October 2008 – Page 3 – Silence and Voice

Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2008-10-24

The NYTimes just endorsed Barack Obama for president http://tinyurl.com/6obyjg #
Have been focused on a health literacy project all morning, and have not stood up in four hours. Good progress, but not smart. #
Meeting a colleague / former classmte / friend for dinner. Will be nice to catch up. #

Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2008-10-23

Just finished our monthly project team meetings. People brought up a lot of good ideas. #
I wonder why sometimes I click the #coComment link to follow some comments, and it opens without following anything. RRrrrrrrr. #
What a beautiful afternoon outside. The leaves are finally turning in Manhattan. Glad I already enjoyed seeing them in the Catskills. #
@gsiemens Interested to hear more about the transsformative effects. Have been looking for some research in this area. #
@arjunsingh We can certainly use this in the States as well! #
@coolcatteacher Who was it and how did (s)he teach it? #
@WeekendEdition Great; still waiting . . . #
@CourtBovee or perhaps because they do not know how to integrate new media into their content areas? #
@CourtBovee Great idea! #
@BarbaraNixon I cannot manage that number of Tweets. The 152 I follow is overwhelming. Have to go Tweet Pruning soon. #
@skydaddy So, you only read as you have time, or do you try to follow and read everything? How can you find things amidst all the din? #
@be_b Can you just share a tiny hint, perhaps via direct Tweet??!!?? #
@vogeltjes Yes, I am still there, and yes, I am very busy. Alas, CCK08 is so large I feel lost. What did I miss . . . ? #
@skydaddy cute about the radio station! See what I mean about missing great nuggets due to the din? #
@skydaddy Great quote! #
Workong with literacy readability instruments this afternoon. #

Doodle Gets a .com!

Congratulations to Doodle, my favorite free meeting scheduling and online polling site; they just got their .com address!

While this may not seem like a major step, the company is a Swiss firm that is increasingly international in scope; so much so that it appears it realized it had to have a .com domain name. With this, Doodle will undoubtedly become more widespread and accepted by an American audience (especially as their previous website was the somewhat difficult to remember doodle.ch).

I have yet to see a faster and easier meeting scheduling website, and already use it for collaborative international synchronous meetings, as well as finding times for my online class to meet when we needed to change a live meeting day. As I started to use and rely on Doodle for scheduling over the past few months that I have been using it, I wish all those involved with it the best for their success.

Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2008-10-22

@be_b It can be overwhelming returning from a conference. What main take-away do you have? #
@mbogle Thank you for the feedback, Mike. I have been toying with this for some time; finding my perception may not be the same as others. #
@BlancheMaynard Thank you, Blanche. I have a bunch from the Cloisters Museum going up today (I hope)! #
@abalone Keeping fingers crossed about #NV09. The challenge, of course, is the longer it takes for them to decide, the harder the airfare. #
@skydaddy Never seen that shorthand. Of course, a few days away already! #
First time out today. Is beautiful! #
@be_b Do I smell a research agenda forming? #
@skydaddy I tend to shy away from abbreviations, though do find myself using WIIFM and WTF at times. Nothing else seems to take their place! #
About to attend my last meeting of the day. #
@be_b I really smell some research-to-come now! #
About to attend a #multimembership planning meeting for our upcoming #SCoPE session http://tinyurl.com/4ngxqx #
@rdelorenzo I need to catch up, too. How do you find the time? What did you cut to do so? #

Stepping Back in Time at the Cloisters

I visited the Cloisters Museum this past weekend. This is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and holds a large portion of the Medieval collection. Set in the middle of a picturesque park at the top of Manhattan, I find myself spirited away when I visit there going back in time to an idealized society and way of life that is often more romantic than reality-based.

Between druidic instincts in the surrounding park and a religious sensibility that somehow transcends its own historical rigidity, I feel the familiarity and comfort there more that comes with time and peace.

This trip, I brought my camera and intended to take photos of things I have never seen there before. Having been in every room more times than I can count, I often notice when works of art are moved, and where they previously were located. Yet, I saw some things that were still new for me. I uploaded my pictures to The Cloisters set in Flickr, and these are a few of my favorites:

I love Medieval art and culture, yet am very happy I did not live in that time; it was much harsher than it appears in our museums!

Now that I have created a new tagline for my blog, what did I learn (or rather, what meaning did I make from this trip)? Well, many of the items in this museum were used and functional items (though primarily for the wealthy and religious of the day). How those items then entered into our visage as something to be revered and learned form makes me wonder what in our current day will last, of anything? This discussion is even being discussed, in a related way, in the current SCoPE workshop Building a Virtual Museum on the History of Educational Technology.