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  • Last update: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:10:51 -0500
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    He Said She Said -- Are For-Profits Driving the Distance Learning Vision?
    Fri, 30 Jun 2006 14:10:51 -0500


     

    (This is a text summary of the He Said She Said podcast from June 22, 2006. This is an occasional podcast that deals with a wide range of topics on Education and Educational Technology. The show's host is Rob Reynolds and he is joined by Susan Smith Nash. A new He Said She Said podcast is available every week on Xplana Radio.)

    In this podcast, Rob and Susan discuss for-profit universities and their role in driving the vision of distance learning in the United States and internationally. Both agree that for-profits continue to evolve and will be a central force in the ongoing growth of distance learning.

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    What's Up and What Matters -- May 7, 2006
    Sun, 07 May 2006 23:42:21 -0500


     

    This is Rob Reynolds' weekly assessment of events related to technology, education, and culture. This week's recap deals with recent developments in the VoIP world, other news from the phone world, and the continuing evolution of video on the Web. In addition, Rob talks about gaming events and, from the education world, treats news related to Intel's $400 laptop initiative and Chinese blogging. In the eduublogging sphere, popular memes mentioned include assessments and podcasting.

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    What's Up and What Matters -- April 30, 2006
    Sun, 30 Apr 2006 23:21:40 -0500


     

    This is Rob Reynolds' weekly assessment of events related to technology, education, and culture. This week's recap touches on Live Mail, Microsoft's e-publishing partnership with the New York Times, and other technology news related to FaceBook, Yahoo, eBay, and Sony. From the education world, Rob mentions posts abot the blogging/wiki session at the Milken Institute, as well as Clarence Fisher's reflections on his experiences with classroom blogging this past year.

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    What's Up and What Matters -- April 23, 2006
    Sun, 23 Apr 2006 18:13:50 -0500


     

    This is Rob Reynolds' weekly assessment of events related to technology, education, and culture. This week's recap touches recent developments in video gaming and provides an overview of reports o blogging and podcasting from Technorati, Feedburner, and Arbitron. This presentation also provides updates regarding the mobile phone trends and goings on in the social networking space. From the education world, Rob treats discussions related to censorship and Web filtering by schools, and mentions ongoing memes such as "Telling the New Story."

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    The Long Tail of Educational Publishing
    Thu, 20 Apr 2006 22:46:48 -0500


     

    (This is a text summary of the He Said She Said podcast from April 20, 2006. This is a weekly podcast that deals with a wide range of topics on Education and Educational Technology. The show's host is Rob Reynolds and he is joined by Susan Smith Nash. A new He Said She Said podcast is available every week on XplanaRadio.)

    In this podcast, Rob and Susan discuss the Long Tail of educational publishing. New markets are opening up along with new publishing alternatives and the means of production and distribution have turned every professor into a content provider. Rob and Susan discuss the possibilities due to Google Books, Lulu.com, BookSurge, and other on-demand print or distribution and e-commerce solutions. They also talk about the effects of social networking on this new publishing world and Rob touches briefly on the potential of projects like Sophie.

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    On Protest and Moral Obligation
    Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:43:00 -0500


     

    1984 was a significant year in many regards, and not just because of the title of George Orwell's novel. Among other things, it was the first year of democracy in Argentina after eight years of oppressive military rule.

    I was actually living in Argentina in 1984. I was a graduate student at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and I had the opportunity to witness first hand how students handled freedoms they had never had before. I watched and journaled as they participated in their first student elections, held massive protests, and seized every opportunity to challenge tradition and authority.

    Some might describe that year as fairly chaotic, but it really wasn't for those on the inside. One of the forces that prevented it from unraveling completely was the professors themselves. They were much older and had lived through a number of government changes in their lifetimes. They had been involved in their own protests as youth and had opposed the most recent military government in their own ways. They may have thought the new democracy was a tenuous and too-good-to-believe gift, but they did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the students who were experiencing it for the first time. In fact, they did just the opposite. They mentored the students, cooperated with them on choosing times and places for University protests, and worked closely with student organizations to integrate the politics into the learning.

