RodeWorks

Jonathan Follett has a nice article covering issues of communication with virtual project teams. Themes include managing conflict, communication styles, debrief regularly, negative is a four-letter word, mitigate stress, and stay in touch. And while he aims this articles at a team setting, these same issues come into play in an online class/teaching situation, which is after all just another type of team. Through my own experiences as an on-line student at Capella University I experienced many of these points first-hand. While many of us feel comfortable in the digital world, with email, instant messaging, blogging, etc, things change when you move from social to work contexts. And get even trickier when you can’t walk down the hall to clarify a misunderstood email. Having some rules of engagement established at the start will be crucial staying focused on the task at hand.

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The 2/15/08 Chronicle of Higher Ed has an interview with John A. Bielec, from Drexel University.  They’re starting a pilot project where students can select to have email via Google Apps for Education, Microsoft Live@edu, or stick with the standard university account.  Among the reasons for the switch:  students already come in with email accounts, why not let them choose what they prefer;  cost avoidance, as video and other media files continue to require more disk space; and fragmentation of offerings is not a worry.

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I listened to an excellent podcast this morning from the Conversations Network.  In the discussion Jesse Stay discusses what to do with facebook, and reviews the process of creating Facebook applications.  I’ve got a Facebook profile, although I’m primarily using it as a distribution channel for this blog.  So I welcome any idea on how to make greater use of it.  It is particularly interesting to hear how much of one’s Facebook profile and friends information, is available through the API. 

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What better way to while away a rainy Sunday than making up a big ‘ole batch of ginger beer!  Standard store-bought imitations will pale in comparison — at least if the bottles don’t explode first!

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The New Media Consortium has published its 2008 Horizon Report, describing “emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education.” Its some thirty pages, available as a download from the site, and well worth reading.  I won’t summarize the report here — you can read it on your own — but here are some highlights that struck me, organized around the 6 emerging technologies they identified:
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Email is really the original web app, and it hasn’t changed much over the years. A new startup, Xobni, is trying to change that.

It’s a whole new look at your email:Xobni Insight is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that offers effortless email management and provides instant access to the most important information in your email.Your Outlook productivity will burst to life with blazing fast email search, automatic phone number discovery, threaded conversations, and more.

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