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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the general stuff category:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ben Vershbow posts Part 3 of his series on "The Book is Reading You" and in it he discusses Google's new plan to sell digital versions of books from cooperating publishers. He points out that these books function well as searchable texts but have none of the social context required of real social software. He tags these efforts as anti-social software as, with them people will lack the ability to:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then, a bit later he adds:

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


• From James Farmer: Post on blogging genres.


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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

• From Will Richardson : Post on Journalism 2.0.


• From Michael Feldstein : Post on video literacy.


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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


• From Jay Cross : Post on serendipity.


• From Stephen Downes: Brief post regarding BlackBoard's announcement of its BlackBoard Beyond Initiative (e-learning 2.0).

Here's our take on news that matters for Wednesday, March 1. Today's theme is commercialization, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Casual games are good, clean, cheap fun -- and they're extremely profitable too. Who said you have to be complex, multi-leveled, and full of the latest special effects to succeed as a game in today's world?

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Sony Ericsson releases new blogging phones. The phones are dovetailed with Google's free Blogger application. If a user chooses to send a picture via "blog", Google's servers automatically create a unique address on its blogspot for the handset/SIM card combination in question.

• Handhelds -- Now we have news of the first virus that can jump from PCs to mobile devices. Also, China estimates it will export more than 250 million cell phones next year.
  
• Social Networks -- Take a look at this article to see how realtors are using social networking tools to enhance their businesses.

• From Stephen Downes : Post commenting on Heather Kanuka's article on the effect of e-learning on education.


• From Dave Cormier : Post on Skype, Socrates and how learning 2.0 will marginalize the ivory tower and bring back the symposium.


• From Will Richardson : Post recounting a case in which a school district turns off access to a teacher's classroom blogs.


• From Ben Vershbow : Post of thoughts on blogging and process vs. product.


• From Jay Cross : Post on the importance of personalization in social software.

Here's our take on news that matters for Tuesday, February 28. Today's theme is should we or shouldn't we , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Utah's legislation regulating violent video games inched one step closer to becoming law. As introduced, the legislation seeks to put violent games under current statutes that protect children from obscene material such as pornography. However, even proponents of the new legislation agree that the constitutionality of the new law will certainly come into question if fully passed.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- An interesting article in the Guardian (UK) discusses the need for podcasts created by amateurs to evolve in terms of their quality. Interesting topic, particularly for education. Do we need to create polished podcasts for people to listen? Also, here's an interesting take on the real status of blogging from WSH's Jason Fry.

• Handhelds -- Who knows where it will all end up, but the struggle between RIM and NTP is getting stranger by the day. The two continue fighting outside of court (it's hard to imagine a settlement at this juncture) even though the judge in the case has told both sides that no one will be satisfied with a court decision. And, we would be remiss if we didn't include here mention of the announcement of the new iPod HiFi system announced today.
  
• Social Networks -- Rumors have been swirling that Google is going to jump into the social bookmarking space. Social bookmarking allows a user to save links that he or she finds useful. Instead of storing them in just one browser on one computer, however, the links are saved to a site such as del.icio.us, where they can be viewed and accessed by other users. Google's supposed entry into this arena could move social networking even more to the center of the stage.

• From Alan Levine : Post on the lack of response from iTunesU and Apple.


• From Anne Davis : Post on a new weblog project at gsu.


• From Doug Johnson : Post asking whether or not schools should provide e-mail accounts.


• From Ben Vershbow : Post of thoughts on blogging and process vs. product.


• From Graham Attwell: Post on using social software in education.


• From Clarence Fisher: Post on classrooms as studios.


• From Lanny Arvan: Post on video in teaching and learning.


• From David Wiley: Post on distributed tools and mashups.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, February 27. Today's theme is moving on , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Well, PC gaming may not be dying like some had thought. In fact, according to one study, the market is growing.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- The Washington Post has a nice article on blogging and is asking for people to tell them why they blog. Their goal is to dig deeper behind the phenomenon and understand the different motivations and goals that are driving the growth of blogging.

• Handhelds -- I'm happy to announce that the world has brightened slightly with the arrival of Frogger on cell phones. Frogger for Prizes is an authentic translation of the original arcade version of Frogger with multiple enhancements and updated graphics. This is actually more important than it may seem at first as a key component in the cell phone's rise to the top of convergent devices is its ability to handle as much legacy content as possible. The ability to port existing games, music, and video successfully will determine the extent to which the cell phone can serve as the "be all" device.
  
• Social Networks -- And now we have carspace.com. This social networking site provides users with options for meeting car enthusiasts with similar interests as well as sharing photos and discussions. In short, this is an example of a growing trend aimed at narrowing the broad social networking space to interest-specific markets.

• From Dave Warlick : Post on the state of the blogosphere.


• From Alex Halavais: Post a MySpace cheat sheet for parents.


• From Stephen Downes : Post responding to Michael Feldstein's observations in defense of walled gardens.


• From Will Richardson : Post on connected learning.


• From Graham Attwell: Post on using social software in education.


• From Clarence Fisher: Post on classrooms as studios.


• From Lanny Arvan: Post on video in teaching and learning.


• From David Wiley: Post on distributed tools and mashups.

Here's our take on news that matters for Thursday, February 23. Today's theme is interesting evolutions , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Evidently, nationality can kill in some online role-playing games. South Korean players in certain online games are reportedly waiting for Chinese gamers to log on, and then executing their characters, according to a report in the Financial Times.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- PRWeb adds podcasting to its suite of marketing services. A new academic study reports that teen bloggers are openly exposed to cyberstalking. In “Teen Blogs Exposed: The Private Lives of Teens Made Public,” Northwestern University Professor David Huffaker finds that half of all teenage bloggers link to other bloggers, and often include a “friends list.” Sixty-seven percent of teen bloggers provide a comment section in order to get feedback from readers of their blogs.

• Handhelds -- It's interesting to note that around 16% of U.S. cell phone customers actually have two cell phones -- one for work and one for personal use.
  
• Social Networks -- Here's an interesting note about the Eurekster search engine that that links search algorithms to social networks and communities of interest .

• From Brian Lamb : Post on Deborah Boyd's research on MySpace.


• From Alan Levine : Post describing the new podcasting tools at Odeo and a reminder that they are free.


• From Stephen Downes : Post on open source and trading standards.


• From Clarence Fisher : Post on social literacies.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, February 21. Today's theme is better late than never , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- A nice article in the San Francisco Chronicle on how video games can make kids love their school lessons.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Here are some tips for creating a podcast for your business. And Editor and Publisher is telling newspapers that the next big thing for them is podcasting and vodcasting.

• Handhelds -- Next up is HD quality video for cell phones. Darn! I still haven't seen non-HD video on my phone.

• From Doug Johnson : Post on why librarians should be in charge of educational technology.


• From Michael Feldstein : Post on an example of a mashup-enabled enterprise app.


• From Stephen Downes : Post on multimedia learning in games, simulations, and microworlds.


• From Clarence Fisher : Post on Day 1 of blogging and vlogging in the classroom.


• From James Farmer : Post Elgg and WebCT sitting in a tree...

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, February 20. Today's theme is better late than never , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- According to analysts, Sony's PlayStation 3 will be late and more expensive than expected.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Podcasting is undoubtedly a successful medium. But what about it's business potential? That is still largely unknown but there are lots of people trying to make it happen.

• Handhelds -- The race for mobile e-mail is officially on as just about every major player announced an initiative at last week;s 3GSm World Conference in Barcelona.
  
• Social Networks -- Looks like AOL is rolling out new features designed to take on MySpace and Skype. And, ere's a good article on "finding, filtering, and forwarding" as the backbones of social networking.

• From Clarence Fisher: Post on blogging, vlogging, and podding in the classroom.


• From Dave Cormier : Post on a plan for a new media curriculum -- online work conference.


• From Gardner Campbell : Post asking what if the problem is not pedagogy but rather the profession.


