Free Knowledge

Well, yes, free knowledge IS what the Internet brings us, but here are some free online learning opportunities:
MIT OpenCourseWare publishes all of their course materials. For free. Special section for high school instruction and subject index available.
iTunes U offers If you’re an iTunes user, you’ve probably seen the mortarboard icon that links [...]

Leaf Peeping

The Internet allows us a glimpse at an ever-expanding world, and as Michael Pollan precociously noted in his 2002 Botany of Desire, might actually be a viable industry some day :-). Its pervasiveness into our everyday lives makes a good ol’ fashioned glimpse out the window seem like a whole new revelation.
In [...]

Darwin and Social Media

Need a break from social media? Sometimes you just need a break from the intensity of a project, and my friend Sarah has an interesting escape–she has a book of Robert Frost or something else mind-numbingly complicated on her desk, and when she needs a break, she picks up the tome. She says [...]

Making Web 2.0 Work

Web 2.0 tools present a vast array of opportunities—for companies that know how to use them.

Here’s an article that speaks to the corporate manager about how to make these new technologies work. A few of my rephrasings of their critical factors to success:
1. The new bottom-up culture needs support and participation from leadership. [...]

Book Review: The New Recruit

The New Recruit: What Your Association Needs to Know About X, Y, & Z
…those being the Millenial generations!

by Sarah Sladek
Boomers want a successful career and to make the world a better place; membership associations help them do both. However, this relevance is lost on younger generations who are already doing these things without a [...]

Ignite Your Presentations

Heard of Ignite presentations or Pecha Kucha?
This year, Housing Colorado’s conference will feature 90 minutes of rapid-fire presentations to an affordable housing audience. Yours truly helped presenters get a frame of reference for the October event by covering what to expect and the basics of how to put a presentation together in this PowerPoint [...]

Serenity Now

I’m headed off to the Midwest–a place I think of as verdant green with bucolic farm scenery. I wonder if I’ll find any unexpected uses of technology there….
Where have you found unexpected tech?
As libraries reinvent themselves for the new century, that’s one place you might find it. Some libraries are even lending e-book [...]

Wha???? Claim Your Feeds

Okay, I know that my head is not totally in the clouds, but this is an unresolved issue.
When I started wondering if I could tell if anyone was even following my blog (Bueller? Bueller?), I searched on WordPress help and saw a few posts about email subscriptions and that word ‘Feedburner’ popped up again. [...]

Volunteer Time Equals Computer Use

While this interactive graphic from the New York Times has many fascinating aspects, one of the most thought-provoking for me is the trendline for volunteering.
According to the NYT, Americans spend about an hour a week on volunteer activities, including tutoring, coaching teams, working in a soup kitchen, ushering at church and handing out political fliers. [...]

Non-profit Techies Unite

Do you know about local non-profit tech groups? They’re springing up, and you can find the local meetings of NTEN 501 Tech Clubs via the national organization for technology in non-profits, NTEN.
Although not an NTEN affiliate, CNTC is a Colorado group of both hardcore techies and non-profit newbies.
July’s CNTC topic was measuring social media.
Here [...]