education & tech

Are Blog Posts evil? That's what some people think still think. In Australia, a man named Al Upton was teaching his students how to blog and all the stuff involved, when the Australian police came in and told them they had to destroy all of their blog posts. Mr Al Upton's students literally cried because they had to destroy their blog posts that they had worked so hard on. Can you imagine why they would have to do this? Blog posts are not evil and they should be allowed all over the world because it's one of the best ways for kids to express themselves.

I wonder what Australian police will say about this mockery.

[link] Digiteen.

If you want to receive my future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, Contact Me at anytime.

This is a statement hard to explain, considering there are a great number of educators who can go deeply about education issues. It's true that bloggers (talking about education in general) by themselves can't go a long way without relying on traditional media, but saying 'education coverage needs traditional media sources because free-standing education blogs could not provide the depth of coverage necessary for quality commentary on the issues without relying on traditional journalism.' It's hard to believe.

Can journalists answer the following questions? Should educators/trainers become technologists? Or should the tools of design become so easy to use that technical skills are minimal? Or do we move the technology to specialized design teams and educators remain the subject matter experts? These questions were brought by George Siemens trying to let us know what's happening at the University of Manitoba in about designing learning. I pretty much sure bloggers talking about education will be quick to answer them all.

They (journalists) can do research, but teachers can do too. Of course, in this open source movement I am not closing doors to journalists, what I am saying is that is too quick to say bloggers all by themselves can have an opinionated criteria about what they know the most, integrating social media and technology in the classroom.

So, while Scott Elliott is certainly right about his topics about education, when he says bloggers can’t really go it alone without traditional media, this may not remain so much true going forward!

If you want to receive my future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, Contact Me at anytime.

Doodle by Lee and thanks to B@b@.

If you want to receive my future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, Contact Me at anytime.

This past weekend all people who love Worldpress among bloggers, thinkers, journalists, developers, and inventors were reunited in the University of California, San Francisco.

The main page says the goal of Worldcamp 08 was "figure out the future of publishing on the web."

Reading Andrew Mager's page where he made a great presentation of events (still missing some video or audio from this event) we've found a particular topic presented by Allen Levine from New Media Consortium. He just put it plain and simple: "The powerful thing about blogging is that it’s personal. It’s the most important subject: me." And after he brings up examples of great work on multiuser installations such as the familiar edublogs, chickspeak, al upton and scholarpress.

We would love to hear what Blogger is doing to favor education or use of blogs in the classroom.

In the lengthy post written about the Worldcamp, there is also a section where Matt Mullenweg interviewed Om Malik (from gigaom.com). The question about any tips for bloggers was answered, pointing out a mistake many still are doing it (myself included: "Listen to your head. You talk from your head. Using blockquote is an excuse. I use it and that’s when I know I’m being lazy."

Malik's answer says all.

See also, Worldcamp SF 2008 Follow Up.

Update:
Cogdogblog posted audio and a PicLens slide show, plus the Worldcamp takeaways.

Update 2:
The Blog Herald is talking about The Changing Social of Conferences.

We want to keep peace so this page 'conveys information in a chronological style' as Sean P Aune just put it. We want to join the project started by Daily Blog Tips, on question What's Is A Blog?

Major difference is the sequence and activity the administrator maintains on the site. There are many genres and if you are a blogger, then you are familiar with blogosphere. We think a blog is an online collection of published items. There are videos, pictures, lifestreaming , research results, documents. As you can see, the variety of subjects is so diverse, as far as its activity doesn't fall on the death sea.

While you join to this thread or drop a comment on how do you define a weblog, I would like to extend the invitation to participate in the Web Future panel. Think of the description they submitted:"The rate of change of the web is accelerating. Radical changes are coming in how quickly we can evolve data, create new apps, find new audiences, and alter the fabric of the browser itself. In this panel, engineers from five areas will present a prediction of the next stage of the web. Expect disagreements, technical digressions, and shouting."

Update:

John Tropea at Library Clips blog on the context of blogs, says: "...blogs, as raw and informal as they are, are not a panacea for context, but they are a hell of a lot better than codified documents."

If you want to receive my future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, Contact Me at anytime.

Sarah Perez from ReadWriteWeb has written an excellent post on what is the future of blogging. Before, she says, "the main way to publish your own personal thoughts and opinions for the rest of the web to read," was blogging, and continues "blogging started a movement that democratized the web. Everyone could be a publisher. But now, blogging as everyone's preferred method of communication may be over. What's taking its place? Lifestreaming."

