Scouting Around

I was tagged

2008-07-01T15:32:00.002-04:00

Janyne Kizer tagged me. She didn't give any instructions, just a 'tag your it' message in Twitter.

So, I did a little research to find out a little more about this 'game'. Apparently, it's been going on for quite some time and is called 'blog-tag'. The earliest reference I found (I didn't spend much time looking) was from December, 2006 where Jeff Pulver has one set of 'rules'. He wasn't the first, but I quit looking. Jeff's state the rules as: "Turns out there is a game of Blog-Tag going around the blogosphere in which bloggers are sharing five things about themselves that relatively few people know, and then tagging five other bloggers to be 'it.'"

I found a couple more from December, 2007, with rules of eights. Luis Suarez lists the rules as: 1. Link to your tagger and post these rules. 2. List EIGHT random facts about yourself. 3. Tag EIGHT people at the end of your post and list their names. 4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

But, in following with how I was tagged, here's my lists....
Five snacks I enjoy:

Gorp (2-4 combined)
Peanuts
M&Ms
Raisins
Pretzels

Five Things on My To-Do list today:

Get OpenID working on http://www.nacaa.com/members/
Start using classes in my coding
Start using AJAX in my coding
Finish writing several blog articles that I've started - this wasn't on my to-do list...
Work out

There is a good chance that one of these will get worked on today...

Five Things I would do if I were a billionaire:

Fund my wife's philanthropic idea for helping those with addictions and their loved ones
Buy more land in the Appalachian mountains
Build my own house
Start an arts (wood working, glass blowing, etc.) school
Start a market for the crafters

Five jobs I have had:

Hog farmer
Inventory business owner (grocery/convenience store)
Veterinary assistant
Ranch hand
Computer User Coach

Five of my bad habits:

Tendency to get tunnel vision - effects my listening skills
Don't say 'no' enough
Perfectionist (I was told this was something I needed to work on in an performance evaluation. I asked "how do I improve upon that?")
Work too much
Don't exercise enough

Five places I have lived:

Florida
Oglethorpe, Georgia
North Carolina

Five people I would like to get to know better (yes, this means you are tagged!):
Now go and post your lists of 5.

I had my wife and two sons listed as 1-3, but since they don't blog, took them off.
There were some others that are prolific bloggers that I felt I knew pretty well already.
There were some others that just don't blog - yet.

Five Random Things:

Looking forward to hiking 67 miles with my oldest son and seven other Boy Scouts in Philmont (Cimarron, NM) in July
Wish I could understand why I'm the only one who has problems (or gets frustrated) with Macs. People I respect for their technological knowledge LOVE them, but I just can't figure out why. Still trying though.
I like woodworking and cooking - don't do much of either.
I love my family. Wish I was a better husband and father.
I answered this tag, not out of arrogance as suggested by Rob Stokes, but for several reasons.

Out of respect and consideration for Janyne who tagged me
The idea that if you (the reader of this who got this far) cared enough to read it you might be more likely to share your information for me to read
One of the biggest benefits of Web2.0 is the relationship building and maintenance aspects. If I want to learn more about someone else, I'm obliged to share something about myself. It's hard to do, but helps me get out of my introverted shell.

Live commentary (shared note taking)

2008-06-30T12:59:00.003-04:00

I just saw a cool use of a new tool - CoverItLive!

Right now, Kristin Hokanson is at the NECC and taking notes. What's cool is that I can read her notes as she takes them. What's really cool is that others can join and help her take notes!

Are you interested in seeing what she noted about the session she took from David Jakes and Dean Shareski's presentation? Check out her blog "The Connected Classroom". During the session, the notes were appearing as she (and others) was entering them.

She took a snippet of code from CoverItLive and embedded it into her blog and then as she typed, it appeared on her site. Since I can't make it to the conference, this is a great way for her to share what she is learning with me (and you!). Also, now she has the notes to the session stored on her blog for future reference.

Is there a meeting or session that you will be attending that others would like to get the highlights - as they are happening? - They could even give you questions to ask the speaker!

Soooo many really cool tools are out there! And they are all easy to use!

Thank you for sharing Kristin!

Sharing is amazing!!!

2008-06-16T13:58:00.002-04:00

I get inspired and educated by seeing what others are doing. Today, I had several "WOW" moments. I'll share the path I took this afternoon and hope that my sharing will inspire and educate you.