• From Ben Vershbow : Post on the Bible on DVD as another example of the embodiment of book on screen.


• From Donna DesRoches : Post of thoughts on her recent presentation on the social Web.

Here's our take on news that matters for Friday, February 17. Today's theme is windows of opportunity , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- In the near future kids may opt to play games as a way to instant millionaire status (as opposed to basketball or golf). Games Media Properties has announced the premier of the World Series of Video Games, with $1 million in cash to be won.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- MySpace is trying to mobilize blogging by becoming and MVNO partner with Earthlink. Also, PC World has a nice take on the possible impacts of podcasting on the music industry.

• Handhelds -- The music player business just got more crowded (if that's possible). Amazon has announced it will create its own music player. And, Microsoft is bullish on its new Direct Push e-mail services as it tries to make a big dent in Blackberry's market share. We'll see...
  
• Social Networks -- MVNOs, the new crop of mobile phone operators who don't have their own network but simply piggyback on the networks of established providers, have been getting a lot of buzz lately for filling in "niches." Also, check out Yahoo! 360 and see what they're trying to do to help their users connect with social networks.

• From Brian Lamb : Post on alternate reality game antecedents.


• From D'Arcy Norman : Post on clarification regarding EduGlu.


• From Anne Davis : Post of blogging snapshots from the classroom.


• From Jeremy Hiebert : Post on a Personal Learning Environment model.

Here's our take on news that matters for Thursday, February 16. Today's theme is new forms of presentation, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Nintendo's DS is still outperforming Sony's PSP worldwide. And here's a nice take on the importance of choice and free will in video games.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Podcasting is all over the place now. In addition to personal, educational, and radio podcasts, we now have podcasting priests, and mutual funds podcast. Some believe it is also the next big think in e-zine marketing.

• Handhelds -- Analysts are predicting that 3G will drive a big mobile market explosion. The mobile market will be worth 231 billion euros in Europe, the Middle East and Africa by 2009, according to a report from analysts the Yankee Group.
  
• Social Networks -- Well, it looks like Sony finally gets the fact that online gaming is about interactive social networking. The company has announced the September launch of its PS3Hub that will feature games, chat, and media exchange (song and movie files), and other communication features.

• From David Warlick : Post on bottom-line concepts for Web 2.0.


• From Stephen Downes : Post on the new e-Framework Newsletter.


• From Sally Northmore : Post on rare books in digital formats and the value (or not) of page turning mechanisms.


• From Alan Levine : Post on presentation as conversation.


• From Lanny Arvan : Post on the learning technologist as Elmer Gantry.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, February 13. Today's theme is giving in (sort of), and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- A new genre of games is flipping commercial product placement and promotion on its head. Known as "anti-advergames," the new titles satirize big companies and question corporate polices ranging from how cattle are raised to low pay for workers.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- For those people who might be addicted to blogging, here's a nice set of lyrics -- Addicted to Blogs. It's high time people wrote more about blogging as a way to nurture friendships among teens. Other good statistics from the latest Pew study: Girls are leading the blogging trend. Among online teens, 25 percent of girls ages 15 to 17 blog, compared with 15 percent of boys. Those numbers go even higher when it comes to simply reading blogs: 53 percent of older adolescent girls, compared with 34 percent of boys their age, do it.

• Handhelds -- Also, Sony is planning on bundling UMDs with DVDs in order to gain more exposure for its PSP-specific format. Open source rival to iTunes launches. Finally, here is a company that's working to turn handheld devices into portable projectors.
  
• Social Networks -- Here's a nice take on the economy of reputation, or how social networking can improve performance and the bottom line in business.

• From Scott Wilson : Post programming sectarianism and the search for the right language for learning frameworks.


• From Clarence Fisher : Post on the information ecosystem and getting kids to give as well as take with their writing.


• From Donna DesRoches : Post on problem-based learning.


• From Christian Long : Post on 10 brain things...and one reminder that people are the curriculum.


• From Chris Lehman : Post on high stakes tests.


• From EdTechTalk: Podcast on Wiki Textbook Project (#5, part 2) with Larry Sanger.


• From Alan Levine : Post of notes on Nancy White's presentation, "The Seven Competencies of Online Learning.".


• From Doug Johnson : Post on whether virtual experiences are driving our real life experiences in education.


• From Albert Ip: Second Post on " Information, language, knowledge and connectedness".

Here's our take on news that matters for Thursday, February 9. Today's theme is moving on (a tribute to Will Richardson) , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- EVE Online currently holds the record for concurrent players in a single, persistent game universe at 23,178 simultaneous users. Time for a hardware upgrade.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- According to this article, Microsoft is considering re-branding its MSN site to MSN Media Network. The new site will feature, among other things, a podcasting feature.Also, lots of commercial groups betting on vodcasting or vlogging. Here's an example.

• Handhelds -- A new service from Eqo Communications, features a package that allows Skype users to talk to each other via cell phones. But unlike traditional calling, which requires the use of phone numbers--and also means that once you give your number to people, they will always be able to reach you -- Eqo is built around the idea of letting people reach out to each other via identities, or buddy lists.


• Social Networks -- The popularity of social networking sites soaring on college campuses, according to a new survey. And, according to Jupiter Research, rising subscription prices on online dating sites are driving people to use social networking sites instead.

• From Will Richardson : Post about his decision to leave his teaching position after 21 years.


• From Miguel Guhlin: Post (by parent) on the need for parent advocacy for the Read/Write Web.


• From Stephen Downes : Post on models for sustainable open educational resources.


• From Chris Lehman : Post on achieving incremental change in education.


• From David Wiley : Podcast on open textbooks.


• From Jay Cross : Post on where we're headed.


• From Ben Vershbow: Post on possible compromises regarding DRM.


• From Scott Wilson : Post on diagrams, bricks, and other maps of the imagination.

Here's our take on news that matters for Wednesday, February 8. Today's theme is strange combinations , and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- This is an example of the blurring of lines in the gaming industry. Yesterday we got the announcement that RealNetworks is buying Dutch game company.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- And, if you think podcasting is just an isolated thing, check out this story about podcasts being used in Peruvian villages to provide important regional and agricultural information.

• Handhelds -- Occasionally, I like to point out a new product. Take a look at the Sony Ericsson M600. This is a Blackberry killer (it can use, among other options, Blackberry e-mail), has a slim but useful design, and boasts an extremely flexible Symbian framework. Take a look at the future.


• Social Networks -- We've talked a bit about MySpace in this forum. Well, you might also check out TagWorld . This is a similar social networking site with some nice twists and the addition of tagging and folksonomies.

• From Alan Levine : Post and podcast about his podcasting presentation.


• From Gardner Campbell: Post on podcast by David Orr from Oberlin College.


• From Albert Ip : Post on information, knowledge, language, and connectedness.


• From Chris Lehman : Post on blogging, participation, and the possibility of change in education.


• From Bud Hunt : Podcast on Moodle and Wikibooks.


• From Doug Johnson: Post on the school librarian's role in ubiquitous computing.


• From Dave Warlick: Post on cultivating a classroom learning engine through information economics.


• From Anne Davis: Post on second graders using blogging comments.

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

• Gaming -- James Cameron sees a future in which multi-player games can be the key to the success of films. Cameron is working on the screenplay for Project 880, which he describes as "completely crazy, balls-out sci-fi." If it gets produced, it could be the first major Hollywood project that audiences will experience first as a multiplayer game on the Net, and only later on the silver screen. Also, this article talks about the increase of women in the video game world.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- If you haven't see the Technorati statistics on blogging, you should. The company is tracking more than 27 million separate blogs around the world, or about 60 times what was online three years ago. About 2.7 million of those blogs are updated at least weekly, with about 1.2 million total posts appearing per day.

• Handhelds -- Get ready. TV on our cell phones will become even more pervasive once handhelds using new tuner chips start appearing.