We do agree with some of her commenters, Blogging it's not the same as Lifestreaming. The process of Lifestreaming will probably appeal to people who are less concerned about writing as their primary output and who do more with audio, video, and images. It may also be more suited to people who share freely and easily as opposed to saving up bits and ideas and then posting. And we don't think either, blogging will be replaced by this new tendency, not in a short period of time.

There are many people who write not because they want to be on top of Google searching of the even care about Technorati rankings, these people will sustain blogging as it begun; no matter that lifestreaming develop and some look for some voyeurism, blogging will persist a long while. All experienced bloggers, making or not profit of blogging are using different channels of distribution but, it doesn't mean they are moving ( as Sarah tries to show you), they promote their contents. That's all.

Now, we do agree with Sarah on this paragraph, it's becoming hard for bloggers to attract readers, because they are getting used to Friendfeed on the sort, so blogging need to be reinvented, not as a mere democratization of the www but as a disruptive process to communicate. Here's the paragraph:

The simplicity of a lifestream is ideal for our information overloaded age. Lifestreams are short and sweet, yet still provide the same insight into a person's life as yesterday's casual personal blog did. A video here, a photo there, and today's web citizens can voyeuristically peer into anyone's life and get a sense of who they are. Long-form bloggers, on the other hand (myself included) require time and attention to read, but with so many publishers out there, people just aren't reading content like they used to - they're just scanning text and moving on. For new bloggers, this means getting readers is harder than ever - your words are getting lost in a sea of noise. So to stand out, several are turning to the lifestream instead in order to get noticed.

Do you think Blogging will be replaced by Lifestreaming at the Friendfeed style?

If you want to receive my future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, Contact Me at anytime.

I came across to a website dedicated to promote the celebration of Internet good use. All bloggers are invited, and there is a contest about writing a story on how the web has transformed your life or the lives of a community you belong to, or the city you live in or your country, which means it goes worldwide. The story needs to be factual but you have the choice to be businesslike, narrative or even poetic. The stories can be reflections of how the web has transformed people’s lives, in the individual, political, economic, cultural and spiritual sphere.

OneWebDay.org is calling on this contest and has published the experiences from a student from a locally popular Institute of Engineering in India, currently in his third year of Information Technology. What it wonders me is his conclusions that he hasn’t learned anything from the Internet! Well, here in the States we have a great respect for students and professionals coming from India. Will Sivasubramanian Muthusamy be asserted on his appreciations? He explains the reasons why this student has learned anything from the Internet. "While we have institutions in India such as the Indian Institute of Technology where the facilities and quality of education match if not surpass the standards of some of the most renowned institutions in the world, this story truly reflects on the Internet access facilities and the attitude of the authorities in several schools / colleges across India."

One of the reasons developed countries enjoy a great advancement and their social networks work perfectly is the access to the Internet. David Sasaki has reason when he says there are three obstacles to a truly global conversation, he writes that censorship, lack of digital inclusion and language are the causes not all people are and feel included in mega networks as the Internet is. This is precisely what could be happening in India with Prabhu (the student who shared the story).

Those are good reasons not only to the hear when the world is talking but to join One Web Day 2008. Are you listening? The world is talking.

If you want to receive my future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, Contact Me at anytime.

Internet has changed and keep things changing every day. Five years now, I had the opportunity to meet young interesting people worldwide, thanks to the hacks it was possible to introduce to the old Blogspot platform.

All of these talented guys had stop working on the new Blogger platform, although they still keep blogging on particular issues developed by Google people and its Blogger in draft fancy project.

Some remain giving out advice on how to teak Blogspot templates. We used to collect all templates we thought deserved special attention. Lately, however we've also give it a stop. The reason, there are lots of templates out there where you can pick and start running your own blog almost immediately. Great bloggers provide this missed assistance nowadays: BlogU , Beautiful Beta and Bloggerbuster.

It's hard to explain in a single post, all three new features offered since last week in Blogger in Draft, at least we can begin with the explanations from Flisha Fernandez, who's currently finishing her last year of Masters in Computer Science at the Ateneo de Manila University. Random Detoxification is her blog and she's worked out one of the features we've talking about here. How to embed a Comment Box in Blogger.

Head over her blog to learn how to deal with it. Be aware, though, this how-to works only with Blogger in Draft enabled, " If, however, you downloaded a customized Blogger template from another site or made your own changes to the template, doing this won't work", she explains.

What are the blogs you've found useful in order to built your blog on Blogger?