A little before lunch, I noticed in my twitter stream (using TwitBin to follow it) bnr1 tweeted "@lorisheldon - Hello Web 2.0 class... from State College PA". That peaked my interest. So, I went to http://www.twitter.com/lorisheldon to see if perhaps lorisheldon was someone I knew and if not, if they were someone I might want to get to know. After all, she is either taking or teaching a Web 2.0 class. Turns out, her twitter profile says she's a "3rd grade teacher turned HS tech. coach". I saw from her recent tweets that she was teaching a Web 2.0 class and was showing twitter. She had requested people say hey and tell where they were from. So I sent her a hello.

One of her recent tweets gave the URL for her Web 2.0 class. Of course, I went and explored and discovered some tools I wasn't aware of along with an excellent video - WOW #1 - The Connected Classroom

After watching the video, I had to explore WOW #2 TeacherTube a YouTube site just for education. This is where I came across WOW #3 - Pay Attention

Which brings me back to getting inspired. I've been developing (slowly) a Web2.0 class for more than a year now. This gets me going on it again.

Of course, in this example the subject was Web 2.0 tools. But, if you use twitter, you'll be following people who are sharing things that you are interested in doing and learning and get inspired from.

BSA Starting Open Source Software Developent Projects

2008-06-10T15:46:00.002-04:00

The Boy Scouts of America has just started developing an Open Source Software project at: http://opensource.scouting.org/

Their mission statement reads:

We are committed to serving the needs of the community. Our Open Source Initiative is dedicated to bringing together the Scouting Community and the Open Source Community in a joint effort to serve the needs of the wider community of software users.

In the welcome page, it states:

In the tradition of the Open Source Movement, the resources of the OSS Website are "Open" to the community. We welcome the participation of organizations who face the same sort of technology issues that we do. Many of the challenges faced by the local Boy Scout Councils, and their volunteers, are the same challenges that other non-profit organizations deal with every day.

If your organization has similar technology needs as BSA, then this might be something worth exploring and getting involved. I think it is a great idea for BSA to tap the resources of all the Scouts and Scouters (adult volunteers) to help build the tools that they all need - and in the process share it with everyone else.

It makes me proud to be a part of such an organization.

Ask the Expert

2008-06-05T12:13:00.001-04:00

Knowing the following:
eXtension has an "Ask an Expert" feature that is supported by numerous Extension Agents and Specialists from across the country. They answer questions in about 16 different categories with more to be added.

Extension Services across the country have publications on MANY different topics.

Background:
I recently revisited the AllExperts site and thought about a question that has been on my mind for quite some time. It first came to me when I learned about Wikipedia.

Question:
Would an agent or specialist participating in others (i.e. AllExperts and Wikipedia) as an expert and contributor be a good way of marketing Extension?

My Current Opinions and Thoughts:
Yes, it is good for agents and specialists to participate and contribute in other sites where 'experts' are needed and recognized with one caveat. There must be a way for the contributions to be recognized as coming from an Extension Agent or Specialist. This can be done in Wikipedia by each individual creating and maintaining a user page with information about credentials and of course their association with Extension (with links). This may require that we maintain two separate accounts - one for when they are representing Extension and one for when we want to post something that should not be associated with Extension - i.e. personal opinions that aren't backed by research.

When we contribute we need to be sure to reference (and link when appropriate) Extension publications, services and expertise.

The argument against this is that we are providing these other services free content and expertise, improving their reputation - which may drive traffic away from our sites. I disagree with this argument. IMHO, the more we can be seen as expert participants on other sites, the more traffic will be driven to our own sites.

Besides, the Extension mission is to disseminate the researched based information to the public. Doesn't it make sense to take advantage of all the venues we can to achieve that goal? Let me make a physical world analogy - if we had the opportunity to talk to a large group of interested people that someone else gathered together, wouldn't we take advantage of that?
Of course we'd wear our Extension name tag and mention Extension services and products in our talk. So, what's the difference?

The problem I see is that most of us are assigned a geographic region to serve. With the web, we are serving a many more than our region and most in our region will never see the results of the time we spend in these endeavors. How do we justify spending time on these type projects to our funders - who primarily care about the people in their geographic region?

Call for discussion:

I don't claim that I'm right in my thinking - that's why I'm posting. I'd like to hear your opinions and reasoning - especially if they disagree with mine!

Should agents and specialists be encouraged to contribute to non-Extension sites? If so, how should those activities be encouraged?

How can they be rewarded and recognized for the time it takes?

How can we 'sell' it to our funding sources?

