OnSwipe describes itself as “a platform that makes it insanely easy for publishers of all sizes to make their content and advertising a beautiful experience on touch-enabled devices via Web browser.” Any blog hosted at WordPress.com is already enabled with the OnSwipe plug-in, and if you host your own WordPress site, you can easily install the plug-in yourself.

via Make Your WordPress Site Tablet-Friendly – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

UPDATE: Not surprisingly, I am late to this party. It looks as if every WP blog I read today is using this and has been for a while. Still, I like it.

 

My adaptation of Blau’s reading log audit is essentially a blog post about blogging, as my guidelines for the assignment suggest:

Begin by printing and reading all of your posts and comments (you can access a list of your posts from the Archive menu at the top of the site). As you reread them, take notes, critically reading your entries as if they were written by somebody else (or at the very least, recognizing that they were written by a different you at a different time). You are not grading your own work so much as commenting on it and noticing what you notice week to week.

Compose a short analysis and reflection of your posts. This meta-post is open-ended and the exact content is up to you, although it should be thoughtful and directed. Feel free to quote briefly from your own posts or to refer to specific ideas from the readings we’ve studied so far.

Some questions to consider might include: What do you usually write about in your posts? Are there broad themes or specific concerns that reoccur in your writing? Has the nature of your posts changed in the past five or six weeks? What changes do you notice, and how might you account for those changes? What surprised you as you reread your work? What ideas or threads in your posts do you see as worth revisiting? What else do you notice? What aspects of the weekly blogging do you value most, and how does it show up in your posts?

via Making Student Blogs Pay Off with Blog Audits – ProfHacker – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

 

Let me know what you think! Anything else to add/remove?

 

Alcatraz - Fenced In

I hope to, but my schedule lately has been ridiculous. I had a great visit with Bob Cargill and next time I hope to meet up with Chris Heard as well. Bob and I talked a lot of edutech including digital textbooks and eduApps (my term) that would, for example, incorporate 3D fly throughs of Qumran such as Bob’s doctorate offers along with images, assessment tools and good old text. We also talked about blogging and we both find that the more we are writing and researching the more we blog. For me it is just another way to think out loud. Such cogitation has been on the back burner lately, but June has been set aside for my research so get ready to read a lot about Targum Ruth! (I am also thinking of offering a 1 credit course, “Creation: Genesis 1-3,” but you can already find lots of my musings on that topic here.)

In the meantime, if you really would like to know about my comings and goings don’t forget that you can follow me on twitter, facebook, and flickr.¹

 

1. Given the rejection of capital letters, I have longs suspected that bob cargill is responsible for the 2.0 naming conventions.

• Andy Ihnatko, internationally-beloved technology pundit and frequent guest on Mac Break Weekly, visited campus. We had a great time and even recorded a podcast in the van trip from the train station. I hope to have it finally edited and up some time this next month (followed by the nearly 1 year late SBL podcast).  Pictures are here.
• I traveled to Boston on business, taking our SHC “lion” with me for photo ops.
• Of course classes ended followed swiftly by graduation. We have over 350 Schreyer Scholars graduate with honors this spring and the ceremony was fantastic. You can read a nice summary of the class at the SHC website. In my closing remarks I urged the students to do two things as they go out into the world:
  • Be public intellectuals – don’t hide your intellect and ability, engage in the world and use the skills, knowledge, and ability that you have developed to make this world a better place.
  • Be people of honor – don’t simply accept the honors of academic success, grants, scholarships but strive to be honorable, doing that which is right. You can sense a theme in my comments.
• After welcoming our incoming freshmen for their first stage of orientation and registration I headed to Purdue with our associate dean for our annual meeting with our Big 10 peers. Always a good time, but this year had the added treat of watching the new Star Trek movie on a free afternoon (look for another movie review blog post if time permits).
• Upon arriving back in State College sans luggage, of course, the family and I immediately hopped in the car and headed to the beach for the Memorial Day weekend. You can see the pics in the post below. A good time and minimal sunburn.
• Finally, last week I spent three days in the Philly area at various events for rising high school seniors.

In between all of this activity I have actually finished the revisions on my article about eschatological lists in the Targumim of the Megilloth, preached a couple of Sundays, and started reading The Book Thief and Guns, Germs & Steel : The Fates of Human Societies for our summer book reading project. So far GGS is rather plodding and while the Book Thief is engaging it is not a light story…at all.

This weekend has thus been very nice. The weather has been gorgeous, we celebrated my wife’s birthday, watched the new Pixar film Up! (ditto on the review), did a lot of work around the house, and enjoyed the pool (which fortunately for us is heated, this is central PA after all).

The week ahead has lots of meetings (and hopefully a repaired MacBook Pro, the screen had issues) but no travel so all in all a lighter schedule. Why should anyone care? I don’t know, but I feel a sense of responsibility to those who do read to give some explanation for why I have not posted more than a few comics and some pictures.

Have a good week everyone!

 

Reimagine Scholarship | Symposium for Teaching and Learning with Technology.

Reflective blogging across a student’s college career

Schreyer Honors College Dean Chris Brady and two students describe a pilot in which the students are asked to blog about their college experiences. Students are asked to relate their posts to the Honors College mission of academic excellence with integrity, building a global perspective, and creating opportunities for leadership and civic engagement.

 

As pointed out, Aramaic Studies offers a two-for-one!

Bonus Session – Two for the Price of One: SBL24-103, Aramaic Studies
11/24/2008, 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM, Room: Meeting Room 309 – CC
1. Ed Cook, Ralph the Sacred River (1st presenter, time 4:00 pm)
4Q541, Fragment 24 Reconsidered (Again)
2. Chris Brady, Targuman (5th presenter, estimated time 6:00 pm)
The Development of the Character of Ruth in Targum Ruth

 

To install this on a Mac, download JP’s plugin (it is an XML file so “Save as…” to the computer. Then go to the Firefox.app, right-click on it and select “Show Package Contents.” That will show you what is bundled into the program. Now go to Contents/MacOS/searchplugins and drop the file in there. Restart Firefox and away you go! Very nice and convenient.

 

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zp-65Lwmh8