TechIntersect

One of the things I should probably understand more than I really do is website search engine optimization or SEO.

I have known for a while now that blogs play a powerful role in influencing the search engines. This was illustrated to me quite vividly recently while doing some prep work for my visual literacy class. We were doing my familiar old pixel pointillism project and I did a quick  Google image search for pointillism.

What’s this? My little blog is the first item returned for a pointillism image on Google? It’s a detail image of a Seurat painting I found on Mark Harden’s Artchive. Check it out!

Anyone who doubts that blogging is important to getting exposure for your website is missing the power of web 2.0.

My visual literacy students have been kicking hind-end this fall. I have a bunch of hardworking and talented students this year. You should check out some of their blogs.

• Rick – http://apps.facebook.com/liveblog/user/1494194154
• Natasha – http://minenatasha.blogspot.com
• Trista – http://tag91.wordpress.com
• Will – http://willyj16.wordpress.com
• Brandon M. – http://bmobes.wordpress.com/
• Savannah – http://srobeson.blogspot.com/
• Kristin – http://thoughtsofadrifter.blogspot.com
• Brandon S. – http://mydigitalbliss.com/blog/wordpress/
• James – http://thanos2469.wordpress.com
• Bryant – http://bwilvisualliteracy.blogspot.com/

This week they did a new pixel pointillism drawing. We’ve been doing these drawings every year. I described the process in a previous post so I won’t go into the details here.

This time we did Rihanna. I guess I have a thing for troubled pop icons. I suppose we should have done Michael Jackson, but I felt he was too obvious. Part of the fun is passing out the different pixel squares and letting the puzzle take shape.

Also this week, we did some drawings with Illustrator. I had them do contour line drawings and also portraits using nothing but shape. Pretty amazing results, don’t you think?

The last thing that educators need on the first day of school is a big, hairy brouhaha but that is exactly what many started the year with this year.

Hurry on over and check out how the Obama speech debacle proves Arne Duncan does not know how schools work by Edward Hayes, it’s a great read. (I heard about it via Larry Ferlazzo on Twitter)

Personally, I never saw what the big deal was anyhow. This is a snippet of a Facebook conversation we had earlier in the week:

Me: Don’t see what all the flap was about in the first place. As if my kids can come home and change my political opinions based on what they heard in a speech at school.

Robert: Or, as if what your kids hear one day in school when they are seven or ten is going to have any impact on them at all tomorrow–if you don’t want it to.

Audrey: Another example of parents getting hysterical over nothing.Just concerned about their own politcal views. I assure you, kids would not have thought twice about listening to the president speak, if not for all this bickering.

In President Obama’s health care speech last night, he compared a public health insurance option to the way public colleges & universities are funded and operated.

I’ve insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.

…it could provide a good deal for consumers, and would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.

This is an interesting notion. Indeed, each year public higher education institutions are moving more and more towards self-sufficiency, with ever diminishing support from governmental sources. We have to pick up the slack through higher tuition rates, research grants, and also stepping up fund-raising efforts- that is through charitable donations.

Unlike with colleges & universities, in the president’s scenario for a public health care plan I don’t really see any potential for income through research grants or charitable donations. Am I missing something or does this leave the public health care option relying solely on premiums? And wouldn’t the public option be for people who can’t already get insurance in the current system (a higher risk demographic)?

What does establishing an unsubsidized public health insurance option that is self-sufficient through premiums accomplish? President Obama suggests that it could avoid

…some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs and executive salaries

If you compare public & private institutions of higher learning, you will nearly always find lower salaries and administrative costs at the private institutions, as a matter of their survival. If you don’t believe it, here is an example for which I have some data— Student Information Systems. In 2004, I did a study of the student information systems used by the community colleges in Kansas. There are 19 community colleges in Kansas and they run eight different brands of student information systems. Each school purchases and operates it’s own stand-alone database independently. Now compare this approach to the private Associated Colleges of Central Kansas approach. Six private universities in Kansas, that is six private schools that directly compete with one another, formed a consortium to share a single, centralized student information system that saves about half a million dollars a year for these schools.

Sorry President Obama, I think the public & private college analogy isn’t helpful for making your case. If you think a public health insurance option that receives no government subsidies can be completely self sufficient by insuring the segment of the population that cannot already obtain private insurance, you are out of touch with how the real world works.

Over the years, I’ve developed a love of art and visual communication. When I am able, I love spending time viewing art in galleries and even creating my own small works of art. Yesterday I attended the opening of a new show at the Salina Art Center. I will write more about that in a separate post when I have more information to share, but let me just say that the current show has lots of kinetic sculptures with motors and electronics incorporated into the work. Very worth checking out.

I haven’t always paid attention to art. When I was in the Navy, I visited some of the most amazing cities in the world, but I was primarily interested in checking out the pubs, not the galleries. In fact, the only gallery I ever set foot in was in Hobart, Australia, and that was by accident. I was eating a nice Italian meal with some shipmates. I mentioned to them that I would really enjoy going fishing while we were in Tasmania. A gentleman at the next table spoke up, telling me that he knew of a young man who might like to take me fishing.

Over the course of the next couple of days, the gentleman (I’ve forgotten his name, this was back in 1991) introduced me to Josh Nester who at the time was around 14 and an avid fisherman. He also took us on a tour of the art gallery he owned. I’m sorry to say that I remember more about the fishing than I do the art. Josh & I each caught a nice lake trout at the Great Lake after freezing our bums off in the highlands of Tasmania.

Of course I took Josh & his family on a tour of my ship, the USS Missouri. Over the years, I had lost track of Josh and his family but I had never forgotten their hospitality. That is until recently, I reconnected with Josh through Facebook. Think whatever you like about the pros & cons of Facebook, some people are fleeing it, but for me it has been an amazing way to reconnect with people I have known in my life that I have lost touch with.

Even though I was only there a few days, Josh and his family provided me with an unforgettable experience in Australia through their kind hospitality. That is why I was pleased to reconnect with Penny, the mother of Josh who drove us to the lake where we caught those fish. I was especially intrigued to learn that she now operates an art gallery in Hobart called Detached. What is even more interesting is that the gallery currently has an interactive exhibit called 8 Months of War by Australian artist Brook Andrew. It is ironic that the 1991 Persian Gulf War was what brought me to Hobart in the first place.

I am continually amazed at this communications-based world in which we live. I was able to reconnect with people I met only briefly eighteen years ago through the power of the Internet, and now I am also able to interact with a new media artist half a world away. You can too. Why not check out 8 Months of War today?