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Showing posts with label About Me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label About Me. Show all posts
Email Updates Discontinued
What's Trending?
It is easy to be seduced by statistics. I know several friends who have websites and blogs and are rather obsessed with their web statistics. They are always checking to see how many hits the site gets or what pages or posts are most popular or what search terms are being used to find them. Social media has encouraged this with Likes and Retweets and Reposts. Our smartphones love to send us notifications that someone has engaged with some piece of our content.
I got this alert in December about another blog of mine.
Of course, I am happy that people found this post from 2010 and are still reading it and hopefully enjoying it. Google's "possible explanations" for this are both correct, as I did update the page this month and the topic of the Winter Solstice was probably trending across the web as we slipped into the new season.
I do glance at my websites' analytics occasionally. I have ten sites and blogs that I do, so it can't be a very regular thing. I do like to look at the end of the year at each of them to see what has been happening. I also have a half dozen clients that I do websites for and they are always interested in their stats.
Your page is trending up
Your page clicks increased by more than 1,000% over the usual daily average of less than 1 click.
Possible explanations for this trend could be:
- Modifications you did to your page's content.
- Increased interest in a trending topic covered by the page.
I do glance at my websites' analytics occasionally. I have ten sites and blogs that I do, so it can't be a very regular thing. I do like to look at the end of the year at each of them to see what has been happening. I also have a half dozen clients that I do websites for and they are always interested in their stats.
100,000
This blog crossed over the somewhat important 100,000 visits mark on my stats counter early in 2019. That is a nice solid number and I'm happy people have found the blog.
with a really small post about some of the Big Questions - How did the universe begin? How did life begin? Are we alone?
That 100k stat isn't all that impressive as blogs go. In fact, other blogs that I write on have bigger numbers. For example, I write on weekends on an aptly named Weekends in Paradelle, about big and small questions on a more personal level. That site is approaching the 400k mark now. My oldest blog, Serendipity35, which covers education + technology, crossed the 100 million mark a while ago.
But this site was a repurposed blog that I started just to experiment with the Blogger software. It had no theme or purpose and was just about things I noticed around the web. I repurposed it a few years ago with the idea of trying to post short entries that "educate" in some way in lots of different areas. The idea of a one-room schoolhouse came to mind.
One-room schools were once pretty commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries, including the United States and the United Kingdom. In these rural and small town schools (some of which literally used someone's house), all of the students met in a single room. A single teacher taught academic basics to different aged children at different levels of elementary-age boys and girls.
I imagine that younger kids were hearing some of the older kids' lessons and older kids could get remedial lessons when the younger kids were being taught. I think that could be an interesting model of learning. I also think it would be a challenging teaching assignment. It's a topic I delve into a bit deeper on my other blog.
A 16mm Education
My elementary school days were the 1960s and back then seeing a film in class was a big deal. Those 16mm educational films often left a bigger impression on me than the books and lessons. A decade or so later and I was the teacher in the classroom and I became very good at threading those old 16mm projectors that often ate up the film.
Television as an educational tool was pretty rare. I recall my fellow students sitting on the floor of the gym in 1962 to watch one small television set as John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.
A bit more than a decade later I was threading one of those 16mm projectors as a teacher to show my students films. Some teachers took advantage of using films a bit too often. We called them "plans in a can" and they were popular emergency plans in case you were absent without warning or on a day before vacation.
I was pretty frugal in my use of films, but I also taught a course on film and video production, so I think I had legitimate reasons to show films. Before there were home video players, 16mm films were the only way to do it.
The Sony Betamax hit the U.S. in 1975, and my school bought a VHS videocassette recorder (VCR) in 1977 when it was edging out the Betamax for the home video market. That VCR was something I used more and more, though my students were still shooting their own video on reel-to-reel VTRs (videotape recorders).
Sony changed that with their 1983 Betamovie cassette camcorder. My school bought a full size VHS camcorder and so did I. My first home movies of my newborn son were recorded with a video camera plugged into a VHS deck.
But I have very fond and surprisingly vivid memories of those old 15mm films that I saw as a kid in school.
Many of them have emerged online. I assume that many of these films have had their copyright lapse, or maybe the companies that produced them have gone out of business or just don't care about their use any more.
