Who I Aggregate

Who Aggregates Me (and has shared their OPML)

& on Bloglines

Education
Technology

[alterego]
autounfocus
Bill Brandon
Blog.IT
Brooklyn BloggEd
cogdogblog
Collaborative Learning
Dale Pike
David Davies
Disruptive Technology
EdBlogger Praxis
EduResources
EdTechPost
EduBlog Insights
Edu-blog News
elearningpost
elearnspace
Headshift Moments
HomoLudens
Jim Flowers
Learning Circuits
Many 2 Many
Mark Roseman
Online Learning
open-education
Seblogging
Stephen Downes
teachnology
Ten Reasons Why
Tim Lauer
SiT
Weblogg-ed
X-Plana

Internet

A Networked World
headshift moments
mamamusings
tmt, tlt
McGee's Musings
Micah Alpern
Microdoc News
Powazek
Scripting News

Other

Connectivity
Library Stuff
Mathemagenic
Open Access News
Seb's Open Research
The Shifted Librarian
Unbound Spiral


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Tuesday, March 30, 2004

Bye bye XMLmania Sorry XMLmania but after a couple of weeks of getting FAR too many results, not enough detail with them and repeated results (over and over and over again) your entry in the news search news aggregator race has been terminated... it's a great idea though so am looking forward to improved versions! [oh, what the heck, I'll keep the elearning feed on just in case] 1:05:26 PM    comments   trackback

Trackback in plain English This is a good . plain . simple . straightforward description of trackback from Common Craft - Online Community Strategies... now I've linked to the item in the title of this post, linked to it in the message content... (I am not, never, going to ping anyone... this should be enough!) let's see if it works... 12:58:28 PM    comments   trackback

Why I hate listservs About four years ago I discovered listservs. Wow! I thought here's an amazing community, "sharing ideas and discussing like I've never seen before". I became an enthusiastic member of groups like TESLCA-L (computers in english language teaching), DOGME (a 'poor pedagogy' for elt), CETEFL (a v. interestingly structured elt group generated from around central europe). I remain a member of ITForum and DEOS-L (both higher education forums with ICT bents) but I'm beginning to think the time has come to cut loose. Perhaps the recent excellent contributions to these forums have spurred me into this, Downes vs. Eskow on DEOS-L or the item by Debby on using IM that I recently reposted from ITForum. First up, you'll note that I link above to Stephen's OLDaily Article and my reposting... not to the items as they originally appear on the listserv web archives (for example, here or here) because: You can't interact with them there The listserv archives don't connect the messages (there's no way I can ho around from part top part of the discussion) The listserv archives are ugly and devoid of context or personality Now, onto why, personally I've really turned my back on listservs since taking up blogging: Listservs are often dominated by a few people... they membership may be huge and the value of lurking may be established but the contributions are few Listservs are often 'clubs' of the worst kind. While I appreciated the 'you must wait two weeks before posting' rule to the CETEFL site it, in the end, excludes outside comment and anyone 'joining' the conversation is usually at a loss to how to contribute or what to say (because of the lack of semanticness within most listservs). People hate email, they hate it! They especially hate 'irrelevant' email... how how how often do I have to deal with people who act like they've been attacked by wild animals because they had to spend a couple of minutes filtering email or received the odd irrelevant message (yet these same individuals will happily sit down and watch an evening's TV laden with commercials ;o) Effective participation in listservs basically requires a degree of synchronous involvement. This can either be an interruption or virtually impossible if you, like me, are in a significantly different timezone People don't know how to use listservs or email... you just get heap upon heap of replies included, poorly referenced comments (i.e. not referring to what they commenting on), poorly formatted text (guilty!) and 'Yeh!' 'Please un-subscribe' messages. The only way to get rid of this is to have a moderated list and if you have that, well, then it all gets a bit silly, doesn't it! It's incredibly 'un-personal' - you don't know anything about me and my contribution sits (if you can access it at all) in a bizarre anonymous zone (CETEFL tried to get round this by asking you to always signature your location, the weather and anything else you wanted... what did Greg say about that kind of thing though, using a saw to hammer nails or something like that?) So, are the digests I receive (I have to digest because of time, timezones, number of messages etc.) worth keeping.... because they do allow a part of the world which doesn't want to / know how to get involved in blogs and rss to have a voice and discuss part of me thinks 'yes', but because of the frustration they cause, difficulties they present and relevance they don't have (it's not like I can select different topics or authors!) part of me thinks 'stuff it'... I'll get the relevant comments from repostings by Stephen et al. What do you reckon? [coming soon, probably, 'Why I love blogs and rss' :o)] 10:31:08 AM    comments   trackback

Nothing to do with the great civil rights leader, James Farmer, but here are some links that are:

Greensboro sit-ins
Reflections
Family (with pictures)


Stuff

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