Keeping up with the decentralization conference at Docs.  Decentralization is how the tech industry will revitalize.  For example:  Decentralized power (new super efficient solar cells and hydrogen fuel cells to heat/power your home and power your car).  Decentralized publishing (Radio + P2P).  Decentralized bandwidth (Wifi mesh networks).  Decentralized micropower (quantum-nucleonics that power devices for 10 years +).  Decentralized computing (PCs).

What's the common thread?  Local control and ownership.  In a decentralized model, individuals can pick and choose how they interact with the grid (power, bandwidth, hosting provider, etc.).  For example:  if my ISP is giving me problems (ie. poor service that results in a dispute over payments), all I need to do is sign up with another one, point my weblog tool at it by changing the FTP settings, and select "publish all."  Easy.  They can't hold my weblog hostage for payment.  I own the data and the means of production.  It resides on a PC I own.  The same logic is true for the other forms of decentralization mentioned above.  The more ownership and control you have over the means of production, the less a grid player can exert leverage over you. 

[John Robb's Radio Weblog]

Excellent commentary that one can even bring to blogs. For example, if I feel that the blog service or application is developing too slow or that company is not responsive to my market, be it education, or my personal needs of digitally expressing myself, why not save my content and upload it into another blog application or blog host. Maybe one of the factors in selecting a blog or blog service is if it provides easy export and import of my content onto another hosted blog service or desktop application. Why should we be held hostage by our blog applcation or blog hosted service?
2:05:38 PM  #  comment []

Adventures in content management. A while back I set up a category for tracking my InfoWorld columns and stories. It's a handy feature of Radio (and of other blogging tools, such as Movable Type) -- just pick your category names, and tag one or more of these names onto an item to assign it to one or more categories. As always, though, this little exercise in content management wound up being trickier than I'd planned. ... [Jon's Radio]

Join the club!
1:55:21 PM  #  comment []

Planned use of Weblogs for the Long Haul My best memories in the teaching profession was when our staff worked in pods or small collaborative work groups. The planning and collaboration that happened months before the school year started was invaluable. Brainstorming, negotiating and writing out a thematic plan, helped us see the big picture for the new school year, but also helped give meaning to the parts of the plan. Having a working plan actually gave us more freedom to be flexible enough to accentuate what was working and changing or deleting what seemed to be not working for the students. Since our projects were student centered and problem based, the project even went to places that we did not forsee, such as students making a presentation before the Chicago Planning Commission on developing a park along a stretch of the Chicago River nearby that had become a garbage dump. These were elementary school children working on authentic problems in the community and got the land cleaned up. It is easy now to look back and see the possiblities of using blogs for student and teacher publication of that process that was just education as it should be. I will take that experience and propose apply that to integrating weblogs in the curriculum. Under optimum circumstances weblogs should be woven into the curriculum before school starts to help ensure the odds of successful implementation. One needs not only to know the basics of the technology but be an evangelist in the Guy Kawasaki mold (author of Rules for Revloutionaries). Even though there are never guarantees, thoughtful planning cannot hurt. Integrating weblogs into the curriculum on a school wide scale, for sure means an extended period of adoption and implies administrative support. What I have written is nothing new. So if we begin integrating weblogs into curriculum projects during the school year, that implies some extended planning time for technologists or media support people with classroom teachers. Administration can support pilot projects with providing either paid planning time after school or pay for substitutes to provide full or half day(s) released planning time. In short, plan before the school year begins and seek extended planning time during the school year. If you begin mid year, do not get discouraged. Working with teachers in an urban setting, depending on any number of variables, you may find that they sometimes just feel they are keeping their heads above water. Since time is precious to teachers, they need to see how that will improve student learning, do not bother. So that even though you build it and show it, they may not jump on board today but maybe fomorrow if you find the hook! Remember that in education, we have had so many federal and state mandated initiatives or "fads" , that politicians or thier hacks in departments of education across the nation push up on educators, that teacher's become skeptical of anything new. So, keep one eye on the present implementation and one on planning for the next school year.
7:03:32 AM  #  comment []