Since I found this last year, I was curious to see what the latest presentation from JWT would bring. From a T-F perspective, these entries caught my eye: BYOD – Bring Your Own Device. I actually have been using this phrase for a while now at my work because we have been experimenting with checking [...]
I am continually inspired the more I read and learn from Brene Brown’s work on vunerability and whole-hearted living. Then, the other day, I was visiting her blog and noticed this badge: I was intrigued. In a nutshell, Free-Range Social Media encourages you to share yourself openly, use others for inspiration but not for wholesale [...]
I was quite taken by a story I heard while driving home this week. On National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, they shared a story about photo retouchers working on damaged photographs rescued from the tsunami that hit northern Japan earlier this year. The sentiment by the main person profiled in the story really struck [...]
This TED talk really spoke to me. The last part is something to keep in mind…. This is what I have found: to let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen; to love with our whole hearts, even though there’s no guarantee — and that’s really hard, and I can tell you as a parent, [...]
At a recent unconference I attended, the “keynote” speaker, closed his remarks by listing some things that can help you live, in his opinion, an “authentic” life. He said these actions help you create a Point of View that is yours and yours alone. These were: Create memories (his suggestion was to participate in a [...]
I know that I have already blogged about how BIG the internet is. But, in many ways, it does feel small. For example…. Earlier this month, I was sitting in a webinar learning about new functionality for a system used at my school. It was quickly getting over my head so, of course, I went [...]
It’s a snow day, which means I “get” to play on the computer more than work since it is a Monday and all. I have had the new interface for Facebook for a little while now. I like it. Cleaner, easier to use and things make sense up at the top rather than the bottom [...]
This blog has a tagline about exploring “both sides” of the brain and I do try to explore and nurture both the techy and the feely of life. Of course, I am always interested when they intersect. Part of the official parts of my job is to be technical support for the faculty and staff [...]
I have a ukulele now. And I take piano lessons. Add in the drum set in the basement and the guitar in the closet and there are a lot of musical opportunities in the house these days. Right now, the uke is the winner…it sits out by my desk and I pick it up about [...]
You may or may not be able to tell that I am a science nerd. I used to teach high school chemistry, physics and math, so it seems only natural. Even though my career path has taken me away from science education, I still really do love it. So, when I saw this video called “Chemical Party”, I just thought it was a brilliant mix of the joy of teaching science along with solid educational concepts within the content.
Enjoy.
It reminds me of the other science related media that I have loved like:
The Element Song by Tom Leher
And, of course, any Schoolhouse Rock like Electricity (although their science entries were weaker than the math, politics and grammar ones). I was privileged to hear the creators of the series at a conference a few years ago. They related that the idea came from observing that one of their sons could not learn the multiplication tables but could memorize the lyrics for every Jimi Hendrix song.
And, the wonderful tunes from They Might Be Giants:
Here at Techy-Feely, if you spend anytime at all looking over past posts, you will see that I am a big fan of the online quizzes found, well, everywhere! While I have pretty much stopped doing them in Facebook because they are smackdab full o’ viruses and crud, they are still pretty fun.
But, the most useful of these quizzes are those that allow you to reflect and record your use of our natural resources and calculate how much impact you have on this earth of ours. The Water Calculator from H2OConserve is a great example of it.
I just ran through it and got these results:
Your Water Footprint
Your total household water use is 1,601.84 gallons per day
Your individual water use is 800.92 gallons per day
This is ok. Below the average for Americans but, frankly, I expected better. I have low flow faucets and I have low capacity toilets. This summer was HOT and the garden was watered a good deal as were some other plants in the yard. I am going to take these results and try to commit to do even better. Shorter showers and shutting off the faucet when brushing my teeth are two places to start. I also need to look at a rain barrel so I hope to do that shortly.
Have you calculated your water use?
What are you doing to help save water, our most important resource for life here?
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Image: ‘websters falls revisited‘
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Wow, it has been three years since I did this (waaay back on 07/07/07) and thanks to @mjmerrill reminding me in Twitter, I have been spending some time building up a new entry to celebrate my favorite kinds of days.
So, Happy 10/10/10 everybody. What are your ten lists of ten things?
When I have too much to do and I don’t know where to start, I tend to sit and stare for a while. I have been doing that a lot this week 
I have found myself staring at the bookshelf in my office and I noticed something: many of the books are focused on visual thinking or presentation. Books like Visual Explanations and Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte are among the ones I look at most often. I guess that is not a surprise but I am seeing a rise in the tweetosphere and edusphere about visual thinking and I am thinking about how I can improve my own visual thinking.
I have been reading Vizability (albeit very slowly) at the suggestion of Rachel Smith at the NMC aka @ninmah who does amazing visual captures of meetings and talks and generously shares not only her work but how she does it as well.
Then, Nancy White (@nancywhite and one of the authors of Digital Habitats – which has another blog post just waiting to be written about it) also recently shared a link to a book called Sketching at Work. I look forward to checking it out.
All of this to say, I am SUCH a visual thinker. I doodle during meetings and like to work out my plans by drawing them:
I spent a good part of the start of a very large course management system project drawing a flowchart and planning how to put all of the pieces together using a huge roll of paper, sticky notes and index cards. Wish I had taken a picture of that!
I love the “big picture” diagrams at the start of any technical presentation (and miss them when they are not given). When asked about scheduling a meeting or something like that, I see a calendar in my head. If I could be surrounded by whiteboards, I would. I want to draw my plans and I think flowcharts are awesome! However, I do recall that I was terrible at the spatial relations tests where they presented a flat cutout pattern and you had to pick what it would look like when folded in a cube. Could. Not. Do. That.
