Vivid Orchid

ACTEM Conference 2011 Notes

2011-10-14T11:03:00.010-04:00

Using Twitter to Build a Personal Learning Network

with Patrick Larkin

http://www.patrickmlarkin.com/

Maine ACTEM Conference 2011

http://willrichardson.com/ - "What happens to schools and classrooms and learning in a 2.0 world?"

Hashtag - follow twitter chatter

ex: #bhschat, #Edchat, #engchat, #spedchat, #musedchat, #sschat, #cpchat, #libchat, #ellchat, #kinderchat - whole list at @cybraryman

PLN = Personal Learning Network

Twitter = microblogging

"The smartest person in the room is the room" - anonymous

"If we can learn how to share our perspectives, we can see the whole picture." Davidson, Cathy N.

Best Twitter tool = TweetDeck

Separate out groups into columns

Text 40404 to get twitter updates

HootSuite app for ipad

Storify.com - app - put together a little story from all the tweets made from a discussion

Tony Vincent

Keynote Speaker

http://todaysmeet.com/actem
Encyclopedia: http://www.qwiki.com/
Puppet Pals ap for ipad - fun puppet movies
Use Google Advanced Search for kid's homepages
Flashcards- ex learn foreign languages - http://quizlet.com/
Online Storage: Dropbox.com or Box.net
"Flipping the classroom" - kids watch lectures at night and do "homework" during class time during the day
Khan Academy
Show Me whiteboard - create videos for flipping the classroom
Motion Math app
Kerpoof
Toontastic

Geek of the Week

Evernote app
Go Tasks app
Newspaper Map.com
Pic Lits
AASL
VoiceThread
SpeachMaker
Search Research
A Google a Day
Assisstments
Tethering your phone
http://hackasaurus.org/ - similar to Firefox edit CSS
Shoutkey - temporary tinyurl
Answer Garden
http://dotvoting.org

Tune Up Your Technical Writing

Barbara Greenstone

bgreenstone@mlti.org

http://maine121.org

http://mlti.org

What is technical writing?

Non-fiction and non-narrative

Hierarchal, chunked, may or may not be sequential

Uses text features to guide reader

How do you read a manual? Not from beginning to end....looking at bold text, diagrams and illustrations, using search to pinpoint what you're looking for

Examples:

Directions - DIY guides, recipes

User manuals

Science lab reports

Resources: Technical Writing 101 by ALan S. Pringle and Sarah S. O'Keefe

Technical writers use TEMPLATES

http://minute.maine121.org/

http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/

Add in diagrams, illustrations, screenshots, etc.

Command Shift Control 4 copies things to clipboard

Authentic Assessment: The Family Member Test - have your family test out your writing

Use Comic Life to make directions - sequential art

http://www.instructables.com/

Going Viral

Maya Crosby and Devin McKusic

http://bit.ly/actem11viral

Viral : YouTube

Tumblr - microblogging platform

http://hootsuite.com/ - Link all your social media sites together

Saving WordPress Websites to CD - Thank You SiteSucker

2010-06-29T22:10:00.005-04:00

A client had me create a website that was for a particular event this month, and at the end of the month the client has asked that I take down the site and burn it onto a CD for him to keep in the organization's records. In the past this would have been a simple task. I used to create all my sites from scratch using basic html, css and a dash of php. However, recently I started using WordPress to create client sites so that they would then be able to login to the back end of them and make updates on their own. This poses one problem - how do you back up a website and burn it to CD when it is created in a WordPress CMS and all the pages are just content stored in a back-end database?

In a panic I searched the internet to find out ways to archive the WordPress site. Each entry I found gave intricate instructions on backing up the database along with "helpful" strings of code in a language foreign to only the most schooled programmer. Then they explained how to jump through hoops, swim across the English channel, and learn to belly dance on the Turkish Riviera (this I have actually done aboard an authentic wooden Turkish yacht) to put the site back together again to be able to view on the CD. I had almost given up on finding practical instructions on how to do this when I stumbled across a little link someone had posted in one of the many forums I had been reading on the subject. They said something to the effect of, "I just use SiteSucker" and then had the link - http://www.sitesucker.us/mac.html.