Another great use for twitter

2008-06-03T11:38:00.001-04:00

Over the past year, I've written about interesting ways that Twitter is being used.

Michael Martine wrote a good article titled "Twitter is like sex" where he makes the point that you just have to get in and experience it to understand it.

The more I use Twitter, the more I find it to be an invaluable tool. Sometimes the noise to value ratio gets a little high, but then something like today's power outage where eXtension and NC Cooperative Extension house their servers occurs. They can't send an email to any of their mailing lists because they are on the servers that are without power. However, I found out about it because some of the people that I follow 'tweeted' that their building was without power. They also used the eXtensionOrgSys twitter account to post the status of their system.

Last week, I drove with my wife to Pennsylvania. Before leaving, I turned on Twitter's SMS feature to have the tweets from that those I follow sent to my cell phone as text messages. Throughout the day, I was able to keep up with my friends and what was going on in the world. I tweeted what I was doing so they could keep up with me. Vince Verbeke shared how to pronounce Wilkes-Barre and even gave directions to a great garden center to visit from where we were having lunch.

After using twitter for more than a year now, I still feel it is a great information gathering tool. It is a great relationship maintenance and building tool. And it's just fun. Twitter is still the first thing I check - before email or anything else. It's like going to a party with all your friends and being able to listen to and even participate in all the discussions. Some I just listen to and laugh, others I participate.

vcverbeke, myself and some others are posting an IT Tip Of The Day (ittotd).
vvanpetten is doing a great job of using twitter to promote her blog and herself.
jdorner is where you can find me.

If you haven't tried Twitter yet, the way I would suggest getting started is to try it with some friends or family that you don't see often. Convince them to 'try' it for a month.

I recommend using a third party tool to read and post to twitter. "How Are People Twittering" has a top ten list as of January 31, 2008. Right now, I'm using Twitbin in my Firefox window. I also like Snitter. And plan to try out Twitterrific (free w/ ads) on my Mac.

Caveat: Twitter is not 100% stable. At this time, I would not recommend using it for mission critical information. Just this morning, there were a couple tweets that I could read on the twitter web site, but didn't get them in my Snitter or TwitBin.

Unable to Learn? Or Unwilling to Learn???

2008-02-14T14:18:00.002-05:00

In working with a lot of people in the area of technology, I hear "I'm not tech savvy" or something along those lines an awful lot. Usually it is a very intelligent professional person. Most of them hold advanced degrees in their field.

As an IT Trainer, how do I get them to become tech savvy? Or maybe I should ask how do I get them to want to become tech savvy?

I honestly believe that there are very few of these people that are unable to learn. The issue is how to get them to 'want' to learn. Is it possible that in today's world, they don't know about the benefits of being 'tech savvy'? Do they think it is just too hard? Do they lack the confidence in being able to learn? Are they using this as an excuse to get out of doing work? Are they afraid? If so, of what?

I don't have the answers. I suspect that I'm not even asking the right questions.

It wouldn't be so bad if their ignorance only affected them. In today's world, their ignorance affects everyone around them. Their co-workers waste a lot of time because they are working on projects with them. The organization loses because countless hours and dollars are wasted, knowledge is not being shared and work is being duplicated to name a few ways their ignorance affects others.

I'm working with a team and we'll have a conference call that will last 2 hours. If the team members could/would post their reports to the web (wiki) prior to the conference call, the secretary's job would be much easier (and more accurate) and our conference call would last a fraction as long. We could spend that time addressing the issues for which we need everyone's input.

If the team members were more tech savvy, we could use some web conferencing software and save hundreds of dollars of phone charges, run a much more efficient meeting, show many of the things we'll be talking about and have a recording for those who were unable to attend.

None of these require skills much beyond being able to type into a web page form, use a word processor or plug in a headset.

I'm done ranting for now...
Your comments would be greatly appreciated!

Getting nothing done this morning

2008-01-16T09:04:00.002-05:00

My mornings usually start with me catching up with my 'tweets' by reading what they did since I was at a computer last. If you aren't using Twitter, it is fun and a great social networking tool. This morning @esagor shared a blog article "Twitter is my village". A great quote from that article is: "For a contrived, weird and techy way to communicate, Twitter’s “passive conversation” fosters very natural, gradual relationship-building."

I learned that Auburn University now has a YouTube channel from @aafromaa and about the daily goings on of several of my friends - that I don't see but once or twice a year. It's just a great way to keep in touch. In return for them sharing their days, I feel I owe it to them to share what's going on in my life.

