Some time back a wiki was created for educators that use Twitter to add their Twitter accounts. I wish I could remember the addresss of the site…

Meanwhile…

Directory of eLearning Professionals on Twitter

OZ/NZ Educators

The value of Twitter for Educators

A Professor’s tips for using Twitter

If anyone has a link to that wiki full of educator’s Twitter accounts I would be happy to receive it. I remember at the time when I added my name I interfered with editing performed by Sue Waters.

Web 2.0 technologies. The read-write web. Call them what you will.  The nomenclature can be so constraining at times. I ramble. What can these technologies do?

They can enable, empower, engage and entertain. Educate too.

People connected with any web enabled device need not be consumers but producers. They can be…

• active as opposed to passive
• performing in contrast to observing
• a part as opposed to apart
• participants and not observers

The Internet facilitated a single dimensional flow of knowledge. It still does for many. From us to them [There is meaning and relevance there somewhere ~ read on]. The flow is also multi-dimensional. People have the opportunity to share their knowledge, ideas, opinions and experiences. What will be the consequences of these new flows? Intended and unintended?

The wisdom of the crowds has been well documented. Here too. The crowd or the mob can combine to act in different ways. Product purchases. Generating happiness. Generating positive change. The Twitter exchanges during the recent presidential and vice-presidential debates in the USA were like a ticker-tape stream of consciousness flow of the American psyche. At least part of it. We could read what many disparate people were thinking, in real time. People we do not know. For many, people far away.

In Singapore, for example, communities work together to achieve change. The community is enabled and connected ~ digital ties, human blood. Here for example: ICCS blog. ToddyCats. A living community that is nurtured and enabled, working together. The net facilitates. People act together. This is good.

The crowd. Will the crowd become overarching? What will happen to individuality? Will our individuality be buried underneath this new world of connectivity? Will the crowd dominate individuality? What if one’s voice is not heard? A voice not heard amidst the clamour of the crowd. Will the crowd create a monoculture? A series of monocultures, one after the other?

I wonder will the push and pull of the crowd crush creativity? Will the crowd determine what is creative and what is not? I feel perplexed. What if you loathe the crowd yet you depend upon it? What if you loathe the crowd yet you cannot function without it? What would that feel like?

Why do people participate in the crowd? A sense of responsibility? Obligation? Paranoia? Peer pressure? The tide? Sink or swim?

This is part 1 in a series of posts of thoughts that crossed my mind last night.

Three questions for my sage fellow travelers. Do you possess the answers to these three questions? I would feel happy to read your views.

1. How can teachers and students exploit Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning?

2. How will these new technologies benefit educators with respect to their teaching?

3. How will these new technologies benefit students with respect to their learning?

To begin I feel that students learn best when they are teaching. Is exploit the right term to use in the first question. Which measures do we apply? Myself and other teachers will be sharing these questions tomorrow. Your enlightened thoughts would be most welcome.  I am putting my ideas together. More to come during the day…

Singaporean bloggers have been very hard at work in recent weeks and in particular this weekend.

First of all a group of Singaporean bloggers, known collectively as the ‘media socialists‘ have been quite busy. They are not ‘socialists’ per se. They are a group of academics, civil servants, consultants and designers who are passionate and actively involved in social media, or what many people call “new media”. A group of the media socialists devoted a rather busy week creating a response, via a collaborative wiki, to the recent AIMS Consultation Paper advising the Singaporean government on engaging citizens through new media.

This form of collaboration and selfless sharing demonstrates how blogging and social media can be utilised to connect with governments and organisations. Individuals can come together collectively to achieve outcomes that would have been so difficult for an individual. Another group of Singaporean bloggers have also contributed to the debate. You can read all about the work of the media socialists here. I am heartened by the knowledge that the media socialists have included myself in their ranks due to my connections with the island state and personal friendships with a number of the actual bloggers.

I have been keeping tabs on their work via blogger extraordinaire, Kevin Lim. Now, who is Kevin Lim? He is a visionary, a researcher, a student and as he points out on his blog Kevin  “…is currently pursuing his doctoral degree in Communication at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Dabbling for both pragmatic and play, he seeks an ideal interplay between online and offline life, through social networking, blogging and lifecasting. He openly wishes to become a “social cyborg”, where the meshing of human and networking technology would allow one’s presence to be augmented by the minds of many.”

On a separate front my friend Siva has been co-ordinating the International Coastal Cleanup Singapore. This involves 3000 volunteers. Blogging and connectedness play a crucial role in harnessing the volunteers, gathering data and publishing results. I remember back in 2001 and 2002 results were being published within minutes of the cleanup conclusion. Tonnes of rubbish are cleared away from beaches and mangroves during the cleanup.

Siva provides updates via his blog and the ICCS blog. The cleanup is happening today, as I type, and already several updates have been posted to the blog.

Siva uses blogging and the net to bring together students, teachers, and members of the community to work on environmental and other projects that benefit the people of Singapore. Siva has been using blogs as a tool to augment his research and teaching for at least five years now. Here are some of his blogs, those of his students and blogs that he contributes towards.

The Otterman ~ original blog
The Otterman ~ current blog
Habitat News
The Biology Refugia
LSM2351 Ecology and Environmental Processes
LSM1103 Biodiversity
LSM3261 Life Form and Function
LSM1301 Animal Behaviour
The Biodiversity Crew at NUS
The Pursuit of Anurans
Biodiversity of Insects at Kent Ridge
Fauna of Kent Ridge
Johora singaporensis
Frogs in Singapore
Horseshoe Crabs of Kranji
ToddyCats
Mangrove Shrimps of Kranji
Pasir Panjang Heritage
Singapore Heritage Blog

I would not be surprised that if one looked up the term blog in an illustrated dictionary there would be photographs of Siva and Kevin within the text of the definition. They are the definitive bloggers.

Most of all they achieve measurable outputs. They are productive. They assist the community. I wish I was in Singapore right now.

Conducted a blogging and edublogs workshop at St Vincent’s College in Potts Point, Sydney at the conclusion of the school day. Chris Morris, ICT Coordinator at the school, organised this workshop as part of a series of workshops that covered such areas as Second Life, Wikis, RSS feeds, Google Reader and Flickr. It was an excellent opportunity for staff to explore all of these possibilities.

I had the pleasure to work with a most interested and receptive group of teachers. I shared with them the possibilities and realities of blogging with students. Management issues were covered yet I also pointed out the advantages in simply allowing students to open their own edublog accounts and then to invite their own teacher to be co-author. Empowerment and responsibility.

The pro and cons of different types of blogs were raised during the workshop. My main message was to take small steps and gradually evolve from that point. The workshop was most enjoyable. I was most impressed with the staff, the students and the school.

While waiting for the Edublogs site to happen at various points during the workshop I whipped open a couple of tabs on the Firefox browser and shared Compfight and Posterous with the teachers. One of the best things was the fact that I simply conducted the workshop using the presentation desktop computer in the computer lab. I did not use my MacBook. The portability, accessibility and cross-platforn nature of all these tools is simply useful.

An updated edublogs workshop document and related presentation can be downloaded from this page.