ARGNet recently captured the story of a lawsuit against Toyota regarding an “ARG” that pranks people including snail mail, phone calls, and [...]
Richard Dawkins, author of The Greatest Show on Earth, gave a “talk” last night at Indiana University. First, before I dive in to comment on Dawkins, I need to give mad props to the union board at IU for inviting him. It must not have been an easy decision [...]
Results from today’s #geekpoll on Twitter. Apparently people really don’t appreciate the viral games on Twitter. Is is the mechanics of the games? Their demand that you pass the game on to your contacts? Is Twitter a bad platform for games?
What do you think?
I can’t help but be excited about Google Sidewiki. It allows users (with google accounts) to leave comments on any website. So now, rather than signing up for forums and chats to comment or searching through dozens of pages to read customer feedback, you can simply click a button [...]
The Wall Street Journal recently published this article claiming that Facebook might possibly ruin friendships as a result of oversharing. Now, I’m not arguing that you should Twitter or change your FB status for every snack you have, every little odd thought that crosses your mind, or every time [...]
Thanks to a glitch with my WP install and a hectic schedule it’s been more than a little while since I’ve been able to blog. But then, we all have excuses, right?
Ubernoggin is back! With a new theme and new ideas. I’m really excited to be writing here again and [...]
Yesterday afternoon, with no warning or rumor, Blackboard announced that it purchased Angel LMS. From the reports online, even Bb employees didn’t know about the acquisition until it was announced. For a mere $80 million Bb purchased its largest competitor. Why fight in court to impose all [...]
Mike Wesch often says that students who ask “How much is this worth?” or “How long does this paper need to be?” are really asking you help them prevent learning more than they have to. Something about this rings very true to me and I know I was certainly guilty [...]
medical mannequin
I’m constantly amazed at the wide variety of interests and projects I get to learn about when talking to companies and faculty. I think if I could compile all the basic understanding I’ve had to gain about all of these fields I might be able [...]
Illinois legislators are trying to require minors to get adult permission to create accounts on social networking sites. For details about the legislation read here.
Synopsis As IntroducedThe brilliant kids who work with Peggy Sheehee created this video. You’ll laugh; you’ll cry; you’ll yell “A-men!
Click here to view the embedded video. [...]Whether you’re “pro-edupunk” or “anti-edupunk” these videos are worth watching. Jim Groom and Gardner Campbell, who seem to agree on more than they don’t, have a great debate that unveils a whole lot about who’s in charge of this whole anti-LMS movement and you might be surprised at what they [...]
***Disclaimer: This post is NOT intended as a slight to SL, the great projects built there, nor the innovative thinking going on around and inside SL. It’s meant to be a discussion only. Also, pardon the length.***
Phew! I don’t normally put a disclaimer in front of a post but I [...]
I come from a field in which research is largely qualitative and most of the great thinkers are theorists. But, I think living with a social [...]
If you’re a Twitter user you’ve probably noticed an influx of new users in the last few weeks. Need proof? Check this out. Twitter has become mainstream with plenty of mentions on national news and other mass media sources. Which is all awesome for the Twitter folks as they [...]
The audio recording for the session described below can be found here.
Please note that the actual session begins at about the 4:00 minute mark.
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Just a little self-promotion for a talk I’m giving tomorrow. Here’s the description and the instructions for watching the session online through Breeze. The online session [...]
There seem to be three camps when it comes to Twitter:
Avid Users: “Twitter is cool. I find it handy/interesting/fun/addictive!” Avoiders: “Why should I care that so-and-so wants another coffee, has to take the dog out, has a headache?! I have my own life!” Unaware: “What’s Twitter?”If you’ve ever tried to explain your [...]
In today’s crazy economy it’s hard enough to figure out the value of a service or product but how much is an idea worth?
The problem with valuing ideas is that you often don’t know how much one is worth until you know what the idea is. But once you’ve heard [...]
Finally, after 18 months of gathering info, installing and uninstalling software, creating account after account…I’ve finished the virtual worlds facet chart. It’s based on the facets I uncovered in my dissertation research that you can read more about HERE. There are many worlds that aren’t included because…well…I had [...]
When I was 15 I got a job as a cashier at the local IGA. We got a spiffy smock to wear over a polo shirt and “dark pants.” On about my third day I went to work with black jeans on. Nice, new black jeans. Now remember, I stood [...]
I.A. Richards claimed that rhetoric is really the study and avoidance of miscommunication. How many times have you argued with someone only to learn that you were using different definitions for the same terms? Or found out that the idea that offended you so much was really something completely different [...]
Last week I spent time with two very different groups: Next Generation Consulting and Western Governors University. NGC consults with cities, corporations and other groups who want to improve their life/work balance and better suit the needs and talents of their employees.