If you want to receive our future posts regularly for FREE, please subscribe in a reader or by e-mail. If you have concerns, please Contact Me at anytime.

The author of the post we are going to quote, ask us for a link. We went to his blog and checked out his contents and what we've found was the chronicle of a certain private school in Sydney (and anywhere else where we've got teens or schoolers):

Difference between Teacher and Educator

"A number of 12-year-old girls were beginning to use lipstick and would put it on in the bathroom.

After they put on their lipstick they would press their lips to the mirror leaving dozens of little lip prints.

Every night the maintenance man would remove them and the next day the girls would put them back.

Finally the principal decided that something had to be done .

She called all the girls to the bathroom and met them there with the maintenance man.

She explained that all these lip prints were causing a major problem for the custodian who had to clean the mirrors every night - ( you can just imagine the yawns from the little princesses).

To demonstrate how difficult it had been to clean the mirrors, she asked the maintenance man to show the girls how much effort was required.

He took out a long-handled squeegee, dipped it in the toilet, and cleaned the mirror with it.

Since then, there have been no lip prints on the mirror ..."

James Farmer, head of edublogs.org, is happy to announce the relaunching of his website. The following is the e-mail we received just today:

"It's been a long weekend over at the Edublogs Ranch, but a throughly satisfying one, as Edublogs is now running on the very latest and greatest version of WordPress!

We've got a customizable dashboard, brand new avatar options and a brilliant new uploader (that automatically makes perfect galleries for you!)... not to mention now over 100 themes to choose from.

You can find out a whole heap more here.

And if you've lost your password or username, it's now even easier to get a new one here. (you just need to pop in the email address you're receiving this email at)

We hope you like the new features as much as we do :)"

After you've set up your blog it's important to know what your niche is, what I am  sure everyone who stars a blog is familiar with, but as myself, you can find some days hard to publish something of your own interest, after all, you don't want to be repeating everything else other small and large blogs are already saying, you want to write original content, thinking on your particular audience. After reading these 10 Top Design Tips that will take your blog to the next level, we thought it was a good chance to complement it with this our post. We are going to talk about content, we respect the work of SEO and SERP people but as many other times has been said, if you don't have quality content, who's going to read it and most importantly (for a blogger) who's going to link to it?  Afterwards, let google do its job.

When writing a book for example, it would be easier if you start cranking  out one well-developed chapter than it would be to write an entire book. Same applies for bloggers, you want to write interesting, appealing and quality content but at the same time you don't want to be too short or get on the nerves of your readers and get them tired or bored of reading such a long post. Writing short stories gives you a sense of completion.

One of the benefits of writing a short story is the amount of time it takes to complete. You might sketch out a rough draft after three sessions at your computer. Then you set the story aside for a few days before revising and editing. Next, you present the story to a friend or critique group to get other opinions. You again revise and edit, add those finishing touches, and—Voila! You have a completed story. This process takes weeks instead of years.  - wow-womenonwriting.com

This is certainly true, because our posts now a days,  need to be long enough and engage our readers in a pleasant reading. One of the authors of widget slab.com, our dear friend Avatar, once told us: "people is getting lazy, they don't want to read large posts"  and  as the annual report into web habits by usability guru Jakob Nielsen shows,  people are becoming much less patient when they go online. "Instead of dawdling on websites many users want simply to reach a site quickly, complete a task and leave." says the BBC.

So, we have to write post for our 'selfish users'.  And that's where prime advice comes handy form people that really knows about this matter.  The authors of dailywritingtips.com are among them. Go and read  their daily topics.

Back to our matters. We write about education and in this field  Miguel Guhlin who describes himself as a learner and educator, has published a post on how to write a List Article,  that I suggest you read in its entirety:

1. When writing an article for publication, I start out with an engaging question, quote, or scenario.
2. A list of follow-up questions off the main topic (these are the ones that get answered)
3. A short summary conclusion or make the conclusion the final question.

Hope this post complies with what I am saying and for those living in the U.S. I wish a nice Memorial Day!

Millions of blogs are being indexed everyday and all their web editors, try very hard to be successful. But, what's the secret behind  those personalities who are confessed they even read blogs, do not collect money for their work or simply...make many of what everybody else is dreaming of, money.

Let's what these three personalities have to say:

GVO Authors.

Guy Kawasaki.

Darren Rowse.

Comment and let us know which one is your mommy blogger.

This post is written for someone who really loves photography and we teachers might have a lift from it. Now that all kids, teens and even baby boomers what to play around with photography.

Title say all: 60 Photography Links You Can't Live Without.