Another good description of twitter is 'micro-blogging'. Often, I get just enough information to get my interest and want read more.

I also discovered two funny blogs - "Because I Said So" and "MaNiC MoMMy". Okay, sometimes twitter leads to non-productivity. But, more often than not, it leads to extreme productivity and great discoveries.

If you still aren't convinced to start using Twitter, read Anne's article "Advantages of Twitter".

If you care about what I'm doing, get a Twitter account and follow me.

If you want to get a (almost) daily IT tip, follow ITTOTD. If you have an IT Tip, share it with me and I'll add you to the list of those that ITTOTD follows.

Time start getting things done!

Sharing your To-Do lists

2007-12-20T15:14:00.001-05:00

The power of the web today is the ability to collaborate with others. Another tool to put in your box is a to-do list.

I just found a couple that I thought were worth of mentioning. Ta-da List and Voo2Do

Ta-da List is a very simple to-do list manager that lets you create multiple lists, each with tasks. This way, you can separate your tasks by projects. The number one feature of this is that you can share a list - or have several people working on the same list. Each list can be shared with different people or not shared at all.

My second favorite feature is the ability to subscribe to a list via RSS feeds. This way, when others edit the list, I'll know about it.

Voo2Do has more features than Ta-da List, but it is lacking the two most important ones - Collaboration & RSS (they are working on the collaboration feature). But, if you don't want to share with others, it is a very good option.
Some of the features that I like are the ability to put notes with each task, divide tasks among projects and due dates.

If you are looking for a "To-Do List" tool, get an account for each of these. It is free and only takes a minute.

Do You Blog? or Why Blog?

2007-12-03T11:58:00.000-05:00

Lee and Sachi LeFever of The Common Craft Show have produced Blogs in Plain English an easy-to-understand introduction to "What is a blog?"

Anne Adrian blogged "What is a blog" and added more to that - and amplified the message by spreading the word. I'm taking what Anne wrote, adding to it, and amplifying the original message. Everyone benefits. Perhaps you will start blogging about something in which I'm interested and I'll benefit.

I see a blog as everything the LeFevers and Anne say it is and more.

A vehicle for self expression.
A time saver - answer that question you are going to get 100 times this month once and for all. The next time someone asks, just point them to your blog.
A great replacement for 'newsletters' (and cheaper to deliver).
A way to help others.
Payment to those I read. Sort of a "Pay it forward" type thing.
A learning tool - I definitely learn more about what I write by blogging about it. If you want to truly learn and understand something, try explaining it to someone else.
If you write well enough about a topic that enough people are interested in (see Long Tail) you might even be able to make some money by becoming a "ProBlogger".

Kevin Gamble blogged about needing to "Be the Ball" in order to 'grok' or fully understand something. Blogging is one of those things you must "Be the Ball" before you can figure out what's in it for you.

Are you ready to start? Don't you have something to say? Everyone has something they can contribute to mankind.

Blog numbers

2007-11-05T10:30:00.000-05:00

One of the first questions I get when talking to people about using a blog for professional reasons is, "How can I measure it?" Usually, they are familiar with numbers like the number of newsletters mailed or the circulation of a newspaper. With blogs, this can be more difficult - but not impossible.

Anne Adrian and I talked last week about this topic I guess it spawned a blog post for each of us. Her article on measuring your blog has some excellent tips for bloggers and recommends using the tools discussed below. She's a faster (and better) blogger than me.

By using a combination of FeedBurner and Google Analytics, there are ways to count the number of people who subscribe to your feed or look at your pages.

Let's start with Google Analytics.

Go to: http://www.google.com/analytics/ and create an account if you don't already have one.

Click on "Add a domain".
Enter the URL of your blog.
Copy the code snippet and paste into the body portion of your blog template (before the "/body" tag at the end of the HTML code).

If you are using Blogger, add an HTML/JavaScript element to the footer of your page template.

Check back to view the traffic reports for your blog.

This will count the people visiting your blog. It does not count the people who subscribe to your feed using a feed reader or get it via email. To collect that data, you need a tool like FeedBurner.

Configuring FeedBurner to collect data.

First, you'll need to create a FeedBurner account and add your blog.

Go to: http://feedburner.com/
Create your account.
Add your blog in the "Burn a feed this instant" box.
When editing the feed details, enter a url for your "Feed Address" (avoid spaces). This is what you'll need later.
Save the Feed Details.

