This morning I found out about a neat "online" conference … available at no charge except for the time it takes you to register. Tony Karrer, George Siemens, Duke Corporate Education and others are sponsoring the event which will focus upon Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations.

The sponsors are folks and organizations which I respect. In Tony’s case, I’ve subscribed to his blog for a long time, and exchanged occasional emails.  I hope to be a speaker at the event. My topic would be using Web 2.0 Tools for Learning and Collaboration. Here is just one small example of my bag of tricks! (engineering learning wiki)

• Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations Conference
  • November 15 to 20 (except Saturday and Sunday)
  • Cost: Free, but registration is required!

Okay … where has this math minor / software nerd been?  Has my head been buried? I guess it shows how little I watch TV. Yesterday, while driving north to my cabin near Minnesota’s border with Canada, I found myself intrigued while I listened to a Science Friday Podcast. The topic was the hit TV series: Numb3rs. Anyhow, as the CBS web site allows one to time shift and watch a program on your own schedule, I will have to check it out. The theme of Numb3rs is how math may be used to solve crime.

Actually, what’s really cool, is that a "number" of organizations are partnering with CBS and have created content which attempts to encourage children to become more interested in math.  Now that’s novel … intelligent television … kind of hard to believe!  Regardless, here is an excellent joint initiative on the part of Texas Instruments, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and CBS: We All Use Math Every Day.

I will add this link to my Engineering for Children page of my Engineering Learning Wiki.  Remember, as a wiki, anyone may add useful links, not just me!

For well over a year, I’ve subscribed to the 60 Minutes podcast.  However, up until recently the podcast only included one story from each show.  Having just returned from China, and while catching up on my RSS feeds, I am delighted to find out that the podcast now includes the entire show. Congrats to CBS.

• 60 Minutes: Website | RSS Feed

I mentioned earlier this week that my Fall project will be to install Linux on an old laptop using Ubuntu. This is another great LINUX resource:

• The Linux Action Show (podcast)

This is not an option one faces, but it does represent technology I am exploring these days. I am down in Nashville attending a technical conference, and with each presentation I become increasingly intrigued with only evaluating content that incorporates Google One Box. During one presentation today, the speaker said it’s not about search, it’s about "Find".  I couldn’t agree more. If you’re not familiar with one box, it allows proprietary databases to be indexed by an internal Google search appliance.

Why is this important? If you spend your time trying to convince your users to visit your preferred tool, you’ve already missed the boat. Find out where your users spend their virtual time, and then try to be present in those domains. I know my users are on Google … thus I want my internal content to come up via their searches.

Oh yes … Linux. My Fall project is to install Ubuntu on an old laptop and create a basic email / word processing computer. Thankfully, Ubuntu has created a month of screencasts (one per day) to help me navigate through the process. Ubuntu allows one to either download or have a free Linux installation cd sent to them. I’ll let everyone know how the experiment turns out.