• Social Networks -- Now the announcement that Google is merging its popular Gmail with chat functionality. This is inline with Yahoo Mail which indicates to users when their Yahoo Messenger contacts are online and allows them to launch a dialog with them instantly, as well as letting them make voice calls. The convergence of all communication tools, as well as pervasive presence detection and management, are important steps in the creation of pervasive online social networks for adults.

• From D'Arcy Norman : Post on Zack Rosen's comparison between Moodle and Sakai.


• From Gardner Campbell: Post on the ongoing debate over iTunes U.


• From Jay Cross : Post on Push and Pull forces in e-learning.


• From Chris Lehman : Post on assessment of learning and assessment for learning.


• From Bud Hunt : Podcast on Moodle and Wikibooks.


• From Doug Johnson: Post on the school librarian's role in ubiquitous computing.


• From Dave Warlick: Post on cultivating a classroom learning engine through information economics.


• From Anne Davis: Post on second graders using blogging comments.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, February 6. Today's theme is keeping up, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- When it comes to video games these days, the popular bandwagon memes include video games and violence, video games in libraries, video games driving music sales, and video games and physical fitness. Swimming across the meme stream are announcements like this one, regarding the Verizon Gaming Network and the busting of stereotypes. On the other side of that argument are articles like this one that discuss concerns in the industry that video game sales may not be moving as quickly as hoped beyond core demographics and sales.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Here's and example of podcasting being used for sales training and organizational updates. Step 1 -- create audio. Step 2 -- give everyone on your staff an iPod. Step 3 -- push the audio and all updates to devices.

• Handhelds -- So dar, the only vote against having cell phones as our source of ubiquitous computing is that they are now being used to track employees and monitor their activities. All that is needed to trace a mobile phone is a computer with an Internet connection. Once a phone is activated for tracking, it becomes a mobile electronic tag and its approximate position can be followed using the service provider's Web site.


• Social Networks -- According to this article, one of the blessings associated with online social networks is the advent of "networked individualism." Until the Internet and e-mail came along, our social networks involved flesh-and-blood relatives, friends, neighbors, and colleagues at work. We had to see them face-to-face or talk to them on the phone. Now we can maintain those same networks but with less movement, less face-to-face interaction and, hence, more autonomy. Can anyone say "have my cake and eat it too"?

• From Derek Morrison: Post on the new Sony Reader and a revisiting of his concept of the "online filling station" model of e-learning.


• From Paul Chenoweth : Post on the Facebook generation and how we view one another.


• From Alan Levine : Post on two recent workshops on using online discussions (with links to audio).


• From EdTechTalk : Post of podcast with Danny Wool of Wikimedia regarding the Wiki Textbook Project (Webcast#4 , Part 2).


• From Jeremy Hiebert : Post comparing formal, open, and self-directed learning.


• From Jesse Wilbur: Post on the value of voice in new media.


• From Dave Wiley: Post on the current state of open educational resources.


• From Will Richardson: Post on the growth of the blogosphere.


• From Graham Attwell: Post on the possibility of having self-directed professional development.


• From Jeremy Price: Post on Wikipedia and the search for networked truth.

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

• Gaming -- Deloitte's Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) industry group predicts that, in 2006, girls will hit the video games. In the wake of the success of new video game platforms, the industry will strive to sustain its growth by creating a considerably larger audience. It will reach out to new demographics, most notably young girls. In a strange new convergence category, Fuji has released a new digital camera that comes with four games installed.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- So the New York Times is now podcasting and, according to them, their daily podcast summarizing front page newspaper stories has already breached into the top tier of iTunes Music Store podcast downloads.

• Handhelds -- According to a recent music survey, 75% of users polled say that music costs too much. 71 percent of people polled thought that 99 cents was a good price for digital downloads--only four percent lower than the number of people who think that music is generally too expensive.


• Social Networks -- Is Amazon.com moving towards social networking? Don't scoff at the idea. The online retail giant is spending money like crazy trying to compete with Google, Microsoft, eBay, and Yahoo for customers. And all of those companies understand the need to create bigger and more loyal communities (hence social networking).

• From Stephen Downes : Post on how to make Wikipedia better and why we should.


• From Doug Johnson : Post on technology-enhanced schools.


• From Alan Levine : Post on the Listen/Speak Web and podcasting.


• From Albert Ip : Post on how to make Wikipedia better and why we should.


• From Clarence Fisher: Post on vlogging in the classroom.


• From Anne Davis: Post on blog comments among her students.

Here's our take on news that matters for Thursday, February 2. Today's theme is it's coming faster than I want, and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Here's a nice article that discusses the rise of networked gaming are changing the computer and video game industry landscape.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Take a look at these "7 deadly sins of commercial podcasting" and compare them to what's happening in education.

• Handhelds -- According to a recent report, we'll all be able to use cell phones on airplanes beginning in December. Is this a good thing?.


• Social Networks -- In a sign that it isn't keeping up with the times. MTV has launched mtvU Uber in an effort to gain back is core college base. Yes, there is lots of cool content aimed at the demographic but, unfortunately, there is no sign of real social networking and thus, no stickiness. They'll pick up some of the usual suspects (although Google Video is more fun and random) but there isn't the requisite interactivity needed for MTV to increase their sagging market share. For a look at how to make it happen organically but simply offering what people actually need and want, check out this article about Craigslist and what makes the site successful.

• From Alan Levine : Post on his presentation NMC's 2006 Horizon Report at the EDUCAUSE ELI conference .


• From Dave Cormier : Post on Wiki textbooks -- moving forward.


• From Graham Wegner : Post on student technology statistics from his class.


• From David Wiley : Post on the inanimate nature of learning objects.


• From Clarence Fisher: Post on early adopters of tools in the classroom.

Here's our take on news that matters for Wednesday, February 1. Today's theme is keep trying and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- The speculation continues to grow that Sony will launch a service later this spring aimed at taking on Microsoft's Xbox Live market. And what about rumors that Cisco might be moving in on Nintendo? Have I said how crazy the world is lately?

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Heck, even Dave Barry is on the bandwagon. As he says in this article, "Newspapers are dead."

• Handhelds -- It seems that European doctors are really embracing the Internet and mobile technology. Over 80% use the Internet daily, two thirds have electronic medical records and two thirds have handheld mobile devices. And, in other international news, a new "point and click" technology is now available for cell phone users in Japan. Mapion Local Search enables consumers to use their cell phones as point and search devices to call up information. Users can simply point their cell phones at 700,000 buildings, retailers, restaurants, banks or historical sites throughout Japan to retrieve information.


• Social Networks -- Microsoft has begun the media buzz about its march into the VoIP business and its intent to connect people via voice, IM, and other Web networks. The battle is on between the Redmond company, Yahoo, eBay (owner of Skype) and Google to see who can turn their bundle of services into the largest connected social networking pipeline in the land. And they're off!

• From Doug Johnson : Post on the irrelevance of "school" for tech-rich kids.


• From Elizabeth Elzer et. al.: Wiki presentation on using wikis to empower student learning.


• From Clarence Fisher : Post on telling new stories about education.


• From Bob Stein : Post on Nam June Paik and the future of media.


• From Ulises Mejías: Post on the blog as dissertation literature review.


• From Christian Long: Post on surviving the first year of teaching without sabotaging the future.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, January 30. Today's theme is keep trying and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Everyone wants to produce an iPod kller that has music games etc . Sony ventured first with the PSP and now it looks like Miscrosoft will be the next to try.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- One of the most useful trends in podcasting marries the simplicity of the phone to posting a podcast. Go to PhoneBlogz for a demo. The BBC is certainly bullish on podcasting and with their download statistics its not hard to see why.

• Handhelds -- Business in themobile world must be good. Microsoft's mobile division just recorded its first profitable quarter.


• Social Networks -- Businessweek has a good article on how companies are reaching the Myspace generation.

• From Michael Feldstein : Post on new articles related to LMS platofrms in education.


