Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Well, podcasting is certainly in the air this week. The EdTech Talk Podcast Academy is being webcast and is definitely worth the watch. This is great stuff. Also, Stephen Downes says that he'll be podcasting more in the future and he links to posts from Alan Levine, Darren Kuropatwa and Mark E. Ott.

Tom Hoffman has this post about the passing of the Golden Age of edtech blogging and writes, "In the coming new age of blogging about classroom blogging, we'll hopefully see the knitting together of a network which is much bigger and broader, with less pontificating and theorizing and more direct, close to the metal classroom experiences direct from the teachers' mouths." I agree that the loose joining of the many pieces will continue top evolve. What story will form the basis of that joining and who/what will serve to make the connections are the big questions.

Christopher Sessums asks some good questions in his post on social software and the co-creation of knowledge. He's looking for comments and her is his dilemma:

"There are many examples of edubloggers who have introduced blogs and wikis into their classrooms with varying degrees of success. It would seem in this sense that social software was more of a top-down initiative, selected by the instructor instead of by the learner. In this light, is it still considered social software as I have defined it? Does it still support the desire of individuals to affiliate with others or is it another formal means for directing learning?"

Also, Jay Cross has this nice reminder about clarity in writing. "Write like your life depended on it, because your livelihood probably does." Amen.

Finally, Vicki Davis has this post on authentic assessments, digital portfolios, and the real evolutionary process of learning. This is a candid article on how portfolios play out in the real world of Vicki's classrooms and in the lives of her students. The eclectic approach does indeed seem to work best (or, in other words, always hedge your bets.) And, speaking of the "real world," check out David Warlick's article on how it's not a textbook world out there.

"In textbook learning, we are taught one way to interpret the poem, one way to solve the algebra problem, one way to punctuate a paragraph, and one way to think. Perhaps that's the way that some people like it. I think that the best learning for our future will happen when students are learning in authentic ways, from authentic information sources, and empowered to do something with what they are learning, to impose their learning on other people, to become individuals with value."

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Stephen Downes is back from his hiatus and leads off with this response to Will Richardson's post on why he is not reading as much in the blogosphere as he used to. Stephen writes:

"Why write posts? Why blog at all? If the content of what you are reading or writing isn't absorbing in and of itself, to you, then the blog just becomes a vehicle for some sort of external reward. Let go of the reward; leave that for the self-promoters and the shysters and the advertisers. And eschew these in your reading. Invest in your passions and follow those of others; the rest will follow."

Ben Vershbow has an informative piece over at if:book on defining the networked book. As he points out, this concept has been getting quite a bit of currency of late. This article recaps recent discussion, offers up a definition of the networked book -- "a networked book is an open book designed to be written, edited and read in a networked environment." -- and provides a list of projects related to networked books.

And, as George Siemens points out, it's just not a one-way world anymore. "We may still control certification, but the learning act itself is quickly moving into the hands of learners." Indeed, education cannot and will not escape this evolutionary event.

Finally, check out Vicki Davis' post on "interesting facts around the blogosphere." She points to predominant language use, education opportunities, and a whole lot more.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

The discussion regarding Internet filtering and censorship continues with Doug Johnson posting his ideas about how to address the problem. Yes, he says, a little civil disobedience in the short term might have some effect, but the long-term solution is to attach the process of district policy making. Miguel Guhlin, the original rabble rouser, responds to Doug's post with a philosophical take on winning through surrender. Bud Hunt also added his take with a nice podcast on filtering conversations, butr in the end, I think I like Tom Hoffman's take the best: "It seems to me that the people with the choke hold on the web filters in our schools aren't educators, and often are largely unaccountable. On the whole, ed-tech seems to be subservient to IT. How the hell did that happen?"

D'Arcy Norman has a great description of the Un-Keynote presentation he did in Vancouver with Stephen Downes and Brian Alexander. The three of them roamed the audience, forced collaborative discussion, and instead of a PowerPoint presentation beamed a back channel chat session on the screen. D'Arcy's description relates the difficulty and anxiety associated with the session, but it also gives nice insight into how this kind of thing can be done and why it can change the way we do presentations in general. Kudos to these pioneers.

Vicki Davis riffs on a Kathy Sierra post and creates her own Typology of Cognitive Pleasures for the classroom. Her list includes Discovery, Challenge, Narrative, Self-expression, Social Framework, Cognitive Arousal, Thrill, Sensation, Triumph, Flow, Accomplishment, Fantasy, and Learning. Worth the read!

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Will Richardson chimes in ont he censorship discussion and even adds a wiki where others can post what is being blocked by schools. Mark Ahlness also weighs in with his observations. If you're late to the debate, Will's article will get you up to speed. Tom Hoffman responds to Miguel Guhlin's original post with his own critique of the situation and offers up specific suggestions for coping. Miguel Guhlin responds to some of Tom's comments.

Meanwhile David Warlick continues his Flat Classroom theme with this post on blogging in the flat classroom. At the same time, Brian Crosby puts out his plea for real working models of "messy learning" that can help create the necessary groundswell for reform in education. This is a lengthy post but there's some good stuff here. Particularly challenging is this thought: "We hear about “The New Story,” or “The Read/Write Web in the Classroom,” but who else but the choir reads, hears or cares about any of it?"

Dan Visel over at if:book has an interesting article on how the new text models created by the Web are challenging us to come up with new ways to read. This is an insightful critique of Wikipedia as well as other text phenomena related to the Web.

In the miscellaneous category today, D'Arcy Norman has kindly posted the audio from his Intro to Podcasting session. Also, Alan Levine gives this interesting summary of a NMC staff meeting in Second Life. Finally, Christopher Sessums has an informative article on personality types and how they affect learning.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

George Siemens posts this 10-minute podcast -- Restructuring our Structures. "Essentially, two changes are driving everything: 1) the breakdown of centralized structures (and move toward network models), and 2) the increased capacity for "quick connectivity" - i.e. the ability to for connections with ease." In a related post, Clarence Fisher asks if perhaps we shouldn't focus more on where (environment) we are learning than how (process). "But schools and classrooms are not structured to best support that learning. We need to understand how learning happens, but mostly we need to deeply re - examine the environments we create in classrooms and begin there."

Ben Vershbow gives us his take on Pulse, a "networked book" from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. "Taking the book for a spin in cyberspace — attracting readers, generating buzz, injecting it into the conversation — is not at all a bad idea, especially in these transitional times when we are continually shifting back and forth between on and offline reading."