This little program is a jewel. I immediately downloaded it and typed in the url of the site I needed to save to CD. It started downloading all the files you would need to be able to view the WordPress site without an internet connection. Mainly the image files, css files, and pages of content pulled from the database. When it was done it saved it all in a nice little folder with the name of the site url as the title. Now all I need to do is burn this folder to a CD along with a text doc explaining to open this folder and double-click on the "index.html" file and voila! they have the entire site, 100% functional.

This took under 10 minutes. I will happily be leaving them a donation for their share-ware. : )

Adventures in Art Direction

2010-01-19T10:23:00.005-05:00

I found this really hilarious movie short about a client manager and an art director speaking about a client and wanted to share! I have had these sorts of conversations, and this made me laugh!

It was originally found at http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/3590711/

Nov 19 Desktop Publishing Class Notes

2009-11-13T16:02:00.015-05:00

Rachel Guthrie's Design Matters Movie

Cornell Notes Description

Rachel's 6 Steps to Good Design:

Familiarize yourself with all of the information that will be on your piece.
Organize the information into 3 or 4 different categories such as title, instructions, and illustrations.
Chunk long blocks of text by breaking it up into manageable parts - "Visual Chunking"
Prioritize each category giving a number 1 to the category that needs the best visibility, and 4 for the least.
Use analogous colors, they create a sense of unity (note- analogous colors are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel).
Use only 2 fonts (I was taught 3, I would think it depends on the design).

Andrew Mundi's Design Learning Tool

MS Word Tricks
Word Options> Save>Embed Fonts
Word Options>Advanced>Insert Pictures as: "In front of text"
Word Options>Save> Save files in this format: Word 1997-2003 (*.doc)
Font>Effects
Paragraph>Spacing Before and After
Styles
References>Table of Contents
Header & Footer Tricks
Saving as a Template

Exercise: List of Amazon Rainforst Animals (doc)

Finding Images & Fonts Online - blog post 9/3/09
Screen Capture/Image Sharing (Mac only) - Skitch
Free Online Photo Editor - Pixlr

MS Publisher Tricks
Blank Page Sizes>Custom
Insert>Text Box
Insert>Shapes & Lines
Insert>Picture>From file or Clipart
Insert>Page

Exercise: Bake Sale Flyer (doc)

Publishing Documents to the Web
Scribd - social publishing site
Google Docs - you need a Google account to use

Creating Websites

General

Weebly
Weebly Ex: MCHS Digital Photography Website & MCHS Art Gallery Website
Google Pages - must have Google account to set up

Blog-Associated

Blogger
Word Press
Word Press Ex: UMaine

Content Management Systms (CMS)

Lorem Ipsum Text Generator

Finding Inspiration
design*sponge blog
Google Image Search
Start an idea board or notebook with scraps of layouts or color combinations that you like
Join Twitter and follow other designers, they post lots of inspirational tweets, or just do a search for a keyword like "newsletter" or "design" to see what people are tweeting about

Books I Recommend:
Graphic Design Cookbook by Leonard Korin & R. Wippo Mekler
Design Basics Index by Jim Krause

-------------

Finding Images & Fonts Online

2009-09-03T23:05:00.004-04:00

There have been a number of people who have asked me where to find images to use in their projects. Here are the sites that I use;

www.istockphoto.com - you have to sign up for an account here, but the image prices are very reasonable
www.sxc.hu - stock.xchg, a Hungarian photo site that istock just bought, however the images that come up here are free to use. istock does include images above your results that cost.
deviantart.com - Resources and Stock images - each artist lists what their requirements are in order for you to use these images
Microsoft Clipart - they actually have a very nice collection
www.flickr.com - Under and to the right of each image it says Additional Information which is where you can find how each artist allows their image to be used

The font sites that I use to download wonderful fonts are...

www.dafont.com - it's the best and all the fonts are free!
www.1001freefonts.com - this fonts are also free but I don't use this site as much because it's not as user friendly as dafont.com.

Enjoy, and happy creating!!

Photographers: Getting Paid for Your Photos

2009-07-28T13:43:00.003-04:00

I run across many amateur photographers who would be interested in getting paid for their photographic passion. I encourage anyone who takes quality photographs to sign up for 2 accounts:

1. istockphoto.com, here you get paid per download of your image. They also accept illustrations, audio, and flash.

