Will you be that one?

When I was growing up through my teenage years, I created a large number of original works on piano. My method was to keep playing them and elaborate upon the ideas over time. I rarely wrote anything down, I kept it all in my head. As I grew older, past college, I lost the ability… Continue reading Will you be that one?

How we learn

Reflecting Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m a reflective person. And among all the things that have fascinated me about the field of education is how we learn, and to some extent, how this body of growing knowledge may contradict classroom practices. I remember well thinking I had “how to learn” mastered by… Continue reading How we learn

Gamify?

In 2023 I began some intensive research around the topic of gamification. This topic seemed to have its heyday in the literature (books, articles) nearly a decade ago, with a seeming golden year around 2015. “Gameful design attempts to design interactive systems that serve (a) functional needs and (b) specific desired uses and effects of… Continue reading Gamify?

On Blogs

I often feel nostalgic at the end of every year. Not for what I did this year, per se, but it’s just a natural time for me to think about a lot of things, some of which are themes that attract themselves back into the front of my brain. Assuming that’s where fresh thoughts are… Continue reading On Blogs

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Documenting Your Growth

I used to be an expert at a program on my computer. When I say expert, I don’t mean just good. I used Finale (music notation software) from version 1 (1988) heavily until 1999, completing a good solid decade of almost daily use of that program to write and arrange music. I knew it in… Continue reading Documenting Your Growth

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Browser Bookmarks

One of the things I regret is not saving all of my chats and email from college. I remember learning how to download email at some point and kept copies of some of it on floppy disks. My many hours (days, weeks) on IRC was altogether lost. It was such a blow to lose that… Continue reading Browser Bookmarks

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Preparing Videos for Canvas

As a course designer for the Canvas LMS, I want to be able to make videos of presentations I’ve created and post them into the course. I primarily use two tools to do this: Quicktime Player (Mac) and Screencast Pro from Telestream. Quicktime for some reason only exports the videos I make using the built-in… Continue reading Preparing Videos for Canvas

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Memory and Scent

My Background I’m feel somewhat vulnerable for discussing this, but the topic is so fascinating to me, I feel like there is at least some benefit in putting some thoughts down about it. I have a strong affinity for smells; I can’t say I am in anyway unusual from other people in this regard, except… Continue reading Memory and Scent

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Reflections on Teaching

My first year of teaching graphic communications and computer applications were intense experiences. I’d just graduated with a masters degree (in music) and suddenly I was thrown into a new job that I hadn’t precisely prepared for! But I had a lot of computer experience and I set about designing lessons on that experience as… Continue reading Reflections on Teaching

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Categorized as essays