Gutenberg and the social media revolution, an investigation of the world where it costs nothing to distribute information
Richard Stacy, Social Media Consultant, Publicis Consultants
http://tinyurl.com/5wpd4s

Interesting article, referenced above, published this month in the Journal of Financial Transformation about what is sometimes termed as “social media.” Richard Stacy discusses the transition from institutionalized mass distribution of information to the “dis-institutionalizing” or “disintermediating” social information environment. This environment is emerging as broadband access is more available, simple self-publishing tools proliferate, and people engage in shared activities like tagging, rating and commenting, allowing “… individuals to create the trust and connections necessary to transact and communicate amongst themselves without any institutionalized intervention.” (p. 93)

This article builds on the long-tail concepts of niche markets and reduced transaction and delivery costs allowing individualized preference to trump mass appeal. Stacy talks also about trust. Formerly vested in institutions that built reputations and brand name recognition over time, now trust is vested within the “visible processes;” you can make your own assessment of the process and from that, you can decide how much trust you will allocate to it. People will still trust institutions who will work to build and maintain reputation, but these institutions will need to consider the benefits of transparency in a world where it is so easy to see how people go about their business.

Ideas around user-generated content and community intrigue me. While it has not always been a linear path (!), concepts from this article including Crowdsourcing and crowd wisdom are in some ways the root of our efforts to bring the best in teaching and learning in North Carolina together on LEARN NC. The idea that practicing teachers know best what works in their classroom and sharing that helps everyone…

The rest of the article talks about the keys to success in the post-Gutenberg world. Content, Conversation and Community are the “channels” Stacy outlines, and there is much here that speaks to our current exploration of what it may take to really foster community online and develop the network so that it is more viable and supportive of teachers professionally. We’re spot on with the content piece, spreading the content threads throughout the networks using Twitter, blogs, StumbleUpon, Flickr and perhaps Facebook. Sharing control with your stakeholders (Bill, weren’t we just talking about citizen participation yesterday?) and getting the conversations going seem to be the next steps.

Read the article. Tell me, do you agree with Stacy’s conclusion “The world we are moving into is one where new technologies are making the process of institutionalized mediation obsolescent. Information can flow between one individual and all of the potential individuals for whom that information might be of relevance, without any form of institutionalized intervention except the provision of a freely available technological infrastructure.”

As we start using more audio on the website and in online courses, this article from Boxes and Arrows might be of some help. It addresses the issue of information architecture in audio design and how to improve the user’s experience of the audio.

Here are the discussion questions for today’s brown bag.

1. What is one new fact you learned from reading this book?

2. What moved, captivated or infuriated you about the first four chapters?

3. Is there an outstanding passage that resonated with you?

4. How does the book portray justice, compassion, courage or wisdom?

5. To what motives does Kozol attribute the state of public schooling for the nation’s poor? Do you agree or disagree with him?

6. What do you think is Kozol’s motivation for writing this book? Was the point of the book to share an opinion, explain a topic, tell about a personal journey, or something else? Did the author do it well?

7. What does this book say about human nature?

Check out the powerful new professional materials posted by the Center for Social Media at American University. The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education is available for download in .pdf format, and there is a video introduction to understanding fair use in today’s media-rich environment that will clarify misconceptions and reassure teachers about their rights (and their students’ rights) to employ all sorts of media in classroom teaching.

http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/code_for_media_literacy_education/

Thanks to Gerry Solomon, Media Specialist to North Carolina, for bringing this to our attention.

This was a letter to the editor we submitted to the News & Observer a couple weeks ago in response to an article about a parent who objected to her kid using the internet in class. The letter didn’t get picked up, but I think it’s important for staff to remember that while what we do seems obviously beneficial to us, there are still a lot of people who aren’t very keen on using the interweb in schools.

The letter:

Regarding the article, “Parents, schools at odds over Internet,” I certainly respect parents’ rights to decide what’s best for their children. However, making blanket objections to Internet use in today’s classroom is equal to objecting to textbooks.

Part of a teacher’s job is finding the best means of achieving instructional goals, whether that entails using a website or a chalk board. Teachers don’t choose online tools merely because they can, but because the information and the manner of presentation offer something uniquely valuable. Online applications such as Google Docs, NC WiseOwl, and Web-based educational resources from NASA offer levels of content, collaboration, and accessibility that simply cannot be replicated offline.

Further, the ability to use online technology is a vital skill in and of itself. Yes, you can find inappropriate material on the Web. But rather than hide the Internet from children, teachers must instruct students how to use it safely. Information literacy — the ability to find the good info and discard the bad — is a critical 21st Century skill. Shielding children may protect them in the short term, but it robs them of the ability to make intelligent informational decisions in the long run.

Melissa Thibault
Executive Director
LEARN NC

We had a productive meeting with Angela Bardeen and Chad Haefele from the UNC libraries. So many of the periodicals we would like to read are already part of the Libraries’ subscription services. Besides, with our work loads it is increasingly unlikely that we’ll keep up with reading our journals, so it seems even more foolish to subscribe to print editions.

Setting up an RSS feed from brings the most current articles to your desktop and offers an opportunity to stay current with a small investment of time and no investment of money. We spent about an hour working to get feeds in three RSS environments: Pageflakes, iGoogle and Google Reader.

Pageflakes and iGoogle provide a dashboard-type widget-intensive option that many of us find useful. If you need help with Pageflakes, Bobby and I are using that pretty extensively. Gail was working in iGoogle. Google Reader is easier to set up, I think, but requires you to actually go to another place to read your feeds… unless you cheat and use a web page widget in your Pageflakes to display your Google Reader feeds, like I do!

