A few upcoming events...

I thought these upcoming events might be of interest to you:

First, through SAIC Career Services, a workshop on March 4 about promoting your work online through websites and social networking. You probably got an email about it, here's the blurb:

Website & Online Networking Workshop
March 4 (Thursday) 4:15 to 5:45 pm

Ryan Education Center Studio A in the Art Institute's Modern Wing

If you don't have a website, learn how to get online quickly and easily. If you do have one, learn how to make it more effective using web development tools.

Special Guest: Jesse Seay, Assistant Professor of Audio Arts and Acoustics at Columbia College and SAIC MFA alumna, will show how she has integrated her website into her art practice: http://www.jesseseay.com.

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Go here to RSVP for the workshop if you're interested! I know it's kinda jumping ahead by looking at website development (which we're doing later in the semester), but the social networking aspect could have a very timely connection to our first few Techno Teach-Ins on that subject.

Second, through AIC Teacher Programs, a program called "Teachers' Lounge - Lessons from the Studio" on Thursday, March 11. Here's the blurb on it:

What happens when educators expand the concept of the studio beyond that of a physical space where art is made to a broader experimental process of teaching and learning? The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and the Art Institute of Chicago collaborate to explore how aspects of the studio experience such as investigation, experimentation, critique, and reflection translate to the classroom. What is effective studio teaching? How are teachers using this process to enhance student creativity and critical thinking skills? What can we learn about the creative process from examining artists’ studios?

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Check them out!

How To Add PowerPoint Presentations To Blogger

If you want to post your PowerPoint presentation to your blog, here's one way to do it. I've used Slideshare in the past, but other options exist too (anyone ever use Sribd?). Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

How To Add Power Point Presentations To Blogger

View more presentations from guest66ae43.

Who needs to leave the house to go to a museum?

An interesting article in the trib about Virtual Museums and their rising visitorship.

Chicago Tribune Article

Especially of note was the Museum of Online Museums site, maintained by a firm here in Chicago!

Mindmapping <--> Mindblowing

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If you're not familiar with mindmapping applications, check this one out at MindMeister. If you have John Ploof for thesis, you may see that he's a big fan of mindmapping (though he tends to do his with post-it notes). It's a great process for plotting out ideas and brainstorming, particularly at the beginning of a research process like a thesis! :) Just google mindmaps and you'll get a slew of different options.

This particular mindmap has an extra Cyberped bonus because it's a mindmap of online collaboration tools (and appears to be quite comprehensive!). Check it out for some other great categories of collaborative resources (file sharing, wikis, social networks, video conferencing, event scheduling, etc...).

Did you know we have a departmental Delicious list?

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I've been thinking (with great nostalgia) about your budding theses proposals and the process you are now beginning (and loving, no doubt) in Thesis I, and I wanted to share some resources that you might find helpful as you're brainstorming. This post is dedicated to the Delicious list that we've started for the department. It has a huge variety of bookmarks to potentially useful sites and studies, and they're tagged to help you sort through them. I'll be curious to see what you guys think of it. If you have any other sites that you think should be added, please share them here on the Ning!

RIP rss feed widget

Yeah, my wonder widget broke and died. And I decided that you guys probably wouldn't care if you had to click one extra time to see the class blogroll here on the actual blog instead of from within the Ning group. A short-lived experiment, oh well.

I fought the widget, and I won.

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I have been trying and trying to figure out how to make a widget for our Ning group that pulls the rss feeds of all your individual blogs (so you didn't have to, you know, click one more time to find the blogroll here on the class blog). I'm not sure it was really worth all the effort, but you can see what I came up with. It works like a collapsible outline, so click on your various blogs to see the posts below. It's kinda ugly, and pretty cumbersome, but it's the only widget creator I could get to work. I learned all about OPML files (something I'd never come across before) -- it's basically like a live outline or list of blog feeds. I used this site to turn my list of your blog feeds into a hosted OMPL file. Then I inserted the url it created for me into this widget creator. Once we all start posting more, if this thing doesn't work we can just get rid of it. But anyways, go play with the result of my many hours of labor (it really shouldn't have been so hard).

Skitch - So Sweet!

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If you find yourself taking screenshots a lot, this application is awesome. It is so easy and fast! It might come in handy for those of you who like posting pictures in your blogs. You just have to download the application at skitch.com and then open it whenever you want to take a screenshot or capture an image from another site. Then you can edit your shot, add various kinds of notations on it (arrows, circles, text, etc.), and upload the image. After a second, you can click on it to get the code to embed into your blog. I highly recommend!

Roll Call

Our blogroll is up with the links to your individual blogs that you submitted to the Ning site. I think we're still missing a couple, so please send me yours to add to the list. Also, if you change your blog URL, let me know so I can update our blogroll.

Please read each other's blogs and comment throughout the week. Don't forget to do two posts a week - one related to one of the assigned "readings" (i.e., websites or blogs listed for the week on the syllabus), and one of your own choosing. And of course feel free to post more often if you want! Happy blogging.

Now I will see if I can make a widget from scratch so your feeds all show up in one happy place in our Ning group (fingers crossed, this could crash and burn).

Welcome to Cyberpedagogy

Welcome to Cyberped!  For class, you all are asked to keep up a blog, so we (Ray and Meredith) will be doing one too.  We'll post on current trends, topics, issues, and events related to the course, as well as share some cool resources and websites for personal, educational, and professional use!  In general, Ray will post from the "Cyberped" name/account, and Meredith's posts will appear with her own name.  We'll read and comment on your posts each week, and we encourage you to comment on each other's blogs as well as ours!  Go team.