Gus on the cuts to public broadcasting: "Cutting funds for Sesame Street simply cannot be a politically viable move in the eyes of history. ... It is like standing in the middle of the street, in full view of the public, and strangling puppies. Very tiny, blind, cuddly, helpless baby puppies."
If you haven't spoken out already, do so.
By some miracle, I've managed to remain in the same apartment for the two years that I've lived in nyc. Although not the nicest of places (cf post of May '04, Apocalypse Now), it's been pretty much just what I needed. Well, tomorrow, in the stifling 95 degree heat, I will be moving the boxes that contain my life into storage before setting out for my yearly summer gig at CET. When I get back from Vermont in mid-August, I'll take up residence in a new neighborhood. More significantly, I'll be living with a roommate for the first time in 7 years. Yes, 7 years. Good luck to me, right? But really, looking forward to Vermont and to fresh starts. Boy, do I love getting rid of stuff. :)
Barbara's writing from Argentina with some interesting observations about blogging from abroad. Travel blogging is a fairly established genre from what I can tell (this entry at about.com as evidence), but the twist here is Barbara's reflections on not just her travels, but on the process of blogging from a foreign country:
It´s disorienting to have your blog homepage pop up as though you are
actually sitting in your office. You could be anywhere. Or nowhere.
Although I talk about wikis in my social software workshops and presentations, I'm genearlly much less confident talking about wikis than I am about blogs. Guessing this is probably because I'm not a regular wiki user (although I have contributed to several workspaces and am currently using one to collaboratively author a book review). So I was interested to see this bit of wiki advice:
Generally, wikis can work best when something is slightly unfinished,
when room for contribution is left clear. Finished text leads people to
drop in links or short comments. Quite different from wikitechture that
involves people in the process of production and encourages development
of shared practices. [Ross Mayfield on M2M]
That resonates with my experience working with wikis, for sure. Seems like sound advice for developing classroom activities using wikis - and also articulates a difference between blogging practices (where a blog as a whole can be collaboratively authored, but posts still tend to be single-authored) and wiki practices (where content is developed collaboratively).
i'm in haverford today for a social software workshop. and so is bush! (but not for my workshop)
Came across Aaron Campbell via Barbara's blog - interesting thoughts on blogs in edu
Scanning the BBC News web headlines at lunch, I came across a column called the Weblog Watch. This seems to be a rather popular item in the mainstream media lately - Time Magazine has the Blogwatch - and since I'm interested in mass media representation of bloggers, I thought I'd check it out. Turns out that according to this British journalist,
since the presidential campaign, "blogs" is sometimes
used as a shorthand for the right-wing community that wreaked havoc on
John Kerry.
????
He goes on to concede that " It's a neat story: the mainstream media is "liberal" and
the independent bloggers are "conservative", but these flimsy labels
peel off easily." Yeah, it's a neat story all right - first-class fiction. I've written before how blogs tend to get boiled down to either being vehicles for independent political commentary, or online journals (that are full of useless crap, is the usual insinuation), so the angle that the reporter is using isn't totally off-base in that regard. But wow - blogs = right wing? That's news to me!
