As an economics major, I know widgets. I have considered the elasticity of demand for widgets, the consumer surplus when widgets are priced competitively, and the change in price when the component materials for making widgets are suddenly more scarce. Always, my professors discussed economic concepts in terms of widgets.

Now, today, I am actually using widgets! Thanks to Widgetbox, I can easily create a way to keep up with ever-changing content like the LEARN NC features and the latest Instructify articles. I’ve even created one for this blog.

Just this morning, Bobby and I were discussing how we really need something to pull together the fiftyleven things we need to update, read, check, and generally pay attention to. How can we keep up with it all?

Pageflakes might just help me, as they promise in their byline, Get it Together. Using this tool, I can pull together the news, online tools, blogs and more that I am trying to keep up with. I can even create widgets and with one click, put them on my Pageflakes page. Pretty cool, eh?

Some of you have been with me when I mentioned to teachers the availability of PBS videos on NC LIVE. I believed that as NC citizens and taxpayers, anyone who was authorized as a library user could access these and, since it would be fair use to show them in a F2F classroom, teachers could include these in their teaching. I was wrong.

Apparently there is a willingness to pay in the school audience. If you are familiar with the 4 factors you must consider to determine if something is covered by fair use, you will see right away that if PBS considers the schools another potential paying customer, then we are violating fair use by showing these videos without paying for them. If you are unfamiliar with fair use, see David’s entry in the LEARN NC education reference area, http://www.learnnc.org/glossary/fair+use

Long term, the implications of segmenting the audience and charging schools as a separate customer is disturbing. We are essentially being charged twice if both NC LIVE and NC Wiseowl subscribe to the same content. Twice the tax money to the vendor for the same content. How can that be OK? Maybe if/when NC Wiseowl seeks to add the same content, PBS will give us a price break since all of the public library, community college library and university library users already are authorized as NC LIVE users. I certainly hope so.

It is all based on willingness to pay, which brings me to the most important issue… we must use our fair use exemptions or we will lose them. The more we hesitate and contact vendors to purchase an article here or there, the more we are signaling that there is another market for selling the content. It will be scary indeed when all the content and information is only available for fee.

Sorry for the rant, but you can see I feel strongly about this, and if you are still reading, thanks for listening.

The video and its impact have been noted for years on the internet, and chances are you have already seen this (or a version of this) but just in case…

Carl Fisch’s blog post and presentation entitled Did_You_Know? has been attracting the attention of political and education leaders, teachers, parents and other citizens for some time. What better way to get a discussion started about the importance of global education and 21st Century Skills than to play this video as people enter the room? That’s what Bobby Hobgood did at his session at the Foreign Language Association of North Carolina conference and I have been meaning to read and write more about it. Check it out, what do you think?

I was writing to my father at the sideline of the soccer field Saturday and the dad sitting next to me commented. “I can’t remember the last time I received a letter.” he said, “seems to be a dying practice.” Indeed. The reason my father and I use snail-mail to converse is because we followed the trends in communication from letters mailed to letters faxed, to email and then, finally, IM. The quality of the communication was disappointing to both of us, so we’re back to writing… trading the timeliness of electronic communication for the depth of a written letter.

The New Media Consortium (NMC) just posted a thoughtful paper on just this subject. Social Networking, the “Third Place,” and the Evolution of Communication starts with a non-judgmental assessment of the changes to acceptable communication that mirrors the experience I have had with my father. There is a reduced “cost” in time, effort and attention in technology-mediated conversations. “With instant messaging, we understand that the other party’s attention may wander between messages in some cases and remain focused on us, as with a phone call, in others.” The article goes on to note that the context of a conversation, including the type of technology being used, impacts the “environmental context” of the conversation. An IM conversation will be different in tone from a phone conversation… just the difference in the expectations for attention to the other person can impact context.

This paper goes on to present the Internet as the “Third Place” (after home and work) where people can meet and connect. Beyond tracking the evolution of conversation (old-school) this part of the article claims new means of communication, new places to communicate, and new avenues of interaction afford us new ways of connecting that transcend the possibilities of traditional conversation. Skype, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Second Life, LinkedIn… possibilities for social and professional access are greater and the likelihood that you may create and maintain connections, share experiences, and perhaps, through the variety of media and length of interaction, create an even more significant connection that is possible with the written word alone.

As I read the questions for consideration I recall how I have bemoaned the potential loss of traditional modes of contact. Am I missing out on a potentially richer, sustained opportunity for interaction by shunning electronic modes of communication? NMC also raises questions about the nature of interpersonal interactions as well as the attractions and pitfalls of online communication. Take a look. What do you think?

Lots of disagreement about what can be called community, but one thing is for sure… when you meet people who have a similar interest when it comes to books, you sure hit it off! Not only can you share your experiences and attitudes about specific titles, but (more importantly) you can get recommendations for what to read next. For me, I really appreciate talking with someone who has enjoyed the book I just read… it’s a sure way to find my next good read.

This is called Readers Advisory. Libraries have been referring people to their “next good read” for years… whether in a thematic display, a “staff picks” section, or by purchasing a standard online package like the Gale product, What Do I Read Next?” I get great ideas from the library or even from browsing Amazon by subject, through recommendations based upon what I’ve purchased, or the “others who bought this title also bought…” tools.

