Liz Straus on Blogging Mojo and getting the Kudzu Out

Not sure that I ever had Mojo, in fact the only Jo I have is my middle name, but I do know what kudzu is. Kudzu can be found all over the south. A fast growing imported vine, it grows eerily overmuch of the landscape in southern states. Kudzu is aggressive and hard to control. It chokes out trees and other plant vegetation. Thanks to Liz Straus and her post on both Mojo and Kudzu, I found the motivation to blog after about a month’s absence. Kudzu can be found in Mississippi (and other places in the deep south) and that is where my mind and I were in October and November. My mother-in-law was seriously ill for awhile, recently died, and was buried on the 15th of November in McCool, Mississippi. So while late September,October, and November found my thoughts elsewhere, November is my blog’s birthday and I have some reflecting and related postings to write up as 2007 wraps up.

Liz says there are 10 ways to kill Blog Kudzu they are:

1. Step back from your blog and the blogoshere and remember it does not need you to survive.
2. Find security in the knowledge that your blog and its links will be there when you return.
3. Figure out someway to have an experience then blog it!
4. Get up and go somewhere.
5. Talk to friends.
6. Read, think, and make up stories to tell yourself.
7. Tell people you are a web publisher. Listen to their stories and think about how you might translate them.
8. Get advice from young children and follow it when you can.
9. Spend some time with you and enjoy your own company.
10. Read your blog archives and pick your favorites. Try to do it again.

The 11th piece of advice from a friend of hers, says to allow yourself to take some time off because you will work better when you return. Mojo has several definitions, I choose to use the one that connects it to magic. The photo of Kudzu was found on Wikipedia.

Thanks Liz!

Explaining the Differences Between Wikis and Blogs

Clever, clever stuff here for anyone interested in using blogs and wikis in education. Well done, fun to read, and creative site to explain the difference between the two mediums. If you are looking for some good things to use in the classroom go to www.wikiblogedu.org and get some! Kudos to Greg, Alan, and Rob on the parody of the Kennedy (wiki) versus Nixon (blog) debate.

Door Opening and Did You Know 2.0

You Tube has allowed me meet my goal of at least three posts a month, but am still not finding time to do much reflective writing. As a member of the "sandwich generation" the past two months have been filled with the pressures of work, family, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Be an opener of Doors" and so far my project has acted as a door opener for me into new knowledge as I explore this social medium.

Quick posts using YouTube and sharing video clips allow me to stay connected with the work of this blog. The YouTube video Did you Know 2.0 and Shift Happens wiki spaces will provide me with rich food for thought as I wrap up the action research part of this blog over the next few months. The Shift Happens wiki spaces invites people to participate in the conversation centered on preparing children for the 21st Century. Great video, wiki, conversations, and a wealth of door opening blogs by Education Bloggers (both women and men) are waiting there.

Wikis in Plain English

Found this fun little tutorial about wikis on the USDLA 's What's New . Uses simple drawings, voice, and a "hand" to explain what wikis are and how to use them, by Lee LeFever, Common Craft.

Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing

Oh my, sure do wish I could attend this conference. Love the title of the I Invent the Future: The Grace Hopper of Celebration of Women in Computing in 2007. For others with the time and dollars to attend, the conference will be held in Orlando, Florida, October 17-20, 2007. This conference is "designed to bring the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront."

Connected to the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI), which is a not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) charitable organization. ABI Partners: Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Google, IBM, Intel, Cisco and Juniper Networks-- this conference appears to be a great one that would allow its attendees to network with leaders and innovators from all over.

Women: Overlooked and Not Missing

Started looking and reading late this evening, but I found a good blog post written by a woman on technology and that led me to another, which leads me to another, and so on and so on. So found several new websites and blogs today devoted to women in technology worth writing about.

Willow Cook of the TechSoup Blog wrote, that women aren't missing from the ranks "technology sector" they are just overlooked. Willow's blog post led me to Tara Hunt's ,Women Who Risk: Making Women in Technology Visible.

Hunt believes "that part of the answer to the question "Why aren't women in technology?" lies in our mistaking the answer to the former question, "Where are the women?" She then goes on to provide an impressive list of women in technology, their blogs names, and the companies they work at or founded.

Women exist in good numbers, so why Hunt asks, can't we be found? Some of her reasons include the following:

-Women choose family first
- Women are cloaked in invisibility ( she provides a personal example of this)
-Masculine measures of success don't fit most women's career paths

So here I am in 10+ months into my action research project, making the invisible, visible by starting a project connected to seeking and finding women in technology. Will continue to work on this as I wrap up between now and the end of the year, but more about that later.

Have You Seen Education Today and Tommorow?