Bottom line, it was pretty easy to get the subscription content from some of the vendors, namely EBSCOhost, CSA, Gale and ISI, working in our various readers of choice. RSS feeds are still “experimental” in these products, so there is no guarantee that it will always work (as we experienced ourselves Tuesday morning!). Our library guides reassured us that if we persevere, we will get the feeds working just as we need them to, and if we get stuck, they are just an email or phone call away.

Contact Angela or Chad if you have any questions or need further assistance:
bardeen at email.unc.edu
chaefele at email.unc.edu
or by phone 919-962-1151

Join us to read Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol in the LEARN book club. We will order copies of the book, and invitations will be sent to those interested to the brown bag meetings on November 17, December 15 and January 12.

Email Keri by October 15 if you are interested.

Read the review from Publishers Weekly here: http://www.amazon.com/Shame-Nation-Restoration-Apartheid-Schooling/dp/1400052459/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220971936&sr=8-1

A reminder forwarded by Tim Poe of MCNC. We can look into using CCEE or since MCNC will be participating, there may be an opportunity for you to join in through their facility. Contact Tim if you are interested. tpoe@mcnc.org

The Tenth Anniversary Megaconference will be held on Nov 6, 2008, all day, everywhere.
Because this is the 10th Megaconference, some very special things will happen then that have not occurred in previous Megaconferences. The Megaconference is the largest video conference in the world, with many hundreds of participants from all over the world.
http://www.megaconference.org. Keep checking there for updates.

There is no cost, and everyone in the world with H.323 capabilities is invited to participate.

Registration closes on Oct 15, so you have only a short time to join this event.
http://digitalunion.osu.edu/megaconference/registration.html

There are many interesting presentations and events on the program, as you can see here:
http://digitalunion.osu.edu/megaconference/program.html

Door prizes (video conferencing related) will be given away by random drawing during the Roll
Call events. So far we have 44 prizes donated by 8 vendors. The Roll Calls also give everyone a chance to say hello to the world, in whatever creative way they wish. See
http://digitalunion.osu.edu/megaconference/prizes.html

A number of people who participated in the first Megaconference 10 years ago will be giving brief “Then and Now” presentations about how video conferencing has evolved and how they predict it will evolve in the future.

Special awards will be presented to those people and institutions who have participated in all 10 Megaconferences.

The event is fully interactive, and you can ask questions of the presenters, etc.

Both High Definition and Standard Definition video conferencing is available. People using HD will see SD participants in enhanced resolution, provided by a Codian MCU.

The Megaconference will appear in Second Life, on a big screen in an outdoor amphitheater, provided by the Technology Enhanced Learning and Research group at Ohio State University
(TELRPort in Second Life).

The Megaconference is available to people using the new Vidyo technology.
http://www.vidyo.com

Still under discussion are availability to people using Elluminate, and a guest appearance by the President of Ohio State University.

The Internet2 Commons, OARnet, Ohio State University and many other organizations throughout the world provide support to make this event possible.

I am, as usual, beating myself up about a failure to do something perfectly. (“Must get A. OK, A+ works, too.”) I have been warned by friends and colleagues, coached by professionals, and reassured by family members that it is OK to NOT to do everything to the nth degree, OK not to be perfect. Rumor has it that there is a RANGE of acceptable performance on various endeavors. Who knew? Apparently that range is NOT, as I have always maintained, A to A+, but rather there are other options, including B and C!

So what am I stewing about now? Getting Things Done. I read it (OK, well almost all of it) and I worked to put it in place and yet I have not systematized this, I am still struggling. What should I do? Renew my commitment to this program? Quit?

[This is how it is for perfectionists, BTW, you either do it perfect or you quit 'cause you are not doing it perfect.]

Turns out lots of people struggle to GTD and that it is OK to do something different. According to the author, David Allen, I need some version of “collect” so I can externalize all the stuff spinning in my head and I can get the bandwidth to be productive. In an interview about his new book, he says “It takes a couple of years for most people to really, really, really begin to integrate that so that that builds the consequential and sort of cruise control kinds of behaviors.” Years. I don’t have to quit, I just need to make it OK to not get an A+, OK to not know how to do it in the first month, OK take the time it takes to systematize. I can do that, right?

As is evident to anyone reading, I have struggled with blogging. My “fits and starts” are a result of my uncertainty of purpose and lack of time to allocate to this process. Who am I writing for? What is important enough to require my chiming in to the discussions in the blogosphere? How can I find the time to actually process issues of import? For me, Blogging has been more of a thing to be observed than a thing that comes naturally.

For others, however, it is a very different story. I have enjoyed the work of avid bloggers who write to think, and the product of their effort really contributes to the conversations about teaching and learning. This inspires me to keep at it, and brings up another important point — just because I am not driven to blog doesn’t mean blogs are useful as tools for learning. (Hear Homer Simpson here… “D’oh!”)

Two interesting ideas that seem right on to me. The first, Blogging the Research Process. In a September 2007 blog entry, Joyce Valenza recommends this practice as a way to facilitate transparency and constructivism, noting that through blogging, students can reflect on the process, get organized, and involve others in the process, ultimately contributing to the larger body of knowledge. The second, also from School Library Journal, is another simple yet powerful way to use blogging tools to enhance learning… a Book Blog. Like a book club, the Guerrilla Season Book Blog provides a place for students to engage their classmates and the rest of the world a project in which the “… diverse group exchanged thoughtful impressions about the book and pondered some provocative questions, adding a whole new dimension to the reading experience.” (Langhorst, 2006)

Simple, logical, powerful tools for learning. I get it. You can too! Pick up The Guerrilla Season and join Eric Langhorst’s book blog project between MARCH 3 and APRIL 4, 2008. See you there!