• From Doug Johnson : Post on 4th graders, search, and filtering Web sites.


• From James Hilton : Post on his Edublogs reading list.


• From Stephen Downes : Post in response to article calliing Stanford iTunes new and innovative.


• From Scott Wilson: Post on PLEs being portable and personal.


• From D'Arcy Norman: Post of his recent Read/Write Web presentation.

Here's our take on news that matters for Friday, January 27. Today's theme is evolving education and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Everyone wants to produce an iPod killer that has music games etc . Sony ventured first with the PSP and now it looks like Microsoft will be the next to try. Also, it looks like video games are the next important step for musicians who want to make it big.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Of course, blogging made its big splash in the 2004 elections. And, as with everything, congress is finally catching on to their value two years later.

• Handhelds -- It was only a matter of time before we started seeing ad-supported free video and music services (following similar Web trends in other areas). And, today yesterday we got the news that SmartVideo and the Digital Music Video Network announced they will offer free, commercial-based video music content to Internet enabled mobile devices. Also, here's a good analysis form PC World regarding the pros and cons of new music services that allow you to download music directly to your phone (Sprint and Version)


• Social Networks -- Businessweek has a good article on how companies are reaching the Myspace generation. Finally check out this interesting article on the Internet's new social order.

• From Dave Warlick : Post on the US losing its edge in terms of broadband usage and the Web.


• From EdTechTalk: Post on Wiki textbook project (#3).


• From Doug Johnson : Post on holding kids to higher standards.


• From D'Arcy Norman : Post on his Edublogs reading list.


• From Stephen Downes : Post on how to do what you love.


• From Ray Cha: Post on experiences as a newbie in Second Life.


• From Ben Vershbow: Post on what he heard at the Economics of Open Content symposium, hosted in Cambridge, MA by Intelligent Television and MIT Open CourseWare.

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

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

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

• Handhelds -- Cell phones became increasingly Web-enabled this week with the full public launch of Opera's mobile browser. And, in a good NY Times article, Saul Hansell writes that we've caught up to convergence but content has fallen behind.


• Social Networks -- AOL will be joining the social networking competition soon with AIMspace. Pete Cashmore links to a Business Week article with the details:

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

• From Dave Warlick : Post on the magic of literacy and blogging as conversation.


• From Brian Lamb : Post on CiteULike screencasts.


• From Doug Johnson : Post the case for social networks.


• From D'Arcy Norman : Post on feedback regarding iTunes University service.


• From James Farmer: Post on BlackBoard's blog journal.


• From Ray Cha: Post on experiences as a newbie in Second Life

Here's our take on news that matters for Tuesday, January 24. Today's theme is conforming and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Okay, so the Disney/Pixar deal is picking up steam. Disney has extended an offer of $7 billion. In an interesting development, Persuasive Games has announced a new game called Disaffected . Here's a description: "a videogame parody of the Kinko’s copy store, a source of frustration from its patrons. Disaffected! puts the player in the role of employees forced to service customers under the particular incompetencies common to a Kinko’s store." This is an interesting type of simulation that may even find its way into certain educational environments.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Now, TiVo has joined the fray of media companies supporting podcasts. The program, which began in November but was announced widely this week, gives TiVo users who also have broadband connections the ability to access any podcast on the Web, and play the audio on their TV sets. Also, you might be interested in this Houston Chronicle article on JuiceCaster -- The World's First Personal Broadcast Network.

• Handhelds -- The big cell phone companies are banding together to support a standard for mobile TV. From the article: " The Mobile DTV Alliance, with Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Nokia, Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN) and Modeo among its founding members, announced support for Digital Video Broadcasting - Handheld (DVB-H), an open procedure standard for broadcast digital-TV reception on mobile devices." Finally, in a not-too-surprising development, the U.S. Supreme Course declined to hear the RIM (Blackberry) appeal of lower court findings that it infringed on patents owned by patent holding company NTP.


• Social Networks -- Research by a faculty member at Sacramento State shows that there can be fewer than three degrees of separation among the thousands of people here—making a big university seem much smaller and friendlier than might be expected.

• From Stephen Downes : Post on Facebook and a recent Chronicle of Higher Ed article.


• From Jesse Wilbur: Post on fair use of the networked book.


• From Michael Feldstein : Post of more corroborating information on the cost of selling LMS platforms.


• From Albert Ip : Post on a simulation for clinical practice.

Here's our take on news that matters for Tuesday, January 24. Today's theme is reinvention and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- From a Slashdot post comes this summary of gaming's growth -- XFire now has 3 Million subscribers, the 1 Millionth DS handheld has sold in Europe, and Microsoft has listed the top 10 Xbox Live Arcade titles.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Neville Hobson suggests that mainstream media should follow BBC's example on podcasting if they ant to stay in the game.

• Handhelds -- Ever wonder why the iPod killers haven't yet killed the iPod? Check out this articlewith quotes from Steve Jobs. Also, a recent study shows more and more Americans rely on cell phones. Nothing new, really, but this statistic jumped out -- 12% of users between 18 and 24 have gone completely wireless.


• Social Networks -- You don't have to belong to MySpace.com to be part of an online social network. Check out this study in Science News Online on the use of e-mail among college students to form social networks. PriceWaterhouse Coopers certainly thinks social networks are important. In a study released for Media companies yesterday they recommended investing in social networks in order to traverse successfully what they call the new "Media Lifestyle." Then again, maybe Jack McKenzie, a senior vice president at Frank N. Magid Associates said it best this week: "We think that the single largest differentiator in this generation from previous generations is the social network that is people's lives, the part of it that technology enables."

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

• From Dave Cormier : Post of notes on the Wikibooks project.


• From Jesse Wilbur: Post on fair use of the networked book.


• From Lanny Arvan : Post on the nuts and bolts of teaching without an LMS


• From Albert Ip : Post on Kathy Sierra's Crash Course on Learning Theory.


• From Will Richardson : Post on WSJ article on cheating in schools and our need to reinvent.


• From Konrad Goglowski : Post on student blog community and example of students dealing with one another through the blogosphere.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, January 23. Today's theme is conforming and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- It seems that multi-player game action may be more important that extra bells and whistles like playing movies and music. The Nintendo DS still leads Sony's PSP in sales after 1 year in spite of the predictions by many. And, what makes good games better? Good writing and strong story.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- The medical profession was an innovator in podcasting and now they are finding practical applications for vodcasting. Hospitals are starting to hand out video iPods to patients so that they can access healthcare information.

• Handhelds -- Some good advice is starting to surface for publishers hoping to monetize podcasting. Also, here's an interesting concept -- in order to deal with illiteracy throughout the world, one major cell phone maker envisions a future where all basic-level phones feature "text-free" functionality that allows users to manipulate all aspects of the phone via images. Finally, have you checked out the new iSee video recorder for the iPod?


• Social Networks -- With the popularity of social network sites like MySpace.com, others, like AOL, are wondering how they can leverage existing tools to get in on the action. The problem with this, as some have pointed out, is that social networks thrive on a sort of chaos that's anathema to established companies like AOL.

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

• From Paul Chenoweth : Post on generational perspectives on adopting classroom technology.


• From EdTechTalk: Post on Wikis for Textbooks Project part 2.


• From Jeremy Hiebert : Post on the revolution of learners as contributors.


• From Ulises Mejias : Post asking what is social about social software.


• From Rob Wall: Post on teaching binary using the Socratic method.


• From Stephen Downes: Post on with audio links to his 2-day, informative seminar at Edson, Alberta.


• From Will Richardson: Post on teachers as learners.

Here's our take on news that matters for Friday, January 20. Today's theme is narrowcasting and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- In case you had forgotten about Nintendo in all the verbiage thrown out between Microsoft and Sony in the console wars, we learned this week that Nintendo's Revolution console will hit North American shores by Thanksgiving. On the MORPG front, World of Warcraft owners announced that the game now had more than 1 million users in Europe.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- This week say the launch of two new podcast ad networks. Kiptronic and Podtrac are the first two of what's expected to be a growing field of entrants into the space this year. These services will be selling ads on individual podcasts and introducing new audience measuring software. Where there's money , expect even more innovation.

