Last night some edubloggertweeterwikiists launched a pretty cool idea for marking the best Twitter posts for the month of March. The idea is pretty simple; see a valuable Tweet and ReTweet it with the hashtag #gr8t. You can then either read them as they come through on this wiki page, or subscribe to the RSS feed from the search.twitter.com results page.

Used judiciously, this could be a fine way to track some of the most informative Tweets out there. I’ve been trying to keep the number of people I follow to a minimum, so for me, tapping into the best of the edutwittersphere in this way could be pretty helpful. It’s like a delicious for Twitter, kinda sorta. (It should also benefit those who follow like 10, 459 people too.)

I’ve always struggled (though not too mightily) with the signal to noise ratio on Twitter. Through the people I follow and with the varying amounts of time I spend on it per day, I probably average about half a dozen good links a day. While I enjoy the back and forth somewhat, I’m really looking for links more than anything, and I’ve been pretty successful at mining Twitter search for Tweets that contain certain words AND a link. Lots of ways to do it.

So, anyway, for next month at least, add your #Gr8t Tweets to the list…

Great article by Clive Thompson in the new issue of Wired (the paper version, so no link to the text right now) about the ways in which netbooks are changing the laptop landscape. And, at the same time, cementing the idea of cloud computing in our lives. Estimates are that netbooks will hold 12 percent of the world’s entire laptop market next year, which is amazing when you think that the Eee PC is less than two years old. And their adoption says a lot about how we think about our computers these days.

As Thompson points out, 95 percent of what we do on computers can now be accomplished through the browser. I don’t need a huge hard drive or speedy fast processors as long as I have a solid, broadband connection to the Internet. (And even then I don’t need much; I’m writing this in a Google Doc while offline on a plane to Seattle.)

Netbooks are evidence that we now know what personal computers are for. Which is to say, a pretty small list of things that are conducted almost entirely online…Netbooks prove that the “cloud” is no longer just hype. It is now reasonable to design computers that oursource the difficult work to someone else. The cloud tail is wagging the hardware dog.

Nice.

I’m looking at my almost two-year-old, dropped a dozen times, bent up MacBook Pro, thinking I’m going to need to replace it in the next few months and wondering should I go with a netbook. Better yet, should I go with like seven of them (or more) which is about many I could buy for the same cost as my Mac. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mac. And I really want to do more video work using iMovie this year. But it would be really nice not to lug this thing around everywhere in my travels.

So I’m hoping some netbookers might chime in here. What did you buy? Why do you like it? What are you doing about the things you can’t do on it?

I hadn’t planned on getting my writing life in order today, but then I somehow happened on this post by Michele Martin on using Delicious to create an online portfolio. Since I have a couple of articles due out this fall (and a couple of new books in the works), I decided a good place to start getting my brain around the idea was with all of the off-blog writing I’ve done the past few years, and so, there went a couple of hours. After wading through it all, it turns out I was able to locate online 35 of the 40 or so pieces of published writing I’ve done (at least the ones I can remember.) Anyway, I gave them all a tag, and now when you pull up the associated page in Delicious, you can see them all in one quick swoop.

A couple of observations here: First, while I know there are parents who are choosing their kids names based on whether or not the domains are available, (which is ridiculuous, btw) I’m thinking it may be good to choose a tag early on. I’ve started using tessorichardson and tuckerarichardson for the stuff I post about my own kids, and I’m thinking they might continue to use that tag as they begin creating and posting their own stuff as well. Second, what I like about this is that because of the RSS feed, people who might be interested can track my work and I can repurpose it elsewhere, say on a Pageflakes page (which could also serve as a portfolio, btw.) Third, as Michele says, the easy to update part of this is really intruiging. For instance, I might want to do this whenever I read generous reviews of my book, (forget the bad ones…(0:) or when excerpts of my presentations end up online. Just create a bit of a different tag, like “willrichardsonbookreviews” or “willrichardsonpresentationclips” etc. And then, I could use the bundles function to bring them all together (or, of course, I could just add a catchall tag like “willrichardsonportfolio”.)

Dunno if this has any earth shattering significance, and I’m sure many folks are already playing with variations on this theme, but I think the ease of doing this once you have it set up makes it worth a second or third thought.

(Photo “Footprints” by andy 5322.)

Ok…so I really am searching for words as to how cool Piclens is. And I know; I shouldn’t get so buzzed by the tools. But I’m giving myself an exception here just because I’ve been fooling around with this thing for about an hour since I downloaded it and it’s like mesmerizingly fun…and useful.

