21apples

I Was Escorted From A Mall For Taking Photographs of My Family

Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:19:50 CST

It’s two days before Christmas, and I had to finish my holiday shopping for family gifts. I headed to Ross Park Mall in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a mall owned/run by the Simon Property Group, INC; a mall I grew up going to.

I had my camera around my shoulder because I wanted to pick up a tripod, and needed to test it out with my camera. While taking a break in the food court with my two brothers, mom and dad, I ordered a veggie gyro at Flamers (which was delicious, by the way). The young man making my gyro struck up a conversation, and was intrigued that I taught digital photography in New York City, so I offered to take his photo. He enthusiastically agreed, and I took the photo (left), and gave him my Moo card so that he’d be able to get the copy from my Flickr set, later. I then went and sat with my family while we ate. After we were done, we took some cheezy, mall family shots at the food court tables!

Then, we walked around the mall some more. As we were walking, I was approached my a mall security guard. He told me that taking photos in the mall or of the mall was against mall policy. He told me that I would need to delete the photos while he watched.

As I teach a digital media course, I’m familiar with photographers’ rights (resource 1, resource 2, resource 3, resource 4).I explained that I would not delete the photos, but that I would leave the mall immediately. I asked if this was ok. The guard (Maurice) explained again that it was against policy, and that I needed to delete the photos. I repeated that I would not delete them, but I would leave. He relented, and said that he would need to follow me out. He did so. When nearing the door with my shocked family, it occurred to me that I wasn’t done shopping! I asked Maurice if I could put my camera in the car, and return to do my shopping. He said that I was violating mall policy, and could not do that. I asked to speak to the manager, if it was possible. He said that it was.

The uniformed manager arrived, spoke with Maurice, and then returned to me. He repeated the policy violation, and I repeated my request. I added that my mom would leave with the camera, and I would continue to shop if that was ok. I added that I just need to finish my Christmas shopping! (gotta tug at the heart strings a bit) He said, let’s make a deal, you delete the photos, keep the camera, and then keep shopping. I said that I couldn’t delete them, but I’d gladly remove the camera from the premises. He said that he didn’t want me to leave, and appreciated that I wasn’t being hostile, and he wanted us both to have a happy holiday. While his words were nice, he was still very stern, and talking very close to my face. I was really itching to take his photo at that moment, but didn’t think it would go well. b I really couldn’t understand what they wanted. I knew that they couldn’t make me delete the shots from my own camera. But I also knew that they could ask me to leave, and that I’d have to (private property, and then I’d be trespassing if I didn’t leave), but lastly, and most importantly, I needed my gifts! In the end, after three mall security guards were around us, and one Ross Township police officer was standing just nearby, he agreed to let me take the camera out of the mall, and return to my shopping.

I’ve never felt so out of place in the United States, let alone my hometown mall! People are discussing this issue all over, from NPR, to Flickr New York City members, to the NYCLU vs the NYPD. It’s incredible to think about how many security/police resources were directed at me, the gyro-photographer while I actually heard their radios going off over a car accident in the parking lot! But to them, policy became security. And perhaps, in some way I can’t possibly understand, the photo to the right is some sort of security breach/threat to the mall.

I’m sort of writing this blog post stream-of-thought, and a somewhat fired-up-stream-of-thought, so I hope that it makes sense. I’d love to hear some simple responses on whether this is reasonable, whether I was unreasonable, or whether the laws are clear/unclear. Any input from photographers, mall goers, gyro eaters, and community members, would be much appreciated.

An exasperated, but Christmas-present—mission accomplished arvind. Happy holidays all!

reporting from the People of Color Conference

Sat, 6 Dec 2008 15:54:33 CST

I am currently at the NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) People of Color Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. This is the 21st year of the conference, and here are some overwhelming statistics about the conference:

this is the second biggest conference in the 21-year history
there are 1,905 adults here from 560 different schools from around the world
there are 1,211 students here for the Student Diversity Leadership Conference, from 260 different schools

I had the privilege of being a presenter with three other teachers at independent schools in New York City; one from the Brooklyn Friends School, one from The Town School, and one from the Trevor Day School. We presented a workshop for people of color who went to independent schools, and now teach in independent schools. We had a great turnout, and a great discussion on making that transition from student, to teacher. The People of Color Conference is a powerful experience, and my second conference has been a phenomenal one, thus far. I have found that many educators don't know about the conference, so if you are interested in learning more, please read NAIS's writeup about the conference. The conference has an amazing online program, so do take a look at that to get more info on all that's offered. My school is making efforts to be more fiscally conservative during these uncertain times, so I had to pay for my conference registration ($600!), travel, food, etc personally, but it might be one of the best investments in myself that I've ever made. If you're a person of color working in independent schools, do yourself a favor and get yourself to the 2009 conference. You won't regret it! Happy to answer questions via email, or comments, so get in touch!

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Tags: POCC, NAIS, People of Color, conference, 2008, professional development, New Orleans

Holiday Present: Flip HD Camera

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:14:33 CST

We've been having a great time use Flip video cameras at the school where I teach. We have students video tape their robots (one-button recording, no memory cards), plug the camera directly into a laptop (no wires needed), and then upload to our school account at Blip.tv. Then, take the little code snippet, pop it into our EdTech blog, or our Moodle, and the video is ready to go. Simple. Effective. Awesome. Now, Flip came out with the Flip HD, and David Pogue put up a great video review. Do yourself a favor, get one of these for the holidays for a few hundred dollars (or less for the cheaper ones), and forget about all that klunky old video hardware.

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Tags: video, David Pogue, camera, Flip, HD, robots, robotics, class, blog, education, sharing, caring

Things I'm Bringing to NEIT2008 Unconference

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 23:55:58 CST

My techie packing list for the unconference:

I think that's more than enough nerdiness for tonight. How's your packing list looking?

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Tags: NEIT2008, NYSAIS, unconference, hardware, equipment, nerd, travel, Mohonk

NEIT2008 Unconference Planning Guide

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:53:52 CST

I provided a little writeup for the NY techies list to help them get ready for the NEIT2008 Unconference, beginning on Wednesday. I posted the info on, *gulp*, email, so I'm redoing it here, now. We're really excited to have author of SEND, David Shipley and Generation Yes educator, Sylvia Martinez there to help push the conversations.

Q: Is it too late to register?

A: Heck no! http://neit.wikispaces.com

Q: Need a ride to Mohonk?

A: Check the rideshare: http://neit.wikispaces.com/Ride+Board (thanks, Bill!)

Q: What is NEIT?

A: The NYSAIS Education and Information Technology unconference. For you auditory learners, listen to the NEIT2008 preview podcast at EdTechTalk: http://www.edtechtalk.com/21cl_83

Q: What types of tools should I bring with me?

A: Read the how to prepare guide: http://neit.wikispaces.com/How+to+prepare

Q: Who is coming to this thing?

A: So far, over 130 of “us.” But add your info to the who’s coming page (hint: click Edit This Page): http://neit.wikispaces.com/Who%27s+Coming%3F+2008

Q: How can I communicate with people during the unconference?

A: Via Twitter (http://twitter.com). Sign up for a free account, and start following: http://twitter.com/NEIT for unconference info. Oh, and see who else is on Twitter via the who’s coming page: http://neit.wikispaces.com/Who%27s+Coming%3F+2008

Q: How can I share photos during the unconference?

A: Via Flickr (http://flickr.com). Tag all your photos: NEIT2008 and they’ll automatically show up on the unconference wiki slideshow.

Q: Speaking of the unconference wiki, what is that?

A: It’s where you can find the schedule, rides to/from Mohonk, info on how to prepare, the schedule, the notes from breakout groups, photos, blogs posts and more. Oh, and you can edit it to year heart’s content! It’s here: http://neit.wikispaces.com/

Q: How can I contribute before, during, and after the conference?

A: Using blogs, podcasts, wikis, Twitter, and any other web2.0 tools, just tag things: NEIT2008

If you read all of this, nice work! Now that you’re geared up, just get up to the mountain safely. See you Wednesday,

arvind

on behalf of the NEIT2008 planning committee

http://neit.wikispaces.com/Organizers

p.s. what happened to shorter blogging?

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Tags: NEIT2008, NEIT, unconference, Mohonk, NYSAIS, technology, education

Long Blog Posts Overwhelm Me

Fri, 7 Nov 2008 10:04:11 CST

Some people are such good writers, and their blog posts are like micronovels. I love reading them, but sometimes have trouble with reading something so dense, via my screen. Or even worse, via my iPod touch screen. I like blogs that are short, to the point, and easy to digest. When I want to really sink my mind into something for an extended period of time, I pick up a book. Blogs turning into journal articles, and even books, scare me. What do you think?

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Tags: bookswriters blogs culture reading

Using Shopping To Green A Business

Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:33:09 CDT

A video from Carrotmob on how they use local consumer power to encourage businesses to be more environmentally responsible. By combining their buying power, they managed to find a business willing to use a part of their profits for "greening" their store. One of the best parts of the videos is the thoughtful and playful video they put together explaining the event. Making it spreadable through the video-sharing site Vimeo helps them get even more attention through people like me, who want to see their work passed on. Godspeed Carrotmob, and thanks to Dean Shareski for pointing me to the video. Watch below. Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

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Tags: Carrotmob, DeanShareski, Vimeo, environment, green, consumer, collective, power

NEIT2008 Conference Planning Moving Forward

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:07:00 CDT

Alex and I were working on the NEIT2008 (NYSAIS Education and Information Technology) Conference wiki site. We're trying to determine what sections would be most helpful. Keep in mind that it is an unconference, so we want to keep the structure open as much as possible. Please go edit the page if you'd like, or just leave me suggestions here. Richard asked me yesterday if I was still blogging. I pretty much said no, but I guess I am. It's all about the inspiration, I suppose.ne

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Tags: neit2008, NYSAIS, conference, unconference, "Alex Ragone, "Richard Kassissieh, "NYSAIS Education and Information Technology

Learning to Change

Wed, 14 May 2008 11:27:24 CDT

Recently I have felt like my blog was dying. Joi Ito said it best when he said that Twitter killed his blogging. Mine too. Well, I'm going to blame it on Twitter, anyways. This video brought me back to my blog, because I wanted people who actually look here to see it. "Learning to Change" speaks to the ways in which we must educate our students for the future. 5 minutes very well spent. Just watch it. It's just below

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Tags: videoeducation future learning teachers students networks 21apples "Daniel Pink

Growing up Online - PBS Frontline

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:21:44 CST

PBS Frontline will be airing "Growing up Online" tonight at 9 PM EST. I like Frontline a lot beacuse of their balanced reporting. The fact that danah boyd is featured on the show makes me think they did their homework. I have written here before, and do believe, she is the smartest English-speaking person I've encountered on dealing with kids and the online world. Do not miss this program, or if you do, watch it online at their website starting tomorrow. Here is a trailer for tonight's episode:
Tomorrow on 21st Century Learning, Alex and I will be discussing tonight's show. Hope you tune in to the live chatroom at 12:00pm EST to discuss with us.

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Tags: PBS, Frontline, "danah boyd, "social networking, online, teens, "21st Century Learning, "Alex Ragone, EdTechTalk, education, technology

Initial Thoughts on POCC

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:27:26 CST

Wow, the opening session is in a giant room in the Boston Convention Center. i am overwhelmed by how many people are here, how many sessions there are, and how many possibilities I have to explore.

The keynote Frank Wu was exciting, the energy in the room is palpable, and I can’t wait to get started. Still haven’t decided if I will liveblog more than this.

Technorati Tags: Boston, Frank Wu, NAIS, National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference, pocc, sdlc

NAIS People of Color Conference Opening

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 09:21:47 CST

NAIS (National Association of Independent Schools) POCC (People of Color Conference)
Nov 29-Dec 1, 2007
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Pat Bassett, president of NAIS opened the conference
3 books that he read before the conference

Difficult Conversations
Courageous Conversations About Race
Fierce Conversations

————-

Gene Batiste – NAIS Vice President
544 Independent Schools represented for POCC

First POCC - First National Conference for Teachers and Administrators of Color in Independent Schools

————-

Liz Fernandez, and Rodney Glasgow

- 100 student leaders were trained this morning on peer facilitation to lead student sessions all week
- regional action planning teams
- affinity groups with adults by gender

————-

Boston City Councilman – Charles C. Yancey
- discussing how many POC activists have come from and through the city of Boston from Malcom X
- official document from City of Boston City Council congratulates the SDLC and it’s organizers for its 14 years of training for indep school students
- Charles C. Yancey, Chuck Turner, Felix Arroyo, Sam Yoon
- 2nd proclamation from City Council to the POCC accepted by Gene Batiste

Fire Marshall just closed the building because too many people are standing in the back. Whoops

————-

Ira Brown (sp?) introducing opening speaker, Frank Wu, Dean of Wayne State University Law School

I’m not obsessed with race, we all are. Even if we’re not actively thinking about it, we still are thinking about it

I don’t wake up in the morning, get ready for work and think, “I’m an Asian American, here I go”

I’ll have an encounter that will remind me that race is important. I’ll be headed down the sidewalk minding my own business. A kid is walking by, he sees me, he smiles, I know what’s coming next. He strikes a karate pose, he says, ching chong, then he laughs and runs off. I could run after him, collar him and call him a bigot. But I wouldn’t, he’s just a kid. He doesn’t realize how hurtful it is to me.

“You speak English so well. To which I reply, gee thanks, so do you.”

“I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired” – Fannie Lou Hamer

Frank Wu does not think the discussion on diversity will ever be over. It’s not a process, but an outcome. Consider democracy, no matter who you vote for next year, to fulfill your citizenship responsibility and the person next year complains about how we voted 2 years ago, when will this thing be over??? You’ll know they missed an important civics lesson. Similarly lies the work of diversity.

”..we will make good on the promise of a diverse democracy.”

————-

The Windsor School small chorus is performing “The Light of Day”

————-

Technorati Tags: Boston, Charles Yancey, city council, education, Frank Wu, Gene Batiste, NAIS, National Association of Independent Schools, People of Color Conference, POCC, Wayne State University

E-Book Reader That Might Be Worth It

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:01:46 CST

Amazon just announced their new e-book reader, the Kindle. It is pricey, $400, but I think the idea is pretty stellar. A super-easy to read screen (not like a laptop screen) that works in any light and is high resolution. Big previous/next page buttons to help you flip through the books. And you can download books anywhere there is cellular service (with no plan needed to buy). Books are a little expensive, from about $8-16, but at least I can feel good not having to buy paper (while feeling bad about adding more poisonous electronics to the world, hmmm).

I can imagine myself on the subway, on a flight, on my sofa or at my desk reading Love in the Time of Cholera (what I'm reading right now) with the lightweight, simple e-book reader. Some people think it's terrible, but I think they're not focused on what the product is for. It is not a laptop, not meant to be a laptop. Laptops are good at other things, but not for reading books on.

If I had to wish for a use in schools? Well, every student would have a Kindle with all of their textbooks on it. Then, that's all they'd have to carry around, and it is lighter than the average paperback. I would consider one feature - the ability to take notes/highlight digitally on the Kindle. The other feature I'd like to see personally is the ability to send (and lose access to) an e-book I'm finished with to a friend. You could even charge me a buck or two, but passing on/receiving books is one of my favorite past times.

Keep it up Amazon, we're getting there...

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Tags: KindleAmazon e-book reader education product hardware electronics

Shifting Our Practice

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:15:26 CST

For over a decade, NYSAIS has run the amazing Conference for IT Managers and Librarians. This will be my sixth time attending. Each of the past 5 years, I’ve been pushed. My understanding, my knowledge, my teaching – it’s all been pushed to a level higher than when I arrived. I joined the conference planning team at the end of last year, and it was then where the idea of an unconference arose. Why would we change something that works so well? “Well” not solely being my interpretation – but the people who come year after year are a testament to it.

So why change? That’s what technology is about, the definition even. It’s about advancement. When something better is possible, you build it. You buy it. But most importantly, you use it. Unconferences change the paradigm of a conference. It’s about the people who are there to attend, not the people who are there to present. This year, there are no workshops on the schedule. No speakers, no sessions, no tracks. Just open spaces, where a facilitator will organize into groups where we can learn and teach from each other. Is it risky? No. It’s been done before many a time, so no real reason to fear. People still will, but that’s not good. We need to be risk-takers are we want our students to be. Calculated risk tasking as adults so that we can bring better education to our students.

Some of the most positive comments we receive are about the exchanges people have in the hallways and over the lunch table. This unconference is about making those conversations the entire 3 days. Let people share their practice and learn from each other.

note: This blog post is a bit hokey – I’m not particularly worried about that though, because I feel like it’s truthful. Oh how these conferences/unconferences get the best of us!

Technorati Tags: 21apples, change, education, future, NYCIST, NYSAIS, NEIT2007, school change, schools

NYSAIS Unconference Is But A Week Away!

Thu, 8 Nov 2007 17:57:49 CST

I love the NYSAIS conference for technologists and librarians. It is held every year that the beautiful and scenic Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, NY. My colleagues who attend are bright, enthusiastic and friendly, and I learn so much from them in a span of 3 days. Last year we use the New York City technologists (NYCIST) website as our main blogging/discussion site, and will continue to do so this year as well. This year we added a wiki to the mix as well, where people can post topics they want to learn about. The main shift however this year is that it has moved from a conference to an unconference. We have employed Kaliya Hamlin to facilitate the entire 3 days. Kaliya defines an unconferences as, "The space between talking heads and a cocktail party with participant interaction around a theme or purpose. " Attendees always comment on how the best experiences they had was in the hallways between sessions discussing with their colleagues. So, we made the entire conference discussions in the hallways. Sort of. That is the idea behind the unconference. Practically, it means no pre-planned schedule or sessions. We build the entire agenda with the people in the room and the expertise in the room. Kaliya assures us that is works. You can read more about her unconferencing here. We will be live broadcasting as much of the conference as we can at EdTechTalk.com, Flickr photos are here, del.icio.us bookmarks are here, and Twitter friend to follow is here. More details as we get closer...

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Tags: NEIT2007, NYSAIS, NYCIST, Mohonk, del.icio.us, Flickr, EdTechTalk, Twitter, KaliyaHamlin, wiki, blog, Drupal

Blogging from Mac OS 10.5 Leopard

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:11:22 CDT

So I ponied up $116 for Apple's new operating system, Leopard. Ok, well actually, I used a gift certificate I had, but still, I could have picked up an iPhone instead. I chose Leopard mainly because I had been having so much trouble with my very-new iMac and was hoping Leopard would cure what ails me. After a somewhat tedious install (due to my previously mentioned troubles) I got it up and running. It's pretty, I'll give 'em that. It doesn't have a lot of new features, but it has a few. My favorite so far is Time Machine (see screeshot to the left). I turned on Time Machine, pointed it to my external firewire drive, and that was it. Now, my Mac takes hourly backups of every file I have (including photos, music, documents, etc). The larger the firewire drive, the farther back my backups will be kept. So I could go back and look at my Word document for my 3-weeks-ago version, or I could find a photo I accidentally deleted. Hopefully I will also have all my data were my Mac to crash. Also hopefully, I won't have to test that theory. I will blog more on Leopard if interesting things arise. Would I recommend you buy it? Probably not. Wait until you buy a new Mac, it will come with Leopard.

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Tags: Apple, Mac, software, Leopard, operatingsystem, time machine, backup

Learning is Free

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:22:07 CDT

Technically, the Internet is just a bunch of computers connected together so that they can exchange data. As a result of this though, the wired world ended up with a massive communications network. And somehow, an idea of free culture has spread round and round this network. That helps everyone. There are many free things I could write about, but today it's about free learning.

The K12 Online Conference is a free, completely online conference about using web 2.0 and new technologies in the classroom. It is facilitated by a group of dedicated volunteers, and the presentations are created by volunteers as well. I happen to be a presenter this year, but that's not why I'm writing about it. I'm writing because the conference is a treasure trove of information for any educator looking to improve their craft.

Just like a traditional conference there are keynotes and conference strands. The great part if that for most events you don't have to be there live, you can listen whenever you want, wherever you want. Some events though are live and interactive. If you have an iPod (or other mp3 audio player) it is incredibly easy to tune in. Simply follow the link to the audio feed, and subscribe using iTunes. Then, each time a new presentation is released, your computer will automatically download the presentation. Then, just listen on your iPod or on your computer. Keep in mind that there are enhanced (or video) presentations as well, but your iPod might only be able to play audio files (unless you have a video-capable iPod or digital audio player).

If you are interested in using technology in your classroom, I couldn't recommend this conference more. There is great information for first time attendees, a help desk in case you get stuck and each presentation has a way for you to find a mentor on that subject (or be a mentor).

Take a risk and learn something new. It's easy, it's free, and it is what the new culture of the Internet is all about. Or at least it should be about. Remember to send your comments in via the website or e-mail so people can know what you got out of the conference.

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Tags: education, conference, free, 21apples, k12online07, presentation, professional development, k12online07pn09,

The Real Truth About Teens and Online Social Networks

Wed, 16 May 2007 22:06:32 CDT

For the past few years I have been educating students, teachers, administrators and parents about the “realities” of online social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc). For the past few years, I have been wrong. Well, somewhat wrong, anyway. At the encouragement of law enforcement, the media, and other responsible adults, I have feared for the safety of the young women I educate. I was concerned that the details they were sharing online put them at risk for predation and victimization. My main concern was never really their physical safety, as that was such a minute possibility. I was mainly concerned about their futures, their college admissions, their job opportunities, but mainly, the possible humiliation they faced by the wrong people viewing their profiles. In that way, I was right.

Last week, before Congress, the four foremost experts in the country testified to the reality of online youth victimization. Every law enforcement person I’ve heard, and most educators I’ve heard have been wrong. The truth, according to the experts: 1) teens who post information online are no more likely to be victims of sex crimes than those who don’t 2) of all the statuatory rape in the U.S. last year, 7% of victims met the perpetrators online, the rest offline 3) parent education does not work.

There are many more important facts pointed out, so watch the hour and twenty minute testimony. It is the most important professional development I have had in the last few years. I can’t recommend it any more strongly. Original video here, transcript here, or YouTube video below. A post to follow will be on what type of education we need to do for/with our students. Your suggestions would be much appreciated.

technorati tags:MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Bebo, safety, online, education, students, teachers, parents, danah boyd, David Finkelhor, Michele Ybarra, Amanda Lenhart, Tim Lordan, Congress, victimization, myths

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9th Graders Discuss Their Laptop Program

Sun, 13 May 2007 17:01:22 CDT

After reading Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops in the New York Times on May 4th, I decided to use it as a discussion piece with my technology classes. I teach in a K-12 girls school in New York City with a 1:1 laptop program in grades 8-12. I wanted the students to respond to the article using their own experiences as students in a laptop school. A colleague at another school, Bill Campbell, suggested I record this discussion. The audio below is 1 class of my 9th grade answering a series of questions from me. As you will hear, I did not suggest any particular answers, but asked them to speak freely.

If you wish to use this audio, please let me know. Since it is a broadcast of a school class, I would like to let me school know where it is being used. Contact me at arvind [at] 21apples.org.

technorati tags:laptop, 1:1, New York Times, Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops, article, schools, education, technology, podcast, audio, students

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Dropping Laptop Programs

Wed, 9 May 2007 21:14:13 CDT

The New York Times article Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops has been getting a lot of attention in the EdTech blogosphere. I have been using the article as a discussion starter with students. Both sections of my 9th grade tech class, and the one 8th grade section I teach have had lively discussions on the article.

We started by identifying the main reasons cited for dropping laptop programs: cost, bad behavior using the laptops, technical support difficulties, and no proven educational benefit.

Then students were asked to critique the rationale reported on in the article. Most students argued that there were many holes in the arguments. Mainly they used their own experiences as students in a 1:1 laptop school to counter the reasoning. The one that seemed to frustrate them most was the lack of proven educational benefits. Almost every student said the laptop has helped them in their student lives, and had testimony as backup.

The students could actually barely finish reading the short article because they were so incensed by the writing. They immediately wanted to counter each sentence they came upon. Afterwards, they explained that their urgency was because they were afraid we would listen to The Times and get rid of our laptop program.

I am an ed tech evangelist much of the time, but when I think about it, it is rarely to/for students. It is for teachers, for administrators and for parents. It was quite a breath of fresh air to hear students voicing why they want laptops in their school.

One student: “They make it seem like walls are crashing down in laptop schools. Why don’t they come see our school to see how well it can work? I think we use laptops perfectly.”

In related news, this week we interview Lorrie Jackson from the Laptop Institute on 21st Century Learning. Tune in to EdTechTalk.com to listen to the episode.

technorati tags:education, laptop, laptops, New York, New York Times, 1:1, Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops, K-12, K12, students, future

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Girls and Computers Live Now!

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 19:40:29 CDT

Right now, right this second as I post this, I am Skype-connected to Concord Academy in Concord Massachusets where they are hosting a Girls and Computers meeting with about 20-30 educators. At the same time, my other laptop is taking the audio of the call and pushing it out live to EdTechTalk.com where people are listening live.

I also just called in to a teacher in Pittsburgh and connected her to the Concord meeting. She is talking about the computer programming world Alice which she has found appeals to a lot of the young women at the Winchester Thurston School.

