Talking about hardware

The class session where I discussed the elements of hardware seemed to go well enough, but not nearly as stellar as I'd hoped. I really feel like the text does a good job of covering the content - giving students a baseline understanding of the content - while in class we discuss some of the major points of the subject in class.

I would really say that most of the time, fewer instances of Teachers having to interact directly with hardware (insofar as technical issues) exist as did in the past. The reliability and standardization of hardware has come a long way, far enough that I've even had discussions with others who have been in the field for over 20 years - and they've felt the same way - that hardware will really be taking a backseat to software - and in the years to come - software a backseat to webware (Web 2.0 and 3.0).
For the most part, hardware will remain less fluid than the software will in the next few years, so I'm hoping that we can spend more time discussing and interacting with those items - especially since those types of things have a better chance of being around - than the hardware in 4 to 5 years.

To that end, I've added a link to a resource I've found to be invaluable on keeping up with current educational tips and new cool tools (both hardware and software - but mostly webware) on the Sakai course page. But you can also get to it here.

We also discussed some elements of how to use LiveText - getting in, moving around and creating content - in this case a sample document to help scaffold the steps of how to recreate a lesson plan in side of LiveText. Really once you get the hang of understanding that a document has parts: Document>Pages>Sections>Content, then you really can get a handle on working inside of LiveText and build just about any content - even including content from outside of LiveText.