XplanaZine

Here’s a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.Ben Vershbow posts Part 3 of his series on “The Book is Reading You” and in it he discusses Google’s new plan to sell digital versions of books from cooperating publishers. He points out that these books function well as searchable texts but have none of the social context required of real social software. He tags these efforts as anti-social software as, with them people will lack the ability to:

• discuss
• quote
• share
• make notes
• make reference
• build upon

I believe there is a three-way struggle going on in the land of the e-book. There are Web-based interactive e-books that are meant as substitutes for a print book (the kind prescribed by Vershbow), Web-based non-interactive e-books that augment the print book (the down-and-dirty searchable solutions by Google and Yahoo), and offline, device-driven e-books like those to be read on Pocket PCs, Sony’s Librie or iRex’s iLiad. Microsoft, Sony and iRex already have lots of buy-in from major fiction and trade publishers, while Google and Yahoo have the advantage of occupying lost of space. Adobe obviously has lots at stake here as their Adobe e-book reader and Macromedia Flash are big players in the Web-based e-book market.

D’Arcy Norman voices what, I’m sure, is a common sentiment by many of us who are just trying to do good work. His complaint is with the Web 2.0 hype and he says:

“Here’s an idea. Just do cool stuff. Be innovative. Stop trying to brag your ass off by buzzwordifying everything. It’s starting to come across like some kind of high school clique - jocks, preps, bangers, and the “Web 2.0″ gang. If you’re not in the Web 2.0 Gang, you suck. Whatever. I was an outcast then, and I’m happy to be one now.”

Darren Kuropatwa had a fantastic summary of the recent conversations regarding “Telling a New Story.”

The old story is about “the school board, county commissioners, redistricting, budget and year-round schools;” in short, everything but teaching and learning. The New Story is about powerful teaching and extraordinary learning. Technology fits in only insofar as it enables and facilitates that kind of teaching and learning. But always the story is about the heart and soul of education — teaching and learning, teacher and learner, and particularly those instances where they exchange roles again and again.

Finally, Dave Cormier has a great post explaining the work going on related to two different projects — the Wikibook Project at Educationbridges and
Edtech Barnraising - Building a New Media Curriculum. While these are separate projects they do have, as their core, common concepts of construction through community collaboration. I encourage anyone who has not delved into these two projects to give them some serious study.