Some great resources being talked about in terms of attracting girls and young women to computers, technology and programming. Podcast will hopefully be up soon at EdTechTalk/21cl.

technorati tags:girls, women, computer science, programming, technology, education, school, Alice, EdTechTalk, 21st Century Learning, Winchester Thurston, Concord Academy, live

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Live from PodcampNYC

Sat, 7 Apr 2007 14:41:18 CDT

I am liveblogging from PodcampNYC. Jeff Lebow and Jennifer Madrell are here running the Worldbridges Broadcasting Studio (pictures on Flickr later tonight). It is great to meet them in person! I am also Twittering, so you can track me there. Oh my, so many ways to be involved. Tune in to Worldbridges to listen to the stream (Jeff just interviewed the Podcast Pickle! Wait till you see those pics). If you don’t have access to a computer but want to join in, call in to 1-712-451-6100, pin code 999374#.

Podcamp by the way is an unconference. No big name speakers, if you want to run a workshop, you just run one. Amazing!

technorati tags:podcast, Jeff Lebow, Jennifer Maddrell, webcast, live, podcampnyc, The New Yorker Hotel, interviews, liveblog, podcamp, unconference

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SXSWi: Bruce Sterling's SXSW Rant

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:18:06 CDT

Bruce Sterling’s SXSW Rant
Bruce Sterling, Visionary in Residence, Wired.com
Bruce’s blog

My thoughts before the text: A great rant. Do catch this podcast. Open, honest critique of problems with the Internet as well as celebration of potential.

Video is the stupidest medium. TV is the wasteland.

Viacom sued Google today for $1 billion. It’s old media vs. new media. We’ll see how this plays out.

I remember when people were saying the Internet would grow up and be more like TV. That is not it, broadband has beaten everything, it is just so much more.

The Internet Generation cares nothing about proprietary media. Time is not on the side of the giants.

Jokai Benkler, Henry Jenikns are some of the big thinkers right now. (I wrote on them yesterday)

Lev Manovich – Soft Cinema

These three guys are coming from three angles at this and they are like the acceptable face of Richard Stallman. Stallman is radical and you can’t introduce to mass media. Benkler, Manovich and Jenkins have the diction to spread the right messages into the establishment.

I was using Google and I realized that information was free. Information wants to be free. This device was delivering a torrent of the most arcane stuff imaginable for no cost. You put Google and YouTube together and it is game over for the 80’s. It is done, there is no area of struggle.

We have the first world: the global market – build it in China, ship it to Utah
Second world: governments – local, UN, state
Third world: common space peer production
Fourth world: disorder – parts of the world where they don’t have any of this

In 10 years this might be quite a bit more obvious

Journalists worry about things like Craigslist. If Craig were a mogul people would understand that. He isn’t trying to be that. He just wanted 200 million friends. He gutted major media outlets and isn’t making any money. We have more readership than ever but no classifieds means no money.

There are downsides to this. The golden opportunity is oversold. It is a new world of laptop gypsies instead of solid professionals. Jenkins is enamored by fandom, I think a lot of fandom stuff is crap – repurposing Harry Potter characters because you don’t have the literary creativity to come up something is ridiculously.

Mashups are novelty music. They won’t be around in 10 years. To pretend like that is creative work is wrong. It is powerful, but not good. It isn’t good music.

In a contemporary Hollywood product every frame is touched by a compositor it means that everyone who can afford the machine (and it is getting cheaper) everyone will be able to create that type of product.

Yes, the broadband is growing. Things are getting faster all the time. That doesn’t mean that we are becoming better artists.

If you have a CusinArt you think everything should go through the chopper blades. Because we have new media products we think everything should be presented that way. The mere fact that it is technically possible doesn’t mean it is better.

DeviantArt is not great. Electronic Art isn’t great. It is interesting, some of it, but no great art there. DeviantArt isn’t even that deviant. It is folk culture. I am not an elitist, but folk culture is for hicks. Hicks are fine, they are there and are good.

We need to eliminate film studies, media studies and we need to come up with ways of analyzing new realities. We need real academics. To valorize them because they are shiny is the electronic hick. It is cool and I couldn’t do it before so it must be good. No.

55 million blogs, so some must be good. Well no, some must be good blogs, but we don’t even know what blogs are yet. I doubt in 10 years if anyone will even use that term. t is hard to find a blog that will make you cry or has the effect of fine art. Now embedded video, words, Flickr set, Digg this: we don’t have a vocabulary for describing this yet. Sort f magazine analysis: nice writing, good typeface, good photo, etc, but that doesn’t express it. We don’t have web analysis skills yet.

I am very suspicious of any internet item that is about turning on the information factory and leaving the room. It is not a mode of self expression, it is machine expression.

95% of the net is spam. Imagine if you turned on the TV and immediately someone tried to rob you or you go to the movie theater and they pick your pocket.

Reed Hundt (his blog),former head of FCC, has this weary look on his face. To say he is disenchanted doesn’t begin to express it. He was involved in spectrum auction. He came up with mad scheme to sell 700mHz spectrum to coalition of police, emergency service providers. He wants to take a couple channels from broadcast TV. Broadcast TV debases even the poverty-stricken people who watch it. It was bad before American Idol. Broadcast television is an archaism. You can take that spectrum and put the Internet on them. Put the Internet over TV and saturate TV areas with broadband. Should that happen, so many borders between media would erase. Phone or TV or Internet would all just use what was there. Look at his website. It is paralyzingly dull, but it is important. Go give him some Neem social networking crap, I don’t care. Give us some damn broadband. Pry it out of the hands of the aging, useless broadcasters.

Benkler – how do you build the third type of thing with collective intelligence. You don’t just open a website to comments. You have to engineer it with thought and care. Socially-motivated, commons-based peer production, here’s how:

First, divvy up the work (you’re not paying and you can’t draft). It has to be granular, modular and integrateable. Even if I do it for 5 minutes I will do it good. 5 minutes or 500 minutes both move it positive direction (granular). Modular – has to be broken up into small pieces. Integrateable – has to have broad social impact, has to be useful.

Self-selected: people are choosing to join you. You have to have a selection process. Then you need an in or out mechanism. In or out membrane of participation.

Communication: need to have platform to talk but not kill each other

Humanization: I don’t believe in this so not covering it

Trust construction: teach people how to trust each other

Norm creation: assembling all these people, they are trying to figure out how to fit in. People have to be acculturated into the space. What’s normal behavior here?

Transparency: how do you stay transparent. When it is small it is obvious. When it is hundreds of thousands of people it becomes an organizational problem.

Monitoring: you actually need a police force (Benkler doesn’t say this). Someone has to watch it all the time. Then who monitors the monitor. State has this problem, common space has this problem. A human difficulty.

Peer review: the people in the group need to know who is good at it.

Discipline: when it is not coming down from powers on high, this is a tough one.

Fairness: Marxist analysts are upset about web 2.0. radically upset about MySpace. A giant machine for teaching false consciousness, teeneagers are roped in and forced to work for nothing and forward Rupert Murdoch’s right wing war against the world.

I don’t think this is a blip. Former professional are being erased by things on the net. Nice, put-your-kids-through-college jobs are melting.

Institutional sustainability: I don’t know how long things like Slashdot can exist. Digg, Redditt and others are eating their lunch. They threw it out there like chum and saw what happened. There was no future plan, no board of directors. I don’t know what sustainability looks like here, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

Al Qaeda is the #1 socially-motivated, commons-based peer production has solved almost all of this. Sustainability? You can’t kill them, more just come up in their place. They are existence proof of this form of organization. KKK, 4th generation warfare groups are good examples.

Benkler: in order to make this work we need to understand the computers are platforms for self-expression rather than well-behaved appliances. Computers stink as appliances: they are hard to use, they change a lot, painful to use, steep learning curve, highly innovative. When you see an appliance it probably kills commons-based peer production. When something barely works (like Ubuntu) it is probably a place for self-expression and peer production.

Benkler put his PDF all over the web, don’t have to pay for it. Then he opened a wiki to explore all the legal, ethical, etc implications. There is nobody there. It is easy to open a wiki and easy to post, but it is not easy to be as smart as Yokai Benkler. He feels like there must be thousands of people to advance his brilliant forward thinking concepts and there just isn’t. Go into any left wing blog and see thousands of people agreeing and saying stuff. There may be two or three people in this room that might be able to help this guy. I can’t engage in a conversation that might help this guy – he is out of my league. If you are in his league you ought to go help him.

Eastern European poet: Cheslav Milosh, Polish communist dissident who got chased out of Poland. He really paid some dues. He wrote it in Berkely because Californians offered him shelter, then became a prof, married a California. A poem about serenity and a sense of fulfillment.
“Gift” – I didn’t transcribe the poem, and I can’t find it online, but in my humble opinion, it wasn’t that central to his talk. Catch it on the podcast. Oh yeah, and I couldn’t find it on Google.

technorati tags:Bruce Sterling, Wired, Visionary in Residence, sxsw, sxswi, video, YouTube, Google, Jokai Benkler, Henry Jenkins, Richard Stallman, Lev Manovich, Reed Hundt, Cheslav Milosh, Al Qaeda, Socially-motivated, commons-based peer production, South by Southwest, future, rant, liveblog

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SXSWi: Five Tips to Make Your Lame Podcast Listenable

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:51:49 CDT

Five Tips to Make Your Lame Podcast Listenable
Steve Mack, Principal, LUX Media
Jose Castillo, thinkjose

Mack: book out on streaming media, book out on webcasting, been doing this for a long time. most podcasts are lame, but they don’t have to be

Castillo: owned commercial recording studio, been in the audio business. Into the social “stuff” and new media.

5 tips + 1 bonus tip on how not to suck

Tip 1: Know your audience
Home Brewing Podcast – targeted at home brewers.

Make sure you spend time on the tools for how listeners can interact with you – comments, wikis, e-mail, Twitter
Example: Ze Frank puts user-submitted video into his posts, encourages interaction

Let people leave voice messages and include them, then those people tell all their friends, it spreads.

Tip 2: good equipment is cool
$99 – no reason why you can’t produce broadcast quality audio. Dynamic mics and condenser mics. Condenser has bigger capsule, used in professional radio shows.

You can destroy dynamic mic and it won’t stop working, but when it is loud, you can push it into your face to only get you. You have to have dynamic mic for loud spaces – less sensitive to handling noise and you have to be close.

Condenser mic pics up everything in the room but has to be on spring-loaded holder. Picks up every single thing in the room.

Showing different audio qualities from different mics, very helpful to hear the differences. Showing plug in mic for iPods or M-Audio devices. Ok quality from these.

Interviewing someone? Show them how to hold it or better yet, use a lavalier mic.

The Shure SM7 is the broadcast standard microphone – Broadcast Supply sells them for $400

buy a good mic pre (pre-amplify)
- Built in soundcards will give you noise, they are not built for recording
- if you do the amplification inside the laptop you will lose quality
- a mic pre fits in your laptop bag, costs you $100.
- FocusRite for more money is even higher quality
- some mixers have pre’s built in

firewire and USB rock
- if you buy a microphone with USB it sends the bits directly into a microphone
- for more than one mic it becomes a problem without a mixing desk

3. stop the pop

- get a popper stopper (foam that goes over the mic)
- mic coming from above rather than below gives less popTip 3: be prepared
- panty house and a coat hanger makes a fine pop stopper

- some of you will need a script
- you don’t have to be an expert but it helps
- practice practice practice
- do your homework
- don’t be Chris Farley: ask leading questions, don’t not ask questions
- ask the question then get out of the way and shut up. Lob up a softball and let them hit it out of the park
- passion is key

4. um, like…edit
- be kind to your guests, make them seem like geniuses
- edit for flow
- tell the story (beginning, middle, end)
- lean & mean
- always leave them wanting more

Tip 5: do like the pros do
- the casting in podcasting has been around for 100 years
- theme songs rock (start and end)
- don’t steal music
- podsafe music
- go to MySpace and find a band, I will announce it on my podcast
- intro/outro – who you are, tell them what it is about, may be the first time they have heard it
- pre-announce, “coming up…” but then start where you are and get to that
- wrap it up – thank them for coming, announce next week,
- compression (audio)
- Mack doesn’t like the Levelator

technorati tags:sxsw, sxswi, South by Southwest, Steve Mack, Jose Castillo, LUX Media, thiinkjose, webcasting, podcasting, liveblog, equipment, microphones, dynamic mic, condenser mic, Shure, editing, pop, pre, hardware, software, podsafe music, MySpace

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SXSWi: Instructional Online Video

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:41:35 CDT

Instructional Online Video – The Next Big Thing
Jan Kabili PhotoshopOnline.TV
Alex Lindsay Founder, Pixel Corps

Kabili: creator, producer of Photoshop Online video podcast; also a trainer, writers. Offer free video podcasts on my blog

Linday: worked at Lucas film doing visual effects, done blue-screen training. Founder of a guild for media creators called Pixel Corps. We create about an hour of instructional video a week.

Kabili: I hate saying instructional video, sounds boring, sounds like something you have to do in school. (my comment: hey!)

Showing a mashup of instructional video on software training including clips from National Association of Photoshop Professionals (I can’t believe there is such a thing!)

Kabili: this is not limited to software training. This is a huge area. Expert Village shows educational videos or how-to videos. Learn how to skateboard, horseback ride, cook, play an instrument, build a home recording studio, quilt, work out and more. Make site shows you how to make other kids of things with online video.

Methods to create videos:
- get a video camera and film yourself
- you can use video camera for the screen too, but have to be careful
- videotaped me showing a photographer Photoshop online
- screen capture software

How to present:
- you can make a video podcast
- RSS feed so it comes to them
- gain subscribers
- add to iTunes
- post to website
- brightcove hosts video, has ad-sharing
- blip.tv
- Revver
- Lynda video training library – buys your video and givea you royalties. They handle the editing, etc.

Lindsay: PixelCopr does inside training by video and external work. You can watch Macbreak, Media Tech and Inside the Black Box on iTunes podcast

If the content is compelling enough the high-end video stuff is not that important. Our most popular shows are some of our most technically simple.

On Networks (launching tomorrow) will pay up front for broadcast quality, 3-8 minute instructional videos

People will watch less than 10 minute videos, but will listen to 1-2 hour audio podcasts

Using Apple Motion to add graphics to video podcasts

With Quicktime video you can embed links inside the video – link to a webpage, automatically link to a webpage or link to another movie. LiveStage Pro is the program we use, but it is awful, but lets you do it.

Your competitive advantage to TV is the interactivity. You can go for a niche market.

Key Points:
- short segment
- be clear
- be entertaining

Right now anyone can put something out and be watched because there is not a lot out there right now. That will change soon.

OnNetworks, Pondango, iTunes/AppleTV, Sony (PS3), Microsoft (XBox), Zudeo, Joost, ATT, Comcast, Verizon are all in this.

Every magazine topic is 5 potential shows, there is lot of room to build programming.

Video stacks tracking: Libsyn – they give us stats that are pretty good

People are looking to pay $1500-2500/show. We won’t do shows if we can’t do 10 at a time. It is all about efficiency of scale right now.

My thoughts: this session was all about commercial uses for instructional video. No focus on the actual instruction. Oh well, I am planning to use it more. I know Alex creates a lot of screencasts at his school and Atomic Learning is an amazingly affordable resource to provide to teachers, students and families in your school – it trains you how to use just about any software out there.

technorati tags:instructional video, online, sxsw, sxswi, South by Southwest, NYCIST, education, video, Jan Kabili, Alex Lindsay, Photoshoponline.TV, Pixel Corpos, National Association of Photoshop Professionals, Expert Village, blip.tv, Revver, Lynda.com, Inside the Black Box, Macbreak, Media Tech, Apple Motion, Quicktime, LiveStage Pro, Zudeo, Joost, OnNetworks, iTunes, AppleTV, Sony, Microsoft, XBox, PS3, ATT, Comcast, Verizon, Atomic Learning, screencast, liveblog

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SXSWi: Will Wright Keynote Speech

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:16:39 CDT

Will Wright Keynote Speech

14:00 CST, 3-13-2007

Will Wright, creator of the SimCity and The Sims is getting ready to release new game called Spore that is a simulation of the universe.

Article by Will Wright in Wired on how games are unleashing the human imagination

Introduction by Justin Hall who I covered yesterday in the Beyond Play panel

Will runs the Stupid Fun Club in East Bay California. There was a video of a fallen robot saying, “help me, help me up” and the taped people’s responses to this homeless, helpless robot.

He has made it possible to experiment with the systems around us. Take The Sims and see what happens when you take out all the doors and toilets.

Will has a broken arm (skiing) and he said he had too much coffee. Ok, I better warm up my fingers.

He will be talking about storytelling and then about Spore.

Story has been the model, movies have been the example for games. I look at the world as a simulation. Certain things in the world influence other things. Everyone sees the same version of Star Wars, but everyone experiences games differently as it is an interactive experience. Every time we take away control from the player we mess up the game. It is like going to a movie and showing a blank screen.

Films are rich emotional experiences where games appeal to reptilian brain. Not that they don’t have depth. Never felt pride in a film. One time beat up characters in a game and I felt guilt, never feel guilt in a movie.

In games it is about agency, I am causing. In a movie I ask, what is going to happen next; in a game I ask, what am I going to do next?

games: agency building model
movies: empathy building model

A lot of movies start out with characters, but you don’t know what happens until you start watching the movie. Once Star Wars starts, the story keeps narrowing to less possibilities.

In linear storytelling the director knows the future. He knows what seemingly minor details are important to the outcome.

In interactive storytelling, very minor initial conditions can create dramatically different outcomes.

Linear drama has a storyboard, interactive drama cannot.

Memento, Timecode, Groundhog Day – examples of using time and storytelling in different ways. Timecode ran 4 stories in parallel and they sometimes interact. In Memento you thought you knew the story, but you had to keep going back and recreating your understanding. In Groundhog Day you know the past so you can keep telling new stories without retelling the old stories – very much like a video game when you “restart.”

“Maneki Neko” – Bruce Sterling, one of Will Wright’s favorite short stories about a karmic computer.

Ok, Will Wright is too smart and too eloquent to write down. Plus he talks to fast. This will have to be the first panel I attend that I don’t really cover with the live blog posting But you MUST watch this video podcast when its released. He understands games like no one I have ever heard, and his ideas are just fantastic and so imaginative.

The Truman Show and Groundhog Day are the two most relevant films to games

He is talking about giving players simple controls with concepts that the computer outputs as really high resolution characters or worlds that can be used in the video game. Can we basically extract an entire world from their imagination? The process of the gameplay is creating assets that work in the game. We want them to make their own experience more interesting and a basically.

Showing a demo of Spore right now when you start out as a single-celled organism in water eating and growing. Showing how you evolve into 3-D creature on land after 5-6 orders of magnitude of evolution.

5 minutes later…

Oh my, he showed how to create an entirely professional-looking character with pro-level textures, features and more. Will post some photos later when I get a chance on my Flickr site. Unreal.

I went to a school at a Montessori school and pretty much the rest of my education after that was all downhill

I think of my games as a Montesorri game, it is a philosophy tool. Playing Spore might make you think about life and how we got here. You don’t learn by someone lecturing you about it.

For everything you see in the game (characters, planets, ships) we have 3-D editors to customize. You can also see what other players have designed and choose those. We can change climates.

One of the biggest problems we have as humans is we can’t do long-term thinking. What will the world look like 100 years from now. We can have small 5-minute experiences in a game that gets us thinking forward in that way.

I don’t play video games, but this is the most convincing demonstration I have ever seen. I will have to buy this game when it comes out. Unreal concepts here.

One important point in the game was to explain how large the universe it. When you are in a planetary system how does that compare to the size of a Supernova? You can see this easily in the game environment.

He got excited applause at the end of the demo. He just sold the room.

Every now and then the world goes through a paradigm shift – hippie movement, Apple, 9/11 and we have political, social and environmental issues we are going to deal with.

his recommended book read: The SIngularity is Near – Ray Kurzweil

Hopefully games can evolve to give us ways to make better decisision in the future by experimenting in the games.

My thoughts: Stellar presentation. Also a fantastic example of how to use PowerPoint well – almost all slides were images explaining the concepts he was talking about, and some were funny and all were easy to follow. Almost no bulleted lists! (my PowerPoint ranting here)

Some quotes from around the room:

“There is nothing left, my brain is full”

“I can’t buy that game. I will disappear”

“I will buy a Windows computer just to play that game”

“That was like watching a drug dealer do a commercial”

technorati tags:sxsw, sxswi, Will Wright, South by Southwest, Stupid Fun Club, SimCity, The Sims, EA, Electronic Arts, games, video games, future, Spore, simulation, Justin Hall, The Truman Show, Groundhog Day, Memento, Timecode, 3-D, Montessori, Ray Kurzweil, Singularity is Near, empathy, storytelling, Maneki Neko, Bruce Sterling, liveblog

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SXSWi: Preserving our Digital Legacy and the Individual Collector

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 13:34:24 CDT

Preserving our Digital Legacy and the Individual Collector
Moderator: Carrie Bickner Web Developer, The New York Public Library
Carrie Bickner Web Developer, The New York Public Library
Josh Greenberg Assoc Dir Research Projects, Center for History & New Media
William Stingone Curator of Manuscripts, The New York Public Library
Megan Winget Professor, UT at Austin

Bickner: (moderator) opening with story of Zora Neale Hurston that when she passed away she had left no instructions for her possessions – the custom in that town was that they started to burn her possessions. Someone came up and realize (Deputy Sherrif Duval) and started pulling things off the fire. Those burned letters and manuscripts sat on his porch for two years before making it to a library. This works with paper, this doesn’t yet work with digital records.

Q from moderator: people are scanning their family albums and putting them on CD to archive. What is the problem?

Winget: digital records are ephemeral, they start decaying immediately upon creation. “The Viewing Problem” – you need technology to read digital documents. Refreshing – documents on 5.25” then transfer to 3.5” to flash to network access. Migration – related to software. Difficult to open documents prior to 2 iterations from the current software. Open a document created in WordPerfect and migrate it to Word 5, to 97, to 2000 to XP, etc. When you have one doc it is ok, but when you have 10,000 you have to write a program that opens each one. Inelegant solution. It also changes little tiny pieces like fonts, tabs, etc. This could make a little or a large problem. Emulation – building software that will emulate older version of the software. Problem with emulation is you are running OS X on OS 30. You are running this software on a super-fast box, it is now different than it was. For art, or for programs with interaction, these changes change what the applications or artwork was. This is a problem. If you are not using an open source product for emulation, you can’t mess with what you need to mess with.

Software is offensive from a free/rights perspective but also from a usability perspective.

Q from moderator: You recently worked with Sep 11th fund. Can you speak about that?

Stingone: Sep 11th fund raise 100 million in 3 days. They wanted to give grants to people somehow affected by 9/11. They approached us to take their records. We document things for historians to study later on. It was our first potential donor that had entirely digital records. They had large databases shared over different spaces, they had legal contracts, they have network with very informal folder systems. Their office manager handed me a CD with 500mb of files on them. He reorganized files for me – first violation of archiving, leave in original order. It was relatively small collection, we could open most things, but there were about 50 different formats in those 500 mb

We have 5.25” floppies sitting in file folders. We may need to revisit that before it is too late if it isn’t already. I am worried about readability. How will we look at these records in the future?

Greenberg: it may seem that new media art is more esoteric than text, images, etc. The web is its own problem, rendering of HTML pages is already problematic, in the future it will be migration, emulation, etc. We’re not going to have an archive of a Google maps mashup – it is not just saving the HTML. How do you archive the server and the information it was giving then? It starts to look a lot more like the new media performance art problem than the Word document problem. There are big systems that can store bits for a long time, but what is the lightweight system for storing personal digital information. We are working on an open source library solution, and we need to get it out fast, maybe missing some library standards.

Q from moderator: what is it that we need to save and how do we go about doing that? We have a declaration of independence with Thomas Jefferson’s scribbling notes all over it. In many ways that is more important than the final as it showed what it might have been. So we often keep the final version of things rather than the process which might be more interesting. The e-mails, the fights, the discussions. What should we save?

Stingone: I try to avoid record collectors, but go for the records creators. I want the record that people created unconsciously while they were doing what they did. People think we don’t want their letters, but that is exactly what I want. I want people to keep records rather than collect them. People keep more records now because they don’t take up space in your house and you don’t have to file them. The problem is they easily go away if you neglect them or get a new computer, etc. One problem is we need to get to people much earlier so that they haven’t gone through 7 laptops before we realize they are an important person.

Greenberg: we need tools that keep track. Versioning in wikis seems very powerful for more apps. It creates historical traces as the wiki page is built. There isn’t a notion yet that once a project is completed you leave the process stuff somewhere in long-term, climate-controlled rooms.

Q from moderator: there is often real ignorance in value of saving work

Winget: the idea of preserving digital documents is changing. In the past to the file, then the box, then the closet, then the warehouse. Now it is much more dependent on individuals to make decisions along the way – file it, digitize it, etc.

Talked to a scientist about his lab notebooks. He had enormous negative findings that he wanted to ensure were in the archives. Then people could move on from where he left out. Then I wanted to archive his lab notebooks and he said all the lab notebooks were totally useless. This is what archivists want. He is in charge of that but does not see any value to it. It is all digital now, he would have to download it, put it on CD’s, store it, etc. In industry lab notebooks are a key piece of intellectual property – there are serious methods with how you collect, store. They prove prior discovery, etc. They are important. People think they are mundane, but that is not true.

