Digital Citizenship Introduction: Out of Control A spectre is haunting the classroom, the spectre of change. Nearly a century of institutional forms, initiated at the height of the Industrial Era, will change irrevocably over the next decade. The change is already well underway, but this change is not being led by teachers, administrators, parents or politicians. Coming from the ground up, the true agents of change are the students within the educational system. Within just the last five years, both power and control have swung so quickly and so completely in their favor that it's all any of us can do to keep up. We live in an interregnum, between the shift in power and its full actualization: These wacky kids don't yet realize how powerful they are. This power shift does not have a single cause, nor could it be thwarted through any single change, to set the clock back to a more stable time. Instead, we are all participating in a broadly-based cultural transformation. The forces unleashed can not simply be dammed up; thus far they have swept aside every attempt to contain them. While some may be content to sit on the sidelines and wait until this cultural reorganization plays itself out, as educators you have no such luxury. Everything hits you first, and with full force. You are embedded within this change, as much so as this generation of students.

Social Software Introduction When the web was originally introduced to the world it was seen as a means of dramatically improving the way in which people communicate and socialise. Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, saw it as a place where people could share information through a series of hyperlinked pages. "In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute." (Tim Berners Lee, 2005) Unfortunately, although the web became an excellent repository of information, it became a place where only technically adept users and organisations would author content. The arrival of new services (often referred to as 'Web 2.0') has helped to remove many of the barriers preventing users from participating. Thanks to this wave of new services we have seen a massive rise in the uptake of web authoring and collaboration. The term this new wave of social activity has been given varies i.e. Social Software, Social Media and Social Computing. The key word is 'Social'! Social software tools, such as blogs, wikis and bookmark sharing services, offer exciting new ways to communicate and collaborate online. Their potential is already being keenly explored in teaching and learning, but they also offer considerable possibilities for research and the business and community engagement (BCE) sectors within higher and further education, since their flexibility and ease of use are particularly well-suited to collaboration across different sectors. As a recent article explained, "The advent of social software has brought a new culture of sharing, and this time around, people are willing to give up some of their knowledge..." (Tebbutt, 2007). Furthermore, social software's increased emphasis on multimedia, as well as text-based content, means that universities can find new ways of harnessing and making their knowledge and research accessible, thus creating what has been described as "a new form of acade

Resources on writing successful JISC bids (updated) Christina Smart Last modified 01 Jul, 2008 Published 01 Jul, 2008 * Send this page to somebody * Print this page It's that time of year again - bid writing time. Given the number of JISC calls for proposals that are out at the moment I thought I'd update an article I published last year with some links to resources on how to write a good bid.

From Participation to Creation This 2020 Forecast illuminates how we are shifting toward a culture of creation in which each of us has the opportunity - and the responsibility - to make our collective future. People are creating new selves, organizations, systems, societies, economies, and knowledge. We are seeing "educitizens" define their rights as learners and re-create the civic sphere. Networked artisans and ad hoc factories are democratizing manufacturing and catalyzing new local economies. These creators are highlighting the significance of cooperation and cross-cultural intelligence for citizenship and economic leadership. Furthermore, advances in neuroscience are creating new notions of performance and cognition and are reshaping discussions of social justice in learning. Communities are beginning to re-create themselves as resilient systems that respond to challenges by replenishing their vital resources and creating flexible, open, and adaptive infrastructures. Together, these forces are pushing us to create the future of learning as an ecosystem, in which we have yet to determine the role of educational institutions as we know them today.

A Radically Different World If you think our future will require better schools, you're wrong. The future of education calls for entirely new kinds of learning environments. If you think we will need better teachers, you're wrong. Tomorrow's learners will need guides who take on fundamentally different roles. As every dimension of our world evolves so rapidly, the education challenges of tomorrow will require solutions that go far beyond today's answers.

Digital Citizenship April 15th, 2009 Introduction: Out of Control A spectre is haunting the classroom, the spectre of change. Nearly a century of institutional forms, initiated at the height of the Industrial Era, will change irrevocably over the next decade. The change is already well underway, but this change is not being led by teachers, administrators, parents or politicians. Coming from the ground up, the true agents of change are the students within the educational system. Within just the last five years, both power and control have swung so quickly and so completely in their favor that it's all any of us can do to keep up. We live in an interregnum, between the shift in power and its full actualization: These wacky kids don't yet realize how powerful they are.

About FFFFOUND! FFFFOUND! is a web service that not only allows the users to post and share their favorite images found on the web, but also dynamically recommends each user's tastes and interests for an inspirational image-bookmarking experience!!

Acceptable Use What am I allowed to write on my blog? You can write about anything that you like on your blog - a great night out, an idea for a project, or your favourite food! However, you must bear in mind that the University has strict regulations about the use of computing facilities, which all users are required to accept before they are assigned a IT Services username. They cover authorisation, copyright and defamation. Disciplinary procedures are in place to deal with breaches of these regulations. The regulations incorporate conditions for acceptable use of the national academic IT network, JANET. There is also a code of conduct that covers use of the public work areas and connection to the campus data network. For more information see the Sunderland Blogs terms and conditions. Also note that your blog is not an official means of communication with the University or any member of the University. If you wish to discuss something with your tutor or the counselling service, for example, you must get in touch with them via email, telephone, or in person.

