On Fonts, Forms and Networking...

Looking over my original goals in order to get a feel for where I'm at with them, I am somewhat encouraged by my progress. One of my primary goals was to improve my usage of APA format. To that end, I have purchased a book on APA format and I've been reading through it and improving my knowledge. I have also played with a couple of social networking frameworks, Elgg and Mahara in order to determine whether or not they would be beneficial in a classroom setting. I also have an account set up with SiteGround to host a personal website using Joomla, which is a particulalry powerful and flexible web-site management framework. Through Joomla and it's various plugins a person can incorporate blogs, wiki's databases and any number of minor "canned" applications into his or her website. I intend to use these features to create my own modest web-portal which will present my own information as well as provide embedded and external links to other resources (like you good folks' blog-sites) for my visitors.
As for my goal of improving my online communication and collaboration, I have sadly continued to struggle in this area. Work has been particularly grueling the last few weeks, which is ironic since my travel schedule has actually lightened up. I've been working on some software coding for a demo that my clients require in two weeks so unfortunately my online collaboration time has suffered. The irony of the situation is not lost on my as I have recently commented on the discussion threads that I'd like to schedule some kind of organized chat time so several of us can get together and have a real-time conversation. Nonetheless, despite my lack of progress in this area, I suppose a positive I can take from the situation is the knowledge that often, technology does not necessarily equate with convenience and ease. At the end of the day, good old fashioned organization and time-management are as critical in the new world as they were in the old days of pen and paper.