Stingone: people want to give us their records and come in and explain them to us. They want us to store their story, but the records are the story. People want to organize things before they give to us. People should just keep them how they are, their natural state.

Q from moderator: how do we deal with privacy? If you archive e-mail, people don’t want all their e-mail read.

Greenberg: The Library of Congress has been interested in problem of saving digital information. Mostly library and information scientists building the infrastructures. There is a historian (University of Maryland) studying technological failures: thinking about what happening to Internet bust companies. He saw that a law firm had gone out of business. He went to bankruptcy trustee office and said let me help you preserve the digital record so that it doesn’t die. It could reflect so much about what happened in those moments. They are legal records, they are private. You don’t know what will happen in 150 years from now; perhaps the law will be different. If later on you can look at them, but don’t have them, the point is moot. It ends up in a “dark archive” – an archive you can’t look at. Census records are in a closed room that you can look at, but there are rules about what you can take out. Technical (room) and legal guidelines.

Q from moderator: What does the future of research look like? What will survive, what will be looking at?

Greenberg: large databases have made larger research analysis possible across multiple locations. We have been building algorithmic approaches to research. Researchers will expect an API that lets them pull in raw materials and then “work” with it to find what they are looking for.

Q from moderator: I want to look at National Endowment for the Humanities – I get archive of e-mail. I am pretty sure that Thomas Jefferson’s letter is his letter, but we will have to have faith in the custodians of the e-mails over the last 50 years not to have changed anything.

Stingone: we have always had this problem. I have to trust my historian colleagues of the past who say this is a diary of so and so.

My thoughts: another good panel. It is overwhelming just thinking about the amount of files we have in our school across laptops, USB drives, CD’s, DVD, file cabinets, network drives. How can we possible keep an archive? We have a new Director of Archives at our school and she is battling the paper records my school has from the 1920’s along with objects, clothes, awards, records and more. How will this intersect?

My big question though is about things like photos. I have photos of my grandparents from 50 years ago. Will my Flickr photos be around in 50 years? I want them to be, but I only have a couple photos of my grandparents, does someone need my 10,000 photos? Anyway, good guidelines from Digital Preservation (Library of Congress) and Managing the Digital University Desktop on how to store your own digital files. Follow their advice!

technorati tags:sxsw, sxswi, Carrie Bickner, Josh Greenberg, William Stingone, Megan Winget, University of Texas Austin, The New York Public Library, Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, Flickr, photos, archive, records, library, Zora Neale Hurston, NYCIST, digital archive

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SXSWi: Open Knowledge vs. Controlled Knowledge

Tue, 13 Mar 2007 12:21:11 CDT

Open Knowledge vs. Controlled Knowledge
3-13-07, 10:00 CST
Francesca Rodriquez Creative Commons (moderator)
Robert Capps Sr Editor,Wired
Brett Gaylor Filmmaker, Open Source Cinema
Hemai Parthasarathy Managing Editor, Public Library of Science
Gil Penchina CEO, Wikia

Capps: New issue of Wired Magazine will be clear – it is all about radical transparency in business – through blogging and other means let people see inside of what you are doing
- to eat our own dog food we posted everything we planned to do online through blogs and people commented and we used that information
- we asked could we really be this transparent and be successful?
- is there something about our craft that we want to keep closed to release a final story to our readers

Parthasarathy: PLS (Public Library of Science) Biology – the majority of science research is funded for the public or in the name of the public but then we charge scientists and the people to see the science. We believe it should be free and openly published. These efforts failed, then we became a publisher – all our articles are published under Creative Commons (commercial and non-commercial) licenses. We reject over 90% of papers submitted

Newest journal PLoS1 publishes all journals worthy of publishing – if it is technically valid we will publish regardless of the potential impact. They are published, then ranked an annotated. We believe that most important papers will filter upwards.

Penchina: CEO of Wikia. Our goal is to make all information freely accessible in every language. The licensing is open. We recently launched more news or mag like sites. Today we launched tunes.wikia.com in honor of SXSW music.

Capps: Could we license everything with Creative Commons? That certainly would be open. I can’t imagine how much tradition you would have to buck with Conde Nast and the writers.

Parthasarathy: there is a lot of waste in current science. Authors are often submitting to multiple journals. Start with the best, journal A, then keeping going until you get accepted. Gets changed as it is resubmitted. A year can go by, multiple comment rounds, multiple expert reviews, a waste of time. In open access models, you can allow communities to decide importance of a particular paper. We don’t just put up stuff, we do publish. The extreme would be putting up your lab notebook every day. All papers receive anonymous peer review, “were trials conducted correctly,” “were the stats compiled properly,” etc. We hope that that type of input enhances the scientific paper effectiveness.

Penchina: the “open” world means can other people come in and participate vs “free culture” means not only is it open to use but open to reuse (Creative Commons). On our site you can actually see who wrote every word, who edited it, who fact-checked it, etc. We are truly open, you can go and edit our homepage. We believe people are generally good. We don’t think you will come in a spray paint our wall just because we left a can of spray paint around. If you get a lot of people together good things generally happen.

Gaylor: a lot of people still getting sued. Companies are looking at free culture and saying how can we monetize this? This culture may be co-opted. Do people have more freedom to interact with the media now?

Penchina: when open source first came along no one believed you could make money giving stuff away. The model has shown that it does work from Digg to web software.

Gaylor: people are tired of consuming, they want more, they want to create it. At open source cinema we are saying that you can’t just watch, you have to put in input. It is our medium, we need to deconstruct the issue of copyright together.

Q from moderator: Can you tell us a time when openness has affected your business?

Capps: I don’t think it has happened yet. We went transparent and posted a bunch of stuff online, got feedback etc. When we are printing it make take 3 months to get it out. When our competition is not transparent, this can be an issue. Chris Anderson, our Editor in Chief posted on his blog that we were thinking of going transparent and another Editor posted on his blog said, “sure Chris, tell us everything you are going to write about 6 months before you do. The other side my scoop us on things. But possibly others will see what we are doing and they will be too late, wont have time to do the article and will let us take it. We’ll have to see how it plays out.

Q from moderator: does the community express fear about corporations profiting from their work?

Penchina: you can have free content and still be profitable. You can also choose licenses that don’t let corporations use your work. People who write at Wikia want respect and want to help people, so they generally want to share their experiences. People are very passionate about certain topics, they will talk your ear off if they could; these passions can have a space online. It is a very emotional thing, people get involved, make friends, have pen pals. The web isn’t always about keeping people away from friends, but another way to interact.

Parthasarathy: scientists are incredibly busy people and generally want to be rewarded for their work. What incentive do they have for commenting on others’ work and helping them? They want to write the definitive paper not help someone else do it. For us the big question is how to we incentivize this?

Gaylor: I had to change my concept of what a documentary. It isn’t just my vision, I have to take many peoples’ inputs. How does Wired perceive these new articles? Who’s work is it? The writer? The group?

Capps: So far it has just been an experiment, the article was an experiment. I still think magazine writing is a craft. You start with crap first, it’s wrong, poorly written, not well thought out and the writer side doesn’t want people to see it. Part of my process is stewing in my bad work until I figure it out and am ready to share it. It interrupts my process being so open before I am “done.”

Gaylor: I have announced my view beforehand, I am open. So I can’t “skewer” someone like Michael Moore does, they already know where I am coming from. But this is a positive thing as well. This is an experiment in democracy. It is hard to post it when in rough cut form, but it is worth it.

Penchina: it is an evolution. Wired comes from one side, we from another, we don’t know where the equilibrium will end up. We hope that more people will be able to publish and find income, satisfaction and more without having to use copyright. Judged a public-interest assignment at Stanford and almost every group had a video, using Facebook, collaborating – the new generation has a set of tools that we just never had.

Q on challenges:

Parthasarathy: creating a community where scientists want to share. We have to determine their rewards.

Capps: if we can succeed, we will be more open. How can we use wikis to our advantage? Our experiments with wikis so far have been poor, have been just vandalized. What are we doing wrong?

Penchina: part of the answer is if you have a community and give them the power to fix stuff, they correct problems quickly. If something has been controlled forever and suddenly you are letting people in, there is a tendency to tweak the person who was running. Kind of being principal for a day, you change all the rules. How do you turn your readers into writers instead of spellcheckers? If you let people make the top 10 instead of telling them to comment on your top 10 I think that seems more healthy place to go/be.

Capps: we just ended up with overwhelming amount of vandalism. Do you really not have that?

Penchina: we have 7 full-time people who help to create the cultulre. But we have thousands of people who volunteer. You have to feel like it is yours, not someone else’s.

Q from audience: League of Technical Voters is working on a “consensus wiki.” We have been working on reputation. We are working on social networking aspects of wikis. Do you have input?

Capps: our system does not have reputation or a way of tracking comments on website. I can see that that is one of the things holding us back. Suddenly becoming open is so much work. it takes full-time people working on these issues, the wikis. We are probably foolish to think we can just throw the doors open.

My thoughts: really cool session, the CEO of Wikia just gets it. I guess that is a good thing since they are the people to watch right now in terms of open publishing, now to mention they host the near-and-dear-to-me School Computing Wiki. I even asked Gil Penchina (Wikia CEO) for help with how to organize it. Demetri, I will talk to you about his ideas. Wired on the other hand needs some help on understanding what openness is. The seem well intentioned but not-so-well informed. I guess I need to write another post on that. Too many blog posts to write!

technorati tags:wiki, Wikia, Wikipedia, Francesca Rodriguez, Robert Capps Sr, Brett Gaylor, Hernai Parthsarathy, Gil Penchina, Creative Commons, Open Source Cinema, Public Library of Science, PLoS, knowlege, openness, free, licensing, copyright, Chris Anderson

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SXSWi:Online Games: Beyond Play and Fantasy

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 18:56:21 CDT

Online Games: Beyond Play and Fantasy
Joichi Ito We Know Guild, his blog
Justin Hall Passively Multiplayer

Ito: We’re going to talk about online games and what we can learn from them. I think comparing Second Life to World of Warcraft is an apples to oranges comparison. They are similar because they are 3-D, Second Life is not a game (although you could make games inside), there is a difference.

I play my World of Warcraft videos in Second Life. We plan raids inside Second Life. Second Life is about simulation, I do talks there. It’s really not where I build relationships but many do.

Showing screenshots of his World of Warcraft that has many user-created add-ons that tell how the game is working, people’s strengths and more. Many of these add-ons are picked up and brought into official releases from the gamemakers. There is an unreal amount of data being shown on the screen. Some military players say their screens in WOW have way more great info than real-life military data systems.

All the data is logged later so that I can analyze later and improve the way I play (along with my teammates).

I recommend players I work with for real jobs because I know about the way they work under pressure, about whether they are honest, cheaters, aggressive, etc.

We use audiochats during game play to stay connected. “immersion-busting, reality-intrusive anti role-playing debasement of what virtual words are – Richard Bartle 2003

People used to keep audio out to keep up the fantasy. “Guildlies” chat me, sms me, audio chat me and more, I think the fantasy is broken, and we don’t worry about that anymore.

People were saying 3-D is not as good as text games because of the lack of imagination. Steven Johnson said well is imagining Paris as good as a 3-D simulation of Paris? It’s not the point, 3-D give new and different opportunities for brain exercise.

John Sealy Brown on USC site (paper) distinguishes between simulation and metaphor – McDonalds job simulation would be exactly like McDonalds vs. World of Warcraft has nothing to do with real life, but the leadership, camaraderie, etc is metaphorically connected to real life – stimulates your imagination for real life application.

A lot of the leaders online are not the MBA-type leaders, but more like open-source leaders. We have bartenders, foremans, nurses etc who are leaders. A lot of CEO’s don’t lead well in the games because they are used to paying people to do work, to follow. Here people pay to play, so if it isn’t good, they leave. More like open source that way. A guild is more like a congregation than a corporation.

Hall: I stopped writing about my life online as I used to do. I don’t play WOW because it takes too much time. I did gain time because of my lack of writing. I do now use MySpace along with Plazes, then my most recent video games, my recent photos from Flickr, my recent music from iTunes. I don’t have to do anything though, but you can get a picture of what was happening in my life on any given day, the Internet is notified. The “myware” software, the personal spyware programs.

Working on an idea of Passive Multiplayer Online Games – just by doing stuff online you score experience points. BBC said perhaps we can eval web literacy this way. I could say you are only level 5 because you only surf 5 sites a day, but I could give you a quest to explore 10 new points to earn 20 points. Then you would learn more about the Internet and gain experience points.

So I am creating a way for people to get experience points by using Internet resources. We don’t log the URL’s so no one could say where does arvind go online? All we know is he views a lot of education sites or a lot of tech sites.

Test the site out at bud.com

Ben Cerveny joins the panel

The real abstract resource we find in play are the metaphors the Joi mentioned. The movement between online and the real world impacts is real and powerful. What started off as a massive multiplayer game ended up as a mode for trading media (Flickr). The reason that succeeded came out of a different approach, that of play. The idea of “flow” is a balance between simplicity of task and complexity of task. Construction of flow it turns out is aided by being in a state of play. You have a different relationship between risk and reward when you play – you will take risk whereas during work you may get in trouble if you mess up.

Ito: In the U.S. we don’t take kids play seriously. In Japan we see kids using pagers so we figure how to use phones. In the rest of the world we embrace fun in work, where in the U.S. we think work can’t be fun. The barrier between work and fun is an American artifact. The barrier between online and offline is also American. In Japan you are always online. American Puritanic view of the Internet is warping perspective.

Pushing kids out is stupid and gaming companies might make that mistake. But the games on the Internet so far have ceded control to kids and users and it is empowering them and making better games.

Q from audience:
The concept of work is recent: 4 hours focused, not thinking about anything else, then a break, then 4 more hours. Thinking back, kids were around, social life all intermixed with work. IM at work and things like it are challenging this new business model, but these are false ideas of what work is. Also I would like to play a game based on Merlin Mann’s productivity ideas and win points for being more efficient.

Hall: There is a company called Seriosity that makes an Outlook plugin that give you points for better use of e-mail.Playing directly into the gaming/productivity idea.

My thoughts: very cool panel. These three guys are super-smart. Games or games-thinking definitely could benefit schools. Ok, another blog post to write. How about teachers gaming to increase their understanding of learning styles, there are ways to approach this. And I love the idea of a game amongst admins on best use of e-mail. I need to check out Seriosity seriously.

Off to the K-12 meetup, I hope Andy Carvin, Sa-Ul and others find me at the Mozilla party in Brush Square Park.

technorati tags:Joichi Ito, Joi Ito, Justin Hall, John Seely Brown, games, sxsw, sxswi, Second Life, World of Warcraft, Passively Multiplayer, We Know Guild, Seriosity, Andy Carvin, Sa-Ul, Brush Square Park, Ben Cerveny

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SXSWi: Alternadad Live!

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:34:34 CDT

Alternadad Live!
16:00 CST
3-12-2007
Neal Pollack, Bloger, Alternadad, starting online parenting community soon
Rebecca Woolf, Blogger, Girl’s Gone Child

Woolf: wanted to talk about hipster parenting buzz that has been around the blogosphere, NYTimes, Time magazine. We have become posters children for alternative parenting. I don’t think we are different than our parents who dressed their kids up in things they like.

Pollack: there has been this label slapped on this generation of parents. There is a cultural shift afoot, largely taking place on the Internet. Reacting against “Mommy and Me,” soccer-mom culture. The parents are largely the same. Idea that parents don’t want to give up pre-parent identity and you have things like Indie-rock parties for kids: baby loves disco, kids bands playing at Knitting Factory, House of Blues. Speaks to pareantal dissatisfaction. David Brooks (NYTimes) attacks, he isn’t paying attention. These are normal parents with a superficial Indie-rock aesthetic.

Woolf: I’m really not that cool, but I am looked at as a cool mom. We’ve become “Indie-rock” but the label itself is contradictory. People are upset, they don’t like me because they way I dress, the way I dress my kid. They are furious that I take my kid to an art show, a rock show instead of Gymboree.

Pollack: the angry people are in the minority. When you have a kid, you feel obsolete as an individual. Everyone can relate to fear of getting older and becoming culturally worthless. Lots of books, websites trying to understand what it means to be a parents, and trying to change definition of parenting in this country. There is fear of change.

Woolf: there are so many blogs that are all about being parents. [polling audience]: how many people read blogs instead of parenting magazines for advice? [not many raise their hand].

Pollack: parenting magazines are so focused. I have tried to write articles for them, but they always say their audience won’t appreciate his point of view. Blogs give a more raw and honest approach to parenting. First generation of parents that have been online their entire adult life, so more comfortable sharing that way.

Woolf: blogging is a personal experience. It is raw, it is ok to swear, etc. You can maintain your own voice while talking about parenting.

Woolf: people say that I am exposing my child, how do you deal with that?

Pollack: negative press that is personal. Parenting is a raw topic.

Deuce is the Beatles of parent bloggers (second Beatles reference I have heard today)

Woolf: I thought when I became a parent I would have to start shopping at Talbots and wearing pastels. You become a desperate housewife, wear tacky nails. So many different stereotypical moms, so I figured I would just start a blog.

Interesting hearing these thoughts. I don’t know anything about parent bloggers, but I should probably start reading them being that I deal with parents and their kids as a profession.

technorati tags:parenting, Alternadad, Neal Pollack, Rebecca Woolf, Girls Gone Child, blog, alternative, online, culture, sxsw, sxswi, ethics, NYCIST

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SXSWi: When Communities Attack

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 17:06:32 CDT

When Communities Attack
Presenter from Topix.net
15:30 CST
3-12-07

A session on the bad behaviors that happen in online communities.

Web 2.0 – it’s coming to your town, your parents town, and it’s not always nice.

Anonymity does enable certain bad behaviors. Someone says something nasty and a hundred people say “yeah”

Just like the playground, accusing someone of bad behavior. People trying to get opponents banned.

Number of people talking to themselves is phenomenal. Same person creates 50 accounts and comments to create credibility.

Small groups of very abusive people follow each other from site to site to fight.

What can you do?
- You can take it down – some news wikis LA, Washington felt they needed to shut it down
- Free speech vs. harboring hate & personal attacks
- you can take down a blog, but not the blogosphere – you’re not fixing anything by leaving
- you get taken down by the traffice

Abdicate: like MySpace, “hey man, it’s not our problem”
- Facebook lawyers have said they have societal responsibility to keep things in order
- hard to put on moderation later, do it at the start

Managing an moderating is probably the most responsible thing to do

1997	2007
moderators	meta-moderators – a group of people who are invested in the site and not invested in the arguments themselves
registration	captchas – help people from screwing with you
profanity filter	heat language analysis – looks at the entire post to see if something is full of hate or reasonable; you can get around profanity filters
logging	recent activity queue (Wikipedia does this well, look at the stream of new edits to keep tabs on bad things arising)
per post/user moderation	IP/domain moderation

The Ni-Chan Paradox – interesting social affect of the infrastructure
- Regisration keeps out good posters – don’t want to be bothered
- Registration lets in bad posters – children and Internet addicts tend to have free time to register, check e-mail for confirmation
- Registration attracts polls – in someone is interested in desotrying a forum, registration adds to the sense of challenge. They are not protecting their own registration, they are destroying others
- Anonymity counters vanity – you can’t get particular attention

What should you do?

- Security is policy. Have one
- make some decisions – if you let everyone bad in, won’t work. make it hard for good people, won’t work.
- optimize for growth
- get rid of the bottom 5-10%
- eliminate threaths, calls for violence, personal details, 100% harm – we allow rough stuff, but just wraith is not allowed

Paper: Clay Shirky – A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy

Real challenge: Identify the good stuff – what is your purpose?

This is a well understood problem. A lot of research has been done. There is caselaw for online communities, do the research.

Differences today are scale and impact: great when SXSW is using your product, but when everyone in the US is using it, that is different. There is an offline component to this. You have more of a responsibility when you’re large, this can lead to real-world issues.

Everybody learns the hard way – you won’t do the research, you will get smacked. Even if you’ve done it before, you’ll do it again.

The lessons I learned was to be precise, correct an error promptly and to let the nasty, sexist comments role off my back. They don’t upset me as much now. I’ve gotten used to the incivility. I don’t like it, but I don’t get as angry. – Deborah Howell responding to the craziness that followed her Washington Post article

A really nice summary about keeping online communities healthy and avoiding the acerbic stuff that can go down. I missed the person’s name, but he was from Topix.net

technorati tags:online, culture, NYCIST, community, Topix, safety, moderation, sxsw, sxswi, liveblog, portal, scale, Chris Tolines

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SXSWi: Dan Rather Keynote Interview

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:23:20 CDT

Dan Rather Keynote Interview
14:00 CST
3-12-2007
Moderated by: Jane Hamsher, Publisher, The Fire Dog Lake Company

Lots of paraphrasing here of course.

Q: What was it like when Richard Nixon dismissed you and you would not be dimissed?

A: (strange he needed the question repeated 3 times and then he went away from the question) We are going to talk about lots of important questions like tech, war, etc. Problems are the problems – the way we call attention to these in the news are important, but secondary. Reporters put themselves in harms way to cover this stuff.

“My role is to be an honest broker of information”

Have to keep up with the news so that people don’t have to. I never say myself as challenging President Nixon, I was just doing my job of finding out what was really going on instead of what they wanted the world to believe what was going on.

I wasn’t challenging the President, I respect that office more than anyone, but the President was involved in one of the largest conspiracies in our history – Watergate. The President said I was challenging him, but the facts are the facts and the President was not presenting the facts.

Q: Does the state of journalism today allow the same types of critiques of the administration

A: In the last 5-6 years (including me) American journalism has lost its guts. Journalists have adopted the go-along to get-along cliché. The access journalism game has degenerated the craft to a perilous state. We trade go-along get-along for access and having the boss feel good about you. The danger is real and present of being called “antipartriotic” and “not supporting the troops.” This is a very serious charge in America at a time of war. A patriotic journalist would be on their feet asking the hard questions. My role as member of the press is sometimes to question authority, keep checks and balances on power, follow up on these questions.

Q: Small group of journalists in DC are trying to protect themselves and their positions by not challenging with questions.

A: American journalism (including me) needs a spine transplant. The nexus between powerful journalists and corporate interest/other sources of power have become far too close. You get a little too cozy with your sources. You make agreements with them, stated or unstated. You take care of me, I’ll take care of you. This is very dangerous. Definitely in Washingtion, but other places as well, city hall, towns, etc. To get them on your newscast you negotiate (but don’t call it that) that you get so close, you become part of the problem. Powerful people do use journalists – they will until the journalists say whoah, too far. Journalists though also use sources. That is a given in most situations. Sources begin to think the reporter can be part of the time. Then the reporter thinks that they are part of the system and need to help, then the reporter has gone too far. Journalists need to rethink the relationship with sources.

If you have many sources, it will be had for your sources to seal you out. When the President sealed Rather out, we called the Pentagon, Congress, etc. So when you call for the 15th time you then tell the secretary that I am on the evening news with a not-so-flattering piece of information and if the President wants to rebut, call me before 5:45pm. It doesn’t work the first time or two, but then they start calling you back. It isn’t true that you can’t find out the info without the main source. It is harder, but you can use other sources to force the hand of the main source.

Q: Do you still think it is important to ask the follow up questions? Is journalism failing to act as a check on power?

A: Do we still believe that the best journalism is Independent? Do we still believe you should ask the hard question and follow up? If the Governor, President, etc does not answer the question, do we believe the next person should say that Mr. President, you didn’t answer her question? Barring national secrets, do we the people still own all the documents? Even a president, this person is not a descendent of a sun god, they are supposed to server we the people. You listen to a news conference, you record, you take notes: then you go out and check, you call, you research, then you report. Or now have we taken the position that journalists are conveyor belts, and our job is not to ask the right questions – “The President said today such and such.”

Increasingly journalists are trying to play it safe. Look at the copy, “I know this is true, but if I broadcast this I am going to pay a price for it” so maybe I should water it down, make it a little less powerful so me, the boss, the network doesn’t pay the price.

“I have never really liked the word investigative reporter because I consider it a redundancy.” All reporters investigate. Hard news with Independent news is an endangered species. Especially in those places with the most outlets, most listeners, most viewers, etc.

Q for Rather: When is the last time you saw a 1-hour investigative documentary on the big 6 networks? It has gone out of fashion. The corporatization of news – larger companies owning news networks – the people at the head of the company and the newsroom, huge distance between the two. The interests of the corporations (building aircraft, billboards, etc) have nothing to do with journalism and they would rather give up the news, except that they need legislation they need to help their business. The have regulations that they need eased or stopped. Television corporations want to own more markets, they need FCC regulation, they need products manufactured. The people at the top aren’t evil people per se, but their mindset is stockholder value and what is good for the corporation as a whole.

Investigative reporting by its definition is going to make somebody unhappy. Journalists are at odds with lobbyists who are trying to get legislation lifted or passed if they are investigating. Competition leads generally to better journalism. 4-5 major corporations control 80% of principal communication. They aren’t seeking more competition, they are seeking less.

