AECT Blog Track - Hanging Out My Shingle

Keeping Up With The Technology

2006-09-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as a relatively technically savy individual. There's a lot that I cant do, but I have a better than pedestrian knowledge about most things.

One of the save things about staying within one's institutional walls is that wha you have the ability to do in terms of your electronic shingle is limited by what the institution will support. If they won't do blogs or wikis with your personal space, than you don't have to worry about them.

But when you venture beyond your own institutional walls, then it becomes a different story. I have no idea if my domain provider allows me to create a blog or wiki - I'd prefer at this stage to use a blog system created by someone else so that I don't have to worry about maintaining it.

I mention these things because today my domain sent me this:

.Mobi Landrush Registration Opens Today!
Many premium names are still
available. Hurry up, reserve yours today.
Within the next three years 1.3 billion users will use their phones to access
the Internet. .MOBI will be the standard by which these people browse the web
from their mobile device.
It is the first top-level domain dedicated to delivering the Internet to
mobile devices and is designed to guide mobile users to made-for-mobile Internet
content and services that can be accessed with confidence.
What is landrush registration?
Landrush is a two-week period of time prior to General Registration in which
individuals or organizations may register .mobi domains at an earlier date (with
a slightly premium price).
Why register a .MOBI Domain?
Be accessible to your customers anywhere, anytime
Mobile devices outnumber personal computers by four to one
Register great names long snapped-up in other TLD extensions
Prebook your .MOBI Domain
Doteasy is now offering landrush and general registrations starting from
September 26, 2006.
.MOBI Registration - Registration Period - Price per year -
Requirements
Landrush (Sept 26 - October 10, 2006) - US$35/year - 2-Year
minimum
General (October 11, 2006 - Indefinitely) - US$12.50/year - 2-Year
minimum

Sign up now for .MOBI
domain today!

So now I sit here, before my morning cup of coffee or tea or anything to really wake me up, trying to figure out what .MOBI is and whether or no it is something that I need to know about. If I were still inside the protective walls of my institution I would have woken up the morning and remained ignorant to .MOBI's existance. But instead, I have to at least gain a pedestrian knowledge of what this thing is.

Tags: AECT 2006, AECT, graduate student, graduate students, graduate school, higher education, education

One Of The Last Institutional Vestages... E-mail

2006-09-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it appears that The Rest Of The World Gets In The Way again (although it is the same post referenced the last time). Over the past couple of weeks I have been trying to get caught up on transcribing my dissertation interviews and reviewing my observational videos, so I haven't had time to work on my shingle. That changed tonight.

While it has been a while since I moved to my own domain (and if you missed the story, I recounted it again in the first entry of this blog - see Starting This Journey), I have continued to use my institutional e-mail instead of the mkb@michaelbarbour.com that I could have created. I continued to use my mkb@uga.edu e-mail address because I felt that the institutional label lent some credibility to my work as an academic. While still hold that view, I have become more and more concerned with some of the big brother features that are common with institutional e-mail accounts.

In the past, I always used a non-affliated e-mail account. I had (and still have) an e-mail account with the National Captial Freenet (http://www.ncf.ca) and I would always use that account on business cards and in correspondence, on websites, etc. - instead of whatever ISP that I had or whatever school account (secondary school or university) that I could have used.

However, over the past few hours I have really been thinking about this, and really this is the last institutional tie I have when it comes to my online presence. So I bit the bullet and switched. A colleague of mine set me an invitation for a GMail account not long after GMail got set-up. I responded at the time and created the account. Through a series of odd circumstances tonight, I decided to recall/remember (with the assistance of Google) my username and password for that account and see if I could mask my institutional identity within GMail.

Well, this was a message that I sent from my GMail account to my UGA account:

From: MICHAEL K. BARBOUR
Mailed-By: gmail.com
To: mkb@uga.edu
Date: Sep 19, 2006 9:25 PM
Subject: Test

Notice the from field. When I click reply, in the "To:" field appears mkb@uga.edu - as I was able to create that as the default "Reply to:" option. So for all exterior purposes, it appears as if I am using an institutional account. Granted, all of my in-coming mail still goes to the UGA server before begin forwarded to my GMail account, none of my outgoing mail can be seen from there.

Basically, I get to keep the credibility that comes wth the institutional label (and I'm sure that there are people who disagree with me on this point), but I get to by-pass actually having to use the institutional system.

Hopefully the continued re-design of my non-institutional homepage will go as smoothly as the transition to GMail did this evening, although I doubt it - as I had my colleague show me how to manipulate my image in Fireworks only to forget two nights ago when I went to do it again.

But that will have to wait for the next entry - in any regard, I am still planning and on target to release my new homepage before I travel to AECT.

Tags: AECT 2006, AECT, graduate student, graduate students, graduate school, higher education, education

How Much Do You Include?

2006-09-01T16:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, so it has been a while since I have been on track (even if And Then The Rest Of The World Gets In The Way) . But I have e-mailed my colleague to set up a time to get my header image finalized for my homepage and I think I have decided upon the outline and content based on what I discussed previously (see Style).

One thing that I am still struggling with is what to do with my publications and presentations. In the beginning, when I was using the National Captial Freenet (http://www.ncf.ca) to host my homepage, I used to link digital copies of all of my publications and even all of the PPT files from my various presentations on my homepage. When I migrated to the UGA server, I did the same thing. But when I migrated to my michaelbarbour.com homepage I didn't. At the time I think it was the work that would have been involved in uploading and linking all of those items in again, but a part of me had other concerns.

I know that there are certain copyright issues that I haven't been concerned with in the past. And regardless if I support open source or not, if a journal owns the copyright to my article what kind of example am I setting for my students as a future member of the academy by ignoring these issues.

