Tcl/Tk is now to be available for OS X Aqua. Very good. MacOS X gets more and more interesting for the old school UNIX developers.
macdevcenter.com has an article by Michael J. Norton on that topic.
Monthly Archive for June, 2003
Today the city of Düsseldorf started the first public hotspots for wireless LAN access. THe hotspots are installed in public schools on top of the school network provided by Deutsche Telekom. Students, teachers and members of the city council have free access. Other users will have to pay a small fee.
After complaining today about developers that reinvent the wheel and not caring enough about cooperation on standards Davw Winer pulled his long running weblog »ScriptingNews« offline.
Winer: »I’m not willing to go on without more support«
I was reading scripting.com daily – sometimes several times a day. 90% of it was not so interesting to me but 10% was darn interesting. I can’t comment on the decision to stop scriptingnews.com, but I think Dave would have a hard time advocating weblogs in Harvard just after stopping to blog on his own.
Bei Microdoc News denkt man darüber nach, wie eine Linkstruktur innerhalb der Blogsphere entsteht und wie diese sich als ein soziales Netzwerk verstehen läßt.
»The technical support team at B. F. Yancey Elementary keeps the school’s 43 iBooks in good order, tutors students, organizes websites and shows parents how to make presentations. The average age of the team is eight years old.« [Apple Hot News]
Marry Harsch: »The implications of RSS file syndication for the academy—in particular, its potential to expand the scope and prominence of self-published Web content—are significant, especially when files are produced from the content of a professional’s weblog. In essence, RSS syndication technology provides a bridge between isolated Web content and interested information consumers in multiple institutions, groups, and arenas of practice. By reaching out to a global audience, syndication transforms the “lonely voice” of the Web page into an international dialogue of ongoing professional discourse.« [BildungsBlog]
Peter Merholz talks about dismissing the word »Design« in the marketing language of his company Adaptive Path:
What’s wrong with “design”? Well, there’s nothing wrong with the practice, but plenty wrong with the word’s associations. [...] Design, with a capital D, ought to stretch beyond tactics, and into strategy. Design methods are brilliantly suited to figuring out WHAT to make, not just HOW to make it.
Jill Walker: »One thing I’ve really liked in the student weblogs I’ve been grading is that there are a lot of posts that are really useful. It’s so different from exams where only the examiners are ever going to see all the work students have done. For instance, a colour blind student teaches other students and readers how to design sites that can be read by colour blind people (you’ll have more colour blind readers than readers using Opera or Netscape or needing websafe colours or any of those other things we fret about), another student explains how to make skins for your blog, one explains how to use php to join up separate html files. There are lots of comments from other students on the blogs, and questions are asked and answered and there are links to and fro and they’ve just done a really impressive job.«
»Another entry in the fusion of the BBS and Blog patterns, JournURL, an attempt to create a CCMS (that’d be Community Content Management System to you and me.) The focus here is improving on the model of simple comments for supporting real discussions in weblogs: “Robust threaded and linear discussion that encourages extended conversations and debate. No simplistic comment system here, folks. No anonymous spam.”«
As I’ve said in the past, blog comment systems generally suck. They’re fine for “me too” responses and the occasional one-liner, but they quickly show their limitations when put to the task of managing large, intense discussions. … Meanwhile, here I am, sitting on what is probably the most robust, blog-friendly discussion app anywhere, and all of those people out there using Movable Type and similar apps can’t take advantage of it. … I’ve decided to see what I can do to make this thing more useful to people using “foreign” blogging apps. Enter ping2talk. …
I really wonder why it seems to be so hard for people to define what a weblog is. Yes, there are many different styles. Yes, it’s not the technology. And no, it’s not depending on the number of links in the weblog posts itself.
I wrote about it when I compared weblogging with DJ-ing: It’s not the music that makes a DJ session. It’s the activity of the DJ (and his potential interaction with the audience – or in other words: the probability of changing the DJs mind by dancing). If you replace the beats with news items (blog posts, sound bits or photos), add a timeline of events (usually with the earliest first) and finally publish that at a solid URL – then you have essentially a weblog.
It’s the constant daily activity of the weblog author(s) that count. Without that activity a DJ session is ended and so is a weblog. I called that the »dissipative nature« of weblogs. And that is what makes weblogs different: they’re a discourse by definition if there would be only one weblog worldwide, nobody would ask if that is a weblog or not! Only the weblogs as a whole – the blogsphere – that cause the buzz.
Marshall McLuhan called that the figure and ground distinction. A car is a figure. The ground are streets, gas stations, traffic signs, etc. Single weblogs are just figures. The blogsphere is the ground.
And while you may read all those weblogs the only way to be part in that blogsphere is to run an own weblog.
Mike Edwards has a longer comment in reaction to the »Weblogs and Discourse« paper.
And there’s other very interesting comments on kairowsnews.org.
The paper »Weblogs and Discourse« got encouraging feedback. I am glad about that I I’d like to share the links to all those people I found that commented. Note to self: Some mayeven be starting points for further investigations.
John Palfrey: Worth a read if you’re thinking about the Web and paedagogy.
Reece Lamshed: Even though an academic discourse underpins this article, the analysis is rich and insightful – and will really help those arguing for letting blogs run free in the institutional environment.
