I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke loose on the wind - Pablo NerudaYou may have read posts tagged Green Pen Society on this blog. September’s first post is hosting the 'Green Pen Society' (GPS) writers' club for Paul Cornies at quoteflections.GPS is a group of writers/bloggers who are developing their voice in writing about the world around them. As this month’s host, I have the privilege and pleasure of choosing the theme.What gets you flying?Seth Godin is one of the world’s foremost blogger/writers. In the short video at the base of this post, he summarises what writing (in a blog) means to him. I identify with Seth’s childhood fascination for short-wave radio, for like him, the phenomenon of true wireless communication with others was one of my teenage obsessions. Today, writing is everything for Seth, especially writing a blog post.Some write to pass on their thoughts to their descendants; some writers record their daily activities; others just write for the hell of it.The theme for this month is about the passion that makes you write.What brings you to write the things you choose to write about? Go on! Sock it to us! What gets you flying when you feel you want to write?To participate in this month’s venture, post on the theme:"What gets you flying when you feel you want to write?"Tag your post with the label Green Pen Society. Put a comment here with a link to your post (important if you want me to know you exist!)I will summarise your response with an update on this post. Go for it!Virginia Yonkers - Connecting 2 the World Why Do I Blog?Paul Cornies - quoteflections What Empowers Your Blogging?Tania Sheko - Brave new worldWhy do you write?What gets you flying?Jody Hayes - Navigators I Blog So That . . .Joanna Young - Confident WritingWhat Makes Your Writing Fly?Kathy Stilwell - Stilwell ReflectionsWhat Gets You Flying WhenYou Feel You Want To WriteSusan Ens Funk - What Counts!Inspired by . . .A Green Pen Society contribution

With online courses and resources available in abundance, competency-based learning should play a more crucial role in education. A competency-based education allows students to progress at their speed. Students can take an assessment on-demand when they were ready to demonstrate mastery on specific competencies.  Learning truly becomes more personalized. This infographic is created by Rasmussen College. Beyond the scope of this... Read More ›

Thursday, January 12 • 2:00 p.m. ETPresenter: David Kelly Twitter is an excellent tool to leverage for both personal and professional learning and growth, and more and more organizations are harnessing its power as part of learning programs. And with that, many learning professionals are encountering the same challenges, such as: How can I use Twitter in my learning programs if I don't even know how to use Twitter myself? What is the platform's value? We will explain what Twitter is, walk through the steps to (properly) set up a twitter account, define much of the technical Twitter terminology, and share some examples of how learning professionals are using the platform. REGISTER NOWOpen to all as part of the ASTD 2012 TechKnowledge webcast series

Through education, research and development, HAAGA-HELIA prepares professionals for business and services. They offer students a versatile choice of studies, great opportunities for specialisation, high-quality education in Finnish and English, and wide business networks even during the studies. They have … Continue reading →

