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MySpace, Facebook, Xanga, LiveJournal…blogs, social networking… "What does this all mean?” parents wonder. “And do I really need to learn about this?”The answer to the second question above is YES! Blogging sites are becoming increasingly popular with teenagers, and there are risks parents need to be aware of.

For a new generation of well-wired activists in the Washington region, it's not enough to speak at Parent-Teacher Association or late-night school board meetings. They are going head-to-head with superintendents through e-mail blitzes, social networking Web sites, online petitions, partnerships with business and student groups, and research that mines a mountain of electronic data on school performance.

School districts in Florida and Alaska have been the latest to initiate Twitter accounts to keep students, parents, and the public updated with news and information about their schools. Broward County Public Schools in Ft. Lauderdale and Anchorage School District have both joined the social networking and messaging site to post updates, called "tweets," on their Twitter home pages. Subscribers can be informed about new tweets through text messages, RSS feeds, and third-party applications.

In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free on PCs were now accessible on mobile devices like the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1.

“We are excited to make Kindle books available on a range of mobile phones,” said Drew Herdener, a spokesman for Amazon. “We are working on that now.”

Unlike the version of Google Book Search for PCs, which displays scanned images of book pages, the mobile version simply displays text, allowing users to download printed material more quickly over wireless networks.

In a move that could bolster the growing popularity of e-books, Google said Thursday that the 1.5 million public domain books it had scanned and made available free on PCs were now accessible on mobile devices like the iPhone and the T-Mobile G1.

“We are excited to make Kindle books available on a range of mobile phones,” said Drew Herdener, a spokesman for Amazon. “We are working on that now.”

Unlike the version of Google Book Search for PCs, which displays scanned images of book pages, the mobile version simply displays text, allowing users to download printed material more quickly over wireless networks.

I've started using Diigo. I haven't quite let go of Delicious but that's one of the good things about Diigo. It allows me to automatically export my bookmarks to Delicious so I don't need to use that service directly anymore. It lets me filter my tags and works directly with Blogger so I don't have to do a tortuous backdoor route to get my bookmarks into my blog. And the toolbar - I have to say that although it takes up more space than the the Delicious buttons... it's fab! You can highlight and make comments on pages and it interacts easily with some of the main social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook. It does the things you didn't realise you wanted Delicious to do, but now you've got a taste for those features, you don't really want to go back...

reference has been made in current writing to such skills as collaboration, networking, and critical thinking as direct benefits for students; however, teaching practitioners are becoming more sophisticated in recognizing levels of learning within those skill development areas.

What is not so obvious but is becoming apparent is that within the general concept of communication, students can develop these skills differently and for different purposes with increased use of Web 2.0 tools. So, while we explore how Web 2.0 tools can assist in direct connection between individuals in the learning process, we must also explore how those connections build and expand students' ability to communicate effectively in various contexts and for various purposes.

I think that the technology in projects like this is amazing, but it is meant to help us see beyond our current ideas of what technology is and can be. I think we need a new term that isn't so tied up with corporations and politics and which concentrates more on learning.

The word edtech concentrates too much on the technology and the teaching. I think we need something new. I'm thinking "edinfo" (education for an information based society) or "ednet" (education for a networked society) or even "create-ed" (education concentrating on creativity).

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