I had been filtering out a couple of categories from the main feed on my blog. Asides and Coursework. Each had their own separate feed, and I wasn’t wanting to pollute the main feed with noise. But, strangely, people are asking why I don’t just let everything flow into the main feed.

Fine. It’s all in the main feed now. Asides and Coursework don’t show up on the front page of the site, but their posts go into the feed.

Asides are stuff that are bigger than Twitter, but less than a real post. Coursework is mostly journal article and book notes, and the occasional piece of stuff I want to publish here so it doesn’t evaporate inside Blackboard after the end of a course.

Also, my hosting provider updated PHP on the server today, and one of the plugins that run this blog blew up real good – causing LOTS of noise on the RSS feed. Sorry about that. Grumblegrumble…

this post is the 2,000th one published to my blog. wow.

mass media outlets spent 67 quidjillion dollars trying to make Canadians care that “local” media outlets are having financial difficulties. Then, they come up with this level of genius to prove their relevance:

thankfully, at least a handful of people know the difference between a city and a province:

It’s been 9 years since DiscoverWare went under. I flipped through my old code/design notebook…

• even MORE screen designs

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/l_2048_1536_B336D6B5-C94F-44A2-9967-A9BF1ECF8375.jpeg

• more screen designs

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/l_2048_1536_6847C5AD-0458-4B15-A4D4-22DD4F5AC29B.jpeg

• screen designs

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/l_2048_1536_B1160293-3D97-4499-B0F6-B380AE031429.jpeg

• relational-object database manager

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/l_2048_1536_CAD0C983-1B49-46B8-BAA1-6C5CA58480D6.jpeg

• drag and drop events

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/l_2048_1536_C8377C82-BFA4-477A-8D49-57EAC57FFFC2.jpeg

• drag and drop manager

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/l_2048_1536_12B724F9-6D11-4DE6-9A5D-93FD335B32D4.jpeg

• exploring tabs/drawers

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/l_2048_1536_677E8278-D5F9-4A7E-B770-4C58FCA25D9F.jpeg

• DWI Designs and notes

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/p_2048_1536_FFC006F7-FAC6-48F3-944E-3175AC78511A.jpeg

The Boy™ wanted to explore Second Life this evening, so we fired up the new SL2 beta client, and went to (virtual) Hawaii, before spending some quality time at the NASA education island. I’m a little scared at how easily he picks it up…

• Screen shot 2010-03-01 at 6.47.03 PM

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Screen-shot-2010-03-01-at-6.47.03-PM.png

• Screen shot 2010-03-01 at 6.44.53 PM

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Screen-shot-2010-03-01-at-6.44.53-PM.png

• Screen shot 2010-03-01 at 6.43.34 PM

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• Screen shot 2010-03-01 at 6.39.50 PM

  http://www.darcynorman.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Screen-shot-2010-03-01-at-6.39.50-PM.png

oops. it’s pretty easy to forget to plug the external drive into the laptop every now and then so it can get backed up automatically. On the desktop at work, I leave the time machine drive plugged in, so it’s always up to date. Need to be less forgetful with the home laptop, considering that’s where all of our family photos live…

there is no edublogosphere. there are people, who do stuff, and who write stuff (or don’t). that is all.

it’s impossible to define what an “edublogosphere” is, never mind who is in it, and how it should or shouldn’t work. that’s just pointless blibber blabber.

Sinclair, J & Coulthard, R.M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse: the English used by teachers and pupils. London, Oxford University Press.

The book describes research into student/pupil discourse – who controls the flow, what coded messages are being communicated, etc…

Four minimum criteria for producing a descriptive system as outlined in Sinclair (1973):^[1]

1. The descriptive apparatus should be finite, or else one is not saying anything at all, and may be merely creating the illusion of classification.

2. The symbols or terms in the descriptive apparatus should be precisely relatable to their exponents in the data, or else it is not clear what one is saying.

3. The whole of the data should be describable; the descriptive system should be comprehensive. (have an “other” category)

4. There must be at least one impossible combination of symbols. (I don’t get this…)

5 major dimensions along which situations could vary:

1. Number and grouping of participants
2. Control
3. Copresence
4. Intended audience
5. Purpose

Sociolinguistic aspect…

Latent patterning.

A model for discourse
- orientation
- organization
- fit
- play
- assembly

Footnotes:

1. Sinclair, J. (1973). A course in spoken English: Grammar. London. Oxford University Press, 1972. Linguistics in colleges of education. Dudley Educational Journal. 1(3).

I’m reading up on Likert scales, and came across this section on the Wikipedia page:

Rensis Likert, the developer of the scale, pronounced his name ‘lick-urt’ with a short “i” sound. It has been claimed that Likert’s name “is among the most mispronounced in [the] field.” Although many people use the long “i” variant (‘lie-kurt’), those who attempt to stay true to Dr. Likert’s pronunciation use the short “i” pronunciation (‘lick-urt’).

also, I did a whole bunch of reading before thinking to look at the Wikipedia page – I was hoping to find links to other original sources. relax.