WGU is an online university with over 12,000 students [...]
Yeah it may not be techy but it is smart if healthy = smart!
Skinny Chicken Parm
Makes about 4 servings
One package thinly sliced boneless, skinless chicken breasts italian seasoned breadcrumbs fat free milk thinly sliced provolone shredded asiago or Parmesan cooking spray lo-sugar spaghetti sauce Preheat oven to 350F Spray casserole pan with cooking spray Dip each chicken breast in [...]Most folks who know me know that I disagree with the idea of Natives and Immigrants in terms of technology (ala Prensky). Today’s high schoolers and undergrads are not natives to technology. They don’t have some magical innate ability to understand new technologies. What they usually have is a clear [...]
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I’ve just finished reading Seth Godin’s Tribes amidst countless news stories with predictions for the new year and Twitters of friend’s resolutions. The end of December always rouses in us that urge to make change, to [...]
I’m normally super prompt about responding to emails, tweets, SL messages etc but I’ll be much slower for the next week or so. I’m having surgery tomorrow that will plant me on the couch playing a bit of Wii Animal Crossing for about ten days.
See you all back here and [...]
It’s not always easy to see how Second Life can be useful for training. In many cases it’s just not the best tool for the job but sometimes a training need just matches perfectly. Kelley Executive has a great face to face training program to help [...]
WOW! ReLIVE last week was an awesome time. So many incredible, smart, innovative people in one place. I was blown away. Not only was I impressed with everyone I was lucky enough to meet, the conference organizers did an amazing job putting it all together. I have pages and pages [...]
You probably already know that I’m a full-blown Google junky (all praise our technology overlords) but their latest tool makes me especially happy. Voice and Video in gmail chat!
Skype has saved lots of folks lots of high phone bills but all it has ever done for me [...]
I’ve been playing MMORPGs for close to ten years. I’ve been studying them for nearly as long. But recently, I’ve run into something that has me flumoxed.
I can’t figure out just how people make friends in an MMORPG.
Now, I’ve had friends in MMORPGs before. I was the [...]
This is absolutely brilliant! Maybe CNN should be presenting the Azaroth exit polls. Could this be a more accurate sampling of voter sentiment than “likely voter” LAN-line phone calls?
[...]First, before you read on, let me assure you that my blog has not been hijacked. This is, in fact, Sarah writing and not the result of someone stealing my login.
That being said, I’ve just spent an hour at the BlackBored booth at Educause and I think I may have [...]
Phew! I’m one tuckered out Intellagirl. Educause 08 in Orlando is a non-stop brain-fest. I haven’t met a single person who I coulnd’t spend hours chatting with. The collective IQ of Florida must have gone up by a few points this week.
Yesterday AJ Kelton and I ran a full day [...]
These are the slides from my AoIR 2008 talk being presented in Copenhagen tomorrow. The Camtasia file with audio can be found here.
If you have questions or comments please feel free to leave them here. I’m eager to hear what folks think.
AoIR Robbins View SlideShare [...]I’ve talked to several folks lately about where they’re most productive. In the office? On the train? At home on the couch? Thanks to our ever-connected lifestyle face-to-face meetings are the rarety for many of us. In fact, for me it’s sort of a special occasion now to actually drive/fly [...]
Here’s the pitch:
There’s a quiet plague breaking out. One by one the number of infected rises around the world. Dismissed as only the stuff of monster movies, real zombies go unnoticed and unreported. Until now!
The site invites and collects witnesses from around the world to submit [...]
Flickr. Youtube. Facebook. Kwippy. If you’re like me, a social media fanatic, when you see a new service which might be useful you rush over, sign up, and at least claim your username for later when you’ll have more time to try it out. It easy, though, with the multitudes [...]
I recently keynoted the Young Professionals Summit in Cocoa Beach FL. My talk centerd around how YPOs can use social media to reach out to new members and keep existing members engaged.
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I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams
Things have been exciting here lately. The semester started and Typewriter is up to his eyeballs in [...]
Today I’m in lovely Cocoa Beach Florida at the Young Professionals Summit. Last night, amongst many drinks, lovely food and with the beach as our background several of us “YP-ers” started talking about the troubles we’ve run into with our older managers, teachers, and even parents. I’ve summed up our [...]
Any tool intended to facilitate community formation and/or user-generated content must have an eye toward flexible development goals. Youtube may have been created to host a wide variety of video content but if the mass of users slowly shift toward contributing only content on a specific topic Youtube must be [...]
Back in fourth grade I had a huge crush on a blond boy named Joshua. I didn’t really know him but he looked cool and he made jokes in the hallway. You know how love goes when you’re nine years old. Anyhow, I really wanted Josh to be my boyfriend [...]