Also, Wesley Fryer has a posted a nice discussion of the online composition-grading tool in use at Texas Tech University -- Topic. This is an online tool designed to provide standardized and consistent feedback, and to make composition classes more efficient and, thus, allow students more time to actually write. Having taught composition fro many years, i have worked with several similar programs and approaches. What I like about Topic is a hybrid approach of technology and people. I also like the emphasis on having students write more and listen to instructors less.

Finally, David Warlick has begun formalizing his work on Telling New Stories in education. His latest post puts forth three types of stories and some basic descriptions for each. Vicki Davis picks up on David's post and talks about the importance of stories over simple facts and the need to make our stories understandable to others.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Miguel Guhlin calls upon the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to talk about addressing the "totalitarian states" that are our educational systems. How do we stand up to them? How do we appropriately challenge their authority to effect the change we believe in? All good questions and, while the comparisons between the state of educational technology today and the plight of Christians in Nazi Germany may seem farfetched, Bonhoeffer's prescription seems both timely and apropos. Brian Crosby reacts to Miguel's post and puts it this way. "The early adopters of project-based. Educational technology driven learning are like those that Bonhoeffer saw disappear early on in the Nazis rise to power when they questioned things. They saw the power of changing paths but were swept out of the way as an impediment to progress. Wasn't NCLB promoted that way?" As Brian says, "Learning is messy!" Finally, Guhlin follows up with several more posts on the concept of disobedience.

Ray Cha over at if:book has a lengthy response to David Rejeski's call for a Corporation for Public Gaming.

"My main contention with Rejeski's call is his focus on the final product or content, in this case, comparing a video game with a television program. His analogy fails to recognize the equally important components of the medium, production and distribution. If we look at video games in terms of production, distribution as well as content, the allocation of government resources envision a different outcome. In this analysis, a more efficient use of funds would be geared towards creating tools to create games, insuring fair and open access to the network, and less emphasis funded towards the creation of actual games."

I agree with Cha's emphasis on tools rather than end products. We have passed beyond the days of a centralized content providers and have entered the time when ever person expects to have the means of production at his/her disposal.

Remember a recent report that said only 1% of people actually listened to podcasts? Well, Vicki Davis has a nice post on what it will take for the podcasting audience to grow.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Doug Belshaw provides his faithful service of keeping track of the previous week's action in the edublogging space. This really is an insightful and useful weekly post and one of the best ways to keep up with things in a busy week!

If you haven't been keeping up with David Warlick's posts on "Flat Classrooms," you can do so via this article on the TechLearning Blog.

"What about an education system that is challenged to prepare children for their future, and it's not their father's future -- and their classrooms are also becoming flat. Traditional education has been an environment of hills and slopes. The teacher could rely on gravity to support the flow of curriculum down to the learners. But as much as we might like to pretend, we (teachers) are no longer on top of the hill. The hill is practically gone."

Graham Wegner has a nice spin off on the topic as he tries to apply David's thinking to the Aussie classroom.

Also, I failed to mention Wesley Fryer's interesting article from last Friday titled "Censored for relevance." The post starts off with a description of how his blog is censored in some schools because of his posts about MySpace (and MySpace is one of the topics "filtered" by some schools). What follows is a whole treatise on openness and globalization. Most interesting.

Finally, Harold Jarche add to Christian Long's post on the use of PDAs by medical students.

"Learners need up to date information and access to knowledgeable people in their own, as well as other, fields. Textbooks no longer meet that need. Unfortunately for specialists and textbook writers, the digital medium is making many of them redundant. The textbook is no longer the primary source of knowledge; instead it’s the messy, disorganised worldwide web."

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

David Warlick has posted the New Story Wiki and is inviting everyone to "Hack the story!" The site invites stories that "address three basic needs. They must connect with the market place, resonate with deeply held values, and they must be something that we can point to." I really like George Siemens thoughts with regard to this ongoing meme. "While the picture of needed change is becoming more clear, our understanding of "how to get there" is not. Some would have our river of change meander through classrooms, others suggest it flows through completely new models. Some suggest an evolution, others suggest a transformation." It might also be interesting for folks thinking about the New Story to look at Kathy Sierra's recent post on Steve's stories. This is about Steve Jobs and how he uses stories successfully to sell his ideas. Good synergy here.

Chalksite is a new online service that provides free gradebook, messaging, and assignment capabilities to teachers and students. For a subscription fee, additional, premium services are available. Speaking of products for teachers and students, Stephen Powell has a good review of the LAMS platform. He says they have done a lot of things right in terms of user interface and overall usability, but that the product's weakness is in its prescriptive pedagogy.

Also, don't miss David Warlick's post on flat classrooms. " I hope to spend the next couple of weeks talking through some ideas concerning a flat classroom learning engine, most of which I am still forming. But I would like to begin with a list of characteristics for students in a flat classroom learning engine.

• Curious
• Self Directed Learners
• Intrinsic need to communicate
• Intrinsic need to influence
• Future Oriented
• Heritage Grounded

I look forward to reading David's ideas as they develop.

Finally, D'Arcy Norman resurrects the Universty 2.0 meme and sets forth a nice outline of what might be possible in the future as both technology and our views of learning continue to evolve.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Vicki Davis has a good follow-up to the Higher Ed BloggerCon session on blogging/wiki research. She gives a good overview of the session and reminds us that "Research is important and vital. It must be unbiased and thorough. We must know why we do what we do and be willing to self-implement sometimes painful paradigm shifts. We must never be closed minded and learn to disagree as professionals." Amen.

Dave Cormier talks about expertise, what it means to be one, and what it takes to remain one. Specifically, he discusses authority by accomplishment and authority by community, and questions the validity and processes by which such conference occurs.

Another theme going around is that of education as experiment. Wesley Fryer has this post responding to an earlier article by Doug Johnson. Wesley argues:

"In the educational, classroom environment, authentic education is always experimental. This is because teaching is an art, not a science. Many, many people sadly mistake the purpose of the educational enterprise as mere content transmission."

I agree with the part about content transmission, but I'm not sure that necessarily makes all authentic education experimental. Now, if he had said experiential. Brian Crosby has also chimed in on the subject and Doug Johnson has followed up his first post with further conversation on the topic.

Finally, Gardner Campbell posts an audio file of a student panel discussing "life online." This is a great insight into the lives of students.

In the general stuff category:

• James Farmer's video post on Blogs as Personal Learning Environments is now live over at Higher Ed BloggerCon and it's definitely worth checking out.
• Kathy Sierra has an informative post on making good presentations and giving audiences more meaningful experiences.
• Bill Kerr give his take on podcasting and its significance.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

I'm really liking what Christopher Sessums has written about blogging as an expression of self. He provides a nice framework for his comments and points to what other active edubloggers have written on the subject.

