Preparation and Reality X
Wednesday, January 8, 2003
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How To Get a FIPSE Grant
"Funding Your Best Ideas: A 12-Step Program" by Joan Straumanis
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See, when nothing's really happening, but you just keep trying, and you're getting bored with yourself, and you hope that just one little change or nudge or jog or jostle will quietly stir current nothings into brand new somethings, when you know that if you just keep doing it doing it doing it something has just got to emerge...
...that in the face of that nothing much is happening but you keep chugging along anyway, it's still hard to keep going, to remind yourself that yes, just keep tugging away and eventually you'll find you're way, just pay attention, and it looks foolish, maybe, to change a little color, or a little shifting in size, variations on a theme and the variations turn into a new theme...
...and you want to give up because it's not happening, but you know better, don't you, everyday, just a little, it adds up, it becomes something different, but it's not enough, something's not happening, not clicking, and what's the deal with those colored blocks anyway, because right now you're right, that's a thing that's a little suspect of not being something but nothing, and it isn't even fun right now, you're looking for something but it's not looking back at you...
...and the whole world is watching, well not really, maybe three people, I think, out of curious pity, let's see what that idiot didn't manage to accomplish again today, those little colored squares, oh god, those colors again, and it's all right angles, what's the deal here, they turn away, keep doing it doing it doing it, because one day, those little nothings will be replaced by something.
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Syllabus: Designing for Learning: The Pursuit of Well-Structured Content
Judith V. Boettcher
Maybe I need to either read it again, or this is a weird, incomplete article. While she has good things worth reading to say about the need to match digital resources to learning levels, she starts out by talking about structure without really talking about what she means by well-structured. What I think she ends up talking about is the organization of and kinds of content. So it's confusing that at the end of the article a sidebar talks about well-structured in terms of using XML to mark up content, without even using the word "metadata." I know enough to read between the lines on this article, and I know others will be able to do that, too, but there is a context and some definition missing here to make this article really lucid. Since "Syllabus' mission is to inform educators on how technology can be used to support their teaching, learning and administrative activities," this little article has too many holes in it, I think, to be reaching that readership.
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People ask me all the time, you know, they stop me on the street, they toot and wave at me in traffic, they politely interrupt me in restaurants, all my weblog readers and fans, all wanting to know how is it that on Tuesday, January 6, 2003 at 4:07 p.m. I am making a post on this weblog dated Wednesday, January 7, 2003 at 12:07 a.m.
And I reply, "Greenwich Mean Time. I've set my prefs to zero GMT."
"But why?" they continue, their eyes wide with child-like curiosity and confusion, "the time zone you live in is PST!"
"Yeah. You know how you get your November issue of a magazine on October 6th? That's what I'm doing. I wanted to see how that would work."
They tremble with excitement at such a crazy but boldly daring and brave idea, then thank me for my precious time and bow out of my way.
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