Genius in your Genes

This is a curriculum I first developed when I was a student teacher. I was amazed at how much needed to be changed to make it more UDL friendly. Some parts till need to be fleshed out, but I'm pretty pleased with it so far! Even learned some cool new technology tricks!

Genius in your Genes!

is there such a thing as TOO MUCH?

I woke up at 3 this morning. Why? Who knows. Except I remember having a very complicated dream about html and my T560 project design. Too bad I can't remember now how my dream-self did a couple of the cool things it did! Have I been spending too much time on this? As long as I'm awake, I might as well do some more work! heh heh heh...

Open Source Lecture

A lecture on TED about open source economics

Viddler and Downloading Streaming Video

Videos on Viddler actually can be downloaded, as can most anything streaming. You need the latest version of RealPlayer (11.something), and when you mouseover a playing video, you will get a tab above it asking if you want to download the video. It will also work on YouTube and almost anywhere else. A few places (like lectures on GSE's streaming server) won't work...there is a way for them to turn off the downloadable feature, but it isn't generally available.

more thoughts on audio books

I started listening to a new book today, and was startled by the use of accents for certain characters, which got me thinking about what purpose they play in a story. In this story, the characters were from different countries, so their accents reinforced that and actually helped in keeping certain points of the plot together (which characters were from the same place, etc.) That is one thing that is definitely hard to replicate when one is reading from text, or with a screen reader. I've seen a few books where the author does an admirable job of writing certain character's dialogue more or less phonetically, but only a few, and only for a couple characters who were supposed to have pronounced accents. A few years ago I took a TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) course, and one of the activities was to 'translate' into written English some sentences that were written in a phonetic alphabet, and also to 'translate' some written English sentences into there phonetic written equivalent. We had to identify our region and what dialect we spoke, since the accent changed how one would pronounce certain words. This is a depth that totally falls away in written text...the nuances of regional accents. Anyway, it was interesting to muse about the effect of accents on the processing of the story...

streamlining notes

Hello All,

I've noticed some of the notes people have posted on the course site or their blogs include multiple files...one for each page they scanned of their notes. I took 3 of those sets and turned them into single pdf files...thought I'd post them here if anyone wants them. I find it helps keep my folders less cluttered, to combine pages. For those using scanners in the GCA, or wants to do this to their notes...it's really easy to do with Adobe Professional. You can make a single PDF document out of just about any file type, or combination of file types. Here's how:

Open Adobe Professional
Choose "Create PDF"
Choose "Create PDF from multiple files"
Select the files you want to use
Reorder the files if necessary
Click "next"
Click "create"
Save the combined file

Anyway, I posted notes from Val, Laurel, and Prim on the course isite.

If anyone wants their T560 scanned notes combined like this, I can do it for you too, if you send me the individual files! dunhamka @ gse...

Now you have it, now you don't...

A friend sent me this interesting podcast about a brain scientiest about her stroke, and studying the brain from the inside out!