I love the blogosphere, blows me away, so many wonderful things going on you hardly have time to blink… here are just a few of them:

Amy says “Contrary to popular opinion, the internet is not really about technology. It’s about people, specifically how people communicate.” She goes on to list, wonderfully, the consequent vermin: porcupines, trolls, zealots, skewers, leeches and burns. Fantastic stuff, a must read if you’re into online community!

Via Steven, comes a cracking new Educause article “Social Software and the Future of Conferences – Right Now“… fellow blogtalkers are you reading, this is one for the printer queue (or pool room?)

Via Alan, check out the 404 Research lab… need to do something about mine so this is a good place to start :D

Rebecca and Sharon are thinking about the communicational dynamics and ethical implications of blogs… wish I had more time today to get into that. But as I’ve left my laptop at home (gasp!) am on a random desktop… trying out, in a way my ‘will I survive if my laptop goes kerplunk’ plan …I have to do stuff like check my own spelling… which takes time!

From Lindon:

“So “Tags” are it are they, OK then I think I’ll start tagging all my posts, I’m taging this one with “thing”, the next with “yellow”, then one with “and’ then one with “but”…etc etc infinitum. Until of course we have a folksonomy that covers every word in the language and what will we have made? – Huh – language as a descriptor for content….which it already is no? – Thus tags = possible giant waste of time…”

Heh, I think that you should have tagged that post, um, with something to do with Tags, oh yes, you did, what a surprise you used language to describe what you were writing about!!! ;D

A funny thing that’s been rattling around in my head (as these things do) is Stephen’s comment on Scott’s new blog:

“we’re still in the heady first few days of his blog where every topic is new (it gets harder in the second year, when you realize you made the same point before, somewhere)” [OLDaily]

Maybe the reason this resonates is I was, thanks to a request for some diagrams it turns out I didn’t do anyway, poking round my old Radio weblog the other day and came across a few interesting posts from 2003, see if any of them sound familiar:

A Weblog Learning Management System – part 1
A Weblog Learning Management System – part 2
Weblog LMS Diagram (.pdf)

But I think that that’s OK, I’m a person rather than a newspaper or publication (I guess OLDaily is more of a publication?) and we tend to repeat ourselves, go over the same ideas, contradict ourselves to the nth degree and generally make arses of ourselves… I guess where this resonates is that when I started doing this sort of stuff I was hopelessly self-conscious (still am a fair bit ;o) and I reckon that part of finding your own voice in blogging is getting over that, telling the same crummy jokes and stories over and over again, rescribbling the same diagrams and having the same conversations over and over again.. until you figure out what you’re actually talking about!

Even more amusing was a Google images search that I did on ‘blog’ a few days back, and on the first page… seen anything similar to this before :o)

Will: “This is pure passion for new ideas, for stimulated thought, for dreaming. It is in many ways intoxicating and exhausting. But I really feel like for the first time in my life, I’m getting the most out of my brain.”

Now that is fascinating (and also very nice :O) Cleve has blogged his experience of this mornings presentation and puts what I’m saying across just as well / better than I did I think!

Amazing stuff listening to peoples thoughts, I always figured I’d rather blog a presentation than be blogged but this is v. valuable.

Update: Crikey, there’s a summary here and another one here and Aaron talking about it here.

In particular Aaron asks:

“I can easily see how the structure of learning environments will influence the patterns of communicative behaviour, but to what extent does that change in outward behaviour affect one’s inner mindset?…

I don’t think that the learning environment – the technology, that is – is enough. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the way educators and administrators view the institutions of which they are a part, followed by direct action to change them. Perhaps this is too much to ask?…”

Which is well worth thinking about more.

BTW, this is excellent, it’s just like getting instant feedback and developing ideas… wow x2

Our third and final Blogtalk invited speaker is Mark Bernstein, the designer of Tinderbox!!!!!!

Check here for more details.

So are we happy that we’ve got Thomas Burg, Rebecca Blood and Mark Bernstein as invited speakers… you’d better bloody believe it!

And we’re not done yet, we’re hoping to be able to also deliver you a closing panel including some of the biggest and best names in progressive Australian technology and communications… watch this (or this) space.

(and remember there’s only 6 days to go to submit your abstract… come and join us, you won’t regret it… wait till I tell you where we’re having it and then you’ll REALLY want to come… this ‘aint going to be no suburban Sydney location…)

Lindon’s looking at making music again and wondering which software to use… wonder if he’s thought about becoming the first (?) podcasting musician?

Anything wrong with Audacity? ;o)

This one is worth storing, if just so that I can pull it up quickly.

Thanks to everyone who took part in the session this morning, especially to Aaron and Bee who are doing an amazing job with EVOnline.

You can find the slides for the presentation (which basically examines discussion boards and weblogs and their capacity to facilitate communities of inquiry through their communication dynamics) here. Each one has a .mp3 file which I pre-recorded (great way to prepare for a presentation!)

Unfortunately the comment / trackback system for WP pages fell over a bit here so I’m also posting the contents page here if you’d like to say ‘owt…

Introduction.mp3

— Communities of Inquiry

— Different Communication Environments

— Communities of Inquiry and Discussion Boards

— The weblog environment

— Weblogs in practice

— Communities of Inquiry and Weblogs

— Where to from here…

Tomorrow morning (or perhaps this afternoon for some of you!) I’ll be running a web-based presentation entitled: “Communication dynamics: Discussion boards, weblogs, wikis and the development of communities of inquiry in online learning environments”.. catchy eh :o)

Seriously though it should be a good opportunity for me to run through a revised version of my thinking in this area (should take ’bout 15 mins) and then for us to have a good chat about it… this is geared towards the EVOnline Course that Bee, Aaron and Graham are running (bless them!) but I think that the more people are there to discuss this the better for everyone so you’re welcome to drop by!

The session kicks off at 22:00GMT (that’s something like 12 – 4 in North America, here are the times) at the Webheads Alado site (go here and choose a name to login – no password required – BTW it’s at the bottom of the page… [Update: But first you have to click on ‘login information’ at the top!]

Maybe see ya there!