I’ve been thinking more about reinvention, especially in light of Stephen’s amazing post on the subject yesterday. My favorite snippet of writing from 2006 thus far?

You know how you feel that you’re on the verge of something important, but just can’t wrap your mind around it? That’s how I feel. Of course, I may just be deluding myself - I’m very good at that, and have deluded myself about a lot of things last year and during the course of my life. And I doubt that anyone will ever actually pay me to do the sort of things I want to do - we’re all so wrapped up these days in funding competitions, commercialization, paperwork, and all that. And maybe there isn’t a magic rainbow-land where every day of my life will feel meaningful and engaged and complete. And maybe I shouldn’t be typing this, and maybe you shouldn’t be reading it. But forget all that. This year isn’t last year, and I will be charting new directions to points unknown. Maybe I’ll founder, maybe not. But it’s now, I think, or never - and I couldn’t live with never.

Um…yeah. Exactly.

And it’s NOW because, at least in my little corner (and I think Stephen’s) the world is a very, very different place from what it used to be. There is so much to know. So much to connect to. So much to learn. And that’s the sickness of the Read/Write Web, isn’t it? When you start guzzling the Kool-Aid and really wrap your brain around it (delusions and all) everything else starts to become, well, I dunno…tedious. Irrelevant. Inconsequential. It’s like there’s this huge buffet of energy and ideas and people and content at your fingertips but someone’s telling you to keep eating the grilled cheese in the cafeteria. (Oh yeah…it’s the guy who pays your salary.) But the thing is, I don’t think I have the time anymore to keep eating that, to not be learning and connecting and contributing as much as I possibly can. Not anymore. It’s become too much a part of my practice, of who I am.

Thanks so much for purchasing my book! Please let me know if you have comments or questions.

All the best,

Will
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(From the Shameless Self-Promotion Dept.) A quick link to an article I wrote in the new issue of Access Learning. Here’s the lead:

Over the last few years, our relationship with the Web has been changing dramatically. Simple new technologies like weblogs and podcasts are allowing us to not only create content like text, audio, and video more easily, they are also allowing us to publish and share that content on the Web with very little effort. Instead of a “read only” Web, we’re entering the age of the Read/Write Web, where contributing knowledge is as easy as consuming it. Being able to publish worldwide this easily does raise legal and ethical issues for educators to be aware of, but it also facilitates a whole range of new learning potentials for students and teachers in the classroom. Here is a quick look at some of the technologies that are changing the way educators think about and deliver instruction.

Covered in brief are Weblogs, wikis, Podcasts, RSS, Webcams, and streaming video. Lots of links included.