As promised, here’s the Japanese version of the guest post I wrote for Notre Dame Japanese teacher Noriko Hanabusa.

I wrote about my experiences working in Japan for Noriko Hanabusa’s first year Japanese class blog at Notre Dame. I also wrote a Japanese version, which will be coming soon!

Check out the goofy picture of me at the top of the post, which is also my photo for my job as Language Technologist (aka Assistant Director for Educational Technology) at the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures at Notre Dame.

Last week, I wanted to create a Venn diagram to visually represent data in a study. One of my colleagues (who shall remain nameless unless he chooses to reveal himself) recommended that I try out GraphJam. So, I visited the site, and I found that it was intuitive and even fun to make a simple, colorful Venn diagram that represented the teaching experience of the participants in the study. The graph I made is above.

It was only after I finished making it and tried to save my beautiful creation that I encountered this dialog:

Oh Noes! In case you missed it, as I did, I’ve helpfully underlined in red the relevant information: I was making a serious Venn diagram using I can has cheezburger?!

Now, believe me, I like LOL cats as much as the next person. Okay, I LOVE LOL cats. And yes, I admit, I subscribe to the feed so that I don’t miss a single LOL. (Don’t judge me!)  But what should I make of this? The easiest to use, most functional Web 2.0 tool that I could find for making a Venn diagram is only intended for making LOLs!

If this tool had a few more options – such as the ability to save your diagram without making it public, or an option to remove the LOL-meter that lets people vote on it – then, I would be very happy to use it for my “serious” tasks, with or without cheezburgers.

Kthxbai!

HITESOL logo. 'Nuff said.

No, it wasn’t plargiarism. It was merely an utter lack of communication from the editor of HITESOL The Word.

On January 2, 2009, I submitted a manuscript to the editor. I had received no communciation in return by yesterday, March 8, 2009, so when I ran across a journal that the topic seemed perfect for, I thought to myself: I wonder what became of that article. I haven’t heard back, so it must have been rejected. I think I’ll submit it here, instead.

Luckily, I decided to check out the HITESOL website first, just in case. And lo and behold, there was my article, Using Google Reader for Professional Development, in the February 2009 issue! Not only had they accepted my article without notice, they had also PUBLISHED my article without bothering to tell me!

Now, of course I am happy that my article was published. But I would have liked a heads-up that it occurred. I emailed the editor to say as much – and I was informed that they inform the author if they cannot publish an article! It’s good to know that they choose to communicate under a certain set of circumstances.

Anyone ever had their writing ninja-ed into print like this? Should I be peeved or pleased?

My colleagues and I at the Distance Course Design & Consulting Group presented some research at the Hawaii Educational Research Association conference earlier this month, and based on that, I put together the VoiceThread presentation embedded below. (By the way, “Elizabeth Lavolette”? Yeah, that’s my alter-ego.)

The research is a comparison of two virtual classroom setups: Elluminate Live! and Dimdim. Both Elluminate and Dimdim offer free and paid versions, but we are comparing the paid version of Elluminate with the free version of Dimdim. One purpose is to explore the feasibility of a free product replacing a paid one. Another purpose is to explore the potential of open-source software. (Dimdim has an open-source version that can be hosted on your own server. We haven’t tried that yet, but we plan to!) We are still doing research, but our preliminary results are in the presentation below, also available here.

Update (4/23/2010): You can now find a PDF of the paper related to this presentation in the post Dimdim vs. Elluminate: Round 2.

People have been asking me lately about my email signature, which looks like this:

Elizabeth (Betsy) Lavolette MA, Second Language Studies	betsylavolette.com

Each of those little pictures is a link to my page on a social network: MyBlogLog, Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google Reader Shared Items. Click them and see! My Simpsons-style picture links to my homepage.

I use Gmail, which doesn’t allow you to insert HTML and images into your signature within Gmail itself. It’s possible, though, using the WiseStamp Firefox plugin. In addition to Gmail, it also support AOL, Yahoo, and Hotmail. I originally learned about it from a Lifehacker post, and I’ve been using it very happily since then.

WiseStamp gives you an easy way to link to your social networks and websites within your signature, just by clicking check boxes and entering your user names. It also lets you just write the HTML yourself, as in my signature. This gives you the flexibility to design your signature’s look and add in whatever you want.

Because WiseStamp is a Firefox plugin, you have to install it on each computer that you use, and it will only be added to your messages if you’re using Firefox.

Jess gave me the best Valentine’s Day gift! It leads one life as a lovely silver bracelet…

USB bracelet - folded

And another as an 8-GB flash drive! Oh, the nerdly goodness.

USB bracelet - unfolded

Oh, and by the way – I promptly made it a bootable Ubuntu drive. Whee!

Oh, that’s right. No need to adjust your set. What you see above is Windows XP running in a little window on Ubuntu 8.10. And yes, that’s iTunes running in XP. If you squint, you can just barely make out the words up there at the top of iTunes: “iPhone sync is complete.” Oh, yes. I have successfully synced (sunk?) my iPhone within booting into Windows. The key piece of magic to do this is VirtualBox (PUEL, not OSE).

Next? Let’s see if I can completely rid my computer of the beast-that-is-Vista.

Currently reinstalling Windows. Even Ubuntu couldn’t save me.

It’s not exactly seasonal, but here’s my latest origami creation. If you want to get technical, it’s not a teabag reindeer, but a teabag-cover reindeer. What are those things really called, anyway? Like the other origami photos I’ve posted recently, the instructions are in Genuine Origami: 43 Mathematically-Based Models, From Simple to Complex, by Jun Maekawa.

Teabag Reindeer

Teabag Reindeer by Elizabeth Lavolette is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.