    The teachers all understood the relevance and importance of the moment for the students. And, while not all professors participated equally, none gave any opposition to this student experiment in democracy.

    In the end, that was the difference between a mess and a meaningful moment.

    I've always been mindful of that year as I've worked with students. I've tried to balance big events and sociopolitical happenings with the educational task at hand. Whether the issue was student support for striking workers in 1988 or War protests in 2006, I've made every effort to use real events and real feelings to help students develop important critical thinking skills.

    Of course, I would be quite the hypocrite if I didn't work actively with my students to find their intelligent and personal voice. After all, one of the lessons I've taught in every class over the last twenty-five years is this -- if you see someone doing something STUPID, you have a moral obligation to stop, point your finger in the appropriate direction, and say, "That's STUPID!" Think of it as responsible citizenship 101.

    Another thing I learned by living in and studying dictatorships transitioning to democracies, is that it's often hard for people to admit that their own government can do really STUPID things -- no matter how STUPID the actions may be. After all, this is the same government that provides for their needs and serves as the anchor for much of their identity. No one wants to believe that the same government is incompetent when it comes to large and important decisions or plans.

    When it comes to education in the United States (my country), my personal feeling is that our government has made incompetent decisions and is doing some particularly STUPID things. Others may or may not agree with me, but whether they do or not makes no difference. My personal integrity requires that I point my finger and say, "NCLB (or another plan) is really STUPID!" To do so is my moral obligation.

    As an educator, expressing my own personal and intelligent voice can help my students find theirs. It keeps me honest and helps me turn messes into meaningful moments.

    I don't know what the solution is to our problems. I like the ideas being shared about new stories and flat classrooms. But I liked Steve Forbes idea about flat taxes too and that never happened.

    From a teaching and learning point of view, however, the actual solution is less important than our willingness to shout out loud that the current system is STUPID and that something must be done. Until we are willing to do that, and until we are willing to suffer the consequences for saying such out loud, we are will lack to common ground necessary for effecting real change.

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    Bad (and Good) Ideas
    Mon, 17 Apr 2006 11:59:04 -0500


     

    I don't know about you, but I've lived long enough to amass a decent-sized list of bad ideas. Now, I'm not talking about the ideas that were ahead of their time, misunderstood by the masses, or just victims of bad timing. No, I mean bad ideas -- those that should have been terminated at the moment they first raised their ugly heads.

    My list of bad ideas includes such notables as:

    • mobile puppet shows (think bicycles)
    • gourmet soup in a barbeque restaurant
    • self-service multimedia stations for faculty who were afraid of technology
    • a money-making scheme related to literary magazines

    Don't get me wrong. Having bad ideas is really a natural by product of creative thinking in general. In other words, the creative process always leads to false starts. Writers delete many first paragraphs and artists rework initial canvasses all the time. These bad ideas are like primitive seeds that grow into a first generation of foliage that prepares the way for more sophisticated vegetation. Bad ideas are only really "bad" when we become enamored of them and try to foist them off on others as good ideas. The problem arises when we lack the wisdom to know the difference between a bad idea and a good one.

    In reality, this is one of the two primary goals of education (the first being to stimulate learners to have ideas in the first place). We want to facilitate the development of discernment in our students. We want to help them learn the difference between good ideas and bad ones.