I recall this film on "Lunchroom Manners" as one I saw in school. I also recall Pee Wee Herman using part of it in one of his shows. Watching "Mr. Bungle" in school settings today reminds me of my own school and the kids look like a lot I did then and my fellow students. Since I have no film and video of my own early days, these are like home movies.
I can imagine teachers in the late 1940s and 1950s showing in a health class films like the 1951 "Going Steady." (It doesn't portray going steady as a good idea.) And I'm not sure how teenagers in 1949 would have viewed the tips in Dating Do's and Don'ts. These were made by Coronet Instructional Films, which produced hundreds of films for the school market.
Public domain films from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archive and Archive.org can be a real trip down memory lane for people who came of age in the 1940s through the 1970s.
But the films I saw in school that left the biggest impression on me were the ones about science. Many of them were well made and from Hollywood producers and studios. I vividly recall "Our Mr. Sun," a film directed by Frank Capra who is best known for It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and many others.
That film launched the Bell System Science series. My father worked at Bell Labs in New Jersey then, so I thought then that he might have had some vague connection to these films (he didn't). It was the time time of the space race with Russia and an early version of STEM education that we all needed to know more about science. My father was determined I would be the first in the family to attend college and really wanted me to become an engineer.
With animation and live action, "Our Mr. Sun" was really well-made for the time. Capra had been producing documentaries for the Army during WWII such as the Why We Fight series and this documentary side business continued after the war. I know I saw that film multiple times in school, but this Technicolor beauty was originally telecast in 1956 and 1957 to 9 million homes and then some 600 16mm prints were distributed to schools and community organizations through the Bell Telephone System film libraries.
Another film I recall was on the atom. I grew up in that "atomic age" when the fear of nuclear war was very real. The film I recall was produced by Walt Disney Educational Media. Walt Disney began hosting his own television show for ABC in 1954. In exchange for a weekly hour-long Disney television program, ABC was funding some of the construction of Disneyland. The show was originally named Disneyland but went through later incarnations as Walt Disney Presents, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, The Wonderful World of Disney etc. All in all it ran for an amazing 54 years.
The "Our Friend the Atom" was a pro-nuclear energy film but it did compare atomic energy to a genie in a bottle, both of which are capable of doing good and evil.
Not all the films were about hard science and another one I recall must have had some impact on my decision to go into the humanities and major in English. Another from the Bell Science series produced by Frank Capra was "Alphabet Conspiracy" which was the story of the science of language and linguistics. The premise was a plot to destroy the alphabet and all language and it featured the very odd Hans Conried.
The growth of television after WWII scared many parents and educators. Kids were watching a lot of TV and, like film and comic books before it, the fear was that it would rot their minds. The same cry was heard with videogames, the Internet and now with smartphones, which contain all those formats.
I wrote my Master's thesis on the influence of television on children in regard to violence and isolation. There is no doubt that all this media influenced several generations, but I'm not sure that it rotted any brains. I suspect it inspired many kids.
We Want to Turn Your Blog Into a Book
"We want to turn your blog into a book and maybe even a movie." That is a dream of many bloggers. And it has happened. Rarely. I have been giving it some thought this month.
I wrote about it on one of my other blogs a few weeks ago and I'm recycling most of it here today.
In 2004, the New Yorker had said that books by bloggers would become a cultural phenomenon, but I never gave that a thought in those days. I started blogging in 2006 and since then have added 8 other blogs to my weekly writing. As a few friends like to remind me, "if you only channeled all that writing, you would have a few books by now."
When I started blogging, it was already becoming pretty common. I started blogging as something to use both in my teaching at NJIT and as a way to get my ideas out there. I had been doing workshops and presentations on the still-new blogs, wikis and podcasts for a while and I was trying to get faculty at the university to incorporate them into their courses.
Then I was asked to do a presentation for business people on those topics. Though I was doing podcasts and had created a few wikis, I was not a blogger. One of my colleagues at NJIT, Tim Kellers, was my tech guru and he created a blogging platform for us to use in our presentation using software called Serendipity. Thus, Serendipity35, my blog about learning and technology, was born. And it's still going.
Then came stories like that of Julie Powell and her blog about trying to cook the entire Julia Child cookbook in her New York apartment.
PostSecret and Stuff White People Like are other blogs that became multiple incarnations of books, but Julie was the star student. Her original blog on Salon.com is gone, but is archived on the great Web.Archive.org site.
The blog began in 2002 as she cooked her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." In 2005, it became a book, Julie and Julia:365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.
