THERE IS NOTHING WRONG HERE

Finding time to write in this blog has not been easy lately. I feel like I have been blogging everyday because of responding to the forums and participant blogs. I was thinking that I should gather some of my responses to the forums and post them in this blog. I do enjoy the back and forth in the forums, but only one or two people read them. Many forum responses get buried 4 and 5 posts deep and never see the light of a flickering screen.

Many of the participants are feeling over whelmed and frustrated with the amount of information they have to process and the software they have to learn. It was a good move to make each session 2 weeks long, I knew that the newbies would need more time to work with each session. To be really effective this should be a series of workshops each teaching only one Web 2.0 tool. Each workshop should be 4 weeks. I would start with setting everyone up with Firefox and Google tools. Then Skype, so that we could use voice and video to teach the other applications. This should be a school year long series of workshops with enough flexibility to allow participants to proceed at their own pace. As teachers new to Web 2.0 get more comfortable with using the tools they will naturally have more confidence in learning each succeeding tools and become more independent learners. Isn’t that what we learned about good pedagogy in graduate school?

After I wrote this post I read Vicki Davis’s blog coolcatteacher.blogspot.com. For those who don’t know, Vicki and Julie Lindsay developed the Flat Classroom Project. Vicki’s blog post is call The 5 Phases of Flattening a Classroom. As I read it I realized this not only applies to student, but also to teachers. The teacher becomes a student when Web 2.0 tools are introduced and moving from the classroom level of connectivity to more complex levels will give the teacher more confidence, just like students. I find that the rush to get every teacher up to speed quickly with technology fails because teachers are use to knowing and becoming a student again means not knowing.

The answer is NO!, according to Alan November. Alan made this point at the MassCUE Technology Leadership Symposium on 3/19/08. An example of his argument is that he has not found any high school that has students taking advantage of the free online courses at MIT, yet over 9000 people in Pakistan are logged on to these courses at MIT.

Dennis Richards, the superintendent of the Falmouth schools streamed the keynote live and now has it posted on Ustream. The video is not that great, but the audio works and that is what is important. As we lean how to use these tool more ineffectually their quality will increase. So take a liste

I have been working on the edtechleaders.ning.com social network the last couple of days. It has been fun customizing it. I would like it to be a place the educators from the Web 2.0 workshop can continue the conversation during and after the workshop is finished. When the Web 2.0 group begins the podcasting session I wanted to have some examples of successful edtech podcasts. The Moodle does not really have a good way to do that, so I created a new tabbed page for Podcasts and then found a podcatcher to embed into the new page. I am very proud of myself for solving the problem.

Just in case you did not know. Edublogs has made it much easier for teachers to create student accounts and/or blogs. I wish they had installed this feature before I spent a day creating 45 student accounts, anyway it looks very easy.

If you have not read Chris Anderson’s article in Wired titled “Why $0.00 is the Future of Business” you should. His article helped me understand why so many Web 2.0 applications seem to be free. I understand how Google makes money, but how is WordPress and Edublogs, which I am using right now, making any money? Chris has broken this economic model down to six categories. Anderson’s thesis is that because the actual cost of transistors (0.000001 cents for each in Intel’s quad-core), storage (off the self terabite for $300, or 0.0000000003 cents/bite), and an over stock of fiber optics makes these cheap enough not to figure into the cost of producing applications or content. I rewateched Anderson’s TED talk in 2004 where he introduced the idea of the long tail, which I did not really understand untill now.

1. Freemium - the subscription model for web software and services. A “basic” version of a service or software is offered and the 99% who get this version is supported by the 1% who purchase the “pro” version. I am using a free older version of Camtais, the company is betting that some of use will want to upgrade and purchase the newest version.
2. Advertising - one of the oldest means of generating revenue. The most famous is Googles pay-per-click ads, and there are all the banner ads and pop-ups. With digital technology, companies can gather data that allows them to more directly target an audience and thereby spend money more wisely.
3. Cross-Subsidies - this is the loss leader mode. Buy one get one free. Make up in volume what you loose on the cost of promotion. Some musicians are now allowing fans to down load free music as publicity for a concert tour, or grow a fan base who will purchase future CD’s.
4. Zero Marginal Cost - when information distribution cost is so low that the economics of scale make it virtually free. People have been have been downloading music for free dispite the best efforts of the music industry. Some musicians have accepted the fact and are now giving away music to tap into the model above, Cross-Subsidies. E-books, articles, magazines publishing costs are approaching zero and digital makes it even easier to share.
5. Labor Exchange - you help me I help you. Google is giving away $144 million in 411 services to build a data base that they figure will be worth $2.5 billion by 2012. By using their service now you are helping them build that database. Digg and Amazon have rating services create value by either improving services or creating information they can sell.
6. Gift Economy - making money is not the motivation for all web content generators. The open source movement is interested in building well designed applications and seeing other use them. Wikipedia uses labor exchange, you add content and get to see your work used by other. Freecycle is like a giant yard sale, except no money is exchanged. The value is in trading ideas and goods.