XplanaZine

Here’s our take on news that matters for Thursday, January 26. Today’s theme is evolving education and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming — Dance Dance revolution is making a splash in West Virginia schools to augment health and physical education curricula.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting — The Student Filmmakers Showcase (SFS TV) will begin its vodcasting services on January 30. The vodcasts will be made exclusively available for Apple’s iTunes and video iPods. And educational podcasting continues to pick up speed with a nice article in CNET and the launch of iTunes University today.

• Handhelds – Cell phones became increasingly Web-enabled this week with the full public launch of Opera’s mobile browser. And, in a good NY Times article, Saul Hansell writes that we’ve caught up to convergence but content has fallen behind.
• Social Networks – AOL will be joining the social networking competition soon with AIMspace. Pete Cashmore links to a Business Week article with the details:
  

  “It won’t be a site per se. Rather, the online giant is building a platform off its massively popular AOL Instant Messenger service to better enable its users to share and create content. That the internal shorthand for the project is “AIMspace” — don’t count on that being its real name — testifies to how tightly the company plans to tie it to AIM, which the company says has 43 million users.”

Now, here’s a recap of our favorite posts from the edublogging community from the past 48 hours.

• From Dave Warlick : Post on the magic of literacy and blogging as conversation.
• From Brian Lamb : Post on CiteULike screencasts.
• From Doug Johnson : Post the case for social networks.
• From D’Arcy Norman : Post on feedback regarding iTunes University service.
• From James Farmer: Post on BlackBoard’s blog journal.
• From Ray Cha: Post on experiences as a newbie in Second Life