CommonCraft has posted various short videos explaining new technologies. To date, they've done the following in their "Plain English" series:

Social Bookmarking

RSS

Wikis

Social Networking

Paid Content:

The new economics of media make charging for content nearly impossible because there is always someone else producing similar content for free — even if the free content isn’t “as good as” the paid content by some meaningful metric, it doesn’t matter because there’s so much content of at least proximate quality that the paid content provider has virtually no pricing power.

To date, I haven't been bitten by the Second Life bug. My avatar is very neglected. In a recent trip with my teenage daughter, I had to chuckle at her reaction to internet access. When I lack email access for several hours, I develop a psychological condition known as connectitus, defined as: "some part of the world has changed in the last five minutes, and I must find out RIGHT NOW what it was". My daughter has a different view: she wants to know what happened in her virtual world...most recently, that her horses needed to be fed (don't think it's a function of age, but of interests). She laughs at me when I need my information fix, I laugh at her when her digital horses require food. It's the same digital disorder, it just manifests itself differently! Techcrcunch has a short article summarizing different virtual world services (just to inform the world that even though Second Life is the de facto conference theme these days, many more options exist).

Freakonomics blog has a discussion on the value of Second Life.

William Gibson:

We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that - we have no idea at all now where we are going.

I have to say that one of my favorite reads of late is Doug Noon, for a couple of reasons. First, because he writes about things that are admittedly out of my comfort zone in ways that compel me to reach (like all good teachers do) and, second, because he does blogging (the verb) really, really well. I know most people don’t spend a lot of time deconstructing blog posts for style, but at the risk of bringing up a whole slew of old debates from past years (like here, here and here), I am firmly in the camp that blogging (the verb) starts with reading, and that great blogging is using the text to connect ideas and patterns from sometimes disparate sources and experiences in a linked environment that allows the reader to wallow in the context of the ideas being presented. That’s not to say that posts that don’t do that aren’t worth reading. But to me, at least, that’s where the magic of this is, both as writer and as reader.

And so I think Doug does this exceptionally well, as evidenced by his “Like Cranky Talk Show Hosts” post yesterday. In it, he weaves a whole bunch of different sources into a pretty tightly knit piece that pushes back against the standards movement and instructs as to the real motives behind those pushing “reform.” Doug writes:

Consider who profits from education reform. The standards movement is not a national response to a grassroots outcry. It’s a corporate business-initiated movement that has been sold to a fearful middle class worried about economic and social insecurity.

Which made me connect to a post I read by Sylvia Martinez a couple of days ago that reviewed some of the latest educational reform rumblings from the political left.

As educators find themselves re-imagining learning based on their own tech-based awakening, the sense comes quickly that this is not about new technology, access to information, 21st century skills, or even 2.0-goodness, but broader-based education reform. But just as quickly, it starts to feel like there is no hope of changing a lumbering, entrenched educational system with a tiny lever called technology. However, we are not alone, and it would be a win-win for both tech-loving educators and education reformers to join forces. The tools of Web 2.0 could tip the balance in the effort to reshape education “in more productive and democratic fashions.” The virtual voices of students and teachers alike could finally be heard in force.

Which pushed me back to a conversation I had last week with a new physical space connection (what a concept,) someone with a great deal of traditional creds (Stanford Ph.D.) but little facility with technology (or the Read/Write Web), and someone who has been working to bring change to districts for almost 15 years. We were talking about the roles of technology and how they have pushed the conversation in many ways, and how now more than ever, we need to start crafting a compelling vision of what schools can become for our students. After we both agreed that schools in their current structure are not going away any time soon, she point blank challenged me to begin to really fashion a vision for myself of what “reform” looks like, to articulate it, make it real.

Which brought me full circle to Doug again, remembering a post he wrote a couple of weeks ago, a post that “attempt(s) to make sense of what ’school 2.0′ might mean,” one that has been sticking in my brain ever since. In it, he writes compellingly about the friction point we’re at:

Right now, most of the discussion that I read among teachers on the web assumes that technology will deschool education by subverting institutional norms, and we’ll migrate, somehow, from classrooms to distributed networked learning systems without disturbing the institutional death grip that schools and the economy have on each other. Economic motivations encourage people to see education as a means to acquiring certifications of technical competence. Communications technology can facilitate networking, but the need for technical certifications is still going to ensure the preservation of existing educational structures. Even if the uncoupling of curriculum and certifications happens as an unintended outcome of testing and the standards movement (since testing may make schooling optional) schools in some form will still be needed.

And to this statement in an even earlier post, which I hope he’ll pick up on:

The real issue now is deciding what’s worth keeping and what form that should take.