This is not the best place to write about Ecuador's affairs but I still like to read about it and i want to summarize what some people is saying about Aids for the flooding victims that thanks to incident with Colombia, it seems everyone has forgotten, except The Prem Rawat Foundation; and how foreigners conceive the 'enculturation' process that needs to be shared with others.

Medicalnewstoday.com published an article where they explain what's the role of The Prem Rawat Foundation which donated $26,000 to Montanas de Esperanza((MdE), a local non-profit in northern Ecuador, to provide relief to flood victims in the coastal village of Santa Lucia(Nanegal, Ecuador). The grant will supply 32 tons of vital food supplies to feed 1,500 families ( about 7,500 people) at least for one month. This community is one of the most severely affected areas, MdE with the cooperation of the Ecuadorian Red Cross, Regional Andean Farmers Cooperatives, the National Emergency Operations Center, community leaders and individual volunteers will handle the deliveries of aid to flood victims, one of the largest provided in Ecuadorian coast to date.

Alicia Craven is teaching English in the Cuenca's city, where a historic and colonial environment makes her write about her experiences back there and how tourists visiting Cuenca may expect to see fedoras, flutes and roasted guinea pig, which is impaled on sticks like giant rodent popsicles. There is a passage that really makes me have some fun, because it reminded me of how culturally different people can be. This is it: "One night, on a night bus, I woke to find my chariot unmoving — a 10-foot layer of mud from a recent landslide had blocked the narrow mountain highway. Naively, I went to question the driver. "Excusing me, sir," I asked in Spanish, "but is there a plan for to cope with the mountain who fall down on our path?"

"Don't worry! There's a plan!" he assured me with a smile. "We wait!" Indeed, patience paid off, and with the help of a team of shovel-toting saviors, we were on our way a mere seven hours later."

Ecuadorans can be so much lucky. Jeff Hansel from postbulletin.com echoes the experience of a young girl back in Ecuador and in the Saint Marys Hospital. The young girl was grown in Portoviejo and unfortunately got hit by a drunk driver while she was crossing the street near her home. All help she's obtained is thanks to opportune intervention of Hands for Humanity, based in Rochester (MN).

In Ecuador if you don't pay medical services, up front, you definitely die. Panchi, short for Francisca in Spanish, is the mother's girl(Lidia Pazminio) and she remembers: "To come to Rochester, Panchi had to raise enough money for the flight and passports. During one fundraiser, she literally stopped cars, told Lidia's story to the occupants and accepted whatever they offered."

No everything is politics and not only Colombian issues are the concern of Ecuadorans.

(*) Picture by iAngelDJ

Technorati: ecuador, cuenca, ONGs

I have loved reading some of the questions and answers from A Tipical Thoughts. While blogging and after reading so many stuff from my reader I have learned so much about fellow bloggers and the idea of bloggers like Tipp are of encouragement because these bloggers have opened up to have anything asked about them.

How much you know about a fellow blogger you read almost every day?

So, in Tipp's words "let’s have a go at it!

Ask away people. Any questions. You will get a straight answer, if I choose to pick yours.

Anyone, anywhere can participate!

Friends and family from “back home”, Bloggy friends, Real life friends.

You will probably never get this opportunity again so do it now!

Those of you who are out there who are lurking, show yourselves! I don’t care if you are an old enemy (really there are only about two people out there that would qualify for such a title so what are the odds they are you, no really, try me!), a stranger, someone from way-back, whoever- ask away!"

Just in case, I've wrote something related here.

No matter how important articles are written by all bloggers worldwide, A-list bloggers who read each other and rarely will land on this blog, still argue on this affairs even when a judge back in the 2006 in Canada [es], determined for the very first time, bloggers are journalists.

Today, jkOnTheRun points out three reasons why the author doesn't care being identified or not as a journalism and we abide by those three points that we add as an excerpt:

1. Always tell the truth. It doesn't matter how trivial the topic or how serious. The truth will set you free and keep you that way.
2. Opinions matter but only if they are clearly identified as such. Don't pass opinions off as fact and your readers will keep trusting what you say.
3. Never quote a statistic without revealing the source. Bloggers are starting to fall into the same pit that MSM journalists often fall into by quoting some arcane statistic that is meaningless. Let the reader decide if the source means it's a reliable statistic or not.

Are you dear fellow blogger concerned about what the media or the A-list bloggers have to say on this business?