Finally, change change your blog's RSS server to use FeedBurner.
FeedBurner has step-by-step instructions for the following blog services:

If you are using other blogging software and have figured out how to use FeedBurner's RSS redirection, please let me know.

FeedBurner also gives you a way for people to receive your posts via email. (Under the Publicize tab, click on "Email Subscriptions").

Looking at the data

After you've configured your blog with these tools, you'll want to periodically view the reports. Use these numbers with caution. They show trends and not absolute numbers of people reading your content. I subscribe to lots of feeds that I never get around to reading and I visit lots of pages only to realize that it isn't what I wanted and leave.

But, if you need to report a number to your boss, these tools will give you some good and useful numbers to report.

Disclaimer: I have no financial or other interests in FeedBurner other than as a user of their services. I'm sure there are other services available that offer similar tools. I just don't know about them.

Using twitter as a 'microblog'

2007-11-02T13:52:00.001-04:00

Most of the people I follow on twitter use it more to share what they are thinking, feeling or doing. Momku does it in a very interesting and entertaining way. All of her 'tweets' are in haiku style.

I'm being followed by a couple who I can only assume follow me in an effort to increase their number of followers (hoping that I'll follow them in return). Their mistake.

Usually when I'm notified that someone is now following me (I receive an email), I'm curious enough to go to their twitter page to see if it is someone I know and would want to follow or try to figure out what is their motivation for following. This usually gets their web site hit one time by me and I move on.

Today, I got notified that I had a new follower "21st Century Citizen". I was curious to see who it was and found that they are using twitter - very effectively - as a microblog. While sometimes some of those I follow use twitter as a microblog, that is the minority of their tweets. "21st Century Citizen" is using it as a way to promote environmentalism by sharing links to related web sites and articles. Of course I clicked on their home page link as well. If I were interested in this topic, I probably would have followed them in twitter and subscribed to their blog (using my RSS reader). But, I'm not, so I won't.

I don't respect their spam like method of marketing. However, I do respect how they are using the tools and can see this as a quick way to share information - with those interested.

Del.icio.us would be a better tool for sharing links with brief descriptions, but they would lose out on the 'spam marketing option'.

What I did learn from them is that twitter could be a good way to share lots of small pieces of information with a large (or small) audience. Maybe a way to share a 'tip of the day' in your area of interest. If there were someone who shared one short (twitter limits you to 140 characters per tweet) tip each day (or just each week) on a topic I was interested in, I would follow them. Hey, that sounds like a good idea. I think I'll try it. Are you interested in an IT Tip of the Day? Follow me at: http://twitter.com/ittotd and we'll see how long I can keep it up. (you can help me by sending me tips to use) Maybe several of us could use post to this - contact me if you are interested in 'co-tweeting'.

What do you know? Maybe a micro-blog will be easier to maintain than a regular blog. I'll let you know.

One nice thing about using twitter as a micro-blog is that I'll easily be able to see who is subscribed (following). Which is a great lead in for my next article - how to count who's reading your blog.

Finding Feeds

2007-10-22T10:12:00.000-04:00

A week or two ago, I wrote "Blogs of interest to Extension Agents" where I collected a handful of blogs that I know about and thought Extension agents might find useful in getting started with an RSS Reader.

Last week Brain Webster wrote an article "Finding Feeds in Google Reader". I had seen this feature, but never used it. This is a great way to find feeds of articles in your areas of interest.

Blogs of Interest to Extension Agents

2007-10-13T11:39:00.000-04:00

A good first step into the world of blogging is to start following some good feeds. Subscribe to them in an RSS reader of your choice. (See: RSS For Beginners)

This article was started months ago and I just kept adding links to blogs and categorizing them. Then Anne Adrian's (from Auburn Extension) PageFlakes sparked an idea. A better way to share feeds that might be of interest to the people I work with. So, I created my own PageFlakes page for you to use to find some feeds to get started. As you surf the internet, look for the icon on the page or in the location panel or button bar. When you see this logo, look at the page and ask yourself, "is this the type content I want to keep abreast of?" If so, then add it to your feed reader. Before long, you'll be keeping up-to-date in your field and know more about what's new and what's going on than most of your peers.

If you know of a feed that would be of interest to Extension Agents, please add a comment to this article or email me.

Google Docs

2007-10-10T09:43:00.000-04:00

Google Docs is a GREAT way to share documents (word processing files, spreadsheets and now presentations) and work with other people. If you haven't used it yet, you owe it to yourself to take a look! All you need is a Google account.

