eCROP Blog

To outline means to organize the relationships between the main and subordinate points of an idea, activity, project or argument. Digital outlining adds the ability to move, minimize or hide less important details. Though the paper-based use of outlining had fallen into disfavor in writing classes, its fluid digital reincarnation brought it back to life in school classrooms and adult planning activities. The announcements of free tools with strong or complete online operations have brought it roaring back into action. Check out the recent announcements of Cmap and Inspiration (for handhelds and Smartboards) as well as management organizers such as Backpack and Basecamp for new ways to think about the concept of outlining. Outlines provide concise visual ways to organize knowledge in order to create meaningful change in the world. Outlines create an organized bridge of prioritized steps between the Look and Evoke stages of problem solving. Such tools adress the overwhelming mass of i...

Click above to listen. Only a single phone is needed to create a podcast. But both the speakerphone and the cell phone shown in the picture below are needed if someone at a distance needs to participate. If your phone services do not offer conferencing, this is a simple workaround; otherwise the audio will be higher quality if phone conferencing is used to make a three party call, with the third party being the blogger.com audio service.. To start an audio conference with the design in the picture, I begin holding the cell phone next to my head for some initial comments, then set it on the speaker phone. The picture shows what this setup looks like. Blog audio conference set up. Here's the transcription of this 3 minute 17 second podcast. "This is another podcast in the Blogosphere Show with Bob Houghton speaking. Welcome to this podcast on simple podcasting systems. This is a test of using my cell phone for automated podcasting. I'm using my cell phone as a microphone to...

A "partner" blogsites parallels a standard web page so that sections of a web page essay can have a place that allows commentary and feedback on its sub-sections. Consider the similarities. Blogs are generally thought of as a collection of periodic postings organized by date, each posting its own topic that does not necessarily directly relate to the last. An essay or any large document is also a collection of headings or sub-topics but organized by sequence so that each sub-topic follows from the last to form a coherent whole. Here's an example of a blog organized as large document or essay. http://blog-study.blogspot.com/ See the sidebar link in the above blog site which connects to its parallel as a web page. The web page in turn has a link to its blog site. At the blog site readers can use the comments link to discuss each section. The author or authors of both sites having the passwords to both would keep these two parallel, building on the feedback and re-weaving it...

Blogging remains the fastest way to generate a web site for addressing community problem solving. In comparing the top three free blog creation services, Walter Mossberg's excellent Wall Street Journal column on blog creation (2005, June 15, D4) found that blogger.com's approach to photos was a hassle. There are points to quibble with in his review. Mr. Mossberg was most kind to respond quickly to my email which complained that he had his facts wrong in noting that one cannot quickly and easily add narration to a photo in Blogger. I retract the "facts wrong" thought and leave his paragraph as misleading. He intended his critique to knock Hello which works with Picasa to upload selected and edited images. He wanted to be able to add the narration or description to the photo while in Hello during the upload process. I prefer the editing to be done back in the back in the blog. Why add the duplication of editing in Hello when it is already quite adequate in the blog edi...

A critical factor in community problem solving is listening and remediating ideas. Remediating? Habermas would call it harmonizing. Humans have an amazing capacity to hear and see what they expect, not adjust to what really is. Stereotype thinking infects us all. Nora Carr makes a career of dealing with this as a publication relations (PR) specialist, who keeps a column going in eSchool News, with one eye focused on the "dark side" of media. She recently mentioned this blog and other work of mine as part of her column that can be found here: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=5711 For those following the CROP perspective of this blog, Nora makes a key point. "The key to building an effective blog is to view it as a relationship-building tool that will help you engage your stakeholders in new and important ways." Solutions to real problems have to begin and end with mutual agreement and understanding about many things.

Audio FAQ It is hard to match the socializing and harmonizing potential of sharing a meal with someone. What is there about the clink of silverware and dishes that stimulates conversation and a little problem-solving. Are blog sites just a weak substitute for good mealtime conversation? Unless videoconference pricing drop off a cliff, it is hard to imagine replacing blog sites any time soon with doing a videoconference lunch with multiple points around the globe. Now there's something to look forward to. A meal seems such a perfect image for communicative action theory. Given global social customs, one could conjecture that brains and stomachs take particular pleasure in doing their digesting together. Habermas's Communicative Action Theory (1984) provides a deeper perspective from which to examine the nova-like explosion of blogging. Who would have known there was such an additional pent-up life-force needing further social discourse? What was so limiting about phones, email,...