A blog post by Andy Carvin describing social bookmarking with a specific emphasis on del.icio.us has been linked from several of the blog sites I follow. Andy has a great writing style and this is a very nice summary of the benefits of social bookmarking and del.icio.us.
I also direct your attention to my own efforts (podcast version) to explain this same category of Internet tool.
The May 7 WashingtonPost.com has an article on kid-friendly (i.e., filtered search). The article includes reference to both several services intended to protect children from inappropriate content while searching.
The article included a reference to RedZee – a service that was new to me. This site offers both a directory and search service. The site appears to be supported by keyword triggered ads.
As some K-12 institutions are considering 1-1 initiatives, some university profs want to ban laptops in their classes (MSNBC). The explanation for their position is that students are off-task. It is unclear if the problem is that students are attempting to take notes and not participating in discussion or working on other things.
I am not sure what to make of this. It is true that a laptop provides an alternative when things are boring – I use mine this way when attending sessions at conferences. Of course, I also take notes and lookup things mentioned by the presenter. There must be a better way to establish priorities – e.g., evaluate particiaption if that is a priority.
So – is the laptop worse than the alternative – taking notes by hand and doodling or writing a letter home? Perhaps the profs distrust the assessment that the students of today are different and thrive on multi-tasking.
I found an article in the May 2006 Learning and Leading with Technology that kind of brought me back to my technological roots. An article by Richard Dillon described Quest – software for writing text-based adventure games. My original academic research interest was in the development of reading skills and I learned BASIC and assembly language coding for the Apple II in order to write programs that would create and run adventure games. My interest was in using adventure games to study and possibly develop reading skills. Sure enough, better readers could move through the levels of the games I created more efficiently. As things seem to go, I moved on to new projects and never had the time to return to what I still think is a good idea. I wonder if 4th graders would think text adventure games are still fun?
Quest turns out to be a Windows only application, but I thought others may take a look. Dillon’s focus is on using the application for student writing. I still think well designed games have potential to challenge reading skills. Hey, if you don’t comprehend, you end up stuck in the 4th level.
Developmental Psychology, a prestigious APA journal, has a collection of articles on Children and the Internet in Vol. 42. The journal is making this collection available to the public – so download the pdfs if you collect material on this topic.
One study (Jackson, et al) reports on the Internet and achievement of low-income families. Internet use was found to be correlated with higher standardized test scores.
Terry Freedman has organized a group of educators (14 I think) to put together a resource summarizing new web developments (Web 2.0) and the role these developments may play in education. The product is an interesting summary being distributed as a pdf.
If you are interested in taking a look, I would recommend downloading the pdf from another site (e.g., edu.blogs.com) because I had difficulty with the Freedman site. An affiliated wiki has also emerged and is fun to explore although very slow.
I am working on my site attempting to add a plugin that allows individual posts to be tagged. So, from now own, I will try to tag my posts. The idea is that a reader can not only locate related posts based on a reader initiated search or using categories, but also based using tags created by the author. Aside from a different way to locate information, the theoretical benefit for readers should be to observe the semantic system the author uses to organize posts. For me (learning aloud), there is also possibly a benefit in making the effort to index the content I record.
A tag cloud should begin to form at the bottom of the sidebar. At this point, I am making no promises regarding the effort required to go back and tag previous posts.