Alana Levine has always been good at featuring outstanding faculty who have a real vision for technology in education (we'll miss this piece of you in your new job, Alan), In this post, he interviews Karen Schwalm, who has done some interesting things with podcasting and providing motivational essays for her students. Karen uses Odeo for her work and, for an idea of what she's doing, check out this example.

Also, I love this quote from George Siemens from his post on Reinvention."

"...society is changing, but education doesn't understand the nature (and depth) of that change). We still think we are dealing with an entity that we can control, box, etc. Education has long been a driver of change in society, but the current lethargy in adjusting to new social and technological environments is disconcerting."

Finally, Clarence Fisher has a thoughtful post on gaming and how its framework can apply to education. Miguel Guhlin adds his reflection to this post here.

Many people are blogging about Higher Ed BloggerCon. Will Richardson has a nice overview of posts from the first several days that can get you started if you haven't been keeping up.

Christian Long has a good post on contextual advertising. As an alternative to what has been done, he mentions The Deck, a great concept that puts together a tightly-grouped set of content providers that can guarantee a concentrated audience for products.

Clarence Fisher provides this update about the podcasts and vlogs his students have been creating in his classes. He held conferences with them recently and shares some of their thinking as new authors. The results are telling.

We've been posting regularly about the releases over at ajaxLaunch, and this week Michael Robertson turns us on to the first public release of eyespot.com, a site for posting and sharing video. Albert Ip has a nice review of the product (as well as the other ajaxLaunch initiatives).

The "New Story" meme is still going strong. This week, Dean Shareski and David Warlick have solid posts on the topic. Also, Gardner Campbell writes this terrific article in which he shares some remarkable things happening with students and learning (a glimpse at the hope offered by the "New Story").

Finally, Christopher Sessums posts his thoughts about collegiality and collaboration in teacher professional development.

"Collaboration and collegiality take teacher development beyond individual reflection, or reliance on external experts, to a point where educators can learn from one another, sharing and building expertise together."

This article is full of Sessum's usual thoughtfulness and documentation.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Derek Wenmoth has put up a couple of thought-provoking posts recently. His thoughts on Future Online Learning Environments and New Wisdom for the Web are great reads. Derek's blog is definitely worth checking out if you aren't already a regular reader. Also, Dean Shareski has moved his blog (with some help from Rob Wall) to a more permanent site and it looks great. He is using WordPress 2.0 and took advantage of the import tool to transfer all of his Blogger content. I have enjoyed Dean's blog posts and am glad to see him "bulking up."

Wesley Fryer gives an initial response to Nature's material on 2020 -- Future of Computing. Towards the end of his post, Wesley talks about a conversation with Miguel Guhlin and references Plato's Cave as a metaphor for "getting" Web 2.0:

"Those of us engaged in this read/write web enabled conversation across the globe (literally) have emerged from the cave of traditional education. Unfortunately, the vast majority of students, teachers, educators, and parents remain in the cave."

While I like the metaphor, I guess I think we're all still in the cave and only able to see shadows of another world on the walls.

Ulises Mejias points out that blogging has certainly changed the way we use language but that some practices related to blogging deserve further scrutiny as they are born out of an economy of attention. These practices include -- 1)Rankism; 2) Self-censorship; 3) Technocratism; 4) Quatitivism; and 5) Opinionism.

Picking up where he left off last week, David Warlick posts again on gaming in education . In this most recent post, he makes the argument that the value of games isn't based on the type of game but rather on the learning expectations.

The Institute for the Future of the Book they are working on a new vision for scholarly publishing via a collective, electronic press. Kathleen Fitzpatrick has authored this post which discusses the need for collaboration among scholars if such an effort is to succeed. I fully support the efforts here and plan to participate to whatever extent necessary to support the cooperative. Having said that, I'm reminded of a MERLOT meeting I attended in 2003 where Gerry Hanley answered tough audience questions about receiving tenure credit for creating learning objects. The collaborative electronic press will succeed to the extent that it is considered as having equal weight as its print counterparts (and thus providing equal support for tenure). Until this happens, it will be difficult to get people to join. Of course, the paradox is that it won't ever have that weight if people don't join.

Finally, in the "of interest and use" category, Will Richardson shares the information he uncovered while searching for a potential Bloglines replacement. He likes Rojo and Gritwire but hasn't yet found something that would make him change immediately. And, George Siemens writes about YouTube's potential as a learning tool but cautions that the space does contain inappropriate content. Our job as educators, I think, is to figure out how to harness the positive potential of sites like YouTube while, at the same time, educating younger learners about Internet safety and discernment.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Alan Levine points to a never ending proliferation of Web 2.0 lists and wonders, cynically, when we're going to see people start posting such lists with.. well.. Web 2.0 tools. Michael Feldstein picks up this challenge and takes a first crack at the task using Bleezer. Speaking of Web 2.0 tools, Mark Ahlness has a good post about the biggest social networking site on the block -- MySpace. Mark says that the real tragedy about MySpace is that the irrational public backlash by parents and some administrators is blocking the way for the success of other tools like blogging and podcasting.

Doug Belshaw serves up his weekly roundup of conversations going on in the edublogging space and he focuses this week on messy learning, games in education, and managing information abundance through adaptation and flexibility. Doug's post, read along with our own What's Up and What Matters article, should provide anyone interested with a good overview of the edublogging memes in the air.

Thanks to Wesley Fryer for his shout our about Semapedia. Semapedia allows people to connect Wikipedia articles to their corresponding real-world objects and, through unique printed tags (visual codes), call up information about those objects (buildings, art, events, etc.) at the point of access. Here is Wesley's summary. It's obvious that this tool has plenty of uses in creative education projects.

"Semapedia is a project that could make traveling with a cell phone (and possibly access to a printer, at least in a hotel room) much more interesting. If you see a piece of paper taped up in a location with a Semapedia tag, you can click a photo of it with your cell phone and have the free software recognize the tag. Think of this as scanning a barcode, but just using your cell phone to do it. Then your web-enabled cell phone can connect directly to WikiPedia articles related to that geographic space."

Miguel Guhlin has a nice article on problem based professional development over at Tech Learning. One of the more interesting things about the article (worth reading in its own right), is that it was written before Miguel became involved with blogging and podcasts.

If you haven't been reading about Brian Crosby's experiences in messy learning, you should definitely check out his blog. Brian captures in vivid detail the cool things that can happen when we let things happen and evolve naturally with creative learners. Of course, the messiest learning happens when we let students go completely solo. It's amazing what they will come up with. Last week, in Arizona, students organized protests using MySpace. Will Richardson has a nice overview of the events and goes on to make some observations of his own. I particularly liked this one.

