[George Siemens] June 12th, 2007
"...It's the change underlying these tools that I'm trying to emphasize. Forget blogs…think open dialogue. Forget wikis…think collaboration. Forget podcasts…think democracy of voice. Forget RSS/aggregation…think personal networks. Forget any of the tools…and think instead of the fundamental restructuring of how knowledge is created, disseminated, shared, and validated.
But to create real change, we need to move our conversation beyond simply the tools and our jargon. Parents understand the importance of preparing their children for tomorrow's world. They might not understand RSS, mashups, and blogs. Society understands the importance of a skilled workforce, of critical and creative thinkers. They may not understand wikis, podcasts, or user-created video or collaboratively written software. Unfortunately, where our aim should be about change, our sights are set on tools. And we wonder why we're not hitting the mark we desire. Perhaps our vision for change is still unsettled. What would success look like if we achieved it? What would classrooms look like? How would learning occur? We require a vision for change. It's reflected occasionally in classroom 2.0 or enterprise 2.0 projects. But the tool, not change centric, theme still arises. We may think we are talking about change, but our audience hears hype and complex jargon.
What is your vision for change?"
NB: I am tagging this post by George Siemens "Digital Promise" though it was published in 2007, because what he wrote then is very pertinent to the 2011 Digital Promise initiative.
"By Emil Protalinski | July 11, 2011, 10:40am PDT
Summary
Facebook has blocked another tool that lets you export your Facebook friends so you can import them elsewhere, like to Google+.
On Sunday July 10, 2011, Facebook blocked Open-Xchange's tool that lets Facebook users export their friends so that they can be imported into other products and services. As I reported last week, the tool used approved Facebook APIs and was not in violation of Facebook's Terms and Conditions, or at least that's what Open-Xchange's management thought. ..."
Catharine McNally - April 27, 2011
"...For those of you who are still on the fence about Twitter, let me assure you that it is not always full of self-promoters or useless babble. When Twitter is "done right" it is a powerful tool for people to tell you what's going on - in a "little d democratic" kind of way. These 140-character statements challenge one to be tactful in how they write, to be understood, interpreted, and actionable. Effectively, the character limit forces one to cut through the fluff to get to the point. For a deaf person like me, Twitter is really helpful. It's kind of a digital version of my friend who sat next to me at lunch in middle school, who I would (often) turn to and ask, "Hey, what's everyone laughing about?" That person-bless her heart-would re-iterate the joke for me concisely and quickly, and of course, I would then laugh when everyone else had stopped laughing. ..."