These approaches work OK, but once you get involved with LibraryThing you will be hooked. Not only does it allow you to see what others recommend, but it also offers tools you can use that pull titles and ratings from the library catalogs of all the members to make suggestions for you. The Suggestor provides access to titles that “people with your books also have” and well as “similarly tagged books” and “most popular books you don’t have.” Like all such services that draw from your profile, the Suggestor works better if you have more books in your library collection. If you have not aspired to cataloging and rating your entire collection of books (hey, I know this is far cooler to me as a librarian than it is to the average reader) you can always even do a simple Book Suggester search based on a recently read or favorite title.

Don’t despair if you have not found anyone who reads the stuff you love. I read a rather eclectic variety of books and it would be difficult to find someone with the same range of interests. Still, I can connect with people on LibraryThing through common favorites from my catalog, suggestions with common tags and through groups. I don’t know if this constitutes “community” to you, but for me, it works!

I don’t mean what you think I mean… I know you can get books, journals and wonderful rich resources online. I am looking more at what brings people IN to the library… or BACK to the social network.

Stephen Abram presented on “The Future of Search” a couple of ALA conferences ago… he said that if online searches answer all the questions, people will stay home and search. But they don’t. They come to the library… for learning and community. If that’s true, then the library’s biggest competitor is not Google but Facebook! Sites that allow users to share their interests and find connections, these are the communities that people gravitate to.

Ask anyone between 13 and 20 and odds are good, they are into Facebook. Tags, groups, friends and places important to us… that’s what is shared. But what drives this? I think that they are sharing more than is evident at first glance… view someone’s profile and you see inside their heart and mind, you can “see” their aspirations.

So what does this mean to educators and librarians? I am not sure but I have a few ideas for how to find out.

First, try what they’re trying. Be a participant in the process of creation. I’m making a stab at it…

• I’m in Facebook.
  
• I’ve got a Catalog on LibraryThing.
• Then there is this blog…

Then, work to apply what we learn to provide context for our audience, whether it is an online class of students or a web-based community of teachers across the state. The more we come from a place of cooperation, collaboration and imagination the more we’ll help our community to BE a community and to make sense of the stuff they need and want to learn. We are the coach, helping people work through their stuff and move forward.

Sort of evolutionary, eh? Adapt or die. But that sounds so negative… change is awesome!

I am reading "Planning for Neomillennial Learning Styles: Implications for Investments in Technology and Faculty" (Chapter 15 of Educating the Net Generation) written by Chris Dede. Seems like maybe it is time to try again with a visit to the virtual worlds. My first attempt was in Second Life and I kept crashing, plus I couldn’t find my way anywhere… I can’t say that I persevered. It was just not interesting enough to me.

Dede mentions Whyville in his article. I just joined and so far I have been able to figure out how to do everything I want to do. If you join, look for me. My name is mrstebo.

I happened upon the 7 Things You Should Know About… series a while ago and shared the handouts about Blogs, Instant Messaging, Facebook and Social Bookmarking at some of the conference presentations that touch on Web 2.0. ELI continues to produce two-sided pdf handouts about new technologies and has even begun to revisit some of the applications covered previously to update the documents. Despite the fact thatt the target audience for these resources is higher education, the handouts are very relevant to K-12 teachers interested in Web 2.0 applications.

In addition to the 7 Things You Should Know About… series there are also some resources for delivering professional development in timely topic areas like Information Literacy and Net Gen Students as well as some guides to specific technologies like blogging or podcasting. (I wonder if we could use this for the pre-conference workshops in October?) The ELI Discovery Tools are action-oriented, modifiable, modular activities and the site offers screen cast overviews of the various topics. These items require a username and password to access but as UNC-Chapel Hill staff we are members of EDUCAUSE — register by creating an EDUCAUSE profile for full access.

I happened upon the New Media Consortium this week (and signed up as UNC TLT is a member organization!) and a report that may be of interest. The 2007 Horizon Report identifies key trends that and projects the adoption of various technologies in classrooms. The trends identified include increased importance (and unfounded assumptions) about information literacy skills, increasing globalization in the way we work and communicate, the interdisciplinary and collaborative aspects of digital scholarship (and the slow adoption of this in academia), the evolution of the read-write web (called collective intelligence and mass amateurization in this report) as an important contribution to scholarship … these validate the work we are doing at LEARN NC. The report also projects the top emerging technologies that will effect education in the next 5 years. This year’s report includes user-created content, social networking, mobile phones, and virtual worlds as the technologies to watch first. For more info, check out the attached report.

In the August 2007 issue of American Libraries there is a brief article by Laura B. Cohen called “A Manifesto for Our Times.” The gist is that response to the revolution in the way people create, edit, search, evaluate, organize and share information is the key — here is a chance to transform processes, break down barriers, give users a trusted, participatory role in shaping the future. How will we respond? A positive response to this shift in the nature of library services can result in a collaborative, personalized and open information culture.

Though the focus is on libraries and librarians, I think there are a lot of places where this could be tied to education… swap out “user” and “library” for “student” and “classroom.” Libraries aspire to be user-centered and meet the needs of all users; classrooms demonstrating best practices are student-centered and meet the needs of diverse learners. As networked communities are more pervasive, will our classrooms evolve to encourage the activities that lead to conversation, collaboration and sharing?

See the Librarian’s 2.0 Manifesto for yourself…

Read the blog posting
http://liblogs.albany.edu/library20/2006/11/a_librarians_20_manifesto.html

or watch the video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZblrRs3fkSU

What will the Teacher’s 2.0 Manifesto include?