The Lost Boys and the Georgia Renaissance Festival

Folks who have been long-time readers of this blog (see Shakespeare With the Lost Boys) know I like the Lost Boys, a “Renaissance rock” group who perform annually at the Georgia Renaissance Festival (and others). Annually, that is, until this year. This popular act has inexplicably not been invited to perform at this year’s faire, despite the fact that they have a core group of fans who dress in teal garb and attend all their shows (no, I don’t do that, but I have all three of their CD’s) and despite the fact that every Lost Boys show I have ever seen was well-attended and appeared to be enjoyed by fans present. I find the decision all the more alarming in light of the fact that Matthew Trautwein, who goes by the moniker String as a member of the Lost Boys, has — I believe — been the musical director for GARF in the past.

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Proud Husband

Just a pointer to an incredibly wonderful, fantastic, enjoyable, thoughtful, scintillating, exciting, provocative (did I say fantastic?) 12-minute interview with my wife Wendy on the nationally syndicated EcoTalk show on Air America Radio. Her book about what we can all do to protect the environment has been getting some great press of late and is starting to get some momentum. It’s also constantly challenging me to think carefully about the choices I make in terms of what I consume every day, from using a refillable coffee cup to driving the speed limit to taking shorter showers. I really, really admire her passion for making a difference…

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Blogs as Exams

There’s no doubt, in my mind at least, that a well tended course Weblog can deliver more information about what a student has learned than just about any standardized exam we can come up with. Unless, of course the standardized exam is to identify and reflect upon the learning evidenced in the Weblog. It would be so simple, right? Take the goals and objectives of the class. Heck, for that matter, take the state standards and say to students “Here, find where you’ve done this in your Weblog. Reflect on what it took to learn it. If you can’t find evidence of the standard, reflect on why. What prevented you from reaching that goal or understanding that concept? What do you think you need at this point in order to master it?”

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More on Bloglines

Using Bloglines (or How to keep up with dozens of blogs everyday) is a great post from betterdays. I like the post and the blog. The post is a great tutorial on Bloglines.

The tutorial shows you how to sign up and subscribe to blogs with

Bloglines but doesn’t stop there. It also shows you some other

interesting things you can do with Bloglines. Here’s the outline:

Signing upSubscribing to feedsSubscribing to feeds - even easier methodBloglines as your research assistantBloglines and Flickr - Subscribing to people’s Flickr photo albumsSubscribing to a Flickr tagSubscribing to news sitesSubscribing to podcastsThe Bloglines bookmarkletYahoo! Groups

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Teaching: Networks and Social Connections

If you're interested, I've posted the slides from my presentation this morning - Rethinking Teaching: Networks and Social Connections to the Pacific Northwest Higher Education Teaching and Learning Conference. A somewhat interesting confluence of factors - social learning, activity theory, network theory, and technology - is occurring. And it seems to be accelerating. Recent conferences I've attended indicate a shift in educator mindsets from tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts) to concepts (networked learning, distributed cognition, rethinking teaching, etc.). Nice to see.

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