And, I really cannot draw very well so, while I can aspire to take notes like Rachel, I will stick to my circles and arrows and paragraphs to explain what each one is for the time being. But, it does speak for how I do like to think and I want to try to continue to build on my visual thinking skills.
How do you think?
At a recent unconference I attended, the “keynote” speaker, closed his remarks by listing some things that can help you live, in his opinion, an “authentic” life. He said these actions help you create a Point of View that is yours and yours alone.
These were:
I starting thinking about collections. I was always collecting things as I grew up. I had my Dad’s stamp collection for a while and I added to it a bit. I collected rocks and bits of other natural materials during treks to various spots on earth. More recently, I enjoyed the 10 year run of collecting the state quarters. I tried to do it with my nephew as he was turning 1 when it started but he really didn’t get into it like I had hoped.
One thing that I have always collected, though, were the tickets to concerts, plays and, sometimes, movies that I have seen. There are some prize ones:
And the list goes on.
I kept them in large manila envelopes for years and a few years ago, I dismantled a toy drum set I had also had for years and now I store the tickets in the bass drum of the set in a “sculpture’ I created (hey, I do make things!) for my office.
Why does this even matter, you may ask? Good question. The most recent concert I attended (Mary Chapin Carpenter in a great downtown smaller venu) didn’t really have a ticket. I bought the ticket online and chose the “Print at Home” option to avoid having to pay mailing fees. That makes sense and I didn’t really think about it until I got home from the show and thought abou putting my ticket in the drum. I have a piece of paper with a barcode on it and the seat assignments. Not a cool rectangle of paperboard with colors and such. Not even a thermal printed ticket. Just a regular piece of paper out of my printer.
Hmmmm….
Certainly, I love the convenience of buying tickets online. I like being able to pick seats (if possible on the site) and I like not having to stand in line. But, do I want to trade that in for losing my beloved collectible? I can pay the extra fee so, I guess the decision is more – is my collection worth it?
Do I want to keep getting this?
Or just keep going with this?
I just am wondering what other collections folks have that could possibly be replaced as technology moves forward. Will we keep having stamps? Perhaps coins will go away too? There will always be those who will continue to collect these items, it will just be harder and more expensive so new collectors probably will be fewer.
What will replace it? QR Codes? Media Storage formats (replacing the LP and cassette collections of today?)
I guess the point is to have a passion for something but I am not sure you can keep changing the focus of that passion with the pace that our technology and what it produces is changing.
It’s the Circle of Life
And it moves us all
Through despair and hope
Through faith and love
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the Circle
The Circle of Life
I took a workshop a few years ago about finding your life’s purpose. It was an appeal to my Feely side and it turned out to be much more beneficial than I dreamed it could be. The end result of the day-long seminar was to create a personal mission statement. It was supposed to be short enough and easy enough to remember if you were being held at gunpoint and asked to recite it. After going through several worksheets to help identify verbs and values that should be included in the statement, I eventually derived this statement:
My life’s purpose is to illuminate, celebrate and participate in the circle of life with friends, family and the Universe.
I like it. The verbs really resonate with me and what I find valuable, useful and important in life- both at work and not. It also was important to me to recognized the Circle of Life as I know it is constantly moving and must be a part of how we live in this world.
Parts of the circle of life are easy for celebration and participation. Birthday parties. Graduation. Weddings. First bike ride. All kinds of things. And, some parts are harder.
Yesterday, I had to participate in one of the hard parts of the circle of life as I said good-bye to my dog, Haleakala. From a post I wrote back during my Project 365:
Back in March 1999, this skinny scared dog showed up in our yard upon returning from a trip to Hawaii. We named her Haleakala and on April 22, 1999 (Earth Day) she came inside the house for the first time. So, we declared Earth Day as her unofficial birth day. She got some treats from a vendor at yesterday’s Earth Fest. She loves them!!!
Saying good-bye to her was one of the hardest things I ever have had to do. She was diagnosed with cancer three months ago and the decline started shortly after that. It is a gift that we can prevent suffering and pain but it is a hard gift to give.
But, I want to celebrate her life and what she gave to me.
I went through my Flickr account and pulled together a slideshow of good, bad and ugly photos of her over the past 4 years or so. You can see what a pretty girl she is.
The Circle of Life keeps moving and so will I as I keep illuminating, celebrating and participating.
Been a while since I took a quiz.
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ENFP – “Journalist”. Uncanny sense of the motivations of others. Life is an exciting drama. 8.1% of total population.
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The more irritated I get with Facebook and other sites who keep changing their privacy policies and yanking around my information without me fully understanding what they are doing or when they are going to start doing that, these four guys and their project makes perfect sense to me. So, I helped fund it!
I know that I have already blogged about how BIG the internet is. But, in many ways, it does feel small.
For example….
Earlier this month, I was sitting in a webinar learning about new functionality for a system used at my school. It was quickly getting over my head so, of course, I went to Tweetdeck to see if anybody was tweeting about the same webinar. I found one person who mentioned he was watching the same session. Okay. One other person. Fine.
Later that same day, I was dealing with a technical issue with a plug-in for our WordPress Multiuser system and started working via email one-on-one with the developer of the plug-in. He was very helpful and we got the issue resolved relatively quickly. (it was one of those issues where it finally started working with settings that made no sense but neither of us wanted to take the time to figure out why it broke or why is was working with those settings – sometimes you just have to take the victory and run).
After working with him, I decided to check on Twitter and see if he was there. One search query later, I found his Twitter page and in his tweet history was the ONE TWEET about the earlier webinar. He was the one person I found also watching the same presentation.
