This morning I came across a great post by Darren Draper entitled “My Twitterversary & the Future of Writing.“ Darren makes some really good points about the power of blog writing, and the unfortunate results of services like Twitter.
About the power of blogging and potential to help writing he says:
“Let me begin by saying that blogging has done more to improve my writing than any class I’ve ever taken, book I’ve ever read, or pill I’ve ever swallowed. To write – and to think – for an often international audience on a semi-regular basis has forced me into measuring my words carefully. It has also helped me to sound smarter than I actually am. The ability to express my thoughts in word – mingled with pictures, video, and other kinds of media – not to mention the social interaction experienced through blogging, has truly elevated my thinking in ways unimaginable just months prior.”
I couldn’t agree more. 
He then goes on to write about how the smaller form writing doesn’t require any thought at all and poses some questions. I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll only reply to one.
- In embracing such simple tools for collaboration are we trending toward mediocrity – in our writing, in our reading, in our thought?
I would have to say… possibly. Often we think in fragments and those fragments put together on a canvas make a very large and beautiful picture.
On the other hand, my gut tells me it is not helping. Most students don’t use twitter, but they use texting, and a lot of the kids I know don’t even know what to capitalize and how to spell. I don’t care what you say about spell check… even with it, these kids will be limited in what they can do in the future if they can’t write correctly.
What about you? Thoughts?
By Jeff
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Posted on: March 12, 2008 at 8:51 am
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Yesterday Steve Hargadon published an article entitled “Web 2.0 is the Future of Education” that every educator should read. Here are a couple of excerpts”
“I believe that the read/write Web, or what we are calling Web 2.0, will culturally, socially, intellectually, and politically have a greater impact than the advent of the printing press. I believe that we cannot even begin to imagine the changes that are going to take place as the two-way nature of the Internet begins to flower, and that even those of us who have spent time imagining this future will be astounded by what happens.”
He then goes through ten trends that are important for education and learning and seven steps we, as educators can take to make a difference.
Trends:
- A New Publishing Revolution
- A Tital Wave of Information (Great statistics on how this information is growing, but he encourages more creation… with good reason.)
- Everything is Becoming Participative
- The New Pro-sumers (combination of ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’)
- The Age of the Collaborator
- An Explosion of Innovation
- The World Gets Even Flatter and Faster
- Social Learning Moves Toward Center Stage. (I especially like this one.)
- The Long Tail (Availability of specialization)
- Social Networking Really Opens Up the Party
Steps we can Take:
- Learn about Web 2.0
- Lurk
- Participate
- Digest This Though: “The Answer to Information Overload Is to Produce More Information.”
- Teach Content Production
- Make Education a Public Discussion
- Help Build the New Playbook
What are your thoughts? Did you see this yesterday?
By Jeff
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Posted on: March 6, 2008 at 9:05 am
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A good friend of mine, Cary Gillenwater, sent me two articles published in this months’ NewScientistTech about haptics. One is for feeling the weather and the second Remote Robot Control that I thought I would pass on. Good stuff to add to our page of things you can do with haptics.
By Jeff
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Posted on: March 6, 2008 at 8:44 am
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A couple of days ago I wrote about a new twitter-like service designed especially for educators, called Edmodo. They posted a little screencast today. Looks promising:
By Jeff
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Posted on: March 6, 2008 at 5:43 am
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For those of you who have been following the Second-Life alternative, Croquet, you will be interested to know that a new (very early) release of the next build, Cobalt is now available. You can download it here.
You can read more about the new build here. The graphics are much improved and the interface also looks like it has some nice improvements. I am diving into it now.
What do you think? You long time Croquet users, what enhancements does Cobalt offer?
By Jeff
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Posted on: March 4, 2008 at 8:15 pm
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The whole review deserves a look, but I especially like the part below.
This is so true. If we don’t get behind this device and push it, it may just fade into the background as something that was a great idea, but never got off the ground..
By Jeff
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Posted on: March 4, 2008 at 8:26 am
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Last week I linked to a great article about using Twitter in the classroom. Today I saw a new service that is in Beta right now that is a twitter-like web app specifically designed for the Classroom… Edmodo. I was not able to get in, but you can see some screenshots here.
It promises to be the service to connect schools, teachers, parents and students.
Instant communication and connection is a great thing and if a whole school buys into something like this it could be fantastically popular and useful, but you will lose the greater Twitter community which is part of the power of Twitter.
By Jeff
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Posted on: March 3, 2008 at 9:27 am
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So a colleague of mine asked if I had come across any unique uses of the Wii… I had indeed and thought I would post my findings here as well. Here are the video’s. Isn’t it AMAZING! (Note: The first three are from Johnny Chung Lee at Carnegie Mellon University and the applications can be downloaded here.)
Head Tracking for Desktop Virtual Reality Displays Using the Wii Remote
Low Cost Multi-Cost WhiteBoard System Using Wii Remote
Tracking Fingers with the Wii Remote
There is also one more I found regarding Croquet.
Controlling a Wii Remote using a Wii Remote.
This last one was done using a program on a Mac called DarwinRemote (GlovePIE for PC)(which I used for my Croquet Haptic Project). It basically turns the Wii into a mouse on a computer. You can use it for any type of program that uses a mouse. Good stuff.
Anyone else seen any cool Wii applications?
By Jeff
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Posted on: March 1, 2008 at 12:00 pm
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A couple of months ago I heard about a monkey that could control a computer with their brain. Here is a video.
Of course this required implanted electrical nodes in the monkey’s brain and months, if not years, of learning the monkey’s brain-waves and then mapping them. Not really possible for humans yet.
Then a couple of days ago I heard about a gaming system that is starting to do the same for humans.
If you think about computer peripherals like the mouse in their infancy and look at the advances they have made in the past decade it is amazing. If you now apply that same rate of advance to devices like this, 10 years from now this might actually be useful…
What do you think? Scary? Cool? Interesting? Amazing?
By Jeff
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Posted on: March 1, 2008 at 8:00 am
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