What is really free? and BlogBar

Well, in this post I think I am going to contradict myself... but that is OK.

1. What is really free? I wanted to write about something that has been bouncing around in my head that I would LOVE to have some COMMENTS on. A while ago I listened to a podcast where someone talked about online resources being FREE. The person (from EdTech Talk?, Voice Thread???) said that NOTHING is really free. Someone is paying for everything somehow. I think in Educational Technology we have a sense that every service provider should provide free services for Educators. We deserve it. We don't have money and it would really benefit the students.

But I think that whoever said it is correct: NOTHING is really free. Many of the services that we use and love were created by people who have a passion for education. They have given MANY volunteer hours into creating these things and some have spent tons of their own money including their own pensions to develop and advertise their service. It would be nice if all of them could count on making millions through advertising or selling to businesses, but that is never very clear and I am sure that some of them just lose lots of money.

This was brought to mind at NECC when there was a long discussion about Pearson at the Edubloggercon. I can totally understand how people do NOT want commercial interests taking part in the free exchange of ideas at edubloggercon. It contradicts the whole idea. However, someone is paying for the location that we are using, someone is paying for the Internet connections and the chairs and the air conditioning. I don't know if Pearson paid for any of it, but I think that there were corporate sponsors.

The same thing goes for NECC. I heard people talk about the fact that the conference is too commercial and complaining about the number of vendors on the floor and the excess they go to in order to get our attention. Well, there may be something to that, but how many of us would go to a boring presentation about their products? How many of us would spend our time (what little there is of it) on any vendor when there are experts in the field to listen to?

Funding for Education and Educational Technology is a HUGE national problem. I am not saying that we should capitulate and let corporate sponsors take over. We really need to be careful when dealing with them. However, when we ask for something for free we need to remember that it is costing someone something and be appreciative and willing to give back somehow.

2. And now for the contradiction: Before writing this I wanted to search my blog and make sure that I hadn't said the same thing just a few weeks ago. (I forget easily and am always surprised at what I have written in the past!). But now I have been writing for three years and there are a lot of words. I needed to search for the word FREE, but how? So, I searched for and found a free service called BlogBar (http://www.blogbar.org/) that created a widget that I could put onto my blog to do a search! It was free! I hope that by telling you about it I am doing a little something to give back.

NECC Thoughts

There are lots of reflections about the conference going onto blogs and they are great to read. I just thought I would add my short one. A story of an experience:

I came for the Edubloggercon on Saturday, which was great and got me thinking about a lot of things. My brain was already full and the conference was just starting! I was so glad to have Sunday to debrief and get ready for the "real" conference. One of the best times I had was spending the afternoon trying out some of the things that had "buzzed" during edubloggercon.

I decided to open up Twitter and to follow what was happening there on my OLPC. It worked! While I was reading Twits someone said that there was UStream of the Blogger's Cafe. I opened up my MacBook and went to the Ustream. Wow! I was twittering and watching a Ustream and participating in a chat there.

Normally, I would not even try to start something like this because I would not have time. It was GREAT to have that afternoon to just DO some of what had been talked about.

I am not sure how this really applies to the ordinary classroom, but it was so amazing. Is the gap between the classroom and technology getting bigger?

NECC and new Macs

My friends just arrived at the hotel and they all have new MacBooks. I am going to show them how to put a picture into a blog after taking it with the camera on the computer.

Diigo

I am in a session on Diigo. The last thing I posted cam directly from Diigo. My mind is sort of boggled with all of the things that you can do with Diigo. The person who created Diigo is here in this session and other people who have used it are talking about it. You can create a group that can specifically use it for training.

Some people use it in their classrooms for kids to search and annotate what they found.

Now the creator of Diigo is showing us a few things!
Possible to filter bookmarks in a group by many user, so you can see

Lists-specific collections of web pages. Can make it public or private. Diigo in Education is a list that the owner created. You can drag and drop the bookmarks. Then this can be made into a web slideshow whic goes from web page to web page. You can then pull up the list and jump from page to page. The annotations are there. The user can see the annotations.

Everyone's brains are really full. We are stopping. This is the first time I have live-blogged. The pictures were actually taken live with my Mac! It was easy!

Social Bookmarking Benefits article

• 
  

  Educational Benefits Of Social Networking Sites Uncovered - Annotated

  
  

  tags: facebook, spacebook, research

  
  

What I am doing on my birthday

It is now 1:00 pm.... How did it get to be so late??? Well, I am allowing myself time to explore while doing my email and people keep sending me things that take me off in different directions.

I just received a few messages from friends who wrote on my Super Wall in Face Book or sent me a message in My Space. Boy, do I feel old. I have set up accounts in these places, but I RARELY spend time on them. Once I log in I am not sure how to even find my Super Wall and then once I get the nice Birthday Cake from a friend how can I send her a note saying thanks? Also, now that I am here I see that I have a bunch of notes from people I know that I have not responded to. And... one of them has a video with it. So, I need to watch the video. I ended up sending the friend who sent me the cake an off-color picture by accident. I only know that because the program shows me what I sent! I don't know how to get it back and delete the picture. I guess I will just send her a note saying I didn't mean it.... but how??? And I am sort of amazed that all of these friends (it is really only three) remembered my birthday. I guess it has something to do with my profile....

It is great to have all of this time to "waste" trying to figure these things out. I feel so unstressed... but I cannot believe that it is already 1 pm!! How do kids find time for this? I guess I just used my time when I was their age on the TV instead of the computer. Instead of their heads being filled with jingles and trivia maybe something else is happening to their brains. hmmmmm

A Reminder

This is why I do what I do.




I think this movie is a MUST SEE. Thanks Dave Eggers!!
I learned about this from the Mosaic Discussion List and watched it on this blog:
http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com

If you haven't heard of Dave Eggers or 826 Valencia I highly recommend going to this link to learn about it! Amazing!
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/233

ASCD adds Technology in 2009

I am a member of The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) mainly because they put out the journal Educational Leadership, which is really great.

So, I get their newsletter "Education Update". Today's edition had articles about the Annual Conference that they just had in New Orleans. Here is the quote that interested me:

"In 2009, ASCD will add a technology strand to the diverse array of informative conference sessions. This year, attendees got a taste of one way that technology is shaping educational discussions by participating in online conference coverage and commentary on Inservice, ASCD's Blog. Attendees responded enthusiastically to the 48 blog posts about the conference, generating more than 250 comments. Inservice's coverage of the event generated about five times as many page views and site visits as last year, indicating that energized participants wanted to continue the engaging discussion about reinventing their schools"

I find it really encouraging that technology is becoming widespread and transparent. You can look at the ongoing conversation at http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/annual_conference.

Privacy??? Public Life???

The article this morning in the New York Times Magazine about living a public life online is worth reading and thinking about. I like that it showed some of the problems of being "overexposed", but didn't BLAST having an online presence totally.

There is something compelling about writing what you are thinking and possibly having others read and comment on it. It is also compelling to read what others are saying and comment on their thoughts.

My position on this is not totally clear. I use my real name online. If you "Google" me you will find lots of stuff online. I pretty much think that anyone can find out just about anything about me if they want to online.... and I doubt that they want to. I know people who write reckless and crazy things online and I am not totally concerned that it will ruin their lives. I think that the coming generations not demand that everyone always be a certain way and not assume that everything they read online is absolutely true.... What do you think?