This past week

I think I've got this blog thing figured out. No, not how to actually blog (I've been doing that for ~6 years) but how the blog is supposed to be used for INST 5400.

Though I turned the PowerPoint Handout in right before the deadline (and am paying for it today, after having to get up at 5am for 6:30am basketball practice...t i r e d...) I feel like I did a good job and would be successful in teaching a high school class how to use the slide master feature in Office 2007.

iGoogle & Pageflakes

Because I'm a fan of Google (until they do something stupid...which they are bound to do eventually) and have been a Gmail user since it's beta days I've known about iGoogle and set up a page a while ago. That being said, I haven't actually used it in the past year or so.

I had never heard of Pageflakes which makes sense because in the short time I looked at it I think I would prefer iGoogle, and I said how much I use it.

While I haven't talked about either in my classes, I have watched many students login to iGoogle and check the news and read about current events through it.

I have no need for iGoogle or Pageflakes because everywhere I go Firefox goes with me along with the Foxmarks add-on, and my bookmarks are set up so that I can check all my favorite news sites with a couple clicks, my favorite technology websites are all set up as RSS feeds (slashdot, engadget, lifehacker, gizmodo, etc) as I enjoy reading full pages of news but the technology sites are basically blogs and I only need to see the RSS title to determine if I want to read the story or not.
Sure I could set something similar up through iGoogle or Pageflakes, but I have no need nor want to.

Open Source

What is open source?
Personally I would sum it up with one word: awesome.
A little more in-depth definition needs to include the following:
1. Free to distribute
2. Producted developed by many (meaning anyone is free to modify it and many great apps are developed by groups, not individuals)
3. Based on code that is free for all to use.

Personal open source favorites:
Audacity (audio editing with some great plug-ins available)
Open Office (even though I own word and use it in my classroom, I love having the option to use Open Office and make sure my students know about it)
Firefox (THE BROWSER. Sooo many great plugins, great built in RSS reader, etc)
VLC (amazing multimedia player with great file converting options!)
Handbreak (great copying software for the Mac)
NVU (for an open source program it's a great web developing program!)

As far as the MIT initiative, I thought it sounded awesome when I first heard talk about it a couple years ago. I also think iTunes has helped education with the educational podcasts they have available.

Finally, I definitely would like to use open courseware with my students. While I have professional programs in my computer lab (MS Office, Adobe CS3 Suite, etc) I let my students know about other program they may use outside of class though I need to take it a step further and make a bunch of CD's loaded with open source software and give them to those that are interested.

Introduction to Andrew

Hello!

I'm Andrew Reynolds and this is my third semester as an Educational Technology graduate student. When I'm not trying to get course work turned in just before the deadline I'm doing one of the following:

1. Teaching high school business courses in Centralia, MO. I teach 6 different courses! (Accounting, Introduction to Digital Media [basics of Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, Dreamweaver], Entrepreneurship/Management, Multimedia [advanced Photoshop, Flash, HTML basics, etc], Personal Finance, and Web Page Design.
2. Coaching cross country in the fall and freshman boys basketball in the winter (yay for 6:30am practices)
3. Improving our Future Business Leaders of America chapter (9 members the year before I arrived, 20 members my first year, 64 members this year) as an adviser and preparing students for district, state, and hopefully national contest (http://contest.chsbusiness.com)
4. Driving a school bus to cross country meets and basketball games to make a few extra bucks
5. Relaxing on the couch with my fiancée (we'll be married this coming June 13) and watching Tivo'd shows like The Office, CSI, House, and many more.
6. Playing with any technology I can get my hands on.
7. Enjoying my school issued MacBook! (The battery life on this thing rocks!)
8. If I had any more time I'd be riding bicycles as I used to race them as an undergrad at Mizzou, including racing in the 2005 Collegiate Mountainbiking National Championships in Pennsylvania.


The last good book I read, and actually have about 20 more pages to go (though I'm sure many would hate the book, including my fiancée, I haven't laughed harder in a long while) is I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell by Tucker Max.
My favorite author is John Grisham and I am proud to say I own every book he's written!

Did Steve Jobs actually say that, or did he say that people don't read old fashion books? (As in using the Kindle instead, which I'd love to try)
If I was to answer the question (Do people read any more?) based on what my students do, I would have to say people really don't read any more. But based on my habits along with my fiancée's habits people still read as often as possible.