Category Archives: Katie and Matt Blog

Getting Ready For the Holidays

Posted on by
Reply

Katie and Matt Blog

Another project that is taking all of my free time is transferring all my sites over to WordPress blogs.  I just like the flexibility of WordPress over the other options that I’ve used.  This site used to be a on self-designed program.  Like, one that I created myself from scratch.  That was fun, but got tiring really quick to add new features.  The EduGeek blog was in a program called Moodle, and I am now in the process of transferring that.  Then it is on to move my two forgotten personal blogs in to one WordPress blog.  I also transferred our two personal profiles to WordPress blogs, even though we don’t blog in them.  WP also makes an excellent content management system.

One of my other upcoming projects that I will hopefully get to soon is to update this blog so that we can run it through our iPhones and update as we travel, not after we get back.  iPhones are just cool that way.

Matt Started a Magazine

Posted on by
Reply

Katie and Matt Blog

Sorry for the lack of posts here recently!  Life hasn’t been too busy or anything – there just haven’t been any big events to post on.  We have done some minor traveling and hanging out with friends, hopefully I will remember to post some recent pictures soon!  One big thing that has kept me busy is that I decided to start a magazine.  Kind of weird – huh?  Well, everyone knows that I am in to really random types of music.  Well, a friend of mine and I noticed that one type of music we like just doesn’t get covered any more – Alternative Christian music from the 80s and early 90s (the same scene that spawned U2, actually).  Kind of obscure, but that kind of music did exist and many people are still doing that today.  So, we decided to take advantage of technology and publish a free online magazine called Down the Line.  You can download it here:

http://www.downthelinezine.com

NUTN Conference in Utah

Posted on by
Reply

Katie and Matt Blog

Recently I got to go to a great conference in Park City, Utah. Park City is where they have the Sundance festival and where they had the 2002 Winter Olympics. I love the mountains. Park City is about a 30 minute drive east of Salt Lake City up into the mountains. NUTN was held at a beautiful resort. It was a great conference – got to hear from speakers from Apple, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems, among others. I also presented a session about the future of the Internet. Conference activities included a trip to historic downtown Park City, a gondola ride up the mountain for an awards dinner, a geocaching activity, and some great food.

Recent Activities and Presentations

Posted on by
Reply

Katie and Matt Blog

Sorry for the inactivity here while I updated to a new blog software. WordPress is so nice. I was trying to write my own blog code, but with thousands of them already out there – why re-invent the wheel?

Anyway, our life has continued on and hopefully we can get to posting some updates here shortly. Katie is going to be defending her dissertation on July 2nd! I’ll let her blog about that in the future, but after that she will be “Dr. Crosslin.”

I have been doing some presentations recently. In March, I went to Galveston to present on “Effective Instructional Design Techniques in Moodle and Second Life” at the annual Texas Distance Learning Association conference. Not too exciting unless you are in to that stuff, but you can see my PowerPoint on this page if you want. There are also a couple pics of me presenting on this page.

This month I went to Park City, Utah to present at the National University Telecommunications Network’s 2008 conference. I have a bunch of beautiful pics and even a couple of quick video clips that I will post soon. I presented on “Future of the Internet: Web 3.0 and 3D Web.” That was fun and interesting. See more information on this page.

Over To A New Blog

Posted on by
Reply

Katie and Matt Blog

You might have noticed something different here.  I made some intentional changes here.  The old blog was using some self-designed code that was just getting old and hard to use.  So I decided to upgrade to a Word Press blog.  I also decided to password protect the thing so we could share more about our lives and trips we are taking.  I also had some goof from France find our site and steal nearly an entire month’s worth of bandwidth in one night.  So, I had to halt that one.  More updates and photos should be added soon.

New Portfolios Online

Posted on by
Reply

Katie and Matt Blog

Katie and I both have online portfolios. Mine is a bit more complete than Katie’s, but we will get that fixed. Here is the address for both of them:

http://www.mattcrosslin.com
http://www.katiecrosslin.com

Also, Matt has been keeping a micro-blog recently on Jaiku.com. A micro-blog is just a place where you keep random, short thoughts and updates flowing during the day. You can see the micro-blog updates on the sidebar of this page, or at this address:

http://grandeped.jaiku.com/

HIV Education Program Video

Posted on by
Reply

Katie and Matt Blog

Katie created the following video for one of her PhD courses. We have been looking for a good video hosting site to put this on, but all of them seem to distort it too much. The original is very clear, but here is the best we could get on Google Video:

It’s a great overview of the global HIV problem.

Doritos X-13-D Flavor

Posted on by
5

Katie and Matt Blog

While on a recent grocery run, Katie and I saw this black bag of Doritos. All it said for flavor was X-13-D. Maybe these are everywhere, but it was the first time I ever saw it. It’s some kind of name the flavor contest. Anyway – to us, it tasted just like a Wendy’s burger. I guess they can’t use that name. But still kind of cool.

TxDLA Conference Presentations

Posted on by
Reply

Katie and Matt Blog

Katie and I were both selected to present at the 2007 TxDLA (Texas Distance Learning Association) conference. Katie’s presentation was called “Moodle for High School: Practical Use for Blended Learning.” I had two presentations: “Web2.0 Alphabet Soup: CSS, RSS, XML, and AJAX” and “3-D Learning Management System: Moodle + Second Life.” The PowerPoints for these presentations can be downloaded here. Also, the session for Web2.0 was recorded. You can find a low quality audio recording here.

Overall, we had a great time at the conference. Coming home was hard due to a cancelled flight, but at least we made it. At the end of May, I am going to be traveling to Austin to present at a conference. One presentation will be on the difference between blogs and discussion boards in online education, and the other will be another presentation on Web2.0.