Check out the roll-out on the Google Blog.

GTD stands for Getting Things Done, an organizational framework I’ve presented about/on before. My favorite GTD app at the moment is Things, linked in the list above.

Vidnik is a new Mac application that lets you record from your built-in iSight camera, and posts the video straight to YouTube. They give the idea of keeping a video diary.

Keeping a video diary intrigues me, but I also don’t always like to watch videos. Sometimes the written word wins: i.e., I can listen to music while I read blogs. Second, I don’t always sound succinct or lucid if I just “hit record.” Maybe you don’t either. And does that matter, sitting side-by-side more polished writings and presentations?

Thanks to Slideshare, you can see his visual aid (the link above will actually show you a video of the talk).

| View | Upload your own

It’s a great idea to invite college students (undergrad or higher) into a high school to tell high school students how they conduct research for their classes. I always felt I had to sort of “teach myself” the ropes of research when I was in college. We knew how to use the card catalog and the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, but were wholly unprepared to deal with academic writing, an electronic card catalog, and journals.

What I found missing from Kevin’s slides, and it’s likely missing in a lot of other places too, is the detail surrounding what he mentions around his discussion of “berry picking.” The Web is an excellent research tool because you can link to all these other sources of information. But it’s also a poor one: there’s so much stuff (good and bad), you may not be able to easily distinguish expertise from good marketing, and how to you manage all the webpages you do find?

I can imagine the kid hearing this (honors or not), and thinking… “Gee… this is kind of like… you know, wearing your seat belt. It’s good to do it, because it can save your life. But… I mean, last week, I got away with it. I drive safe enough. I didn’t get killed. I didn’t get caught.”

More research? Yeah, research isn’t typing “G O O G L E” or “W I K I P E D I A” and printing the first thing you find. I’d advise any teacher to break up research projects by stopping kids at every step and doing mini-evaluative assessments. Maybe, even, kids can draw a meta-map of their research process (there are many tools to do this, my favorite, Omni Graffle, another popular in schools, Inspiration).

I’ve been working with our technology resource teacher on a “Research for the 21st Century” initiative. It’s a work in progress, but it gives students actual concrete tools for reporting what they find (verbatim), how they have backed it up (found confirming sources), what they know about the source(s), and how what they found expands their initial research idea (thesis). I figure if we do well enough, it could be a nice guide or better, a book. We cover advanced techniques with Google. We cover non-traditional media. We cover domain lookups. We also suggest methods of digital collection and bookmarking (using folksonomization tools) and here’s another idea–getting feedback from peers.

Kids need help with research more than ever. It’s too tempting to believe the first thing you read. (Many adults need reminded of this, too.)

I think too many educators “feel” and consequently block Wikipedia when there’s nothing to fear. Like Lim says, quoting his former professor, Alex Halavais, the search ought to begin with using a encyclopedia (read: Wikipedia), but never end that way. It’s funny, but I’ve heard that same advice in our own libraries and media centers for years, referring to the World Book and Encylopædia Britannica.

I thought I’d share a little Web 2.0 magic in a tool I’m late to discovering: Slideoo.com. It takes Flickr photos and puts them in a horizontal strip for pasting into a webpage or your blog.

Enjoy these photos from NECC 2005 in Philadelphia.

I agree with his general point, but from a much different perspective. As the guy who has to manage student blogs, I don’t want hundreds of kids in our system blogging. At least until we have a better logistical handle on how to do it.

So, I’d rather just a few cases here and there emerge, with teachers who are going to regularly use blogs in the classroom, with kids who naturally like to write.

But I also look at the computer, the blog specifically, and the audience it gives emerging writers and wonder that if we hold back on the blogging that we might be throwing-away the incentive to write. I’ll be honest here, when I’ve asked kids to write in my classes, I get things that I’d never expect out of their mouths. Reading what they write was interesting. And despite the statistic Clay cites for how important kids think writing is for success in life, a good writer/communicator is never something that holds you back.

So, I don’t see the harm in introducing blogging if it gets kids to write, even when they don’t have a natural need of writing. But I am not sure I’d use it in the same way Burrell does–in English class.

I’d be interested in blogging in a blogging style: to keep track of what was learned, personal reflections, etc. To make this successful, we have to show models. Are there good models of blogs as learning databases out there?

I also came across a reading he lists, from the Alliance for Childood, their Tech Tonic. The brief is highly suspicious of corporate entities (read: Intel, Apple) and some organizations like CoSN and ISTE.

