A metephor worth considering

Sundance film winner Ondi Timoner speaks briefly about her newest project "We Live in Public" centering around Josh Harris.

There is a good discussion of the movie with Ondi and Josh Harris on the TWiT Network's Net@Nite 117 which was where I first heard of it. Of particular interest are the parallels drawn between some of Josh's projects and current trends in social media.
Interesting...

It's delicious!

coachrobbo's Network on Delicious Originally uploaded by coach_robbo

The new and improved version of Delicious, one of the oldest (and my fave) social bookmarking services, is out. It has been well talked about all over the web so it's not necessary for me to go into mind numbing detail (do a search on "delicious 2.0") but I will provide an overview, as is my role (as meta-filter extraordinaire?) In a nutshell there are three things that strike me about the Delicious update:

1. Yahoo! (they own Delicious) coughed up cash and changed the URL to delicious.com from del.icio.us (opinions are divided on this)
2. The UI (user interface) has had a makeover; and
3. You can now have 1000 characters in the "notes" field

They are probably in reverse order of interest for me. More characters in the notes field is absolutely awesome (and the updated Firefox plugin now reflects the change. Peeps, seriously update now if you haven't already). I usually select a paragraph of "about" text on the page I'm bookmarking and rarely is it neatly less than the old 128 minimum. Oh the freedom! The user interface looks pretty tight and modern but it has thrown me somewhat. I have had to refamiliarise myself as a few things are done slightly differently. Most notable for me was adding to your network. The "add user to network" link is a small button in the top right visible when you're in the network "tab". It seems different anyway. Maybe it's just because the text is now like font size 10 and I can't read it (who keeps moving my medicine?) Domain change? Who really cares. I don't actually visit the site itself much and when I do it is usually from the Firefox plugin button. Heck, most browsers auto-resolve to point you to where you need to go anyway. If you're not part of an online social bookmarking service you're not in it. You have to get a taste. Sign up, get Firefox (portable if you wish [Windows or OSX]), get the buttons and get tagging! I wonder how long it will take for the Atomic Learning tutes to be updated?

The social network saga

At our inaugural Technology Mastery day the other week we had an intensive discussion about social networks, internet safety and related issues particularly in reference to our obligations or otherwise as educators. Bill Ferriter in his blog The Tempered Radical talks about an email question he received from a parent and his response.

The Tempered Radical: Middle Schoolers and Myspace

I'm still trying to think through my own approach to introducing kids to Internet safety---and this just happens to be where my thinking stands today:

He references some great resources providing a good balance of information with advice. I like the "conversations in the foodcourt at the mall" analogy lifted from Clay Shirky's book and Fear Factor: Dangers overblown (by Anastasia Goodstein) puts the online predator hysteria into perspective and is an article that should be read by everyone. If people get keen they can follow the link in Anastasia's article to the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Congress where they invited a group of experts to discuss The Facts About Youth Online Victimization. One of the experts is danah boyd who was in Australia last year chatting to all sorts of people and podcasts of some of her events are hosted on the Education.au Seminars blog. They are quite goodTechnorati Tags: internet, safety, social, networks

This is the plan

St Columba's Physics is going "web2.0". Hang on and enjoy the ride!

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