Recently I was speaking with a colleague at Arizona State University who was eager to buy her first Kindle. I asked why she’d not considered an iTouch. She just shrugged, and I shared some researched I’d done last summer. Simply put you could buy a Kindle and read books, and that’s cool, but if you buy an iTouch you can use the same Kindle software plus do much much more.

The Kindle’s form factor is thing and larger than the iTouch, and all it does is allow you to read, download text, and and annotate. Plus it is damn expensive and for the price, foughetaboutit! Not too mention it’s easier to break because of the fragility of the factor. For me, I enjoy several different sorts of applications for my iTouch. I use educational mobile apps, games, travel apps internet utility apps, obviously my eReaders, games and some other random things.

My daughter, Claire, spending an evening out with dad at an event, playing games on my iTouch.

I’ve installed Evernote, which my friend Alan discusses at length HERE, as well as Shmoop LINK which is a mobile study guide system for history and English. Many of the games I have installed are for my daughter, but her favorite is Word Magic which allows her to learn to spell by giving her an image and a word with letters missing. She fills it in and wins virtual medals and ribbons. She can play this for hours. My travel apps were a huge deal last summer when I toured Europe, and these include Skype (which you can use easily with a miced ear piece), translators for the languages of the countries I visited, Google Maps, language dictionaries, and currency converters. Some of the coolest internet utilities I have include, obviously, Google Apps, Google Voice (before it’s ben embargoed by who knows whom), Tweetdeck, Yelp, Twitterific, Facebook, Remember the Milk, and Tumblr. My eReaders include Sony eReader Pro, which is absolute favorite because I can bookmark a page by “dog-earing” it, Stanza, which has a powerful file converter application for the computer side, and, of course, Kindle, which I actually find myself using infrequently.

I am a self-proclaimed bibliophile and was apprehensive to begin reading books electronically, but you know what? After reading a chapter, I was hooked. I could take as many books with me anywhere in the world, read in the dark (think LCD screen), and I completely forgot it wasn’t paper in front of me. No issue. I have now read about a dozen books in three months on my iTouch and haven’t look back.

Did I mention free wireless anywhere there’s a signal in the world? It’s like a mini-computer in my pocket!

After I finished talking to my colleague about that, her response was “Looks like I have a lot more research to do before settling for a Kindle.”

In a session about the public profile as a literary genre. The presenter is talking about Facebook, and she mentioned it’s origins. I guess her son went to the Ivy league, so she truly knows where this all began. There are about 75-100 people in here, and I am concerned about the “random” public profiles she’s pulled up here in the session. And as I type this, I know that this is the point to part of this presentation.

Students understand that employers will look at their FaceBook, but they don’t think their MySpace profiles are viewed. She said MySpace is “raunchier” and she was surprised that older people are the largest group on MySpace, but I didn’t think this was surprising. There are voyeurs who search for the spectacle and they find it. Some people create one FaceBook or MySpace with their real name for employer’s to find while they create a second account for their “real” stuff.

She uses FaceBook for her classes, too. She posts everything from her BlackBoard or Angel CMS classes to FaceBook, too because the kids are there. They barely log in elsewhere (i.e., they’d prefer to be somewhere more social). Teachers use to just want to be the sage on the stage, but being on places like FaceBook make undergraduates feel the professors are more accessible. We, teachers, were never their friends before. Now they engage with us more when we are “human”.

I personally have a FaceBook account, and I made it to better connect with my students. We were in Europe together and most of the student travelers with me had accounts. My wife and I set up accounts immediately. I know my audience, and even though I also connect with colleagues, family and friends there, I do keep it completely PG. I sometimes let my political or religious proclivities emerge there, but they are subtle and innocent.

About a month ago I got an email asking me if I was interested in heading to Claremont University outside of Ontario, CA for a conference on facilitating learning communities in higher education. I didn’t know where that university was, but the email said it was all expenses paid. I liked that. It also fell over my mother-in-laws month visit to Arizona (and I do love my mother-in-law) but it was a hell of an opportunity. To go to So Cal in the middle of OH-MY-GOD-IT’S-HOTTER-THAN-HELL-IN-ARIZONA!!!! season sounded ideal. So I wrote back quickly. I wasn’t too sure what I was in for, but it was a free trip.

A few weeks before that I was asked by Shelley if I would co-facilitate our faculty and professional learning community at Mesa Community College. I hesitated because I knew the wife would rather me do less than more while she’s in grad school, but I am a sucker for buttering up the MCC administrators. I agreed shortly, and now I am sitting here in Claremont, CA outside, on the patio, on wireless, with a full moon above head in 75 degree cool weather in my short with not heat or sweat. How nice.

Tomorrow I will learn how to better facilitate my professional learning community, I think. I am eager to continue to find ways to better develop curriculum based around a strong use of technology. A way to meet the students where they are (online, on their computers, on Facebook, using their Blackberries) and how to marry that platform to my pedagogy. Here we go!