"Now, I have to tell you, I have a hard time picturing a bunch of grownups doing quick, mass mobilization this way. Seriously. We're so e-mail. And I'm pretty much done with that whole natives and immigrants meme because there's nothing stopping any of us from becoming fluent in this language except our own unwillingness to learn it (and, ok, maybe some time issues...where do kids get the time for this anyway?) We can debate whether or not the kids should have done what they did (read the comments to this Danah Boyd post; in fact, read the whole thing) but we might want to recognize it for what it is: a powerful example of the connectedness that technology can create."

Finally, the good folk over at the Otter Group have posted a couple of articles on Learning 2.0 Basics -- Part 1 and Part 2.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

David Warlick has a great line in his post on video games from Wednesday -- "'Hack the system.' Turn our classrooms into learning engines. That’s what games are." He follows up with a post on Thursday suggesting that gaming can be utilized to make the learning experience richer and more about conversation than transmission. If you're interested in educational gaming, take the time to listen to the Learnitology podcast on educational gaming. This is a nice, succinct overview based on the Horizon Report (2006).

Clarence Fisher asks specifically about the form of the Read/Write Web when we says, "If not blogs, what?" Chris Sessums contributes to the meme with a good overview on the value and uses of blogging in education.

"The appropriate use of weblogs can learning on multiple levels. Weblogging enables reflection both individually and collectively in systematic ways that allows individuals, colleagues, and others to tap into a network that gives “something back, something more than the good feeling of simply articulating what's in our brain in writing." (see his follow-up post here)

Dave Cormier adds to this discussion by talking about what is is that we are actually trying to accomplish in this first wave of the Read/Write approach to education. In his own evaluation of blogging's value as an educational tool, Darren Kuropatwa writes a long and passionate post regarding "Resonance and Dissonance." He tackles the complex subject of teaching and learning strategies and how to do the best job of reaching all learners in a class with different methods or styles of instruction. In this light, blogging is a great tool for engaging conversation and thinking. I love this quote.

"I firmly believe that all students are capable of succeeding in advanced math. Their marks measure the amount of time, energy and effort they put into learning; not their intelligence. If you want to know how smart someone is have a conversation with them. (Get them to blog.) If you want to know how hard they're working in school, look at their grades. Learning is largely dependent upon the learner. I have never had an able bodied student fail my class after they have tried their hardest."

Tom Hoffman responds to Wes Fryer's enthusiasm about the possibility of blogs in teaching with a reminder that great teaching is not about specific tools or technology.

Speaking of educational theories, Clark Quinn's post on Universal Learning Design is definitely worth the read.

Finally, Ben Vershbow has a post on e-books and says that one of the great features of the open source platform Sophie (to be released soon) is the ability to have conversations inside of books.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Alan Levine has this post about Shelly Rodrigo's Cinema class at Mesa Community College. The class site, HUM 210: Contemporary Cinema, features student blogs and furl accounts and the teacher has student use the GitWire aggregator as well. This is a great example of how to use multiple tools to build a great collaborative environment.

Jesse Wilbur writes about the promises and limitations of RDF as an organizational and descriptive schema. As he points out that, while RDF is conceptually easy it is syntactically hard and without the appropriate automated tools adoption is a hard row to hoe. I agree with jesse the the best alternative here is Web API's.

"API's mean that people can innovate on an interface level, even if they don't have serious coding chops. I've seen the Google API implemented in twenty minutes. This is a more fluid way to develop; one that feels more comfortable even if it sacrifices information richness."

What is "fake learning?" Wesley Fryer defines it as "all about trying to control learners or learning. Real learning is likely not completely out of control, but may be on the border of control." He goes on to define "messy learning" as "students taking initiative and working in an environment where unexpected, constructive learning events can happen– in fact, they are encouraged." Messy learning, then, is about complexity, creating enough dynamic interaction between agents that new forms of interaction and behavior can develop and the overall system can evolve unexpectedly.

Clarence Fisher posts his reflections on the blogging and podcasting his students have been doing in the classroom for the past five weeks. Here is a snippet from his conclusions.

"We have learned a great amount about the power of the classroom as a studio and about the exponential learning that is possible in a network. We have explored this new medium, but we are in no way masters of it. We are beginning to understand the possibilities of genre, but we have certainly only touched upon this. These students are seeing the purpose of research, of production, scheduling, and time management. Not to mention some of them seeing the power of revision, of editing, of doing something repeatedly until it is done to their satisfaction. "

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Doug Johnson has an insightful post on the value of traditional libraries and librarians in a digital age. Doug concludes his post by saying, "Please, tell me why, if a young person asks, I should enthusiastically say, 'Yes - pursue a career as a librarian!'" I'll go one step further. Please, tell me why, if a young person asks, I should say enthusiastically, "Yes -- pursue a career as a teacher!"

I like Harold Jarche's comments on the limitations of the print medium. "As a blog post, this article built on previous posts and was open to comments and additions. With this print article, it seems as if my learning process has been frozen in time."

Also, Ben Vershbow points to a post by John Holbo on the need for academicians to take responsibility for creating scholarly resources on the Web. As Ben has pointed out recently, "Google, Amazon are moving more aggressively to define how we find and read documents online." In my opinion, if academics are going to have a chance to define any part of this space or discussion they will need to move with uncharacteristic haste.

Finally, Lanny Arvan weighs in on the the NCLB discussion with his usual candidness and fresh perspective. Responding to Sunday's article in the NY Times, Lanny points out that the real issue is not how much the kids are reading in school but rather if they are reading at all outside of school.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Alan Levine shares this link to Alisa Cooper's wiki for her workshop "What Can You So with a WIki?" This is a wonderful example of how to model technology for training.

Tom Hoffman takes a look at essay writing on high stakes tests. He discusses the need to make up information and sources. His recap of the post is:

• “high stakes” assessments of non-fiction writing have to allow students to make up facts;
• people who don’t know what they’re talking about find this disturbing;
• so teachers are supposed to ignore this;
• even though it is harmless;
• and would raise test scores.

In other NCLB news, the NY Times featured an article Sunday on the "narrowing of the curriculum due to NCLB requirements. Narrowing of the curriculum or of the general American mind?

In a similar vein David Jakes talks about Digital Story Telling and its real value to students and teachers. He argues that the skills required to create digital stories are often greater than those required to meet testing standards.

Lanny Arvan has put together a couple of posts on faculty development . In this latest article, he talks about a kind of on-the-job training and mentoring role where mentoring and learning takes place at the real point of need -- in the classroom.

