From Ebert’s page at suntimes.com:

I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers.

Although months in bed after the bleeding episodes caused a lack of strength and coordination, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago restored my ability to walk on my own, climb stairs, etc.

I no longer use a walker much and the wheelchair is more for occasional speed and comfort than need. Just today we went for a long stroll in Lincoln Park.

We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my festival.

Well done, Roger. Welcome back.

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Some people are natural athletes. Some are gifted in the arts. Those gifted with a mind for numbers and systems contribute in engineering and sciences and more. It’s these natural gifts that allow each of us the opportunity to shine in our own way, to make the world that much better for those still to come.Tammie Reed can talk.”Everyone has a gift,” says Tammie. “Mine is running my mouth.”

Late nights, long hours.It’s 10:00PM and I’m just wrapping up a class on technology marketing for a group of engineers made up of folks from Intel, Synopsis, and Tektronix. They look tired, but they’re tracking the material, studying hard, and putting in what it takes in these late nights, long hours.They know education, these folks. There are eight of them in class and not only do they have their bachelor’s degrees in computer science and master’s degrees in engineering, they’re here studying marketing with me as part of their MBA regimen. And still, in spite of the years they’ve put into their academic careers, this is hard work.

Here is an interesting interview with Robert Scoble on the “sensational” transition he made from Microsoft Blogger to instant new media pundit:

http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,1540,2022650,00.asp

I’ve been fascinated by Robert’s rise to fame and have been eagerly watching his new ScobleShow over at PodTech.

He’s worth a view — mostly because of the unbelievable access he gets with his camera and jolliness. He’s technology’s Gomer Pyle, and somehow that congeniality has made him the go-to guy for new media.

Go figure. But congratulations anyway, Robert. Keep the interviews coming.

Looks like one of our own is making good in gamespace — here is a nice article from Jesse Upchurch on video game addiction that just hit gamecareerguide.com. I’ve been playing a ton of Second Life lately — not to mention my latest re-discovery of XBox Live.

In these games, the player takes on the role of an avatar that ventures through an elaborate fantasy world and interacts with other real players and NPCs (non-playing characters). The attraction of this genre of games can sometimes lead to players feeling the need to play even to the detriment of other aspects of their life. This leads to a question that many have debated and are still debating today: is it possible to be addicted to an online video game?

I didn’t think it was possible to be addicted to the games. Sure, I play hours upon hours of “Gears of War” online, but no — not until I introduced my father in law to Zuma did I realize the true danger of online gaming to humanity.

I like Bill Belew’s blogging because he gets that education, whether for-profit or non-profit, is a business.

15 Reasons Why University of Phoenix Thinks Wall Street Has it Wrong”

That’s an important distinction because at the end of the day, no matter your philosophical stance on the matter, you need to make sure you can keep the lights on and faculty in the classroom. Thirty years ago, we chose to go the for-profit route and have been able to ensure adherence to one of the core tenets of our mission: everyone who wants a chance to get educated should get a seat at that table.

This is one of the most fun distractions I’ve seen today. Draw something, start the Scribbler, and email the pics to us!

http://www.zefrank.com/scribbler/

The first public article went live at midnight here:

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0926biz-namingrights0926.html

It’s way too late for me to write too much that’s articulate, but I’ve been told that there’s a press conference at 10:00 AM PST to announce details and that we’d all know more then. I’ve got a chat scheduled with the folks who put the deal together tomorrow (today!) afternoon and will hopefully post more about how this came about then.

Capella University commissioned a study recently on the value of returning to school. The results lend support for just about everything we’re doing in the industry to figure out the rapidly evolving learning models. You can find the results site at http://www.degreesofopportunity.org. There’s also an interview with the head researcher on the page, Dr. Lyungai Mbilinyi from University of Washington.

Amidst all the brouhaha about quality of education, it appears that the number of people wanting to head back to school in a non-traditional fashion just keeps growing, fueling the fly-by-night programs and extending this sharks v. jets street fight between the traditionals. We need to move past this. From the findings:

• Only one-third of those who would like more education said that they would “probably pursue this.â€�
• The top two barriers to pursuing higher education were:

• • Finding the time for school amidst work, family, and other commitments.
  • Finding the money for school, including the need to provide for themselves and their family while attending school.

We need to launch a campaign that educates on the realities of education — not just the beyond-the-degree benefits. I was talking with Mark Alexander today about other student services organizations that exist specifically to support the extra-curricular needs of students. This one struck me: Student Resource Services.

What genius, right? With now a full 60% of attendance in higher education coming from a non-traditional age range (from the survey and interview), it should make perfect sense that this group begin to demand the same services they receive at work from their Employee Support Organizations. What are the biggest obstacles for colleges and universities to get into this sort of support business for their students?

On the heels of my last post, Joe Cockrell sends me this article from the AOL Research & Learn site. It mentions one of our students, but the sentiment is broader. Take a read — it makes me want to go to class…

And seriously… baby boomers are hitting 60 at a rate of one ever 7 seconds? I guess the more important question is for how long?

Career Comebackers – by Vicki Salemi

We have a development group under the Apollo Group umbrella called Apollo Publishing. The team there has mutated over the years a number of times from publishing house to licensing house to dev center. Today, it serves pieces of all of those, and more. The most interesting: it’s a skunkworks for projects in education technology that may — or may not — make it into the classroom.

I was there yesterday visiting Colin Smith, one of the developers there working on a side RSS project for me. We got to talking about Second Life, one of my all-time favorite time sinks, and he introduced me to Second life: Second Campus. It’s the Apollo Group foray into avatar based learning.

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Technology, University of Phoenix

Robert Scoble has been talking about video blogging, and it’s got me thinking.

As to visuals Jon argues: “If I don’t have any visuals, then I should stick to audio.� Ahh, now I’m starting to get his point. He’s saying if you don’t have anything visual you should just stick with audio. Well, that’s true. But, what is “visuals.� Everything around me has a visual component.

I’ve been using audio and video in my teaching material for the last year. It’s changed the way my students interact with me (for the better, I hope) and I like to think we’re going to be getting better at delivering it institutionally.

But I had lunch today with two of the brains of the place, Bill Berry and George Love (George says he has a blog he needs to revise, Bill should be blogging, and he knows it — I hope he’s sufficiently shamed at his absence from the discussion). Our discussion wandered into the realm of standardizing media content into the classroom. So, before I get into the meat of my point, I have to give a little background.

So, I’m here in Las vegas. You have to get the image here. There’s a moving sidewalk that leads right into a funnel of double doors off of the A gates — the passage narrows considerably, which shouldn’t be a problem with normal traffic flow. But this is not normal traffic flow. This is post 9/11 traffic flow. Someone just found something terrifying in the big open area on the other side of the double doors and caused a lock-down. The doors shut automatically and this stream of people from the moving sidewalk just sort of… slammed into them. But they’re like lemmings, these people. They didn’t adjust like fluid and move around the moving sidewalk to the sides, back up the hallway. No, these people just dog-piled, letting their luggage and bodies just fall into one another. For five minutes this has been happening and it’s not stopping…

___

OK, so it’s stopped, the doors are open and no one knows what it was, just that it has to do with a security breach at the Burger King.

Say it again. A security breach at the Burger King.

That’s rich.

At long last, the release of iTunes 7.0 allows Mac users to create a new iTunes library at launch a la iPhoto. Just option-click the iTunes icon to launch and get a pretty “Choose iTunes Library” window!

Technorati Tags: Apple, iTunes

And so, the day of the clumsy RL anime mech has come. And just in time, too. Haliburton is looking for some new hardware to exploit.

Technorati Tags: Anime, Mech, Technology