Weblogs

I hadn't heard the term "commonplace book" before, but it sounds like a perfect description of the "outboard brain" - the main reason I started blogging. It wasn't about publishing anything, or discussing or commenting or connecting. It was documenting a flow of ideas and contexts. Steven Berlin Johnson gave a talk back in April, describing the history of the commonplace book. He was using it as an introduction and context for the need to be able to remix content - as an argument against locked down electronic books that implement DRM to prevent copy and paste - and it nicely describes both the need to remix, and the need to document....

I was just invited to enter an entirely reputable "blog awards" contest, for the low, low entry fee of only $195 - but ACT NOW! The entry fee goes up to $275 in January! I can't wait to be invited to attend the Nigerian Dead Relatives Blog Directory Awards...

Another silly quiz, claiming to calculate one's blog addiction score. pfff. it's waaaaay off. 85%How Addicted to Blogging Are You? Definitely skewed low. Some MySpacers are probably blowing the curve. Good thing they didn't include Twitter and Flickr. I'd be in the triple digits easily...

I was asked to share my Edublogs reading list, which is published automatically by my copy of BlogBridge, in the BlogBridge Topic Guides website. It's basically a web front end for the .opml file generated by BlogBridge, but it might be a handy way to share the list. So, now I'm a "BlogBridge Topic Expert" - I'm rather uncomfortable with the term "expert" but it's their word, not mine. The new Edublogs Reading List is online, and (I think) should stay synced with my list in BlogBridge, so maintenance won't be a problem....

This blog is about 2 posts away from devolving into a bona fide cat diary (and I'm not exactly a fan of cats). I'll be trying to stop barfing banality into the internet tubes, so as a result I'll probably be posting much less. Hopefully, as quantity goes down, quality (and relevance) may go up? Or, I might just wind up raising the bar so high that I finally fall out of this whole blogging thing....

After a couple of hours of running with Drupal as my blogging platform, there are some areas that are definitely behind WordPress as a pure blog-friendly system. Comments. Typical blogs have "name", "url", "email" and "comment" fields. Drupal has an optional "Subject" and a "Comment" field. It works, but makes it harder to follow contributions in a conversation - you have to remember to put your name in the comment each and every time you post....

I've been spending so much time in Drupal lately that I've been contemplating moving my blog from WordPress to Drupal to take advantage of some of the flexibility in Drupal. I've even gone as far as migrating a copy of this blog, and it's basically working now - it may even look familiar. But, I'm holding off on throwing the switch (I came within about 5 seconds of a full switchover, but finally decided against it)....

My copy of Will's book "Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms" just came in. Looks like it's going to be a pretty good read, providing the perspective of an in-the-trenches teacher, rather than just the geek echochamber I usually expose myself to... The book is definitely on top of my nonfiction reading list (my fiction reading, on the bus ride commute, is currently another Gregory Benford book I'm deliberately reading out of sequence....

I just about spaced and missed this online conference on "blogging" in higher education: HigherEdBlogCon 2006 (thanks for the reminder, Brian!) The first round of online events (April 3-7 - right now!) is on the teaching implications of blogging. Topics like case studies, integration with LMS, blogs as personal learning environments, information literacy, etc... The next round of events (April 10-14) is on library & info resources, followed by admissions/alumni/marketing (April 17-21) and websites & web development (April 24-28)....

Stephen Downes is taking a hiatus from publishing his awesome OLDaily resource. Stephen - I have no idea how you've managed to keep up the volume and quality of publishing you have done so far! You definitely deserve a break. I'll miss OLDaily while it's gone. I'm feeling a bit like Rob - our Gandalf has just disappeared into the depths of Moria, and we're now left to stumble through on our own....