You’ve got to find it slightly inspirational that a 2 foot tall indian muppet wearing underoos has the vanity to actually die his hair. At least this made me feel better. This….and the half tablet of vicodin. I always wanted a pet monkey, but now I want one of these little guys. I would give him a sword and we could have battles.

For the love of god I really am starting to be ashamed to be an American. Why should I care about Gary Coleman’s marital disputes, Janet Jackson’s philosophy on love and discipline, or what Britney Spears had to say about Bionce and Tina Turner. Is this really the crap that America is concerned with? Apparently it is. And its not isolated to the smutty, idiodic little world of Entertainment Tonight. Apparently our (yes, your’s and mine) congressmen feel it is their responsibility to spend an enormous chunk of their time (our time) determining exactly what performance enhancing drugs may or may not have been used by some former baseball player(s) and which former baseball trainer(s) or player(s) may or may not have lied about it during the interminable initial waste of time investigating the ’scandal’. I swear to god I’m considering either emmigrating or hanging myself. And as I sit here watching the biggest loser dancing supernanny wife swapping American idol apprentice gladiator geek, I’m already stringing my neckties together wondering if the light fixture in the cieling can support my weight.

Thank the good lord I FINALLY got a good wireless signal. You know…I’m not really into reviewing stuff outside my domain of interest, but I really think I could write a book sometime of hotel reviews. Here’s the catch - I would base my entire review on my experience with their wireless internet. I would score the place I am staying in tonight near the bottom of the list of those many that I have experienced. I mean really…are there any places out there that don’t offer up free internetanymore? Well, apparently there is in State College, PA (I’m going to refrain from naming names on the basis that I’m not sure I can afford the legal ramifications). Not only did I have to pay for my access, but the signal ended up being so bad in my room that I was forced to move to the bar to get a good connection - well, I guess that’s not a terrible thing, but come on!

Anyhow, at least my angst allows me to relieve any little anxiety I might have for presenting tomorrow at the Blendedschools conference entitled “Educating the Digital Native”. Sutably trendy title for a conference that got me thinking about Prensky and got the gears rolling along. If you need a little kindling for thought, take a look at Jamie McKenzie’s critique entitled ‘Digital Nativism, Digital Delusions and Digital Deprivation’. Good stuff. Don’t agree with everything he says. But good stuff. McKenzie did a good job of defining the wierd little nagging feeling I got when reading Prensky’s definitions of digital native/digital immigrant. I just refuse to accept that I am a digital immigrant, when I’m sitting here in a hotel bar in State College scribing a blog post for my limited Community of Practive. I’m a native baby. Right?

And I had been sooo good about posting regularly, then I go and take a couple weeks off…

Been a busy couple of weeks. First off, got the Lasik surgery and I’ve got to say if I had known what was involved and what the results would be I would have saved some money and done this ten years ago (of course, the technology has got to be vastly improved since then). Absolutely AWESOME. That’s the only way I can describe it. The technology involved in the procedure alone is fascinating. The whole thing is done with lasers now. One (called the IntraLase laser) is used to cut a flap on your cornea and create a thin layer that is easily peeled back by the doctor before placing the eye under the eximer laser to reshape the layers underneath, thereby correcting your vision. The eximer even locks on to your eye and makes adjustments for any tiny little eye movements during the procedure. The whole process literally takes less than five minutes - a total of maybe 30 seconds of laser per eye between both lasers. AWESOME. I was able to sit up after the procedure and see perfectly. No pain. No discomfort. The biggest annoyance of the whole process is the loads of drops you have to use gumming up your vision. Eyes are periodically mildly itchy for a couple two three days, but since the fourth day I have had no dryness or itchyness or any irritation of any kind. And my sight is perfect. Better than perfect. No more contacts, no more glasses. AWESOME. In case you were interested, I had my procedure done by Dr. Tom Boland at the Northeast Eye Institute in Scranton. Not cheap, but these guys are the best.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on what I will hesitantly describe as ‘research’ on the applicaiton of the virtual environment of Second Life. Second Life is a MUVE (Muli-User Virtual Environment). It is massively popular - nearly 40,000 people within the virtual world of SL at any particular time and millions of registered users woldwide. I think it might have enormous potential in education, but I’m not sure. The question is beginning to absolutely facsinate me and I am spending entirely too much time in this world of make believe trying to answer it. My charater’s (or avatar as it is correctly called) name is Zipplestich Bing. I have joined a group of researchers from the University of Texas that have created a region within SL called the Educators Coop. This has provided me with access to some personal ‘land’ where I can create a sort of ‘home-base’ within SL, and the goal of the Coop is to bring together a diverse group of educators that are focused on exploring the application of these virtual envoronments in the future of education. The focus seems to favor higher education applicaiton, but there are a few members of the coop that are K-12 so I am looking forward to developing more collaborate relationships and riding the leading (or bleeding) edge of the future of instructional delivery mechanisms.

What I find most interesting and educationally applicable with SL is the fact that the entire ‘world’ is interactive and manipulable. Objects can be created or edited using a robust but simple pallate of tools. It has its own scripting language so scripts can be created and applied to objects. There is an entire in-world economy (similar to the economies that have developed within other online games like World of Warcraft) that literally translate into a real exchange rate between game money and real money. Objects can be created, bought, sold, borrowed, traded. Real estate is a large focus as well - land can be sold or purchased, terraformed, built upon, improved, speculated upon. I see it the entire SL world as a really giant set of legos. And I loved legos. Haven’t had the opportunity to play with legos in a long time, but I’m making up for it now. This really fits in well with what Mitchel Resnick and his research group at the MIT Media Lab would describe as Lifelong Kindergarten.

I will definately be posting more on my experiences in SL. It has captured by interest and attention. Can it do the same for our students?

Been shaping up as a busy couple of weeks for me. First I finally, got fed up with how bad my allergies have been lately and called the allergy doctor. Also, thought it was time to get my eyes fixed once and for all, so I’ve been going to a series of eye appointments and I am scheduled for Lasek surgery next Thursday. In addition to that and getting evaluated for my snoring problem, my riding mower crapped out on me a couple weeks ago and I ended up buying a new mower.