Some points are valid questions. They are opting for less screen time and more people time. In today’s American culture, I don’t think anyone would argue that “quality” time from/with caring adults could ever be in excess, harming a child. Instead, we often identify problems with children in situations where parents are too busy, missing, or abusing.

In a section of the report centered on “Developmental Guidelines” (see page 79-82), they suggest middle school age children just might be introduced to educational uses of television after they understand how TVs work. And suggest high school students be able to perform research on the Web, at the same time that they become involved participants in community-based ethical norm setting to help them deal with both the obvious and hidden aspects of using technology.

I’m all for helping develop literacy, ethics, and technology fluency in schools. But, to suggest that we deal with the ethical issues only at the high school level, or research at the middle school level, is rather novel. Naive, perhaps, too. Parents who aren’t card-carrying members of the Alliance may not have TVs or Internet at home, and certainly don’t give their children cell phones. But what about those misguided parents who do have broadband Internet, have 2nd graders who can load DVD players, and a copious pile of cell phones at the ready in the home?

I feel this “tonic” assumes that the only technology students have access to is in school. And it is highly suspicious about most of it. The premise, assumed, is: “It can’t be good if its good hasn’t yet been proven. For the sake of Mother Earth, technology is of course assumed suspect!”

The reality in many communities is that students and their families are quite fluent with the use of a variety of technologies. And the effects of assuming a digital lifestyle aren’t always traditional, healthy, or advantageous. Yet, we push forward, for a variety of reasons–reasons that schools are inadequate to significantly influence. Instead, as some have called for, we might turn to the “tools in their pockets” as a new means to educate them.

I felt that this report gave some valid concerns about current-day society, without fully accepting what society has become. It’s far too late to turn Luddite and think we can make our digital reality go away. Their call for “giv[ing] our children and youth the full opportunity to get to know themselves through play, the arts, and hands-on learning, so that the have a solid sense of self–and confidence in their own creativity and competence–before tackling the major issues of the world” need not be exclusive of a world that communicates, emotes, sings, dances, solves problems, and sees itself with digital technology.

I think any one who we expect to be on top of their game ought to undergo regular “PD.” Sylvia at “Generation Yes” spoke recently about PD concluding that, according to S. Papert, a project-based approach where PD was happening in the classroom live with students was the best approach. One commenter called this method guide on the side.

We have that model here in Virginia, although it works differently among schools and school divisions. ITRTs are crucial “guides” on the side. No doubt, this model isn’t ideal for 100% of our teachers and administrators, but it likely is one of the better approaches.

Time and money (economics) dictate workshops. Do we have 20 trainers/guides? No! But we can teach a skill to 20 teachers in one session. If they’re motivated (and lucky) enough, they might get to use what they learn. Or, try it, and fail, and never attempt it again. It’s no wonder some teachers have a bitter reflection of using tech in the classroom.

But reading Sylvia’s post also reminded me of the Google model, which isn’t precisely professional development, but could be. Their “20%” rule has been described as an incentive to work on “personal projects” in the workplace, among a creative (read: non-constrained) environment.

Today at work I checked out some new Web 2.0 websites for about 30 minutes. I felt guilty doing so, to be honest. But that should count as my own PD. Explore new tools, consider the possibilities; educate myself.

No doubt, we’d likely have better schools if we granted teachers professional time that allowed them to network and self-discover new approaches to pedagogy.

I do love the program myself; when Apple releases a new version, I can’t wait. What it and some other Mac programs–specifically here, Omni Graffle do–is make arranging objects and text on screen easy. Things “snap” into place like magic.

Unlike Vinh, I’ve never used Keynote specifically for a print design (but I have used Comic Life). But I am thinking of one project in particular that might be perfect. A tip of the hat for the idea!

I don’t like to think of us as educators as making future workers (there is something far more lofty when thinking about preparing our students for their future lives as democratic citizens), but I’ve made the most impact when I’ve talked about why we need to change in the field, when I’ve tied it to future work.

So, David Warlick always talks about the workplace of the future and says we don’t know much about it. He does a nifty trick where he shows you a home office and makes everything disappear. But I do think we know some, and I’m sure Gladwell has some good insight.

