Will Richardson

Speaker, consultant, writer, learner, parent

diigo and del.icio.us

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You may have noticed (or you may not have) the daily bookmarks posting that has been showing up here for the past few days. It’s a list of all of the sites/posts that I have been saving to my diigo account, which in case you haven’t heard of it, is a social bookmarking tool that feels like a combination of del.icio.us and Furl plus a bit more.

With diigo, you can do most of what you can with del.icio.us in terms of saving links with various tags, connecting to other users who have saved the same post or used the same tag, and tracking either users or specific tags (or specific tags of specific users) via RSS. Even more, however, is that like Furl, diigo captures a copy of the page, so if it disappears from the Web at some point, you can access it in your archive.

But what’s really different is the diigo allows you to highlight certain sections of any Web page you’re on, and also gives you the ability to attach sticky notes to the site. Those highlights and notes are then visible should you visit that page again. But even better, if you have a diigo account and I have “forwarded” the page to you, you can see them add your own when you visit the site as well. Think digital feedback on student work.

Now while the diigo user base is much smaller than del.icio.us, quite a few people are adding some interesting links and resources. And one other nice feature is that when I add something to my diigo account, it also gets added to my del.icio.us account. By the way, C-Net has a review of diigo that highlights some of the good points.

There are a lot of applications for classrooms here, and I’ll try to expound on them the more I experiment with it. Bottom line is I’m starting to like this tool more and more, and I’m wondering who else might be playing with it.

(Image from diigo)

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The MySpace Effect

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A recent article in School CIO magazine discusses the use of social networking in schools, highlights one school that is trying to find the middle ground with the blog and wiki abilities of Blackboard, and quotes another school as not going down the Read/Write Web road because none of the teachers have asked to. (Oy.)

“Together, these two tools could give the student the ability to experiment with blogs and wikis in a safe, secure environment where they would receive feedback from their teacher and classmates that was monitored and attributable,” says Paul Regnier, community relations coordinator for Fairfax County Public Schools.

Um, yeah but…are they also being taught to navigate these environments outside of school so they have the tools to stay safe in the no so secure real world? Aside from the inherent problems with using Blackboard, the bigger problem is using it to avoid the difficult responsibilities we have to our students these days. Anyone know if Fairfax is not only banning MySpace but teaching it as well???

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MySpace in US News

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Jonathan Seal points to an article in this week’s US News magazine that is a comprehensive discussion on both sides of the MySpace issue. The bottom line is the same: yes, there are dangers, but if we teach our kids, we can make them safe. Oft quoted Parry Aftab says that “parents are chicken” when it comes to MySpace, and I would only add that most educators are as well. But as the article points out, it’s just not something we can afford to be afraid of. In some way, shape or form, we have to teach MySpace or at least the social networking concept that it represents.

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EdBloggerNews Update

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Just a quick update on the Digg for educators experiment. In four days we’ve had about 2,500 views, are averaging over 110 unique visitors per day, and aggregated over 50 articles. There ave been over 100 votes for stories too, which has pushed Steven’s “Adults and MySpace” article to the top of the heap. So far so good.

Remember, if you are going to play, try to make sure that the articles are specific to Education 2.0, meaning that the articles deal specifically with the the Read/Write Web and education. And please, do play. The first few days have been pretty interesting…

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Changing the Mindset

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Doug Noon posts about an interesting paper from Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel titled “Blogging as Participation: The Active Sociality of a New Literacy” that does a nice job of framing the difference of mindeset between the traditional view of the classroom and the emerging view.

I think the underlying premise between the two mindsets is interesting: “The world is much the same as before, only now it is more technologised, or technologised in more sophisticated ways” vs. “The world is very different from before and largely as a result of the emergence and uptake of digital electronic inter-newtorked technologies.”

I know I keep coming back to MySpace, but if nothing else, what’s happening there should be a starting point for just how much the world really has changed. The ability to network widely changes everything, and the kids and adults at MySpace are showing it.

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Digg for EdBloggers / Do We Need to Get Our Act Together?