2. flickr.com - this is a photo sharing site that even graphic designers look to for artwork. Read the article on graphics.com, How to Get Paid for Your Flickr Photos, about how to get noticed, and maybe even contracted, via flickr.

There is also the art sharing site deviantart.com, and they have a special Resources and Stock Images section where pros look for artwork to use. Each artist gets to decided how people can use their artwork.

4 Multimedia Learning Principles

2009-02-24T21:49:00.002-05:00

How many of you go to a conference, only to fall asleep the second the lights go out and the gleam of a lengthy power point presentation starts up? Power points are supposed to be powerful teaching instruments, however many people end up using them in the same way middle schoolers use 3x5" index cards when giving presentations. They cram as much as possible into a tiny space so they won't forget anything when in front of the class.

There are some basic rules for power points, like use a non-serifed font at least 34 pt large. Use high contrast colors. Use short, bulleted lists as much as possible. However, even when using these rules the presentation is not going to keep people awake and interested. So what is?

Using instructional design.

Olivia Mitchell has put together a great post on precisely this called 4 Multimedia Learning Principles That Will Improve Your Slides. She describes instructional design as a way of design that incorporates the different ways people learn and process things, including both visual and audio. I would encourage anyone who has ever had to or ever will create a presentation to read this blog and memorize its content.

My favorite presentation that she posted is called "Brain Rules for Presenters."

Brain Rules for Presenters

View more presentations from garr. (tags: reynolds garr)

All My Faves

2009-02-24T21:39:00.002-05:00

There is a new web page that has all the links in a visual interface making it very easy to get to every page that you would visit on a daily basis.

Check it out! http://www.allmyfaves.com

It gets the Vivid Orchid stamp of approval.

Adobe CS4 Resources

2008-10-16T15:49:00.005-04:00

Notes from the Pre-Conference ACTEM workshop:

Use Flickr to search for images to use in projects as well as istock, etc.

Go to www.adobe.com and do searches for these keywords to find fabulous resources on how to do anything with any Adobe project:

"CS3 workflow guides"
"CS3 video workshop"

Adobe publishes a series of books called the Classroom in a Book series

Education reources: www.adobe.com/education

Video resources similar to youtube? tv.adobe.com

---

Etsy: An Online Shopping Experience

2008-09-10T18:12:00.004-04:00

My boss told me about this great new website called Etsy where one of her friends is selling her homemade goods. Generally, when I hear the word homemade, I associate it with words like tacky, tasteless, unfashionable, cheesy, crude, and garish. (Not that anything I have ever made would fit into any of those catagories of course!) But I checked out the site anyway, and boy was I ever blown away. Not only are the products classy, the site design and interactivity is leap-years beyond anything I have ever seen. The site is actually FUN to browse through. I have only made it through the first two "Ways to Shop," via Color and Treasury, because they are just so addictive. When you zoom your mouse around the color block colors bubble up and then slowly bubble down and disappear as your mouse gets farther away. Once you click on a color a bunch of snapshots of different products of that color appear and you can zoom in on them, visit their individual pages, or click, hold, and throw them off the page. As I said, really fun! The treasury puts together lists of similar items that are also fun to browse through.

This site kind of makes me think of when Old Navy became popular, with the slogan, "Shopping is fun again!" This site gets my vote for best online shopping experience for it's layout, colors, and interactivity. Also, I like that it is open to the general public so that even artists who want to sell things online but can't afford their own storefront have a classy place to sell.

http://www.etsy.com/

Principles of Graphic Design

2008-04-07T10:37:00.003-04:00

Charlie Johnson found this AMAZING design learning tool by Andrew Mundi which he gave to the students of his Portfolio seminar. (Disclaimer: I did not create this, just uploaded it to one of my websites to share.) On the left there are 5 categories,

Introduction to Design
Color Theory
Composition & Layout
Perspective
Typography

Then to the right are sub-categories of each of the above. It is a wonderful overview of the principles of design.

Eco Art

2008-04-06T19:18:00.003-04:00

A workshop at the Arts, Innovation, & Creativity Conference
Presented by Cynthia Robinson - www.ecoartalacarte.com www.cynthiarobinson.net

In Cynthia's words, eco art is art that helps improve our relationship with the natural world.