We might also talk about the school of the future. I know less about that, but to say, we have a hard time changing that. There are many reasons, I’m sure; here are a few I believe in:

• schools are built for use in multi-year increments (25-50-75 years)
• new schools are designed around what schools have been to the current administrators and architects
• schools are built on the cheap
• we don’t train teachers by in large to teach in different spaces

I mean, schools just have:

• lockers
• gyms
• cafeterias
• band rooms
• classrooms with rows of desks, and sage platforms

I’ve seen some new schools that are certainly impressive, but they aren’t typical. Many of note are experimental charter schools. Here are some things off the top of my head I’d like to see, should I be building a school in the next couple of years:

• unique spaces, not a collection of similar classrooms
• adequate space for storing and charging computing devices
• adequate power in learning spaces
• spaces students can build in

And what else, while I’m dreaming? Why not make it easy for students to communicate privately with teachers (e-mail, chat), deliver great bandwidth with big fat network pipes, and accept only students with good attitudes?

Okay, I am dreaming. But we ought to be thinking about what would make a better educational environment. There’s always room for improvement. And it’s not a bad idea to look ahead to a future world of work.

Visit the Phun page.

In my book I mention a scenario for wikis where students in a school produce their own version of the Wikipedia. But the idea here, instead, is students of education create their own textbook. While conceivably high school juniors and seniors might take on such a project in K-12, I think you’d need a special group (highly motivated).

But the idea of having college students, who are learning to become educators (and will very likely encounter the paper-based textbooks in their first jobs) is an excellent idea. They will be collaborating to put this thing together, always be asking themselves “what belongs in a textbook”, and hopefully discovering ways to improve the textbook concept. Alongside other efforts to make open-source textbooks, projects like these could be submitted to some central authority for quality-control and licensing (something “copy-left”, not for profit).

So, kudos to Dr. Delta Cavner of Southern Baptist University for having her students establish a wiki textbook.

Specifically, he found sections of the article lacking, dated, irrelevant; the whole thing, perhaps, a “squandered opportunity.” He says the ISTE editors “didn’t do their job with this one.”

As it turns out, I hadn’t read the article yet. I figured “it can’t be this bad.” At least once before, I found Dr. McLeod’s negativity discouraging. With such an open, critical review of this article, I know if I had been the author, I would have been crushed.

Worse yet, comments on the blog only echoed McLeod’s sentiment. One said: “I can only imagine the damage the author is doing to her reputation and credibility as tech-savvy educator,” while another said: “I just went back and read it again and you are right on target with your criticism. Looks like an article from 4-5 years ago with a section added in the middle about the collaborative web.”

So this morning, before I checked my morning e-mail, I broke-into the article and examined it with a careful eye. It was a leading article for this issue, and even enjoyed fanciful artwork and “Web 2.0″ glossy “Aqua-esque” treatment to headers in the table comparing online web services.

I wanted McLeod’s review to be unfair and mean. I wanted this article to have redeeming qualities. I found, however, the article does fail, but for somewhat different reasons.

First, the title isn’t addressed. “Creating Valuable Class Web sites” suggests some newfound knowledge that will make a class webpage… worth making. The article does little of that. Instead, it focuses on three methods for creating a website. This might have been okay. Basically, these are the options author Betsy Baker offers:

• Use an online webpage creation tool (Geocities, Tripod)
• Use the Read/Write Web (blogs, wikis)
• Start from Scratch (but cheap), i.e., using web design software (Dreamweaver, FrontPage, iWeb, etc.)

Second, I did question why certain tools and services were listed (i.e., “Macromedia” Dreamweaver was one that stuck out), and McLeod and company did the same. The problem is, some of these tools (including Geocities) still exist! Today, it’s Adobe Dreamweaver, and so what if FrontPage is the 2003 edition. What I thought was unfair in McLeod’s review was the assumption that just because the latest and greatest tools weren’t being used, the article stunk.

Instead, the article lacked merit because it didn’t build on its own strong title. Comparing FrontPage 2003 to a modern wiki page is not even fair. It’s not comparing apples to oranges. Sure, some educators I work with still are nostalgic enough to want to goal-set “having my kids make a webpage.” “So what?” I ask. “What is that going to do for them?”

“I don’t know.”

Well, let’s start: what would make for a valuable learning experience when it comes to the Web?

Instead, the article offers this pull-quote: “Research indicates employers soon will expect workers to be able to create, maintain, and use Web sites.”

Whoa. My legs are weak from the time-warp. I forgive McLeod. Yeah, some of tools are out-dated. But is the author suggesting kids should make websites because it’s a future work requirement? Back to that question.

