I suspect few of my USA-based readers are old enough to remember the Ed Sullivan TV Show in the 1960’s, but I seem to recall there being a reoccurring juggling act mixed in among Elvis, the puppet mouse and the Beatles. In the act, the juggler used breakable plates that he spun on a series of long narrow dowels. The trick was to get as many subsequent plates spinning while not allowing any of them to fall and crash to pieces. Lately, I feel as though I have too many of my own plates spinning!
This week is a case in point.
Yesterday, while heavily involved in several aspects of launching of two new companies, I was attending a webinar from a company called Phase II Technology which I took to be centered in Drupal content management. It was just what I hoped as OpenPublish turned out to be an impressive and advanced publishing framework that extends Drupal quite nicely. It will work well for New North Systems and its clients. But just as I was sensing a wrap-up and time for me to move onto other, higher priorities, the presenter introduced another tool the company was developing that was just about to be entering general beta called; “Tattler.”
With the past month’s activity taking me miles away from the baseline knortal project (figuratively, at any rate, as I haven’t had a chance to think about knortal in many weeks), I was immediately stunned back into focusing on that plate! Tattler is a very comprehensive approach toward aggregation. A very comprehensive approach! I was so impressed, that I called the company straight away and expect to talk further with the project manager/Phase II company representatives soon about knortal and the very important input functions that will rely upon aggregation in a very similar manner to what is being developed with the Tattler tool.
As fascinating as this was, I needed to get back to task… I have another company website to build!
Then an email string that I rarely intercept from a LinkedIn Group-Connectivism and Connective Knowledge came in ( I have automated filtering down in my Google Aps), and again, I found an extremely interesting set of knortal alerts. First I was tipped to a book which is to be written/edited by a Dr. Michael Thomas in the specific academic genre knortal stems from, called VLEs (virtual learning environments). Second, a listing for a wetpaint site written by a training professional named Kayrn Romeis which turned up a nice thesis called - Theoretical Framework: Connectivism detailing the general connected-thinking philosophies of knowledge development including those credited from my friend George Siemens ( who was to be the original knortal project manager!)
Okay, okay, the knortal plate is has its centrifugal force back… now can I get back to my current backlog???