May, Spring, Rainy, Cold, and too much work

May is a cruel month this year. Spring is late and cold, it is a rainy fishing opener, and I have too much work to do. The only good thing about the cold and rainy weather is that it keeps me in the house and so I am getting work done. Being able to sit at home and search the Internet is great and although it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the information that is out there I am always astonished by the caliber of work people are sharing in the cyberworld.

Just joined a local social networking site(Mooseworks) created by Ken Graetz a Minnesota State Colleges and Universities colleague and just do not have time to socialize! I got a Mooseworks badge with my membership and will share it here. Once May winds down a bit I will come back here to learn more about what some of my favorite Minnesota eLeaders are up to.


Will need to catch up with the fast runners in Mooseworks, but in May I just plan to visit and read about what others are up to. I am working on a presentation about this blog for the eLearning Summit at Normandale "held every 2 years" this conference is an event we look forward to in Minnesota. I am looking forward to hearing Dr. Wesch as keynote.


View my page on MooseWorks


Powerpoint is everywhere and though people poke fun at its use and point out its misuse, I find that a visit to Slideshare every now and again allows me to look at some really fine examples of its use.

Two presentations that I admired this week included:

1. Death by Powerpoint (and how to avoid it)

2. Enhancing visual effects in Powerpoint presentations

Learned a new word this week, Ning.

MERLOT (MIC07) Keynote Day 3

The MERLOT Conferences and the ideas presented at them always provide me with plenty to reflect on once I get back home and to work. The MIC07 provided an interesting and eclectic mix of presenter and topics. Typically, MERLOT has three keynotes at a conference. One is future focused, a second is discipline focused, and the third usually has an applied focused.


The third keynote on the last day of the conference was very future focused. One of the most ambitious and “bleeding edge” presentations at this conference was given by Barbara “Bee” Dieu. A self-professed Webhead, blogger, wiki-maker,Second Lifer, and reader of Kerouac, if she appeared on the old What’s My Line TV Game Show the panel probably would not see this mature, soft-spoken, teaching professional as an experienced and relaxed inhabitant of cyberworlds and user of Web 2.0 .

Bee's presentation was broad in scope and had so much Web 2.0 stuff in it that it may have been too much to digest in such a short time frame. The MERLOT community is made up of technology saavy folks, but many of them watched, listened, and left this presentation a little woozy from ideas and technologies Bee demonstrated. Wikis, Second Life, Blogs, Webathons, ZOHO, Twitter, Flikr, and the like are not in the tool box of most educators right now. Just a quick look at the vocabulary from her wiki would send all but the most "bleeding edge" technology pioneers running for the online dictionary, google, kartoo, or wikipedia.


While Bee's presentation might have been a little "out there" for some in the audience, her bold demonstration and use of technology, social networking, Web 2.0 tools, and cyberworlds is a bit of a wake up call. Her presentation points to new ways in which the web and technology can be used in education. It was satisfying to listen to a woman present on new tools, worlds, and ideas on how to use and share technologies. Bee has friends around the world and presents on her work often. She is a woman technology leader and user to watch.

aephoneia and Danah Boyd's Research and Writing

Wow. Just got through reading Danah Boyd’s powerful response to all the posts and hype that her essay, Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace, received since June 24, 2007. aephoneia, was one of the first high quality and “bleeding edge” blogs I came across when I started my research. Wikipedia uses the verb risky to define bleeding edge, a term usually associated with new technology. Boyd's research centers on new technologies and how teens communicate on social networks such as MySpace, Facebook, and others. The topics she blogs on and researchs are new. No one understands or has a handle on it all yet, but Boyd is savvy. Her research, knowledge of teen social networks is out on the web and viewable by all. Her presentations and writings have been featured in NPR, Wired, MSNBC, USA Today, Newsweek , and The O'Reilly Factor. She has been profiled in The New York Times and in Financial Times .

Since her June 24, 2007 essay Boyd has been bombarded with what she calls "critiques". In a July 25, 2007 post, Responses to: "Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" she takes criticisms received and responds to them all in an even toned, scholarly manner ─even the ugly ones. Boyd’s response paper outlined how she works and writes, defined methodology terms, vocabulary used in her research, and she did not hedge when describing the ugliness of what some critics wrote, or how she felt what they wrote. Ouch, hard to read, but so well written and so eloquent I read to the end. It appears that she plans to keep blogging.

Awhile back another woman with high visibility in the blogoshpere, Kathy Sierra, posted on harassment and death threats that she was received online and quit blogging. Ellen Nakishima’s, (April, 2007) provocative article, on the darker side of women bloggers who"gain visibility in the blogosphere" detailed some of the ugliness of in the cyberworld and the sexual threats used to stifle some bloggers. It is worth going back to and reading. Other good articles related to Sierra's experience and cyberbullying are, PBS Teachers: Participate in Stop Cyberbullying Day and Is it time to crack down on the blogsphere?