A valuable class web site is one (100% my opinion here) that:

• communicates what students are learning,
• is easily accessible by all the stakeholders,
• encourages 21st century collaboration and cooperation,
• allows students to connect their own emerging knowledge.

Yes, some day employers will want employees to have web skills. In my district, teachers have to maintain a weblog. The day has already come for many of us.

But let me return to my original point: the tools we use shouldn’t really matter. Sure, the “read/write” tools make it easier (and quicker) to focus on content rather than HTML. But I have teachers who today use a variety of tools to create their own presence on the web: one who maintains a digital version of her curriculum using Dreamweaver, another who podcasts regularly, and another that built an awesome drama website for her kids using iWeb. It’s a mixture of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 tools.

What’s the value in publishing on the Web?

• Motivation through the sharing of student work,
• Communication with parents about what’s going on in the classroom,
• Self-paced instruction for students,
• Creative expression by students.

Ultimately, the most valuable web site might be one that gives equal access to publication by all learners. That’s why I’d have framed the article in a completely different way.

Giving students voice means they’ll likely be using Read/Write tools. That’s what’s most valuable; it’s also the point I think that ultimately disappoints in this particular article.

Our focus then becomes, as McLeod rightly suggests, on how to gain access to read/write tools, or as he says, “[the article] should have included “Some discussion of the desirability of using outside, non-district-sponsored tools…”

And then, finally, it all starts to make sense when we read Karen Work Richardson’s article (”Don’t Feed the Trolls”), calling for students to participate online as bloggers to learn a few things about civil discourse. Now that’s valuable.

I was first introduced to tagging through del.icio.us and Flickr.

Tagamac is a website dedicated to doing tagging on the Mac platform. I’ve linked there to their page of software. Together really looks nice; I’ve tried Things and love it; I’m thinking of buying Yep and Leap soon, too; both support tagging.

But I’ve also told people that you can tag using the Finder (Spotlight comments) and this tip might help you too. It suggests using a unique character for adding tags.

If this any example, I have a real reason to be excited.

Involved people make for better innovation… Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.”

How many times do we encounter educators who have seemed to lose their involvement?

The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. … “You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.

How often do we find this attitude in schools? How many times do parents share the same vision, the one that’s sometimes imposed on teachers? What happens when everyone doesn’t believe… in the impossible?

If you work in lighting but you want to learn how to animate, there’s a class to show you animation. There are classes in story structure, in Photoshop, even in Krav Maga, the Israeli self-defense system. Pixar basically encourages people to learn outside of their areas, which makes them more complete. [and more creative].

(Emphasis, mine). I think learning together–even if it isn’t, let’s say, a pedagogical skill, or a software application, can be fun and encouraging. I’d actually love teaching something off-the-wall with teachers. Encouraging creativity is good for education; I believe it 110%.

If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.

The payoff in education is not sales, of course, but… the importance is just as great, if not more so. Too many folks, I’ve seen, ignore morale problems because honestly, they aren’t equipped to fix them.

Okay, it wasn’t a quote, but a paraphrase.

Negroponte said he was mainly concerned with putting as many laptops as possible in children’s hands.

It seems the leadership behind OLPC is falling apart, even though they still hold optimism. Optimism for open-source on one side, optimism for Windows on another.

It would seem to me, getting more copies of Sugar out there is a good idea. Only with a wider base will it evolve (and in theory, improve) more quickly. It would make sense that we could install it on a fancier (read: larger) computer here in the U.S., and perhaps, even pay a small subsidy, that would pay for the hardware elsewhere.

But having “laptops in their hands” alone won’t solve many issues. OLPC is an experiment, and one, when I saw it introduced, I thought deserved a chance to succeed.

I’ve heard the argument before; it was most blatantly made by Marc Prensky at a conference I attended 2 years ago here in Virginia.

To wit:

The bigger question is, if our expensive filters are insufficient for keeping students off websites we’d like to block, how do we teach our students to navigate these sites in a safe and appropriate way?

Let’s have a reality check here.

1. Schools need money, including what (little) the federal government supplies us.
2. The filter is a federally-mandated requirement.
3. Many educators feel “entertainment” isn’t a part of the school day, at least when they consider why a $1200 computer and a fast Internet connection has been provided.

We sometimes find a student who tries to find racy pictures. Twenty years ago, the kid’s father might have attempted to bring-in a racy magazine. The media has changed, the behavior, not so much.

But by in large, kids aren’t up to all looking for dirty pictures, hateful language, or instructions for making a bomb. They want entertainment. Web-based games, videos, etc.