The press has a very important role to play as a watchdog (not the only role). Not an attack dog which goes for the throat. What does a lapdog do? Crawl into a lap and someone says nice dog, nice dog. A good watchdog barks at everything that is suspicious. Who’s that over there? Why’s the happening? Not that they will always be right, but that they will always be barking. That role has been shrinking in my lifetime.

Q: People have been turning to the Internet to get news that isn’t too close. What are your thoughts on Internet news, democratization of news.

A: Internet is great for news, education, illumination (Edward Murrow), the potential is unlimited. The Internet is in the Beatles stage. Elvis was the early stage, the Beatles moved it forward. We are not in the Beatles stage, the potential is vast and I am excited about it.

So many people think of it just as the blogosphere. There is so much more. Whatever you think the Internet will be in 15 years, it probably will be in 3-5.

Are their irresponsible blogs? Of course. Are there good analysis blogs? Yes. Are there some who do reporting themselves, going to the places, making the calls, yes. I applaud responsible journalism. Journalism integrity is about finding truth. I have a problem with anonymity. You could get on the internet on an anonymous blog and cut up a competitor or your neighbor – these are problems to overcome. Given time, the marketplace will balance this. Sometimes this takes a long time and reputations/businesses can get ruined. Being anonymous and saying scurrilous and unscrupulous things is a problem.

Q: You have a small group of people who aren’t asking the right questions. The country has other questions. How does new media address that problem?

A: One way, stay on it, hold people accountable. If you feel the right questions aren’t being asked somewhere, a rather constant putting out of a list of questions that aren’t being asked can be effective. Holding the press core accountable. These are major truths that aren’t being told, we need to keep generating this. So many raindrops eventually make a dent on the rock. We need to move towards increasing accountability. This is a problem in every government. We had less, but it is more and more of a problem. We need to keep asking.

When someone lies, news reporters say, “this is what the governor says, this is what his critics say.” When is the last time someone said, “this is what the governor says, this is a lie.” When the facts clearly demonstrate, that type of direct language might be preferable to the type of sideways dance that is going on.

Q: Do you think journalism as a craft took a hit during the Libby trial? Journalists on the stand said they assume everything is off the record unless stated otherwise.

A: This goes back to getting close. “I am pretty big, I am part of the system, I am part of what helps the country go around and I know a lot of things that I can’t tell people because it wouldn’t be good for the country.” If that toxic gas gets into journalists, that is dangerous for journalism and the country as a whole.

Off the record used to be clearly defined, on background was defined, on deep background was defined. In your own head, you knew what the rules of the road were, they were agreed to. Call a source, start talking: incumbent on the source to say on what grounds are we talking? Assumed that everything talked about could be written about. The source could ask to be protected, but it wasn’t assumed. If the source asked to be off the record, you could say no, not on this topic. Then you negotiate what the terms are. If those aren’t the rules now, then what are the rules? How can we get info from sources who won’t put their names, don’t want to be traceable in any way, and keep our obligations to the readers?

Going to leave early to do a live update at EdTechTalk.com. Tune in to the podcast and live tomorrow at 2:15 pm EST/1:15pm CST.

technorati tags:Dan Rather, Jane Hamsher, The Fire Dog Lake Company, NPR, ABC, news, media, sxsw, sxswi, liveblog, media literacy, corporations, reporters, sources, NYCIST, journalism

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SXSWi:Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 14:08:37 CDT

Convergence Culture: A Conversation with Henry Jenkins
Henry’s bio
Henry’s website and blog
His new book
3-12-07
11:30 CST
Moderated by dana boyd (bio, website)

Holy heck, Henry Jenkins and dana boyd just blew my mind. If you listen to one podcast from South by Southwest Interactive, make sure it is this one when it comes out.

Henry has written 3 books in the last year and posts a blog essay daily

dana boyd: What is fandom?

Jenkins: I have always been a fan. My cousin had comic books, etc. In college I was a fanboy of things geeky, techie. Married a fangirl. Star Trek fans.

People’s willingness to think non-stop about what they like leads to sites like Fanfiction.

Academics did not respect fans. I wanted to set the record straight about fans and the passion that drives them – 20 years ago. My book 16 years ago was written at a time were fans were totally marginal, hiding in their parents basement.

New book, convergence culture: fans are central to culture. What everyone calls web 2.0 is fandom without stigma. Creating communities, shared knowledge, remixing content. People were doing this in the basement 20 years ago and now major companies are making money on this. Fandom is not essential to the economy.

Church activities, political activities are now modeling themselves after fan culture.

Q: What role has the Internet played in fandom?

A: More people find their way into fandom. Mimeographs didn’t make things highly visible. The web makes things like the half-million Harry Potter stories possible.

A2: Speedup. Within 5 minutes of a TV show starting discussions have become.

Leads to a world of collective intelligence.

Twin Peaks: Newspapers were complaining that it had become too complicated to follow. Internet communities were complaining that it has become too simple. What was happening? Online communities sharing info, needed more complexity to follow. People watching along couldn’t follow along.

Steven Johnson: schools are dumbing down and TV is ramping up. Pokemon expects you to remember 250 characters and their traits while schools are struggling to get students to remember a handful of Greek gods.

Q: Remix culture: Many creators are not embracing this. Fans are being sued. Where is this going?

A: basic premise: media companies have already lost control. We can take your content and do whatever we want (remix, resample, etc) and there is pretty much nothing you can do. Media needs to deal with that and create new ways of engaging. Media companies need to know that fans don’t detract from value but actually increase.

Prohibitionist attitude (cease and desist letters to 14 year old girls who write Harry Potter stories) moving to a enfranchising attitude where fans increase value of what companies are doing

Control over intellectual property is a battleground which will determine if we become a more participatory culture – caught in a vice between government regulation and Hollywood attitudes – both squashing this participatory culture

Are you going to give up your house, your kids’ college funds or are you going to take your story offline? No one is able to defend the rights that the courts would likely protect. Bullying is the technique and lawyers are at these companies’ disposal.

Q: Young peoples’ participation. What does that environment look like with DOPA and others that affect youth?

A: 57% of American teenagers are media producers. 30-some% are sharing media they produced with people they don’t know. What does it mean to turn these kids loose on a world where they have far reach, but don’t have a lot of guidance and assistance. (from Pew study)

DOPA strips schools of social networking and blogging technologies. For a decade we were closing the digital divide through schools and libraries. Now that we are almost there (reservations, rural areas withheld) we have libraries with: 10 minute rules, no storage space, slow connections and now rules on what you can use. This does not allow people to be successful in a networked world and participatory culture.

Liberals and conservatives are both in this together. This would not pass without the support of liberal democrats. Mark Foley was an author so it solved. Ted Stevens is not pushing it further (the Internet as pipes guy). The community needs to mobilize against this.

Even if we thought MySpace was crawling with predators (it is not) we need to know if it is safer to lock out MySpace and don’t train students or better to train teachers and librarians to work with kids on how to participate in this culture. It probably leaves kids more at risk than they ever were before.

Kids being hit with cease and desist letters and driven out of social networks when adults are around.

Time magazine names “You” person of the year but “you” are under fire.

Boyd: Connecticut Attorney General trying to pass legislation that says any under 18 folks need proper adult supervision to use any communications tool – how would this work? Keeping kids out of queer sites could be terrible

Jenkins: politics of fear is working. All politicians agree that kids should be muzzled. Gender issue: we are afraid of our sons and for our daughters. Men will be Columbine and women will be attacked and violated.

Until we release the fear mongering we won’t be able to move forward with reason. We must challenge the fear and the methods that are being used. We must look to the researchers who are finding out how kids are engaging in civic spaces.

The right to preserver the infrastructure of democracy particularly as it applies to young people is essential.

boyd: Where do you see participatory democracy going?

Jenkins: the language of politics is not eternal, it shifts over time. Fireside chats are different than the Kennedy- Nixon debates. Participator culture potentially gives young people a new language, remix of politics. (see blog post from last week’s MIT conference Beyond Brodcasting). Democracy needs to be lifestyle the way we live with popular culture.

We feel more comfortable being consumer than we do citizens. Washington disempowers us. American Idol taught us about our role in music and we need to think about role in politics.

Photoshop for democracy – photoshop collages responding about political issues almost in real time. The peoples’ editorial cartoon. Challenge is that it does not fit into paradigm of news coverage.

News: already racist images of Obama, sexist images of Hillary. Use of images will play a huge role. We need to think about the ethics for using images – media literacy is essential in this.

“With great power becomes great responsibility” – Spiderman. The language of fan culture will be a lot of how the next election will be run. Using Second Life, YouTube etc. trying to appeal to young people. We can’t tear each other apart with stuff, but need to find out how to work together using these resources.

boyd: What lessons can we learn from Wikipedia?

Jenkins: Gave talk about why Middlebury College is wrong for banning Wikipedia (link to video here). It is a monument of participatory culture that it is as good as it is. I would be teaching people to look at the debates/struggles about how historical entries on Wikipedia are made. I had so much more respect for Encyclopedia Brittannica until I was asked to write an entry. I could not possibly write an entry! Speaking with Jimmy Wales about international evens like wars – English Wikipedia is one of the few places in human history where both sides had to come together and decide on “truth.”

You could aruge that all concerns about Wikipedia from history departments could be countered by this discourse about truth rather than one-sided reporting on History.

Center for Deliberative Democracy – no political leaders but putting together citizens to read and learn about issues and come up with policy – often better and different than all the major platorms

boyd: user-generated content is being critiqued.
UNC breakup video – 3,000 gather to watch a guy breakup with his girlfriend for cheating. Uncomfortable video as you are not sure you should be watching it. It was a hoax – was a test to see how far things can get out on the web. People were upset with it. They want things to be real. What is real? How do we work through these issues?

Jenkins: “Humbug” – stuff that was presented to the public without a certainty of status. PT Barnum – the status of this is under dispute, come see for yourself (a mermaid). Australian scientists find a beaver-like thing with a duck bill and a poison stinger, trying to convince people it was real – duck bill platypus

The World of Networks – Binkler – we are trying to figure out the status of what all this content is. Knowing what it is on YouTube is evolving – grass roots media literacy movement is beginning as a result. We need to stop being angry about being faked out.

Politics of shame covered by mainstream news outlets. How can we tell what is fake when the breakup is fake but the tasering of the student is real? Theoretically that could be fake. How do we get people to discern reality through the mixed media we received today. Through McCarthur we are focused on media literacy and how people can view this media with a critical eye.

boyd: what are the critical issues with things like second life and MMORPG?

Jenkins: I love Second Life. Global Kids group in New York made my avatar for me. Second Life is a new center of that participatory culture. Compared it to a medieval carnival where men dresses as women, women as men and other transformations. Women would beat mean that one day a year where the roles were reversed, a small check on culture. Boston Tea Party took image of Native Americans to do something out of character for political gain.

As we enter an environment that parallels are own but allows us to try out new and different ideas – sexual identity, economics, politics – try it out and see what happens and then carry out energy out into the real world.

Brigadoon Island in SL for autistic kids to learn about social signs with avatars and then move out into the new world.

Another idea about Macedonia and what it should look like. What about a virtual Palestine online? What about talking across national borders and see what that will give us? We need to think about it as a social experiment. It is not about escapism but about the experiment that allows us to see what might work in the real world.

That is why I like Global Kids in New York as they are trying out what could work in Second Life and learning from it.

There are now people lining up to ask questions. As with most questions in these types of panels almost every single person is a man.

Q: How do we combat politics of fear? Money?
A: I don’t know who is going to invest in fighting the politics of fear. Like small movies that make it big, how do we get low-budget politics to get big results? We have creation power that people will pass along if it is not granola, not bitch-slapping. Civic media needs to be viral to make change.

On mashup culture: The Sistine Chapel is a mashup of the Bible and Shakespeare did Fanfiction of characters that he read about.

LOL was used by teenagers in the 1850’s. There are connections between early print press to ham radio to the Internet – we can trace language across these times/modes. Participatory culture has lost ground at times and gained at times.

Q: Isn’t all the fandom stuff reliant on mass media? Is this a problem?
A: The 21st century drove out folk culture for mass media culture so fandom is heavy reliant on mass media. We will get back to folk culture. People write fan fiction because it is the best way to get people to read it. If I write about my high school you probably wont read it, but if I write about Hogwarts you might. It is simply a language that we share and so we use it.

We will be somewhat dependent on large companies to fulfill our shared fantasies, but companies are more reliant on us than ever before.

Q: What is driving DOPA for politicians? What are they afraid that kids will do, meet, say, see?
A: Fear of the unknown. As a parent I do things that I swore I wouldn’t when I was a kid. Parents don’t know how to get on second life, how to read a MySpace page, so all it takes is a small trigger event like a school shooting, abduction. Politicians then say how do I get parents to vote for me. Clinton: sees a shooting in Native American reservation with history of alcoholism, gangs, violence, zombie comics and video games. So she blames it on comics and video games – the good liberal.

Definitely the loudest round of applause I have heard at all the talks I’ve been to at SXSW. Went on for a few minutes. Ok, time to give my fingers a rest and get some lunch. Planning to have Henry on 21st Century Learning, perhaps to talk about how parents should be educated on these issues. Stay tuned.

technorati tags:Henry Jenkins, MIT, danah boyd, media literacy, sxsw, sxswi, NYCIST, MySpace, social networking, history, culture, mashup, Hillary Clinton, Barck Obama, UNC, breakup, 21st Century Learning, freedom, copyright, politics of fear, GlobalKids, Second Life, The Wealth of Networks, Yochai Benkler, Center for Deliberative Democracy, Middlebury College, Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, Dopa, plagiarism, fandom, fan culture, Convergence Culture

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SXSWi: The 4-Hour Workweek: Secrets of Doing More with Less in a Digital World

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:04:56 CDT

The 4-Hour Workweek: Secrets of Doing More with Less in a Digital World
Bio: Timothy Ferriss
Book: The 4-Hour Workweek
His website
3-12-07
10:00am CST

How do decisions and priorities change if retirement is never an option?

Everyone in this room is probably too smart and way too easily bored to ever retire.

If you are growing in e-mail, calls, etc, is your business scalable, is your career scalable and is your lifestyle scalable?

Showed cartoon of a support group: “Hi, my name is Barry and I check e-mail 2-300 times a day”

“If you work faithfully 8 hours a day, one day you can be the boss and work 12 hours a day” – Robert Frost

3 currencies that you need to control:
- time
- income
- mobility

What you want to do, be and have (financial) needs to be defined to decide what you need to get there.

80/20 principle – 20% of your actions/inputs create 80% of desired results
20% of people created 80% of the output

Had very low spending customers taking up most of the time. Took those customers and put them into a holding pattern. Took the 5 most productive customers

and observed the commonalities with them farther.

You can apply this to customer base, suppliers and personal activities. You need to do a time audit – where do you spend time? Q1: What 20% of my activities

are producing the 80%. You need to ruthless eliminate everything else – some things eliminated may be somewhat important, but they are not important enough.

Q2: What 80% of my activities are producing only 20%? I fired the customers who were browbeating me (even though profitable) and it saved me social,

professional stress.

Parkinsons Law: from Ed Ciao (prof at Princeton, founder of Silicon Valley) – a task will swell in perceived perplexity and importance in direct correlation

to the time you allot it.

1. Limit the tasks to the important ones (80/20)
2. Limit the time (Parkinsons) spent on the tasks

Time management doesn’t work. There is an efficiency epidemic (especially technologists). More time spent on organizing than reducing.

Average American worker spend 24% of time between tasks switching tasks.

Batching: let similar tasks accumulate and then performing them at very limited times

Knowledge workers: 25% of time on e-mail. E-mail is the single biggest way to shave time. Set autoresponder on your e-mail. Dear Colleagues, thanks for your

e-mail, because of extremely high e-mails and workload, I will only be checking e-mail at 11am and 4pm. If an emergency, call my cell. If there is not a

question and only a confirmation, I will not respond, please don’t be offended.

I recommend e-mail checking twice a day. Checking e-mail first thing in the morning should not happen – scrambles the brain with unrelated e-mails, and

usually not too many responses.

You must manage expectations of people around you including your boss.

Focusing on the critical few and not that trivial new. Most things don’t matter at all, and a few things matter the most.

Quantify the value of your time: If you make $50,00 and work 40 hours a week and take 2 weeks of vacation – $25/hour. Outsource anything that can be done for

less than $15/hour. It removes the ability for you to create “crap” tasks for yourself.

From Tim’s website: outsourcing life. Read how an Esquire editor outsourced personal life stuff to India.

Create rules for yourself so not to be living in a response to urgency situation

Creating mobility (third currency of ideal lifestyle design):

Entrepreneurs: fear automation (don’t micromanage)
Employees: fear liberation (set rules that you expect people to obey)

You must not ask for permission or beg for forgiveness

If you are able to do this, you have a glut of time. You need to figure out what to do with all that time. A week on the beach is enough, then what?

Once you remove work as identity, it is quite a challenge to make productive use of that void.

I believe that the point of life is to enjoy it. Time, income, mobility are means to achieving that, not ends in themselves.

My ideal outcome: catalyze a movement against sever information overload.

Having people to wait for you is a symbol of power. You need to train them to do that.

Question from audience: How do you run meetings?
I use a virtual architecture, so don’t have many meetings. Here are my rules:
1) Shouldn’t have meeting to decide problem but to solve problem
3) No meetings longer than 30 minutes, define end time

No jumping on phone to hash things out – set agenda to do work ahead of time. Ask that person to send agenda and questions.

I call people when I have something important or interesting, not e-mail.

My Q to Tim: For those of us who work in traditional organizations, what should we do when we get back? Is the structure too locked in to change?

A: 1) increase your value to your employer 2) Ask for more things that you want

Wait until you are in a crunch time, then ask for the big things – 3 weeks off beacuse you are feeling unhappy. You are worth it to them.

Don’t underestimate your leverage. Make it harder to lose you than to give you what you want.

Homework: explore these two sites:
Your Man in India and Brickwork

by Wednesday send Tim an e-mail saying how you implemented his techniques – most dramatic story of implementation wins a free trip anywhere in the world

timferriss <at> gmail.com – feedback on the presentation. send physical address with feedback on the presentation and get free copy of the book

500 months in your working lifetime – slow down, take a look at what you’re doing, there is no rush

My notes: very cool presentation, worth listening to the podcast when it comes out. Tim is a good speaker and I chatted with him a bit yesterday. I am

definitely go to try out some of his techniques. I love efficiency and you know David Allen has been influencing me a lot lately. Maybe Tim Ferris is the new David Allen – I bet he hopes so.

technorati tags:Tim Ferriss, 4-hour Workweek, Brickwork, Your Man in India, 80/20, Parkinsons Principle, work, job, sxsw, sxswi, NYCIST, management, employee, GTD, David Allen, meetings, organization, lifestyle, knowledge worker

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SXSWi: The Rise of the Blogebrity

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 19:15:44 CDT

The Rise of the Blogebrity

Kyle Bunch Co-Founder, Blogebrity
Amanda Congdon Co-Pres, ABC News/Oxmour Entertainment
Henry Copeland Founder, Blogads.com
Karina Longworth Editor, Netscape
Casey McKinnon Exec Producer, Galacticast
Nick Douglas Director, Look! Shiny!

Copeland: (on blog rankings) “Totally screwed popularity metrics”
Going to look at Forbes Web Celeb Top 25 and Technorati Top 100 – how they are screwed up

To be famous on Forbes, you do not need a lot of hits, you just need to know a reporter. Their #3 blogger only has 80,000 page views compared to those with millions surrounding him.

Technorati #60 has 400,000 impressions where one much lower have millions.

Trying to make it into the technorati top 100 is ridiculous – “it is a piece of crap”

Congdon: it is about where I see them about how often I see them – writing books? Quoted in newspapers? On TV? This his how I evaluate blogebrities.

Longworth: People who get a lot of traffic on their blogs because of who they were before they were bloggers – Arianna Huffington. Film blogs are different – the best film blogger is David Hudson

McKinnon: I only pay attention to video. Celeb video people: Ask a Ninja, Ze Frank. We are considering people celebs as soon as they are in the New York times. Sad because we are new media but we are relying on old media.

Douglas: I like bloggers who give me the stuff I am going to blog about. Just the one step cooler than me.

Video Killing the Blogging Star? Post YouTube is it the end of text-based bloggers?

Congdon: there are still books. TV and books live harmoniously. Most on the panel are video bloggers. Visual medium is more visible making us more recognizable.

Douglas: people come across text blogs by searching for words. Video blogs don’t work that way, but they do give you a public face (people stop you on the street).

Quantity vs. Quality:

Douglas: 600 people watch me. Quality is totally important

McKinnon: quality. Sound and picture quality is essential. We are not professional film makers, but trying to make the video bigger and better looking online is key.

Copeland: If we are just replicating TV we are in trouble. Good to subvery the traditional hierarchy and screw the networks, but the star culture may be harmful. Web 2.0 is about communities and making them better is the real importance.

As a blogger who is clearly not a “blogebrity” it is interesting to listen to these people who are literally famous on the Internet. The moderator is asking them if their celebrity status becomes too much to handle. Jeez, bloggers are that famous?!

Forbest Top 25 only had 3 women on their list. Will we see a bigger shift or is this just a flawed report?

Copeland: those methodologies are flawed. 75% of the celebs on this panel are women.

Right now blogebrities are based on flawed metrics, still using old-world celebrity making, word of mouth of powerful people and those connected to traditional media. Shouldn’t the Internet be able to tell us who is popular with simple metrics?

Ok, my liveblogging steam is wearing thing. I stopped liveblogging this session, but let me tell you the listening was somewhat interesting. I realize that I am not obsessed with blogebrities as a lot of the people in the room are. They are trying to figure out how to make money and how to be famous in the blogosphere – I’m glad I’m not in that position. Me and my three readers are good to go!

Time to go check out the evening events. I’m headed to the SXSW Web Awards Preparty after I drop my laptop back at the hotel.

technorati tags:blogebrity, Kyle Bunch, Amanda Congdon, Henry Copeland, Karina Longworth, Casey McKinnon, Nick Douglas, blogads.com, netscape, Galacticast, ABC News, Oxnour Entertainment, blogging, celebrities, sxsw, sxswi

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SXSW: The Big Bag

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 17:20:45 CDT

Your registration to SXSW comes with a bag full of free stuff. It is mostly paper with magazines, flyers, coupons, etc. Some free stuff like pins, stickers and other little trinkets. With the thousands of registrants, putting these bags together must be a nightmare. When I went to pick mine up I snuck a peek behind the scenes: scary is the only way to describe it.

technorati tags:sxsw, sxswi, schwag, free, bag, big bag, nightmare

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SXSWi: I Can't Believe You Sent That: E-mail Disasters, Large and Small and How to Avoid Them

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 16:12:48 CDT

If you don’t know me, I both love and hate e-mail. More accurate, I used to love e-mail, now I hate it. I think it is over. It is no longer effective, particularly in business/organizations. I think there are lots of new tools to do what e-mail might have done somewhat well. Too much to write on that now. Here are the notes from a good session.

I Can’t Believe You Sent That: E-mail Disasters, Large and Small and How to Avoid Them

Will Schwalbe Random House
David Shipley Random House/New York Times
Their new book/website, Think Before You Send

It is not a technological issues, but psychological, anthropological, sociolgocial.

We are not talking about stupid people. CEOs who are insider trading on e-mail; space shuttle pilots who carry on romantic conversation on e-mail,

They showed a video interviewing people about why the love and hate e-mail. Pretty well done. All people in the video showed people who valued email and didn’t want to live without it, but no one expressed confidence in how to use it.

Dominant form of electronic business information and major player in social communication.

Last year each of the speaker received about 50,000 emails and sent about 30,000 e-mails. They were having lunch and both had had bad days. Both realized that most of what happened had happened on e-mail.

E-mails are often too vague, too long, unnatural, or unnecessary.

Email can be an enormous time waster as it creates the illusion of forward progress.

Email is dangerous because it gives us a feeling of action even when nothing is happening – Bob Geldolf

Nothing serious happens in the delay, no people dying, etc (usually).

Causes of bad e-mail, the “why’s”:
1) curse of the new – new in human history. Once we get something new, we tend to use it too much. Using it for things that should be done in person – firing, breaking up, scolding
2) If you don’t insert tone specifically, tone gets inserted for you
3) E-mail is fast, often too fast to keep up with. Volume tone, content, spelling dozens of times a day under intense pressure. Speed encourages sloppiness and that causes problems because words have meaning.
4) In face to face (voice to voice) our emotional brains are constantly evaluating the responses of the other party – email does not have that ability, but lulls us into thinking it does.
E-mail puts people into a state of disinhibition (NY Science Times).
5) E-mail actually eggs us on – more duplicitous, less aware, encourages the lesser angels of our nature – combine with an easy-to-hit send key and you have a problem
6) What works in speech and letters comes out very differently in e-mail
example: “please” – common sense says adding please to an e-mail makes it more polite. A spoken please is considerate, an e-mail please conveys a sense of exhasperation.

Video showing worst things that have happened to people using e-mail. Great anecodote about how an e-mail was sent out accidentally to 38,000 e-mail with a joke when woman was testing e-mail blast software.