There is also the issue that Vegreville raising in his entry entitled Losing control of the manuscript. In this post, he makea case for why he doesn't or isn't posting manuscripts anymore. From his entry, I get the sense that he is referring to manuscripts that are in progress or have been submitted but not accepted, as much as he is talking about publications. But he does raise some interesting points.

So, where does that leave me? Ignore copyright issues in my own little protest for open source and open content by posting digital copies all of my publications and presentations? Or simply provide the list with an encouragement to e-mail me for copies?

There is a middle ground, which would be to post some and not others, but how would you judge which ones to post? There is also the issue of whether or not to post conference presentation PPT slides, I mean a lot of us graduate students have a lot of conference presentations because we need to present to get funding from the university to go, and we need to go to get our names out there and meet others to help us find employment upon graduation.

Some things to think about and hopefully get feedback on. What should be included in my professional shingle that I am designing for the main, or at least immediate purpose of helping me find employment?

Tags: AECT 2006, AECT, graduate student, graduate students, graduate school, higher education, education

And Then The Rest Of The World Gets In The Way

2006-08-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

Well, this past week was the beginning of the semester here at the University of Georgia. And like at many institutions all across the United States and Canada, the first couple of weeks have been a little hectic. Through in a week-long visit from some family and you get two weeks without a single minute spent on my shingle.

Hopefully the next couple of weeks will prove a little more productive on this front. Hope to schedule som time with my design colleague, Peter Rich in the next week and maybe that will bring some activity to getting my new shingle ready for the rest of the world.

Tags: AECT 2006, AECT, graduate student, graduate students, graduate school, higher education, education

Style

2006-08-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

What colour do you want them there shingles to be?

That's the dilemma that is facing me now - an issue of style. What do I want my professional homepage to look like?

I'll be honest, I like the top and background of one of my blogs - Virtual High School Meanderings. I like how the lighthouse on the side kind of blends into the background (particularly in the bottom righthand corner of the image). I like the fact that it is white or a very light colour, with a crisp and clean design.

It would be nice if there was a beam of light coming from the lighthouse, where I could add my name. I've been playing in Fireworks for the past hour, trying out things and this is the cloest I could get:

It's not bad for an amateur, which is really what I am when it comes to graphical design and image manipulation, but it doesn't have the same kind of professional look at the one on my blog does.

In terms of content, I like the way that my colleague Drew Polly has designed his site - focusing upon the things that are important in academia. I think if I had categories across the top, and I do like that top layout, I'd use:

Home / CV / Biography/ Teaching / Research / Service

Then on each page I'd have two bars, the one you see above and a page specific bar. For example, the one under Biography would read:

Professional / Personal / Blogs

The one under Teaching would read:

K-12 / Instructional Technology / Social Studies Education

The one under Research would read:

Research Projects / Development Projects / Evaluation Projects / Publications / Presentations / Funding

The one under service would read:

Departmental / College-University / Professional / Community

I think it would make a nice layout, at least in terms of content. I need to send some more like with a fellow student, Peter Rich, to figure out how to do some of the Firworks stuff (and to get some better designs for overall layout). This is the difficult part of the task. Once I have something I like, copying and pasting from the current content and updating what has become out of date is easy enough.

Tags: AECT 2006, AECT, graduate student, graduate students, graduate school, higher education, education

Starting This Journey

2006-08-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, I think I'm the person that Nate (see Getting Started) is referring to as already having started - as I go have a registered domain and existing blog.

At present, I have my own non-institutional website at http://www.michaelbarbour.com. I also regularly maintain three different blogs:

my research blog - Virtual High School Meanderings
my academic/profesisonal blog - Breaking into the Academy
my personal blog - Rock Ruminations

Now, getting my own domain was actually an interesting process. Last summer I was posting a series on web presence (see Creating your web presence and Be careful about your web presence) to my academic/profesisonal blog when I got this message in my inbox:

Subject: new web site disclaimer policy
TO: UGA faculty, staff and students
RE: New policy requiring disclaimer statement on Web pages
____________________________________________________
On April 21, 2005, the University Cabinet adopted a new policy requiring a disclaimer be placed on all Web pages residing on the UGA Web server, or that otherwise explicitly or implicitly indicate an affiliation with the University of Georgia. Please note that pages that provide OFFICIAL information on behalf of the University are NOT required to affix the disclaimer. The policy, including the specific language of the disclaimer and detailed information regarding the requirement, may be viewed at

http://www.eits.uga.edu/webhelp/wsdpolf.pdf

Please review this policy to determine its applicability to any Web site under your control. This particularly applies to any personal sites of students, faculty and staff, as well as those of student organizations. Please note that non-compliant sites are subject to removal from the UGA Web site. We trust that the policy and explanatory document at the link above will answer your questions. Additional questions may be addressed to wsdp@uga.edu.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.

This prompted me to write Disclaimers on your web presence and to get my own non-institutional server, which was finally set up at the end of June 2005 (see My new web presence). Th procss itself was relatively simple. I asked two friends that had their own domains for their opinions, and I was recommended the Canadian company Doteasy by my American friend and the American company GoDaddy by my Canadian friend (funny how that worked out). I selected Doteasy because if you registered a domain with them your web hosting was free if your website was less than 100MB. If you recommended them to a friend, that increased to 200MB (which I did when I registered a domain for my wife - see http://www.lisabarbour.com). The fact that I got in during a special where I was able to register my domain for $4.95 didn't hurt either.

So, it is a basic website and has served its purpose for the past year and a bit. But now I am going up on the job market again and I think that I need a more professional presence. So my main personal goal during this Blog Track is to give my shingle that professional and polished look prior to arriving in Dallas in October won't you join me on this journey?

Tags: AECT 2006, AECT, graduate student, graduate students, graduate school, higher education, education