Yeah, some teachers have the itch, too.

But I don’t like it when folks suggest that maybe we might look the “other way” or that we’re facing an uphill battle. It does ring with some truth, from time to time, but can we change the attention away from the “bad schools” who use filters and instead on the “bad government” that imposes these rules?

I like a filter and I’d vote to have one without a federal mandate. I’d open certain things we have to filter, and perhaps close off other stuff that was more gray.

Despite my distaste for suggesting all the filters are smoke and mirrors, my point is that filtering should be a local issue. Curriculum should be a local issue. And, gosh, we ought to teach students how to deal with the “real” Web. But maybe we ought to also hold them to a higher standard that sets boundaries and limits on what’s permitted. Too often, the consequences are either not understood, or too weak to deter the game.

The real solution here is as complicated as the one for cheating. Would it be easier to educate all the teachers about all the Web so they can educate all the students?–or just block the stuff that gets in the way of learning? We (as schools) more often than not, take the easy route.

No, change they way our students learn. Change the rules. Don’t cut out a website because it’s powerful, cut it out because it’s harmful towards the mission of the school. As I’ve been told by colleagues for many years, the best filter is the one upstairs in your head.

He uses a variety of methods. I thought I’d share my own methods, and while they are working now, I think I will expand a bit within the year.

For the sake of understanding how I do what I do, it’d be best to describe what equipment I have.

• PowerMac G5 tower (holds two drives)
• 3 LaCie HD (Firewire)
• Apple Timecapsule

I’d echo Benjamin and say that having a bootable clone of your drive is a good idea. SuperDuper!, a program I’ve bought, does a smart-backup feature which updates the clone image as often as you like. Before you start, however, it helps to have a second HD that is the same size.

So, if you are backing up a 750GB drive, you need a second drive of equal or larger size. Maybe not at first, if you only have 300 GB of files; but in theory, you’ll need something at least as big. You have to begin thinking, then, of acquiring drives “in pairs.”

I currently use the two internal drives in my computer to hold the Mac OS system, home folders, etc., on one drive; the iTunes folder on the second. I now use the 1TB Time Capsule (hybrid backup and Aiport Wifi router) to backup both drives. For now, it is adequate, but it is a short-term solution. Calculated in less than a year, this will be inadequate. The TimeCapsule uses Apple’s Time Machine software to backup everything.

I used to keep a cloned copy of the music drive on an external HD. But then it grew too big to fit on one drive. That is likely what I’ll do in the future: buy another HD for mirroring/cloning the media drive; use TimeCapsule to do the computer’s main backup.

Keeping cloned copies would be a luxury. Like Benjamin, I keep Mail loaded through IMAP with Google Mail. It is of course also backed up on the computer through it’s own backup on TimeCapsule.

Other options for more storage include devices that hold multiple drives (NAS, Drobo, RAID systems), and of course, a new computer chassis (the 8-core MacPro holds 4 internal drives). I’m excited at some point to load up a new computer with a smaller boot drive (320GB) that runs at 10K or even 15K RPM. This would speed up the computing experience, for sure.

As more laptops make it into the home, I become aware that loading software on all your home machines is like maintaining a lab. I’ve also toyed with acquiring a 10-seat license for Mac OS X Server to use a technology Apple calls “Netboot.” This boots the computer off the server–all your applications are off a disk image stored on the server.

Your local client machine can hold files (i.e., documents), or your could even share them on a mount point on the server (everything is centrally stored). If files lived on the client machines, you could back each of them up to the centralized TimeCapsule. Future Apple products may include TimeMachine write to an OS X Server (mere speculation, but it would make sense in work environments).

Above all, I can say from experience, it’s important to keep backups of your work. I’ve known folks who keep everything on a flash drive “as the backup.” They may own all of 600MB of files that fit on a 1GB thumb drive, but that isn’t very wise.

Recommended backup programs I’ve used over the past few years:

• Carbon Copy Cloner
• Chronosync
• Time Machine (Mac OS X Leopard)
• SuperDuper!

Of course, Dr. Morgan was our former superintendent who rallied behind our teacher blogging initiative. As many of you who read this blog already know, VoiceThreads aren’t special podcasts, but rather, are suped-up slideshows available only through VoiceThread.com. Their popularity stems from the fact that you can embed these multimedia creations into blogs, webpages, etc., just as easily as you can with other Web 2.0 multimedia, such as YouTube videos.