Wesley Fryer had a great post on how blogs are changing education and Tim Stahmer took up the discussion of Britannica vs. Wikipedia with a new twist. He argues that initial accuracy is less an issue than the ability to fix errors in general and to record new information quickly. If that is the standard, Wikipedia will win hands down.

Finally, David Warlick writes about learning as doing -- "learning is about doing, regardless of your learning style. It means doing it. Doing to it. And doing with it." Amen. And now back to some doing so I can learn yet a bit more.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

I really liked Darren Kuropatwa's post yesterday on encouraging excellence. In it, he talks about a mentors blog he has set up and describes the work three of his volunteer mentors are doing for his AP Calculus class students. I agree with Dean -- this is precisely how blogging becomes transformational. It allows connectedness (apologies to George Siemens) and the creation of distributed informal communities.

Tim Stahmer writes about the high cost of testing. Referencing an article in the NY Times, Tim points out that students will take 45 million exams this year, and that doesn't include the SAT and similar college gateway tests. Problems with the setup and scoring of these tests may be bad, but they do not compare those being introduced due to the high costs associated with administering and scoring all of these tests. "Rather than trying to teach kids to understand, analyze, and evaluate information, the underfunded requirements of NCLB are rapidly leading to assessments asking them only to spit back facts." This makes a nice setup for Miguel Guhlin's post about cool things related to Digital Storytelling projects and how kids learn much more with these than through standard assessment practices. Of course, this is all related to NCLB in the United States and Wesley Fryer also weighs in on this subject referring to quotes form President bush.

When it comes to the incessant debate about whether Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica is more accurate, Dave Cormier gets it right. The argument is...

"Irrelevant. There are no gatekeepers protecting knowledge. Or at least, the gatekeepers are very difficult to find and/or they can’t do their jobs very well anymore. What we have now are salespeople, they are selling particular brands of knowledge and we need to teach our students to be good consumers."

Jay Cross looks at RSS feeds and the various views available in aggregators and discusses how we can best manage and see information the way we need it. This is an interesting post because of the bigger issue it touches -- personal information management. Honestly, I don't know how people not using aggregators, and/or tagging systems manage their time or Web information at all. This is definitely one of those important skills we need to be teaching students.

Finally, a number of faithful edubloggers have been recording events from this week's FETC sessions. Check out:

• Wesley Fryer blogging "The Old is New: Television, the Internet and Students by Peter Grunwald"
• Will Richardson blogging "21st Century Skills as Transformation in K-12 Schools--Ken Kay"
• Will Richardson blogging David Warlick's keynote on podcasting.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Will Richardson posts about an ongoing digital storytelling podcast at Long Elementary in Dearborn, MI. Will says that these wonderful creations are "a perfect example of why teachers need to explore these technologies." Tom Hoffman responds to Will's saying he thinks "It is a little early to peg it as a “best practice,” as Will does. Let’s see if they can complete a few more chapters, or if they've made their process a bit too complex to finish, which seems like a real risk."

Miguel Guhlin continues the discussion about technology as a tool in education. His admonition is to invest in people not things. By this, he means looking to low-cost, open source solutions so that we can provide common and quality technology access to all students.And, speaking of the human touch, Clarence Fisher has a good post on why he blogs with kids. From his post: "I blog with kids to help them realize they are part of the conversation and so that they learn in a protected space how to become part of that conversation. I do not believe we do kids any favors by sheltering them or filtering the world for them."

Are kids too plugged in? George Siemens ponders this question as does Kathy Sierra. Christian Long weighs in as well. This is all in response to Time Magazine's cover article on multitasking kids and the dangers such multitasking poses. Really? Yes, I understand that social researchers have conducted studies that show "adverse" effects. My inclination, however, is to think that those studies have a pre-conceived baseline (a prejudiced one) of what is normal and good. Let's face it -- the current adult generation does not multitask naturally. We worry about our kids often because what they do seems unnatural to us. Now we have studies that say it might be bad for them. How surprising! I wonder what kid researchers would come up with if they did social studies on the dull linear tasking we practice. They would like find that it is harmful to creativity and building cognitive capabilities.

And, Ben Vershbow has some interesting thoughts on the search for control over the definition of e-books. "What's interesting is how the Google/Amazon move into online books recapitulates the first flurry of ebook speculation in the mid-to-late 90s. At that time, the discussion was all about ebook reading devices, but then as now, publishers' pursuit of legal and technological control of digital books seemed to bring with it a corresponding struggle for control over the definition of digital books."

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Will Richardson is caught between the digital and the digital/analog worls of note taking. The problem is his darned Tablet PC. it allows him to copy snippets fromt he Web and mark them up by hand, thus creating a cool library of research. Of course, that method is great for him bus doesn't play as well socially (like del.icio.us). For now, he will likely stick with both methods. Sound like a really cool app is out there somewhere for this, however.

Tom Hoffman has a great article on openining up the curriculum. Tom suggests having the Pacesetter English curriculum released under an open content license, such as a Creative Commons license. Tom writes further about this in his blog.

The clash between the gaming generation and the teaching generation is the subject of this insightful post by Rob Wall.

"iwould say that blogging, podcasting, and the whole read-write web thingy also trains participants to be creators of media. Gaming is perhaps a particularly well-defined facet of this, and something that has a wide participant base. It also offers some great possibilities for learning as well (I’d love to get SimEarth running for my Biology 20 class, but I don’t think it would run on our school’s Linux terminals). A major shift will be required in our ideas about assessment in order to make this fit in with school-based learning."

And Mark Ahlness has more to add to the recent conversation on "telling a new story." He muses, "the idea of finding the right way to get the word out to teachers about 2.0 stuff. What is spreading the word right now is clearly not working.."

Finally, Alan Levine has a couple of posts worth reading. The first details what he learned as he went through the process of resigning from his currnet position, and the second is about an interaction with another blog owner.

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.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

MobileEd has a nice post on the use of smart phones in project-based learning (thanks to George Siemens for the link). The concept of building cultural encyclopedias and mixing cool multimedia presentations via cell phone technology is exciting.

Speaking of media, Derek Morrison talks about video standards or a lack thereof. To sum it up, " You see there's MPEG-2 and then there's MPEG-2 ... and not all MPEG-2s are the same."

James Farmer created this great MindManager visual from the first day at Blog Hui. Unfortunately, James lost most of his application data due to a computer snafu. We hope you've recovered well.

