A while back the PBS Frontline series ran a special entitled Digital Natives.  If, like me, you missed it you can view the program streamed off their web site.  And it is well worth the time.  It starts out sort of feeling like a standard case of adult worrying that the new generation is somehow headed to ruin because they don’t appreciate the values adults consider important.  But the program is more than that, so stick it out through the end.

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I get a fair amount of useful information off of my twitter feed — in fact it is often more informative than the RSS newsfeeds I follow.  But Twitter, Facebook, Yammer and the rest of the live streaming applications share a common problem.  If you want to refer back to something that floated by several days, weeks or months ago you are pretty much out of luck.   The noise factor is not an issue when monitoring the stream live.  I mean sure, there is plenty of noise, but it is easy enough to filter it out as the garbage floats by.  But try to dig through items from the past and the noise quickly overwhelms.  Anyone got an answer?  Or is do we just need to accept that we must leave the past behind — even if it is digital?

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I recently read Jaron Lanier‘s new book You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto.  It was a gift, and while I hadn’t heard anything about the book, it looked promising.  Lanier is an early internet pioneer counting early work with virtual reality (and coining the term itself) among his accomplishments.  And the basic premise of the book — essentially a contrarian view of the current state of internet culture — is interesting.  A regular practice of challenging common assumptions and examining choices made along the way is healthy.  Unfortunately Mr. Lanier’s arguments are poorly supported, and often based on inconsequential or incorrect assumptions.  I’m not going to recap his whole argument here — check out the linked articles instead.  But here are a couple of points inspired by ideas exposed in the book: Read the rest of this entry »

One of the new tech-memes is that the Internet brings a new information abundance, and businesses built on a model of information scarcity, like newspapers and universities, are doomed.  I think many aspects of the delivery of information and where learning takes place is changing — and it needs to given the many new opportunities offered by the internet.  But to predict that the experience of taking on-line courses replaces the in-person experience of participating in a learning community is foolish.  The experience of going to college is so much more than just the time spent in class.  Institutions that only focus on the traditional classroom are probably at risk.  But those that recognize and embrace the full value of a multifaceted learning community have a value that will endure, and will actually be enriched by the internet.

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Need to distribute a document?  Whether you are emailing it, adding it to a course site, or putting it on a web page, you should be using the Adobe Acrobat PDF (portable document format) file type.   Adobe gives their version of the viewer program for free, but charges for the full, professional version of Adobe Acrobat which allows the conversion of a document to the PDF format.  This professional version has a lot of powerful features, but if all you want to do is convert Word, Excel and other documents to the PDF format, the purchase cost is a little much.  One of these free alternatives may be just what you need:

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As a recent recipient of a Kindle birthday present I’m starting to like it.  It is really convenient and perfect for a rabid reader such as myself.  But is it ready for the classroom? Should we be moving wholesale to dump old fashioned print books and replace them with sexy new eReaders?  A couple of thoughts: Read the rest of this entry »