• Handhelds -- Up next? The Rob Reynolds Sony Limited Edition NW-A1000. Just kidding. Really it's a Franz Ferdinand special but it's just the latest in an exploding trend of limited edition custom handheld devices. Instead of narrowcasting with content, we're seeing narrowcasting with physical product.


• Social Networks -- One of the most interesting questions to Google founder Larry Paige at CES was how the search company was dealing with Yahoo's lead in social networking. Paige dismissed the significance of Yahoo's position but search in general may prove to be the very best tool for linking everyone. As an example, take a look at Korea's NHN and their "Knowledge In" initiative that bases search, in part, on information provided by users (on topics ranging from recipes for or kimchi to the composition of rocket fuel.

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

• From Doug Johnson: Post challenging teachers with an "I will" list.


• From Ben Vershbow : Post on how Google Book is reading you.


• From James Farmer : Post on the process of becoming part of a blog-based community.


• From Graham Attwell : Post on asking whether technology actually improves education.


• From Rob Wall: Post on putting his school site on a blogging platform.


• From Stephen Downes: Post on Lis Neal's e-learning predictions for 2006.

Here's our take on news that matters for Thursday, January 19. Today's theme is combining forces and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Curious what's available in new online roleplaying games (i.e. why the interest)? Check out the new game Minions of Mirth and some of its offerings.
  
  • Auto-patcher that delivers immediate content and feature upgrades.
  • Full single player support.
  • Player vs Environment and Player vs Player multiplayer.
  • No monthly service fees for multiplayer.
  • Form your own party of up to 6 characters. Join other players in online alliances with up to 36 characters.
  • 16 playable classes, 12 playable races, Multiclass characters in three careers up to level 100.
  • 3 playable realms: Fellowship of Light, Minions of Darkness, and the Monster Realm.
  • 14 huge and diverse zones to explore.
  • Unlock monster templates to create your own stable of monsters.
  • Fight the onslaught of vast armies in epic battles.
  • A tremendous amount of unique NPC's, creatures, items, and quests.
  • 2 hours of original music.
  • Free dedicated world server with source code is available. Host your own persistent world with your own original content

  Also, you might enjoy this timeline of notable video game villains. And, if you don't think this will have some kind of impact on video games, Disney is in talks with Pixar about an acquisition.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Disney announced yesterday that it has sold more than 1.5 million episodes of TV shows via iTunes and that it will widen its list of programming available for handhelds via vodcast.

• Handhelds -- Cingular to sell handheld with Microsoft software Walkman sales boost Sony Ericsson. Strong demand for mobile phones with camera and music features has helped Sony Ericsson to report record fourth quarter sales and profits. Sony Ericsson added it had shipped three million of its Walkman branded handsets since August last year. Television ads coming to a small screen near you (as in, "in your hand"). http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124390,00.asp A few months later than planned, Opera Software announced Wednesday that it has released a beta version of its first Web browser for the Windows Mobile Pocket PC.


• Social Networks -- According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, some students are discovering that sharing personal details on social-networking Web sites can have unintended consequences. On a different take, Napster announced yesterday that it has passed the 500,000 paid subscribers mark.

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

• From Ben Vershbow : Post with more grist for the "pipes" debate.


• From Paul Chenoweth : Post on how the digital divide can become a digital dump.


• From Jeremy Hiebert : Post on learning outside the school.


• From Will Richardson : Post on Lawrence Lessig and the significance of the Read/Write Web

Here's our take on news that matters for Tuesday, January 18. Today's theme is social and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- One motivation, perhaps, for pushing the concept of online gaming in education is that users seem willing to shell out their disposable income for games. In 1up.com released results from a customer survey yesterday that shows its users plan to spend and average of $245 on games in the next two months.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Technorati continues providing useful data related to blogs. Most recently, they've updated their chart functionality that provides visual assessment of search term popularity. And, you thought there wasn't enough hype around podcasting. Wait until May when the ID3 Podcast Magazine launches.

• Handhelds -- In our "news of the weird" category, a report surfaced yesterday linking the federal excise tax on cell phones back to the Spanish-American War.


• Social Networks -- Is text messaging making our kids illiterate? Ultimately, social networking is about linking people, even those using disparate systems. Google took another step towards connecting different groups yesterday when it announced that it had released GoogleTalk federated. What this means is that now Google Talk’s XMPP servers can talk to other XMPP servers such as Earthlink and Gizmo Project. Essentially, if you have your own Jabber server, you could talk to GoogleTalk. Also, the power of social networking technologies is giving young voters a place to voice their opinions regarding politics, researchers say. Finally, if you haven't yet checked our 43Things , at least take a look at Alan Levine's overview. A great look at the fun and potential of social networking on the Web.

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

• From Alan Levine : Post on the zing in Podzinger.


• From Ben Vershbow : Post on meta-wikipedia or the factions within the organization that make it really interesting.


• From Stephen Downes : Post of his reaction to an article discussing the state of the e-learning market.


• From Anne Davis : Post on blogging at the schools.


• From James Farmer : Post on blog-based communities -- explaining the basics.


• From Will Richardson : Post on connective learning.

Here's our take on news that matters for Tuesday, January 17. Today's theme is doubletake and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- And then there's the hands-on approach to gaming. This past weekend, the International Rubik's Cube Competition was held in San Francisco and a new record of 11.13 seconds was set.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- It was only a matter of time. Creative, in its ongoing attempts to shadow Apple, has launched ZENCast. This is similar to the iTunes podcasting and to Yahoo's service.

• Handhelds -- Portable devices helped offset weak sales of gaming consoles and drove the video game industry to record sales in the United States last year, according to a report from the NPD Group. Portable gaming was the clear winner, with sales of games for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance and the Sony (NYSE: SNE) PlayStation Portable (PSP) climbing 42 percent to $1.4 billion. NPD Group said more sophisticated and new devices such as the Nintendo DS helped expand the market to older players as well. "The real story for 2005 was the incredible expansion of portable gaming," said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.


• Social Networks -- Here's a good twist on social networking and Google Maps. BuddyMapper.com allows you to use Google Maps to meet people with similar interests in your own area. Nice blend of visual and text-based connection (a la Facebook.com).

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

• From Brian Lamb : Post on the Stanford iTunes project.


• From Santiago Iñiguez: Post on the brave new world for management education.


• From EdTechTalk: EducationBridges #1 post on Wikibooks as a textbook solution.


• From Ray Cha : Post on an overview on the future of the book.


• From Lanny Arvan : Post on acting and learning and effective teaching


• From Clarence Fisher: Post on the Movies Game as a classroom teaching tool.


• From Rob Wall: Post on building a school Web site one blog at a time.


• From Will Richardson: Post on classroom blogs and other stuff.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, January 16. Today's theme is extension and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Well, news this past weekend confirmed what we all suspected -- the video game industry had a record year in 2005. There are some interesting tidbits in the final reports, however. Among them, the fact that console sales were actually down while handheld game sales were up . For the second consecutive year, sales of portable titles exceeded $1bn, reaching $1.4bn in the US.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Blogging and its offspring (podcasting and vodcasting) are moving rapidly beyond independent journalism into the business sector. As proof, articles like this one pop up daily. And for those who want to blog but are afraid of people knowing who you are, here's an article on anonymous blogging tips.Also, check out this suggestion for a mobile podcasting rig (from ZDNet). Great stuff to add to your list.

• Handhelds -- In addition to its new deal with Blackberry for services on handheld devices, the big G also announced its new home page specifically for mobile devices. A special version of Google Talk for BlackBerry will launch this spring. The software will be included with new BlackBerry devices, and available as a free download for existing models.


