From Putnam, 1995: The most whimsical yet discomfiting bit of evidence of social disengagement in contemporary America that I have discovered is this: more Americans are bowling today than ever before, but bowling in organized leagues has plummeted in the last decade or so. Between 1980 and 1993 the total number of bowlers in America Continue reading

Jim Groom brings a new term into being in a recent post — edupunk. There’s a couple reasons why I find the term useful, but the most important is that it captures the cultural revulsion many of us feel with the appropriation of the Learning 2.0 movement by corporations such as Blackboard. Learning 2.0, like Continue reading

I always *felt* like I should be a gamer. After all, I built educational games for a good portion of my career — first for children (reading readiness software), then for Columbia University and Cable & Wireless, where the name of the game was social simulations — choose-your-own-adventure style scenarios where you interacted with professional Continue reading

Vista on my budget laptop was the straw that broke the camel’s back. (really, there must be a better and more current saying for that, but I’m pre-coffee today). I was losing an untold amount of time clicking links and x’s and waiting for Vista to do something (anything!). I was watching as Vista crashed Continue reading

So I was unaware until I got a twitter from Jim that the UMW faculty academy was on UStream.tv. They are off air right now, but they should be starting up around 11:15. I’ve embedded the Ustream below. Live Videos provided by Ustream.TV The Janet Murray presentation was wonderful, and the the faculty participation was Continue reading

I’m a big fan of Ning, and lately I’ve been gearing up to launch an Alumni site in it. The first email invites will go out tomorrow. Well, not exactly the first invites. And therein lies a story. See, before I launched this, I tried a little experiment and invited a few of my alumni Continue reading