I moved from Blogger to my own WordPress implementation some years ago. However, Blogger has continued to improve and offers sophisticated features. This seems to happen – I move to something new and the old service morphs into something more powerful. I guess this is the nature of supported online services. This post from Technologizer describes some of the most recent innovations.
Tech and Learning is offering a multi-part series on web tools (100 tools to enhance collaboration). The first installment is now available. If one wanted to get into the mindset of exploring and explaining new tools, this could be a never-ending commitment. I have mixed feelings about this abundance. On one hand I think innovation is great and the competition it creates for attention drives advances. On the other hand, I think tech-committed educators can easily waste too much time looking for the next new thing. One of my recent “themes” has been efficiency and I think we lose instructional efficiency when we and our students are constantly learning about new tools rather than using new tools to learn (note the clever turn of a phrase). We need more ideas and examples more than we need more tools. How about 100 new ideas for the use of a blog, wiki, or whatever in the classroom. A much tougher challenge, but a much more useful endeavor.
I draw a personal parallel between this situation and one I find myself facing as an administrator. Research productivity is expected of the faculty I work with, but there are different kinds of research. Survey studies and laboratory studies are easier than intervention studies to implement and possibly easier to publish. This becomes an issue when considering recognition and merit advances. The advancement of science aside, benefit to the public occurs when knowledge can be put into practice. I have a personal bias toward application and always feel like recommending to some that they have gathered enough descriptive data or conducted enough laboratory research and it might now be time to see if their findings might improve something for someone.
In both cases, it is easy to get caught up in part of the process and not take responsibility for seeing the process through to some attempt at a productive conclusion. At least, we ought to consider what has been accomplished by our endeavors.
The tea party thing was cute – interesting label and lots of yelling. Now, it is time to focus on services for all – protesting educational cuts and misguided priorities.
CNN (later) – protestors arrested
This story from Reuters quotes an ATT executive as indicating that most will likely use the iPad via wifi. I agree (or at least hope so since ATT can’t seem to find North Dakota). The article offers additional comments on net neutrality and improvement in broadband access.
My advice: take your money out of ATT and invest in coffee shops.
Gizmoto offers a comparison between what they think are the actual costs of providing a book and an ebook. My experience in authoring textbooks has been that there are more costs than this. Products I have been associated with include heaving editing (someone who works closely with the author in “smoothing” the final product”, media (e.g., fees to photographers and graphic artists), lawyers (e.g., securing copyright releases for embedded images and other protected materials), and fees to external reviewers at several stages of the development process (money paid to course instructors to offer feedback to be considered by the author and editor). I would think the cumulative value of these services would be equal for both traditional and ebooks, but my point is that the costs listed here underestimate what goes into a product for the academic market. Of course, these costs do include the sales force that visit your office or provide access at national conferences or all of those free copies sent to instructors.
Hmm – similar analysis from the NYTimes.
I just read that picnik (the online image editing software) has been purchased by Google. What makes this confusing is that picnik is the image editing software you access when working within Flickr and Flickr is owned by Yahoo!. Google owns Picasa which has free desktop image editing and storage software that links with Picasa online. So, why did Google need picnik and what happens to picnik availability through Flickr?
