If I was Dave Winer I’d say “bing” or something like that. But I’m not so I’ll just say hurrah Stigmergic “first they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win” Web posts a great run-down on adding enclosures to WP… Am currently enjoying the latest D’Arcy podcast (funky intro BTW)… lordy, at this rate I may start doing ’em meself ;O)

I totally agree with you D’Arcy that we should be making the most of our f2f time… but sometimes taking notes is a good way to use that time and people like, ahem, me just don’t tend to do that in any depth at home (unless we really want to :O)

And on the Drupal front, I agree that the URLS are pants, although I reckon that they need to look at the fundamental flexibility of design / customisation of the blogging spaces first / at the same time.

Still if you fancy a bit of collaboration on that front I’d be MORE than happy, come and have a play around in the incsub association to see how it could be done (and for some notes on other drupalisms like Books).

Seems like Bloglines is having some trouble with Manila RSS feeds, Anne Davis having experienced a similar fate to Seb who disappeared of my radar a bit back only to pop up in a pubsub alive and kicking (thank god I have vanity feeds eh :O)

So, if, like me, you’re a blogliner (and I hope and pray that the hint at Bloglines becoming a ‘pay-for-service’ provider in Derek’s recent presentation notes), grab hold of the old/new Seblogging feed today… again!

[Update… see comments… Bloglines won’t be charging at any point in the future for what they offer now… which is good by me :o]

Scott comes up with some interesting possibilities for Lamb-esque presentation without the costs of Breeze.

The open office solutions sounds like a good possibility, am very impressed (but unsurprised) by the quality and breadth of Robin Good’s exploration of PowerPoint to Flash tools and it seems to be the case that, realistically, Flash is the only way to go here (for the synched, self-presenting presentation).

A note of caution on the PowerPoint front though, while it is possible to very very simply record a webcam / audio commentary to your slides it is only (as far as I can tell) IE compliant and even then spectacularly unreliable over the web (off a CD might be better!).

Here’s a proposal I’ve just submitted for The Radio Conference 2005 (here in Melbourne) :

“Fireside chats come of age: From FDR to podcasts

James Farmer & John Carmichael

In 1994 John Carmichael pioneered the use of voice recordings in distance education through pushing the boundaries of his University’s voice mail system (Carmichael, 1995). He used these ‘narrowcasts’ to minimise the isolation felt by distance students and counter any perceived disadvantages they felt compared to on-campus students studying the same subject. He referred to these broadcasts as intentionally ‘homely rather than slick’ and was inspired by President Franklin Roosevelt’s “folksy” use of the then still new medium of radio to deliver what came to be called fireside chats. The response to this innovative use of the Voicemail system was overwhelmingly positive.

In 2004, after experimenting with audio streaming lectures, Carmichael conceived of providing similar audio recordings, for his learners online. The intention is that these “fireside chats” would seek to cover topical and collateral material, convey the teacher’s enthusiasm for the subject and enhance a sense of student connectedness that would extend to students suggesting matters they wanted covered in the chats. Working with education designer and weblogger James Farmer, he has taken the concept of the ‘fireside chat’ broadcast into the digital age by developing a system which allows him to post audio recordings to a weblog environment, annotating and allowing interaction on their subject matter. These broadcasts also take the form of ‘podcasts’ as the webfeed generated through the technology allows users to aggregate the audio recordings to their .mp3 players (often ipods, hence the name) in the same way that a user might download email.

This paper reports on the thinking behind and cyclical development of the ‘fireside chat’ approach from it’s origins to the telephone system and to broadcast through weblogs and aggregation. It describes the approaches and technology involved, the pedagogical rationale and the possibilities for audio Internet broadcasting in a wider sense. In doing so it examines the development of radio as an educational tool and offers some perspectives on the future possibilities of the use of radio in a decentralised technologically advanced world where every teacher has their own frequency.

Carmichael, J. (1995) Voice mail and the telephone: A new support strategy in the teaching of law by distance education. Distance Education, 16(1)”

I, like Aaron, was impressed by Talking Communities at the GLD, who despite looking tacky as worked very very well. It confuses me that there doesn’t seem to be any audio / text open source conferencing systems out there, or am I missing something?

Really should mention George’s latest article Learning Management Systems: The wrong place to start learning. Would love to go on about and use this to springboard off but am a bit rushed and WikiRadio has just given me some serious presentation anxiety ;o) Better get my ASCILITE stuff sorted straightaway!

A couple of central quotes from the article:

“Only recently (and in limited ways) have LMS vendors started extending tools and offerings beyond simple content sequencing and discussion forums”

“Large, centralized, mono-culture tools limit options. Diversity in tools and choices are vital to learners and learning ecology”

& Personally I’ll go for the “walk away from LMS’ altogether and develop an alternative based on decentralized, learner-in-control, piece-it-together tools” option. There’s so much money and passion in education technology that there has to be an opportunity! Anyone for a coalition?

On the conference front all my presentations and the workshop out of the way by 2PM on the Monday… not bad! Anybody in Perth fancy some drinks Monday night?

The hits keep coming, Brian Lamb’s WikiRadio Presentation. He’s “tingling with wikicitement” Absolutely ace! How the heck do I do this without Breeze… I want to want to wants to… doubt if I could make it this good though.

