eCROP Blog

Does your phone have a Conference button? I'm realizing that I've been under-utilizing this feature and have recently begun to take better advantage of its capacity to get consensus or collect team ideas without making multiple one-on-one calls. Advances in the blogging movement however transform my phone and conference button into something almost unimagineable. With a couple of keytaps, my phone transforms into a recording studio with up to six guests for an attached web-based radio station with global syndication! Whew, sounds like a real whopper, doesn't it. It isn't. Listen. This is an audio blog, and making this show with Norr Carr, columnist with eSchoolNews , couldn't have been more simple. The current buzz phrase for these things is podcast, named after the ubiquitous audio and music players called iPods which grab audio from computers for mobile listening. Yet desktop media players and other computer mobile products and even cell phones can all play the p...

Learning, understanding and problem solving have a very high visual component. GIS stands for Geographic Information Systems, applications which compose maps of relationships as easily as one would compose a paragraph. These relationships are as basic as the above map of schools in western North Carolina or a state highway map and as complex as multiple layers of a community’s infrastructure of pipes, wires, roads and buildings. Deeper understanding of GIS begins with learning more examples of applications and the elements of a GIS map. GIS plays a significant role in problem solving at both the Look and Evoke stage of the LEAP model . GIS software enables a user to build maps in layers and to search data which can be displayed as relationships among the data on the map. Applications range from desktop computer tools such as ArcView by ESRI to web server map systems such as provided by maps.google.com , earth.google.com/ , maps.yahoo.com and http://www.mapquest.com/ , terraserver.mi...

How many revolutions were ever completed and no one noticed? I can give you at least one example. Podcasting capacity to link audio with images using quicktime web tracks or other technology will transform public use of television, not radio. The discussion of podcasting appears blinded by the box of radio thinking. How does one use blog systems (podcasting) to duplicate or top what can be done with transmitter based radio? Rob Griffiths's lament in Macworld that podcasting is just more noise in the system is a case in point. His question seeking what folks like and do with podcasting now frames discussion within the early development potential based on existing knowledge of radio. Short term innovation is always overhyped and long term is undervisioned, but holds the real value. Application capacity for synching images with audio is as old as quicktime ( 1991 ) and with iPhoto 4.03 has been around since August 5, 2004 in a linked but not in a form that allows the author to choose...

My study of the wiki phenomena seems headed for a one word summary, leadership. If leadership is about getting teamwork done, of drawing others into effective action, then wiki work is a fine training ground for the needed attitudes, habits and practices. My review of key wiki developments can be found at 123 Wiki . Wikis are just one part of an overall vision for problem processing, but they provide a unique application for collaborative work at the Evoke stage. Their different perspectives serve each of the LEAP stages. Many wiki projects have advanced to the point of having respected information for the Look stage, which grows their perception as outlets for the Publish stage. Their edit history tracking and comments provide feedback for the Assess stage.