Like many social media geeks, I’ve had many opportunities to help folks understand how and why social media can change the way they do business, relate to other professionals, etc. These four objections are the most typical responses I hear from my most hesitant audiences. Whether you’re a company, university, [...]
“Technologies don’t become socially interesting until they become technologicaly boring.” - Clay Shirkey
If you’re a Twitter user you’ll know what I’m talking about when I ask “Who are you on Twitter?” Are you an employee of the company you work for, are you a friend of your followers, are you [...]
Are you like me? I’m totaly jealous of folks who seem to have, not just the time, but the ideas to blog every day or even more often. And not only do they post all the time but everything they say is brilliant, well-developed, and thought provoking? Yeah, I secretly [...]
The Media Sauce crew held a great event today to share what we know about User Generated Content (UGC) so I got to put together a fun talk about where UGC comes from, why it works, and how to leverage prosumer contet to best benefit your company, organization, campus etc.
Be [...]
It’s easy. Just Google “Yourname + Needs” and copy out the first ten instances of the phrase. Oh boy! Mine are a little depressing.
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Months ago, when I heard Clay Shirky claim that “Technology doesn’t become socially interesting until it becomes technologically boring” I found myself saying “Amen” back to the television. Due to recent events, I’m not so sure if I still agree.
[...]
Appalachian State faculty (Stephen Bronack and Richard Riedl) presented along with James Witte from Clemson about their joint project called “Carolina Virtual World Consortium” in which the two schools have joined forces to explore many different virtual world spaces for use in education both at Clemson and at [...]
This morning Adrian Sanner from Arizona State gave the keynote talk. Sanner is funny and brilliant. He spent the first 30 minutes or so sympathizing with the current state of technology in higher education. It felt a little long and I was eager to get on to his solutions, the [...]
Not everyone is into social media. Most folks don’t blog or IM or Twitter. In the grand scheme of things, those of us who choose to express ourselves via technology, those of us who choose to develop networks of friends whom we may never meet, are [...]
New technologies can be scary but for businesses the risk of being passed by is too high to be scared off. The best example of late is Mattel’s steamrollering by Scrabulous. Mattel didn’t jump on the opportunity to create an application for Facebook when they could have and [...]
Skimming through my RSS reads today I stumbled on Mashable’s post about Apture. No doubt you’re wondering what the new link types are here in the text. They’re Apture links.
Here’s what it does…once you’ve created an Apture account, added the plug-in to your site, and activated it, Apture lets [...]
Local bloggers from across Indiana will gather at the IUPUI Campus Center on August 16-17th, 2008, for Blog Indiana 2008, a 2-day blogging and social media conference that aims to promote education, innovation and collaboration among Indiana’s fast-growing blogging community. The conference is sponsored by the [...]
I know I’m an early adopter and that I tend to try out new web apps that other people don’t quite see as useful so I admit that I have a certain amount of bias. Regardless, I have to rant a bit about the so called “tech journalists” who begin [...]
Lately I’ve been giving talks about the potential conflict between formal, institutionalized learning and the kind of informal, self-driven learning that social media supports. At the Sloan-C conference, and more recently at EduComm, I tried to get folks thinking about the difference between the way we learn in school and [...]
When the food came is was awesome. Slices of steak, chicken, incredible sausage, and lots of veggies with couscous and bread. Yum! We took a chance and it turned out well.
[...]It’s very humbling to be in a country where you don’t speak the language. Mark and I headed out to a restaraunt last night and basically said “We’ll have what they’re having” pointing to a nearby table. We weren’t really [...]
If you’re ever in Sao Paulo DO NOT miss the art museum! It’s truly amazing. It’s the only building I’ve ever seen that doesn’t have a ground floor. The main exhibit area is on the second floor and below ground is a beautiful space with a [...]
Mark and Bill Thompson in downtown Sao Paulo traffic
[...]Taxi rides in Sao Paulo are pretty darn scary
[...]No it’s not a new Brazilian rock band. Last night we were treated to an amazing dinner at a traditional Brazilian BBQ. We went with two of our hosts, both named Fabio and neither anything like the “I can’t believe it’s not butter”-Fabio. They both work for the Institute of [...]
This is a video I shot with my Small Wonder from the roof of our hotel last night. The quality doesn’t do the view justice but you’ll get the idea.
[...]I’ve been reading too much David Sedaris lately. He makes me want to write. I guess it’s not a bad thing.
After getting married last week, giving two talks, and nearly being flooded out of our house, Mark and I left for Sao Paulo last night. A second round of severe [...]
NEWS FLASH!!!
INTELLAGIRL GETS MARRIED!
