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Okay, technically it is only a subcommitte of Congress… but still… a meeting in second life.  I’m not sure if I should be afraid, or excited… what do you think?

This morning I came across an interesting article about book publishing in the future.  Apparently Penguin Books is doing an experiment called “We Tell Stories” with delivering six different books through six different medium channels over the next six weeks.  The first two are already done…  Google Maps for the first week and a  Blogging/Twitter combination for the second.  The third is an interactive writing of a fairy tale…

The google maps mashup, “The 21 Steps” is very creative.  There are certainly stories that would benefit from something like this.

I like the blogging/twitter combination book “Slice.“  Blogging is a pretty good way of reading a book.  RSS and twitter for little extra’s.  That seems cool to me.

The third one “Fairy Tales” is interesting because there are many, many different outcomes to the story.  Very clever… and interactive.  Should keep our attention.

What do you think?  What other mediums do you think they will use?  Is this progression, or regression?

Neil Hokanson tagged me for a Meme to create a digital quilt of our passions. The rules for this Meme are as follows:

1. Post a picture from a source like FlickrCC or Flickr Creative Commons or make/take your own that captures what YOU are most passionate about for kids to learn about…and give your picture a short title.
2. Title your blog post “Meme: Passion Quilt” and link back to Miguel Guhlin’s original blog entry.
3. Include links to 5 folks in your professional learning network or whom you follow on Twitter/Pownce.

My Passion for kids to learn is Programming! When I think of what I want my own kids to learn, I want them to be able to program. Computers are becoming more and more integrated in our lives and if they have this skill they will not only be able to always find work, they will be creative in thinking outside the box and creating their own solutions! That is why I love programs like Alice!

I’m running out of time so I tag the following three people:

• Darren Draper
• Blern
• Ryan Bretag

This morning I came across a great post by Darren Draper entitled “My Twitterversary & the Future of Writing.“  Darren makes some really good points about the power of blog writing, and the unfortunate results of services like Twitter. 

About the power of blogging and potential to help writing he says:

“Let me begin by saying that blogging has done more to improve my writing than any class I’ve ever taken, book I’ve ever read, or pill I’ve ever swallowed. To write – and to think – for an often international audience on a semi-regular basis has forced me into measuring my words carefully. It has also helped me to sound smarter than I actually am. The ability to express my thoughts in word – mingled with pictures, video, and other kinds of media – not to mention the social interaction experienced through blogging, has truly elevated my thinking in ways unimaginable just months prior.”

I couldn’t agree more. :)  He then goes on to write about how the smaller form writing doesn’t require any thought at all and poses some questions.   I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll only reply to one.

1. In embracing such simple tools for collaboration are we trending toward mediocrity – in our writing, in our reading, in our thought?

I would have to say… possibly.  Often we think in fragments and those fragments put together on a canvas make a very large and beautiful picture. 

On the other hand, my gut tells me it is not helping.  Most students don’t use twitter, but they use texting, and a lot of the kids I know don’t even know what to capitalize and how to spell.  I don’t care what you say about spell check… even with it, these kids will be limited in what they can do in the future if they can’t write correctly.

What about you?  Thoughts?

Yesterday Steve Hargadon published an article entitled “Web 2.0 is the Future of Education” that every educator should read. Here are a couple of excerpts”

“I believe that the read/write Web, or what we are calling Web 2.0, will culturally, socially, intellectually, and politically have a greater impact than the advent of the printing press. I believe that we cannot even begin to imagine the changes that are going to take place as the two-way nature of the Internet begins to flower, and that even those of us who have spent time imagining this future will be astounded by what happens.”

He then goes through ten trends that are important for education and learning and seven steps we, as educators can take to make a difference.

Trends:

1. A New Publishing Revolution
2. A Tital Wave of Information (Great statistics on how this information is growing, but he encourages more creation… with good reason.)
3. Everything is Becoming Participative
4. The New Pro-sumers (combination of ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’)
5. The Age of the Collaborator
6. An Explosion of Innovation
7. The World Gets Even Flatter and Faster
8. Social Learning Moves Toward Center Stage.  (I especially like this one.)
9. The Long Tail (Availability of specialization)
10. Social Networking Really Opens Up the Party

Steps we can Take:

1. Learn about Web 2.0
2. Lurk
3. Participate
4. Digest This Though: “The Answer to Information Overload Is to Produce More Information.”
5. Teach Content Production
6. Make Education a Public Discussion
7. Help Build the New Playbook

What are your thoughts? Did you see this yesterday?

A good friend of mine, Cary Gillenwater, sent me two articles published in this months’ NewScientistTech about haptics. One is for feeling the weather and the second Remote Robot Control that I thought I would pass on. Good stuff to add to our page of things you can do with haptics.

• “Weather map interface lets you feel the wind.“
• “Robot with ‘human soul’ explores remotely.“

A couple of days ago I wrote about a new twitter-like service designed especially for educators, called Edmodo. They posted a little screencast today. Looks promising:

For those of you who have been following the Second-Life alternative, Croquet, you will be interested to know that a new (very early) release of the next build, Cobalt is now available. You can download it here.

You can read more about the new build here. The graphics are much improved and the interface also looks like it has some nice improvements. I am diving into it now.

What do you think? You long time Croquet users, what enhancements does Cobalt offer?

The whole review deserves a look, but I especially like the part below.

This is so true. If we don’t get behind this device and push it, it may just fade into the background as something that was a great idea, but never got off the ground..

Last week I linked to a great article about using Twitter in the classroom.  Today I saw a new service that is in Beta right now that is a twitter-like web app specifically designed for the Classroom…  Edmodo.  I was not able to get in, but you can see some screenshots here. 

It promises to be the service to connect schools, teachers, parents and students. 

Instant communication and connection is a great thing and if a whole school buys into something like this it could be fantastically popular and useful, but you will lose the greater Twitter community which is part of the power of Twitter.