It’s a Firefox add-on for Windows and Mac that finds all sorts of video and images via search from a number of different sources (Flickr, straight Google, Amazon and others) and lets you scan them/watch them through the slickest 3D interface I’ve seen yet. You can also breeze through the latest news and sports photos and videos (among others) and every photo or object that comes up anywhere in the frame is linked to the original online. (With the news stuff, a brief summary of the story comes up as well.)

But it’s the hypnotic way in which all of this works that has me amazed…just check it out.

Kind of spur of the moment I decided to UStream all of my presentations at MICCA in Baltimore, and in the midst of doing so noticed some cool upgrades, the best of which is the ability to “cohost.” (Notice the little link in the bottom left of the picture.) This may not be all that new since I haven’t played much of late, but it was fun to bring all sorts of willing experimenters from the studio audience in to play. Talked to bicyclemark in Amsterdam, a classroom teacher in Wichita, a technology specialist in the UK, and some students in Montgomery, Alabama, pictured here. The folks who were watching seemed to indicate that the sound and picture quality were pretty good, despite some spotty bandwidth yesterday. The only glitch was that when I tried to record those interviews, the “cohost” contributions didn’t stick. It was just me talking and listening, making little sense.

I have to say that UStream has become quite the eye-opener for people in my presentations. It’s definitely an interesting way of positioning the drastic publishing shifts that we are experiencing, and to give a bit of context to the “call for conversations” around them. And on a personal note, it is great to be able to watch/listen to presentations while multitasking in the background.

Now if only UStream would archive the chats…

Before I pull myself the last couple of steps up from my recent blogging funk, a quick item from the “Things I Wished I’d Known for the Last Two Years Department.” My major, major, major frustration with Google Reader has always been what I thought was the inability for me to mark a post “unread.” As with my practice in Firefox when I leave like 87 tabs open, by work flow is such that I just like to keep alive all the potentially good stuff I scan through when I don’t really have time to read it. The “Add a Star” feature in Reader has never done the job, and I have been staring at the stupid “Mark as Read” button (which I have never understood the purpose of) wishing I could turn it into “Mark as UNread.” No amount of staring helped.

So today, I find out all you have to do is hit the “M” key on a post to keep it active in Google Reader. I know, I know…I should have spent more time on the shortcuts page.

Not sure what it says that my life suddenly feels a whole bunch better right now. Sad, I know.

I’m not following all that many people on Twitter, I know, but even with the ones I do follow there are upwards of 300 “Tweets” a day, far too many for me to get to in most cases. I like following the updates when I’m online, but I confess I rarely go back and see what I’ve missed when I’m not watching the updates flow by in Twhirl. Still, when people add links to their Tweets, I usually find interesting stuff. So, I was hoping to find a way to strip out only those posts that have links in them and at least just catch up on those, preferably in my Google Reader.

And, thanks to the many answers I got to my Tweet about this, here is the way you do it, just in case you might be interested as well.

I may be late to the this party, but the Twitterverse just led me to this fairly new theme for WordPress named Prologue which seems to create a Twitter-like blog that can be installed locally. Here is a demo to check out. And here is another, YouthTwitter.com that was put together by Paul Allison and Susan Ettenheim both of Teachers Teaching Teachers fame. Looks like more than 140 characters, but the idea is the same. And I love reading the questions and replies about how it all works, etc.

In that context, don’t forget this Twitter for Academia post to start generating some ideas of how Prologue might actually be useful. Any other ideas?

Technorati Tags: twitter, wordpress, prologue

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On the somewhat surreal occasion of the 1,000th person to follow me on Twitter (really, how is that possible?), and since Twitter seemed to be on the tip of everyone’s tongues at EduCon this weekend, it’s probably an appropriate moment to reflect on how I’ve evolved in my thinking on this strange yet somehow important little tool.

In my session on Saturday, when I opened up the discussion on personal learning networks, the first response was simply, “Twitter”. We attempted to define it, someone mentioned “Twitter guilt” I believe, and various folks weighed in on why the did or did not “get” Twitter. At some point later that day (lunch maybe), I made the comment that it seemed a lot of profound, previously bloggable ideas were being “Twitterialized”, which, of course, I think someone Twittered. (That’s why I’m blogging about it…so there.) Case in point, when Kristin Hokanson was asking the very probing questions of the morning panel on Sunday, she started one with “In 140 characters or less…” and we all laughed.

