A couple of useful web development and design articles I came across the other day.

A List Apart: Articles: Understanding Web Design by Jeffrey Zeldman (Nov 20, 2007)

Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.

Some good points about thinking about how web content is both similar to and different from other forms of content creation.

A List Apart: Articles: How to Size Text in CSS >by Richard Rutter (Nov 20, 2007) contains some useful reminders that all browsers do not render text the same, even if you’re being careful with the CSS.

Interesting article over at TidBITS Networking: An Electronic Book Giveaway: 2003, a Disaster; 2007, a Pittance which notes the decline in internet traffic costs over the past few year, and some things to be aware of if you’re going to make something available for download that might be (very) popular – in their case, a free eBook.

Short but helpful article by Darren at ProBlogger on How I Produce Video Blog Posts.

As part of some part-time work I’m doing at the moment I’m doing some distance/flexible learning implementation using Moodle (a free, open source course management system for online learning). So here’s a few links I’ve found useful over the past couple of weeks.

• Moodle: Teacher’s manual 1.6 (Introduction) from Lappia – The Municipal Education and Training Consortium of Kemi and Tornionlaakso (Finland). An older version of Moodle but still helpful.
• Course: Moodle Features Demo from @berNET (Aberdeen)
• Course: Introduction to Blogging in the Classroom from @berNET (Aberdeen)
• Teaching FAQ – MoodleDocs on the Moodle web site
• Using Moodle book – MoodleDocs on the Moodle web site. Again, an older book but some good examples of what’s possible.
• Moodle: Moodle 1.8 Teacher Manual from Sweet Briar College, Virginia

In my wanderings around the net a while back I came across this issue of Theological Education which looks at the role/impact of digital technology upon theological education. Looks like a helpful selection of articles.

See Theological Education 41/1 (2005)

Related links:

• Greenflame · Technology and Theological Education
• Greenflame · New media literacies and collaborative work in academia and ministry

I’ve thought about putting Skype on the iBook and wondered about Mac-compatible hardware to support it – yelling at the laptop didn’t seem ideal. But really had no idea where to start. I’ve found in the past that quite a few USB devices (speakers, keyboards etc,) do work in Mac OS X but the boxes never say that because it’s unsupported. However TidBITS (which I’ve been reading since it used to be distributed as HyperCard stacks) has a recent, helpful breakdown here of some options.

See TidBITS: Choosing Mac-Compatible Skype Hardware.

Blog statistics. Some people admit to looking at them, others won’t (even though we know they do ) For some they can become the all-consuming passion – especially if you’re trying to monetarize your blog.

Lorelle on WordPress has a very useful page that collects together the various different plugins and schemes for WordPress that collect statistic. See Counting WordPress: Statistics WordPress Plugins « Lorelle on WordPress.

I’ve been wondering for a while how many words I’ve written each year, and now I can find out.

Radio New Zealand National : Programmes A-Z : Nine to Noon : Wed, 18 July had an interesting section from their employment lawyer Andrew Scott-Howman on employers and potential employers using information available on employees (and potential employees) on social networking sites. Audio link here.

A selection of links that intersect around the role of new media in educational environments. Henry Jenkins has an essay (in two parts) that looks at the tension between participatory media and traditional educational models, and in particular emphasises the critical application of the following skill set:

1. Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others towards a common goal.
2. Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information source.
3. Networking — the ability to search for, synthesize and disseminate information.
4. Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative sets of norms.

See:

• Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: WHAT WIKIPEDIA CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE NEW MEDIA LITERACIES (PART ONE)
• Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins: WHAT WIKIPEDIA CAN TEACH US ABOUT THE NEW MEDIA LITERACIES (PART TWO)

Connected to this, is Mary Hess’ post about a review of her book on theological education promoting this type of critical engagement with new media by teachers and students. See:

• Tensegrities » Struggling to respond… and Tensegrities » A response to a review
• Tensegrities » Teaching/learning in theological education

Then AKMA has this post on reflecting on a meeting to discuss related matters – AKMA’s Random Thoughts – Retrospect and Prospect.

And then Tim chimes in with this post (connected to AKMA’s) – SansBlogue: Bible, Babel and Web 2.0. (Some long comments there – including some from Mark which he refers to here: E-BCNZer: Brighouse – “On Education”).

The integration of digital technologies, with existing pedagogues and technologies, will be here for a while yet. I know that I’ve found it frustrating as both a student and teacher that the roles I’m being trained for/are training people for are collaborative – they stand or fall based upon healthy, dynamic relationships (both in IT and religion) – and yet the systems promote individualism (for assessment particularly) and work to stamp out collaborative efforts (it’s called cheating). Intellectual property discussions (esp. academic ones) also connect here. There must be a better way.

Playing around with the news feeds for the site. Should be no hassles, but let me know if there are.