So that’s a question I’m going to try to focus on more and more in my personal “study” this coming year. Knowing what I know about how my own learning has changed and the influences that these technologies are having, and knowing pretty well what I don’t know about the fundamental educational influences that have gotten us to where we are as a society and a system, I’m going to try to put a curriculum together for myself that can inform an answer. It may not be a compelling answer when all is said and done, but I really do think the time is now to try to make sense of it for myself, if for no other reason than my kids turn 8 and 10 next week. Not a lot of time left…

Technorati Tags: education, reform, learning, doug_noon

One of the metaphors I find myself moving more and more to of late is “Aggregator as Textbook.” Google Reader is the place (along with Twitter of late) that I head to first every day when I open up my computer, and on an average day, I end up going back there at least 4 or 5 times. It’s become an important part of my learning process, because my daily study almost always starts and flows from what’s collected there.

That being the case, I’ve been thinking more and more about my own use of RSS, and trying to reflect on the choices I make in my aggregator. Frankly, I am still amazed that so relatively few people (not just educators) have made RSS a part of their practice, but I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with how disruptive a technology it is when you really think about it. It changes the traditional information structures in fundamental ways, and it forces us to be much more involved with the information we consume. I’m no longer just a reader; I’m an editor who is constantly at work in the process of finding feeds to read, determining what’s relevant, trying to connect ideas and patterns, making decisions as to what to do with all of the information I come across.

The technical side to RSS is not that difficult. But I constantly wonder if I’m “doing RSS well” in the way I use it. So, anyway, here are six things I wonder about my own use of what I think is the most powerful of all of these technologies.

What’s my optimum number of feeds to read? I’ve gone between 25 and 250, and now at about 60 I’m still not sure if that’s the “right” number. And it’s not just a time factor that determines that number, although that has more to do with it than anything else. The scope of topics and a diversity of views also has a lot to do with it.

How do I not become “married” to the feeds I already have? It would be easy to keep the 60 or so feeds that I have for a long time, but I’m not sure that’s the best strategy. As new voices appear, as my interests shift, I need to be willing to let some old voices go. That’s exceedingly hard, at times, because I don’t want to miss anything, and because I feel connected to those teachers on many levels.

Do I rely too much on a handful of feeds? I’ll admit, while I struggle reading every feed every day, there are a half dozen or so that I try not to miss. I think of these as the ones that do the best job of culling out the important ideas of the day. In many cases, these people are reading many of the same sources I am. I wonder if this makes it even more difficult to read more widely.

How many individual pieces of information can I realistically make sense of? There are days when I could easily find 50 or so interesting, relevant posts or links to sites, and I wonder if that’s always such a good thing. If I were to try to process all of that, will the best filter up?

How do I best organize the information that is most useful? I have a del.icio.us account, and I stow away some snippets of things in various spots. I tag and tag and tag. But this is my most difficult struggle. I’ve yet to find a really effective way of processing all the ideas and links that make it easy to return to later.

Should I read ideas, or should I read people? Stephen Downes advocates for the former, and I can understand why. It’s the concept, the exchange of ideas that is important, not the person so much. Still, I find it very difficult to separate the two, and I do think that knowing the person through the writing adds context to the ideas. But, again, reading people also tends to limit the scope and diversity of the ideas, I think.

Without question, my aggregated text requires much more intellectual sweat than the traditional form. And that’s actually why I want my own kids to become adept at writing their own texts around the topics they find engaging. I’ve put together Pageflakes pages for my kids built on RSS feeds about horses and the Phillies as a way to get them started. But that’s just the first step.

So, I wonder, what do you wonder about RSS?

Technorati Tags: rss, learning, education

One of the metaphors I find myself moving more and more to of late is “Aggregator as Textbook.” Google Reader is the place (along with Twitter of late) that I head to first every day when I open up my computer, and on an average day, I end up going back there at least 4 or 5 times. It’s become an important part of my learning process, because my daily study almost always starts and flows from what’s collected there.

That being the case, I’ve been thinking more and more about my own use of RSS, and trying to reflect on the choices I make in my aggregator. Frankly, I am still amazed that so relatively few people (not just educators) have made RSS a part of their practice, but I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with how disruptive a technology it is when you really think about it. It changes the traditional information structures in fundamental ways, and it forces us to be much more involved with the information we consume. I’m no longer just a reader; I’m an editor who is constantly at work in the process of finding feeds to read, determining what’s relevant, trying to connect ideas and patterns, making decisions as to what to do with all of the information I come across.

The technical side to RSS is not that difficult. But I constantly wonder if I’m “doing RSS well” in the way I use it. So, anyway, here are six things I wonder about my own use of what I think is the most powerful of all of these technologies.