The most interesting example was one of an artist in Chicago, Jackie Brookner, who created a work of art called "Prima Lingua" (above) composed of concrete, volcanic rock, mosses, ferns, wetland plants, fish, steel, rubber liner, tubing, pumps. This was originally created in a river that was extremely polluted. The plants that she planted on the rock cleaned the water as it ran over it. It is the integration of art with ecology.

Another interesting artist is Mierle Laderman Ukeles. She created a park in Cambridge where the walkways were made out of recycled glass. The more the walkways get weathered and used, the more they sparkled.

Lesson: Your artwork can have a function!
or can Bring Awareness

Including:
Land Art
Earthworks
Ecological Art
Activist Art
Conceptual Art
Installation Art
Maintenance Art
Trans Species Art
Ecoventions
Interventions
Reclamation
Phytoremediation
Social Sculpture
Artist's Intent
Artist's Practice

Read more at www.greenmuseum.org

Arts, Innovation & Creativity Conference

2008-04-06T16:02:00.000-04:00

I'm at the Arts, Innovation & Creativity conference at the Samoset Resort put on by the Maine Learning Technology Initiative. Presenter Keith Kelley is teaching us how he integrates technology into his grades 5-8 classes. He has a blog for each class, and all are connected via his main blog, www.itsvms.com. It's ingenious! He has projects for each class, and has the students create all the content that they can then view from home. Parents are also able to log on and view the blogs to see what their kids are doing in school. He also is using Google docs for homework, which means the homework can never be lost!

Loving Logos

2008-03-31T21:22:00.001-04:00

I have started creating logos for people and while I was weary that I would be able to pull it off at first, I think they are coming out pretty well. I start in Illustrator, get the basic design and fonts figured out, then sometimes take the images into Photoshop to re-work certain areas, then place them back into Illustrator and fine-tune the design and choose final colors. Here is a logo that I created today with my co-worker Coleen. Her husband does contract work and is moving his business to a downtown location and was in need of a logo for his new business cards and sign. This is what we came up with.

I am very pleased with the way this came out. It was an excellent example of how someone can have a specific idea in their mind, explain it as best they can to a designer, and the designer can in turn create what they were thinking. In this case Coleen knew she wanted the word Maine to create part of a truss with the rest of the words built into it, and the Maine needed to be a hunter green and she wanted the truss to look like wood. After a few first drafts, and some help from a colorist upstairs, we had a winning design.

Today I also fine-tuned a logo for my friend's husband who is starting a bookkeeping business. He asked for a green pig and something with a dollar sign.

I only hope this one is not too busy, and I wonder if the bottom sentence should be darker.

The best logo that I have ever designed was for the Healthy & Ready Work non-profit.
However, it does have one major design flaw that no one seems to have picked up on yet, the fact that nowhere does it say "Healthy & Ready to Work." Which makes me wonder if logos need to spell things out...?

Another logo I did that came out really well was for our New England GEAR UP conference back in October. This has been one of the highlights of my career so far. It turns out the attendees were so impressed with all the media that they thought we had hired a large design firm to create all our materials. They were very surprised to find out it was all me! Some of them even offered to hire me...

The last favorite logo that I'm going to share is a fun, colorful one I did for the "Other Qualified Mental Health Professionals" organization that my work took over. This one also does not have the entire name spelled out, and it works!These last few are a bit duller than the actuals as I used some lower-quality versions to post. They are definitely a good starting batch, and I think the more I create the better they will become. Here's to many more vibrant, vivid logos.

Delving into Design - Online Magazines

2007-12-07T21:06:00.000-05:00

I am LOVING being a designer. I live and breathe color schemes, layouts and type. And yesterday I discovered this new type of online "magazine" from www.zmags.com and it just blew me away. Here is a little background on me. Since I was very young I wanted to work in the publishing industry for magazines. I love the glossiness of magazines, the way they smell, the glamor. I used to think that I wanted to be an editor someday, but when I got older I realized that all an editor does is edit, and I am a designer. So then my dream changed to being an art director. Perfect! I interned in the art department at Cosmopolitan magazine, U.K. edition in college and it was a dream come true. They taught me tips and tricks of working in Photoshop, how stock image companies work, and took me on photo shoots. It was incredibly amazing. Then my plan was to work for Victoria magazine after I graduated, only sadly their last issues was June of my graduation year. I was lucky enough to meet one of their contributing editors before they went out of publication (a fellow Smith College alum) who gave me a tour of the New York office and I was in HEAVEN. However, I ended up working for a Connecticut artist Karen Rossi after graduation until she cut all our hours and now I work as a graphic designer for a non-profit educational organization, the Maine Support Network. Between employment I started a web design company Design Initiatives after falling in love with web design, and I still run this business on the side.