• Social Networks -- With the new version of its software platform, Skype continues to push the envelope and serve notice that it is much more than a VoIP solution. Skype now features video communication, IM, etc. and is working rapidly to sign partners that will introduce more uses for its community. Next up is its partnership with Kodak as the two are teaming to offer photo sharing with voice.

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

• From D'Arcy Norman : Post on social network mapping with Kartoo.


• From Clarence Fisher : Post on small pieces loosely joined and playing with connectivist tools in the classroom.


• From Will Richardson : Post on more ideas regarding the "Teacher as DJ.".


• From Michael Feldstein : Post on BlackBoard by the numbers.


• From Stephen Downes: Post on the management relationship between entities and organizations.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, January 13. Today's theme is new evolution and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming --A new player has enetered the MMORPG space. IPVG Corp., a publicly listed firm with business interests in media and IT, has added RAN Online as the latest MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game) to be hosted locally. RAN Online, developed by e-games of South Korea, is a popular online game in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and was recently introduced in Thailand. IPVG acquired exclusive rights to distribute the game in the Philippines through its gaming arm, IP Interactive. MMORPGs will continue to be imported at a more rapid rate than they are cerated in North America. They will also continue to ooutpace the rest of the video gaming worldsd in terms of growth. Hmmm... education anyone?

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- A new search engine for podcasts, Podzinger, launched today. PodZinger announced the launch of its podcast search engine which is based on 30 years of speech recognition research and development from BBN Technologies. PodZinger is touted by the company to be the fastest, easiest, and most reliable way for users to find information in podcasts. Two unique features of PodZinger make it exceptionally powerful and user-friendly: it displays the text surrounding the search term, so users can skim results the same way they skim text search results to assess relevance quickly; and it allows users to listen to the most relevant sections of their search results by simply clicking on any word in the search result and beginning audio playback from there.

And, we talk a lot about blogging in politics and education, but there is increasing discussion regarding blogging in business. Like IM software, there is lots of concern in businesses about security, control, etc. A bit antithetical to the whole design of blogging but, where there's money, there's legs on the trend.

• Handhelds -- Research in Motion announced yesterday that it's new handhels will include the Google Talk instant messaging and VoIP service. A special version of Google Talk for BlackBerry will launch this spring. The software will be included with new BlackBerry devices, and available as a free download for existing models. On a more serious note, CBS is working on a soap opera that will be released exclusively on cell phones.


• Social Networks -- Of course, it was bound to happen. Social networking sites have gone to the dogs, literally. A site called Dogster gives our furry friends the opportunity to post photos, share their personalities, make new friends and even maintain blogs. On Dogster, which won the 2005 Webby Award in the community category, Web savvy humans take a back seat to their lovable companions.

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

• From Brian Lamb : Post on how RipMixBurn si coming into focus.


• From D'Arcy Norman : Post on teaching dossiers.


• From FLOSSE Posse : Post on how learning nodes are here -- still and again.


• From Ben Vershbow : Post on ESBNs and the end of cyberspace.


• From Will Richardson : Post on PLEs and learning vs. education.


• From James Farmer : Post on Personal Learning Environments.


• From Albert Ip: Post on whether or not an interactive program really fails the reading test.


• From Stephen Downes: Post on Personal Learning Environments and Virtual Learning Environments.

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

• Gaming --A new USC study found that overall Internet use is continually increasing; email is the most popular online activity; and broadband has reached the highest level yet for online access. The year 2005 showed the most Internet use to date with 78.6 percent of Americans going online with the average weekly usage rising to 13.3 hours. In 2000, 46.9 percent of users reported that they use home Internet access. This number increased to 66.2 percent in 2005, according to the study. Of course, more broadband means more broadband applications. The fastest growing besides porn? Online gaming.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- And, we talk a lot about blogging in politics and education, but there is increasing discussion regarding blogging in business. Like IM software, there is lots of concern in businesses about security, control, etc. A bit antithetical to the whole design of blogging but, where there's money, there's legs on the trend.


• Handhelds -- The war about the role of cell phones in schools rages on. It's definitely a tough one. On the one hand we all see cell phones becoming sophisticated enough to be important learning tools, and on the other hand they are disruptive communication devices. I have a good idea. Let's find learning applications for cell phones that will motivate them to use the handhelds more constructively at school.


• Social Networks -- Don't think that social networks are only being notices here in North America. A good article in the Taipei Times about the importance of social network software and Web 2.0.

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

• From Graham Attwell : Post on the nature of informal learning.


• From Clarence Fisher : Post on being punished for blogging prosperity.


• From Albert Ip : Post on making courses that reward students with pleasure.


• From Stephen Downes : Posts on ESBN.org.


• From Lanny Arvan : Post on the virtual university conundrum.


• From James Farmer : Post on Personal Learning Environments.

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

• Gaming --According to a Forrester report, video games market will experience nice growth but it's still a man's world. Ars Technica assesses the same report thusly:

"Forrester's research shows that gaming is still the province of young men. A truly astonishing 94% of American young men between the ages of 12 and 17 regularly play video games, but when the age range is raised to men between 16 and 25, that number falls to 77% and and it drops quickly at higher ages. And when it comes to women of comparable ages, the numbers are far lower. Women also tend to feel less welcome at the console. These figures suggest that gaming, though popular, still has a long way to go before it can be called a truly inclusive activity."

A report for Research and Markets found that video game consoles and handheld game consoles are greatly expanding the market for online gaming. Worldwide console and handheld online gaming subscribers numbered 3.4 million in 2004, and could exceed 30 million by 2009. Whether Sony continues to offer free online console subscriptions or goes to a paid subscription service when it releases the PlayStation 3 in 2006 will have a big impact on subscriber growth and revenues over the next few years.

• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Well, now I know we're in trouble. Media Firms have discovered the blogosphere. According to the article, the win for these companies is customer feedback and dialogue. I was thinking it might be about brand name distribution. Shows what I know.


• Handhelds -- This has been a story/prediction buzzing around for a couple of weeks, but the word is that 2006 is the year retail shopping via cell phone will be a hit in the U.S. Okay, so why shouldn't we get this at least a year late just like all the other good stuff? Seriously, retail shopping means secure services over the phone and a greater degree of interactivity. E-commerce and increased interactivity are two key ingredients for the success of mobile learning and training.


• Social Networks -- Meanwhile networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are so popular that they are spawning conspiracy theories. The reality here is that the interface between free sites and the corporate entities that buy them for their communities is an uneasy one.

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

• From D'Arcy Norman : Post on learning objects and their viability both past and present.


• From Graham Attwell : Post reacting to blogging and communities.


• From Godfrey Parkin : Post on predictions for six emerging corporate pandemics that trainers will have to deal with in 2006.


• From FLOSSE Posse : Posts on the virtue of thriftiness in learning and education.


• From Ben Vershbow : Post on Internet TV and new paradigms of distributed media.


• From Stephen Downes : Post on the education dilemmas associated with the rapid increase in significant information.

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

• Gaming -- A New York Times article yesterday, posited that "'Massively multi-player online role-playing games' are challenging movies as the go-to entertainment for the 18-35 crowd. (The "King Kong" version was released the same day as the film.)" And, in a "too close to home" moment, USA Today ran an article this weekend discussing the use of "cheats" in online gaming and whether or not it is fair to be able to "buy" your success in a game rather than having to conquer all the levels. Oh, and Bill Gates said this week that the secret to success was making software more like video games.
  
• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Here are some interesting predictions from the UK creative company Audacious. And as proof that blogging makes a difference in communication, Sun President Jonathan Schwartz said in a recent interview that blogging played a big role in the company's communication strategy over the last year.


• Handhelds -- One of the most obvious messages at last week's CES is that no one is capitulating final sovereignty to Apple in the iPod wars just yet. A slew of new devices were rolled out in efforts to challenge Apple's dominance. We'll see how things shake out at MacWorld this week before we give any of the pretenders much of a chance this year. And, in addition to teaming with Yahoo on its Ready services for millions of users, Motorola is partnering with Google for search on cell phones.