But that idea has been sticky in my brain. I wonder if this 140 character world in which many of us spend much of our time is in some way dumbing down the conversation. And my thinking still feels pretty thin on this because for some reason Twitter just remains hard to fully get my head around, hard to peg. But here are some somewhat random thoughts, not all original btw:

*I’m thinking that in my case at least, only a much smaller percentage of those people are actually tuning into my Tweets. Even so, I know that I’m pretty much an outlier here, an outlier in all of this at this point at least, seven years into this grand network building experiment that has turned my life on its head.

*It feels like some use Twitter because 140 characters alleviates the pressure of developing and articulating ideas in a full-fledged blog post. At some point this weekend, we were talking about this from a reader standpoint and I was struck by how almost equal numbers actually liked just reading the short blurb while others missed the context. Which makes me wonder what if any affect Twitter is having on my reading.

*Twitter gets most frustrating to me when I see long lists of Tweets from people who are responding to the individuals who Tweeted them giving me absolutely no context for what the response means or is about. These usually end up being something like “@soandso That was amazing! Thanks for sharing it! This will definitely transform my classroom!” or “@soandso My mother used to say the same thing! ;0)” some of which compel me to start clicking through links to gain some understanding that usually ends up being personal or irrelevant. (Mea Culpa, I know, but I try to limit it.) There is a signal to noise ratio here that is more acute than blogs I think, and I’ve started doing some unfollowing because of it. (Not that I follow that many folks already, I know.)

*And since I only feel like I can follow a few people or risk “Twitter guilt” (and hours of my life) by not reading every Tweet, most of the people I follow are people I actually know and have met in person. (In fact this weekend I was able to add quite a few to my blogger/Twitter life list.) Btw, how do people “follow” 657 others?

*Twitter is most powerful to me when people ask questions and get quick answers and suggestions. And you see that happening all the time. It really can be “PD on Demand” in many ways.

*Twitter is also powerful in terms of networking, no question. The ability to send links or interesting ideas to people who might not currently have you on their radar makes for a pretty connective tool.

*I struggle with the marketing aspect of Twitter. And I am guilty of this as well, the “New Blog Post: The Twitterialization of Blogging, Networks, Etc” http://tinyurl…” type of Tweet that serves to bring readers in faster than a speeding RSS aggregator. I feel kind of slimy for some reason when I do that. (Not slimy enough, of course, to not do that at some points, but slimy enough to not do it every time.)

Obviously, Twitter wasn’t created to be the learning/professional development tool that it seems to have become. And I think in many ways it struggles under the weight of that. And yes, there is some network capital to be harnessed here. And yes, 1,000 “followers” (I really, really hate the way that sounds) makes it compelling. But while there may not be a direct cause and effect, since I started using Twitter last March I’ve been blogging less and reading blogs less and wondering more about where all of this takes us in the end.

Now, to post this on Twitter…

Technorati Tags: twitter, educon, learning, networks

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Not sure if this has been blogged much but UStream now has a privacy feature as in the ability to password protect your show. That’s a huge first step that all of a sudden makes classroom television a little more palatable for teachers. Let’s kick this around a bit…this lets us provide a limited, invited audience to:

• Poetry readings
• Dramatic interpretations
• Skype interviews
• Homebound lessons
• Lectures
• Demonstrations
• Debates
• Interpretive readings
• Concerts
• Meetings (BOE, Administrative, etc)
• Sporting events
• Talent shows
• Ceremonies
• Assemblies
• Food fights

What else can you think of???

As an aside, UStream has also done some sprucing up in terms of your ability to design our show homepage and other fun things. I’m going to be playing with some of the alternatives more and more this winter and spring, but right now, I’m liking UStream more and more.

Technorati Tags: ustream, streaming, video, education, schools

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Since it’s still close to the first of the year, and since if I remember to do it at the beginning of ‘09 it would be an interesting comparison (I think), let me follow the TechCrunch meme and make a list of the tools and sites I currently use on a regular basis. These are in no particular order, btw, and the only requirement here is that I use it at least once a week, but I’ve put a * next to the ones that would probably be near the top of the usage list. Here goes:

• WordPress*
• Skype*
• Gmail*
• Google Search*
• Google Reader*
• Google Notebook*
• Google News
• Google Calendar*
• Google Docs*
• Firefox*
• Flickr
• Ning
• Elluminate
• Audacity
• Wikispaces
• Delicious*
• Netvibes
• Pageflakes
• Jing
• MindMeister
• iTunes
• iPhoto
• Skitch
• Twitter*
• Twitterific
• NeoOffice
• YouTube
• Jott
• Rhapsody
• Pandora
• Wikipedia
• Amazon

Kinda Google-centric, I know. Scary on some level. And I’m sure I missed some along the way. (Btw, Facebook is missing on purpose…I’m not going there at least once a week these days…not feeling the Facebook love.) If you have better suggestion to a tool listed here, I’d love to hear it.