The key to working smarter is working together. Today, there are lots of tools that can help you do this more efficiently and Google Docs is one of them. I'll write about others I use in future articles.

I have been using Google Docs for about a year now. Now, I save very few, if any, documents to my hard drive. They all go into Google Docs. The straw that broke the camels back and pushed me into using Google Docs for just about everything I do happened one day this spring. I needed to see the budget my secretary kept on her computer and she was out of town for a week. There was no way I could get to that file (legally). When she got back, we put that spreadsheet into Google Docs where we could both access it and work on it. I've heard of many others having similar experiences.

Reasons I love Google Docs:

I can access my files from any computer connected to the internet. Very nice if you use more than one computer.
Other people (I choose who) can be invited to edit - this is the REAL power
Other people (I choose who) can be allowed to view
Documents can be published to the web to share with a lot of people with two clicks
Every change is recorded - along with who made the change
Integrated with Google Mail (if you use gMail)
Post directly to your blog
FREE
EASY
FAST

Reasons Google Docs is not perfect:

It is not a desk top publishing (DTP) application. For the rare occasion when I need to format a document for paper beyond the capabilities of Google Docs, I save it to my computer and use the appropriate application for DTP. I use Google Docs to create, get others' input and help and then do any final layout using a DTP app on my computer.
I find it easier to move around and edit a spreadsheet using Excel or Calc. So, if I'm going to be doing some major work on a spreadsheet, I'll work on it locally and then upload it when I'm done.
Presentations doesn't allow me to edit the background or add animatation.
Presenations doesn't allow me to save as a PowerPoint file.
It does about 95% of what I need a word processor to do, about 90% of what I need a spreadsheet application to do and about 80% of what I need a presentation application to do. What I lose in functionality, I more than make up for in other ways.

Over the last year, Google Docs has made a lot of improvements and new features are being added at a fast pace. If it doesn't do what you need today, keep watching.

For a quick overview of Google Docs, see: Google Docs in Plain English.

2007-10-06T19:16:00.000-04:00

In BSA WoodBadge Training they taught us to teach the youth leaders how to teach using the "EDGE Training" techniques.

This is a simple four-step process used for teaching any skill.
Explain—The trainer explains how something is done.
Demonstrate—The trainer demonstrates while explaining again.
Guide—The learner tries the skill while the trainer guides him through it.
Enable—The learner works on his own under the eye of the trainer.
From The Youth Leadership Training Continuum

A more detailed explanation at the October 5 Scoutmaster Blog

This applies to teaching adults as well as youth.

Paradigm shifting tools

2007-10-04T09:47:00.000-04:00

The world is changing. I really enjoy finding or identifying tools, trends, etc. that I think will effect the rate of change. Finding those things that have the potential to cause global paradigm shifts.

I saw several this morning. All in a 20 minute talk by Hans Rosling.

1. The obvious one was the topic of his talk. How money and political leaders have changed and are changing the health of their countries. Making the public aware of these trends is a great first step towards making changes.

2. Less obvious: new software (at least new to me) can be used to present complex information in easy to follow and understand formats. I had never seen animated graphs like his before. He used it to show global trends, but it won't be long before it will be used in K-12 classrooms to show how much food is wasted in the cafeteria.

3. He concludes his talk about freeing and making understandable the information that is paid for by the public. This requires that the information be ANIMATED, LIBERATED and SEARCHABLE. Gapminder and Google are working towards this end. Reminiscent of Kevin's article "Open Access In Scientific Publishing".

4. PowerPoint presentations (or Google Presentations) will become better (less boring and more infomative) in the future (woo hoo!!!)

5. Social networking tools work. I found out about this when reading my RSS feeds (subscribed to rconlon's del.icio.us feed) You are discovering it by reading this blog directly at http://blog.johndorner.com/ in your own feed reader or it might have been delivered to your email by FeedBurner or other similar service. Those who aren't using at least some of the new social networking tools are getting left behind.

What's really cool - is that you can play with the same software and dataset that Hans Rosling used in his presentation at: http://tools.google.com/gapminder/.

LifeSmarts

2007-10-04T08:22:00.000-04:00

Just ran across this site today - LifeSmarts - http://www.lifesmarts.org/

Looks like it would fit in with 4-H perfectly. Competition started 9/17/07, so you need to hurry.