8 deadly sins of e-mail:
1) unbelievably vague e-mail – “where is Dave” (which Dave? where physically? when you sent this?) – send this to multiple people and many are confused.
2) email that insults you so bad you have to get up from your desk
3) email that is cowardly. (fire people, drop bombs all while safely shielded, and emoticons that don’t soften the blow; Friday afternoon email to avoid discussing it)
4) email that puts you in jail (“Never talk when you can nod, never write when you can talk. My only addendum is never put it in an e-mail” – Elliot Spitzer)
5) the thank you e-mail – then the thank you to the thank you…
6) sarcastic e-mails – people don’t recognize this. Cornell study shows that drippingly sarcastic e-mails only read properly 87% of time. Sarcasm comes for Greek word from ripping flesh with teeth
7) e-mail that is too casual (Billie, Billster, etc)
8) inappropriate e-mail (4% of Enron e-mails were racist, sexist, homophobic or otherwise offensive)

Lesser sins:
- subject lines
- personal spam
- wallpaper

What makes good e-mail?
- love exclamation points
- like emoticons
- like furious e-mails when justified
- short paragraphs
- requests clear at the top
- top posting, not bottom posting
- simple fonts
- let people know when no response is needed
- flag-free e-mails, we’ll decide what is important
- condolences or congrats when proper follow up is coming (good for quick delievery)

Whether e-mail sticks around: the less annoying we make e-mails, the more it will continue to stay in use

Cut each other some slack, evolving too rapidly for their to be style police. But let’s not cut ourselves too much slack, let’s be careful and thoughtful

Their final points:
Think before you send
Send e-mails you want to receive

I can’t believe they didn’t list this, but my pet peeve is trying to schedule meetings, pick a dinner location, etc with 10 people over e-mail. Yikes, it never works. My new lifeline for scheduling meetings is Doodle, a website that super-easily lets you schedule meetings. Use it, you’ll thank me.

technorati tags:e-mail, email, culture, kindness, research, book, Will Schwalbe, David Shipley, Random House, New York Times, schools, education, NYCIST, sxsw, sxswi, emoticons, Doodle, SEND

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SXSWi: Serious Games: Can Learning Be Hard Fun?

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 13:48:55 CDT

Serious Games: Can Learning Be Hard Fun?

March 11, 2007, 11:30 CST

John Purdy, President/CEO, Red Knight Learning Systems
Lauren Davis, Liemandt Foundation, Hidden Agenda Games
Paul Medcalf, Senior Flash Game Developer, Blockdot Games
Melinda Jackson, Director of Instructional Design, Enspire Learning

Resources on serious games: seriousgames.org gamesforchange.org, elearningguild.org, seriousgamesmagazine.com, seriousgamessummit.com, seriousgamessource.com

book resource: Engaging Learning, Designing e-Learning Simulation Games
– Clark N. Quinn

“Can learning be hard fun?” – central question

You are challenged and it is difficult, but the fun is in that grappling to solve the difficult problem. Similar to a tough professor who made class fun and pushed you to learn more

Q: What are serious games?
A: learning games, educational games, games with non-entertainment purposes

If a picture is worth a thousand words, an animations is worth a thousand pictures. And to take that a step further, a game is worth a thousand animations. – Peter Raad, Executive Director, The Guildhall at SMU

Davis: working with Liemandt Foundation in Austin to develop middle school game on $25,000 (about 1/10 of what is needed). Worked with college students to create contest where the objectives are to design a game for middle school students to learn. Run through Hidden Agenda site. The games are free for students, teachers, parents.
Examples:
MeChem – robot battle game for middle school kids to play against each other. Have to build robots to fight against each other – requires physics knowledge and chemistry knowledge
ELEMENTAL – periodic table Tetris-like game. Have to build compounds to make shapes disappear
Waste of Space – Asteroids-like game where you are a space garbage man, but using real physics properties like velocity, thrust, etc
Algebra Arcage – Pacman-like game that teaches FOIL method. Takes a lot of practice to learn FOIL and this game does that.

Metcalf: from Blockdot games. Game programmer and game play designer. Formerly worked with Cisco to create games that teach. Developed game to teach about wireless networking. Objectives: teach components, teach security types, protocols. Want to make it fun, introduce an environment like outer space. They give different objectives like room sizes, layout, etc that require a wireless network be set up. They gradually introduce new concepts so that player doesn’t have to learn everything at once. Had to design all the levels so that they were fun and challenging without being too much in your face about the technical stuff.

Jackson: (enspire learning) Create interactive learning experiences for mostly corporations, but also some K-12 and universities like Harvard Business School. Learning is about “tell me, show me, let me.” School: a lot of telling, a little showing, not much letting. Games: a little telling, more showing but a lot of letting.

Purdy: Remission – a game developed for teenagers who have cancer (by HopeLab). To learn about their treatments, chemo, radiation and the importance of staying with their medications, etc. Also designed to get them to take care of their help. First person tutor type of game. Starts by getting you to learn how to move, then how to use your weapons, then to fight bacteria, etc. The price was fairly high to develop this game. Give the game away free to teens with cancer. They ask for a donation if you are not a teen with cancer. Young people who played the game showed higher adherence to therapy and meds.

Q to panel from Purdy: if the ultimate goal is to provide learning experience, should it be a 50/50 balance of learning and entertainment?

Davis: Hidden Agenda games are judged on 70% entertainment value and 30% educational value. If it is not fun they just won’t play it so you have to skew to entertainment side and then move education in later.

Medcalf: sometimes you have to compromise a little on entertainment to get in the education, but without fun the game isn’t worth building as people wont play.

Jackson: we have to make tradeoffs. Game designed might not think it is fun, but instructional designer has to force certain issues to be covered.

Jackson: Feedback is one of the most important teaching tools we have. Letting students know what they have done right, wrong, etc. Feedback should be more immediate.

Question from audience: how do you balance the pedagogical/content expert who is a teacher with the person making a game?

Medcalf: At Cisco, the holy trinity of educational game designing: subject matter expert, instructional designer, game designer all have to work together. There is an internal conflict, but it requires teamwork to balance their different expertise.

Question from audience: the “trick them into learning”, coercive rhetoric doesn’t come across well. Why is their a distinction between education and entertainment?

Davis: “Hidden Agenda” is tongue and cheek. Rather than hiding, the learning needs to be baked in or intrinsic to the game. We save 70/30 to get designers to think primarily about the game play and bake in the education. Bad games have “shoot the bad guy now do a math problem!” That just doesn’t make sense.

Question from audience: Are these games a one-time thing or an over and over experience for users?

Jackson: YVille is giving a lot of focus on game play and how much kids are using these programs.

Overall an interesting panel. My only problem (and I didn’t get to ask this) is that most games start with very few rules (Steven Johnson’s explanation). You know how to move the character, but you figure out all the rules as you play. How to get into the castle, how to get more gear, etc. But when you are teaching chemistry, so many of the rules need to be laid out. How does this jive?

technorati tags:games, serious games, learning, education, blockdot, John Purdy, Lauren Davis, Paul Medcalf, Melinda Jackson, NYCIST, sxsw, sxswi, Guildhall, Peter Raad, Liemandt Foundation, fun, mechem, elemental, algebra arcade, k-12, university, college, Hidden Agenda Games, Cisco, Remission

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Too Many Electronic Distractions?

Sun, 11 Mar 2007 12:06:30 CDT

I am Twittering, Mozesing, blogging, texting, IM’ing, calendaring, Flickring, talking, meeting, collaborating, watching and more while I am down here in Austin for SXSW. It has gotten to be a little much and I ended up missing a session I really wanted to go to, Parent Bloggers 2.0. I guess I’m going to have to wait for the podcast of that one like everyone else. Oh well, the next session I am headed to is Serious Games: Can Learning Be Hard Fun?

technorati tags:twitter, mozes, blog, IM, Meebo, 30boxes, Flickr, sxsw, sxswi, parents, games, learning, podcast

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SXSW/Barcamp Austin: Enough Liveblogging

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:19:47 CST

Ok, have been liveblogging all day. If you think any of my posts were worth reading, please do leave a comment so I know whether I should continue or not. I am going to go drop my laptop back at my hotel now so I can attend some of the evening events. Will carry my camera I think, but not the laptop bag and the SXSW schwag bag. I will have to post pics of the schwag bag later, I caught some photos of the storage space where they keep them. You wouldn’t believe how many were there…

technorati tags:sxsw, sxswi, liveblogging, schwag

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Barcamp: Second Life

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:51:49 CST

Second Life (3-D world you need to know about) folks are here at Austin Barcamp talking about how they open-sourced their software, how they have 5,000 servers running their grid. Just to get an idea of how important second life is becoming, their user base doubles every month, and in the last 24 hours over $1.5 million was spent in Second Life. You can buy stuff, sell stuff, create stuff, design stuff, just amazing. Download the program and try it out. Be patient, you have to learn to live in a 3-D world. But more and more people and companies are creating a presence here. My projection: Second Life hasn’t even come close to hitting its stride yet. Wait till it becomes as popular as MySpace for the kids…

technorati tags:sxsw, sxswi, Barcamp, Barcamp Austin, Second Life, Linden Labs, NYCIST, free

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Left SXSW for Barcamp

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:03:56 CST

The next few panels at South by Southwest were a little too distant to what I am interested in, so I headed over to Barcamp Austin. A Barcamp is a conference/meetup that is run completely by the attendees. All presentations are by attendees and anyone can and should give one. We are experimenting with this for the 2007 NYSAIS Ed Tech Conference, so I figured I might as well learn by doing – we call it an “unconference.” Barcamp is all sponsored and totally free. Really amazing. More info on Barcamps here.

Current session is on coworking spaces, “cafe-like community/collaboration space for developers, writers and independents.” What a concept!

technorati tags:coworking, Barcamp, Austin, sxsw, sxswi, unconference, NYSAISEdTech2006, NYSAIS, NYCIST, BarcampAustin, coworking space, Bourbon Rocks

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SXSXi Keynote: Kathy Sierra

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 15:52:39 CST

Keynote Address: Kathy Sierra
her great blog: Creating Passionate Users
creator of Head First books

People are liveblogging, Twittering, recording, chatting and more. We’re telling people that you need our software, not humans. But you’re all here, right? Why?

What is that thing about being with real human beings? It could just be smell. There’s a lot of other theories. To make better applications, we better compensate for that missing “human-ness.”

Which group? designers, coders and money people. You may be in more than one.

Designers: if you saw a man drowning and could either save him or photograph the event…

What would you tag it in flickr?

Coders: If you could choose between coding an open source web app or having sex?

Women in pic says: Ruby
Man in pic says: Python

Money person: (visualize money-person and insert humorous money-person comment)

Two things we need to do with our applications:

1) help our users get together with one another (offline)
2) make our software feel more human

Encourage offline communities:
- start help/user group
- make it low cost
- make your own *camp

Q: “What can a human do with another computer that they can’t do with a computer?”

A: they can’t make faces at a computer
A: they can’t ask questions (FAQ’s are not questions)

Showing slides with lots of wondering, frustrated faces – can software understand this? No.

All of our applications have Asperger syndrome (she listed qualities on a slide)

Have to give our app a way to know that the user is confused. I am trying to create passionate users, not people who just survive the product.

No one is passionate when they suck. Anyone who can get their users past the “suck” threshold to the passion threshold faster than the other guy will probably win.

Facial recognition theory is super-complicated. Instead, add a “WTF” button to the application. The computer can understand this.

When you click “Help” isn’t that people saying “WTF?” No, because the people who wrote Help think you are calm, ready to learn, have time to read, etc, instead you are actually in a panic and need to solve something.

The first thing in any good help would be “Don’t Panic”

She is showing someone searching for how to “add up numbers” in Excel Office Assistant with no luck, so many frustrating results. Then uses Excel’s main help section, again no helpful results. Nothing wrong with them, just written for the wrong people at the wrong time. The user is not able to express what they are feeling and doesn’t know what the function is called.

So what do we do when a user tells us they’re confused: think like a human.

Normally when someone is confused, you ask them what they are confused about. You could use a computer with natural language processing (another huge research area). Computer based learning has focused on this for a long time.

If you take the most commonly asked questions and capture them all, you can create menus that have those questions – you have to collect all the crazy questions though, not the ones the engineers write what they think will be the most common questions.

The point of the WTF button:
1) Get the user to the right context ASAP
2) Then give him an understandable set of questions

How to do this:

1) Choose a high-level statement like:
I’m lost Why did this happen. I don’t know what it’s called, but I need it.

“Give the user a way to express herself to the system in a more human-interactive way”

Why stop with WTF? What other emotions could the computer recognize?

People say that they hate the program, but they are actually sad because they can’t do what they want, it is making them feel stupid

You want people to say, “they knew exactly what I was thinking” – things were right where I needed them when I needed them.

Most importantly: talk like a human. When they write people stop being human for some reason. By just adding the word “you” the affect on user understanding is huge.

If you took a transcript of you answering a user question and posted that, it would be better than the tech writeups you normally get in FAQ’s.

“The key to passionate users is helping them learn.”

You can outspend the other guys, or you can out teach them. Both work.

Where there is passion…there is a user kicking ass.

Being really good at something makes that thing a higher-resolution experience.

If you can make your user just a little bit better at anything (playing a game, working, learning) – entering a state of flow – will be some of the happiest moments of their life.

We don’t have the change the world on a giant scale, but just one 5-minute user experience at a time.

I guess Kathy wasn’t collecting our videos to use at this presentation, because she didn’t show any videos. Pretty interesting presentation. I have to think about how it applies to ed tech people because it certainly does. It is about better teaching when we introduce new products to our teachers/students.

technorati tags:Kathy Sierra, Creating Passionate Users, sxsw, sxswi, education, teaching, NYCIST, learning, WTF

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Under 18: Blogs, Wikis and Online Social Networkin Sites for Youth

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:37:05 CST

Warning: I took a lot of notes, sorry! The session was too good.

Under 18: Blogs, Wikis and Online Social Networkin Sites for Youth
11:30 CST
Speakers:

Andrea Forte, Georgia Institute of Technology (moderator)
danah boyd, USC Annenberg Center
Anastasia Goodstein, Publisher, Ypulse
Kate Raynes-Goldie, TakingITGlobal
Erin Reilly, Exec Dir, Platform Shoes Forum
Elisabeth Sylvan, Researcher, MIT Media Laboratory

87% of teens 12-17 online, 80% of parents online, 54% of American families filter

Young people online are:
1) in constant moral danger
2) fulfilling their inner potention

neither is reality, somewhere in the middle

dana boyd: 100 years ago less than 10% of 14-17 year olds going to high school. 1930’s during depression, made teens go to high school to stop competition for jobs for older men. Created age segregation where young men were initiated when they entered older age segments. Now teens are mainly exposed to only other teens. “Teenager” became a marketing term by 1941. Marketing shifted towards age groups. 1950’s went to a movie that was meant for “you” not for all society. 1960’s started legislating to keep kids away form adult spaces. 1980’s curfews. Everything young people did was terrible and we needed to keep them away from adults. The internet allows for people who are trapped in their homes to escape.

“If you’re not on myspace, you don’t exist” – Skyler Sierra from Kathy Sierra’s blog

Kids can now be tracked (searched for), replicability (anything copy/pasted), recognizability (no one knows who anyone is online).

Erin Reilly: created safe online space for girls who are interested in science, engineering, technology. Knew it had to be online social networking to engage the kids. Zoe’s room is the name of the space. Creating mobile device – the more they are active, the more power their online avatar has.

Elisabeth Sylvan: building inspiring tools for kids. Blocks are great, how would you digitally enhance blocks for older kids to make sculpture, sculpture that moves, programming, etc? Want to make kids realize their dreams with tools made available to them. Computer Clubhouse – over 100 physical centers around the world where kids can create whatever they like with computers in a mentored environment. Ex: make portraits of themselves, designing video games. Mentors encourage them to create what they want to create, different than learning in schools. Shows them how technology can be a part of their lives. All Clubhouses share an intranet site where great cross-cultural interactions take place.

Other community she works with: Scratch. (built on top of Squeak). Visual programming environment, very easy to use. Easy to introduce to adults as well. Can make games, interactive stories, make artwork. Online space where kids can post projects, download code, leave comments, etc.

Kate Raynes-Goldie: Online community for young activists. Do a lot of offline engagement as well. Created 5 years ago, before Facebook, MySpace. Designed by youth for youth, a key to our success. How can we engage teens online before alienating teachers and lawmakers? Online discussion boards, profiles, etc just like other sites. But also using to inform themselves to learn about issues, organize protests and dialogues, participate in national and international decision making. We were founded before the moral panic around social networking so that is a new challenge for us. They have another version of their website designed to be used in the classroom. We educate teachers and schools about how to use our tools and how to use the internet safely. Have to counter huge mass-media machine that takes a few incidents and makes the Internet look like an awful place. The ed site is more teachery-looking, pastel colors, etc. Trying to strike a fine balance between adult acceptance and student interest. Adults generally don’t get what kids are about which creates a lack of what kids need. Kids who should be mentoring kids generally don’t know enough about the internet. Generally end up with spaces that marginalize youth and are oppressive.

Anastasia Goodstein: I blog about generation Y info for media professionals. Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online. Her new book for adults to learn about youth online behavior. Parents often glaze over when talking about tech. Need to talk parents down and explain that teens are really just socializing online, looking for validation. Usually with friends, sometimes with strangers. They are getting their education online. When teens have Internet taken away the thing they miss most is being able to do homework research, not e-mail, IM etc (she cited Nickelodeon study). Identity creation is a big part of their development, and much of what they are doing online with identities, avatars, etc. You can’t legislate good behavior. There are issues we need to deal with. You can’t solve this with technology (filters, etc). The main way to work on this is through dialogue. Parents are afraid because their kids know more than them, they don’t know what to say. We need to create the dialogue so that parents can be closer to their kids and know more about what they are doing in their lives.

Andrea Forte: “Wikis scare the hell out of high school teachers.” A completely open environment is hard to line up with standard assessment practices. Wikipedia: young people have an opportunity to contribute to something legitimate. We need to bring young people into adult conversations in a legitimate fashion.

Three questions from moderator: Q1: What exactly are young people getting out of their lives online? Q2: What is reality when it comes to dangers for young people online? Q3: What kinds of social, tech/design solutions are there once we identify experiences we want to facilitate and/or prevent?

dana boyd: DOPA – legislation, Deleting Online Predators Act. Not what it sounds like. Bans all minors from all social technologies in schools and libraries – Yahoo groups, Neopets, Wikipedia (exception for non-profits, but Wikia, Wiki news), MySpace and all the like. Not banned at home. Moving from digital divide problem to participatory divide problem – private vs. public schools. Most teens ignore strangers; the ones who don’t are the kids who aren’t doing so well – there are a lot of these kids. The online world isn’t so different than the offline world that way, but it is a problem because the kids are doing poorly. What if we put social workers on MySpace? Instead of blame the tech, realize they are people regardless of technology. If we took care of the people, the technology wouldn’t matter.

Erin Reilly: cyberbullying (especially with girls) is the greater problem, not online predators. It always goes back to education. Rural community workshop: 25 tween girls, none of them knew what a pedophile was. We must be educating them.

Anastasia Goodstein: Plagiarism and cheating is a major new problem. Texting under your hoodie. Big need for educators to teach kids about finding credible sources, about plagiarism, etc. Students using personal statement form other students to apply for schools.

Erin Reilly: media literacy was a big focus. Now we need to teach cyberethics. Even if my school blocks IM, if I can get around it, it doesn’t hurt anyone. Kids need to understand rules.

Kate Raynes-Goldie: just like the drug wars, banning doesn’t work. Have to teach people.

Elisabeth Sylvan: I work with 10-18 year olds. 10 year olds have much different understanding than 18 year olds. Need to differentiate between ages when talking about online safety. Online communities should have methods for young people to alert someone when something hurts them.

dana boyd: strange narrative: I was always allowed to talk to shopkeepers, or teachers on the first day. Strangers are those characters in your life that have no role, because anyone who has a role is not stranger. Online, I only talked to strangers. Where do I go to college, what is going on in the Gulf War, etc. What are we losing by saying no strangers online. What is trust is the real question? How do we teach that? Talking to a stranger about the Iraq war online is much different than meeting them for sex, right? Most bullying is offline, not online. The online has shifted the architecture, so what is possible is different. Why do teenagers break up on MySpace? No he-said, she-said game. Very clear to the public what happened and what was said. Then they “delete” each other.

My comment to myself: this session is fantastic! So many thoughts running through my head.

Kate Raynes-Goldie: Young women are expected to dress that way. It is a reflection of society that our girls are posting racy pictures. We need to look at what kind of societal values we are developing.

Anastasia Goodstein: we’ve democratized bullying. Anyone can create a fake persona, anyone can steal a password.

dana boyd: we’ve moved it to a specific cyber-ethics and forgot about the core ethics. Adults online dating are meeting strangers.

Elisabeth Sylvan : We tend to want to put things on schools. I think that is unfair. There is a lot of stuff that schools already have to deal with. Some teachers can deal with cyberethics and some are trying to figure out how to use PowerPoint in the one hour they have to teach a lesson.

Anastasia Goodstein: shy kids are being empowered, a huge benefit. Kids who don’t raise their hands in class can blog, post to boards, etc. Harris Interactive study recently showed that offline + online friendships deepens those friendships. Adds a new layer to teen friendship.

Kate Raynes-Goldie: Kids can access communities that they might not have access to: queer, transgender, etc.

Q: are kids more media literate?

dana boyd: No, kids haven’t learned HTML. They copy/paste or someone designed it for them. They don’t know how to navigate to a website, they know how to Google it.

My comment: Unbelievable women on this panel. When the podcast comes out I highly recommend this for ed tech folks and parents. I am going to try and get at least a couple of these women on 21^st Century Learning.

technorati tags:education, sxsw, sxswi, NYCIST, teens, tweens, safety, myspace, facebook, social, social networking, online, culture, Andrea Forte, danah boyd, Anastasia Goodstein, Kate Raynes-Goldie, Erin Reilly, Elisabeth Sylvan

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SXSWi: Emerging Social and Technology Trends

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 12:15:39 CST

Trying to live blog, bear with me (all paraphrasing):

Because the registration line was all messed up (took me an hour) I missedthe start of the session. When I came in they were talking about young peopleon social networks. One of ths speakers comment was that he was so glad thathis teens and 20’s were spent in the dark days before online social networks.

One of the speakers just said (paraphrasing), 4 year olds now, when theygrow up, are going to look at the generation now and say, wow, that was sosquare, how could you blog about everything you’re doing? But even if there wasa backlash, we wouldn’t knw about it because they won’t be blogging. (got abunch of laughs)

10:31 CST: They’re now discussing the trend towards allowing peoplemodifying their products. People who make their API’s open have to be ready tosee their product head in a direction they don’t want necessarily. Examplesinclude people hacking hardware to do what the manufacturers normally sell asmore expensive machinery – just hacking gives you all the extra options. Somemanufacturers are ok with this because it generates interest, but most aren’t.Businesses are interested in these secondary economies that can be generated bythe augmentation folks.

10:36 CST: Some speakers putting down Apple for not allowing programmers todevelop for the iPhone. Consumers need to demand from their carriers theability to customize their devices.

10:39: Question: What are the demographic trends that will influence what weare talking about?
A: Living room video conferencing not coming in more quickly is surprising tome. The baby boomers kids will have large screen tv’s, networked forconferencing. 1 year old kids think video chatting is totally normal. A2:People’s desire to use technology combined with the current fear regardingsecurity will create a lot of market for security companies – biometrics,biotech, security services, home security, creating a fortress.

10:46 CST: Most people in the world are or will be accessing the Internetthrough a mobile device. What does that mean for how we are designing theInternet? Most people in Africa will not beaccessing the Net using an overpowered PC in their home, but rather anunderpowered, outdate mobile device.

10:49 CST: In India they have a service called ePost. Send an e-mail to thepost office and they will print it out in rural India and deliver it to people.Hybrid environments emerging. VoIP cannot be run in Indiawithout permission of the government in India. There are a lot of projectsin the global south that require government cooperation even withmonarchs/dictators. People are often afraid to comment on what they are workingon because of fear of being quoted in their home countries.

10:52 CST: Q: What are you opinions on how education could be changed inlight of these social trends? How can we change teaching?

A1: The board of ed in New Yorkjust signed 12million project with IBM to design a database for gradebooks todo metrics of scoring – NCLB.

A2: Lots of ways for students to learn including games and othermodels.Education system doesn’t have the resources or knowledgebase to bringtogether so many different types of learning, the structure doesn’t allow forit.

A3: Mentiong the Ross school and The School at Columbia and how 1:1 and innovativeclassrooms are changing schools. Talking about project where students buildingtheir own albums using Garage Band. Mentioned Google’s apps package foreducation. So many resources out there, how to apply it creatively withinschools to solve a problem.

Q: What is the future of e-mail? Will it be replaced by messaging or SMS?

A1: E-mail is pretty perfect. Asynchronous, not going anywhere.

A2: Videoconferencing is coming. HP has very expensive, no delay, high defvideo system. There aren’t many barriers left to getting a lot cheaper

A3: With large displays in peoples’ home, telepresence should be here soon.Ability to purchase premium network access to support those services throughnetwork providers will evolve.