I’ll be sending my 10 Favorite Tools to Jane Hart as she’s updating her list for 2008.

Technorati Tags: tools

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So George Mayo is sitting around at lunch today with his students trying to get their Twitterstory started and a few hours later he’s reading about it on the NPR site. Kinda scary on some level. If you teach middle school kids, George is looking for collaborators. You can get more info here.

Technorati Tags: twitter, twitterstories, networks

So the cool thing about this is not that you can pretty easily hack a Wii to make just about any surface you can project onto into an interactive white board (though that is cool, no doubt.) What’s REALLY cool about it is that Johnny Chung Lee, the guy that figured out how to do it, created a video that shows pretty compellingly the amazing applications here and then offered up the program that makes it all work for free on his Website.

I showed this for the first time in a presentation I gave this morning and I made sure to watch the reactions of the people in the audience. They were doing the OMG head shake and stare for the most part. But what I should have made more clear is that the important part of this is not the hack but the delivery, the sharing of the inspiration, the willingness to give it away. You just know (don’t you) that there are going to be dozens if not hundreds of more Wii hackers born because of this, and it’s primarily because of the transparency of the process.

That’s what continues to make me giddy about this moment…

Technorati Tags: wii, tools, hacks

Widely blogged about, I know, but I just wanted to include my voice in the chorus. The OLPC program is offering a special during the weeks of November 12-26 where if you buy one laptop for $399 you’ll automatically be getting a second laptop into the hands of a child in a developing nation somewhere. This is just such a great opportunity to support a whole bunch of good causes, not the least of which is providing access to kids that don’t have it and putting a learning tool into the hands of your own children. (Lots of open source goodness, too.) And if you do the math, a classroom of laptops for $12,000 with another set being donated out would make a great service project for schools to get involved in. (Thanks to Magda for that idea.)

So, put a pop up on your calendar…the holidays are coming fast.

Technorati Tags: olpc, education, learning

So last night, David Jakes, Steve Dembo and I met in a wifi enabled restaurant in Chicago to watch some of the Cubs game (sniff) and to put UStream.tv through its paces by doing a “live” remote broadcast which we Tweeted out as “2.5 Cubs Fans in a Bar.” Let me just say, in a word or two, it was a great deal of fun, as you can easily tell by the amount of wide-eyed wondering that was going on. It probably should have been titled “3 Guys Amazed that New Technologies Actually Work With Little Effort.” And while I don’t want to spend an inordinate amount of time reflecting on it, I did learn a few things last night that I’ll just bullet out.

• If we can do this using wifi in a public place, we’re getting close to really starting to think out of the box with technology. This was cheap and easy.
• It was fascinating (and distracting) to watch the progress of the chat. People, thankfully, just tuned us out and started connecting around what they found important, tuning back in when they heard something relevant or interesting. And they were teaching each other how to change the colors of the text, to connect the stream out around social tools, and I’m sure much more than that. (You can read through the 28-page chat if you like.)
• The global reach of the network and the speed that it reaches out still really amazes me. We had people from Australia, New Zealand, China, Argentina and all across the US. All collected initially, at least, by posting on Twitter. We got up to 43 people in the room, which was about four times as many as I thought we’d get. It is instant audience.
• I loved the fact that I was learning and getting answers from the audience. For instance, we were lamenting the fact that Twitter was no longer allowing us to see older Tweets when Karen Hokansen chatted in that it had been fixed. Ok, not earth-shattering, I know, but still…

If all goes according to plan, Saturday at 11 am EST I’ll be at the MediaTech center where I live doing a live stream interview with a group of game playing middle schoolers. I’ll Tweet it out a reminder, and it would be great to get some questions from the audience. I also might see who I can rope in for a keynote in Chicago today at 2:45 Central…

Thanks to all those that dropped in. Would love to hear your reactions.

Technorati Tags: ustream, video, learning, teaching