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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Thursday, April 01, 2004

IM RSS When RSS gets sorted with IM we'll be laughin' 2:17:16 PM    comments   trackback

The People vs. The Technology... Why I hate listservs continued 10RW has been quiet of late and that's a shame... Greg Ritter is, however, not and that's good :o) In a comment on my 'Why I hate Listservs' post Greg both refers to a powerful piece by him in 1995 thinking about relationships online and off  'The Word and The Body' [read it if you have a chance!] and has a crack at my arguments against listservs: "Let's look at what you're REALLY talking about. "Listservs are dominated by a few people," "listservs are clubs," "people hate email," "people don't know how to use listservs or email," and "it's incredibly unpersonal" are all comments about the PEOPLE involved in the listservs you frequent, not about the technology itself ... I think presuming causation between listserv technology and the personal behavior you describe is a gross error in logic ... it seems to me that you don't hate listservs as much as you hate the listserv communities you're involved in and the people in them. Maybe it's time to for you to find some new listserv communities to participate in!" And in some ways I agree (I also enjoyed Greg's confession to being, sometimes, a 'rhetorical bully' ;o) I think the main issue is about people, although not them... me. You see, I generally don't function well in large groups with setish-cultures and agendas... I've always been the grumbly one (dare I say subversive?)... I want to have my own voice and platform unencumbered by the context of the conversational space... and weblogs are punk, if you like it, hang around, if you don't, then don't... I'd enjoy greatly a small group, ground-level discussion list, I have done in the past, but how you get that (invitation only etc.) makes me groan when there's an organic group all around me, power laws regardless! For me, the technology is the medium is [often] the message is the behavior is the people. It has an enormous impact on what happens and how it happens as Greg pointed out. Put simply, I say that the technology we use to communicate impacts dramatically on the ways in which we communicate. And on that technology front... I do find 20-odd emails a-day annoying (breaks up my concentration span if nothing else), your inbox these days is much like your phone in 1995, it's a bit too much... and listservs do require a far greater degree of synchronicity in order to participate effectively (they're MUCH more linear, for example, than a blog conversation). So, can listservs work well? Yes, absolutely, they do and have done with certain groups in certain contexts and for certain purposes. But do listservs fit the needs of an swelling and increasingly diverse cohort of misery-guts like me? No, not at all, I want to have my own voice (you don't have your own voice on a listserv any more than you have your own voice in a seminar), find a professional community that listens because they want to (they're subscribed forgodsake!) and get away from this godforsaken email mediated discussion (although what to I'm still figuring out...) I prefer my community to find me ;o) 11:54:05 AM    comments   trackback

The Learning Marketplace: Meaning, Metadata and Content Syndication in the Learning Object Economy Ahhh... it just gets better :o) Here's Stephen's book in PDF: "The Learning Marketplace. Thanks to some generous contributions, my book is now available in PDF, Zipped HTML format, Postscript, and PDB for the Palm OS. Still no audio version. ;) By Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web, March 31, 2004"  [OLDaily] 9:33:20 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)


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