Tim Owens - Throw Out The Manual (Page 12)

You Are Cordially Invited

### Dear DS106, You are cordially invited to attend a midnight showing of a 1987 Christmas Classic, "A Muppet Family Christmas" in honor of the holidays. IMDB gives the storyline as follows: > When Fozzie and the Muppet Show gang drop in unexpectedly on Fozzie's mother, she is forced to cancel her

Test Post

This is just one of those pesky test posts to see if some additional, yet to be revealed, functionality is actually working. Please disregard.

change11

Where is the "Change"?

"MOOCs are all about messing with boundaries, barriers, and silos." In May of this year George Siemens announced the "Mother of all MOOCs", appropriately titled Change. The philosophy is sound: Why have a single person or even small set of people delivering course content when we have a global network

alumni

Custom Post Types in Wordpress with Gravity Forms

We recently discovered the great premium plugin Gravity Forms at DTLT from the web group at UMW who purchased it to use with the redesigned UMW.edu site (running completely on Wordpress!). One amazing feature of gravity forms is that it allows you to create a form that, when a

The 7:30 Project

[S]o Andy Rush came up with a great idea, document all the off-the-wall things I come up with in the early hours of the morning when I get to work. You see, for the time being my wife and I are commuting to Fredericksburg from Richmond. Since she likes

audio

This American Life Sex Tape

This is possibly the best parody I've heard, and I think it's a perfect example of how students can use just audio to create a compelling new narrative.

apple

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

Today, just one day after announcing a slew of new gadgets and showing off yet more amazing software that seems futuristic, Apple replaced their homepage with an image none of us wanted to see. At the age of 58, Steve Jobs lost his battle with cancer and passed away. I've

DesignAssignments

Born This Way

The great @scottlo is back on the radio and doing some great things, one of them being timed #ds106 assignment. ~24 minutes where he plays a few songs and challenges you to finish an assignment. Don't think, just make. I saw it this morning and rose to the challenge, another

DesignAssignments

Going Home

I grew up in a small town called Fairborn that was situated close to Dayton, Ohio. We moved when I was 11 and haven't been back in a very long time. From what I understand the town is suffering with job loss and many folks having moved out of the

DesignAssignments

Where did that guy come from?!

Spending some time this evening in Photoshop with another fun ds106 assignment. Pretty basic, photoshop a guy into odd scenes. I'm focusing on film scenes. Enter our volunteer stage left: Photo courtesy of Rob Let the games begin.... I've got quite a few more planned, but I want to open

DesignAssignments

Math is hard

You know what's cooler than a million dollars? Me neither.

DesignAssignments

Sorting Hat

The Messing with MacGuffin asks you to choose a pivotal point in a movie and alter the plot with a single line. It turns out to be a hell of a lot of fun!

brainstorming

Collective Collaboration

These are notes we took at the DTLT office yesterday while brainstorming ideas for 2 courses we have the opportunity to create for the Spring Semester under the American Studies discipline of the History Department at UMW. But yesterday we did things differently. Rather than simply erasing the whiteboard and

images

Writing through Media

I was browsing Reddit and came across this image which I post here not because I think it's so hilarious it's worth a blog post, but rather it has my mind spinning on the realization of why an image like this exists. In the Age of YouTube why would someone

Media U

A few weeks ago when I started playing around with Wowza for streaming I started thinking about the value iTunes U offers for the University. We have an iTunes U server on campus that never really got much action, in part because it was nothing more than a Linux box

Kinect, 3D Printing, and Advanced Technology for Higher Education

Today after giving a standard talk to students about some great resources freely available on the web for their projects, Jim and I stuck around and chatted with George Meadows who is teaching the freshman seminar course. We got to talking about interesting technology that's out there right now and

design

Design Matters

So often I have lengthy discussions on Twitter and keep telling myself "I need to be blogging this! 140 characters isn't enough for my rage!" but to grab the bits and pieces of what was said on Twitter and codify it here on my blog can be difficult at times.

umwbl.gs and DIY url shorteners

Shortening URLs has become a really popular service in conjunction with Twitter and text messaging growing in popularity. I've wanted to play around with URL shorteners for awhile now. To be honest I don't trust that bit.ly or t.co or is.gd will be around forever and while

amazon

Streaming Live Video without Ads for Pennies

I've been in search of a decent low cost video streaming solution for a long time now. It doesn't take long playing with Ustream and Livestream to realize that while the software running those systems is extremely user friendly and convenient, the ads they run are obnoxious and intrusive. The

development

Encouraging Gravatar Use in Wordpress Multisite

We're in the process of redesigning the layout and look of UMW Blogs and one of the features Martha Burtis has added is a stream of the 5 latests posts from the entire network. The plugin is pulling the user's Gravatar along with the title, author, a character-limited description, and

college

The Myth of DIY U

It's hard to learn this way; in fact, it's harder than going to college. The educational system as it is currently structured is intended to offer a set of short cuts - access to qualified practitioners, creation of custom peer networks, guided and scaffolded practice - for a certain price.

anniversary

Reflecting on 20 years of the World Wide Web

I grew up in a small town called Fairborn, Ohio and we didn't move to Virginia until 1993. I can remember my only interactions with a computer around that time being the one my dad had at work (he was a minister of a church) and how I loved to

custom posts

Custom Post Types and Taxonomies in Wordpress

One of the greatest geek features of Wordpress 3.0 is custom post types. Custom post types takes Wordpress from just a simple blog/page CMS to literally anything you want it to be. Instead of drafting a "post" you can create a "video" with it's own attributes like "actors"

comments

Alternative Commenting Systems: Video Responses

I've been thinking a lot recently about ways to engage discussion on a website while still requiring people to "own their words" so to speak. Anonymous comment forms encourage and embolden users to react and respond with no regard to others. Ever read the comment section of your local news

Sesame Seeds and the Race to the Bottom

This story came up today while talking to my brother about the declining quality of their day care center. I can't remember where I first heard the story so you get my version of it, complete with profane language. Please escort your 9-year-old away from my blog and enjoy. The