Recording of session from Trudy’s blog
Leave a Commenthttp://trudypowers.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/gt-tele-conference-mar-8-2007/
This is the recording from the March 8th meeting.
The shortest distance between two ideas….
… is a question that waits to be asked.
From a blog called the Google Operating System
Questions can be recycled to make better answers. Unneeded answers can be cut and stapled to become questions. The shortest path between two ideas is a question that waits to be asked.
I breathe words, I wear words, these words are a part of me. I also write a book from people’s weaknesses, inspirations and lies. They write it without even realizing. Their disjointed ideas wouldn’t survive without my book, because they need questions that make them complete.
There is no limit to the number of times a question can be asked, but it’s not the same question. My labyrinth of ideas needs questions to create connections. The answers transform into other questions and I have to push my book throughout eternity.
I am the past that tries to build the next step, I am the spaces that anticipate the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I deliver imperfect answers for imperfect questions. I am a post-modern mix of thoughts and after-thoughts and I manufacture inverted connections.
Zoho Writer Version
… of second assignment can be found here.
Here you will see the limitations of the tool for academic writing, but it’s still a great tool for sharing and collaboration!
First Session, 1/25/07 — with MP3 file
This is a full recording of the session on 1/25/07.
Please let me know you were here by leaving me a comment! Thanks, Carol
Second Session — with link to MP3 file
Full recording of 02/08/07 session. Skype kept fading in and out, so this isn’t the best quality audio.
MP3 File
Okay… so I figured it out. Please let me know you were here by leaving me a little note in the comments!
Commenting
I’ve been encouraging you to please leave comments and suggestions on this blog. It’s really easy to do that. As you read a posting and want to comment, click the Comments link right under the post’s title. This will open the post for comments. Scroll down until you see the area for leaving comments. Add your thoughts and submit. You’ll be asked for your name and email address. Your name is published, your email is not. This lets the blogger (Glen or me) know who’s been here! Of course, if you have your own blog you can just link to this and leave a comment and we can dialog that way (that’s the boundaryless, networked knowledge practice of blogging that is so exciting).
Why I like Zoho!
The nice things about using a tool like Zoho… for word processing, spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations, among other things:
- most services are free
- functionality is adequate to most basic tasks
- you can get to it from anywhere you have an internet conncection (since I travel alot and have several systems to keep aligned, I prefer to store my work on the internet somewhere)
- if you need to do something fancy, you can pull the zoho file into another tool to work on
- you can share your work easily
As a person responsible for managing large systems, I do not like nor do I encourage the use of attachments. They spread viruses, are hard to manage and take up a LOT of space. Just in this class, for example, each time we send out a file we are making 15 or so copies of it. Each copy takes up a certain amount of space, and space is not free nor easily managed at the back end. From a systems efficiency standpoint it’s better to have ONE FILE that is accessible by MANY people. than MANY files accessible by MANY people.
Set theory basics and good business practice say our current practice (I mean the universal OUR here) of constantly sending files off is not best practice… but it’ll be hard for some folks to switch to a new way.
There are some obvious limitations to sites like Zoho and Google’s Writely for academic work. I occasionally get to interact with Zoho’s developers and financiers as a result of some other consulting I do and I have expressed my concerns about these limitations, especially since they hope to bundle this service with other student-based tools such as Blackboard….
- no integration with current reference generation sites (Zotero, RefWorks, EndNote)
- no standard template for academic writing styles (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc)
- occasional lack of formatting when moving from web-based to proprietary systems such as Word
But, these limitations can be overcome by a revised work process in the short term… here’s what I do… I use Zoho or Writely for jotting my thoughts, organizing my work and perhaps an outline. Then, when I’m ready to write I work in Word in order to have access to my tools (templates and interface with EndNote). Then, I put the file into Zoho or Writely in order to make it accessible to reviewers. Writely is better at reviewing than Zoho as it lets you know who made the change and when.
In professional work, my colleagues and I actively use Zoho for RFP responses and drafts of client documents. Partly this is because my colleague has trouble using change tracking in Word… so Zoho makes it easier and partly because we can be on the phone with each other and making changes together without any issues of version control. Our word product is much better as a result.
Anyway… just felt like thinking out loud!
Be adventurous…!
Second Session
Full recording of 02/08/07 session. Skype kept fading in and out, so this isn’t the best quality audio.
I don’t know how to publish this in MP3 format. It’s taking me too long to figure out. So, apologies. When I figure it out I’ll post. In the meantime, please let me know that you’ve been here by leaving a comment.
Thanks. –Carol
Reflections
Carol’s Second Assignment… finished!
Buckley was a challenge. As I thought about it I realized several things… First, modern literature on systems theory, at least that I have read, does not provide a good history or much context. I’ve been thinking about systems from a technological, political, economic, and management perspective and had not really considered the influence of Descartes or Newton on the foundational concepts that underly so much of what we study in sociology and education. From working through this material I actually understand more of what Barney Glaser has written about related to the scientific method applied to social process (for example).
Second, I don’t have much formal educational background in sociology. That meant, on this assignment, that I had to really reach out for more information from other sources. On this particular topic Bausch and Flood were helpful interpreters.
While I was working through Buckley I was listening to the Tao of Physics in my car as I travelled. This helped me to identify some confusing items (use of the organic model to describe two nearly diametrically opposed models… one based on biology and the scientific method of a different sort and one based on eastern philosophy).
All in all, I have found the effort worthwhile as I feel like I have much better grounding in the history and context of what we read and think about in modern systems theory.