The next session I am going to is: “Under 18: Blogs, Wikis.”Should be interested because a lot of the people here are trying to figure outhow to make money from the under 18 segment, while I am trying to figure outhow to empower that segment as learners as well as media literate folks. Are wein opposition to each other? Let’s see…

technorati tags:sxsw, sxswi, teaching, student, online, social networking, Africa, global south, Austin, interactive, panel, Apple, iPhone, education

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On My Way To Austin for SXSWi

Fri, 9 Mar 2007 21:49:32 CST

I am at George W. Bush airport in Houston, Texas waiting for my last leg to Austin where I’ll be attending the South by Southwest Interactive Festival. The conference has an unreal number of ways to stay connected to what is going on there: the SXSW Twitter group gives me text-message alerts on my cell phone (or instant messenger); the Austin Barcamp Mozes group also connects to my cell phone (or e-mail); I am subscribed to the SXSWi community blog ; I’m using the SXSW web calendar which creates a feed that I subscribed to in my 30boxes calendar (my web calendar of choice); I am attending many of the events for SXSW listed on upcoming.org and I also subscribed to that on my 30boxes calendar (again so I have to look one less place for stuff);

I am overwhelmed already and I haven’t even got to Austin! Information overload to say the least. The South by Southwest Mini Survial Guide is a good article on how not to fall apart when you’re down there. I plan to follow it closely.

Alex and I will be trying to do daily live webcasts while I am at South by Southwest so stay tuned to the 21st Century Learning schedule at EdTechTalk.

More to come soon, my flight it boarding.

technorati tags:sxsw, sxswi, Alex Ragone, 21st Century Learning, EdTechTalk, conference, 30boxes, Twitter, Mozes, barcamp, Austin Barcamp, upcoming.org, George Bush Airport, Houston, Austin

Headed to SXSW Interactive Festival March 9-13

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:39:09 CST

I am fortunate to work in a school where 1) professional development is valued, and 2) the nearly limitless potential impact of technology is recognized.

Because of that, my school is sending me to the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. I work/live in New York City, so sending me to Austin comes at a significant expense to the school. However, SXSW is a place where some of the most brilliant thinkers on technology and the future will be presenting. This is an opportunity for me to learn about developing technologies and approaches to using them. Most people who attend SXSW aren’t educators – but, they are thinkers. And that is why I want to be there. I want to push the boundaries of how we think about education and what’s possible. I plan to surround myself with outside-of-the-box folks who might help inspire future projects within my school.

My school, while traditional, became a 1:1 laptop school in 1998. This was very early, and as a girls school was pioneering. We are now 9 years in to the program and we know a lot more than when we started. Computers in the hands of every student have great potential, but require a dramatic shift in the way we think about the classroom. School change is an art and science, and anyone good will tell you that real changes takes years and great effort. I hope to be inspired by folks at SXSW like Kathy Sierra, Will Wright, Dan Rather, Limor Fried and hosts of other speakers who will be there.

So many of us attend professional development sessions that train on completely hands-on skills. That is great, that is necessary. But, are we spending enough time doing professional development on vision, on future-thinking? Probably not, so I am going to seize this opportunity.

Is anyone else going to South by Southwest? Please leave a comment, perhaps we can have an educator meetup in Austin.

Technorati Tags: 1:1, Austin, Creating Passionate Users, Dan Rather, education, future, Kathy Sierra, laptops, Limor Fried, professional development, school, school change, South by Southwest, SXSW, Texas, vison, Will Wright

Should We Teach Software Skills?

Wed, 7 Feb 2007 23:19:26 CST

Today on the ISED mailing list, someone posted a quotation from Nicholas Negroponte (of $100 laptop fame):

In fact, one of the saddest but most common conditions in elementary school computer labs (when they exist in the developing world) is that children are being trained to use Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. I consider that criminal because children should be making things, communicating, exploring, sharing, not running office automation tools.

The poster asked for people’s opinions and it generated a flurry of wide-ranged responses. Here are some highlights:

Here here! I find the fixation on teaching Word, Excel, and Powerpoint in schools troubling indeed. Are we training our students to think or to be secretaries!

then

These kinds of ideological pronouncements always make me crazy. As if “making things, communicating, exploring, sharing” and learning how to navigate office tools are mutually exclusive.
I agree that the emphasis in elementary programs should be on the exploratory and creative side. However, we don’t argue that children should not waste their time learning basic math facts, do we?
Mr. Negroponte needs to spend more time in school.

and

However, I would agree with Stephen ~~snip~~ about the realities of school. Why is using Microsoft Word not being creative? Isn’t the act of writing creative and isn’t it true that Word is a tool that makes writing, editing, revising, and publishing easier? Isn’t Excel a way to analyze information? And I saw Dr. Negoponte’s Powerpoint presentation at NECC in 2006 so obviously there are communication uses for Powerpoint.
I also worry about the “either” “or” nature of some of these arguments – why supposedly certain types of techology applications negate creativity and problem-solving in favor of productivity, for instance. Why isn’t our question “what’s in your toolbox and why and what are you planning?”
In my opinion, it all comes down to how these things are used, what work is being done, what goals we have, how are we encouraging higher order thinking, and what process we are following. And in the end in our schools the teacher is the singlemost important factor in success in spite of their being technology or not.

then

This and many other educational debates (“Chicago Math” v. Saxon Math, whole language v. phonics, ad infinitum) can never truly be resolved because their basic premise – that these are either/or decisions – is either just plain false or a convenient way for ideologues on either side of a bogus dichotomy to dumb down a much more complicated discussion than they would like to have.
There are many educators out there who respect children enough to create learning environments that are not predefined by someone else’s either/or and acknowledge the practical realities of everyday life while simultaneously embracing the wonder and joy of discovery and exploration.
We generally don’t find them on CNN or quoted in the paper. They are too busy getting things right and serving their students. The quality of our reflections on educational practice would improve greatly if we would take the time spent spouting either/or dogma and instead use it to watch, listen, and learn while these transcendently effective “both/and” people ply their craft.

and

If I ruled the world, a nod to a James Brown song, I would invite a group of talented English teachers, technologists, child development specialists, etc and put them in a very comfortable place for a year and ask them to come up with a writing tool for students at various levels of development. (Pay them of course!) It would not have to be two or three different programs, but it could be one that could be set up with various features that could be turned on as kids got older. We would then have a program that would be suited for writing as opposed to a tool that has been designed for corporate use with very little thought given to how kids learn. I think the last wp developed for schools was the Bank Street Writer. So by the weight of the two ton lb gorilla we use Word, and yes we can be creative with it but it could be a hella of a lot more creative and useful.

It’s amazing how you first read a quotation and it sounds so right. Then someone spins it in another direction and it sounds so wrong. I think those of us in the ed tech world know what Negroponte was saying. In my mind it translates to learning skills without context. No one need to learn how to use bold. People know how to emphasize words, and there is a difference. This was a major confusion and continues to be for ed tech programs around the world. How to we blend learning skills with higher order thinking? Do we teach kids PowerPoint or do we teach them how to make fantastic presentations using digital tools? If you say obviously the latter, can you do that without a digital slideshow tool like PowerPoint? And if you do, don’t you need to teach them that tool? While someone above argued that we are using overkill tools to teach our kids (which I agree with), I don’t think we are going to find a totally intuitive software package for creating digital presentations. I’m not willing to leave teaching to go design it, are you? So in the mean time, let’s do both, teach skills and context – just don’t pick only one; it’s not fair to the kids. Or you.

Your thoughts? Apologies for the long post, but I wanted to remember this conversation, so I posted it here. Right now we are discussing how private this list should be (archives are public though), so I left names off the quotations. To find the names, use the archives.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Nicholas Negroponte, PowerPoint, $100 laptop, skills, software, teaching, Word

Headed to David Allen's GTD The RoadMap Seminar

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:16:39 CST

On Thursday I will be attending The RoadMap seminar with organizational superstar David Allen. I have written about his system before (1, 2, 3) and hope this seminar will push me fully into “stress-free productivity” as his book claims it can bring you. I know, I know, the book cover looks so cheezy. Just ignore that and read it. Even if you think you are organized, this book will change you.

Since I will be missing work that day, I was going to check in on e-mail from the hotel until I got a pre-semiar note today. They mention the Internet access at the Marriot Marquis Times Square: “Wireless internet is available on the Eighth Floor, for a fee of $8 for every fifteen minutes.” What the???

Anyway, on Feb 6, 2007, 1:30pm EST (GMT -5) we will be covering Getting Things Done on 21st Century Learning (my weekly live webcast). I’ll give plenty of feedback from the seminar, so tune in or catch the podcast.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Learning Webcast, David Allen, Getting Things Done, GTD, Internet, Marriot Marquis, organizational, The Roadmap, Times Square

Getting On The Map

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:54:55 CST

So I’m on the map. The Google Earth map. If you don’t have Google Earth, download it now (with a high speed connection). Lets you zoom in with satellite images anywhere on the Earth, amazing. That being said, Alex Ragone tagged me to contribute to the Google Earth Educators Meme started by Lucy Gray. So, I fired up Google Earth and used it to answer two questions:

What has been your most memorable learning experience?
Who is the teacher that has influenced you the most? And why?

They were difficult questions, but I did my best writing them up. Only twist, I wrote them directly onto bookmarks in Google Earth meaning you can view where this experiences occurred. All you have to do is download my KMZ file and open it in Google Earth. A little hard to explain, but just click the KMZ link and try to open it. If you have Google Earth, my answers will pop out of the world, literally. If you teach any kind of history or geography, do yourself a favor and learn how to do this with your students.

And now to tag some other folks. Go!

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Learning Webcast, Alex Ragone, Basil Kolani, Chris Lehmann, Google, Google Earth, history, June Ahn, Kerri Richardson, kmz, Laura Gray, learning, geography, Randy Ziegenfuss, teachers, teaching

MySpace Sued By 4 Families Of Abused Children

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 22:04:09 CST

Four families with young daughters who were abused, molested or raped by someone they met on MySpace have filed suits against News Corporation (who owns MySpace). These are tragic examples of the real dangers that online communication tools can facilitate. Having had hours of discussions with parents, students, administrators and colleagues about the dangers of social networking sites, these stories make the dangers startlingly real.

Trying to think about this in a balanced way, I wonder how fair it is to hold MySpace responsible for these young women meeting these awful men. Yes, they used MySpace. But didn’t they also use computers, web browsers, phones, cars, the subway, public places like restaurants, parks and more to meet? Are they all to blame? Is this the same as overweight people suing McDonald’s? It is very difficult to understand who is at fault here. Who is liable? In the end does it actually matter, these girls have already suffered, and there is no recovery. On a forum on Slashdot someone suggested the parents be charged with negligence. Is there really anyone to blame other than the criminals?

Most often I tell families that the dangers are real. They must deal with that. It is however much more rare than one might realize. The overwhelming majority of perpetrators of sexual violence against children are victims’ parents. Read this great article highlighting the data from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It’s also important to note that 79% of reported online abuse occurred at home.

The conclusion of the article really summed it up well,

The question is, “Are we going to take a “zero risk” approach to using technology and the tools of the Web?”
We don’t take a “zero risk” approach with our sports programs where the chance of injury, paralysis, and, in rare cases, death, is always present. We don’t take that approach with field trips where students travel to museums and historical sites in locations where they might be touched by crime. We don’t take that approach with recess on our playgrounds, or transporting our kids to and from school.

We can never eliminate all risk; but there are ways to maximize our students’ safety while using these incredibly powerful tools. Each tool needs to be analyzed individually to ascertain its benefits and the specific risks it might present. From there, thoughtful people can find solutions to the student safety issues that may arise.

As educational leaders we need to be safety conscious. We need to be prudent, reasonable; but we won’t live in fear and we won’t act from fear.

It is by opening doors, not closing them that we create new possibilities for our children and new futures for ourselves.

Would love to hear your thoughts, and how your school or home is responding to the sensational media coverage.

p.s. In other conspiracy theories, doesn’t network television have a vested interest in having parents be afraid of the Internet? It keeps the kids watching TV instead of YouTube when the parents take away the computer. I know that one is way out there, but had to toss it in the mix.

Technorati Tags: article, MySpace, net generation, news, NYCIST, online, parents, safety, social networking, students

Happy New Year!

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 20:04:15 CST

Happy new year to all. I had a wonderful time traveling through Spain and Morocco and my christmas present took some unbelievable photos (evidence below). I have been learning so much about photography from the Digital Photography School blog and the Photojojo blog. Never thought I could learn so much about photography by reading blogs. Will my online professional development ever end? Let’s hope not.

This week has been busy with Winterim, a one-week period where teachers get to try out experimental courses with students. I am teaching Internet radio broadcasting to twelve 8th graders. They have put on two great shows and tomorrow is their final show. They are on live at 12:30pm EST (17:30 GMT) tomorrow January 11, 2007. Tune in to the chatroom and channel 1 at Webcast Academy.

I’ll get back to blogging soon. 2007, here we go…

Technorati Tags: 8th Grade, Canon, digital photography, Digital Rebel XTI, Flickr, Morocco, online, professional development, Photojojo, radio, Spain, webcast, Webcast Academy

See You In 2007

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 10:40:25 CST

I’m finally putting my report cards aside. I’m going to spend some time not thinking about educational technology for as long as possible. I’m headed to Spain and Morocco to do some backpacking. I can’t totally put aside the technology though as I pack my digital camera, memory cards, travel adapters, chargers, CD-R’s, USB card reader etc. During last year’s India trip I took similar equipment. This time I’m not taking a laptop though as I am only carrying one backpack. No room for extras. Just enough clothes to make it and a guidebook to pick my next destination.

I picked up a new digital SLR camera, the Canon Digital Rebel XTI. I am a bit of a photo snob, and I love my digital point and shoot (Panasonic Lumix). But this camera takes photos to a whole new level. I am amazed at my initial shots. I sprung for a decent prime lens which is giving me some great results.

I will be abroad for new years, but hope to try and tune in to some of the Worldbridges New Years Webcastathon. Some great voices will be broadcasting around the clock, so tune in when you can. If I have access to Skype I might try and jump in from a Spanish Internet cafe.

Happy holidays and happy new year everyone. See you in 2007.

Technorati Tags: camera, Canon, Digital Rebel XTI, Morocco, backpack, Spain, travel, Worldbridges

Teachers Need Objectives

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 23:14:14 CST

Want to be a great teacher? Then know what learning objectives are.

I recently listened to the wonderful Geek netcast #48 where they discussed the confusion of teachers wanting to learn technology tools rather than how to use them with their students. They discussed the existence of a class called “Microsoft Word”—their response, Microsoft Word is not a class, it is a tool! Of course I agree.

Randy (a friend from Teachers College“) writes on Results Now, Mike Schmoker’s new book. Randy quotes, “In most cases, neither teachers nor students can articulate what they are supposed to be learning that day.” This sums it all up. Students are dying to know what is expected, what is coming. We should tell them, and let explore it in the most powerful ways possible – give the access to the Internet, to the library, to local experts to graduated cylinders to dictionaries…to whatever they need.

I am tired of the discussions on what tools we need to train teachers on. Our training models are too slow for that technique. By the time we’ve trained, that is out, and students are on to new things. We need to be training our teachers on how to plan lessons properly, how to communicate the objectives to students, and how to facilitate an exploration of the concepts at hand. They need to be prepared to have students bring in tools that work for them. Yes, using Facebook might just be the best way to plan your next community service project. Deal with it. Heck, embrace it. Why not? Your students are going to with or without you.

Sorry for the rant. Lay out the objectives and see how much closer your students will be to achieving them. Don’t try to trick them into getting there, it will surely land you short of your goals.

My next post should be on how tech integrators fit into this picture (since you are my main readers). I am working on it.

Participatory Conference

Fri, 17 Nov 2006 20:38:37 CST

This year’s NYSAIS Tech Conference was professionally thrilling for me. I had a slight advantage over most attendees though, as I got to plan the conference blog. On 21st Century Learning (my weekly webcast), Alex and I interviewed Bill Fitzgerald to figure out how to use the free software Drupal to power our conference blog. Listen to that interview here:
powered by ODEO

Planning a blog for technologists and librarians who come from the high-tech world of New York independent schools was a challenge. I had two main goals for the site: 1) allow people to explore web 2.0 technologies and 2) make the conference (and site) a more collaborative experience.

I think the blog was fairly successful. Before the conference started I sent out an e-mail to all the registrants and the New York City technologists asking them to register for the site, and try out some of the “homework” assignments I posted. The assignments were to get people using the tools, hands on. Most didn’t try the site until they got to the conference, but then traffic really took off. I think the blog will have a lot of use going forward for the New York City tech community who hosted it, but it will take a concerted effort (like anything worthwhile) to keep it going. I do believe it is in all of our best interests though – I’d like to see it blossom into an online extension of our already vibrant group. Our last show covered how the site works, so take a listen here:
powered by ODEO

Results of the homework: our photo gallery, our blog posts (internal or external) and our bookmarks.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Learning Webcast, Alex Ragone, blog, conference, del.icio.us, Drupal, education, Flickr, free, Learning Blog, NYCIST, NYSAISEdTech2006, online, New York City

Raucous First Day at NYSAIS Conference

Thu, 9 Nov 2006 01:32:05 CST

The first day was overwhelming to say the least. I showed people the new conference blog site and talked about how to blog, post photos, and share bookmarks. People really latched on to it and are making the site an incredible resource and online meeting place. During the sessions I had the chat room projected up at the front of the room and it was flying by. Really exciting stuff. Catch the podcast of Rob Darrow here and the Will Richardson/Alan November podcast here. First speaker didn’t know it was up there (last minute call), but Will and Alan latched on and were all for it. We are asking speakers from now on.

I just finished sending out my class coverage information for tomorrow. Now it is time for much needed rest before the exciting media literacy workshop I am attending in the morning. See you in person tomorrow or in the chat room at 5:00pm.

My room at this instant:

Technorati Tags: Alan November, blog, del.icio.us, Flickr, Mohonk, NYSAISEdTech2006, podcast, bookmarks, Rob Darrow, Will Richardson

NY Tech Conference - Be There Remotely or Personally

Wed, 8 Nov 2006 00:03:39 CST

The NYSAIS technology conference starts tomorrow and I couldn’t be more excited. I think this is my fifth year attending, but who’s counting? It is great to connect with other technologists from around New York – I am always amazed at how bright, energetic and creative these teachers are. If only we all worked in the same school, now that would be fun. Or really nerdy.

This year there are some snazzy new features (if I do say so myself, read on to see why): for one, Alex, myself and the EdTechTalk.com team are going to be live webcasting the keynote speakers. This means if you are going to miss (or not be attending at all) any session, you can listen live. Check the full schedule. While listen, be sure to join the chat room to ask speakers questions remotely. Talk about expanding your audience.

We also decided to create a collaborative conference blog/website. I was inspired by participating in the K12 Online Conference site, and created 3 homework assignments for people to try out before, during or after the conference: try blogging, photo sharing or bookmark sharing, whatever works for you.

This conference is all about collaboration, and the site lets people experiment with great, free collaborative tools. The site also lets non-attendees participate. So whether or not you will be at the conference, please do join us. As we like to say at NYCIST (who is hosting the site), the knowledge is in the group.

If you need someone to talk you through it, Alex and I did a preconference webcast today, so give a listen.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Learning Webcast, A Whole New Mind, Alex Ragone, blogging, conference, Daniel Pink, del.icio.us, Drupal, EdTechTalk, education, Flickr, k12online, K12online06, learning, live, NYCIST, NYSAIS, NYSAISEdTech2006, online, Drupal, technology

Sorry For the Duplicate Post - NYSAIS Conference Info On The Way

Sun, 5 Nov 2006 23:31:10 CST

Sorry that my David Warlick K-12 Online Conference post came up again. Was messing around with my previous post and reposted it. Now I can’t get rid of it!

Oh well. Look this week for my post on the new NYSAIS Tech Conference collaborative blogging post. We are taking our NY state tech conference to the next level – online collaboration for all the attendees and beyond. We will be live broadcasting, blogging, sharing photos, links and more. Stay tuned for more info in the next couple days.

The conference starts Wednesday, so I better be ready before then. Hope you’ll be able to tune in, in some way or the other.

Technorati Tags: conference, David Warlick, NYSAISEdTech2006, NYSAIS, webcast

Watch David Warlick's K12 Online Conference Keynote

Sun, 5 Nov 2006 23:23:34 CST

I planned to go to bed early tonight after I finished writing my parent-teacher pre-conference writeups. Instead, I started watching David Warlick video keynote address for the K12 Online Conference and I couldn’t stop. As usual, David was spot-on on everything he was talking about and finished his keynote talking about how we all need to be 21st century learners – obviously I liked that since my blog is called 21apples (find out why) and my weekly webcast with Alex Ragone is called 21st Cenutry Learning.

This “conference” is so interesting because it is all going to be conducted online. You can read about it, participate in live events, check out the agenda, see a map of who all is involved, visit/edit the conference wiki and more.

A wonderful opportunity for teachers, technologists and everyone in-between to learn more about technology in education. How can we do it, why should we do it and more. If you want to use the Internet, computers and tech in general in your school, “be at” this conference. You can even get graduate credit for participating in this online conference.

On a side note, David Warlick’s Hitchhikr website will be charting all the blog posts and Flickr pictures connected to this conference.

Technorati Tags: conference, David Warlick, graduate school, K12 Online Conference, k12online, K12online06, Learning Blog, NYSAIS-EdTech-2006, NYSAISEdTech2006, school, schools, students, teachers, teaching, technology, wiki

Do Students Have To Learn From Experience? Laptops And Students, Oh My!

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 22:05:41 CDT

As a tech director in a 1:1 laptop school I have the opportunity to see a wide range of student treatment of their computers (see picture). We start our program in the 8th grade. In a whirlwind of excitement we do our best to keep students from overloading their computers with questionable software that’s going to inflict spyware, popups and the like onto their machines.

In the most recent drama, some of our pro-Mac students (we use Dell’s) have installed software that makes their Windows machines look just like Mac OS X. They also convinced lots of others to do the same. They soon realized that their hacking around caused a number of functionality issues (like not being able to see their address bar in Internet Explorer). In the process of cleaning up the machines we learned that we had to insert the Windows XP CD to replace missing system files – wow, is this Windows 98 or what? Couldn’t remember the last time I had to insert a XP cd. When installing the software students were asked if they wanted to overwrite “essential operating system files.” What do you think they did? They clicked “yes” to everything. In fact, students who were helping other students made sure to tell them to click yes to everything.

After all our discussions about operating systems, reliable software, etc, at least 10 students (out of 40) took the leap. Did they have to individually learn from from the negative experience? Was there a way as teachers we could have prevented this? Is this just normal teen behavior? Some students certainly don’t take those risks, but is that more about their innate risk-taking or does it have to do with the education they receive? If only the answer were so cut and dry. I think it is a mixture of all these things, but letting older students mentor younger students might be a way to “learn from experience,” even though Peter Senge thinks that doesn’t exist (read his great book). All I know is, we should be able to get better and better from year to year. Less trouble, less of the same mistakes made each year. But we don’t. We are a school, but are we not a learning organization?

Do you have particular grades that go through the same challenge each year? How do you deal with it?

Technorati Tags: 1:1, Dell, education, laptops, learning, Mac, Peter Senge, experience, software, teachers, teaching, technology, teens, The Fifth Discipline

Watch David Warlick's K12 Online Conference Keynote

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 23:38:30 CDT

On a side note, David Warlick’s Hitchhikr website will be charting all the blog posts and Flickr pictures connected to this conference.

Technorati Tags: conference, David Warlick, K12 Online Conference, k12online, K12online06, Learning Blog, NYSAIS-EdTech-2006, graduate school, school, schools, students, teachers, teaching, technology, wiki

Programmer Uses MySpace To Bust Child Molesters

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:43:01 CDT

A benevolent programmer at Wired Magazine used his skills to create a script that crawled through the MySpace user directory looking for registered sex offenders who are using the site. Guess what he found? Over 744 sex offenders, over 400 of which were registered child sex offenders using their real names on MySpace. His search technique was only good enough to locate people using their real names who identified their zip code within 5 miles of their real address. They could have beat his system by using a fake name, fake picture or fake zip code. Not very hard to do.

There is real danger with these sites. Criminals are using these sites for their own malevolent purposes. In the article, the author argues that MySpace is still a good thing for kids, but warns:

It’s all up to MySpace. We can’t count on parental supervision; howmany teenagers looking for a space to hang out in with friends will accept one occupied by parents? We can’t count on peer policing; nobody reported Lubrano for his inappropriate comments.

We definitely can’t count on teenage street-smarts. Swagger isn’t judgment. Young Jacob is a smart guy, but even after he politely rebuked Lubrano for hitting on him, he made plans to meet the man at a Pennsylvania amusement park.

His argument is one for technical solutions, perhaps influenced by his own “success” of finding predators electronically. However, there are much bigger questions to be answered here: what kind of men are we raising who could do things like this? What kind of situations are we exposing our children to if they are able to go meet strangers in real time? What kind of decision-making are we teaching if our children can’t understand these risks?

I am an educator and have always believed that education is the answer. However, just educating children on social-networking is not enough. We must also be educating on how the media portrays men and women, how our own biases impart patriarchal views of women and how all of this is contributing to the violent world to which they are constantly exposed.

