BlogTalk DU – consolidating learning points (part 2)

To continue the documentation of my quick fading memories containing my limited understanding …
2. Rebecca Blood’s Keynote
Did not manage to catch the title of her keynote if there is one. She placed in perspective our current day blogger as a publisher, who seeks to establish conversation with his/her reader. She sees our shift from “the age of specialist” towards “the age of amateur”. We are also shifting from the mode of “collaborative media” towards a world of “participatory media”. Bloggers are filtering and producing news with their own perspectives, and some of these can first be based on news by media and professional reporters.
Quoting the evolvement of wikipedia as an example, she further touched on her belief that everyone is interested in something, and given time, everyone can be good in something.
very forward looking keynote and place her belief on the world’s future development, if only i can catch more of the thoughts in words:| some other reflections by Michael Specht goes here.
3. Mark Bernstein on “Protecting the Blogosphere
A very inspiring presentation with a very global view of things, specifically the blogosphere. Blogs have different popularity and many of these exist in “the long tail”. Those in this ‘tail’ are least often referenced but their existence are just as important. Helping to keep them alive (by reading and linking) keeps the whole blogosphere alive.
I was unable to capture the full (high speed) train of thoughts but if you would like to ‘visit’ the presentation, listen to this podcast by Mark Bernstein himself. Also, check out this note on the presentation by Michael S.
4. Adrian Miles on ‘Media Rich versus Rich Media
This paper shares insight on the video prototypes that Adrian Miles is working on. By making videos granular, some affordances of blog (text-based) postings can be transferred into videos! This include clickable hyperlinks in the video itself, which is shown in his 1st prototype; The 2nd prototype allows 2 separate video streams to run side-by-side, with separate controls, allowing one video to ‘quote’ something in the other video; The 3rd prototype demonstrates the possiblity of placing commentaries after a clip hyperlinked from elsewhere has been played. In other words, video streams from different sources can be combined into one ‘screen’.
(to be continued …)

Blogger API

Developed back in 2001, this API allows users to hook up Blogger with other programs, interfaces, or environments. Will require some programming knowledge to get it going though 😐

Blogs as Exam

This posting off weblogg-ed resonate with one of the issues we have had when thinking of bringing blogging into classroom(s), yes, that of assessment.

Unless, of course the standardized exam is to identify and reflect upon the learning evidenced in the Weblog. It would be so simple, right? Take the goals and objectives of the class. Heck, for that matter, take the state standards and say to students “Here, find where you’ve done this in your Weblog. Reflect on what it took to learn it. If you can’t find evidence of the standard, reflect on why. What prevented you from reaching that goal or understanding that concept? What do you think you need at this point in order to master it?” – Will R.

If at a certain level (e.g. secondary? upper pri?) we can start introducing such thinking processes into our students’ learning, we are on the way to cultivate life-long learning. (Continual) assessment can be done based on blog postings and not just our usual one-off paper-and-pen(cil) tests.