“You are about as funny as a flat tyre on an ambulance” “We wanna be free to do what we wanna do”

Love the phone ins too… the three amigos keep going… this has got to be the best recorded virtual presentation I’ve ever seen. Period. A must see.

Have only been able to get online for about 30 seconds today so haven’t had the chance to read much but one thing I have read struck a serious chord on the awards front. Scott commented that:

“on the one hand, it’s great to recognize excellence and all of the hard work some folks have put in…. on the other hand, this feels somewhat antithetical to the sense of collaborative community that some feel is emerging through the blogosphere… The potential for harm is greater than the potential for good in this sort of thing. There are plenty other ways to indicate what you like in the blogosphere” [edtechpost]

Which pinpoints some of my concerns about the Eddies.

I guess ‘awards’ can be many different things. As Scott says at their best they are ways of acknowledging what people do and can be a celebration of and a moment of identification as a community. They can be a way of introducing people to new things in the area (I’ve already found a ton of great stuff from the limited activity so far!), a way of developing an identity as a group and in that conferring value that might otherwise not have been placed on it (by the outside) and a great ‘coming together’ of people with similar backgrounds / interests / beliefs or whatever.

But at their worst it’s much much worse… they can be moments of self-glorification, they can espouse the most unfortunate aspects of the meritocracy that Scott mentions (the bits where by being in the ‘top’ [small]% confers upon you a certain moral goodness and the rest can be thoroughly depressed about their non-inclusion or achievement… dare I say suffer from status anxiety). They can indeed be about reinforcing “their meatspace connections, status and networks”. (I think Jill also commented that results would surely just be discipline based). They can turn out to be an awful lot of bullshit.

So what to do, I’m not sure, which is I guess why I’m writing this here. Something in me feels that this is good, that we could really do with something that acknowledges the amazing hard work (without fiscal reward) that people put into this and the benefit it brings to us all and that this can help us define ourselves as a community in a ‘public’ sense (I believe, quite genuinely, that the vast vast majority of people in education see blogs as little more than a novel waste of time / ego massage, and think that some definition of the community can’t hurt in this???? Maybe?)

Hmmmmm…

Personally, while many aspects of this and it’s potential fills me with concerns, I think that the feeling that it could be good and the challenges involved in this are enough to make it worthwhile. So I’m going to go ahead and keep it going (if anyone else is interested in joining in). BUT I think that a lot of the stuff I did yesterday and a lot of my initial enthusiasm seems, on reflection, to be a kind of instinctual / kiddish response… a lot of which follows the pre-set and very established ideas in my head about exactly ‘how’ an awards thing works – which basically come from mass media. Which isn’t good. Need to put of some rationalistic glasses and take a step back.

So in doing that I think that:

-The idea of ‘one nomination’ per category is absolute arse, I mean I wanted to nominate a ton when I saw Alex’s initial posting so why the hell am I saying “You can only nominate one” and who the hell am I to say that anyway. I think that you should be able to nominate as many people as you want.

-The limited categories are also fairly rubbish, people should be able to nominate new categories, if you suggest one I’ll put it up.

-When it comes to voting I think people should be able to vote for everyone in a particular category if they want to, or 3 of them or one of one of them or whatever

-I think there should be the ability to ‘OPML’ nominate, that is to share our webfeed reading lists and for those blogs to be officially recorded as a kind of edublog universe by edubloggers… or something like that. Not to replace the regular nominations but as an equally valuable resource and definition. I know Dave Winer did Share your OPML… maybe something like that. Small problem is that I have no idea on earth about how to do that!

But most importantly I think that I shouldn’t do any of these until and unless the people who matter / care ;o) have a chance to tell what they think about all of this.

So what do you reckon?

So… following Alex’s suggestion, my reaction and Josie’s thoughts we have the 2004 Edublog Awards!

Nominations are open from now until Friday 3rd, previous nominations made at Alex’s site will be transferred to the ‘Overall’ categories. You can nominate anonymously if you wish but only one nomination per category please.

After this voting will open and there will be a popular choice winner and an editorial choice winner for each category. I guess the polls will probably be open for a week or so.

Also, please consider supporting the awards by offering as an incentive a small prize for a category of your choice, for your generosity you will get sponsorship linkage and great karma :o)

Me, I’ve always hated ranking competitions, and IMO this isn’t one of them, it’s a fun way of giving a pat on the back to all the great edubloggers out there. So please do skip over now and leave your nominations.

[BTW feel free to tracckback your nominations if you like]

Alex links to a heap of sites on writing Manifestos:

* How to write a manifesto
* Another manifesto assignment with links to some more notorious ones
* A manifesto-writing tutorial (follow at own risk)
* The Scottish Parliament has some ideas on manifesto writing, too: pdf

Have to say I was tempted by the “Submit” option at the bottom of the excellent ChangeThis manifestos that have been going around of late. They may be .pdf but I really really like them.

I guess the ‘only’ issue (besides the fact that I can’t write for toffee compared to the authors they have :o) is that it would probably be looked on, in terms of publications, as even more useless than keeping a weblog (I can hear the ‘pah’, ‘manifestos’ as I type :o).