Jay Cross: This is thought-provoking if you’re contemplating the interplay of blogs and learning.
John Hibbs: This is a serious paper about blogging with a focus on its use in higher education. Highly recommended.
Muttly Hound: A steaming coil of considerable size. Step into at your own risk.
CTC Faculty Mentor: This is a scholarly paper on the use of blogs in higher education. It is worth the effort to read.
Stephen Downes: If we have to convince people to blog, to in some way grade them or mark them, then in so doing we lose what is essential to blogging. (my answer)
Sam DeVore: I think most of my students like the Web log, but I really don’t know if they would keep a personal, reflective journal given the opportunity. And I guess I’m not sure whether it’s appropriate for me to ask them to at this level.
Charles Lowe: I wouldn’t say that this Blogtalk conference paper is an effective exploration of weblogs as discourse from a composition theory perspective. Nevertheless, after all the attempts on the web to define weblogs and find a place for them within education, it was interesting to read this rather lengthy speculation. It enhanced my understanding of how weblogs are being thought about outside of my field.
Terry Elliot: Much good here especially because I am not casting a baleful eye toward post-secondary universe and blogs. I especially liked the provocative “Weblog Campus” and thought to myself–”Weblog High School”.
Mike Edwards: I found the attitudes evidenced in the linked Blogtalk conference paper considerably more engaging than the ideas.
Jeff Ward about »Blogging is a footstool«: For a more in-depth analysis (and one of the best I’ve ever read) about blog discourse and its role in education try »Weblogs and Discourse« by Oliver Wrede. Though its focus is on education, even a casual blogger can draw something from it.
Mike Sanders: This is a good read for anyone who takes blogging seriously or is seriously blogging.
Laurie Armstrong: This article is grappling with a lot of what the metablog project is aiming at:-do blogs improve discourse, support teaching and what are the institutional benefits – not a completely rosy analysis.
Marsha Berry: I found the criticism of the echo-chamber affect intriguing. I don’t see it as an exclusively blog phenomenon. [...] I guess what I am getting at is that the echo chamber effect could well be an artifact of human communication…
Frank Paynter: Shared intentions are the key.
People talk about reasons to have a weblog, how will you measure its success. I wanted to say You’ll know when it works, you won’t need numbers. You’ll get an idea you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten. A business contact. A bug report. An old friend finds you. You get a job. You hire someone. You get an answer to a question. These are the benefits of running a weblog. There are others, more surprising. I quit smoking — I get support from people who read my weblog. Even better, I inspire a few others to stop smoking. It can be so gratifying (that is, inspiring gratitude).
Charlie Lowe pointed me to a text he wrote for the Computers And Writing Conference 2003 conference. It’s about Weblog CMS’s as alternative to Learning Management Systems (like Blackboard; see screenshot). He looked closer at PostNuke.
Heath Row is really fast with the keyboard. So there are almost complete transcripts of the panels available (there are also some alternative transcripts from Denise Howell). They haven’t provided an overview of the transcripts, so I add that here:
Postlude
XVII: Live Blogging
XVI: Using Weblogs in Large IT Organizations
XV: The Open Source Media Movement
XIV: The Law of the Blog
XIII: Weblogs — New Syndication Models Or Uncontrolled Platforms?
XII: Where Weblogs Matter
XI: Digital Self-Fashioning
X: Blogging Technologies And Platforms — Today And Tomorrow (alternative transcript)
IX: Blogs and/as Content Management (alternative transcript)
VIII: Strategies and Tips for Business Blogging Success (alternative transcript)
VII: Why Weblogs Matter (alternative transcript)
VI: Managing A Business Blog (alternative transcript)
V: Are Weblogs A Threat Or Opportunity For Enterprises? (alternative transcript)
This tutorial describes how the instructional design of an online course can facilitate an optimal learning experience for the student. The optimal learning experience is the state termed “flow.” Flow, as defined by creativity researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Me-high Chick-zhent-me-high), is the “state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” During flow experiences, work is pleasure and is rewarding in itself. Csikszentmihalyi has also described flow as “joy, creativity” and ” the process of total involvement in life.”
This article by John W. Dean reads like the worst thing that could happen to the world is an impeachment of the president of the United States.
The article is titled “Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?”
What a strange question is that? If there is something that seems to be a reason for impeachment then it’s lying about reasons for a war! But lying about your private sexual life maybe is much harder to take for the US public.
I remember headlines in Germany in the last days before the US attack on Iraq asking “Did diplomacy finally fail?”. USA didn’t even try to be diplomatic about the Iraq question. The only diplomatic activity was trying to blackmail other nations to join the “coalition”.
David Carraher identifies a fundamental issue:
“There are barriers separating teacher education, curriculum development, and research about learning and teaching.”
I don’t know if he makes a general argument about the development of education systems or if he just reflects on Harvard. From my local experience here in Germany I can say that there are programs that try to overcome these barriers. But generally my impression is that they are not as efficient as they might be or should be.
For the moment I say that the pay-off of learning-to-learn, aka deuterolearning, is an achieveable, and eminently worthwhile, goal. Weblogs, I believe, are a possible mechanism.
Jay Cross about the »Weblogs and Discourse« paper: »This is thought-provoking if you’re contemplating the interplay of blogs and learning.«