I don’t have a very elegant beginning crafted here. That’s a shame, but it would be an even bigger shame not to begin at all, so here’s the first podcast from the 2006 UMW Faculty Academy on Instructional Technologies. This lunchtime session on May 17 was entitled “A Fantastico Expedition: Massive Web Innovation on $6.95 a Month,” and it featured our five UMW Instructional Technology Specialists: Martha Burtis, Patrick Gosetti-Murrayjohn, Jim Groom, Andy Rush, and Jerry Slezak.
This was a great session for many reasons, and on many levels. Rather than try to describe them, I’ll let you listen and hear for yourself. I do want to say a special thank-you to Jon Udell, our Faculty Academy keynote speaker, who has very generously made this session the subject of both an InfoWorld column and a blog. These pieces are extraordinary in themselves and would be in my “save forever” category even if they didn’t feature the work we’re doing here.
I found nearly all of Faculty Academy deeply inspiring this year. And there were many moments that were truly magical. You’ll hear some of them here. There are more on the way.
I also need to say that these Instructional Technology Specialists are remarkable folks to work with. Their intelligence, wit, and imagination inspire me on a daily basis. I want to say something very intense and profound at this point, but if I do I’m likely to short out my computer (they’ll understand why), so I’ll simply say that I am humbled and grateful to be among them.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (31.0MB)
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I am a K12 Tech Teacher/Trainer. I’ve been using Fantastico on an ISP solution to deploy and manage solutions for about a year. Using Fantasico, I’ve been able to deploy and utilize installs of B2Evolution, Moodle, WordPress and Drupal.
Each has it own merits and uses. I’ve been able to customize themes/modifications to suit the K12 environment, and then duplicate these in a short time span.
Fantastico/Cpanel allow me to bring up an install, customize it overnight to what I need, then kill it when I’m done. Over the course of that last academic year I’ve had 3 Moodle installs, 2 Drupal installs and a couple of B2Evolution installs for my teachers.
I do not have the resources (I pay for this myself) to allow teachers to utilize Fantastico. However I could see a district utilizing it, with a library of customized themes to allow teachers to deploy tools as they see fit.
A teacher wants 30 students blogs, with customized privacy mods / central administration of users accounts / moderated content? Let them put up a B2 install with a customized theme from a central library.