Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Editor and Publisher reports that Digg.com, a Web site that ranks and displays news items based on recommendations from its users, is expanding to include video and topics beyond technology. Currently, users are limited to posting and reading items on security, digital music, robots and other tech-related categories.

Beginning Monday, they will be able to post and have access to world, business and entertainment news, along with non-news video. Games and science also will break out of the general technology section.

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I spent much of last week at a retreat dealing with learning communities, “classes that are linked or clustered during an academic term, often around an interdisciplinary theme, and enroll a common cohort of students.” Because writing can be applied to almost any discipline, writing courses are often parts of learning communities. One computer science professor, however, objected to the idea of combining his course with a writing course: “The problem with giving all these writing assignments is that then I gotta grade them.”

From what I could tell, “grading” writing assignments meant going over them with a red pen, writing “AWK” or “FRAG” in the margins. Several English faculty hastened to explain that not all writing assignments have to be graded. Indeed, one of their goals is to get students to see writing as an activity that makes and shares meaning, not as something done to get a grade.

This was my cue, so I stepped in. Blogs, I explained, are especially valuable for this purpose.

Im trying to get some feedback on gated online communities on the web…I found a site with some links http://www.gatedonlinecommunities.com where you have a collection of links for gated online communities like http://www.outorin.net etc…any comments on this are appreciated…Thank’s

Dear Kairos Readers,

The Institute for the Future of the Book is pleased to announce the launch of next\text, a new project designed to encourage the creation of born-digital learning materials that will enhance, expand, and ultimately replace the printed textbook.

There are two stages to the next\text project. The first is a curated website showcasing significant projects currently in the field. The aim is to draw attention to a broad range of experiments that identify ways in which digital media and networks are expanding the potential of textbooks, redefining the role of teacher and student, and converging to create new ecologies for educational institutions. These areas include, but are in no way limited to: “expanded” multimedia textbooks; “open-source” textbooks continually improved by teachers and students; dynamic, networked textbooks with live or regularly updating components; collaborative work spaces; and multi-user games.