2009.12.28 17:20:07

ben

I am currently working on developing a sleeker navigation (buttonbar) for site-wide navigation. This tutorial is proving very useful in creating navigation akin to that on the apple.com site, with pressed button states achieved by swapping .png images.  

Using image sprites, the page will load a single .png for all states of the navigation buttons, drastically decreasing the number of image requests on the server when a new page is loaded. If all goes well, this method should applu to the navigation across all 3 applications (Moodle, Elgg, and WordPress).

This seems like a nice trick, but it sure does take a lot of time to create all those images the first time around...

2009.12.28 17:10:17

ben

In re-designing the COE Online site, I have been testing the waters at other COE sites across the spectrum. One such site is that of the Portland State University Graduate School of Education. The site is pretty good on many fronts. Here's how I see the breakdown:

Pros

• Navigation is generally clear, and provides access to virtually all content (within the /education sub-directory) through a consistent horizontal nav menu
• Delineation between the higher level (pdx.edu) domain is clear, allowing for search in the COE or university domains at most levels of navigation
• Faculty research profiles are searchable in a tidy interface
• "Future Students" nav item provides pertinent content in a professional context
• Persistent "Profiles" block on the right of the screen is an excellent idea

Cons

• Horizontal and vertical navigation are redundant most of the time (actually this is good, because the flyouts on the horizontal nav bar are a pain)
• Some pages at the lowest levels of granularity have only category breadcrumbs and remove the vertical nav, requiring a press of the 'back button' 
• Site lacks visual appeal, could use some more interesting photos and slicker CSS

Basically, this site includes excellent content and copy, has pretty intuitive architecture, but looks a little tepid and outdated.

2009.08.08 18:19:47

ben

I'm happy to say my little hobby, GreenCollarSolutions.org, has taken a more tangible form. Our little consortium has put together the beginnings of a social learning community based on the Elgg open source, social networking application.

I have been posting more often on my GCS blog, but will remember to re-post here in the future.  

green | social learning | learning | green collar

2009.06.18 20:15:29

ben

Here at the Sloan-C Emerging Tech Conference Professor George Otte described the process CUNY went through to establish a learning network, CUNY Academic Commons. Technically they chose a bricolage of best in show open source technology, blending WordPressMU with BuddyPress and MediaWiki, all linked through single sign-on.

It offers faculty and staff (soon to include students) a platform for sharing ideas, posting blogs and resources, and networking with user-created groups. CUNY just got it started in the past 6 months and have not put any money into it except for the web server it runs on. The delivery of the network has been broadly accepted for all sorts of purposes, most notably those NOT associated with CUNY's LMS.

Parting thoughts: "Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about."  - Cory Doctorow

networking | SF bay | wordpress

2009.04.15 19:21:23

ben

The UF Department of Urban and Regional Planning put on a Green Symposium today. A panel of experts presented research findings on the trend toward green building and urban planning. Of note:

• Much of the current green building is done by builders who will occupy the buildings they design, such as schools and health care buildings 
• Many research initiatives have quantified the return on investment of green building investment
• The location (proximity of occupants) of new office building construction often has a bigger impact on the building's energy consumption than its construction, i.e., on average occupants expend twice as much energy commuting than the building does when occupied
• Average cost of a home built to code: $300k; Average cost of LEED certified construction: $308K
• 83% of Executive home builders "extremely" or "very likely" to seek LEED Certification in the next 5 years
• Current development regulations significantly impact the ability to add greenery to new development areas
• According to new codes, town center commercial areas must be out of sight of major thoroughfares.
• Regulation always has unintended consequences

green | green collar | urban planning

2009.04.03 17:45:45

ben

I have been perusing YouTube's new EDU feature and mulling possibilities. It seems like an inevitable extension of the contemporary move toward open courseware. But it threatens to further penetrate the wall separating Formal education -- indeed, capital "F" --  and NonFormal education (NFE).

 So...when do we start the countdown towards the dismantling of the accreditation system?

NFE | open courseware | youtube | education

2009.02.06 19:39:39

ben

This story, brought to you by our own Gainesville Sun, could be huge. It focuses on a Gainesville city commission decision to allow solar energy producers to sell back energy harnessed by their own roof-top power plants.

Murray Cameron, vice president of the European Photovoltaic Industry Association, was one of eight delegates who visited Washington, D.C., Tallahassee and Gainesville this week to learn about the potential for launching North American branches of their corporations.

"This is a little bit of a feeling of déjà vu for us," Cameron said. "Because in Germany it was not the federal level that introduced feed-in tariffs, it was local."

Germany, as you may know, has made tremendous leaps with its feed-in energy tariff, far over-shooting its anticipated public interest in the opportunity for citizens to "farm" and sell their own energy.

2009.02.06 05:16:35

ben

This small site, developed by an ID team at Penn State's Behrend College, offers an excellent overview of renewable energy. The instructional site includes videos and flash demos of various forms of renewable energy, and offers learners opportunities to quiz themselves along the way.
Kudos to the design team on a pedagogically-sound, reusable learning object (RLO).

rlo | glo | green

2009.02.06 05:11:33

ben

Thanks to Cathy Cavanaugh for passing along this article in Education Week. It cites a program at Whitmore Lake High School in Michigan, focused on incorporating sustainable technology in the curriculum. Author, Sean Cavanagh, highlights a dearth of a centralized repository for green learning objects (GLO):

"Like many educators, however, Ms. Taylor has also been forced to track down many renewable-energy resources on her own, mostly because no single set of materials meets her needs."

A lack of State standards has slowed the advancement of programs like this around the country. In order to assess need for such standards, Karen Heys, the senior director of education at the National Environmental Education Foundation, conducted a survey in 2008 of 1,300 employers. Sixty-five percent of respondents said they valued job applicants’ knowledge about “environment and sustainability,” and 78 percent said they believe it will increase as a hiring factor in the future.

green | green collar | education | schools

2009.02.04 03:14:59

ben

journal | green collar | gcs | music