It was cool to appear in a South Carolina newspaper supporting what we do in Goochland County.

As it turns out, these are good traits, no matter if you work for Google, want to be a good citizen, or simply want to change the lives of young people.

To paraphrase,

1. Focus on people,
2. KISS,
3. Engage,
4. Innovate,
5. Design for those outside your reach*,
6. Plan for today and the future,
7. Be worthy of our trust,
8. Human touch.

I think #10 is most important. It’s that #6 I want to spend just a couple sentences on, however.

Their #6 is design for the world, but I changed it slightly. When I design things in my job (a screencast, an after-school class, or a writing I do) I look beyond its immediate use. I don’t intend it just for my immediate, intended audience, but instead, a far-wider, far-reaching net.

After all, what I publish invariably ends up online. But shouldn’t we all aim higher, and take the extra effort, to make world-class things? If you speak of it another way, “Well for us here, I only would have to…”, you dumb it down.

I think one of the more important things I can do is share the fruits of my labor with more than just the 220 employees who are in instructional positions. Someone once said of me, “You’re always willing to share, you put so much of what you do out, online, for others to use.”

That’s right. I’m aiming for those outside my typical reach. And shouldn’t this be something we all go for? How are we to compete for the recognition of our ideas in an Internet-accesible age when our ideas aren’t good enough for a wider audience?

Be Googley. It can’t hurt.

My colleague has a method by which he makes folders for each month. He puts all the stuff for the month in there; if a project extends beyond the month, it makes the move to a new folder for the upcoming month. I never quite understood his system.

This hint, from November 07 shows off some of the power of the so-called “Smart Folders” in Mac OS X. With this tip, my colleague could store his files in more appropriate folders, yet still have the month’s last content at the ready.

Combined with tags, you’d have a pretty robust system.

Microsoft’s IIS servers have been hacked, sending malicious code to you through your browser, if you visit an affected website.

This report says perhaps over .5 million web servers have been compromised.

johnhendron.net uses the Apache web server.

I took special interest then, in this article in the New Yorker on walking and shoes. It suggests the best “medicine” for your feet is walking barefoot!

We have talked a lot to teachers for the past two years on Internet safety, cyber-based copyright, etc., and there is a genuine concern for student safety. Are we careful to warn against using too-revealing information about ourselves?

This topic interests me because you do gain a reputation through search. I chose some time ago to use my real name for this website. I wanted to build a reputation, a type of “digital identity.” I figured if someone knew my name, they ought to find me in my own place online.

In college, we never used our real names, we used handles. And I use handles too, for non-professional activity online.

There’s some saying I seem to recall… “You’re only as good as your reputation” or something like that. It’s a reminder that in this emerging stage of electronic culture, our identities are very vulnerable.

This image compares it with Diigo and del.icio.us.

The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.

What was even more interesting was a comment from Lisa-Gaye that she gets tired of teaching with colleagues who are “sages on the stage.”

Having just went through something with many of our teachers along this vein, there was some resistance. Some simply will tell you “I don’t have the time or patience” to change my teaching, use technology, or… learn something new.

Becoming an agent of change is tough work, no doubt about it.

Following my earlier post on the advantages of digital reading tools (i.e, the Web, ebooks, PDF, etc.) today I was writing in a Moleskine notebook. There’s something about it (likely similar some reserve for the romanticism for books) that I like. But, this article on fluency reminded me how more fluent a writer I am when I use a computer.

Many years ago I remember reading an article (online, it wasn’t that long ago), where Francis Ford Coppola was remarking how incredible some new iMac was, because he had iMovie, and boy, it would inspire people to create films (or videos).

Maybe that was an interview, or a commercial. But I also remember reading about an argument Jeffrey Katzenberg was having with Steve Jobs… Jobs wanted to give movie-making tools to the average consumer; Katzenberg stated “he owned animation,” and basically, as I remember, he thought giving movie-making tools to the masses was a “bad idea.”

So, just yesterday, I run across this: instructions for making your own newspaper.

Now, when you think about it, yes, RSS feeds are kind of like that; you collect together various sources into one place, thereby creating your own digital “newspaper” of sorts. But this tip was more profound to me, for some reason, because it automated the process of collecting content together and making a new, “I could hold this in my hands” document.

I actually haven’t tried it yet, but it’s on my weekend to-do list, alongside upgrading some blogs to WP 2.5, reading some articles, and checking out sketching software… oh yeah, and mowing the lawn might be in there too.