What’s my optimum number of feeds to read? I’ve gone between 25 and 250, and now at about 60 I’m still not sure if that’s the “right” number. And it’s not just a time factor that determines that number, although that has more to do with it than anything else. The scope of topics and a diversity of views also has a lot to do with it.

How do I not become “married” to the feeds I already have? It would be easy to keep the 60 or so feeds that I have for a long time, but I’m not sure that’s the best strategy. As new voices appear, as my interests shift, I need to be willing to let some old voices go. That’s exceedingly hard, at times, because I don’t want to miss anything, and because I feel connected to those teachers on many levels.

Do I rely too much on a handful of feeds? I’ll admit, while I struggle reading every feed every day, there are a half dozen or so that I try not to miss. I think of these as the ones that do the best job of culling out the important ideas of the day. In many cases, these people are reading many of the same sources I am. I wonder if this makes it even more difficult to read more widely.

How many individual pieces of information can I realistically make sense of? There are days when I could easily find 50 or so interesting, relevant posts or links to sites, and I wonder if that’s always such a good thing. If I were to try to process all of that, will the best filter up?

How do I best organize the information that is most useful? I have a del.icio.us account, and I stow away some snippets of things in various spots. I tag and tag and tag. But this is my most difficult struggle. I’ve yet to find a really effective way of processing all the ideas and links that make it easy to return to later.

Should I read ideas, or should I read people? Stephen Downes advocates for the former, and I can understand why. It’s the concept, the exchange of ideas that is important, not the person so much. Still, I find it very difficult to separate the two, and I do think that knowing the person through the writing adds context to the ideas. But, again, reading people also tends to limit the scope and diversity of the ideas, I think.

Without question, my aggregated text requires much more intellectual sweat than the traditional form. And that’s actually why I want my own kids to become adept at writing their own texts around the topics they find engaging. I’ve put together Pageflakes pages for my kids built on RSS feeds about horses and the Phillies as a way to get them started. But that’s just the first step.

So, I wonder, what do you wonder about RSS?

Technorati Tags: rss, learning, education

Over the last several years, calls for rethinking literacy have grown in prominence - ALA released a report in 2000 on information literacy skills (.pdf), NCEE released a report on how to change the education system, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is dedicated to "infusing" (their word) these missing elements into education, and so on. I recently came across a report (.pdf) by the Association of American Colleges and Universities which addresses the skills higher education needs to cultivate in learners. I imagine most educators and corporate training departments know that we need to develop different skills in learners - from primary, secondary, post-secondary education, and into the corporate market. Lacking in the discussion is the structural elements of the system to be tasked with achieving the education of these learners. The NCEE report tinkers with salary increases, better recruitment, standards, etc. Structurally, education could continue to exist as it does under that model. I'm interested in what education should look like. What structural changes are required? We know the problem, we have a vision for the content of our needed educational models, but we lack (public, private, and corporate education) the structural model that will provide the backbone of learning. I'm working on an article on this subject, so if you have ideas, feel free to comment.

Over the last several years, calls for rethinking literacy have grown in prominence - ALA released a report in 2000 on information literacy skills (.pdf), NCEE released a report on how to change the education system, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is dedicated to "infusing" (their word) these missing elements into education, and so on. I recently came across a report (.pdf) by the Association of American Colleges and Universities which addresses the skills higher education needs to cultivate in learners. I imagine most educators and corporate training departments know that we need to develop different skills in learners - from primary, secondary, post-secondary education, and into the corporate market. Lacking in the discussion is the structural elements of the system to be tasked with achieving the education of these learners. The NCEE report tinkers with salary increases, better recruitment, standards, etc. Structurally, education could continue to exist as it does under that model. I'm interested in what education should look like. What structural changes are required? We know the problem, we have a vision for the content of our needed educational models, but we lack (public, private, and corporate education) the structural model that will provide the backbone of learning. I'm working on an article on this subject, so if you have ideas, feel free to comment.

Over the last several years, calls for rethinking literacy have grown in prominence - ALA released a report in 2000 on information literacy skills (.pdf), NCEE released a report on how to change the education system, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills is dedicated to "infusing" (their word) these missing elements into education, and so on. I recently came across a report (.pdf) by the Association of American Colleges and Universities which addresses the skills higher education needs to cultivate in learners. I imagine most educators and corporate training departments know that we need to develop different skills in learners - from primary, secondary, post-secondary education, and into the corporate market. Lacking in the discussion is the structural elements of the system to be tasked with achieving the education of these learners. The NCEE report tinkers with salary increases, better recruitment, standards, etc. Structurally, education could continue to exist as it does under that model. I'm interested in what education should look like. What structural changes are required? We know the problem, we have a vision for the content of our needed educational models, but we lack (public, private, and corporate education) the structural model that will provide the backbone of learning. I'm working on an article on this subject, so if you have ideas, feel free to comment.