Techlearning blog

And speaking of medium, we should all revisit the “medium is the message” concept from Marshall McLuhan-it's important as ever. McLuhan would have been probably fascinated by YouTube (the medium), not so much by the content that is there, but with the sheer ability of the medium to potentially impact how we see ideas and events, and how the worldwide distribution and amplification of video (the message) could create change.

And speaking of messages, I’m not sure of the impact that Wes Fryer’s latest administrator video will have, but I was sure I was going to see a “Donate a Water Buffalo” website emerge after the recent Water Buffalo movie. I’m not aware of any, but it would have been a great way to make a social contribution and improve lives.

And speaking of social contributions, why not record for posterity the ‘wisdom’ engraved in living plants, a form of graffiti called, are you ready, vegafitti. That’s what the Flickr Group called Vegafitti did- and there are some pretty cool images there.

And speaking of images, be sure to read Alan Levine’s blog entitled Share, Link, Repeat, where he discusses the value of linking and sharing, with a great example of a German rock band using one of his images for a CD jacket. I’ve had a similar experience-a group of college students found one of my images on Flickr, and asked for permission to use it as downloadable wallpaper on their site about beer drinking at Wisconsin universities. (how appropriate for me)

And speaking of Wisconsin, did you see Will Richardson’s wiki page that supports his presentation to the Wisconsin State Reading Association? He thoughtfully provides a series of statements how the Web changes how we approach learning, knowledge, information and literacy, and classrooms and teaching-all in one place. Each statement is supported creatively with a great resource.

And speaking of resources, be sure to take a look at Steve Dembo’s Top Ten Free Web 2.0 sites for Educators. It’s a good list, and was built by Steve by inquiring with his network on what their recommendations would be. You would hope that most educators would by now be using at least several of these, including JumpCut for digital storytelling projects.

And speaking of digital storytelling, the Center for Digital Storytelling has created a new Web site called Storymapping.org. The site is about linking the process of digital storytelling with readily available mapping technologies to “share stories about the places that matter to us, and place our life stories in countless geographic contexts.” Think of it as a digital storytelling social network.

And speaking of social networks, Steve Hargadon has created a Ning site to support educational blogging. Ning enables anyone to create their own networking environment (think MySpace here), complete with a variety of Web 2.0 networking tools. Check out the Library 2.0 Ning site as an example. In 2007, it’s all about networking.

And speaking of networks, be sure to check out Twitter (via Steve Dembo and Tim Lauer). Basically, Twitter enables you tell everyone what you are doing, when you are doing it. It installs in the sidebar of your blog, takes input from IM, and get this, it produces an RSS feed. So, if you want to know what Steve Dembo is doing at any given moment, go ahead and get your own Personal Dembo Update (PDU).

I wonder if any of that information could be printed on a Pringles chip?