Technorati Tags: article, children, education, educators, Internet, legal, MySpace, online, safety, school, schools, social networking, teaching, technology, youth

Collaborative Desk for Students

Tue, 10 Oct 2006 22:40:00 CDT

I spent my day off for Native American Peoples’ Day (formerly known as Columbus Day) hanging out at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. I was most interested in the architecture and design exhibit – Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind has me thinking about how right-brained (more artistically, less algorithmically oriented) folks are about to take over the world. One of his pieces of advice on how to get the right-half of your brain going is to get to design museums. I heeded his advice and had a great time.

While looking at some furniture I came across Jean Prouvé school desk (France, 1937). I thought the desk simply and elegantly displayed what a collaborative school was all about. It was a shared desk. One piece of furniture, two students, having to learn to work together and share a space. In my grade school days, we had double-desks, but each had a distinct area of its own, separated writing/working surfaces. This desk is just the opposite. One complete top for both seats. There are many ways to do this in modern classrooms of course, but I like the idea that this desk is fixed. There is no opportunity to pull apart (as we often do in modern classrooms). Even if you are working on separate tasks, with the Prouvé desk, you are in it together.

How many people think this desk would sell now? Anyone have furniture like this in their school?

Technorati Tags: A Whole New Mind, collaborate, Columbus Day, Daniel Pink, design, desk, furniture, Jean Prouve, MOMA, museum, Native American, France

MySpace or Their Space?

Fri, 6 Oct 2006 21:16:07 CDT

MySpace is such a clever name for a website. People think of it as theirs. Our students often get into that argument with teachers and parents. “Why are you in our stuff? It is not for you it is our space.” According to latest study, over half of the people on MySpace are over 35 years old and only 30% are under 25. Teens make up just 12% of the MySpace members.

Does that make it uncool for kids? Probably not, but it might make other sites like Facebook and Bebo more appealing. That is until the adults come in and ruin everything. Is there a space where adults and younger people can live harmoniously? I wonder if there is a way to create that space relatively safely. I just think schools need to be organizing the online social network to provide some kind of insulation while giving students the social contact that they so obviously crave.

Technorati Tags: AP, article, Associated Press, Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, parents, safety, school, schools, social networking, students, teachers, teens

Club Penguin - MySpace For Your 8 Year Old

Wed, 27 Sep 2006 22:53:23 CDT

Business Week continues its observant coverage of social networking sites and young people with MySpace For The Sandlot Set (see my earlier post on their MySpace article). This article however is not about MySpace. It is about Club Penguin a MySpace-esque social networking site for 8-12 year olds. Yes you read correctly – 8-12 year olds. In August Club Penguin reported 2.1 million visitors.

Basic access to the site is free, but they sell memberships which give you access to advanced features (jee, do you think your 10 year old will want that?). When you sign up, you can choose 8 and under, 9-12, 13-17 and 18 and over. If you choose to sign up as an adult you get this message:

You also have to agree to a set of rules:

They mention that the entire website is moderated by their staff. It is amazing to me that people are willing to take such risks setting up a site where young people could be vulnerable. I would rather see groups who are interested in getting kids online to work with schools and teachers to create spaces where classes could safely and effectively connect with other classrooms around the world. These sites unfortunately just seem like market-research tools. What do 8-12 years olds like? Once we find out, let’s sell it to them.

Groups in the process of making a profit while “helping” young people put themselves in a challenging ethical situation. They are for-profit groups who as a mission want to help kids. I wonder if those two goals often find themselves in direct or partial opposition. Anyone think they can hold on to their ideals while still trying to land a profit?

On a side note: when I asked my 5th grade class at the beginning of the year to introduce themselves along with something they love to do on the computer at least half of them said Club Penguin.

Technorati Tags: Business Week, Club Penguin, education, MySpace, children, social networking, students

School-Wide Blogging

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 12:56:19 CDT

My school has leapt into blogging in a big way. We have blogs for every academic department, the heads of the lower, middle and upper schools and each K-4th grade teacher uses a blog as their class news page. I was worried about overwhelming teachers/administrators with yet another thing to do, but most of the responses have been very positive.

We are using Google free Blogger to power all of our blogs. We set them up to publish directly onto our web server, thereby allowing the blogs to be password-protected and just for our community. Eventually I would love to see the blogs become open to the public, but we wanted to start small (concept-wise) and build up.

I think that blogs could easily replace fancy, professionally-designed school websites. Many independent schools hire serious web-design groups to build flashy sites to attract potential families. I subscribe to the Cluetrain Manifesto philosophy which talks about how most marketing is seen as just that by your audience, canned marketing. The book argues that visitors to fancy sites know that it is all marketing and they read them with skepticism. Blogs however give off an air of authenticity. The writing is informal and honest. The topics are micro level instead of macro. People feel like they are getting a real look into the happenings of the school instead of a carefully-crafted image piece. It will take one school to start using their blogs as the public face of their Internet presence and the rest will surely follow. Ok, maybe not surely.

So who will be first? Is it your school? Share the link below so we can all show them to our admins.

Technorati Tags: blog, Blogger, blogging, education, Google, The Cluetrain Manifesto, school

Summer Vaction Is Over, School Has Begun

Sat, 9 Sep 2006 19:15:25 CDT

I took the rest of the summer off from blogging and webcasting. I was so exhausted I didn’t even post a goodbye post. But here is my welcome back post. As are all the other teachers, I am working to learn all my new students’ names, get my classrooms set up and get my roll book ready. I also coach soccer so I have been working with my team for a few weeks now (preseason).

The beginning of school can be tough for ed tech folks as we have been working feverishly all summer to get the entire school ready tech-wise. Teachers come back refreshed and ready to go and most of us have bags under our eyes. That doesn’t mean I haven’t had any time to relax, I certainly found some. I spent a week in Belize snorkeling, scuba diving, visiting Mayan ruins, sailing, swimming and just plain relaxing. Scary that I was diving with sting rays (and nurse sharks, see pic below) a few short weeks before Steve Irwin was killed by a sting ray.

I am looking forward to the start of a new school year and a star of the new webcasting season. We are trying to figure out our final weekly schedule, but Alex and I did our first show on Friday. As soon as I know the weekly times for our show, I will post them. In the mean time, grab the RSS feed and plug it into your iTunes or other podcast software.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Learning Webcast, Alex Ragone, Belize, nurse shark, podcast, Mayan, schools, Steve Irwin, sting ray, teachers, vacation, webcast

Social Networking For Educators

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 22:50:56 CDT

Way back in December, I called on MySpace to create MySpace School Edition. I never did hear from them, but luckily Alex Ragone decided to start up EducationBridges.net: Teachers Collaborating with Teachers – it is a social networking site for educators. (If you know WorldBridges, we’re all connected. Alex and I put on our weekly webcast with them.)

First thing you need to do: go to the site and sign up for a free account (your information will never be sold, traded or given away in any form. You decide what is private and what is public, I promise!) Make sure to fill out your profile. Most things can be left blank, or set to only show to site members, or the public. Be as secretive or as open as you’d like. But, make sure to indicate what your “interests” are on your profile. These interests are then searchable by anyone. So if you list “blogs” as an interest, anyone looking for blogs will find you. See how it works? We can then connect teachers together who are interested in blogging. I sense a joint-school project, don’t you?

After you create your account, try posting to your blog. Just click on “your blog” at the top, and then, “Post a new entry.” Write up whatever you’d like, then put some “keywords” at the bottom. If your blog post is about pedagogy then put that, if it is about laptops, then put that. This helps people find your post. If you want to see my page, it’s here. If you are involved in education in any way, please join us, we’d love to expand the network.

Technorati Tags: Alex Ragone, arvind grover, blog, education, Education Bridges, Elgg, educators, social networking, teachers, Worldbridges

Thoughts on 2 Months of Internet Radio Broadcasting

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:24:34 CDT

I have been doing an Internet radio show for the last 2 months. I thought I should take some time to reflect on what it has been like and where I think it could go. Alex Ragone from Learning Blog practically double-dog dared me to join him. He was a virtual intern at The Webcast Academy (you can be an intern too and get your own radio show). After learning how to run a webcast, he invited me to join him and after a moment’s hesitation, I jumped in.

I have been blogging regularly (@21apples and other places) for nearly a year and a half now, and feel like I have a good handle on how the Internet can be used for writing and interacting—the read/write web as it is called. While words on the screen can have great power, audio has blazed a new trail through the internet with podcasts. There is something entirely different about hearing someone speak than reading what they wrote. I have also been able to engage in live conversations (being that I do the show with Alex). Blogs are much more about you yourself writing, then people responding later – asychronous. Working with Alex has been a synchronous conversation, a completely different dynamic. We have also been able to bring others into the conversations, radio guests, to spin it in a whole new direction. While some of my blog posts attract comments (create conversations), others go by with not a peep. This cannot happen with the radio show since there is always at least two people there (and usually more). We also have the live chat room for the show, where listeners can weigh in, ask questions, talk to each other, etc. This has really pushed Alex and I to be ready to think and respond on the spot. A little more pressure than blogging, but exciting pressure.

When Alex and I first starting doing this show, we said it was so that we could figure out how our students could use live web radio. The last two months have mainly focused on things we have been interested in, but maybe that is just because it’s summer. The next step really is learning how our students as broadcasters could enhance their educational experience. Will it be live shows from athletic events, discussions with professionals in the fields, debates/conversations with distant schools, or the celebrity dish of the week? I don’t know. But, after participating in this amazing technology for the last couple months, I know I have to give it to them. I have found that students long to communicate, whether with me, their classmates and friends or with strangers. They idea of publishing their own voice would be a powerful one. In fact, our newspaper is already coming out with a podcast next year, they even appointed a podcast editor position. We have to deliver the tools with some guidance, but give them the room to take it farther. I certainly haven’t thought of all the ways webcasting can be used, and I am sure my students will be lined up with possibilities.

How do you think we can use this great, “free” tool?

Technorati Tags: Alex Ragone, arvind grover, blog, EdTechTalk, education, Learning Blog, live, podcast, 21apples, radio, schools, students, Worldbridges

Riding the Rails

Fri, 7 Jul 2006 08:32:55 CDT

I am on the 6:50am Amtrak train out of New York Penn Station on my way to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. If you have never rode a train in the United States (or elsewhere), I highly recommend it. I love traveling by train—spacious seats, power for my laptop, and great views of the countryside without the annoying traffic or potholes (hmmm, do the laptop and the countryside views conflict?).

I am going to be giving a workshop to the faculty of the soon-to-start Science Leadership Academy there. We will be discussing Moodle (open source course management software) and how it can be used effectively with students. The faculty there have been using Moodle as an online meeting place for the adults, an excellent start, and will be taking it to students when school opens.

After the workshop, we will be broadcasting the 21st Century Learning webcast at 1:00pm EST from the Franklin Institute with a group of teachers. We’re calling it a brown bag radio show, so please join us to hear from these fabulous teachers. Of course you can weigh into the conversation live in the chat room. Should be a lively discussion with teachers from a brand new school with a 1:1 laptop program, project-based learning all over the place, and a superstar principal, Chris Lehmann.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Learning Webcast, Amtrak, blog, change, Chris Lehmann, Franklin Institute, Moodle, Philadelphia, Practical Theory, train, webcast, workshop, Worldbridges

I'm Still Alive

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 18:25:02 CDT

I have been quiet derelict in my blogging of late. The end of the school year really hit hard – report cards, graduation, inventorying equipment and the like. You teachers and technologists out there know exactly what I am talking about. But I am back. Alex Ragone and I have been busy with our webcasting (live Internet radio) and have just finished our 7th show which was on the future of NYCIST, a professional organization for New York independent school technologists. We are exploring how to take NYCIST from 1.0 to 2.0. I am the outgoing president and Alex is the incoming, so it makes for even more collaboration between the two of us.

The two of us have often been accused of witchcraft, because people think we are involved in more things than the hours in a day can allow. In truth, we are both always looking for ways to better give ourselves the time to do what we want to do. I have quickly become a follower of the Getting Things Done method by David Allen. I have tipped Alex off on the book, and tomorrow’s show will be about the book, and literally about how to get things done. Most people don’t realize that they are wasting a huge amount of time, and could actually get much more done. I don’t just mean work. I mean get in much more time with family and friends, time to exercise, time to read and time to do whatever. What it really takes is a system. That is what we will be discussing tomorrow. If you can’t read the book before then, try this article on GTD by Merlin Mann.

I will be broadcasting from San Juan, Puerto Rico (I love Skype!) and the show will still cost Alex and I almost nothing to run. We have joined EdTechTalk channel of the Worldbridges Network, so thanks to them for hosting the live radio and the live chat. Please listen in and join the chatroom to talk to us live. Tomorrow (updated time!) 1:00pm eastern standard time. Hope to “see” you there.

Technorati Tags: 21st Century Learning Webcast, 43Folders, Alex Ragone, David Allen, EdTechTalk, Getting Things Done, GTD, lifehack, Merlin Mann, radio, webcast, Worldbridges

Our Radio Show Has Graduated!

Sat, 10 Jun 2006 17:26:28 CDT

Alex Ragone and I have spent the last 5 weeks doing a live internet radio show on 21st century learning. I hope you have been able to tune in. If you have not, please join us this Friday at 12:00pm EST (convert to your local time). You can listen live and talk to us by chatting on the web. This week we will be talking with Chris Lehmann, principal of the new Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The school has committed itself to using technology to advance learning, and Chris is taking aggressive steps to ensure 21st century learning techniques are utilized. Ask him all the questions you want during our show. Don’t miss Chris’ brilliant blog Practical Theory which takes you through the founding of this new school.

We are also very excited to be joining the folks at EdTechTalk.com. We have officially graduated from Webcast Academy. EdTechTalk.com has allowed us to join their official network, and we couldn’t be more thankful. They run fantastic live shows about education and technology, and I highly recommend you listen and read their extensive wiki.

Technorati Tags: Alex Ragone, Chris Lehmann, education, Internet, news, online, Philadelphia, podcast, Practical Theory, radio, Science Learning Academy, teachers, teaching, technology, wiki

The Myth of "Keeping Up"

Mon, 22 May 2006 20:00:23 CDT

Creating Passionate Users did a wonderful post called, The Myth of Keeping Up, where they discussed the traps that we set for ourself by thinking we can “keep up.” We have a ton of stuff coming at us every day. E-mail, magazines, phone calls, web sites and more. Most of us pile these things up because we intend to review them. Somehow, we forget the lessons of “stuff” passed, where we never got to them. How frequently do you go through your magazines, emails, etc and just trash the old stuff? You have to, but you know that you will never get to them. Instead of letting these things build, feeling guilty about them, then tossing them anyway, you have to take a more proactive approach. You must prevent yourself from getting into the pile-up situations.

1) Read The Myth of Keeping Up and
2) read David Allen’s Getting Things Done, and get yourself organized. This book changed my life. The cover is totally tacky, but read this book

image from Creating Compassionate Users blog

Technorati Tags: Creating Passionate Users, David Allen, e-mail, Getting Things Done, GTD, junk, organization, stuff

Free Phone Calls To USA and Canada, And That Is Just The Start

Mon, 15 May 2006 20:21:42 CDT

I am constantly amazed by Internet innovators. There are new killer applications coming out every day.

One great app that I have blogged about before is Skype. Alex Ragone and I use Skype to produce our Internet radio show on 21st century education (podcast feed, or listen live). We conference call each other (totally free) using the Skype software, and Alex’s computer streams it live on the Internet and records it for podcasting purposes. You can then listen live and chat with us and other listeners. All of this is done using the free Internet! (free as in speech, not free as in beer)

Today I got an e-mail from the good people at Skype telling me that now I can call anyone in the U.S. or Canada for free. All I need is my computer with my free Skype software. Unreal. They used to make you pay for that, now they are giving that for free as well. Not to mention you can call anyone in the world who has Skype for free. They are also working on free videoconferencing.

If you like what you read, make sure to help fight to keep the Internet as it it. The internet service providers are trying to legislate their way into ending free choice on the internet.

Technorati Tags: 21st century, Alex Ragone, education, free, Learning Blog, live, podcast, podcasting, freedom, radio, resources, software, students, teachers, teaching, Verizon

Join Me for Live Webcast on Friday

Wed, 10 May 2006 22:45:19 CDT

Alex Ragone (Learning Blog) and I have jumped into the world of live audio webcasting. Don’t know what that is? Think of it as a radio show on the web, where you can listen, and also join the conversation by entering a chatroom. You can talk with other listeners, and talk to us directly. It is a really cool experience, and I hope you join us. We will be doing regular shows on education in the 21st century.

This week’s show is all about blogging. We will talk about how we got into blogging, and we will also give you practical ways to get your own blog going. We will discuss the impact of blogging on classrooms as well. You can tune in at Webcast Academy, Channel 1 on Friday (May 12) at 1:00pm eastern standard time. Once you start listening, join the chat session as well.

Not sure if you are interested? Listen to our first show podcast here. note: the file is kind of large, 17 megs. Hope to “meet” you on Friday.

Technorati Tags: Alex Ragone, blog, blogging, chat, ipod, Learning Blog, live, podcast, podcasting, 21st century, radio, Webcast Academy

Getting Spammed, Had to Limit Comments

Sun, 7 May 2006 23:25:35 CDT

My blog is getting splog (blog spam). It started off at about 1 every few days, nothing I couldn’t stay on top of. Now all of a sudden it is 10 a day, on different articles. What a pain. Annoying, unscrupulous website managers using my blog to promote their site. Selling strange stuff like chaise lounge chairs and cheap, illegal pharmaceuticals. So, until I can put some brakes on their splogging, I turned off comments on posts older than 15 days.

No doubt there is some software to put in place, so if any of you know your way around Typo (my blog software) anti-splog systems, let me know.

Technorati Tags: splog, software, spam, Typo

Our Students Must Solve Problems

Wed, 3 May 2006 22:12:00 CDT

Computerworld magazine did a stellar interview of six professors asking them about the future of computer science programs and jobs. It is clear that more computer science jobs are being created in the U.S. than are being outsourced. The entire oursourcing fear mongering is unfounded, and is actually deterring talented students under false pretenses.

Why is this important? I think Professor Kenneth Birman from Cornell summed it up perfectly:

The importance of CS has never been greater. We’re discovering ways to build just about everything out of small, simple mechanisms glued together with software, so no matter what you do, CS tends to be inside. And the scope of this new CS is amazing: We’re at the center of the action in biology, nanotechnology, particle physics. If society is ever going to slash medical costs, CS will play the key role. I see CS as a sort of universal science. We’re beginning to pervade everything.

Some of the best points mentioned are about algorithms. We have huge speed of processing, that is great for menial tasks. But as we are living in a increasingly-complex world, there is a need for bigger and better algorithms. It is the real future of computer science and knowledge-based business. We need to be training our students to be problems solvers, not fact-repeaters. I advocate for computer science starting lower school and going all the way through college. The effect of technology on the world has been dramatic and it continues.

If your school does not have a computer science program, you must ask yourself why not? If your school does have a computer science program, you must ask yourself is it the right one? The professors in the article do a great job of explaining their vision for the upcoming computer science world, don’t miss it.

Technorati Tags: college, computer science, computer science, Computerworld, curriculum, education, future, Kenneth Birman, problem based learning, schools, university

Tech In Education, Where Do You Start?

Tue, 25 Apr 2006 22:59:00 CDT

Supervising a laptop program, I get to meet with interesting people from all over the world who come to see what we do. We talk about hardware/software, professional development, computer science and more. But if you were starting an educational technology program, where would you start?

I would start with decision-makers. If your school is top-down, then your admins need to believe. If you school is more faculty-centered, I would start with the faculty leaders. No matter what, if those who direct the school are not involved, progress is even more difficult than it need be. A bottom-up approach can be tough (although not impossible – viva la revolución de la tecnología!).

That being said, the training for these folks is pedagogical, not technical. Sure you can train people on software, but if they don’t know why, then what’s the point? Educators’ strength is their ability to see possibilities for their students. It is also their weakness, because their vision tends to be within their comfort zone. The vision push I am most interested in is project based learning. Computers, the Internet, and all the other tech tools work best when students have time to push the limits over an extended period of time. 30 minutes at the end of class surfing a website does not a laptop program make. Two weeks grappling over the question “who writes history,” now we’re talking…Technical tools allow students to spend time analyzing, struggling, interpreting, communicating all in the name of understanding. There is no test on which to recall random facts, but rather a project to demonstrate deeper understanding.

Some of my favorite project based learning (PBL) resources include: this video of Seymour Papert talking about PBL, George Lucas Educational Foundation’s Edutopia magazine’s PBL site, 4teachers.org’s PBL checklists, the PBL Design and Invention Center, and for some thought-provoking reading, try David Warlick on breaking the standard mold of education or the Department of Education report, Technology and Education Reform (ch. 8).

Technorati Tags: education, Edutopia, George Lucas, laptop, PBL, professional development, project based learning, Seymour Papert, teachers, teaching

Do You Like The Internet? You Better Fight To Keep It

Thu, 20 Apr 2006 19:52:51 CDT

People/companies can develop so much great stuff on the Internet because of one major feature of the ‘Net, called the end to end principle. All this means is that the Internet connects two ends together. It is nothing more than a pipe that sends information back and forth. It is the machines on the end that have all the brains (computers, routers, etc). The network itself is brainless. This is great, it means innovators can send whatever they want through the pipes, and a long as your computer can accept it, it works.

If you have Skype on your computer, you and I can have a free voice conversation or even video conference. If you have a web browser like Firefox, you can connect to a website like the one you are looking at now. There is nothing between you and me that can block our our communication – again, the network knows nothing more than passing information.

Some savvy legislators are trying to pass laws that protect this end to end principle. However, there is one major group who is objecting. Can you guess who that might be? Well, the Internet Service Providers of course. They are arguing that they should be able to control your bandwith. They want to decide what data going through the pipes is important and what is not. So, when a company like Vonage lets you make unlimited phone calls on the cheap using the Internet, Verizon might decide to make Vonage’s traffic slow way down, to a point where it is unusable. Why? Because it competes with their phone lines and their voice over IP offerings.

We as educators, as technologists or just as Internet users cannot allow this to happen. Please consider joining MoveOn.org’s campaign to protect Internet Neutrality (as it has been dubbed). Spread the word, and let people know that the power of the Internet is worth protecting. We cannot allow corporations to decide for us how the Internet will be used. If you don’t want to join MoveOn, please contact your representative directly.

If you want to learn more about what could happen to the world if this is not protected, read the amazing Lawrence Lessig SCTHUMBZZZ.jpg" /> The Future of Ideas : The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World.

Technorati Tags: change, Congress, end to end principle, future, Internet, law, legal, Network Neutrality, network

How Can Teachers Help Students "Fail?"

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 14:51:00 CDT

Creating successful students requires that we understand the entire system that affects our students. The Fifth Discipline (Peter M. Senge), is a book which discusses how systems thinking is the only real way to create change, build growth and develop sustainability for an organization, individual or other group. The book does a brilliant job of explaining how one goes about viewing and changing systems.

One of the simplest examples sheds light on how we as teachers often contribute to a student’s decline by missing the system. A shy new, student does poorly in class (in fact, distracted by difficult home life). The teacher believes the student is unmotivated. The teacher begins to pay less attention to the student, and student pulls further away from schoolwork. The home life becomes more difficult as a result. This student is caught in a reinforcing feedback loop, and is in fact a victim of a self-fulfilling prophecy by the teacher (see diagram).

Thus, students are unintentionally “tracked” into a high self-image of their abilities, where they get personal attention, or a low self-image, where their poor class work is reinforced in an ever worsening spiral. (p. 80-81)

I regularly hear teachers and administrators (at various schools) talk about how a student won’t make it next year, yet the student will be attending the same school next year. How does our predefined judgement affect that student? Are we setting up the self-fulfilling prophecy? The end of the year often has conversations like, “see, I told you he wouldn’t make it.” Are we in fact to blame? Short answer, sometimes. We must try to shift systems by exerting small changes that cause situations to snowball in a positive direction rather than a negative one.

Educators probably also want to grab Senge’s Schools That Learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education. SCTHUMBZZZ.jpg" />

yet another post idea from a Professor Meier class at Teachers College

Technorati Tags: books, Peter Senge, systems thinking, review, students, system, teachers, teaching

Want A Laptop Program In Your School? Careful What You Wish For

Sun, 9 Apr 2006 20:00:50 CDT

As a technology director in a laptop school people contact me from all over the world to ask questions about our program. Our school was a very early program (1997), and remains one of only a few girls schools with a laptop program.

While you are thinking about all the glamorous things that can come out of a laptop program, let me give you some of the least glamorous tech support cases I have seen:

Keyboard not working. Remove the keyboard and find some fake fingernails underneath. Reattached and keyboard worked normally.
Cat tears apart student laptop by ripping all the keys out and scratching up the entire inner case. Obviously needs a new keyboard, but the cat’s hair is inside everything.
Student eating sushi, working with laptop – you can imagine, but soy sauce on a motherboard just doesn’t work.
Repeat example above with : water, coke, diet coke and iced tea. (students and teachers)
Student takes out emotional frustration on laptop with expired warranty – family had to buy a new one, that hurts.
Just last week: sheepish student comes to tell me that someone threw up on her laptop! Everything corroded on the inside. Thank goodness for Dell Complete Care warranty.