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From the “Throw it Up and See if it Sticks Deptartment” I just put together a Digg-type site over at CrispyNews specifically for those of us who are focused on the Read/Write Web and the implications for education. Here’s how I think you could use it if you bought into it.

First, go over to the EdBloggerNews page and register for an account (left hand column.) Then, grab the bookmarklet (at the top of the left hand column) and drag it to your toolbar so when you find something of interest you can easily post it. Then, most importantly, subscribe to the RSS feed for the site so you collect all of the Web goodness we provide (with any luck).

I know this plays off the del.icio.us idea that I threw up yesterday, and it still might be better if we just collectively used the edblogreading tag that “ratcatcher” created. Suggestions welcomed.

And to be honest, this is all stemming from a bigger burr in my brain of late that has to do with the seeming randomness of all of the really great work that people in this community are starting to create. It’s just feeling like it’s all over the place, and that if we could in some way get our collective act together, we could start creating an incredibly valuable resource. I know it’s all about small pieces loosely joined, but wouldn’t it be great to point the newcomers to one spot that was a clearinghouse for all of this work? Not to mention the value it would have to us old timers in terms of bringing people in. I mean all of a sudden, it seems like everyone has a wiki, and most all of them have great intent and good content. But there’s also a lot of duplication of effort, and more importantly, dis-connection, at least that what it feels like to me.

Am I wrong?

And more importantly, what to do about it?

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del.icio.us Network–What's Your Account Name?

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Alan’s great post about del.icio.us titled “Tagging It to the Next Level” has me thinking about how to better use it as a way of tracking the reading of the community. Since you can create your own network of users based on their account names, I’m thinking I could add to my network anyone who consistently saves links to relevant stuff and then offer up the RSS feed for the results. (The feed does not appear to be working right now, however.) It would also be good to know the account names of people in the community so we could use the for:xxxxxx (where the xs equal the account name, i.e. for:willrich) tag so we could send links to other people’s accounts.

If you’re game, leave your del.icio.us account name in a comment below. At the very least, it might help you set up your own networks…

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Mosh Pit as Classroom

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(So this is my first post using the Flock browser blog posting interface. After an hour of using it, I’m loving the browser…we’ll see how this goes.)

Kathy Sierra writes about the “Mosh Pit as Innovation Model” and I’m wondering about a “Mosh Pit as Classroom Model.” I mean, check out the Old vs. New chart that she includes and read it as an educator.

Old Classrooms vs. New Classrooms

Linear and slow vs. networked and quick–we need to create learners that are nimble and nomadic, able to take responsibility for their own needs.

Proprietary knowledge vs. shared knowledge–We need classrooms where it’s clear that we all own the knowledge and that we all benefit when it is freely shared and remixed.

Ideas as advantage vs. ideas “paid forward”–what a cool way of thinking about it, but isn’t this the way science has worked forever. Here’s what I have discovered, and I give it to you to discover even more. That’s what we’re beginning to do in every area.

Mentors vs. micromentors—every student can network with more narrowly relevant teachers outside the classroom.

Learn by reverse engineering vs. lessons learned benfit all–What could that concept do to standardized assessments? What if the entire class, collaboratively, had to pass the assessment? Just a thought…

Progress by “Shoulders of Giants” vs. progress by “Mosh Pit”–Hey, we already have the teacher as DJ concept. And if in this world of crazy fast information and knowledge, only the “we’re all in this together” approach is going to work.

Wisdom of experts vs. wisdom of crowds–This might be the toughest nut of all for educators, expecially, I would think, higher ed types. But look at Digg and Technorati and all of the other ways that reputation is moving away from the individual to the group. We need classrooms that tap into the power of socially constructed knowledge and ideas.

The rest of the post is amazingly good, as are the comments, but much that validates the thinking of our community.

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The Learner as Network

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Jeff Jarvis posted one of those push-my-feeble-brain-to-the-limit posts last week which I think has resonance in a lot of ways. It starts with this:

In the future of media, which is now, everybody is a network. In the past, networks were defined by control of content or distribution. But now, you can’t own all distribution and content is controlled where it’s created.