• Social Networks -- Google co-founder Larry Paige was dismissive backstage at CES this weekend when asked about Yahoo's lead in the social networking space. His response was that "The data that defines you socially isn't really that complicated, or that hard to collect." Such may be true, but the thing we've learned about social networks to date is that they are only partly about technology. Collecting the data and providing the platform isn't the issue -- it's getting the idea right so that people with interact with the data and with each other. Still Google has lots of experience with that as well. Oh, and if you didn't already know, MySpace is the place to be for teens.

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

• From Doug Johnson: Post on adjusting schools' lobbying strategies at the federal level.


• From George Siemens : Post reacting to the "one-way only" approach that some designers/developers have to learning.


• From Kathleen Fitzpatrick : Post on RSS, the future of academic publishing, peer review, and tenure requirements.


• From Jesse Wilbur: Posts on Digital Universe and building a better Wikipedia (or not).


• From Albert Ip : Post on looking beyond 2020 and the implications of rendered physical realities in learning


• From Will Richardson: Post on the education dilemmas associated with the rapid increase in significant information.

Here's our take on news that matters for Thursday, January 5. Today's theme is innovation and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- Online gaming will continue to grow at a rapid pace over the next three years. Based in part on an industry report from Parks Associates the article estimates that revenues from online gaming within the US to increase to more than $3.5 billion in 2009 from $1.1 billion in 2005.
  
• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- The Student Filmmakers Showcase, or "SFS TV" is coming soon to a portable vodcast near you.


• Handhelds --The round-the-clock availability that cell phones and pagers have brought to people's lives may be taking a toll on family life, a new study suggests. The study, which followed more than 1,300 adults over 2 years, found that those who consistently used a mobile phone or pager throughout the study period were more likely to report negative "spillover" between work and home life -- and, in turn, less satisfaction with their family life. From another perspective, at least we can all be thankful now that Yahoo will make all of its communication services (e-mail, calendar, etc.) available via cell phones (see Yahoo Go)without the use of a browser. One the positive side, from the Signs of the Convergence archive, Pioneer and Samsung have unveiled new portable XM satellite radios that incorporate MP3 players.


• Social Networks -- Mobile lines overtook fixed lines on a global scale at the end of 2002. At the end of 2003, there were over 1.35 billion mobile subscribers worldwide, compared with only 1.2 billion fixed-line users. Particularly among younger users, mobile technology is the preferred form of social networking.

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

• From Doug Johnson: Post on looking forward and the impact of new technologies on education.


• From Gregory Smith : Post on digital entertainment and Higher Education.


• From D'Arcy Norman : Post on RSS, attention, and flocking behavior.


• From Will Richardson: Posts on World Languages teachers getting excited about podcasting.


• From Graham Wegner : Post on reading blogs anywhere, anytime on a Pocket PC.

Here's our take on news that matters for Thursday, January 5. Today's theme is innovation and here are a some links to headlines about technology that is changing the way we live and learn.

• Gaming -- According to In-Stat, handheld online gaming subscribers numbered 3.4 million in 2004, and could exceed 30 million by 2009. Also, this interesting article from Spiked on why some people get so obsessed with online video games.
  
• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Om Malik had an interesting podcast yesterday about emerging video trends. Among the topics covered here are new ways for amateurs to create and share videos online and Google video hosting.


• Handhelds -- Motorola wins an Innovator of the Week award for announcing both its new radio service for cell phones and the new ROKR E2 Also, check out this first sighting of Sony's e-book reader, and pay close attention to Adobe's announcement regarding the release of the next version of Flash Lite for mobile devices.


• Social Networks -- When it comes to hooking up with other people around the globe, Skype is still making big waves. Yesterday, we got a first look at the new cordless landline that is the result of a Skype and Panasonic partnership. Lots of possibilities here.

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

• From Doug Johnson: Post assessing the progress made with technology in his district since 1991.


• From Alan Levine : Post on bloggers for hire.


• From Anne Davis : Post on measuring the results of student blog usage.


• From George Siemens : Post commenting on a Crash Course in Learning Theory.


• From Flosse Posse : Post on whether or not we need to redefine what a university is.


• From Stephen Downes and Will Richardson: Posts on reinventing ourselves in 2006 and trend toward change sweeping through the academic blogosphere.


• From Graham Attwell: Post on a major UK survey on VLE usage.


• From Ben Vershbow: Post on Wikipedia, lifelines, and the packaging of authority.

Here's our take on news that matters for Wednesday, January 4. Today's theme is statistics and here are a few pieces of information sailing about as the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) gets ready to launch tomorrow.

• Gaming -- 88% of boys ages 12 to 17 who own a video game console and 63% of girls own one. Added to that is the related statistic that 36 million U.S. households with high-speed Internet access.


• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- Rumors abound around what Steve Job's will announce at the next MacWorld. Many are suggesting a built-in podcasting tool in the next version of iLife. According to Technorati data, there are about 70,000 new blogs a day. Bloggers — people who write weblogs — update their weblogs regularly; there are about 700,000 posts daily, or about 29,100 blog updates an hour.


• Handhelds -- 807 million cell phones were sold in 2005. 25 million digital music players were sold in the USA in 2005. Apple's share of digital music player market stands at 60%. Meanwhile, demand for digital TVs and MP3 players is expected to push U.S. consumer electronics sales to a record $135.4 billion in 2006.


• Social Networks -- 87% of 15-year-olds use instant messaging.

*Statistics courtesy of Technorati, Forrester Research, In-Stat, and NPD,

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

• From Konrad Glogowski: Post on organizing blog posts in an educational environment.


• From Alan Levine : Post on WordPress 2.0 release.


• From Albert Ip : Post on knowledge, information, and learning.


• From Graham Atwell : Post on commodification and the shaping of e-learning.


• From Lisa Lynch: Post on the future of the educational DV D-ROM..

Here's our take on news that matters for Tuesday, January 3. Today's theme is taking it personally and here are a few things from the technology world that are making a difference in our lives.

• Gaming -- A couple of interesting items. First, this article from Sprawl magazine (a zine dedicated to suburban youth) on online roleplaying as the future of creative writing. Reported from a player's point of view, this is definitely worth a read if you haven't spent much time in online role playing games. And, if you want to know what the big online games were last year, check out this review.


• Blogging, Podcasting, and Vodcasting -- An interesting new survey from Podtrac. Awareness of podcasting is the same or higher than reported by other surveys but the slant here is that most podcast listeners are men. Mediaweek reports that the research found roughly a third of the thousand Web users surveyed said they have heard of the term "podcasting." Among that group, just 32 percent have actually listened to a podcast. Of those who have listened to podcasts, 78 percent were men, according to the study.


• Handhelds -- Personal calling on wireless phones exceeded that on residential land lines even though 35 percent of the U.S. population doesn't have wireless, according to the Yankee Group. And with CES a couple of days away, here's a look at some of the handheld media player news coming our way:
  • It's Distributed Media Galore at CES
  • Nextlink Introduces Bluespoon Spider Bluetooth Headset
  • Samsung YP-Z5 Flash MP3 Player with 1.8-inch Display
  • Samsung YP-T8N Flash MP3 and MPEG-4 Player


• Social Networks -- How useful (really) are social networking sites when it come to doing important things (not to say that goofing off at work isn't important but..)? Here's an article from Xeni Jardin that takes a crack at answering that question. The preliminary answer? Like any tool, SNS is more useful for those who no how to use it and who have a concrete purpose for doing so.


• Finally, is anyone/everyone ready for Google PC? Is it Google + Walmart = Microsoft? It's definitely going to be a strange year.

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

• From Sol Gaitan : Post on the year in ideas.


• From Will Richardson : Post on stories of reinvention (personal and education) from edubloggers around the world.