Social Media Wiki

Social Media Wiki created by Social Communications group of Campbell-Ewald has an awesome graphic mapping online communities, I could not resist posting here today. Along with this visual you can find information on Web 2.0, avatars, blogs, Weblins, widgets, gaming and metaverses, and definitions. Did you know wiki is Hawaiian for fast? The Social Media Wiki was created in Wetpaint and there is an open invitation for folks to join in the conversation. Mosey through this site when you have some time. Although wiki is Hawaiian for fast, the information on this wiki may make you linger and spend more time than you intended. Lots of good reading and web sites to visit are located on this wiki.

Sifry: The State of the Blogosphere

Just found an excellent resource information on the state of the blogosphere. Sifry's State of the Live Web has data from October 2004 through April 2007. Lots of visuals for are provided and are freely available for use under a Creative Commons license. Users are asked to keep Technorati logos and links when charts and data are shared. Sifry's most up-to-date portrayal on growth of weblogs is as follows:

• 70 million weblogs
• About 120,000 new weblogs each day, or...
• 1.4 new blogs every second
• 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day
• Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December
• 1.5 million posts per day, or...
• 17 posts per second
• Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days
• 22 blogs among the top 100 blogs among the top 100 sources linked to in Q4 2006 - up from 12 in the prior quarter
• Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%
• English second at 33%
• Chinese third at 8%
• Italian fourth at 3%
• Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%
• English the most even in postings around-the-clock
• Tracking 230 million posts with tags or categories
• 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags
• 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February

I started this blog because I wondered, Where were the women bloggers?", but now as I learn more about social networking and blogging I wonder, where was I when people started blogging? While my adult children were telling me about MySpace and Facebook I was dismissing what they told me because when I did look at these social networking sites I saw much of it as juvenile, bawdy, and in poor taste. The sites did not hold my interest. What I did not know until I began to research women bloggers and blogging sites in general was just how informative and learning focused well-done blogs could be. While there is the not-so-good and seamy content, there is a wealth of well-done, well written, and education friendly writing going on about the topics I am interested in.

Who knew? Well it appears that since 2004 through 2006, a whole lot of people blogging knew.

Webheadsinaction.org; Global Webcastathon

Just received an email invitation to this happening. It's free, easy to register, great venue, and looks like it will be fun as well as educational. I registered to attend and will take in as much as I can when I can at the WIAOC 2007 WORLDBRIDGES WEBCASTATHON - MAY 17-MAY 20. The information below is copy/paste from my invitation.

Posts that contain Webcastathon per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

"Begins at 2200 GMT and wraps up at EdTechTalk 75 hours later.In between, there are 47 planned sessions, including keynote presentations by Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Etienne Wenger, Robin Good, Barbara Ganley, Teemu Leinonen, & Leigh Blackall. This is also likely to be an unprecedented unconferency very global gathering of educators and technologists who like to play with collaborative social media tools ... shouldbe fun. So, stop by when you can to check out some sessions and/or hang out in the virtual hallways. You can tune in from any Worldbridges site, but the real action will be at [http://webheadsinaction.org/].
A presentation schedule is at:
[http://www.webheadsinaction.org/wiaoc2007/Presentations]We will also try to bridge to a teleconference when possible. 1-712-451-6100, Access Code: 999374#"

The conference hasn't started yet, but there are lots of places to poke around, things to read, links to resources, and tutorials. This looks like a winning combination of people, places, and things!

Bebo in the News: Safer Social Networking

While reading Danah Boyd I found a great research site about youth and their learning and experiments with digital media. Boyd and others at Berkley are contributors to this current and readable website. This site on "ethonographic investigation of innovative knowledge cultures" titled, Digital Youth Research: Kids Informal Learning with Digital Media is impressive.

Dipped into several articles, but the one that engaged me and kept me there for awhile was on Bebo and information about the safety that this social networking provides for its users and parents of users. Bebo has a BlogSafety Forum that provides educational information on safe blogging and social networking. Bebo states that this safety blog is about " social networking about the social networks" (Bebo, 2007).

I read a lot about Facebook and MySpace, but had never heard of Bebo a social networking site ranked third most popular and the most sticky site in the in the world(Stoller, 2005). Also voted Peoples Voice by Webby and Best Social Networking site of 2006, Bebo recently appointed Joanna Shields Managing Director of Strategic Partnerships for Google EMEA, as President in its new London office.

Shields' 20-year work history includes senior management positions in several leading technology and internet companies. In her previous position at Google, she built syndication networks around the world and was instumental in developing partnerships with "some of the world's largest media and telecompanies (Gavin, 2007).

Am always pleased to learn new things when blogging and through my research this week found out about the world's third largest social networking system and Shields, a woman making the news as leader in the field of technology.