He writes about how when we work and practice in a transparent, read and write environment, all of us become nodes in much larger networks. (There is a lot of

George Siemens in this.) I love this description:

Networks are about sharing now; they used to be about control. Networks are two-way; they used to be one-way. Networks are about aggregation more than distribution; they are about finding and being found. Networks are now open while, by their very definition, they used to be closed. You join networks and leave them them at will; you can join any number of networks at once and content can be found via any number of networks, there is no practical limit. Networks used to be static. Now networks are fluid.

It’s interesting how much this speaks to education, and how far we need to go. We are still about control, not sharing. We are still about distribution, not aggregation. We are still about closed content rather than open. We are static, not fluid. The idea that each of our students can play a relevant, meaningful, important role in the context of these networks is still so foreign to the people who run schools. And yet, more and more, they are creating their own networks, sharing, aggregating, evolving to the disdain of the traditional model of schooling that is becoming more and more irrelevant.

The biggest problem is how few of our educators still cannot relate to this description. They are neither networks unto themselves or nodes of a larger system, and they understand little about what it means to be either in a world that is more globally interconnected. And our students are not only left without models of what it means to be networked, they also get relatively little content that is contextualized through the network. So network literacy, the functions of working in a distributed, collaborative environment (Jill Walker), is an important aspect of learning and education that precious few of our students get a chance to practice. And it is only by practicing these skills, whether teachers or students, that they can truly be learned.

49 Captive Superintendents–One Message

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So, I get the chance to address 49 Superintendents in Upstate NY on Thursday. I’ve got some ideas of what I plan to show them about the power and potential of the Read/Write Web, about what teachers and students are already doing, and about the obstacles that we need to begin having serious conversations about. But I’m wondering, if you had 90 minutes with this group, what one thing would you bring up/point to/challenge them with? What would be your most important message?

Chime in before Wednesday because I would love to point them to this post during my talk.

When Parents Contribute to Student Blogs…

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Anne pointed to this pretty amazing exchange that occurred on one of her student blogs recently, and it’s an interesting and effective example of how involved parents can contribute to their childrens’ learning in these more transparent spaces. I wonder how many teachers actively invite parents to at minimum read and perhaps respond to the work that their children are doing in their blogs. I know when I was in the classroom, I made a point of letting parents know what the URLs of the blogs were, but I left the decision to have parents comment on the sites up to the students themselves. Since it was high school, most opted not to let that happen. But a few did, and while the responses were not many, almost all of them were helpful, instructive, and relevant. And I do think for the students who allowed their parents to contribute it was a positive experience, especially for the parents who like the opportunity to be more involved.

Anyway, it’s nice to see such great discussion happening on student blogs. It’s rich, personal and, in this case at least, adds a great deal to the topic.

Deconstructing the MySpace "Threat"

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I think this Q and A with Danah Boyd and Henry Jenkins about the many very subtle and significant aspects of MySpace should be a must read for any of us that are concerned with the general response that schools are taking and the recenty DOPA legislation. If nothing else, it should give us some great talking points for holding a discussion about the site and the dynamics surrounding it. Here are some of the highlights:

“Youth are trying to map out a public youth territory for themselves, removed from adult culture. They are doing so online because their mobility and control over physical space is heavily curtailed and monitored.”

I know this is a difficult argument for some to accept, that we did this out in the real world and our kids are forced to do it in the virtual world because the real one has become so scary. As a parent of two small kids, I struggle with this as well. When my children get old enough to, say, take their bikes and ride off on their own, how comfortable will I be with letting them go alone? Certainly, when I grew up around here, it was the norm to go and find a game or whatever outside. Now..? There is much more in this interview about this.

“In many cases, schools are being forced to respond to real world problems which only came to their attention because this information was so publicly accessible on the web. Schools are uncertain what level of responsibility they should have over what their students do online – some are worried about what they are doing on library computers and others seek to extend their supervision into what teens are doing on their own time and off school grounds. Much of the controversy has come not as a result of anything new that MySpace and the other social software sites contribute to teen culture but simply from the fact that adults can no longer hide their eyes to aspects of youth culture in America that have been there all along.”