Tuesday morning, June 3, at 9:35 am Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins and Mark Bell were married at the Monroe County courthouse, Bloomington IN. Mark Bell was quoted as saying “I may have gained an amazing wife but I lost a sweet sugar momma.” Witnesses told us that [...]
Yes, you read the title right. Hello Kitty, that cute little kitten with the pink bow, may just kick the butts of all the green skinned warriors of Ogrimar. How? With some of the most innovative game mechanics I’ve ever seen.
Before I got into detail about [...]
A colleague just emailed to ask me what Web 2.0 tools I thought should be on the list of “apps higher ed folks should know about.” When I’d written it I figured it worth while to just post it somewhere for everyone so here you go! It’s a rough…what free, [...]
Well, it’s been over a month since I’ve written on my own blog thanks to all the other projects I’m happily working on. The mass of students have finally cleared out of town leaving Bloomington a pleasant place with shorter lines for the fancy coffee. I’ve cut back on hours [...]
So you’ve been thinking about taking your business into the virtual world but you need some help. Maybe you need some numbers, some handy facts about demographics, some insightful analysis about what this whole movement to the virtual world really means for business. Well, O’Reilly is [...]
So I’ve been having trouble with image spacing over at the SL-Education Blog. They were crammed up against the text no matter how much padding I put in. Tonight I finally got sick and tired of wrestling with it and called for help. No I didn’t turn on the [...]
Authors of Second Life For Dummies Live in Second LifeAbracadabra – March 20, 2008 – SLED and SLRL’s own Sarah “Intellagirl Tully” Robbins and Mark “Typewriter Tackleberry” Bell, authors of Wiley’s Second Life For Dummies, answer audience questions in Second Life on March 27, 2008 at 3:00 p.m. [...]
This is the slideshow from my talk on Friday about how to use Social Networks in business. Please go check it out. Don’t be scared by the number of slides.
You’ll find:
I’m a devoted Twitter user. I Twitter from my desktop, from inside Second Life, from my iPhone. I use Twitter to ask questions, keep in touch, find news stories and tech updates, and even to make dinner plans when I’m on the road. Of the technologies to cross [...]
The Intellacast is back! I don’t podcast as often as I’d like but when I do I try to make it worth it. So here’s a doozy. It’s a challenge to three of the best social media evangelists out there: CC Chapman, Joseph Jaffe, [...]
Oh I love data! One of the most important things we Digirati geeks can do is encourage ourselves to stop and reflect on what we do and how we use the applications available to us. Being able to look back over patterns of usage not only informs our own use [...]
When I wake up the morning I grab coffee and stumble to my desk. Twitter and Gmail are already open with updates and messages. My community is up, awake, and posting info vital to the start of my day. It’s more than just the need to know what’s going on [...]
Does this happen to you? You need to schedule a meeting with a few people, none of who share a calendar with you, and ten emails later you still don’t have a time slot that works for everyone? Perhaps you find a time but now you have to decide where [...]
Mark and I are in San Antonio at the ELI Annual conference. The program is super exciting with sessions on Second Life, social networking, haptic devices, and more. First up, Henry Jenkin’s talk about Wikipedia. Here are my notes from the session:
Sometimes I sleep in. Other times I’m up at 3am. I work in pjs as much as I work in a suit and heels (ok, I don’t wear high-heels but you know what I mean). I’m an information worker, a web-citizen, a member of the digirati and I work where [...]
Listening to Bob Edwards on XNPR the other day I heard a great interview with child psychologist David Anderegg about his new book Nerds: Who Are They and Why We Need More of Them. Anderegg interviewed kids from 6th to 9th grade about nerds, what [...]
NYT Article about MTV’s Virtual Lower East Side (VLES). VLES is an interesting response to the independent music scene on MySpace and other social sites (which seem to be faltering big time!). In VLES, and its accompanying social network site, bands and fans meet up to support their [...]
Pew has done it again. This most recent study shares insights into how teens use the internet, create content, and stay connected. Give it a read.
[...]Mark and I often do a bit of brainstorming on the big dry erase boards in our dining room. Lately, we’ve been churning out research-type questions about virtual worlds. I thought I’d post them to save them from little hands and erasers and perhaps to get some discussion going.
Geesh! Blogging, among so many other things, has become quite difficult to keep up with. I’m sure many of you can relate. I’m constantly amazed at the folks who can do so much AND find time to write about it. I manage to Twitter quite a bit but I’ve neglected [...]
Henry Jenkins’ awesome blog “Confessions of an Aca/Fan” has once again brought up the topic of the digital natives and immigrants initially conceptualized by Marc Prensky (See link here to read Henry’s very thorough post). As I travel around speaking to groups about Web 2.0, Second Life, and [...]
