(via Sebastian Fiedler) So I would qualify this as must reading for anyone who is trying to get a handle on what’s happening with social technologies. This month’s issue of Technology Review has a well written article by Wade Roush about the impact of blogs, wikis, Flickr and the like:

This explosion of new capabilities shouldn’t be mistaken for “feature creep,” the accretion of special functions that has made common programs such as Microsoft Word so mystifyingly complex. There is something different about the latest tools. They are both digital, rooted in the world of electrons and bits, and fundamentally social, built to enable new kinds of interactions among people. Blogging, text messaging, photo sharing, and Web surfing from a smart phone are just the earliest examples. Almost below our mental radar, these technologies are ushering us into a world of what could be called continuous computing–continuous in the usual sense of “uninterrupted,” but also in the sense that it’s continuous with our lives, in all their messy, social, biographical richness.

I agree with Seb who notes that we’re starting to see all of these disparate tools being pulled together into a more holistic framework and that’s a good thing. When all of the parts really come together, it will be interesting to see how close to reality this vision is:

And this, in the end, is what’s truly new about continuous computing. As advanced as our PCs and our other information gadgets have grown, we never really learned to love them. We’ve used them all these years only because they have made us more productive. But now that’s changing. When computing devices are always with us, helping us to be the social beings we are, time spent “on the computer” no longer feels like time taken away from real life. And it isn’t: cell phones, laptops, and the Web are rapidly becoming the best tools we have for staying connected to the people and ideas and activities that are important to us. The underlying hardware and software will never become invisible, but they will become less obtrusive, allowing us to focus our attention on the actual information being conveyed. Eventually, living in a world of continuous computing will be like wearing eyeglasses: the rims are always visible, but the wearer forgets she has them on–even though they’re the only things making the world clear.

Lots to think about…

(via Graham Stanley) So this is a very cool idea to create personalized podcast feeds using del.icio.us:

How to do it:

1. You set up a new tag at Del.icio.us (I tried it with pod-efl).

2. You create a podcast-friendly RSS feed at Feedburner using the Del.icio.us URL of the new tag(http://feeds.feedburner.com/Delicious/blogefl/pod-efl).

3. You put the podcast feed into your podcast client (podcatcher): iPodder, or iTunes, for example.
4. The next time you come across a link to an mp3 audio file (podcast or otherwise) you think you may like, you post the link to Del.icio.us, and then when you run your podcatcher, it’ll be automatically downloaded to your PC or mp3 player.

I’ve just tried it out, linking to the last Comprehensible Input podcast and it worked a treat.

Why this is interesting/useful :

I have just thought (off the top of my head) of these ways of making use of this feature (although I’m sure there are more):

a) You can publish a Del.icio.us feed of what you’re listening to (could be used for recommending podcasts to other teachers / educators), thus filtering interesting podcast content for other educators.
b) You have a class of students (with access to the Web of course, and preferably mp3 players) and you want to give them extra listening practice. Just as using a blog can direct them to relevant and useful resources, so this system can supply them with relevant audio content.
c) You’re interested in downloading mp3 files that aren’t podcasts to listen to later (for example, from ELLO). This would be a tedious job, downloading each file one-by-one. This makes it much easier to do.

Nice! Introducting the “Educational Podcasts for Educators” feed, with, of course, “Free Culture” to start. If you find some specific podcast shows that you think educators will find especially useful, tag them with “webloggedpod” at del.icio.us and they’ll automatically be added.
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(via Dave Winer) MSNBC has an article titled “Blog it Now, Regret it Later?” which in essence does the blogs as journal thing all over again, this time with a pinch of ominousness thrown in.

Experts say such incidents belong to a growing trend in which frank outpourings online are causing personal and public dramas, often taking on a life they wouldn’t have if the Web had not come along and turned individuals into publishers.

Some also speculate that more scandalous blog entries — especially those about partying and dating exploits — will have ramifications down the road.

So does this “blogs attract pedophiles” meme has sputtered out, only to be replaced by the “blogs will ruin you” meme? Or the “blogs will create young terrorists” meme?”

That’s what happened at a middle school in Michigan last fall, when principals started receiving complaints from parents about some students’ blog postings on Xanga. School officials couldn’t do much about it. But when the students found out they were being monitored, a few posted threatening comments aimed at an assistant principal — and that led to some student suspensions.

“It was just a spiraling of downward emotions,” says the school’s principal. She spoke on the condition that she and her school not be identified, out of fear that being named would cause another Web frenzy.

“Kids just feed into to that and then more kids see it and so on,” she says. “It’s a negative power — but it’s still a power.”

Ah yes, but there is an upside.

Still, she thinks blogging is worth it — to stay in touch with friends and to air her more creative work, including essays.

“I suppose in that way,” she says, “I think of blogs as ‘open mic nights’ online.”

Thank goodness!

Ok, seriously, these are big issues for schools, and they are only going to get bigger. Not just the fact that kids are blogging. An even bigger issue is that parents don’t know how to deal with it, which is why they are complaining to schools. Like it or not, schools have a boatload of education to be doing, with kids AND parents. (And teachers…) Shutting down access is not the answer. Putting the fear of god into them is not the answer.

Frame it any way you like, kids now have a voice, moreso than most schools. We are losing a lot of the traditional control over content that we had. We need to recognize that education is becoming something much different from what it used to be. It’s not a monlogue any longer. It’s dialogue, conversation, collaboration. Let’s celebrate it instead of fight it because if journalism, politics and business are any indication, resistance is futile.
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