This is an interesting point, I think. As parents, are we just now being confronted with behavior that we didn’t really want to deal with before?

“As a society, we are at a moment of transition when the most important social relationships may no longer be restricted to those we conduct face to face with people in our own immediate surroundings but may also include a large number of relationships which are conducted over vast geographic distances.”

You pretty much have to believe this in order to understand MySpace. And this is a tough one for most. It’s so different from what we’ve experienced. But, as with so many other things that change from generation to generation, who is to say that it is necessarily worse from what we are accustomed to?

There is much, much more…

MySpace Analysis

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Danah Boyd posted a most interesting look at the MySpace phenomenon that does a nice job of putting the whole thing in perspective. I have to say that I’ve been suprised to some extent by the “moral panic” as Danah calls it that MySpace has wrought of late. Not to say that there aren’t some dangers there, but the risks something bad happening are still extremely low. It’s all about education…

Anyway, some interesting quotes from her piece:

Adults often worry about the amount of time that youth spend online, arguing that the digital does not replace the physical. Most teens would agree. It is not the technology that encourages youth to spend time online – it’s the lack of mobility and access to youth space where they can hang out uninterrupted.

This is the sad truth of the times, I’m afraid. I know this with my own kids, that I have a niggling worry when they play outside alone that is really unwarranted. It’s too bad that you never see kids just hanging out anymore…now they’re hanging in.

Another:

The scantily clad performances intended to attract fellow 16-year-olds are not meant for the older men. Likewise, the drunken representations meant to look “cool” are not meant for the principal. Yet, both of these exist in high numbers online because youth are exploring identity formation. Having to simultaneously negotiate youth culture and adult surveillance is not desirable to most youth, but their response is typically to ignore the issue…Without impetus, teens rarely choose to go private on MySpace and certainly not for fear of predators or future employers. They want to be visible to other teens, not just the people they they’ve friended. They would just prefer the adults go away. All adults. Parents, teachers, creepy men.

Finally, this one sentence caught my attention:

Because the digital world requires people to write themselves into being [3], profiles provide an opportunity to craft the intended expression through language, imagery and media.

Hmmm…write themselves into being… What a cool way of thinking about it.
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Jots.elicio.us

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So I love Jots, I really do. No really. I love how easy it is, how it looks, the rss feeds, etc. But after reading David Weinberger’s update on what’s in store for del.icio.us, well, I think it’s time I got with the masses and revived my very quiet account there.

Delicious is adding social networking. You’ll be able to designate people as members of your “network” so you can keep up with what they’re tagging and you’ll be able to create groups within which bookmarks can be kept private. Eventually, Delicious may disambiguate tags in part by weighing your groups’/network’s use of them more heavily. In any case, the addition of social networking will create yet more unintended consequences…something to look forward to.

But now here’s the problem, and yes, I’m looking for help. I’d love to be able to import my jots bookmarks into del.icio.us, but there doesn’t seem to be any google-able info on how to do that, and jots support is, to be kind, nonexistant. (Silly me.) So, I’ll ship one of my wife’s homemade pumpkin pies to the first person who can tell me how the heck to move my bookmarks. (Hey Alan, they got pumpkins in Phoenix???) And “you can’t” just isn’t an acceptable answer.

Social Software Classes

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From the “Courses We’d Love to Teach Dept.” is the graduate course “Social Software Affordances” at Teachers College at Columbia. The very comprehensive syllabus says that:

Social software represents the promise of truly networked human communities extending across the online and offline dimensions of reality. But beyond the hype, a critical approach to social software is necessary in order to explore its impact and possibilities.

Students are asked to set up aggregators and blogs, and there will be a class wiki that will collect research and analysis that they gather during the semester. Among the questions they hope to answer are:

  • What is ‘social’ about social software?
  • What are the pedagogical implications of social software for education?
  • What are the social repercussions of unequal access to social software?
  • Can social software be an effective tool for individual and social change?

    • In some less formal ways, these are questions we should all be asking even on the K-12 level.

