Long ago, EdLab did not occupy the "western front" of the 5th floor... we were relegated to the back office (what we now walk through on the way to the water cooler), which we lovingly called the "iLoft."

That was back when the iPod was a 1.0 product.

Anyhow, this brief history is just to entice you to help lay the groundwork for the future of the iLoft... what is now a patchwork of old desks and wasted space will soon become the all new, refreshed, EdLab Techteria! Or the Edlab Caftechia! (Ok, Ok, so maybe we need an inspired name too...)

The goal is to make a tech-friendly cafeteria space! To do this, we need a new combination of tables and chairs (and anything else?). Anything is possible, but a good place to start shopping is on the Steelcase website (we get an institutional discount). But we can also get anything our hearts desire, within budget!

The main goal is to create an informal, energizing work space where groups can gather.

Thanks for any help you can provide. Please post ideas/links below.

As part of International Week 2009, the Media Design team collaborated with the Teachers College Office of International Services to exhibit featured entries to its second annual International Photo Contest. Photographs taken outside the United States were submitted by TC students, faculty, staff and alumni and selected by an expert panel.

The nine finalists are on view in the Kasser Family Exhibition Space on the 1st Floor through mid-April. If you miss it, check out the TC 360 Flickr Set from the April 1st opening reception!

I came across this interesting article about color harmony for web design. Guess in the future I won't be blindly putting colors on a webpage or software that I design

Color Harmonic Templates on the Hue Wheel

A collection of colors that fall into the gray areas is considered to be harmonic. The templates may be rotated by an arbitrary angle.

From "Color Harmonization," by Daniel Cohen-Or et al., ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), Volume 25:3. July 2006. Proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2006, pp. 624 – 630 © 2006 ACM, Inc. Reprinted by permission

Collision of Memes!

Contacts, Friends, Friends of Friends (FOFs), Followers (e.g. in Twitter), and etc.… ahhh, the relationships we form and maintain through online social network are infinite. This network could be cosmic – so vast and so complex – that maybe some of us want to just shout what’s going on!

Brian Solis, whom I thanked for sharing the web 2.0 conversation prism, recently blogged about Micro Disruption Theory and the social effect. When he explained about tools that chart, plot, or map relationships between people and the conversations they have, I went yes, uh huh. But when he introduced the Social Collider, there was an information traffic jam in my head.

Here’s the gist:

On Social Networks we're bound by context and not necessarily by the relationships that link us in the real world.

Art and Code was a symposium/conference/workshop at Carnegie Mellon that took place last month.

Golan Levin, the conference organizer, wrote this in the Motivation section of the conference website:

Just as true literacy in English means being able to write as well as read, true literacy in software demands not only knowing how to use commercial software tools, but how to create new software for oneself and for others. Today, everyday people are still woefully limited in their ability to create their own software. Many would like to create their own programs and interactive artworks, but fear that programming is “too hard.” The problem, it turns out, may not be programming itself so much as the ways in which it is conventionally taught.

ITVS (Independent television service) just announced a partnership with PBS to explore ways of distributing independent documentaries. According to the press release, "Nearly 50 independent works will be distributed over the next six months through PBS distribution partnerships, such as download-to-own and ad-based video sites."

It will be interesting to see what happens with this. Will they sell advertising or will they charge per download? I know that I don't pay for content online and I don't really want to. When I watch documentaries or tv shows online, I only watch what I can get for free and I don't mind the ads. If this new partnership manages to generate revenue, does that mean there will be more money out there for independent producers?

Read the press release here.

A new application that connects New York State standards with games?

At Pravin's recommendation, I've been checking out the data visualization tools on Many Eyes. The latest visualization there apparently run on questions people posted on whitehouse.gov, specifically about education:

http://manyeyes.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/visualizations/americas-townhall-questions-to-the-p

Neat stuff!

If anyone's interested in my own work with Many Eyes, my page is Gus Andrews. I'm looking for emergent themes, but also running a lot of analysis on words related to literacy (read, write, website, etc) in order to get a sense of the different groups of participants' attitudes about each others' literacy practices.

Thanks for the tip, Pravin! This tool is great!

Time is a precious commodity lately but if you have any to spare, I have just the thing for you, my friends: Omegle. Just go to http://omegle.com and start chatting with a random stranger from anywhere in the world. It's like a throwback to the chatrooms of the mid-late nineties.

For the most part, the conversations I've had so far are really short and fun and, for some reason, 3 of the 5 I spoke to tonight were from Brazil. For someone like me who grooves on getting to know people, this site is pretty interesting. Check it out but only if you can afford to spend the time! It will draw you in for sure...

Here's a convo I had with a stranger. Don't judge me.
Stranger: You like RENT?
You: love it
Stranger: Sing Seasons of Love with me
Stranger: 525,600 minutes
Stranger: 525,000 moments so dear
You: 525,600 minutes
You: how do you measure, measure a year
Stranger: In daylight,
You: in sunsets
Stranger: In Midnights
You: in cups of coffee
Stranger: in inches
You: in miles

It's just so hard to stay on top of the newest technologies... Thank goodness we'll soon have new "nano-blogging" platforms to keep us up to date! ;)

Thanks Mashable!