Learning the World

I’ve been using Twitter for years, and almost since I created my first account I’ve debated the need for splitting it in two: once for my work related tweets, and one for everything else.

It’s was a difficult question, because you can’t easily divide my life into “work” and “non-work” related tweets. The apps I work with every day — Drupal, WordPress MU, iTune, etc. — also happen to power the stuff I use at home.

This is because my friends, both online and off, then to be intensely creative and productive people. They’re podcasters and writers, gamers and hobbyists, and they use all the self-same tools as at my day job. Cross-pollination between the two has been essential to my use of Twitter, and for that reason I’ve been hesitant to spin off a separate account.

And yet … when I go to conferences for work, I find a lot of people using some iteration of their real-world name for twitter … where as I use my gamer handle, @nukehavoc. Now that handle’s fine when I’m at Origins, GenCon, Balticon or some other big geek convention … but it feels a little less professional when I’m at a work conference.

There’s also the fact that while I’m sure some folks enjoy keeping up with my geekier side, I think there’s also some that would rather not have to read through my Star Wars tweets to get to my WordPress MU ones.

So to that end, I’ve created a new account on Twitter for my work and webapp related posts: @knewquist. I still have my @nukehavoc account, but that one’s full-on geeky — it has all my posts about web development, geek parenting, gaming, etc. You can expect some cross-posting between the two, especially when it comes to web development and online technologies, because as I said earlier, the cross-pollination between my different audiences is what makes Twitter work for me.

I’ll freely admit this is an experiment, and I don’t know how well it work out. I’m going to maintain the account for six months; if at the end of that time it proves to be more trouble than it’s worth, I’ll disable it.

Hosts Courtney Bentley and Ken Newquist kick off the early October edition of the ITS Coffee Break with a discussion of fall projects, including a slew of student video projects and “Spaces”, a new intercollegiate workspace for faculty that’s powered by Moodle and Shibboleth. In Tech News they look at new political and utility apps for the iPhone, check up on a chess match being played between Earth and the International Space Station, and consider Nintendo’s answer to Apple’s iPod touch: the DSi.

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Educational Games Research runs down the Top 10 educational video games from the 1980s, including Oregon Trail, Zork, and SimCity.

Science fiction + Libraries = Hi-Fi Sci-Fi Library The Music Video.

Wow … I haven’t posted to Learning the World since August. How time flies … and how painful it is to be locked out of your blog because EduBlog’s multiple resets of the password (which finally seems to have taken… but we’ll see).

In any case, the semester is now under full steam, and most of my Moodle-related fixes are taken care of, the new library site is live, and I’ve got some room (and time) to breathe before diving into my next series of projects, which include:

• Experimenting with using Drupal to power web-based workflows.
• Continued behind-the-scenes development of the Library web site.
• The launch of a new shibboleth-powered Moodle for faculty collaboration.
• iTunes U/Moodle integration
• WordPress Mu setup and testing
• WYSIWYG editor testing in Drupal, MediaWiki and WordPress

Martin Dougiamas, creator of Moodle was honored at OSCON 2008 as “Best Education Enabler”.  Very cool.

Lafayette’s network upgrade rolls through campus and host Ken Newquist and Courtney Bentley try out the second of three new microphones in this edition of the ITS Coffee Break. In Tech News, they discuss new apps for Apple’s iPhone, how to collaborate with Google Docs and Sheets and speculate on Microsoft’s plans to offer DRM-free downloads through its Zune Music Store. Finally, in Help News they review ITS’ web site update project and take a look at the upcoming Web and Video Conferencing lecture being held in November.  Get the podcast.

… so clearly I need to post more frequently to this particular edu outpost. Looking at Lafayette’s referrer logs, I can see a handful of visits coming in from this blog, which just goes to show how quickly things can be found on the web.

The ITS Coffee Break helps faculty and staff at Lafayette keep their New Year’s resolutions to clean up their web sites and learn about multimedia editing with news of the upcoming Web Design Day and Audio & Video Project Planning workshops. In Tech News, Courtney Bentley and I give a roundup of education technology blogs, while in Help News we discuss the rest of ITS’s January term workshop offerings. Visit Soapbox to get the episode and read the show notes.