I was again fortunate enough, today. I got to see Obama being sworn in (not live, since I was in a flight). And I am in Orlando at the Educause ELI 2009 meeting, among people I admire and follow through their shared Web presence. I’m talking here about Jim Groom (bavatuesdays) and Alan Levine (Cog Dog Blog). It was great to meet them in person after reading their blogs!
They gave a great presentation on what I’d call the power of blog (together with Cole Camplese from Penn State). Jim showed us his work with WordPress MU, and talked about the possibilities of expression for students and faculty that this installation brings about. Here’s the link.
Jim said that blogs are “a place in a larger educational platform,” in the sense they are one piece of the bigger picture of personal publishing. In fact he is convinced (as I am!) that
aggregating content from many sources onto one aggregated page is an extraordinary accomplishment, which is revealing very useful for students to know each other’s work and positions at all times. Also, this aggregation through feeds does allow for what I call a “multiple mirroring” effect: when I insert a feed from sources B and C into my primary blog A, I obtain a multiple, instantaneous republishing of my original content (perhaps with a little repurposing?)
However, Jim also said he saw students take all they published through his WPmu platform and republish it in a different blog platform under their own domain. This is an appropriation of their own production: in a way, he says, a portfolio of their work.
Indedd RSS is the glue which holds it all together, ain’t it Jim? I loved his metaphor of the blogging platform as a linguistic concept: a technology which allows for the formulation of a new vocabulary (this is my interpretation…) and perhaps a whole new syntax!
Guess what: when I introduced myself to exchange a few impressions with him, he sent his regards to our common friend Mario Nuñez. I said Jim both Mario and I would like to have him in Puerto Rico by next year! I’m sure with my our project STEMmED at Sagrado we may just be able to do so!!!!
Next: Horizon Report 2009 just released; how Tweets and hashtags work; and Wednesday morning live Mike Wesch’s talk.
Indeed it was a pleasure for us too, Jim! And we sure must find the way to put us all around a table (f2f I mean!!) and talk. I hope you’ll be able to come to Puerto Rico soon!
Hey Antonio,
What a pleasure it was to meet both you and Doribel in person at ELI. I’m a fan of Skate of the Web, so it was nice to put a face to the space, and talk about ll kinds of cool things from ed tech to politics. I’m looking forward to those class links and the like, and I’m gld you enjoyed the session, you, mario, and I really do need to meet up in person and talk about all the cool stuff you all are doing.