In 2007, a film version was announced - the first major motion picture that started off as a blog.
Say what you will about the writing of Powell, she had an established readership and that is why a publisher knew that readership could mean book sales. This is not new to publishing, TV or film - choose things (comic books, hit plays etc.) that have a built-in following and are a surer bet.
The film adaptation, directed by Nora Ephron, also titled Julie & Julia, was released in 2009. The film was actually based on both Powell's book and Julia Child's autobiography My Life in France.
This was not a small, independent film. Amy Adams starred as Powell and Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Julia's husband Paul was played by Stanley Tucci.
But that is one blogger who got great deals out of many millions of bloggers. It is tough to find a number for how many blogs exist (active and archived) but just Tumblr.com's cumulative total blogs in July 2016 surpassed 305.9 million blog accounts. That makes the odds about the same as winning the Power ball lottery.
Yes, Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody got a book deal out of her blog (not the one that led to her best known screenplay for Juno though).
Another success story is Tim Ferriss. His blog, the Four Hour Work Week, was listed at number one on the top 150 Management and Leadership Blogs.
In 2010, photographer Brandon Stanton started a project to create a photographic census of New York City and his blog version (and Facebook page) of Humans of New York became the book Humans of New York: Stories and was a bestseller.
That is why you can find lots of blog posts about turning your blog into a book. (For example, look at thebookdesigner.com/2015/06/making-the-leap-from-blogger-to-book-author/ and authorunlimited.com/turn-your-blog-into-a-book-effectively
I still haven't moved any of my blogs to the print (or film!) world. I could see my poetry project at Writing the Day as a poetry collection. I'd like to think that Weekends in Paradelle and One-Page Schoolhouse have enough posts to produce a collection of essays. The same might be true of the several thousands post on Serendipity35, but I realize that many of my posts are "dated" in the time they were written. Editing would be a major part of turning a blog into a book.
I believe that, despite tales of the death of print, an actual book still holds a special, higher place in our culture than a website. Publishers: contact me.
I wrote about it on one of my other blogs a few weeks ago and I'm recycling most of it here today.
In 2004, the New Yorker had said that books by bloggers would become a cultural phenomenon, but I never gave that a thought in those days. I started blogging in 2006 and since then have added 8 other blogs to my weekly writing. As a few friends like to remind me, "if you only channeled all that writing, you would have a few books by now."
When I started blogging, it was already becoming pretty common. I started blogging as something to use both in my teaching at NJIT and as a way to get my ideas out there. I had been doing workshops and presentations on the still-new blogs, wikis and podcasts for a while and I was trying to get faculty at the university to incorporate them into their courses.
Then I was asked to do a presentation for business people on those topics. Though I was doing podcasts and had created a few wikis, I was not a blogger. One of my colleagues at NJIT, Tim Kellers, was my tech guru and he created a blogging platform for us to use in our presentation using software called Serendipity. Thus, Serendipity35, my blog about learning and technology, was born. And it's still going.
Then came stories like that of Julie Powell and her blog about trying to cook the entire Julia Child cookbook in her New York apartment.
PostSecret and Stuff White People Like are other blogs that became multiple incarnations of books, but Julie was the star student. Her original blog on Salon.com is gone, but is archived on the great Web.Archive.org site.
The blog began in 2002 as she cooked her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." In 2005, it became a book, Julie and Julia:365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.
In 2007, a film version was announced - the first major motion picture that started off as a blog.Say what you will about the writing of Powell, she had an established readership and that is why a publisher knew that readership could mean book sales. This is not new to publishing, TV or film - choose things (comic books, hit plays etc.) that have a built-in following and are a surer bet.
The film adaptation, directed by Nora Ephron, also titled Julie & Julia, was released in 2009. The film was actually based on both Powell's book and Julia Child's autobiography My Life in France.
This was not a small, independent film. Amy Adams starred as Powell and Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Julia's husband Paul was played by Stanley Tucci.
But that is one blogger who got great deals out of many millions of bloggers. It is tough to find a number for how many blogs exist (active and archived) but just Tumblr.com's cumulative total blogs in July 2016 surpassed 305.9 million blog accounts. That makes the odds about the same as winning the Power ball lottery.
Yes, Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody got a book deal out of her blog (not the one that led to her best known screenplay for Juno though).