So.....what does all this have to do with zmags.com? Everything! Zmags is everything I love wrapped into one. It is ONLINE MAGAZINE software that integrates all aspects of design. You virtually flip through the pages just like you are flipping through a magazine. You click to zoom in to get a better look and click again to zoom back out. The pages can be filled with glossy, gorgeous layouts as well as having all the interactivity of a website. Parts are clickable, you can crop out a picture or screen shot and email it to a friend, you can email a whole page or a whole magazine to a friend, you can search the magazine for keywords and phrases as well as search archives, all back online issues of the magazine. When you mouse-over certain areas movies will pop up. Some movies are embedded right into the page. You can print certain pages or the whole magazine in high resolution. I have always thought that the internet can't replace a magazine, but these magazines are SEXY. They are cutting-edge, a designer's dream! You not only get to design a flat layout, you also get to make it interactive and web-viewable.

This is a great time to be a designer.

Oh, and as a side note, Victoria Magazine is as of last month back in publication! Maybe someday I will work for them, creating the online versions of their print magazines...

The Reason Behind Masculine Cars

2007-11-10T13:04:00.000-05:00

Ah ha. There is logic to not selling feminine cars. According to the article, "Most Popular Cars for Men and Women" posted on Yahoo! Autos Dodge came out with a "female" car that flopped;

"The most famous attempt was the Dodge LaFemme, dreamt up by marketers trying to capitalize on the growing interest in automobile ownership among women in the early 1950s. The car sported pink upholstery patterned with rosebuds and came with a matching purse, raincoat and umbrella. It was outfitted with lipstick holders and painted a new shade, dubbed Heather Rose."

This car did not sell, I am guessing because in the 1950s most women were not earning their own income. And which man even in today's society is going to buy a pink car, even if it is for his wife? If she decided she didn't want it after all, he is not going to want to be seen driving around a pink vehicle. And as the article said, "Women might buy a 'man's' vehicle, but men won't buy a 'women's' car."

That being said I think instead we need to focus then on the interior of the car. I would still like to see seat covers that came in all different colors, designs and materials. With the trend toward personalization, I think this would be met with open arms by consumers, myself included.

Pink Plaid Cars

2007-10-31T22:44:00.000-04:00

Today I was at my wonderful acupuncturist appointment lying quietly on the table with thin needles sticking out of my belly, legs and feet and I had an epiphany. After a very stressful day at work, as it was our first day back after the big New England GEAR UP conference that we put on, (check out my kick-ass program!) and trying to get through the piles of projects and details left undone in between creating a new website for our Integrated Services grant, I was WORN OUT. And I had to leave work early to get to a rather uncomfortable doctor's visit, so by the time I got to acupuncture it was a treat to just lie there and dream under the sweet scent of the eye pillow. And back to my epiphany. I realized that it's a women's world out there. We compromise over half of the population. So why doesn't it LOOK like a women's world? Yes, there are some places that look female-friendly. But most of these are interior places, inside Buildings. What I am really trying to get at is color. I want to see more things in techni-color brilliance. I want to see buildings bursting at the seams in gorgeous hues, each more beautiful than the next. I want to be able to go to a women-run car dealership and not feel like I am getting taken advantage of by the opposite sex trying to sell me a car that has all the gadgets and gizmos inside but only comes in red, green, silver, blue or white with either leather or nylon interiors. The exteriors I want to choose from are ladybug-polka-dotted, pink plaid (my sister always wanted to paint her first car pink plaid), beach sea green and blue stripes, white with an over-sized hot pink gerber daisy on the roof. I want to be able to go into a shop that sells seat covers with as many designs as can be found in a museum. How much fun would it be to have the pink daisy car with tangerine interiors? Or a zebra-striped car with eggplant-purple interiors? I spend a lot of my life in my car, more time than I spend awake in my apartment, and wish that it could be decorated similarly to decorating my stationary dwelling.