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    Social Bookmarking for Educators

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    In keeping with the “Read/Write Web Software for Educators” meme, seems Todd Slater is developing scuttlEDU.

    ScuttlEDU is different in that it is designed to make tagging easier for educators. When you register for the service, you are asked to provide your grade level and subject area. When you add a bookmark, these two pieces of information become tags. You have the option of not using these tags as well.

    He’s looking for test drivers, and I just volunteered. Another step toward some more teacher friendly tools for those who aren’t comfortable with the current offerings.

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    Graphical Bookmarking…Make it Stop!

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    So text isn’t enough, huh? You want to del.icio.us-ize graphics now too? Well, try Wists! Go to a page. See the text and pretty graphics. Click on your little “Add to Wists” bookmarklet. See just the pretty graphics. Click on a pretty graphic. Add tags, description, save to your Wist account, auto post to blog. Find other people Wist-ing graphics you like. Snatch their RSS feeds. Better yet, find tag you like. Make java to add to blog code. Watch Wist pics flow automatically on page. Even better, create personalized Wishlist by Wist-ing pictures so people in ultra-capitalist society can subscribe to your Wist Wishlist feed and buy you stuff.

    It’s never going to end, is it?
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    I Like Jots Lots

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    So you can add me to the growing list of Jots fans, a fact that is causing me a bit of angst since I really like Furl so much as well. But as Alan has said, Jots just has a cleaner feel, and it’s the best of Furl and del.icio.us in one. (I’ve never been a big del.icio.us fan, btw.) I like the bloggy look you get with your bookmarks. I like the easy tagging form and the list of tags in the right hand column. I like the RSS-ability of just about everything you can think of: users, tags, searches. Way too easy to do all of it. I like the trackback like links to people who have Jotted the same link. (The verb making industry loves the Read/Write Web.) I like that it saves a copy of the page. And I like the groups feature.

    What I don’t like? I want the Jots page to open in a separate window so I can easily ALT-Tab back and forth to cut and paste. And I don’t like how everyone is adding their jots links to their blogs. I want blogs to be, well, blogs, not link lists. (There I go again, blog snob that I am.)

    But that’s not enough to keep me from using it, though it may not seem like it from my public Jots list. That’s because I’m doing a lot of private saving for, um, private reasons. I’m looking forward to more and more people getting into the Jots pool…

    EduFlickr

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    I’ve been doing some research into Flickr in the classroom lately and I came across (once again) this example that I just wanted to note. It’s an “History of Western Art and Civilization: Renaissance to the Modern Era” class at FIT in New York City. Barbara had mentioned it last fall, but I didn’t get a chance to look at it closely until today. A lot of annotations and discussion about what the work achieves from an aesthetic sense. It gives you a pretty good idea of what the potentials are…

    I know that when I did my Teacher’s Toolbox class last week, Flickr was a big hit. In fact I’ve been talking with some science teachers who are trying to figure out how to use it with photos of dissections. Mmmmm.

    del.icio.us Serendipity

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    So this is how it works…

    I’ve started playing with del.icio.us a bit more of late, especially as a place to quickly save things I want to read or write more about in the future. Yesterday, I saved a link to Ken Smith, who by the way has been blogging great guns of late. Today, when I went back to del.icio.us, I noticed someone else had linked to the same post. Turns out it was Paul Allison, who I have written about here before and who has a pretty nice list of tagged sites of his own which, of course, I had to start clicking around in. Which led me to pfhyper who has an extensive list of tags, including my meme of the day: socialsoftware. Which led me to TagCentral, (which I immediately Furled) a site where you can put in a tag and get the latest saved links and photos with that tag from a whole slew of sites. Which, when I put in education, led me to this story from NPR on Big Picture Schools that included this great description that flowed right out of my previous post:

    Students are encouraged to discover their passions, interning two days a week with mentors in the community who relate those passions to the real world. The student might work at a hospital, a bakery, or an architectural firm. School projects are designed by the mentor, the adviser and the student together — and are presented orally, along with a portfolio, every nine weeks.

    I love this stuff…