Wesley Fryer, Miguel Guhlin, Mark Ahlness, Ewan McIntosh, Darren Kuropatwa, and Jeff Allen created a great Skypecast called Podcast 40: Defining and telling the new story. As it was inspired by Dave Warlick's earlier posts on telling a new story, Dave created an insightful response to the group's effort. Lots of really good stuff in both posts. I'll synthesize both (unjustly) with this great quote from Warlick:

"Guhlin said that the practices of innovative teachers are considered, “…untried and untrue because they don’t connect with the traditional environment of school.” I think that the real story is that our schools are not connecting to (relevant to) their own goals, preparing children for their future. "

Will Richardson suggests that we may be at a turning point in terms of new technologies and education.

"So maybe it is time to reinvent this conversation. Maybe we're moving out of the how to and into the why. And when we get down that road a stretch, we'll get back to the how again, only this time with an eye on best practice teaching and learning. Then it should get really, really fun."

Finally, Ben Vershbow has a nice post on some thoughts towards the establishment of an electronic press. In his post, Ben asks some significant questions:

• How might our conception of a press be updated for the networked age?
• How do we create a publishing ecology that supports discourse at all levels -- from blog to working paper to monograph -- focusing less on the products of scholarship and more on the process?
• In practical terms, how might this process make use of the linking, commenting, and versioning technologies developed by blogs and wikis in order to enrich the discrete and fixed scholarly text with an evolving, interactive network of discourse that encourages conversation, debate, reflection, and revision?
• How might peer review be reinvented as peer-to-peer review?

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Dean Shareski follows up on Will Richardson's earlier post expressing disappointment in education panelists who opine on blogging. Dean asks, less generically than Will, "why don't they blog?"

"I'm not suggesting that this is the only form of communication but right now this is the best tool for engaging in global conversation. I'm guessing they'd say time is an issue. That simply tells you where it fits on their priority. I'm guessing they understand blogging but without really experiencing it, it's difficult to appreciate the real professional development that occurs. The conversations that I'm involved with and the resources that have been shared with me cannot be overstated. "

He is exactly right. Blogging is something you have to experience. And, Dean's not the first to point to the PD benefits of blogging.

On another front, Ulises Ali Mejias picks up on the sensibility of incorporating multi-function game platforms like the Nintendo DS into the classroom. As he points out, the could certainly replace classroom clickers. But, they could also serve as e-book readers, blogging devices, and general research machines. It's convergence that makes sense.

Continuing down the path of curriculum mashups and student-centered learning, Harold Jarche starts to ask specific questions about what this would look like. He begins his post with a link to a quote by Bill Fitzgerald and I like this particular snippet. " True student-centered teaching takes more preparation than traditional lecture because the teacher needs to be prepared for whatever outcome organically arises." Harold also points to Brian Alger's assertion that curriculum is really just a solution to a problem we have created. Get rid of the problem (our ideas about learning) and the need for curriculum starts to dissipate with it.

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Will Richardson expresses concern about recent conference panelists' mis-casting of blogging and, while Will doesn't want to come off sounding negative, he is absolutely right. It is a common practice these days for education officials to espouse opinions about blogging, social networking and other technologies. Listening to such opinions, however, I'm often left with the feeling that they have never blogged, tagged, or logged on to a social network. Thus grows the new digital divide.

When Clark Quinn writes about constructivist contamination, he's referring to "the constraints of higher education and industry, where timing is critical," and leads us to throw higher learning goals out the window. He has found success in his project-based learning strategies, however, and invites other to share their experiences and problems.

Lanny Arvan spent some valuable time writing about the process of evaluating student work and giving appropriate feedback over the course of a semester. When pondering how technology can play here, Lanny writes:

What does Internet technology do in this vein? The obvious key thing is to lessen the lags between submission, response, and revision. This promotes engagement and that is clearly good. It also makes teaching feel like running a sprint - it wears you out quickly. But I wonder if having a few quick bursts like this during the semester is better for the students than having a sustained but more reserved critique of the writing throughout.

Miguel Guhlin has a nice article in Tech Learning. He asks, "Do we as educators have the requisite schema, and the flexibility to adapt when we encounter such innovations? And, in the face of Read/Write Web technologies--a.k.a. blogs, wikis and podcasts -- is it possible that we lack the schema to understand exactly what is happening?" My answer is absolutely!

Bob Stein has an interesting take on the government's recent victory over Google that will force the search company to hand over private records. I think Bob is right -- we need to shift the argument. Bob writes:

"...the really important question (for the long term health of society) isn't "should Google have to surrender information to this or any other government" but "why should Google have such sensitive information in the first place?"

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Dave Warlick offers up three more bullet points on Web 2.0. And, while he apologizes for the use of the bullet-point motif, I think these three points are worth listing.:

• Content is increasingly conversation
• Content seemingly organizes itself
• People are now connecting to each other through their content -- through their ideas

Tim Stahmer offers up his reflections about the gap between what adults think is needed to improve education and what kids think. Tim writes, "What about asking the kids? How can we make decisions about teaching and learning while leaving out the people most impacted by those decisions?" Amen.

If you're wondering what great quotes you've missed at SXSW, check out Kathy Sierra's post. One of my favorite quotes comes from a session on research and polling data. "'Google' is the number one search term on Yahoo. 'Yahoo' is number three."

And Clarence Fisher is revisiting his recent meme of networks, studios, and classrooms. In his most recent post he asks "What about extending this theme so that it changes, merges, and becomes networks of studios? The empowering, absorbing space of the studio joined with the power of the network..." It's a good question and, in many ways, isn't this precisely what MySpace and other social networks are trying to do? Now, how to we convert those models (or appropriate their energy) into the improved education and learning?

Finally, Ben Vershbow over at The Institute for the Future of the Book has some questions and uneasiness about the Google acquisition of Writely.

"I've been a webmail user for the past several years, and more recently a blogger (which is a sort of online word processing) but I'm uneasy about what the Writely-Google union portends — about moving the bulk of my creative output into a surveilled space where the actual content of what I'm working on becomes an asset of the private company that supplies the tools."

Ben asks us to forgive him for sounding a bit paranoid but, heck, a little paranoia isn't a bad thing, huh?

Here's a summary of ideas and conversations from the edublogging community that have captured our attention in the past 48 hours.

Alan Levine has gives us a nice list of podcast work over at Maricopa Community Colleges. His posting provides this nice links to various staff and student projects as well as podcasts from their Honors Forum speakers and samples form their Bringing Digital Storytelling to the Classroom Learnshop. Also, if you're using Moveable Type and want a nice tutorial on how to create podcasts on that platform, you should definitely check out Alan's helpful set of podcasting instructions (with suggested ancillary tools).