These are all true, so if you are thinking about a laptop program at your school, buyer beware. As someone in my office noted, what kind of laptop party was that kid at anyway?

Technology in schools creates amazing opportunities for learning, but the practical is, well, just that…practical.

Technorati Tags: education, hardware, laptop, laptops, schools, students, teachers, technology

How Did I Get Into Blogging?

Thu, 6 Apr 2006 00:01:00 CDT

Two words: Will Richardson

SCTHUMBZZZ.jpg" align="right" border="2" hspace="4" />I saw Will’s lecture RSS: The New Killer App for Educators at the 2004 NYSAIS Conference for IT Managers, and he just killed. I saw all the potential he was talking about and more. He got me totally hooked to Bloglines, a free web-based RSS reader. Right away I started a blog, and right away it crashed and burned. I learned how hard it was to write for public consumption, and how essential a purpose was. Jeff Utrecht talked about this today in his post, myspace and xanga not so cool. He argues that kids are leaving myspace and xanga because they couldn’t keep up with the blogs. The pressure to write, without a purpose, left them unmotivated. The returned to the land of instant messenger. I understand this, because I have been there.

The Washington Post wrote an article about blogging in Will’s school (now former school) in New Jersey. The piece was slightly light on substance, so if you can, go and hear Will speak in person, or read his book. His calendar is on the right side of his website, and he is all over the place. Will has been so successful blogging and his so into it (he is a self-proclaimed “blogevangelist”), that he quit his job to blog full time.

Alex Ragone over at Learning Blog tipped me on to both of the articles listed above, so while you’re at it, grab Alex’s RSS feed.

Will’s original lecture was about RSS. I am an RSS believer, and at my school, we are trying to do all sorts of things with RSS from community calendars, to teacher blogs, to online student newspapers, to podcasts, to homework assignments and more. I will be writing the how-to’s here soon, so stay posted. And I don’t just mean the technical how-to’s, I mean the pedagogical ones…the good stuff.

update: Washington Post did another article about teachers with blogs called Blackboard Blogging

Technorati Tags: Alex Ragone, blog, conference, education, future, Internet, Jeff Utrecht, MySpace, news, RSS, schools, students, teachers, teaching, technology, U.S.A., Washington Post, web, web2.0, Will Richardson, Xanga

American Technology (and Education) Left in the Dust by South Korea?

Mon, 3 Apr 2006 20:28:03 CDT

Norimitsu Onishi article in the New York Times about South Korea’s robotics efforts make American technology and educational technology seem somewhat archaic. (read the article soon, because the NY Times charges you after a week. Or bookmark it with ma.gnolia and they will save a copy for you)

Some factoids about South Korea from the article:

this month they will introduce WiBro, the 10 megabit wireless Internet connection for your home (faster than your cable or DSL modem)
first country in the world to to have high-speed Internet in every primary, junior and high school (the U.S. still doesn’t have that)
you can watch TV on Korean cell phones (U.S. companies are starting to offer this now too)
Microsoft and Motorola test new technologies in South Korea before the U.S.
17 of 48 million people in South Korea are members of CyWorld, a social-networking website (not just kids)
72% of South Korean households have high-speed Internet access (in the U.S. it is 58%, ranking 15th in the world)

CyWorld is so popular in South Korea that many politicians, celebrities and companies have formed profiles on that site rather than creating their own websites. CyWorld is similar to MySpace or Friendster in that you create your own profile, and then indicate who are your 1st circle friends. The rest of the space connects accordingly.

The article speaks to commitment. South Korea certainly doesn’t have more money or resources that the United States, but it is committed to using technology to improve the lives of its people. The national government offers information technology courses to homemakers and makes subsidized computers available to low-income families. That is commitment. Here in the U.S., the federal government decided to completely cut educational technology spending (read it yourself here), while standing by companies like Verizon who are trying to prevent cities like Philadelphia from giving away free wireless access. By 2010, they intend to put a networked robot in every home (the Jetson’s have finally arrived!).

From an education perspective, they are committed to giving their students access to 21st century tools so they can compete and thrive in a 21st century world. They realize that with broadband access, Internet-enabled phones and social-networking websites comes responsibility. To ensure their students know how to practice safely online, they created educational programs for all schools:

...in February, the government released a 256-page “IT Ethics” textbook for junior and high school students. Teachers are expected to spend 30 hours instructing from the textbook, whose chapters include “Healthy Mobile Phone Culture,” and “Protecting Personal Privacy.

The U.S. needs to take a long hard look at itself as it seems like we take an arrogant approach to things sometimes – feeling that we are the world hegemond simply because our military is the strongest. Let’s not confuse the issue. Just because we can beat everyone else up, doesn’t mean we are smarter. We need to make strategic choices to make sure that the citizens of the U.S. and the students of the U.S. are being provided what they need to excel. Right now, it seems like we have a long way to go.

p.s. I know the robot in the picture is Japanese, but I couldn’t find a good Korean robot photo that was not copywritten

Technorati Tags: education, FCC, future, Internet, New York Times, Norimitsu Onishi, Philadelphia, robot, robotics, safety, schools, South Korea, students, technology, Verizon, WiBro, wireless

The 8th Grade Editor in Chief - Positive Student Use of the Internet

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 11:02:00 CST

I have been asking for a positive article on students’ online lives for some time. Still waiting, so I wrote it myself:

This is more than a post about a new website. It is a post about an 8th grader in Indianapolis who decided to run his own news service, using free and easy to use web tools. Kyle Bandy, a self-described “junior high computer nerd,” started his own news site using the new web 2.0 news site Newsvine.com.

Since January 29th, Kyle has written 7 of his own articles, reviewed 6 other articles, and has received direct comments from over 111 readers from around the globe. Kyle has written on the possible creation of a .XXX TLD, cell phones being banned in school, Chinese government Internet censorship, President Bush’s State of the Union, iPods being banned in school, hypocritical enforcement school tech policies, and an article critiquing Apple’s latest iPod update.

Kyle is going to graduate in 2010. He is online, and will be online for the foreseeable future. His online life includes a barely-used MySpace profile, a now defunct Xanga site (friends stopped using it) and his Newsvine site. He is certainly engaged with web sites that many think are ultra-dangerous for teens (and in some cases they are). But, Kyle is a great example of what is possible when young people are able to use the web productively. He communicates with friends, studies and writes about local and world issues, engages in international communication with readers and explores his interests in computers and technology.

My rhetoric: There is something undeniable about the web. Young people flock to it, heck I flock to it. Culture is a strange thing, because those pushing it forward (read: young people) generally come head to head with those who developed it before (read: less-than-young people). We are there now. Let’s partner with some of the brightest minds to ever live, young people, and see how we can push the web to its limits together. One generation defining it for the other (in either direction) just has no chance.

I interviewed Kyle via e-mail to write this, and here are some highlights from that interview:

Question: Why did you start the Newsvine site?

I started my Newsvine column because I wanted to show the world my opinions. I also wanted to see what other people’s views were on my opinions. Take my article entitled “Should iPods be Allowed at School?” for example—I wrote that article to get my opinion out to people that I honestly believe that if iPods were allowed at my school, it would be a change for the better.

Question: Do you have any other websites?

My father has made two websites…He lets me use some space on [example.com] for whatever I may need to put up on the web. For example, whenever I have a test in any of my classes, and our teachers give us a study-guide, I fill out the study guide and put it up online at www.study-guide.[example].com. (Note that my teachers do know that I am doing this, so I am not letting students copy my work or anything like that.)

Question: Give me some examples of how you would like to see computers used in your school

Well, I think there is a lot of stuff my school could do with computers, but they just haven’t. One thing is perhaps audio (or even video) podcasting of all classes so that if a student misses a class, they can just watch the podcast. Or to study for quizzes and tests, they could just rewatch their teacher’s lectures. I myself listen to many tech podcasts (e.g. thisWEEKinTECH, dl.tv, et cetera) and I know that they are very educational. (of course, I also listen to Newsvine’s own podcast, VineSeeders) I also, think teachers should incorporate technology even more into their curriculum. Of course, over time this will need to happen—after all, I believe that someday almost everything will be done with the assistance of computers, and I can’t wait until that day!!!

If we as teachers can’t take advantage of this enthusiasm, do we really deserve our students’ attention?

Technorati Tags: article, blog, education, generation, media, MySpace, net generation, news, Newsvine, online, students, web, web2.0, Xanga, youth

MIT Media Lab Guru Says No Computers in Schools

Sat, 25 Mar 2006 13:33:00 CST

Michael Schrage, co-director of MIT Media Lab E-Markets Initiative, writing for The Financial Times openly flogged, “edutainers,” or people who claim that technology in schools can make learning fun – the article is, The ‘edutainers’ merit a failing grade (You have to pay to read it all now, so I will quote liberally. Another great reason to use ma.gnolia to bookmark, it saves a copy for you).

Schrage acknowledges that, “state-run school systems require fundamental reform,” but, “Nevertheless, the shrewdest policy to improve public education while saving billions in government spending demands abstinence. Keep computers out of the classroom.” Schrage fails to draw some important distinctions between computers in the classroom, and “edutainment” software. But let’s read on.

To hear the rhetoric of its champions, educational technology is a glittering silicon seducer that will lure learners into fun, engaging and “edutaining” experiences. “Edutainment” is an ideology. The “edutainers” assert that classroom computing should conform to the cognitive needs and constraints of the child. These technologists offer the false promise that learning should be fun and assert there is something wrong if it is not.

I consider myself a champion of educational technology, but certainly not to just make learning fun. In fact, I wrote a piece called, Learning Isn’t Fun, Knowing Is Fun that deals with the “edutainment” issue. Software companies create, market and sell “edutainment” software. Educational technologists are trained educators, who help design curricula that utilizes technologies to enhance student learning. There is a core difference here that Schrage overlooks.

Let’s take the most expensive technology programs out there, 1:1 laptop programs where each student has a laptop. Costed out over 4 years, a student can have a laptop for about $500 per year. The U.S. average for per pupil spending 2004-5 was $8,554 (source: National Education Association, Rankings & Estimates report PDF). Spending $500 a year represents just 6% of that budget. For 6% of our education budget, our we willing to give our students access to: spreadsheets, word processors, online libraries, digital media resources, world-wide communication and social networks, voice over IP and more? If the business world can utilize these technologies, why can’t schools?

Schrage does venture a possibility for technology to help schools. He discusses educators in Seoul, South Korea who are considering having teachers text message with parents to deliver grades, schedules and homework assignments. His conclusion:

Is it possible that parental involvement technologies may have a greater impact on educational quality than the most “edutaining” classroom software? These are the sort of questions that the “edutopians” rarely ask, let alone seriously answer. They are too busy trying to bring The Next Great Technology to your school. Do not let them.

In fact, this is a question that many in educational technology ask all the time. How can technologies like the web, e-mail and mobile computing redefine parent roles in schools? Many schools communicate with parents regularly via e-mail and blogs, maintain up-to-date web resources for families and more. In fact, we are using these technologies to bring parents closer to schools, but most importantly we are using them to bring students more in control of their own learning. We expect students to be problem solvers, and to use powerful tools (laptops, PDA’s, video cameras, digital microscopes, graphic calculators, iPods, the web, and much more) to explore complicated problems and concepts.

It’s not that learning needs to be fun, but that it needs to be authentic. This is the power that these tools deliver.

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Technorati Tags: 1:1, change, education, edutainment, Financial Times, Michael Schragae, news, laptop, schools, teachers, teaching, technology, U.S.A.

Professor Bans Laptops, Students Protest

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 23:05:00 CST

The Associated Press is reporting that a University of Memphis law professor banned laptops in her first year law classroom.

My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing…The computers interfere with making eye contact. You’ve got this picket fence between you and the students.

It sounds like the professor has a wealth of new tools in her classroom: powerful laptops. Instead of redefining the boundaries of her classroom, she sees the laptops as a “fence” between her and her students.

Let’s play this problem out a little. You and your friend are on opposite sides of a fence. You want to work together. What can you do?

Get rid of the fence
Walk around the fence.

2 sounds good to me, the tool remains, and you can work together on the other side. This professor has a genuine opportunity to engage students with tools that they find valuable to their own learning. My advice: walk around the other side of the desks, and partner with your students. You will keep the learning tools, keep the student interest and you may just learn something from your students.

The students have formed a petition and plan to challenge the teacher’s decision with the school’s administration. Preliminary efforts have not yielded anything…

Technorati Tags: article, education, laptops, law school, review, teachers, teaching, university, University of Memphis, USA Today

Handpicked Websites for Education (and Technology)

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:05:00 CST

I read a lot of blogs, magazines, books and articles about education and technology. I also attend professional meetings, workshops, conferences and more. As a result, I have been able to collect online resources that I find tremendously helpful in my work. I also find web resources that could be helpful for other educators.

I use two main tools to organize these links (both totally free): del.icio.us and ma.gnolia. Both of these fall under the category of social bookmarking. Basically, it means that instead of using “favorites” or “bookmarks” in my web browser, I post all links to all of my favorite websites into del.icio.us or ma.gnolia, and I share these with you.

del.icio.us: I use del.icio.us for every single site I want to remember/come back to in the future. There is a shortcut button on Firefox 1.5 that makes it very easy. When I am at a site that I want to remember, I just hit the del.icio.us button, and up pops a window that lets me enter a description of the website, along with tags (I will get to tags, but click the image to the right to see more).

In the example to the right, you can see that I tagged the website with “blog” “education” and “technology.” The beauty of tagging, is I can basically run queries when I am looking for old bookmarks. So, to see all my bookmarks, I might look at http://del.icio.us/agrover but if I only want to see the ones I tagged education, I could look at http://del.icio.us/agrover/education. The most powerful tool is the plus sign: http://del.icio.us/agrover/education+software+free. Starting to see the possibilities? While you can browse the linkroll, you can also just subscribe to the linkroll RSS feed, and let my prescreened, commented and tagged links come to you. del.icio.us is now owned by “Yahoo!”http://www.yahoo.com

ma.gnolia.com: ma.gnolia is another social bookmarking website, but it seems to be more keyed in to aestheics. The site is definitely prettier than del.icio.us, but has some additional features like groups. So, you can join the Educational Technology group I started there, and we can all share bookmarks with the group. The best feature of this site, is that the moment you bookmark something, ma.gnolia goes out and saves a copy of the site. So, if it disappears, goes down, or moves, you still have a copy of the page. This is great for article at places like the New York Times who make their article go away after 7 days (and then they charge for them). I bookmark any interesting articles from newspaper sites with ma.gnolia so I know that I will always have access to them. They of course also allow tagging, which makes organizing a breeze. ma.gnolia even lets you have tags with two words, like “educational technology.”

Both of these sites automatically create RSS feeds for you, either for all your bookmarks, for one of your tags, for combinations of your tags or for individual groups you are in. Amazingly powerful ways to share your links. I share my favorite links on my linkroll page, so enjoy, and please do the same.

Technorati Tags: article, del.icio.us, education, links, magnolia, resources, review, tagging, teachers, teaching, technology, web, web2.0

3,000 Apple iBooks in 3 Days

Sun, 19 Mar 2006 01:27:58 CST

Came across an image gallery of of Miramar High School’s 3,000 iBook laptop deployment. Apparently it only took 3 days, which seems impossible. I have been involved in my fair share of way smaller deployments (< 100) and I thought those were challenging.

It is great to see so many 1:1 deployments happening around the country. I just want to hear a lot more about the faculty training programs and curricular changes that are going into place the year before the 1:1 deployments.

images from Jaron Brass

Technorati Tags: 1:1, Apple, curriculum, education, future, iBook, laptops, photos, Mac

Getting Things Done (don't make a list?)

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 19:34:59 CST

After reading Edward Tufte’s analysis of PowerPoint (see my review), I have been thinking a lot about how to organize information.

I use Backpack, a personal management tool (try the free version) from 37signals to help me stay organized, but one of its main features is simple lists. I have many many lists on different pages (personal, work, 21apples, recipes, reading lists, shopping lists and more). I thought it would help me stay more organized, but so many items on those lists remain undone. It seems like the lists are good for keeping track of all the things I want to accomplish, but I do not have an easy time planning the execution.

I am beginning to think that a program like Tinderbox might be more fruitful (click the image on the right). I could use it to document everything I am doing, but also add things like when to do them, which items to work on together, priority and more. The Tinderbox Blog which is actually published using Tinderbox, features tips on what’s possible with the software. Quite Content is a blog that has a writeup on how to use Tinderbox for problem solving. The Quite Content blog is focused on the Getting Things Done method (all about productivity) coined by David Allen. 43Folders is an amazing blog about personal productivity (lifehacks) that also has a lot of great resources on Getting Things Done.

Of course, the greatest way to “get things done” is to follow the old adage my mom always used to tell me, “never leave for tomorrow, that which can be done today.” If only today were 412 hours long…

Technorati Tags: 37signals, 43Folders, backpack, change, David Allen, free, Getting Things Done, GTD, organization, lifehack, Quite Content, resources, review, Tinderbox, web

Is PowerPoint A Waste of Time for Teachers?

Sun, 12 Mar 2006 23:02:00 CST

I just finished reading “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within” by Edward Tufte. If you use a computer, or help others use a computer, this is a must read. Tufte argues that PowerPoint’s design inherently makes it more difficult to communicate with an audience.

Instead of giving an informative presentation, PowerPoint encourages speakers to create slides with ultra-short, incomplete thoughts listed with bullets. One of the harshest critiques in the 31 page booklet is about bullets. Harvard Business Review describes bulleted lists as serving 3 limited possibilities: “to show sequence (first to last in time), priority (least to most important or vice-versa), or simple membership in a set (these items relate to one another in some way, but the nature of that relationship remains unstated).” You can probably find bulleted lists in every organization in the world. I know I use them all the time, and reading the Review’s take is making me rethink my personal organizing strategies.

Tufte specifically addresses the use of PowerPoint in schools, and delivers tough judgement on student use:

Especially disturbing is the introduction of PowerPoint into schools. Instead of writing a report using sentences, children learn how to decorate client pitches and infomercials, which is better than encouraging children to smoke. Student PP exercies (as seen in in teacher’s guides, and in student work posted on the internet) typically shows 5 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation consisting of 3 to 6 slides – a total of perhaps 80 words (20 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Rather than being trained as mini-bureaucrats in the pitch culture, students would be better off if schools closed down on PP days and everyone went to The Exploratorium. Or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something.

His main suggestion? Use the tool that provides real power. In many cases: the sentence

One of the most important points I took away, was that digital projection of information, particularly with PowerPoint, is a terrible way to present data. His example of John Graunt’s 1662 work The Table of Casualties does a perfect job of showing how a simple data table is exponentially more powerful than literally thousands of PowerPoint slides. He explains how to create excellent handouts for your audience instead of using the less-useful slides.

A point that sounded like a constructivist education argument against PowerPoint is helpful in thinking about how we train teachers to use technical tools.

The push PP [PowerPoint] style imposes itself on the audience and tends to set up a dominance relationship between speaker and audience. Too often the speaker is making power points with hierarchical bullets to passive followers. Aggressive, stereotyped, over-manged presentations – the Great Leader up on the pedestal – are characteristic of hegemonic systems.

We want to be careful to help teachers learn how to empower students, not empower their own speaking egos.

Even if you feel differently, I highly suggest reading it. It raises important points about how we teach young people to choose appropriate tools.

Technorati Tags: books, education, Microsoft, PowerPoint, Edward Tufte, software, teachers, teaching, Windows

Writely - Write Collaboratively Online (for free!)

Thu, 9 Mar 2006 22:28:00 CST

Writely announced today on its blog that they had been bought by Google. Writely is described as “the web word processor.” All in your web browser, you can create new documents, give them tags, share them out with other people to co-author documents and more. You can upload Word documents, download the document to any computer, make it publicly viewable on the web, post it to your blog, see all the previous revisions, or e-mail directly to it, and then it has all the major word-processing functions plus more: formatting, color, tables, images, links, save to Word format, OpenOffice format, RTF, get the document’s RSS feed. In terms of features, Writely is chock-full.

For educators, it is a fantastic tool for collaborative writing. Think a group of students working on a paper or document. The teacher or students create the original document, and then give editing privileges to everyone in the group. Whenever a change is made, it is documented as to who made the change. You can watch the evolution of the document, leave comments for one another and keep moving forward. For a bigger project, like a student novella, it could be a continuing process of adding work, revising and editing past work, with all the history documented and stored.

From a school level, I could see the administrative team working on a letter home to families which goes on Writely. Then, each administrator works on the document on their own time, adding, deleting, refining, until a final document was agreed upon. Thing of the time saved – no meetings with 5 people reviewing the smallest word choice in each paragraph. Just keep writing until it’s right for you.

Technorati Tags: education, free, future, Google, iRows, Office, online, teachers, teaching, web, web2.0, wiki, Writely

Some might say Writely is a glorified wiki. In some ways it is, but they have taken the ease of use and the value of word-processing and joined it with a wiki. For the average user who doesn’t want to bother with wiki formatting, and just wants to write, Writely is it. Unfortunately, the Google purchase means a temporary delay in signups. In the mean time, head to their signup page, and put your e-mail address. They will send you a note when they reopen signups. I am guessing you will just use your Google username once that happens.

For another post: Google’s may be farther behind in the web-based Office suite everyone suspects they are making. Maybe Writely will be their word-processor. The folks at iRows (free, web-based, shareable spreadsheets) may be gobbled up next.

Naysayers Are More Important Than Your Supporters

Mon, 6 Mar 2006 20:40:06 CST

One of the foremost educational change experts out there is Michael Fullan. His book The New Meaning of Educational Change gives fantastic insight into what it takes to make change in a school.

One of the most important points for educational technologists to take from it is how to deal with “naysayers.” All ed tech’s probably know about naysayers, those people who just refuse to try out new things. Fullan says that you have to listen to them: 1) either they are right (and you are wrong), or 2) they are going to derail what you are trying to do with their conversations with others.

I think a lot of educational technologists run for those teachers who wait with open arms. Sometimes, it is important to run to the naysayers, turn them to your side (see Fullan), then you have even more teachers to work with.

next post: why great ideas usually can’t catch on

Technorati Tags: books, change, education, teachers, resources, teaching

Education and Web 2.0

Thu, 2 Mar 2006 17:18:48 CST

In case you haven’t noticed, the world wide web has changed substantially in the last few years. I am not talking about the number of websites, as those have been increasing since the web started. I am talking about two major facors: Blogs and the Web 2.0 movement – the 2.0 is referring to a new generation of websites, those the act less like standard websites, and more like programs on your computer. Try the example that lets you drag items into a box on the page. This was not possible a couple years back.

What does this new web mean for educators? Here is how it has impacted my life:

We use the free, open source blog software WordPress to power a Digital Poetry blog and our Parents’ Association website. We let them post entries in a remote WordPress site, then using the automatically generated RSS feed, we publish onto our school’s Intranet. We control the look and feel, the parents control the content. Great symbiosis.
We use AirSet, a free portal for blogging, calendaring, communicating, sharing links and more. The site allows you to give certain people access to certain parts of your group. We use the group calendaring feature to power our intranet calendar. Once again, just pull out an auto-generated RSS feed, style it, and pop it on your website. No longer necessary for the webmaster to update the calendar. Empower your end users.
- AirSet also has a free synchronization tool that works with Microsoft Outlook. I have it sync my calendars and contacts each night so that I can update either from AirSet or Outlook. I will explain what I do with the calendar RSS feed on that private calendar later.
30boxes – I have been evaluating as many web calendars as I can get my hands on, and this one is hands down the best. Create a free account, and type right into the box at the top of the page, “Building Learning Communities July 17-20 (Weston, Massachusetts)” and 30boxes automatically figures out what you are saying, and adds it to the calendar. Amazing! Then choose what friends are allowed to see what parts of your calendar. You can also tag events. I use school, personal, professional and others. You can then pull RSS feeds out based on tags, or pull out the whole calendar. You can also sync to iCal on the Mac, or export to CSV for Microsoft Outlook. If you have a website, use their HTML badge creator to make a nifty calendar piece for your website.
Right now for me, Protopage, self-described as, “Free Personal Start Pages,” is the granddaddy of them all. Head to Protopage and click the link at the top right to start your own page. You can add whatever you want to a page, to-do lists, RSS feeds (click to add 21apples to your Protopage), an e-mail checker (great feature), weather, links and more. I have a few different pages, one for work, one for personal, etc. On my personal page, I pull weather, personal e-mail, and my personal calendar (30boxes) all from feeds. I also use their sticky notes as to-do lists. On my school page, I pull school e-mail, the school’s Airset calendar, the Parents’ Association feed, and my Airset calendar (sync’d from my Outlook calendar) via RSS feed. Now I really do have 1 starting page which lets me see my calendar, my new e-mail, my to-do list and more. No need to go around checking all the different information systems I use. I can quickly pull up my page from any web browser, and check all relevant info.

Lots of information to parse I realize, but try out some of the websites, you won’t be disappointed. If you have any other great ones to add, please leave a comment with a link.

Technorati Tags: 30boxes, AirSet, Apple, blog, education, future, open source, Protopage, resources, review, software, web, web2.0, WordPress