My last post was serious so here’s another quick funny post to contrast it. On the way back from the Red Mountain campus yesterday I was having another good conversation with my ride, Charlie Levine. Right in the middle of it my right leg started feeling really hot for some reason. I felt bad because Charlie and I were having a good talk and during his part of the conversation I was fidgeting around in my seat and thinking to myself, “Why in the world is my leg on fire?!”. It took me about 3 minutes of discomfort to finally do something about it, and I discovered that a 9-volt battery that I had put in my pocket in preparation for some video work that morning was being shorted out by my key chain. (Which by the way creates a very hot set of keys.)
So here are my 9-volt battery safety tips:
Don’t touch them to your tongue unless you want a shocking experience (it’s okay to do this once when you are a kid and your older sibling triple-dog dares you)
Don’t touch them to your metal watch band while it’s on your wrist (I did this once on purpose just to see what would happen)
Don’t carry them in your pocket with anything metal. (It gives new meaning to the term Hot Pocket) Ouch!
After car-pooling with her to the MCC Red Mountain campus yesterday, Donna and I had a conversation that she encouraged me to write about in a blog post. So this one’s for you, Donna. 🙂
I’m currently enrolled in an educational psychology graduate class at ASU entitled “Fundamental Theories of Learning.” Tying it together with some of the technology skills and the environment I work in has been an excellent experience. In the class one of the papers we read was entitled “The Seven Sins of Memory” — based on the book of the same name written by Dr. Daniel L. Schacter from Harvard University.
Responses (from 14 MCC faculty) to a request for top three favorite podcasts (most are available inside iTunes)…if you did not get a chance to submit your favorites, you can add them in the comments area below:
Hmmm…interesting. This research seems to lend support for the idea NOT to use PowerPoint as a way to place bulleted text on the board but rather images and diagrams and animations that illustrate the idea. So, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and get rid of PowerPoint. Let’s use it in ways that stimulate the brains of our students not ways that overload their brains and make learning more difficult.
Listen in on CTL Podcast with the Professor Episode 3 as Rod Christian, Business Faculty from Red Mountain, discusses his approach to providing feedback on student writing in his Business Communications classes.
Recording notes: The audio for this podcast was captured using portable podcast technologies (iPod video device and Micromemo recorder). The sound was edited the podcast was created using Garage Band.
In my opinion, one of the reasons that George Lucas’ earlier Star Wars film efforts were so successful is because they portrayed his vision of a ‘used future’–one where its inhabitants weren’t totally amazed at the fact they were traveling by light speed in space ships the size of Texas. They just used technology because it was there. What part of this are we employing today? Which teaching and technology trends are here to stay and won’t evolve or degenerate because the future is here and now and we just use it without geeking out about it?
James brought to my attention that the folks at Apple are up to their old (but good) tricks again. They’ve released a new version of their Boot Camp software that allows MS Windows to run on their hardware. Newly added is support for Windows Vista. I anticipate there will be a day when we will be so used to technology that it won’t matter THAT much what OS (Operating System) a computer has on it. We will just walk up to technology and begin interacting with it. Bad technology will devolve and good technology will progress…much like natural selection in ecology.
Well… Microsoft Internet Explorer does it again! Today I was doing some work on some highly stylized HTML lists. I began to do my normal routine of looking at the web page in various browsers. Everything was looking great, but then came Internet Explorer 6! I noticed that it had placed quite a bit of extra space between each list item. Investigation started! (more…)
Yes indeed, your friendly “professional development guru” has returned from a crash course on motherhood. I enjoyed my 12 weeks of “mommy-time,” however, I’m ready to be back at work using my brain muscles for things other than just changing diapers and soothing a crying baby! That is hard work! With that said, I am open for business. To refresh everyone’s memory about what I do here, I’ve compiled a quick list: (more…)
Fantastic use of blogs for education…tracking your movement through the maze of an academic conference session. “Walk” with Shelley Rodrigo, MCC faculty of English, this week as she attends and documents her experience at the CCCC conference.
