Image courtesy of puuikibeach That’s more or less what my room looks like right now (sans awesome pirate flag). I’m trying to get all of the crap I’ve collected over the past decade or so sorted out, donated, tossed if it’s past the point of usefulness to anyone in any way, and setting up my […] more

Today I attended the last class of my undergraduate career. People cried. It was great. I brought snickerdoodles. Our professor sent us out the door with hugs and a list of books and a poem hand-picked for each student. “What do we do now?” This from one of my classmates as we walk down the […] more

Before I get into the bulk of this post, a minor update: I’m going to be presenting this project at UMW’s Kemp Symposium, which is in actuality kind of a big deal. I’m not sure how I’m going to present the project yet or what kind of resources I’ll have at my disposal (i.e. a […] more

Martin Weller’s The Digital Scholar: How Technology is Transforming Scholarly Practice has finally come up on my to-read list, and I’ve realized that I probably should have started with this book in the first place. Because Weller and Jim Groom share a lot of the same ideas on how digital and open education should operate, […] more

And metaphorically the heart is where all the best words come from. If you don’t exercise your muscles, they’ll atrophy. This is a truism of writing as well: to write, you must write. Bam, simple. Except apparently if you’re me, and you’re one of those kinds of perfectionists, and the idea of writing something with […] more

In an effort to make this blog an actual thing that actual humans (and the occasional small rodent) might enjoy reading, I’m going to stick a few personal posts here. Hopefully that will also make it easier to transition it back to ds106 work and whatever else I want to do with this space post-graduation. […] more

Seriously though. I know astrological spring and meteorological spring are different concepts and I’m all for more snow, but the bouncing back and forth thing has got to stop. GET IT TOGETHER, VIRGINA. This post is a day late thanks to the Sweet Briar creative writing conference eating most of my brain really late because […] more

My final paper is proceeding apace. And by “apace” I mean WHY DID I SIGN UP FOR THIS LAST SEMESTER? What made me think this was a good plan? DEAR GOD I GRADUATE IN TWO MONTHS! Panicking aside, I’ve made some decent progress on sorting out how I want to conclude my paper, and how […] more

Here we are, just about at the halfway mark, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout so far in my edtech extravaganza it’s that there is so much I still have to learn. Hopefully the conference next week can help me fill in a few more blanks, but man, I have a long way […] more

You guys, the next couple of weeks are going to be crazy exciting.         Next Thursday I’ll be attending OpenVA, “Virginia’s First Annual Open and Digital Learning Resources Conference,” as the tagline proclaims. Looking over the proposed schedule is overwhelming, especially since the final schedule will have my name on it—I’m giving […] more

This week’s post is going to be a bit short, but I’m hoping to lay the groundwork for a return to where all this madness began: ds106! My initial proposal revolved around framing a discussion of open education and edtech with my experiences in that class, and while I’ve spent these first few weeks getting… more

All right, I know I said I was going to discuss ds106 exclusively this week and go back to the NITLE paper I started with, but in finishing up this chapter of Alexander’s The New Digital Storytelling I came across one idea that I do want to explore in more depth. Plus, there’s still that… more

New text this week! There’s still a lot I have to digest (and re-read) in Spiro and Alexander’s NITLE paper, but for the moment I’m moving on to Bryan Alexander’s book The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media. I’m delighted to have such a specific resource at my disposal; it’s especially pertinent to… more

Before I carry on any further with digesting Spiro and Alexander’s paper on open education in the liberal arts, I wanted to do two things: first, try to clarify a little of what I was discussing last week, and jump to the end of the paper to check out the section on obstacles facing open… more

Okay, we’re off and running and I am writing my first blog post for my edtech/online ed independent study here at the University of Mary Washington. The first point I would like to make is this: I am more than a little overwhelmed. I’m essentially taking this semester to give myself a crash-course in emerging… more

I DID IT. I HAVE A PROPOSAL THAT MY ADVISER IS SIGNING OFF ON. THAT IS HAPPENING. TODAY.           So if you’re interested in what the Big Scary Research Project is (more or less) going to be about, read on! The short version is that I’m going to be picking apart… more

If there’s one thing I learned (and actually got some practice overcoming) last semester, it’s that I have an intense aversion to starting new things. So this research project proposal? Yeah. It’s still kicking my ass. The only way to fix that… IS TO BEGIN. I have taken into account some of the feedback I’ve… more

Bulk editing of posts is one of the most useful features that WordPress offers. It’s also one of the most fatally flawed, because while you can easily add categories and tags to large numbers of posts at once, it’s impossible to remove large numbers of posts from a category using WordPress’ native CSS. I’ve figured… more

I’m working on making my blog a bit shinier and better for the new year. That means lots of wonkiness and new layouts and generally a lot of derping around for a bit. Also an excuse for more lame bunny puns! Because those never get old, right??   more

TUNE IN AND FIND OUT! Seasonal! Kinda! Also appropriate considering there is a LOT of new stuff! Starting with dusting off the cobwebs on WordPress and getting everything shiny and updated for 2013. So. Here are my big scary awesome projects for the new year: Big Scary Awesome Research Paper- I’m doing a research project!… more