Ruminate

I use a couple of tools to keep myself somewhat organized. Besides a general methodology (David Allen’s Getting Things Done), the most important tools are:

• a good task management tool (I use My Life Organized)
• a good desktop search (Copernic)
• and a tool for keeping notes, web clippings, etc. (Evernote).

These three tolls help keep ideas and tasks organized and make it easier to find information in files. But file management is always an issue, primarily because of changing locations… I reference a file in a note and then the location changes because I move the document to an archive or external drive or new folder and the reference is useless. Searching helps, but ideally I could create shortcuts that actually work (Windows shortcuts are not recognized by many tools).

Until recently, I had no idea that Windows had the ability to create and use “hard links” similar to those available in Unix.  To simplify, in the world of Windows, hard links to files are called hardlinks while those to drives or directories (folders) are called junctions. Both are explained– simply and then in depth– in this shell-shocked article as well as in Wikipedia.

Simply put, junctions (which I find most useful) are like Windows Shortcuts but they actually work.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m fascinated– despite myself– by Twitter, which allows groups of friends to keep up with what each is doing through simple text messages that are propagated to cell phones, IM clients, and web pages/badges.

I am hardly the ideal demographic. I’m well past my early twenties, if my cell phone does text messaging I’m not aware of it, and I have very few friends who care what I am doing at any particular moment. But it still fascinates me and I find myself compelled to keep posting twitters even though there only three people I know who might be reading them, and then only at my behest so I could see how the service works.

The first time I actually started paying attention to Twitter I immediately started thinking of ways it could be used in an educational context. The Smith Magazine 6-word Memoir Contest is an example that points the way. It’s not just the idea of the short memoir, but the immediacy with which it can be propagated to a group that has the power to opt-out and opt-in combined with the low overhead that allows spontaneous contributions.

Poetry, the art that feeds my heart while technology is busy feeding my rational brain, is full of interesting issues and questions regarding performance, spontaneity, real and artificial speech, etc. I could easily see using Twitter as the basis for a nearly real time collaborative poem building activity that would meld together the immediacy of performance with a distributed group… a kind of remote “rounds” session. The results could easily be aggregated and viewed with a badge or fed to a weblog or other site.

10 Minute Email provides exactly what it says it does: web-accessible email addresses that exist for just ten minutes. Very handy to help keep your email from being harvested when registering for a service that demands a working email address for verification. Instantaneous setup and, if you end up needing an extra 10 minutes you can just press a button to extend it.

Propranolol is a beta blocker that is sometimes used in the treatment of hypertension and migraines. The Sixty Minutes segment The Memory Pill looked at its use for treating post-traumatic stress syndrome. Apparently, one of its effects is to lessen the intensity and immediacy of traumatic memories. Various patients were interviewed, all of whom showed astounding improvement after years– even decades– of suffering from severe PTSD following car accidents, physical debilitation, and rape.

Although the results are more than promising– there seem to be few side-effects– research in the US was effectively shut down after a White House bioethics report questioned the ethics of “altering memory.” Research continues in Canada, though, and it looks like the U.S. Military is going to start funding that research…

Critics worry about the effects of manipulating memory. Learning to deal with traumatic events is part of psychological growth. What happens if we short-circuit that process? How will it effect not just what we learn, but how we handle similar situations in the future? What role does memory– even traumatic memory– play in the formation and effectiveness of conscience? Could this become a drug that people take to forget their bad behavior at a party, that criminals take to make them more effective in pursuing their nefarious tasks, or that the military force feeds soldiers to make them better able to “kill, kill, kill”?

These are fascinating and interesting questions, but ultimately they are irrelevant. This cat is out of the bag– both in substance and peoples’ desires– and one can only imagine the kinds of memory manipulation we’ll see in the next few decades: memory erasers, intensifiers, enhancers. It’s the road humanity is on, love it or leave it (like you have a choice).

I’m back in the decidedly below zero climes after a nice week in Portland attending the WCET 2006 conference. WCET is the “Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications” and, founded 15 years ago, it has been showing its age. Conferences, like their mostly mainstream academic participants, are not always the quickest to change… or reflect change.

But I had a much better experience this year than last, largely because the things that are most important to me have– practically overnight– gone mainstream. Last year when I mentioned social software, for instance, it provoked blank responses (or vague terror). This year there was some real momentum around Web 2.0 and social software, replete with Jimmy Wales as the opening plenary speaker. It’s not necessarily that these concepts are being understood, or even embraced, but they are at least receiving real attention.

Highlights of the conference were meeting some other kindred spirits at dinner, such as Jared Stein and John Krutsch, both of Utah Valley State College who helped put into context the past and present monolithic LMS and the emerging virtual/personal learning environment (and their cool tool that helps bridge this gap directly). A number of people asked me if I was related to– or actually was– John Krutsch. Which seemed strange to me, though I guess we are both burly, handsome, surprisingly intellectual and witty…

After dinner came drinks at some nouvelle South American place (caipirinhas, with cachaca and “muddled” limes may be my new favorite drink… I’m not sure how much the enthusiastic shaking of the drink has to do with it and how much the sweet, alcohol-free taste) with Scott Leslie, Terry Anderson and some of the Alaskan crew. Scott, who I’d met most briefly before, had brought his Magic Eight Ball to bear and presented with John and Jared… I was excited to talk more with him about pretty much everything. Terry and I had been on a panel earlier in the day on Web 2.0 and Social Software which was very well received.

Despite all the ways people can communicate with this social software stuff, I often feel pretty isolated here in the North, and this was a happy opportunity to connect with some peers and reassure myself that I’m not alone in my endeavours, concerns, and outlook. I left feeling more refreshed than I have in a long time… and determined to find my way to the Northern Voice conference this year.

Some session notes by the Alaskan contingent on the conference blog… I’ll post a few more of ine later.

You know things are getting bad when Republicans jump on a verbal gaffe by Kerry as if it is the end of the world as we know it. Is this the best they have on offer as we get read to go to the polls. Mocking Kerry would be perfectly fair– it’s amazing that any Republican supporter can do so with a straight face given the, umm, “verbal challenges” faced by the current Commander in Chief– but to take such an obvious slip seriously reeks of desperation.

Unfortunately, it’s just that kind of desperation that often draw in the gullible who don’t pay attention to the initial noise, just the endless reinterpretations in the echo chamber…