• From Graham Wegner : Post on things he is looking forward to accomplishing as part of his job this year.


• From Stephen Downes: Post on the deficiencies of the publisher screening process.


• From Dave Cormier: Post on Wikibooks and the potential of funded projects.

Today's news update focuses on signs of the new times , and lists links to news items related to gaming, music sales, the best gadgets of 2005, and . On the edublogging front, we have some great posts RipMix textbooks, classroom audio podcasting, and multiple models for learning objects.

Here's our take on news that matters for Monday, January 2. Today's theme is signs of the new times and here are a few things from the technology world that are making a difference in our lives.

• Gaming -- Okay, it's true. Game sales were actually down over the holidays but as soon as the supply of Xbox 360 consoles catches up with demand the slump will abate. Add to that the much-anticipated release of Halo 3 and Sony's PlayStation 3 console and you get what could be a blockbuster year. More important, the newest generation of consoles herald a technology revolution as the new devices will be vying for much more than dominance in the video game markets. These powerful devices will be looking to take over our living rooms and more.


• Music -- In spite of the RIAA's efforts, news is out that music CD sales have taken a slide despite RIAA's efforts. US album sales in 2005 fell 3.5 per cent year-over-year, according to Nielsen Soundscan. On the other hand, downloaded music reached $332.7 million for 2005, which represents a 148% increase from the previous year.


• Handhelds -- By the end of 2004 everyone had announced the death of the PDA. Funny thong, though, how some things are harder to kill than others. While the original PDA device market may have evaporated, the concept of the PDA lives on (and vigorously) in the form of cell phones and media devices. Just take a look at Wired's best and worst gadgets of 2005.Its list features the iPod, Xbox X60, Sony PSP, Palm Treo 650 ... handhelds galore!


• Social Networks -- As if we needed any more proof regarding the shift in media power, just ask Rupert Murdoch how easy it is to manage the users at MySpace. Murdoch paid $580 million for the social networking site MySpace and recently ran afoul of its opinionated users over claims that the new parent was censoring information. As one irate user put it in a message to MySpace members, "visit Friendster and Hi5 if you're interested in social networking sites that don't censor content and allow your YouTube video embeds."

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

• From Alan Levine : Post on RipMix textbooks and the tools that are breaking content apart and re-assembling it into new.


• From Albert Ip : Post on multiple models for Learning Objects.


• From Lilia Efimova : Post on end-of-the-year thinking.


• From Stephen Downes: Post on classroom audio podcasting

Here's our take on news that matters for Wednesday, November 16. Today's theme is do-it-yourself and here are some links to related news items.

• It's been described as the Craig's List killer by some and the eBay killer by others. Right now it's not either but since we're talking about Google anything is possible, right? At any rate, Google Base is now live! So, go ahead and start posting, listing, and referencing stuff for free. Might as well be on the first wave.


• CNET is pushing wikis of late and this article, Taking back the Web through wikis, captures much of the disruptive and influential force of wikis. From the article: "Moments after the eye of Hurricane Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, news agencies everywhere rushed to report the story. But among the quickest to begin offering comprehensive coverage wasn't a formal news organization at all. Instead, it was a loose collection of self-appointed "citizen journalists" reporting, linking and photographing from Louisiana and around the world. And the organization for which they were working, called Wikinews, wasn't paying them a dime."
  
• And speaking of do-it-yourself initiatives, believe it or not there's a whole new trend around building your own cell phones. Not that this should surprise us too much. It is, after all, a natural evolution from building our own computers (now passé) and doing mods on our game systems.


• Finally, Ars Technica asks is the mobile phone music market reaching critical mass? It's a good question. iTunes is only one solution for this market and, so far, much the companies that gain early advantage have the best hardware. Down the road (5 years), everyone will likely be using iTunes, Yahoo, and google for most of their music from a portal perspective, but the gadget wars will rage a while longer. look for an early split between phones and traditional MP3 players with an eventual convergence and phones taking over a majority of the market. It's only a matter of design from here on out.

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

• From Godfrey Parkin : Post on e-learning growing up.
• From Alan Levine : Post on the intensely personal nature of blogs.
• From Anne Davis : Post on the ups and downs of a high school blogging project.
• From George Siemens : Post on the mainstream media meltdown and its effect on textbook publishers.
• From Stephen Powell: Post on Personal learning Environments.
• From Albert Ip: Post on a popular podcast for learning spoken Mandarin Chinese.

Today's news update focuses on film and media , and lists news items related to AOL, Emmys for mobile film makers, this weekend's box office totals, and alternative strategies for marketing films and other media. On the edublogging front, we have posts on technology integration into schools, Structured Blogging, and the use of new media in the classroom.

Today's news update focuses on openness, and lists links to news items related to open software and discussions. These links include news on Open Document, Firefox, and XM Radio. On the edublogging front, we have posts on the Web decimal conundrum, collaboration and teacher reflection, and trends in print news.

Today's news update focuses on change, and lists links to news items related to signs of things to come. These links include news on Microsoft, new Apple converts, rising use of mobile phone e-mail usage, and gaming profitability. On the edublogging front, we have posts on the e-learning market, podcasting in education, and social bookmarking.

Today's news update focuses on media, and lists links to news items related to shifts in the consumer media world. These links include news on Grokster, On Demand TV shows, snf s msindtream media meltdown. On the edublogging front, we have posts SuperGlu, MIT's $100 laptop program, and academic blogging.

Today's news update focuses on media, and lists links to news items related to shifts in the consumer media world. These links include news on Yahoo, TiVo, Google, and podcasting. On the edublogging front, we have posts on student blogging, ideas for using Skype in the classroom, and how to shake the Google addiction.

Today's news update focuses on signs of future times, and captures telling signs about remote-controlled human beings, Microsoft and book searching, Google Base, and the ongoing competition for AOL. On the edublogging front, we have links on student blogging, the tagsonomy interview with Peter Morville, and contemporary online teaching cases.

Today's news update focuses on security, from FBI wiretapping via college Internet systems to special anti-piracy measures aimed at Oscar screeners. On the edublogging front, we link to posts on instructional design, Gada.de, open source challenges in education, and a new edition of EdTech Talk.

Today's news update focuses on the ongoing battle over Google Print, planned e-mail and data upgrades from Cingular, gasoline prices, and why Doom (the movie) may be important to education. On the edublogging front, we link to posts on the changing demographics of Internet usage, digital repositories, open source LMS platforms, and the importance of learning through conversation and experience.

Today's news update focuses on interesting tidbits ranging from Google and OpenOffice 2.0 to the Japanese auto show and gaming and violence. On the edublogging front, link to poses on Wikipedia, push vs. pull education, and the relationship between Connectivism and Web 2.0.

Today's news update focuses on "big surprises" or, in other words, those items that really come as no shock at all but which the news media plays up with the same fervor as Nick and Jessica spats. In general news we take a look at Microsoft and free software, spam, and Michael Jordan's gambling admissions. On the edublogging front, we have some nice, honest posts about goings on at Educause, DRM, and blogging in schools.

Today's Daily Update focuses on "expansion", and ranges from earnings reports and rising tuition costs to Google and Wikipedia. We also mention Hurricane Wilma and the expanding repertoire of opinions attributed to Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers. On the edublogging front, we feature nods to WordPress, E-Learning 2.0, the viability of the new video iPod, and generational views on technology.

Today's news update focuses on "small things" ranging from a new Walkman phone and Leap Frog's new Pentop computer to news about Nintendo's wireless deal with McDonalds and smaller tax forms. On the edublogging front, we hear about best practices in blogging design, early adopter demographics, and recent criticisms of Google Earth.

Today's news update includes news on stock market bears, weekend boxoffice results, outsourcing, technology mergers, and an update on Scooter Libby and Karl Rove.

On the edublogging front, we hear about blogging in the classroom, best practices in hosted solutions for e-learning, and the whole business of public schools and private markets.