James Farmer was asked recently for his opinion on about "closed-off journaling tools (limited audiences / student-teacher)," and while he could see little value in it personally, did suggest that both Elgg and Drupal could handle the job. While it makes little sense pedagogically to limit communities (insist on centripetal rather than centrifugal learning momentum), there

Jenny Levine provides a nice overview of catalog tagging at the UPenn library. As Jenny points out, the advantages of this tagging system are 1) Students can rely on their trust networks to locate materials that they wouldn't otherwise see, 2) Professors can assign books and tag each one with the course number, and 3) Librarians can easily create online subject oriented reading lists. This is a great example of how community tools like tagging can be used effectively to improve information resources in education.

Will Richardson has been focused on a particular thread of late, with posts on the mashup meme and now this post on teaching students to teach. He writes:

I love that idea of just breaking out of the textbook mold and presenting teachers and students with all sorts of choices from which to cobble together a more relevant and interesting learning experience. (Remember "Teacher as DJ"?) And then having students perform their own mashups to add to the menu. But that is such a different way of approaching the classroom.

Then, a bit later he adds:

But I wonder how much further down the road they'll be able to run than the kids who aren't getting the chance to create and connect their own content either because they can't afford it or their schools can't see it. When I think about this, I see amazing potential. But I also see a lot of kids getting left further and further behind. For too many, learning is still pre-packaged, and it will remain so for quite some time unless some major changes occur. The same holds true for educators who are unwilling to imagine what could be, much like the Oscar voters who couldn't bring themselves to see Brokeback Mountain because of the "unsettling" content (at least for them.)

I agree with Will that we are entering a new "great divide" and it's the difference between read-only and send-receive models. One group will Rip/Mix/Burn and the curriculum will indeed be a mashup, while another will carry on as usual processing static, pre-packaged information. David Warlick addresses this in his post by saying "I think that the problem is that the standards movement is simply a wagon that I'm not riding on." Such is true for a growing number of educators and students.

Here's our take on news that matters for Friday, March 10. Today's theme is simply WOW! , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- One reason for the success of Nintendo's DS handheld console? The Brain Training for Adults and More Brain Training for Adults titles. The Brain Training titles have sold nearly 3 million copies in Japan and have helped further the dominance of the console. They will be released in the US later this year.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Not wanting Sony Ericsson's blogging phone to get all the momentum, Nokia has announced an update to its cell phone blogging software -- Lifeblog 2.0 . Cingular is also stepping up to the plate with a new mobile blogging and social networking platform called Rabble.

• Handhelds -- iTunes keeps flexing its muscles with regards to content. This week -- a new subscription rollout featuring The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. And speaking of iPods, David Pogue at The New York Times has a nice review of Samsung's "reputed" iPods killer, the Z5. Engadget has a nice review of the ASUS and Founder[ UMPC (Intel) / Origami (Microsoft)] handheld tablet prototypes at CeBIT. Some really interesting features here. I'm particularly intrigued by the scroll wheels for entering text.


• Social Networks -- College administrators are now warning their student athletes to be careful of what they post on Facebook or other sources. The Pew Internet and American Life Project has recently released a new study -- this time on online dating. "Some 11% of all internet users and 37% of those who are single and looking say they have gone to dating Web sites A majority of them say they have had positive experiences and believe their use of such sites helps them to find a better match." And, finally, Skype has announced that it's rolling out its new Business Skype plan targeting companies with fewer than 10 employees. The service will launch with a new Web site (skype.biz) as well as new features and hardware.


• Technology Talks -- Well, it's official. Google has bought Writely. This is e a major score for Google in its push to replace the desktop software paradigm and make further inroads into Microsoft's dominance.

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

• From Clarence Fisher : Post on a good example of non-linear thinking by his students (made possible by asynchronous technologies).


• From Doug Johnson : Post on the value and benefits of face-to-face meetings .


• From Doug Johnson : Post on whether technology is making a difference in your school


• From Wesley Fryer : Post on the ins and outs of importing QuickTime movies into PowerPoint.


• From Chris Lehmann : Post of his technology mission statement for the Science Leadership Academy.


• From Christian Long: Post on how blogs ar teaching teachers to un-learn grading techniques.


• From Lilia Efimova: Post on women at work and the role of role models.


• From James Farmer: Post on blogging genres.


• From Dan Visel: Post on the if:book group's first e-book software release -- Sophie.

Here's our take on news that matters for Thursday, March 9. Today's theme is come together now, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- A new study gives some nice insight into the revenues related to online games. According to the just released DFC Intelligence Online Game Market Forecasts, subscription revenue from online games was $2 billion in 2005 and is expected to grow to $6.8 billion by 2011.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Podcasting in sports (where else?) is really taking off. Now folks can get an audio fix of their favorite pastimes, players, and teams whenever the need hits them.

• Handhelds -- T-Mobile because the first company to launch a branded version of the Opera mini browser yesterday at CeBIT. This addition extends T-Mobile's mobile Internet offering to a wider market by including the capability in low-end and mid-range phones. And this post by Shawn Oster reflects my feelings pretty well with regards to the new Origami devices. I'll definitely be in line by Christmas once prices have hit the $500 mark.


• Social Networks -- USA Today has a decent article summing up the problems many students (high school and college) hace had as a result of posting on MySpace and Facebook. Worth the read. Also, a nice update from eMarketer on Social Networks as a marketing tool. Some good statistics here.

• From Dave Warlick : Post on the value of new technologies and their ability to turn students into creators rather than digesters of content.


• From Bud Hunt : Post the slow-going process of getting students and teachers to make blogging a habit (and the time required to blog) .


• From D'Arcy Norman : Post on the effects of his own blogging and the effects of Stephen Downes' hiatus from blogging on his thinking..


• From Lanny Arvan : Thoughtful post on "burnout" and Stephen Downes' hiatus from blogging.


• From Will Richardson : Post on the mashup meme in education.


• From Christian Long: Post on the usage rate of MySpace compared to Google and American Idol.

Here's our take on news that matters for Wednesday, March 8. Today's theme is we can't wait , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Different camps may not agree on how to get more women to play video games, but there were plenty of women duking it out anyway at this year's Women in Games International conference held recently in San Francisco.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Six Apart announced its new Business Class blogging services today.Siz Apart powered approximately 75% of the blogs out there and this move to offer business-specific blogging tools is yet another indication that blogging has gone mainstream.

• Handhelds -- Check out these early photos of Microsoft's new Origami products. This could be a perfect "second" computer for road warriors who don't need the full-blown computer while they're mobile. The size is roughly equivalent to Sony's new e-book reader but this does oh-so-much more.


• Social Networks -- Yahoo is starting to get mashups in a big way. The company has announced four new application program interfaces for developers -- photos, calendar, shopping and bookmark tools. In addition, America Online has announced that it will be letting developers create their own version of its popular instant messaging client AIM. This means that developers will be able to reach about 63 million users of AIM by creating unique mash-ups, plug-ins and stand-alone applications. And, by the way, here's how some companies are reaching the MySpace generation.