Another success story is Tim Ferriss. His blog, the Four Hour Work Week, was listed at number one on the top 150 Management and Leadership Blogs.
In 2010, photographer Brandon Stanton started a project to create a photographic census of New York City and his blog version (and Facebook page) of Humans of New York became the book Humans of New York: Stories and was a bestseller.
That is why you can find lots of blog posts about turning your blog into a book. (For example, look at thebookdesigner.com/2015/06/making-the-leap-from-blogger-to-book-author/ and authorunlimited.com/turn-your-blog-into-a-book-effectively
I still haven't moved any of my blogs to the print (or film!) world. I could see my poetry project at Writing the Day as a poetry collection. I'd like to think that Weekends in Paradelle and One-Page Schoolhouse have enough posts to produce a collection of essays. The same might be true of the several thousands post on Serendipity35, but I realize that many of my posts are "dated" in the time they were written. Editing would be a major part of turning a blog into a book.
I believe that, despite tales of the death of print, an actual book still holds a special, higher place in our culture than a website. Publishers: contact me.
The Diarist
If you define a diary as a book in which you write down your personal experiences and thoughts each day, then I never was a diarist. I never was disciplined enough to do it every day. I tried but there were days when nothing seemed worth recording. If I let a few days go by unrecorded, I often couldn't recall what happened.
I have always referred to my volumes as journals which can be done occasionally with no required regularity. My journals of the past few years have been done by the month. I scribble notes as the month unfolds (dinner with Elizabeth, presentation in Houston, poem published, sprained wrist, visiting in NYC...) and then sit down at the end of the month to expand the notes.
Maria recently posted about Leo Tolstoy who in his youth kept a journal as a "record of his moral and spiritual development." My youthful writing was never so lofty. Reading it today, I am amazed at the lies. I seemed to have some idea that it would all be read one day by others. My biographer? Tolstoy's diary of old age became "reflections on the meaning of existence, gleaned from a long, imperfect, yet vibrantly lived life." The final year of his diary was translated into English and posthumously published as Last Diaries, which seems to be out of print (though there are other versions).
This year, I started trying to keep a small record of my daily activities. I took one of those daily reminder books that only allow a few lines per day. Not too much required of me. And yet, I still miss a few days and then can't recall what happened.
It is no diary or journal replacement. It might be a nice memory jogger some day when my memory is even worse than it is now.
Events can be big - my son's recent wedding day - or quite uneventful - "spent a rainy day trying get through the pile of magazines."
One of the results of such a record is -on the negative side - a reminder of how little I seem to accomplish. But these days, I can be more positive about things and I view this new exercise as a reminder that life is made up more of uneventful days - and that can be a very good thing. I'm hoping for many more uneventful days.
Looking at Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and Academia
I'm setting up a course to provide an introduction to using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) in academic settings that will be a meta-MOOC itself (a MOOC about MOOCs).
A MOOC is generally a course where the participants and the course materials are distributed across the web and the courses are "open" and offered at no cost to a very large number of participants who do not receive institutional credit.
I'm doing this for NJEDge.NET and the course will be offered via the Canvas Network. Canvas is an open-source learning management system by Instructure Inc. It is released under the AGPLv3 license for use by anyone interested in learning more about or using learning management systems.
Canvas Network gives teachers, learners and institutions alike the place and platform to define the world of open online learning in a way that makes sense for everyone. It grows as teachers and learners apply it in individual ways and then share the results with the world.The course -which is more of a Conversation - is set to launch in April 2013 and run for 4 weeks. It will be open and free to anyone interested. There are a number of courses being offered now at www.canvas.net.
Built on the same Canvas platform that millions already use to learn every day, Canvas Network will grow to be a gathering place for the open online courses, communities and collections that millions more will be able to use to evolve learning to meet their goals.
One of the courses there is "Learning Analytics and Knowledge" taught by Dr. George Siemens, Associate Director of the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute at Athabasca University, where he leads the learning analytics research team. That course will run from February 11, 2013 to Apr 7, 2013. Siemensis one of the earliest MOOC teachers, and the author of Knowing Knowledge
(a Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning and Knowing Knowledge)."Academia and the MOOC" will briefly cover the history and development of MOOCs and it will engage participants in discussions of why institutions are offering these courses, and the possible benefits to both a school and to students. We will look at MOOCs from several perspectives: as an instructional designer building and supporting a course; as an instructor; as a student; as an institution offering the course.
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