    Of course, this is easier said than done. One of the big obstacles is that there are so many bad ideas out there posing as good ones. Kids today are inundated with bad role models, bad TV, bad movies, and a whole list of other bad products -- all posing as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

    With that in mind, I've gone through the personal checklist I use for keeping me honest about determining good ideas versus bad ones. Here are some rules of thumb I use that might prove helpful to others:

    • Just because you can make money at it does not make it a good idea. If you don't believe me, spend next weekend watching The Godfather Part III. Public opinion can be remarkably stupid and shortsighted. This is evidenced regularly in political elections and American Idol contestant results.
    • Just because everyone else says nice things about an idea doesn't make it good. Of course, the inverse is also true here. Critics have unanimously panned movies that became classics for later generations.
    • Just because you like an idea doesn't make it a good one. Ego is a tricky thing. Sometimes we feel compelled to push an idea because we want to win or position ourselves more favorably. Ego is a good energy source of generating ideas but a horrible one for discerning their value.
    • Just because people don't understand your ideas doesn't make them bad. Yes, it's important that they be understood eventually if others are going to adopt them, but an initial lack of understanding should not discourage you. This is often simply because you are thinking ahead of the curve and you need to develop a bridge that connects where people are to where you want them to go.
    • Cultivate an honest and caring community that will help prevent you from shooting off a toe or foot. I have such a community. It consists of colleagues, family, and friends (some fall into all three categories). There are times they tell me things I don't want to hear about my ideas. There are other times when they like ideas that I don't think are really that good. Whatever they say, I know that their motivation is to promote my best interest. It's a pretty nice safety net to have (as long as I listen to it).

    The best way to promote discernment of ideas in our students is to encourage them to have plenty of their own. The key here is quantity. Help them push out as many ideas as possible until they have enough that it becomes easier to detect the differences between ideas, divide them into groups, and assess their real value. We must get learners, first and foremost, to commit to the general act of having ideas, regardless of their eventual worth. In other words, if we can get them to think, mentoring them towards discernment is a relatively easy next step.

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    Perspective and Perception in Podcasting
    Fri, 14 Apr 2006 07:38:10 -0500


     

    (This is a text summary of the He Said She Said podcast from April 14, 2006. This is a weekly podcast that deals with a wide range of topics on Education and Educational Technology. The show's host is Rob Reynolds and he is joined by Susan Smith Nash. A new He Said She Said podcast is available every week on Xplana Radio.)

    In this podcast, Rob and Susan discuss podcasting and different perspectives on and perceptions of the technology. Rob begins the conversation by commenting on the recent Forrester projections and relates a recent encounter he had with a podcasting client. Susan follows with insightful comments on the differing perceptions and definitions of the technology in education. Both agree that, in order for podcasting to realize its real potential in education, both perspective and perception will need to be altered.

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    Snap Shots and Moving Pictures -- Where to Go with Learning Objects
    Tue, 11 Apr 2006 07:48:11 -0500


     

    The grandmother of a good friend died recently and while attending the family meetings and funeral, he picked up old photos she had taken of the two of them over the years. Now, you should understand that his grandmother was 100 years old and the pictures spanned a time from his family's arrival to the U.S. from Cuba to just a couple of years ago. There were pictures on boats, at the beach, and at parties. There were pictures of cooking, dancing, and talking. In short, there was a fantastic collection of moments from different eras of their life as family.

    Obviously, those snap shots, were not the complete picture. Each of them, individually, represented a specific and limited point in time. They could be stitched together by his narrative to create an abbreviated "movie" of her life, but it would be an extremely limited movie. So much would be left out.

    In my opinion, this is one of the conundrums associated with learning objects. Traditionally, regardless of the exact definition we might hold, we have thought of these as tangible, static objects that could be stored and which contributed in some way to the overall learning process. In other words, they were like snap shots that could be put away and retrieved on demand to tell a static part of a learning story. They could even be stitched together in collections with the assistance of our narratives. By putting enough of them together, we could even make a a whole learning movie (a course), even though that movie would be limited. So much would be left out.