• From Dave Warlick : Post on the passing away of the notion of education as a finished product for learners.


• From Albert Ip : Post of his comments on Dave Warlick's article on the changing shape of information.


• From EdTechTalk: Post on Wikitextbook Project 6 (part 2) -- a conversation with George Viebranz and Roy Norris.


• From Wesley Fryer : Post on potential curricular uses of Google Video.


• From Graham Attwell: Post on new generation learning and personal learning environments.

Here's our take on news that matters for Tuesday, March 7. Today's theme is new twists , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Of course there's money in gaming. We always knew that. It's just not what we thought it was. Popular video games are having a big impact on the authors who write the strategy guides for the games. Currently, "about 25 professional U.S. authors are writing strategy guides for video games -- which are big sellers. The guide for the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, has sold 748,000 since it was released in 2004. Author David Hodgson estimates that the 55 strategy guides he has written have sold about 1 million copies, reported the New York Times Sunday."

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Podcasting is even going with us to the gym. In this latest manifestation, fitness buffs are downloading workout motivation podcasts so that they can have their personal trainers with them whenever they feel the need to workout.

• Handhelds -- In a sign of even better things to come, Samsung's is showing off its new SGH-i310 8GB Windows Mobile 5.0 musicphone at CeBIT later this week. From the article: "Samsung has also bettered on the OS by (finally) dropping in Windows Mobile 5.0. Not just that kids, this pup also throws down a 2 megapixel shooter with flash, video recording and playback, TV-out, and microSD slot if you just gotta roll larger than 8GB. You also get USB 2.0 support for moving those AAC/MP3/WMA files on the quick and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo audio support if those built-in dual-speakers just ain't cuttin' it. On display starting this week at CeBIT with release (in Europe) during the second half of ’06. "


• Social Networks -- BusinessWeek has this article about making MySpace safe for kids. In it, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal talks about efforts to protect users of the social-networking site from sex predators. This, along with news that some districts are considering limiting access to blogging sites, points further to the inherent conflict between Web/Learning 2.0 (open) and current educational and societal paradigms (closed). In the end, it may be as simple as a war between views of abundance and scarcity.

• From Dave Warlick : Post on the concept of curriculum as a mashup.


• From Clarence Fisher : Post questioning the tendency of blog activity to trail off in the classroom.


• From Rob Wall : Post on Dave Weiner's definition of an unconference.


• From Wesley Fryer : Post on The Hangman Book Blog by Eric Langhorst’s 8th grade American History students in Liberty, Missouri.


• From Stephen Downes: Post on his hiatus and the turning off the lights (temporarily, we hope) at OL Daily.


• From Will Richardson: Post on the future of blogs in education.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, March 6. Today's theme is whou would have thought?, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- It was bound to happen -- online gaming has usurped even the most popular of analog roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- A recent survey in Shanghai, China showed that half the white-collar workers in the city had set up their personal weblogs. The primary purpose? Keeping up with their friends and community.

• Handhelds -- Google and ABC are teaming up to provide live daily webcasts of "World News Now" with rankings on the day's top search terms and the most popular stories on Google News. And, it may not be a handheld, exactly, but the $100 laptop is definitely mobile. Here are the latest pictures of the device to surface. Also, while the RIM settlement was nice for Blackberry business, it wasn't so kind to Palm. Blackberry stock rose by as much as 19% while Palm stock dropped 4% on news of the settlement.


• Social Networks -- As crazy as it may seem, sometimes it's easy to forget about Microsoft, particularly when the topic of discussion is Web 2.0. But, let us not forget the new Microsoft Live products announced back in November, 2005. According to Venkatesh Rangarajan, Microsoft is pretty close to the mark with its product. Finally, check out this article about myYearbook.com, the next pretender tot he MySpace throne.

• From Will Richardson : Post on Journalism 2.0.


• From Michael Feldstein : Post on video literacy.


• From Stephen Downes : Post responding to challenging remarks about the true efficacy of new technology tools in education.


• From Alex Halavais: Post on research regarding high school dropouts and the university becoming more like high school.

Here's our take on news that matters for Saturday, March 4. Today's theme is not that again , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- The Nintendo DS Lite Japan launch was a huge success. All available units were sold the first day.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Check out these results from a study on the blogging efforts by the nation's largest newspapers. The best blogging newspaper according to the study? The Houston Chronicle?

• Handhelds -- Whew! RIM (Blackberry service) finally settles their suit with NTP. So, for a mere $612.5 million, RIM can continue its service without threat of future lawsuits. On the flip side, because it chose to drag on the negotiations, the whole world is now aware that Blackberry is not the only option for push e-mail services on handhelds. And, in the end, it probably won't be a single company that knocks the iPod off the mountain, but rather a single convergent device. Peter King of Strategy Analytics estimates sales of phones equipped with MP3 music players will balloon to 796 million in 2010, accounting for three-quarters of all handsets sold, from 94 million this year. Over the same period, the market for stand-alone digital music players, should triple to 176 million units from 58 million, which while still strong, would be slower than the break-neck expansion of recent years. Finally, location-based services are becoming increasing popular for handhelds. Check out this article on Earthcomber's new service for Windows mobile devices.
  
• Social Networks -- You might want to check out CNN's Next Net 25 list, particularly the first group on social media. This gives a nice overview of what's out there besides the usual suspects like MySpace and Facebook.

• From Will Richardson : Post on the Orange County DOE pulling the plug on MySpace and all logspot blogs..


• From Graham Attwell : Post on Marc Prensky's presentation in Adelaide.


• From Clarence Fisher : Post on networks, studios, and classrooms.


• From Jay Cross : Post on business performance and Web work.

Here's our take on news that matters for Friday, March 3. Today's theme is expected serendipity, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Recent adjustments in new game console rollouts have lead analysts to predict a 4% slowdown in the videogame market for 2006.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- eMarketing has released projections that put the active listener count for podcasts at 80 million by 2010.

• Handhelds -- Nokia is predicting that TV viewing on mobile phones will have deep penetration in the masses by 2008.
  
• Social Networks -- MTV owner Viacom acknowledges it needs to get into social networking. The company has designs to partner with or purchase a social networking site in the nexty year.

• From Lanny Arvan : Poignant post on a list of things he doesn't understand.


• From Dave Warlick : Post on Will Richardson's presentation on wikis at the IL Technology Conference for Educators.


• From Jeremy Hiebert : Post on classrooms as studios and personal doing environments.


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