marcusodonnell.com: blogsperiment

Publish your homework

Doing a search for resources on e-portfolios I stumbled across this gem from Pete Hubbard

We do need to harness all of the creative energy that is now at the hands of our students (with access.) I say this in my presentations all the time, but how cool would it be for us to remind our kids to “publish your homework” instead of simply hand it in? We can do that now.

Glocer also says that “what we are seeing today is an almost continuing talent show,” and I really like that image. It reminds me of a quote from a book by Marc Rosenberg, Beyond E-Learning I've been working through where he says “don't call them learners:”

“Thinking about e-learning in new ways has to start with existing paradigms that might be holding you back. Calling people what they really are is a good beginning, but if you must use a generic term, a better one might be performer (23).”

Technorati Tags: e-portfolios

Katie Couric to blog?

USA Today's Peter Johnson reports that Katie Couric's new contract with CBS includes a commitment to a “daily, regular presence”. Current NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams already contributes a regular blog to NBC's site and the ABC co-anchors do a fifteen minute daily webcast.

But exactly what form that'll take has yet to be worked out, he says. “I don't think she has decided exactly how she's going to do it or what she's going to do other than have a keen interest in figuring how we can use new media to extend our reach and make sure people who may not be seeing The Evening News get a chance to see the work she is doing in a new form and in a new way.”

This is something new for Couric, who has blogged selectively on various Today projects, such as this year's Winter Olympics, but has never has a daily Web presence.

The Web “is something that Katie's really interested in, and so are we,” Hartman says. “She shares an everyperson sensibility, which is: She loves what the Internet represents and loves the possibilities, whether it's as a journalist, parent, or consumer. But she doesn't claim to know the ins and outs or be a techie.”

Blogstats

Dave Sifry at Technorati has just posted their latest quarterly “State of the Blogsphere” report: In summary:

* Technorati now tracks over 35.3 Million blogs
* The blogosphere is doubling in size every 6 months
* It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
* On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
* 19.4 million bloggers (55%) are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
* Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour

Sifry points out that not only has the number of blogs increased dramatically, so too has the volume of posts per day. Graphs also indicate that posting volume spikes in response to world events. Big news events are obvious, but what is interesting is that tech news - ipod video and mac intel announcements for example - also cause notable spikes.

Technorati Tags: blog stats

Urban Blogging

Interesting article in the NYT about urban activism around a Brooklyn real estate project that has found a focus in the blogsphere. The Atlantic Yards project, a vast residential, commercial and arena development near Downtown Brooklyn, has come in for some tough criticism:

But Atlantic Yards may well be the first large-scale urban real estate venture in New York City where opposition has coalesced most visibly in the blogosphere.

“If Jane Jacobs had the tools and technology back when she was fighting Robert Moses' plans to bulldoze Lower Manhattan, I bet 'The Death and Life of Great American Cities' would have been a blog,” said Mr. Naparstek, 35, referring to Ms. Jacobs's seminal 1963 book criticizing the urban renewal policies in vogue among city planners of that era.

About a dozen blogs follow Atlantic Yards closely. The authors are usually Brooklynites, some of them experts in fields like urban development. But even the amateurs among them have boned up on arcane zoning provisions and planning-law quirks that can induce headaches among the less devoted.

The result is an unusual ferment of community advocacy and opinion journalism, featuring everything from manipulated caricatures of Forest City Ratner executives to technical discussions of traffic flow.

As is typical of these blogging projects the blog critics include experts in the area (architects for example) who also blog and bloggers who quickly show their aptitude in the area by coming to terms with obscure planning law. While this has always been true of urban activism, I think the public nature of blogging pushes people into doing more and better research.

The response to this project highlights the fact that blogging is a multidimensional writing/research/communication modality.

This article is in the Time's technology section not its media section although the implications for traditional media are perhaps more important than the mere fact of the technological delivery:

Mr. Oder said he spent up to 25 hours a week on atlanticyardsreport.blogspot.com, a successor to his original blog, Times Ratner Report. Hardly a hearing, community meeting or news story relating to the project escapes scrutiny.

He started blogging last September, he said, because “Brooklyn would be one of the largest cities in the country if it were a separate city.”

“Then,” he added, “it would have its own daily newspaper, which would pay a lot more attention to the largest real estate development in its history.”

Technorati Tags: blogging activism, blogging and journalism