    The limitation of the our traditional notions of learning objects is that they are neither big or complete enough. Our models have accounted for only a piece of the process -- some quiz, assignment, or reading material -- and have not dealt with the multi-faceted and fluid nature of the real learning process. How do we account for the teaching that goes into the formation of the object and extends beyond it? How do we account for the user who brings his or her own interaction to the learning object and actually transforms it (albeit temporarily) in the process. The reality is that learning objects -- movies, images, and quizzes -- are never the same object for one user as they are for another. This is a variation on Heraclitus' comments on stepping into the river, as well as an echo of the reader-response theories advanced by Iser, Fish, and Tompkins.

    In other words, we have lacked a model that could account for all sides of the learning object -- the creator, the object, and the learner. The learning object is itself a dynamic and fluid construct. It is the quiz in the mind of the instructor creating it; it is the physical quiz that exists to be taken; It is the student taking it along with the results garnered. No, this model of the learning object doesn't fit as neatly into a physical repository (at least not the way we have them designed at present, anyway), but it does reflect more accurately what is really involved and what our models need to address.

    ----------

    One of the good things about my work is that I actually get paid to read on the job (well, at least part of the time). And yesterday, while I was doing my official research for the day, I ran across George Siemens' post in which he talked about what it takes to become and remain an expert (this, in response to Dave Cormier's original post on the subject). George writes, "Learning is a process of exploration. It is more like a river than a lake...more like a process than an event."

    I couldn't agree more. I also think technology itself has evolved so much over the last two years that it defies all attempts at static categorization and classification. Think of wikis and blogs and podcasts, Oh my! In yet another example of this evolving fluidity, we have wikiCalc a product by Dan Bricklin co-author of VisiCalc. As the Web site says, "The wikiCalc program is a web authoring tool for pages that include data that is more than just unformatted prose. It combines some of the ease of authoring and multi-person editing of a wiki with the familiar visual formatting and data organizing metaphor of a spreadsheet."

    In other words, wikiCalc allows for the creation of shared and editable data pages on the Web. It is application and collaboration. It is product and process.

    As many of our learning tools and platforms evolve along these lines, how can we change our thinking to handle the flux? How will we account for multiple user roles in our definition of the learning object? Honestly, I'm not sure "how" we will do it. I only know that it must be done.

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    Seeing Things Differently
    Mon, 10 Apr 2006 07:00:00 -0500


     

    We've all had those experiences where we were seeing a map of something familiar, but it was being shown in a way that made it unfamiliar. I remember seeing my first aerial map of some acreage my father owned and struggling to make sense of it. All of a sudden, my visual understanding of creeks, hills, and canyons was challenged by a different way of seeing those things.

    Most of us have had similar experiences with topographical maps, X-rays, CAT Scans, and information bar charts. We carry around a notion of how something really is in our heads and then have that notion challenged when it's shown to us from a different perspective.

    It's all about how we see things. Graham Wegner picked up on this in his recent post on visualizing learning networks. Actually "seeing" the information network and paths of knowledge that make up our learning can radically change the way we go about doing our work.

    I was thinking about this when I saw a post on BoingBoing about a site called Cab Spotting. As the site says, "Cabspotting traces San Francisco's taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay Area. The patterns traced by each cab create a living and always-changing map of city life. This map hints at economic, social, and cultural trends that are otherwise invisible."

    I think that's when the significance of perspective-- seeing things differently -- really hit me. It was with the line "It hints at trends that are otherwise invisible." Before I saw the Cab Spotting map I might have assumed that I was seeing things pretty clearly. But then I was shown a new perspective on the same information and I did start to see invisible patterns. I started to see things differently.

    This, of course is the nature of and reason for creating new maps or views of our worlds. These new views confirm or dismiss our previous assumptions about things, and they stimulate us to conjure up new hypotheses about the reality we are living.

    In the physical sciences this happened dramatically with the development of the telescope and microscope. The same has happened over the last 150 years with other discoveries in biology, physics, medicine, anthropology, psychology, literature, and, yes, education. From the lecture halls of humanities to space-age laboratories and super computers, our current era of rapid-fire information and discovery has given us new maps and new perspectives.