Fun music to listen to, effective images, and illustrates how education and students have changed.Information about this video from YouTube: Created by Tom Woodward of Henrico County schools in Virginia. Tom used the work of Karl Fisch from Colorado who created a PPT using various quotes and statistics from "flat world" thinking.

Reviewing Goals, eMentoring, and The National Center for Women and Information Technology

My blogging anniversary is looming and I am feeling a bit harried. As I review the the goals I set for myself over the course of the year am now wondering if I will be able to work through all of them over the next few months. One of my goals was to post at least three times a month and while most months I do, September will be iffy.

Find myself wishing I could read, write, and reflect a little bit more than I do, but often feel the need to work fast. So in this hurried reflective post on my goals, I see I have explored a few women’s issues related to higher education, leadership, and education technology Also, found over a 100+ women bloggers and most of these were in the first three months of blogging.

In this quick review of my blog I see posts connected to leadership issues and reflection on posts as scant. So I went out looking for organizations that focus on issues of effectively address issues of gender and technology and found The National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT). This organization's stated mission is "to ensure that women's knowledge and skills are fully represented in the creation, development, and consumption of information technology".

NCWIT has an eMentoring project that is worth reading about. Its focus on same-sex mentoring offers young women interested in information technology opportunities to connect with like minded professionals without geographic constraints. Mentors interact with mentees via email and use online materials, communication, and coaching. The research collected in this project is promising. Wish there was something similar for middle-aged women.

MERLOT (MIC07) Keynote Day 3

The MERLOT Conferences and the ideas presented at them always provide me with plenty to reflect on once I get back home and to work. The MIC07 provided an interesting and eclectic mix of presenter and topics. Typically, MERLOT has three keynotes at a conference. One is future focused, a second is discipline focused, and the third usually has an applied focused.


The third keynote on the last day of the conference was very future focused. One of the most ambitious and “bleeding edge” presentations at this conference was given by Barbara “Bee” Dieu. A self-professed Webhead, blogger, wiki-maker,Second Lifer, and reader of Kerouac, if she appeared on the old What’s My Line TV Game Show the panel probably would not see this mature, soft-spoken, teaching professional as an experienced and relaxed inhabitant of cyberworlds and user of Web 2.0 .

Bee's presentation was broad in scope and had so much Web 2.0 stuff in it that it may have been too much to digest in such a short time frame. The MERLOT community is made up of technology saavy folks, but many of them watched, listened, and left this presentation a little woozy from ideas and technologies Bee demonstrated. Wikis, Second Life, Blogs, Webathons, ZOHO, Twitter, Flikr, and the like are not in the tool box of most educators right now. Just a quick look at the vocabulary from her wiki would send all but the most "bleeding edge" technology pioneers running for the online dictionary, google, kartoo, or wikipedia.


While Bee's presentation might have been a little "out there" for some in the audience, her bold demonstration and use of technology, social networking, Web 2.0 tools, and cyberworlds is a bit of a wake up call. Her presentation points to new ways in which the web and technology can be used in education. It was satisfying to listen to a woman present on new tools, worlds, and ideas on how to use and share technologies. Bee has friends around the world and presents on her work often. She is a woman technology leader and user to watch.

MERLOT (MIC07) Day 2 Keynote: Teaching Blue

The description of this keynote presentation by David Megill and his twin brother[ Ultimate Multimedia Object(UMLO)] did not do this witty, fun, and educational presentation justice. Through great story-telling, a recorder performance, and by engaging the audience's imagination, the Megill's illustrated some of the inherent difficulties [and rewards] in teaching music. This presentation, althought created in Keynote, followed all the rules outlined in Atkinson's, Beyond Bullet points : Using Microsoft PowerPoint to Create Presentations that Inform, Motivate and Inspire . The presenter's discussion of grading students, assessing student learning, talent and aptitude could be likened to the some of the discussion surrounding quality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. By the way for those MIC07 attendees that heard the announcement about the MIC08 being held in Minnesota--Pirsig was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota

MERLOT(MIC07) Day 1 Keynote Address

Dr. Bruce Chaloux, Director of Southern Regional Education Board's (SREB) Electronic Campus, posed some challenging questions in a keynote address titled,The Coming of Age of Online Learning--Now what? Based on SREB's (and Chaloux's) experience with Katrina students and other online students in SREB states, everyone in higher education should be gearing up and planning how to answer questions related to this keynote that addressed issues of "readiness". Specifically, is higher education ready for:

1. The next group of 6 year olds moving through K-12?
2. The new group of faculty entering higher education?
3. For the "in and out" employee, student, etc?
4. Students who desire flexibility and education that fits in to their schedules? i.e., not the ones we (higher ed) create?