So what am I going to do about it? Turn to Photoshop and come up with some models. Then send the models to....Martha Stewart? Maybe do some research.

As for adding more art to our buildings? Hm, I think the US needs to see examples of what other cultures have done. The Russian buildings are incredible. But I'm not saying that our buildings have to be artistic to that extent. Just more friendly and feminine.

Design Tips from Rachel Guthrie

2007-10-29T18:01:00.000-04:00

Rachel Guthrie is a teacher at Cape Elizabeth High School in Cape Elizabeth, Maine and is an amazing designer. She designed the ACTEM conference program and taught the course, "A Good Design Can Sell Anything" at the conference. She had some great design tips on developing media.

Rachel says that Good Design helps us to address learning styles, including;

Tactile/Kinesthetic Learners (learn by moving, doing, and toucing)
Auditory Learners (learn by listening)
Visual Learners (learn by seeing)

To create this dynamic design, there are some basic steps to follow;

Familiarize yourself with all of the information that will be on your piece.
Organize the information into 3 or 4 different categories such as title, instructions, and illustrations.
Chunk long blocks of text by breaking it up into manageable parts - "Visual Chunking"
Prioritize each category giving a number 1 to the category that needs the best visibility, and 4 for the least.
Use analogous colors, they create a sense of unity (note- analogous colors are colors that are next to each other on the color wheel).
Use only 2 fonts (I was taught 3, I would think it depends on the design).

Tips:
- Try not to overwhelm people, stick to "simple thoughts, one liners, mind bytes, & mind candy."
- When creating a logo or a brand for a company, ask them to "design your company to me" and listen carefully to the adjectives they come up with.
- Look for things like;

Harmony
Proportion
Balance
Restraint
Originality

As she says, "People want to look at stuff that's really pretty."

Watch her slide show to see examples of good design in action!

Graphic Designers are the Future

2007-10-17T22:27:00.001-04:00

Continuing with the big picture....

My coworker Corda went to the Maine Alliance for the Arts conference at the Samoset last week and came back and told us about how wonderful it was for art educators to get together and be able to share and collaborate. The wave of the future is Creativity. Graphic designers will hold the most important role in the creative future, she said, which made me especially happy, as I LOVE what I do!

Here is what is happening, she wrote me in an email, from the book A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink,

"Abundance, Asia, Automation (affecting white collar workers (jobs being sent overseas). [We] need to develop aptitudes that computers can't do better, faster, or cheaper.)

"Six Senses (6 essential R-directed aptitudes, R=right brain)...

Design
Story
Symphony
Empathy
Play
Meaning"

While I didn't quite understand this email, after visiting the book's website, I found a good summation of what's inside (and now the above makes more sense!),

"The era of "left brain" dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which "right brain" qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate."

What I took from all this is that the Information Age is now morphing into the Collaborative Age, in which humans are most important and the qualities that make us human are now taking center stage.

Finding information is just so yesterday man, today reaching out and meeting someone new and creatively sharing your ideas is what's in. Get with the program!

As a graphic designer I haven't quite got it all figured out yet, but I know that my job is to design the future. I will log in once I have read the book. : )

The Big Picture - ACTEM

2007-10-17T21:45:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Vivid Orchid, a blog bursting with design ideas, inspiration, and a closer look at the big picture.

I attended an ACTEM (Association of Computer Technology Educators of Maine) technology conference last Friday, October 12, 2007, and it opened my eyes to the direction our universe is headed in. The guest speaker was Will Richardson who is "famous" because of his blog http://www.weblogg-ed.com/. His main subject matter covers education, and how our current education system is becoming more archaic by the minute. "Why are we asking our children to memorize the planets?" he asks. "Recently it was discovered that Pluto is no longer even classified as a planet." (As I'm thinking, "shoot, now what is the point of My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas?" when Pizza is no longer on the menu?)

I took from his presentation that his point was that we need to be teaching children how to find credible information and how to collaborate safely with others on both a local and global scale, and that our teaching methods need some drastic overhauling.

Cell phones equipped with cameras and cameras equipped with video recorders + MySpace & facebook & AIM = instant information

Basically we need to be teaching MySpace and using AIM in the classroom. Moodle (I love this word!) is a great start. Let's get more people using online course software like this!