"LifeSmarts… the ultimate consumer challenge is an educational opportunity that develops the consumer and marketplace knowledge and skills of teenagers in a fun way and rewards them for this knowledge. The program complements the curriculum already in place in high schools and can be used as an activity for classes, groups, clubs, and community organizations. It is free and open to all teens in the US in the 9th through 12th grades. LifeSmarts competitions are run as gameshow style matches. Teams of four to five teens compete in district and state matches with the state winners going to the national competition to vie for the national LifeSmarts title. LifeSmarts is a program of the National Consumers League."

LifeSmarts is operated by the National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is a national nonprofit organization that identifies, protects, represents, and advances the economic and social interests of consumers and workers through education and advocacy.

More on Presenting

2007-09-27T10:22:00.001-04:00

QOTD: "(powerpoint) bullets don't kill people, people kill people"
I saw this same quote in both Visuals In PowerPoint by Rowan Manahan and in Death By PowerPoint by Alexei Kapterev.

I found these on Slideshare.net this is one of the playgrounds of the Knowledge Worker 2.0 Great stuff here!!! Great place to share your stuff!!!

I don't create many PowerPoints, but the ones I've used recently are there. But, what is even more important are the ones that are in my list of favorites. Those are the really good ones.

I've got to start blogging more... Sorry, I haven't been keeping up my end of the bargain. However, I have been using del.icio.us, SlideShare and Twitter for sharing information, links and my thoughts. If you aren't using these, please look into them!

Hospice Management for Old Media?

2007-09-10T08:58:00.000-04:00

In Jim Langcuster's from Alabama Cooperative Extension post Hospice Management for Old Media he thinks about how all media has become demassified and how Extension should deal with it. I think he summarizes it well when he says:

"Newspaper, radio and television now are only small parts of a considerably larger picture — valuable, yes, but only elements of a much larger mosaic. Likewise, there is no such thing as an Extension audience but rather an infinite variety of micro-audiences that are still amenable to Extension knowledge, provided it’s disseminated in the right way."

There are numerous ways content providers should be getting their content out to the public. If you are still relying on the old media (newspaper, radio and television) as your primary means, start looking at other methods.

If you are still using the old media as a way to get your information, please learn more about RSS/Atom and feed readers like Google Reader or any of many others.

Presentation Tips

2007-09-07T13:01:00.000-04:00

Here are some tips for giving a presentation when you want to show some web pages or other applications.

Quickly Switch between PowerPoint and a Web Page (or other application)

In Windows [Alt][Tab] will let you switch between any open windows. If a window is minimized, it will open.

On a Mac, [Command][Tab] will let you switch between running applications. If you have more than one window for an application open, you will need to click on the desired window or use [Control]1 (or the appropriate number) to bring the correct window to the front. If a window is minimized, it will NOT be opened. SO... be sure to have only the applications you want to show during your presentation open and set up as you want them to be shown before starting your presentation. Also on a Mac, be sure to Quit any unused applications so they won't appear in the list of applications to open.

Save Your Presentation as a PowerPoint Show

If you save your presentation as a PowerPoint Show, you won't have the ugly editor window as an application/window option. Just start the show and you are ready to go.

If you will be giving your presentation on a different computer, you will want to package it. Jeffrey SoRelle wrote a great set of instructions at: Package PowerPoint for Removable Media.

Make it legible from a distance

Before you show a web page to your audience, increase the text size to where they can read it from a distance. Showing a web page with the fonts at the same size that you use when working will not be legible from the back of the room. In Firefox you can use [Ctrl]+ or View ([Command]+ on a Mac) -> Text Size -> Increase to increase the size of the text. This may distort the layout of a page. Images will not be increased. In MSIE, [Ctrl]+ Zooms the page, including images.

In Firefox, I recommend getting the PageZoom add-on. This enables you to zoom all tabs and increases the size of images as well.

In MSIE 7, you will want to use Page -> Zoom rather than Page -> Text Size because many pages don't change their text size with this option and it doesn't increase the images' size.

Show only what you want them to see

On a PC, show your browser in Full Screen mode (View -> Full Screen) or [F11] in both Firefox and MSIE.
On a Mac, Firefox and Safari do not have this feature. On a Mac, you will want to hide the toolbars you don't want to show (View -> Toolbars).

Make it easy to go to the next web page

Before you get up in front of the audience, open all of the pages you want to show in new tabs and position them in the order you want to show. Rather than clicking on a link, move to the next tab. Unless you are very confident that there won't be ANY problems with the internet connection, connection speed or the web site you are going to show, I would strongly recommend having all the pages already loaded. More than once, I have lost an internet connection when giving an important presentation. Which brings me to the next tip.