Conversations and research surrounding how to confront the challenges of teaching and learning in the 21st century abound. One thought provoking occasional paper by Jenkins (2006) titled, Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century, is worth a read and printing out to share with others. In this exploration of "new frameworks" for student and teacher relationships current faculty may gain a better understand of how "digital technologies are changing the way young people, learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life". Other resources that can assist exploration of the issues presented in Chaloux's keynote include Georgetown's Children's Digital Media Center chock-full of research on early childhood computer research.

aephoneia and Danah Boyd's Research and Writing

Wow. Just got through reading Danah Boyd’s powerful response to all the posts and hype that her essay, Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace, received since June 24, 2007. aephoneia, was one of the first high quality and “bleeding edge” blogs I came across when I started my research. Wikipedia uses the verb risky to define bleeding edge, a term usually associated with new technology. Boyd's research centers on new technologies and how teens communicate on social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and others. The topics she blogs on and researchs are new. No one understands or has a handle on it all yet, but Boyd is savvy. Her research, knowledge of teen social networks is out on the web and viewable by all. Her presentations and writings have been featured in NPR, Wired, MSNBC, USA Today, Newsweek , and The O'Reilly Factor. She has been profiled in The New York Times and in Financial Times .

Since her June 24, 2007 essay Boyd has been bombarded with what she calls "critiques". In a July 25, 2007 post, Responses to: "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" she takes criticisms received and responds to them all in an even toned, scholarly manner ─even the ugly ones. Boyd’s response paper outlined how she works and writes, defined methodology terms, vocabulary used in her research, and she did not hedge when describing the ugliness of what some critics wrote, or how she felt what they wrote. Ouch, hard to read, but so well written and so eloquent I read to the end. It appears that she plans to keep blogging.

Awhile back another woman with high visibility in the blogoshpere, Kathy Sierra, posted on harassment and death threats that she was received online and quit blogging. Ellen Nakishima’s, (April, 2007) provocative article, on the darker side of women bloggers who"gain visibility in the blogosphere" detailed some of the ugliness of in the cyberworld and the sexual threats used to stifle some bloggers. It is worth going back to and reading. Other good articles related to Sierra's experience and cyberbullying are, PBS Teachers: Participate in Stop Cyberbullying Day and Is it time to crack down on the blogsphere?

Kartoo a meta search engine that maps

Kartoo is worth the time you will spend looking at results presented in a highly visual format. Still can't say that I understand all the ins and outs of using it, but love seeing results presented in maps. This was also fun to chart. Looking at the chart it appears (again)I am a little behind the buzz in learning about what Kartoo is and what it does.

Posts that contain Kartoo per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

My searches, using key words brought me by a genie look alike, were mapped by relevance and larger sized items indicated importance. Using keyword search, women bloggers, Kartoo brought me 16,000,000 results in pages of visual maps that went on and on.

Another key word search using, women bloggers research, provided me 8, 5100, 000 results with the most relevant items sized accordingly. Found MotherPie again on the first page of this Kartoo search. It is fun to search this way and as my mouse moved over the mapped images linking lines connected to other images and information on images was presented in text on the left navigation.

If you are interested in seeing search results presented in something other than a long list of items, check out Kartoo. Oh, and once again it appears that when you are actively looking for information the "truth is out there". Women are blogging and their numbers are growing.

Wanted to track the Fusion D2L Conference on technorati to see who is blogging, how many are blogging on this conference, and what they are blogging about. I am fond of this charting tool and find it interesting to watch the "buzz" on topics and sessions in in real time. The chart below illustrates Posts that contain Fusion D2L Conference per day for the last 7 days. Will update this as the conference and post-conference workshops go on this week.

Get your own chart!

Social Media Wiki

Social Media Wiki created by Social Communications group of Campbell-Ewald has an awesome graphic mapping online communities, I could not resist posting here today. Along with this visual you can find information on Web 2.0, avatars, blogs, Weblins, widgets, gaming and metaverses, and definitions. Did you know wiki is Hawaiian for fast? The Social Media Wiki was created in Wetpaint and there is an open invitation for folks to join in the conversation. Mosey through this site when you have some time. Although wiki is Hawaiian for fast, the information on this wiki may make you linger and spend more time than you intended. Lots of good reading and web sites to visit are located on this wiki.

Double-Entry Blog Postings

The double entry journal, first suggested by Berthoff (1981) in the Making of Meaning is outlined in Journaling-Navigating Possible Futures by Creating Maps of Undiscovered Territory by Rex Veeder. Veeder’s (Spring 2007) narrative on how using this method in journaling can foster habits of rethinking and reflecting on one's own writing is outlined along with tips on how he uses "double-entry" to frame his journaling.

