You may or may not know that this blog was unavailable for a short time overnight. I was pretty worried about this. What had I done now?
I followed the steps outlined in the WordPress support forums and completed a form asking for some help and then headed out for a dog walk. By the time the dog and I returned, Anthony from WordPress had reviewed things and reactivated the blog. My sincere thanks. Apparently, it fell victim to an automated process.
I apologize for any inconvenience to anyone who got caught up in all of this and send my appreciation to @windsordi who first alerted me to the problem. I owe you a Tim’s.
The news wires are just alive with news of the impending release of yet another version of Microsoft Office. This version will be called 2013 and has a huge list of additional new features.
There was a time when I really would be excited by something like this. Now, not so much.
Next to a programming language, a wordprocessor was one of the first pieces of software that I purchased for myself. It made a huge difference in my productivity. Probably the biggest benefactors were my students who could actually read my tests and assignments. SuperScripsit had a bit of a learning curve but it made sense eventually and I had documents overflowing the diskette tray.
Technology moved on and so did the word processing software that I used. I ended up “standardizing” on WordPerfect which was one of the great applications. Yet, at the same time, I had to learn how to use WordStar to help colleagues. It generally wasn’t a big deal; I liked helping out and it helped push the technological agenda along. Along the way, I paid money to buy Borland’s Sprint as its claim to fame was that it was programmable. Surely, anything programmable would be flexible enough for my needs.
Eventually, I felt good about my decision to focus on WordPerfect. The Ministry of Education licensed it for all Ontario publically funded educational institutions and there was a great uptake of the product. I was already there! But, the Macintosh lobby wasn’t happy about this and their lobbying ended up with Clarisworks and then Appleworks being licensed. Hopefully, by now, you can see where this is headed. In a multi-platform district, I would end up supporting WordPerfect and Appleworks users with their challenges. Nothing was worse, though, than when you would have a Windows user send a document to a Macintosh user. Doug ended up being caught in the middle helping folks transfer their masterpieces.
It gets worse! Documents started appearing from the Ministry of Education in Microsoft Office .doc format. After having a whole system now pretty aware of .wpd and .cwk, a new beast appears. Sometimes, the document would import but as time and user sophistication grew, things became worlds apart. What to do? Money was thrown at the problem and administrators were given copies of Microsoft Office to be able to work with the new documents. It makes sense until they started to share these documents with people who didn’t have Office. The cost of providing the software forced us to look into other areas and OpenOffice was used as a solution. You’d think that we would have it nailed, right?
Nah. Later editions of Microsoft Office come along and .docx adds a new wrinkle to the situation and a new dialect for this humble servant to add to the mix. As you can imagine, the easiest way to manage all this was with .txt file so that we could just focus on the content and not all the neat features that modern word processors feature. Bwah! The good folks at Apple start to have a few promotions and Pages stakes its place in the learning space as well.
About the same time, we got very serious about the web for wordprocessing. My personal favourite was Google Documents although I’m intrigued by Microsoft’s Live Offering. I’ve also messed around with Zoho Docs and really like what I’m seeing there too.
Stop the merry-go-round already!
Having done all of this, when was the last time I actually used a wordprocessor! Honestly, it was yesterday when my friend @cyndiejacobs sent me a document for my thoughts. So, when was the last time before yesterday. Now that becomes the long time I’m getting at to drive my case here.
Instead, I’m not really a wordprocessor user! A great deal of the writing that I do are for the web – I’m using the Qumana editor right now but will also use Microsoft’s LiveWriter, WordPress’ Editor and ScribeFire depending upon how the mood hits. When I’m taking notes, if I know that they’ll end up on a blog post, I’ll key right into those editors. If it’s going to end up being a document that I’m sharing with someone else, it’ll either be Evernote or a Google Document.
Given that my head is full of learning the above, I think that you might be able to see why I’m hesitant to devote a few brain cells towards learning another package with updated features. (although the inner nerd in me is curious about the ribbon and the metro features…) And, will there be a Macintosh or Linux version? Hmmmm.
At present, I’m not terribly worked up about the features. There was a time when I wanted every little feature that a developer could dream of. I shudder when I think of all the tutorials and problem solving that I did just to learn yet something else new or to help someone who needed assistance. Quite frankly, my needs have always been a subset of the latest and greatest. My curiosity and desires a little more. But, I think for the present, I’ll just follow my needs.
What about you? Are you creating cutting edge documents and need the latest or are you wearing your own comfy writing software and routine and sticking with it?
This is called the Chrome Remote Desktop, and yes, it is part of Google Chrome (well, with the addition of a small extension). I thought to myself, “Google made a remote desktop app and how did I not know about this?” I just had to try it out to see it for myself.
Back in January I shared a post titled “Breaking the Ice with a Collaborative Google Prez,” in which I explained how I’ve been using a Google Presentation, shared with anyone who has the link to have edit access, as the foundation for a social “ice breaker” and reflection activity in my online class. That original post with provide you with more context about the activity, including a sample of the template I provide to students (i.e. what the presentation looks like before they edit it).
One book can bring two different worlds together. That’s what two Vanderbilt students believed when they founded Teach Twice, “a social venture that educates children and their communities through stories and the exchange of culture.”
Skimmer℠ is an Adobe® AIR™ desktop application designed to streamline, beautify, and enhance the experience of participating in your most frequently used social networking activities. It improves upon your day-to-day interaction with multiple social networks, removing distractions and providing a rich experience that is particularly suited to multimedia content.
In 1955, the Lincoln division of Ford Motor Company designed and built a futuristic concept car called the Lincoln Futura. It was built entirely by hand in Turin, Italy at a cost of $250,000, and like many concept cars, was never put in to production. In the mid 1960’s, George Barris of Barris Kustom City acquired the car for $1 directly from Ford.
The Power Pwn is described as “a fully-integrated enterprise-class penetration testing platform” that has an “ingenious form-factor” – which, I think is a euphemism for “easily hidden” – and as a “highly-integrated/modular hardware design”.
YouTube has a firm place in the current classroom. From Khan Academy’s videos to YouTube EDU and beyond, there’s a reason all these videos are finding a home in schools. In an effort to help keep the ball rolling, Google just launched a set of 10 interactive lessons designed to support teachers in educating students on digital citizenship. A topic obviously quite close to Google’s heart.
Google has launched a new version of its fast booting web based operating systemChrome OS. It has a completely new interface, called Aura, which gives you more control over the apps and tabs you have open, and provides access to files, so you can work offline.
Have you ever been transfixed by looking at colorful pie charts and histograms that are often displayed by leading news channels, or in a magazine? Most of them try to educate viewers about information related to social-economical-political matters but they present such dry and boring details in style! They make use of brilliant visuals to transform boredom into curiosity. These colorful elements are known as ‘infographics’
What are the implications of MOOCs on Higher Education and University teaching? In this article on single-most-important-experiment-in-higher-education:
doug --- off the record 