Terms and conditions, Warwick Blogs [c] A blog is a personal web page and the University is not responsible for any of the content contained in a blog, nor does the University assert any ownership over blog content. There may be some exceptions to this rule, where a blog is being written by University staff for some official purpose, but such exceptions will be individually identified and do not affect the general principle that responsibility and ownership of a blog rest with its author(s). Even though blogs are personal web pages, the university's acceptable use policy still applies. In particular, this implies that:-

Dubbed "the explainer" by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on society and culture. After two years studying the impact of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rain forest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on culture, technology, education, and information have been viewed by millions, translated in over ten languages, and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences worldwide. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Magazine Rave Award, the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology, and he was recently named an Emerging Explorer by National Geographic. He has also won several teaching awards, including the 2008 CASE/Carnegie U.S. Professor of the Year for Doctoral and Research Universities.

October 28, 2008 Kevin Kelly Q&A Filed under: Uncategorized - wadatripp @ 9:56 am Tags: Kevin Kelly, masie, Q&A On Collaboration Tools of the Future: Tools we have right now are minimal. Not good in sense that they dont structure the information we are generating. Info needs structure to be readable and parseable. We'll see tools come along where the structure of the information is parsed and shared. Example: Parsing out arguments. If you use the word "Pacifica" for my hometown, the machine should know that…because we know that. Tools today are not aware of semantic structure of an argument. Hello Semantic Web ; ) Awareness of structure and interactions of conversations. Meaning of what we are doing is better captured and parsed.

Design your best elearning yet Fun guide helps you create powerful elearning every time The Elearning Blueprint™ guides you through a streamlined approach to instructional design that helps you turn even the most boring content into lean, lively materials. Practical advice and lots of examples make it easy to choose the most powerful activities, organization, media, and writing style.

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Doodle MyDoodle: your polls at one glance Forgot password? · Create account How does Doodle work? 1. Create a poll. 2. Forward the link to the poll to the participants. 3. Follow online what the participants vote for. Free. No registration required.

Year 2009: Current Passions I spend most of my time these days writing my next book. It is about "what technology wants." I'm posting my thoughts in-progress on The Technium. I solicit comments there, which in turn influence my ideas. It is a wonderful way to craft a book. Writing in public is more work, but it makes the book better. The final draft is due to be delivered in October 2009, and will most likely be published by Viking/Penguin sometime in 2010. In order to finish this book on deadline, I've drastically cut down on travels and speaking, but when I do, I am represented by Monitor Talent. In addition to The Technium I post to 9 other blogs, detailed below. All these bits are consolidated into one uber-blog I call my Lifestream. Anything that I write on any blog will be posted in this stream. (Anything written by other authors on my blogs will not be posted here.) This is an easy way to keep up with what I am working on, thinking about, conjuring with. I am exploring Twitter. My handle is kevin2kelly in case you want to follow.

Join the world's first and largest social networking site dedicated to education and educational technology. Launched in 2004 and with over 20,000 members there is something in here for everyone interested in education.

T&L blogger Ryan Bretag recently sat down with his students and asked them about 21st-Century Learning strategies. Their suggestions are amazing. Read the whole piece here: http://www.techlearning.com/blogs.aspx?id=15776 Some snippets: Each discussion point started and ended with the focus on learning. For example, the students talked about creating a learning environment that was about learning not just memorization. To do this, they wanted to seek out partnerships both locally and globally in order to build connections that would foster a "learning to learn" movement where students are learning for learning, open to learning, and innovative. Clearly, textbooks were not fast enough nor diverse enough in their eyes. They longed for ways to interact with materials that were updated frequently and offered a wealth of perspectives. In fact, a good portion felt there was a need to move beyond the textbook because "information changes to rapidly" for textbooks to be the main source in the classroom. Along with this, information and resources needed to come in a variety of formats if the curriculum was going to remain progressive and current: narrative, fiction, digital, multimedia, and non-fiction.

Changing Nature of Physical Spaces Each Saturday I meet my friend and colleague, Scott McDonald, at a local coffee shop for an hour or so to discuss some emerging research topics we're working towards. Each week we are amazed at the number of people in Saint's sitting on their laptops working - most of them are doing browser based work like google docs, Facebook, and the like. It is rare that I see anyone not using the browser as the primary mode of work. That is a big change from even a year or so ago. The same can typically be observed if you walk onto our campus and into the student union building. You see table after table of students on laptops, living in their browsers - Facebook, gmail, and ANGEL seem to be what I see. Rarely do I observe work happening in "real" applications. I am guessing that will only get more common as the Blogs at PSU gain wider adoption for writing and students begin to weave google docs into their daily workflow.

Voices Carry I was feeling really restless early last week about our ability to run and manage new and emerging services in a World where change happens at a pace that is nearly out of control. I thought my post, Why Run a Service would be a signal that I've come to a conclusion that there are real reasons to try and keep up. I didn't honestly expect it to strike the chord it did, but when you ask people interesting questions you sometimes get more interesting questions in return that demand to be explored. Lots of killer conversation going on in the comments of that post … one particular thread emerged about how encouraging open writing and blogging can generate greater depth of connections within our community. That last word is the really important piece to us - how we work to engage our community to embrace these emergent trends is what we think will ultimately make what we do more interesting and important. The more they participate, the more we can contribute opportunities to change teaching and learning.

At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?