Radical Reuse

“Embedded!”

In this episode the EdTech Survivalist tries to help a war buddy unembed himself from the web. But first he has to help him navigate a long, abusive history of being at the mercy of centralized IT, a reality that might just push Johnny Embed over the embedding edge.

While I was trying to record the most recent EdTech Survivalist video, I was hacked by an alter-ego I thought had been laid to rest long ago. So forgive the quality of this recent installation, but I was shanghai’d in to giving a more instructive, albeit confusing, explanation of the syndication oriented framework of UMW Blogs. I’m not responsible for any of the propaganda in the following video, and given Tom “Catfish” Woodward has expressed interest in further involvement, I’m sure there will be a number of new and improved EdTech Survivalist videos coming this way over the next several weeks. In the mean time, all I can do is apologize for the following aberration.

Anarcho Syndicatin’alism

“Fishing with Tom”

The first, introductory episode in The EdTech Survivalist video series which is designed to show you how to manage teaching and learning in the wilderness of the wide open web.

Given the impending EdTech doom, that no one wants to acknowledge no less talk about, I have been thinking a lot lately about what to include in my personal survival kit of web-based tools. Because I, for one, want to be prepared when the in-house, centrally managed IT systems begin to crumble and the budget cuts eliminate in-house programmers by the thousands leaving the majority of instructional technologist to scavenge for themselves, most of whom will be unprepared and acutely vulnerable.

But not me, I’ve been patiently stockpiling free, web-based services that will allow me to go on despite the dark days that lie ahead. In fact, as I have been going through my survival kit I realized that surviving the EdTech apocalypse is neither expensive nor particularly difficult, rather it requires a new frame of mind when approaching the limited resources we currently have along with the increasing costs and inefficiencies of in-house, proprietary systems for learning and data management. Peak EdTech is nigh, and the answer lies in all those free, “throw away” third party services and open source applications. My arsenal consists of a unique hybrid of these two resources which together make me far more likely to survive the impending doom than all the EdTech cattle who lazily graze upon one course management system or another.

So here is what my survival kit of tools looks like, and if you were smart you’d get on board and start saving your data, your livelihood, and the future of teaching and learning with technology.

I Can Has Tools?

• Flickr
• del.icio.us
• Google Reader
• Wordpress
• Google Docs Spreadsheets
• Firefox
• Welcome to the Site

Feeds listed by aggr.

I know we all like our toys, no doubt about it. After all having the biggest most expensive plugin on your blog can be sort of a status symbol. Leading to being looked up to by the other bloggers, giving way to pride and boasting, and a feelings of self worth, or something like that. We want the best plugins available but very few of us edtech survivalist types have unlimited funds. Not everyone can afford to put down a large sum of cash for a custom survivalist arsenal of plugins. But being poor or cheap does not mean you must be held to a disadvantage. Below is a list of free plugins that we use here, stock up now before it’s too late!

[plugins list all]