    Lately, in the edublogging sphere, we've seen and heard a growing discussion about "Telling a New Story." The idea is that we need to move towards a different understanding of learning and a different form of instruction. In other words, we need a new map for education. I happen to embrace this call for change, but I'm also aware that I have a personal stake in the outcome of the argument. My writing, my business, and my teaching are all affected positively by the New Story and adversely by the Old Story. Unfortunately, that tends to make me less interested in seeing things from too many different perspectives.

    But knowing that the real secret to understanding is gaining new perspective -- is seeing things differently -- I start wondering about what else we should be mapping. I look at Cab Spotting and visualized learning networks and I ask myself what other invisible things am I missing?

    Perhaps, instead of spending so much time on the obvious, I should be spending more on what I am not seeing, what I cannot see, and what I have trouble imagining. I'm not sure exactly what that means in terms of education, but I do know that I plan to spend more time looking for new maps in the future, and opening my thinking to whatever new information those maps can reveal.

    I think I'll call it my personal treasure hunt.

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    What's Up and What Matters -- April 9, 2006
    Sun, 09 Apr 2006 08:00:00 -0500


     

    This is Rob Reynolds' weekly assessment of events related to technology, education, and culture. This week's recap hits on the new Boot Camp download from Apple as well as recent surveys on podcasting (by Forrester) and on mobile phone usage (AP/AOL/Pew ). This presentation also provides updates regarding the CTIA Wireless Conference and new movie downloading services. From the education world, Rob treats news related to the One Laptop per Child initiative as well as e-books. Finally, the past week's hot memes in the edublogging space included the "New Story," gaming, and the concept of an electronic press of academia.

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    The Experiential Browser
    Thu, 06 Apr 2006 08:34:25 -0500


     

    Ok, it's personal confession time. I don't have much of a sense of direction. That goes for places I've never been to and the ones I've been in all my life. Heck, several years ago, I took some of my co-workers down to Austin, where I grew up, and they were amazed that I got dreadfully lost one night. "It's dark," I told them. "I'm used to navigating by landmarks and I can't see a thing at night."

    I'll readily admit, I'm the man women make fun of when they talk about guys who would rather wander around aimlessly forever rather than ask someone for directions. What the women in my life don't understand, however, is that I don't ask questions not because I'm afraid of being wrong, but rather because I like the discovery that only comes from wandering.

    Yes, it's true, sometimes the task or goal at hand has tight time constraints and wandering aimlessly just won't work. But, for the most part, I've always arrived on time, kept my projects on task, and still managed to discover a whole range of new things along the way.

    I like to call my method of maneuvering "organic." I have a starting point and an end point but no set path in between. It lets me get the most out of everything I do.

    Now, I am aware that a good percentage of people do not move about this way. They operate in a more linear fashion and get nervous when people like me get too close to them. They like direct paths and known routes. Discovery, for them, is the same as chaos.

    In essence, this is the dilemma of the browser. It was built originally for a world moving about in a linear fashion and for a Web structure that assumed direct routes from points A to B. When newer browsers started to appear with features like tabbed browsing, it was nice for all us organic surfers but it didn't seem absolutely essential. There was tension between linear and organic but it wasn't anything we couldn't live with.

    And then along came Web 2.0. All of a sudden organic has become the new way of life. Every new application is about discovery. Everything is about allowing users to create their own personal experience, about moving about and finding information exactly the way they want it. Yes, you can still do old school, linear travel, but it's no longer the default.

    With this shift, the traditional browser, the model of lowest-common-denominator viewing, is hard pressed to keep up. We embed rich Internet applications, spruce them up with a bit of AJAX, and make new plug-ins available as fast as we can. But, in the end, we realize that the issue is not one of technology but rather one of vision. We want our browsers to be more useful, more customizable, and more invisible at the same time.