Have a backup plan!
This works if you won't have an internet connection or if you have one and you lose your connection. Save the pages you want to show to your hard drive (or flash memory stick, CD, etc.). In Firefox 2, use File -> Save Page As and choose Web Page Complete for the file type. In MSIE, use File -> Save As and choose Webpage Complete for the file type. This will create an html file and a folder with all the graphics and other necessary files. Be sure to keep both the html file and the folder together.

Practice! Practice! Practice!

Practice giving your presentation on another computer to make sure that ALL of the files you need are on your backup flash memory stick or CD. To make sure your backup web pages are all there, test it on a computer that hasn't visited the sites you are showing (or clear your browser's cache) and is disconnected from the internet.

Practice giving your presentation using the same equipment with which you will be presenting. Become familiar with the mouse, pointer, remote, etc.

Practice in the room where you will be giving the presentation. Become familiar with your surroundings and all the equipment. Know where you will be standing so you won't be blocking the audience's view. Look at your busiest slide from the back of the room. Look at it as though you were the most visually impaired person in the crowd.

Oh yeah, did I mention that you should practice your presentation?

Follow up on using Gmail

2007-08-15T14:50:00.001-04:00

It's been a month since I switched to Google Mail. All of my mail accounts are forwarded to my gMail account now.

Overall, I would say the experiment has been a success and I don't plan on moving back to using desktop clients (i.e. Thunderbird or Outlook).

Observations:

I REALLY like having my address book available from everywhere and not have to sync it.
It is a much better interface than the university's "WebMail" (squirrelMail).
I like the gMail Notifier (mac or windows) and needed it to make gMail my default email client.
Tagging took a little getting used to - slightly different than using folders but similar enough to not be a problem. Has more advantages than using folders - i.e. a message can be have several tags.
Very fast "Search" capabilities.
2GB of FREE storage space!!!
Tons of keyboard shortcuts.
Good spam filter - only a few spam messages have passed through and I haven't found any good messages in my spam folder - which automatically deletes messages after 30 days.
It's cool how it displays all the messages in a thread when a new message is delivered.
Overall - VERY easy to use.

Until something changes, I plan to continue to use gMail as my only mail client.

Useful Site of the Day

2007-08-06T09:52:00.000-04:00

The University of California - Irvine
Online course - "Fundamentals of Personal Financial Planning"
http://ocw.uci.edu/courses/AR0102092/

Moving Online - GMail - the final frontier

2007-07-11T15:23:00.000-04:00

I work from too many computers to be able to successfully keep my email address books on all of them up-to-date. I add an address on this one, then delete an address on another one. Before long, I have several different (and all incomplete) address book.

I tried Plaxo, but could never get it to synchronize.

So, it's time for a Kevin Gamble type experiment. I'm going to try using Google Mail as my only mail client. I've imported my address books and have all of my mail accounts being forwarded to my GMail account. I've been using GMail as a storage place for all of my Sent mail for several months now (BCC all messages to that account and set up a filter to automatically archive messages from my other accounts). I've resisted using GMail as my primary because I felt it just lacked the features I 'needed' in order to work efficiently. But now my frustration from working from different computers has just gotten the best of me - time to make a drastic change in the way I work.

It will be an interesting experiment. I'll let you know how it comes out.

A couple months ago, I stopped saving files to my hard drive (and using the flash memory stick only for backups) and started using Google Docs almost exclusively for my word processing and spreadsheets. There have only been a few features that I've missed. Otherwise, I've been VERY happy with that experiment. I even used ZoHo for creating a presentation.

I have also stopped (mostly) using my browser's bookmarks in favor of del.icio.us and have been THRILLED with that move.

My pictures are going either into my Facebook account or into Flickr.

I'm storing my presentations on Slideshare.

What's left?

Would you like to join me in this experiment? What are you liking or missing?

Making Impacts

2007-07-06T08:39:00.000-04:00

Last week I talked to the Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware Associations of County Agricultural Agents about collaborating online, web 2.0 and using wikis (there division between all three of these is very hazy). I had a great time visiting with the agents up there and enjoyed their hospitality (and crabs).

During the presentation on wikis, we created a PACAA wiki using PBwiki. Ken Balliet started the home page with a great introduction. I especially like it where he asks, "Who is the webmaster of the PACAA wiki?" and answers, "YOU ARE!" (referring to the PACAA members).

They have some great agents doing some great things up there.