Technorati: A-list, bloggers, jkOnTheRun

I want to resist to believing this story run in first place by 10news.com and then replied at a good place I've found today. Kool design and a very different way of presenting news and interacting with netizens. The story I am about to comment was written by Gimundo.

He's been appointed to the National Institute for Literacy by President George Bush, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and subsequently served on the Board of the Institute under President Bush and President Clinton. He's John Corcoran, creator of a Foundation under his own name, Jonh Corcoran Foundation.

What id can be explained by me, at least, is how such a prominent person can't read while in school and how he found his way around such as the history says. Put it in this way, we'll love to have students like Mr. Corcoran. The original post deserves to be quoted:

When I was a child I was just sort of just moved along. When I got to high school I wanted to participate in athletics. At that time in high school I went underground. I decided to behave myself and do what it took. I started cheating by turning in other peoples' paper, dated the valedictorian and ran around with college prep kids

He learned to read anyway when he was 48. And after his long run of cheating he's an education advocate and has two books written, "The Teacher Who Couldn't Read" and "Bridge to Literacy."

Is this story embarrassing in any way or is it a motivator for the 'M' generation?

Technorati: education, Jonh Corcoran, stories, school

Edublogs.org was launched and as any start up the beginning was kind of slow, but as for right now is one of the best places to open a blog (free hosted). This is a niche dedicated for educators and all related matters; however there are not restrictions as for who can open a free blog. We’ve already made a reservation that can be seen in here but being this an educational blog we would like to recommend all teachers to open their blogs just here at Edublogers.org. What are the advantages? They just launched the Forums Feature which is generating a lot of buzz because this will change the approach many teachers were having while hosting their blogs in edublogs.org; now they are going to be able to attract student and not only make them open an account but get them to participate in any issue that will be showed in a particular forum. Isn’t that great, when we all know students enjoy spending time online?

These are some reasons why you should open an account in this Wordpress platform service:

1. Experiment with contemporary, customizable themes.
2. Simply embed videos, podcasts, images and a whole lot more.
3. Import from other blogging sites – or export back to them.
4. Great support and community.
5. These are not just blogs you know… it's a Wordpress technology.
6. It’s not (just) the technology, it’s the pedagogy too.

While you click away, please, feel free to drop any comments whether you know a better place to host free blogs in an educational commitment. Enjoy!

Technorati: edublogs.org, edublogs, schools, education, classroom, edtech

One of the things I hate about politics is that in this arena everything is acceptable. Today I saw a magazine where the subtitle said 'How Hillary will win' this democratic nomination and immediately it pointed it out, is better to ask 'How Hillary lose' the nomination?. All media is talking about how all the political machinery of the Clinton's has failed, many reports even say the same advisers are not happy about themselves because they don't know (they weren't prepared) to fight the Obama phenomenon. Just today is circulating a picture that nobody knows how come it hit the net, surprisingly now the Hillary feels behind even in Texas where Hispanics that regularly were loyal to Clinton are jumping ship according to an interview to a member of Davila's family over the south of Texas, he had pictures showing in his terms, that one third were white, the other third Hispanic and the remaining black. In Ohio, workers need answers and they think the Clintons already had their opportunity and now it's time for a change, no more outsourcing jobs from Ohio manufacturing plants.

CBS and the NYT poll found Obama ahead of Hillary nationally, 16-points ahead. Now they want to stop Obama telling Americans that cultural heritage is bad. Everyone already knows the spiritual origins of Obama ancestors, Muslim. So, what is wrong about to wear something is part of their spirituality and culture. What American living in another country can be diminished just because he/she likes to celebrate Thanksgiving in the very American way?

Why they don't show and comment about The Clinton Chronicles? I want to save your time, just click the video and make your very own conclusions.

Technorati: obama, clinton, video, politics, primaries+elections

This is our gratitude for the person who's made this blog not only look nice but very professional (not money down). eBlogTemplates is holding a contest from now until March 16th, 2008. As the post says, all bloggers are in call just make sure your Wordpress selection are under Open Source and it is a in a blog-style format.

After finding what you think is the winning template, paste the template name and url where it can be demoed and downloaded from in the comments box below. Make sure there’s not already the same template suggested otherwise the person who first submitted it will only be considered. If you’ve designed your own template feel free to suggest it as well. Just make sure it’s really cool and high quality otherwise it might be removed from the list

So, join in David W Cowhill and help him help others to get a nice Wordpress theme converted into Blogger code. We have plenty of time to participate and choose among those thousands of nice looking Wordpress designs.

Technorati: wordpress, themes, blogger, blogspot, blogger+templates