How do you recognise comment spam?Just over a year ago I started getting weird comments against a few blog posts. Not too frequently, perhaps one or two a month. Their occurrence was regular enough for me to consider using comment moderation. I didn’t switch it on as it happens, but the experience made the option very tempting.The comments were not always posted on the most recent posts, which could have been a bit of a worry.Luckily I enabled Comment Notification Email early on. This option in the blog settings is a splendid alert system. It’s just as good to know when valid comments arrive as it is when bogus ones hit the fan.Cut-throat approachWhen I get comment spam, I usually just delete it there and then. It's a minor nuisance. But in recent months I’ve noticed these infrequent occurrences are becoming more sophisticated. I’d hate to delete a valid comment from a well meaning commenter.These days, it takes me longer to work out whether it’s spam or just a comment with odd diction. Some of them can be almost appropriate to the post, though usually they come at the blog from left field.Tell-tale signsThere are usually signs that indicate something is dodgy. One comment that I deleted recently, Nice blog and have lots of stuff here, actually linked to what appeared to be a valid and reputable environmental site. However, a search on Google, using the parenthesised comment as search criterion, returned 1740 hits.That was telling!Here’s an example of a recent comment I got against a post published in July last year:First time I have seen your blog and what a great post that was!Remember the saying "Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration"So once you have a great idea you have to work hard to turn it into a viable product that doesn’t just exist in your head. Keep blogging.Plausible commentAt first reading, the comment makes some sort of sense, even with its idiosyncratic punctuation. But it linked to a commercial site, which is a tell-tale spam characteristic, rather than to a blogger’s account or about page.Having jostled uneasily with comments like this over the past year,I eventually developed a speedy strategy for putting them to test.Perhaps you have a strategy of your own? Here’s my three point plan for nutting out an otherwise convincing spam comment -Does it make any sense that’s appropriate to the post it’s posted against?Does it link back to a valid blog or site that may be associated with a single person or valid group?How many hits do I get in Google when searching using the text of the comment or any parenthesised significant part of it?The last point sometimes presents the need for closer inspection, despite a low number return. 15,00 hits is unequivocal, but if the number is less than 10, as it was with the otherwise convincing comment featured here, I have to inspect a few of the destinations listed in the search return.Tracing the originsAt the time of posting, the search criterion, which was the first sentence from the suspicious comment, "First time I have seen your blog and what a great post that was", returned only 9 hits.But it becomes clear, when tracing their origins, that the comments are bogus - check them out.I’d like to learn more about how others view this growing nuisance.Are you a cut-throat deleter? Or do you have a sleuth-like strategy up your sleeve? What checks on suspicious comments do you make before you delete them?

Did you miss Learning 2011 (Masie Conference)?  If so, here's the scoop on available content - lots of great information, videos and a free eBook!Learning Wiki: Content, video and participant perspectives on the seminars and keynotes at http://www.learningwiki.com  Watch interviews with Inventor Dean Kamen, learning leaders from Walmart and Starbucks, and much more. The interviews are rboken into segments focused on key questions; you can use them or pass them along. Go to http://www.learningtalks.com for the videos from Learning 2011. eBook Released: Learning Perspectives 2011: This year’s Learning Perspectives 2011 e-Book was just released in open source for your download and reading. Articles from several dozen "30 Under 30" learning professionals, with their views on the changing nature of our field. In addition, Bob Baker, CLO of the MASIE Center, has a detailed perspective on the role of "Checklists" for the learning world. Download it at http://learning2011.com/ebookLearning 2012 Dates: October 21 to 24, 2012 at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. Early Registration will open next week for those who want to use 2011 funds for next year’s event.

After introducing certificates of Completion on Eliademy 8 months ago we saw a very steady growth trend. Over 10.000 course completion certificates has been issued by instructors and over thousand of them is being shared by students on LinkedIn every month. We decided to … Continue reading →

Envisioned by W3C consortium, "Web on Everything" is one of the goals of "One Web". (Open Standards, Open Web Platform, Web on Everything) This infographic could extend the topic by showing how technologies pave the way for the future.

This was one comment I got that certainly wasn't comment spam!Scott Merrick’s announcement almost made me jump out of my newMiddle-earth blogspot!Would you believe!Blogger in Middle-earth has been nominated Blog-o-the-Month!The announcement and polling place is at ISTE Island's Blogger's Hut in Second Life. Scott maintains the island for the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE).Apparently, your vote counts. So if you’d like to vote for this site, teleport over to the ISTE Island's Blogger’s Hut and cast your vote.I'd much appreciate your support.( 7 ) ( 6 ) ( 5 ) ( 4 ) ( 3 ) ( 2 ) < - related posts

Yesterday at CES, Microsoft announced the new Kinect for Windows hardware and accompanying software will be available on February 1st, 2012. In a blog post, Craig Weiss wrote "Kinect technology and gesture free will equally make an appearance in 2012. I am projecting that the number of vendors who enter this space to start slow, but gain steam - at least with some aspect, by the end of 2012. ..... Great opportunities in education (K-12 and higher ed) and even with companies, although I see it more with mid-size and large. Costs will vary, again lower price points are needed. What is great about Kinect technology is that it will work with tablets, eventually smartphones and televisions. "Check it out: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/01/09/kinect-for-windows-commercial-program-announced.aspxCraig's Post: http://elearninfo247.com/2011/12/20/5-e-learning-forecasts-for-2012/