In the lane snow is glicening.

This is the view from my front porch. It started sleeting and snowing around 6 this morning and pretty much everything has been closed since.

The date that shall live in infamy.

66 years later it is pointless to argue whether Japan's attack on the Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor was an appropriate response to American embargoes. It is also pointless to talk about whether the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a retaliation for Pearl Harbor or a way to subdue the Japanese population which would have fought to the death following an invasion of the Japanese mainland. And the most pointless thing would be to draw parallels between the attacks of 12/07/41 and 09/11/01. All we can do now is remember.

Kringle racing.

This time of year you find a lot of strange Christmas themed inflatables decorating people's lawns. However, this one was decorating a sidewalk.

Request for proposal.

If you are planning to write, or to answer, a Request For Proposal in the near future, Free RFP Template Toolkit might come in handy.

Online course design.

This is a banner I made for an online course I am building.

St. Nicholas day.

Saint Nicholas was a 4th century Bishop of Myra in what is now Turkey. He was famous for secretly giving very generous gifts to the poor which lead to the birth of his better known counterpart, Santa Claus. He is considered to be the patron saint of several groups of people, such as sailors, and cities, such as Moscow and New York, around the world. In some cultures, people exchange presents on December 6th instead of Christmas day.

E-learning via a cell phone.

As our lives get busier and busier, the humble cell phone is rapidly becoming an increasingly useful and necessary accessory. With the recent introduction of Apple's iphone to the purses and pockets of tech savvy people it has become evident that a device, which is not quite a PDA and not a simple cell phone either, has a lot of possibility beyond being an obviously useful combination of tools and features.

The most useful feature of these devices lies in their ability to download and display content. The screen size along with the storage capacity make newer phones readily available e-learning platforms. In fact, with the email access previously unheard of and the features mentioned before, there is no need for a busy sales representative to carry a cell phone and a PDA along with their laptop. They might even be able to get away with just the multi-talented cell phone. And when a rare free moment occurs, these sales representatives could access trainings or certifications their company require them to take right on their phone.

This idea may not be as far fetched as it first seems. Since Adobe's development, and recent improvement, of Flash Lite now allows a developer to build short e-learning modules which would fit into anyone's busy schedule and would minimize time away from work.

Old wheelbarrow.

Time for causes.

Right around Thanksgiving you start noticing Salvation Army Kettle Drive bell ringers and the Marine Corps' Toys For Tots boxes everywhere you go. These things are as much a part of Christmas as carols and presents. They are a part of a Christmas tradition of giving and work on the principle of Public Display of Charity. Throwing a few coins into a red kettle in full view of other people not only makes you feel good about yourself, it makes you feel better about the amount of money you're going to spend on presents.

There is another charity which needs attention around Christmas. This charity works with people who, more than most, need the gift of good cheer and a wish of a Merry Christmas. The charity in question is eMOM and the group of people they work with is the American soldiers stationed overseas. EMOM, which stands for eMail Our Military, provide those who sign up on their site with an email address of a soldier in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Once you have a soldier's email address you can provide them with much needed support and holiday spirit. This is of course a very private display of charity, but one that will prove more valuable than a few coins thrown into a red kettle at the mall.

December duties.

With the arrival of December, we welcomed it to our house by hanging a Christmas wreath on the front door and a Christmas Countdown Calendar on the door of Lili's bedroom to help us countdown the 25 shopping days until her birthday. For her part, Lili modeled the new hat that her great grandmother sent just in time for the first day of Winter.

The ADDIE model.

During C.A.C. I had a brief discussion with Louis Biggie, from Johns Hopkins University, about the ADDIE model and breaking the rules of instructional design. The issues here is that as technology evolved, giving instructional designers better and better tools, the design process itself has not. The design process usually follows a model, like ADDIE, step by step without much deviation. There are several models and each one is an attempt to streamline the design process, but the actual process of designing instruction sometimes makes it difficult to follow a model step by step.

Let's look at the ADDIE model which serves as the staple of instructional design. ADDIE is an abbreviation of the five steps that make up this model: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. An instructional designer supposed to follow these five steps in order, using the outcome of one stage as the starting point of the next. However, the Design and Development stages can be done simultaneously which simplifies the process. For example, let's assume that during the Analysis stage it became evident a client's needs would be best served by a web based instructional solution. Therefore, a web developer could be building a site, while an instructional designer is working on a solution.

This is why I like the Layers of Necessity model. Layers of Necessity allows you to modify it to fit a project in hand instead of following it blindly step by step. The most important parts, Learner Analysis for example, are placed in the fist layer. While the rest, depending on their importance, project time line, and the budget, are placed in the second, third, or nth layers. This model has only been around for seventeen years, but it demonstrates what instructional design can become if the theoretical development follows closely with the technological.

Tales of dismay.

Ever since I first signed up for Twitter I have been thinking about its uses. An individual Twitter post, or Tweet, is only 140 characters in length which is smaller than an average cell phone text message. This makes it difficult for individual posts to contain a lot of useful information. However, Sean McMinn, a writer from Hong Kong, has found an interesting approach. He is writing a novel called Tales Of Dismay one Tweet at a time. This is a very interesting literary and Web 2.0 experiment which I intend to follow.

CCDP site.

Columbia Child Development Program is a non-profit organization that provides child care in the Bloomsburg area. This is a site I created for CCDP using HTML, CSS, and Java Script. This was supposed to demonstrate to the CCDP managers how a website could streamline their enrollment process.

NYC at night.

This is a picture my wife took from a Circle Line boat at night. It wasn't much to look at so I helped it a bit using PhotoShop and Illustrator.

Space.

I made this image using Adobe Illustrator. It is called "Space" and was inspired by reading too much science fiction and watching entirely too much Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Cool-Aid aquarium.

For some strange reason the water in an aquarium at a local Chinese take out place is a lovely shade of green. The fish, however, don't seem to mind.

Family type thing.

Today, to celebrate my Dad's birthday, Thanksgiving, and the 11 months anniversary of Lili's birth my wife, Lili, and I had brunch with my Dad. It was a nice family event especially with the Christmas spirit oozing out of every store.

Cellular gift guide.

If you are planning to give somebody a cell phone for Christmas, check out Phone Scoop's Holiday Gift Guide. And if you are looking for one yourself, check out Phone Scoop for cellular news and for cell phone reviews.

Reading level.

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I don't know if this is true, but it's nice to think it is.

Thanksgiving.

After watching the Macy's parade, Lili celebrated her fist Thanksgiving with a holiday bib and a jar of turkey and sweet potatoes baby food.