Keep the cringe on– the rate of chrun is only increasing. Either throw up yout hands and say Woooooooo or get off the roller coaster ;-) Seriously, give up the mastering of the toys, as the technology becomes more and more disposable…. but if you look very closely, at the bottom and interstices of this is much RSS and that is the true Glu.

Hey Brain! Edward Abbey said no such thing; that’s just a joke in the footer of my template and the number of students is actually the number of database processes to display this mess,

It seems, from conversations I’ve observed and participated in both on and offline, that we’ve come to a point of overload. I cringed with your list of Flickr, de.licio.us, 43things, Writely, etc. because thats exactly what I’m struggling with both personally and with Learning Circuits Blog. On one hand, I almost feel like screaming STOP. I need some time to get used to the toys I already have before you give me more. But then again, each new application that’s launched is so exciting (well not every new application) that I find myself diving into it and exploring it. (My latest favorite toy is cocoment.) Hopefully efforts like D’Arcy’s EduGlu and others will help deal with this crazy whirl of content and applications.

Edward Abbey continues a conversation that has been percolating in the world of education blogs recently at his CogDog Blog in a post titled The Dissonance of “Blogs in Education”.

It’s …

Please, please keep in mind that this is NOT definitive and is my outloud thinking, subject to derision, change, mileage may vary, batteries not included, void if the tag is ripped off….

Also, note that this is the first time every I used a high falutin’ word like “Dissonance” which is right up there with “penultimate” none of which are words I use in normal conversation ;-)

One of my approaches to blogging (I think there must needs be many) is to look at parallels with journalling– getting at the Zen-like aspects of “practice” and personal space and reflection. Like many approaches, there is a lot that “goes without saying” in the discussion else we fall into a solipsistic hole of qualifications and explanations.

Using “blogs in education” is like that. There’s a lot that has to go without saying in particular instances because it would take volumes to say every time! Of course the blogs in question shouldn’t be *only* for a class, shouldn’t be time limited to an academic term, the efforts should be integrated into the “social life of students,” whatever those things are that monolithic CMS vendors are creating shouldn’t be called blogs at all, my students are really then being taught how to “use their blogs as part of an education” etc.– but shouldn’t that all go without saying sometimes?

I don’t know, but I think there still is; but the ‘institution’ wouldn’t be the individual college or university, it would be the state or province, much in line with the ‘eportfolio for life’ initiatives trumpeted elsewhwere. I know, this will bring on a strong and immediate reaction by many people in terms of privacy and control issues, state paternalism, etc., and I really do respect these. I am no fan of being dictated to. I am just thinking out loud here.

But I had an interesting conversation at NorthernVoices with an attendee who was from Norway (I think, I apologize if I get this wrong, maybe Sweden). We were talking with others about the issue of identity management’ and the fellow from Norway said, somewhat surprisedly, what, you mean your government is not involved with this? And I think he was right, not that the government *should* be involved, but that inevitably, they *will* become involved, and so instead of taking a retroactive approach to policing this after the fact, why don’t we steer the boat towards getting governments to provide services in a fashion that still allows the individual to protect their rights, make different choices if they want, but also outlines the base requirements we have for safe and civil interaction online. (sorry, this should have been a blog post of my own, didn’t mean to fill up the comments area).