Although, Veeder’s focus is on traditional journaling if the word journal is replaced with blog his tips provide a sound method for reflection on this blog's postings. I learned of Veeder's journal article (Spring 2007 issue of Leadership: Journal for Post-Secondary Leaders) in June as I finished up my Luoma Leadership Academy work. The article focused on the idea on using journaling as practice to "move from abstract speculation and commentary to the realm of action" can be applied to blogging. I am at mid-point in my self-assigned action project and reading the article was timely. Future blog posts will include going back into early posting and using the double-entry method.

MERLOT International Conference 2007 (MIC 07)

If you have not heard about MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching), please have a look at this site devoted to sharing digital resources nationally and


Check out the buzz and consider attending the MERLOT 2007 conference August 7-10 in New Orleans, LA. It will be hot in New Orleans in August, but the MERLOT Conference is way cool.

3rd International Forum for Women in E-Learning (IFWE, 2007)

USDLA's International Forum for Women in E-Learning has a call for proposals and a conference announcement out. If you or another woman you know in E-Learning is looking for a conference that allows "attendees, at all stages of their careers, to discuss ideas with experienced women leaders in distance learning", Santa Fe, New Mexico is the place to be November 28-30, 2007.

The call for proposals is open until August 15, 2007. The IFWE Conference is looking for proposals focuses on:

• workplace policies and practices,
• improving the female voice in the workplace,
• diversity and mentoring,
• innovative e-learning strategies,
• the future of e-learning in the workplace,
• mentor/mentee relationships,
• becoming change agents,
• finding female balance,
• wellness, motivation and stress relief

Here's to establishing this conference as an ongoing addition to the nation's conference calendar.

Communication and Gender

Recently, I found an online resource written by a woman for women on leadership issues. The website, bizwomen.com by Connie Glasser provides some good tips to guide women as they work in--or work toward--leadership roles. I bookmarked the resource and plan to go back and to read more, but wanted to share one of her articles, Plan Your Words, Take Credit for Ideas . This article hit me as a particularly effective method to use to prepare for meetings where ideas can be presented.

Glasser advises women that it is important to view each meeting as an opportunity to make a contribution and to gain some recognition. Some of her tips on how to do this are:
1.Don't fly-by-the seat of your pants -- go to the meetings with ideas that are connected to the agenda.
2.Talk about your ideas with key people who will attend the meeting prior to the meeting to get a sense of how they view or support your ideas.
3.Take credit for the ideas you present by preparing a document that include your ideas and your name.
4.Make copies for everyone who will attend and the present your ideas--if your ideas generate some discussion and go over well--pass out the documents you prepared. If not, don't.
5.Plan ahead for conflict and be prepared for it in meetings by familiarizing yourself with issues connected to opposing viewpoints--do your homework.
6.Be sure to speak with assurance and don't be overly concerned with appearing aggressive.

Have you ever presented and idea at a meeting and had it reappear at another meeting and it suddenly belonged to someone else? If so, Glasser's tips might keep this from happening at future meetings.

Web Conferencing Software: Why I Like WebEx

Over the course of last 18 or so months I have spent some time learning how to use web conferencing technologies. Have experienced BREEZE, elluminate, Microsoft Office Meeting, and WebEx. Just wish I had known about the research that Network Computing: For IT By IT, provided for users and those thinking about using web conferencing technology in April 2006.
The research review titled, Tech U: The World is Our Campus provides an overview of detailed overview of nine products and information on which two web conferencing technologies were selected for an Editor's Award. Details 40 products were weeded down to 14 for review are provided. The information on this review would be extremely helpful to colleges and businesses looking for resources to help guide local t decisions on which web conferencing technology they might want to use. It also provides report cards and information on products that received grades of A, B or C in an interactive report card .

In the review and testing process three common applications used by most people in education or business were used in the web conferencing product demonstrations. Powerpoint files, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets were tested for " ease and speed of loading these files into the application" and how well the content displayed. They also tested working in real-time on a blank PowerPoint, how easy it was to record a session and the quality of playback for voice, video and stability (Cogburn & Kurup, 2006). This review is well worth a look and provides a process for people to use to make decisions about these technologies that are similar to process that has been used to make decisions about Instructional Management Systems.

Oh, here is my list of reasons why I like WebEx:

1. Simple process to set up meetings.

2. Easy to edit and make corrections to meetings as you set them up.

3. Deceptively simple interface that allows you to learn how to:

-share applications, desktop, whiteboard, and a host of meeting tools

4. Nice meeting lay-out that is easy to move around in and I don't get lost when I host a meeting.

5. Real time training opportunities, good tutorials, and self-help documents.

6. We have an in-house super-user that helps me troubleshoot.

7. I have become familiar with it and have "meeting confidence" when I host.

8. Easy to allow others to present.

9. I have my own personal meeting room.

10. Received an Editor's Award for use in this study validating my good taste and good experiences using this web conferencing tool.