    What we want, and what we are moving towards, is an experiential browser. It will function more like a customizable home (or whatever else you want it to look like) and it will have traditional browser functionality as well as game qualities. As we can do with games, we'll be able to collect things, compare ourselves to others (points and rankings), get feedback on our actions, interact with others, and personalize our environment. As we can currently do with browsers like Firefox, we'll also be able to set auto-destinations, keep track of where we've been, pull in information from other areas, and personalize our look and feel. As we can do with games, we'll be able to collect "valuable" items and share them with others, earn points for our participation in the community, have full two-way communication with others, and have completely unique look and functionality settings. This new browser will be avatar driven (for those who want to play that way), provide public and private areas of movement, and present a full economy of rewards for our actions.

    The future browser will be experiential, a mix between Firefox 2.0 and Hive7. We can see this coming easily enough. The real question is whether or not we can expand our educational content visions to adapt to this new experiential reality.

    It looks awfully exciting to me.

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    Kids and Their Cell Phones
    Tue, 04 Apr 2006 08:22:26 -0500


     

    When I think about my cell phone, I'm often reminded of the famous Grouch Marx line when a woman tells him she has thirteen kids. "Lady, I like my cigar but I take it out of my mouth once in a while."

    Yes, I like having a cell phone. I remember, back in 2001, when one of the perks that tempted me to consider a new job was a cell phone. Until then, I hadn't experienced the joy of being able to communicate anytime and anywhere -- well, almost anywhere. The next year my wife got her first cell phone and we've never been the same since. Now we have them and all three kids have them. Of course, my phone is for business and talking to my wife. For my kids, the phones are pretty much their lifelines to everything. When I put my cell phone on the desk to recharge at night, I must admit to feeling an odd sense of relief at being detached from the device. My kids, on the other hand, feel a sense of panic when their cell phones are more than three feet form their hands.

    Yes, while my kids and I all have phones, there are some differences in how we use them. I look for scores, play games in airports, catch up on the news, and well... you know... make phone calls. My kids text message, IM, take and send photos, surf the net, and make phone calls. It's not that I never text message, mind you, it's just that after seeing how my kids text message I've decided it would be inappropriate to place my feeble attempts in the same category as theirs.

    Take my son, for example. He can text message faster with his thumbs that I can type on the keyboard. If he turns the sound on for his keys, you can't hear the break between one key stroke and the next. Naturally, this skill has developed from ample practice and it allows him to IM as easily from his phone, holding multiple conversations, as he does from the computer.

    And that's what convergence is. It means having functionality normally associated with different devices available on a single device. But it also means having that functionality available in a comparable fashion. In my mind, that's been one of the big drawbacks for cell phone conversion -- the small screen and keyboard are poor substitutes for my computer. What I'm learning from my son, however, is that the gap between the cell phone and the computer may simply be generational -- as in one generation is willing to develop the skills to make it an adequate substitute and the other isn't.

    This generational gap notion isn't new but now there's some interesting data to back it up. A new AP-AOL-Pew poll finds that people from age 18 to 29 and minorities are more likely to use their phones as personal computers, digital music players, and cameras. Here are some other interesting items from the poll:

    • Almost half of cell phone users use their phones to send and receive text messages or would like to.
    • 47%, say they would like to have a mobile map feature in their devices.
    • Nearly a third said they either send e-mail now on their cell phone or would like to.
    • 24% either play music on their MP3 players or would like to.
    • Young adults from age 18-29 are much more likely to use extra features of their phones. 65% of them send and receive text messages.
    • Minorities are more likely to use such cell phone features than whites.
    • About four in 10 young adults with landlines say they are likely to drop their landline at some point.

    What does all this mean? Among other things, it signifies that our society is more dependent than ever on their cell phones. It also means that the market for rich featured cell phones will continue to grow. In other words, convergence is on the way.

    I may not like it but I guess it's adapt of become extinct. Face it, this time next year my company will probably expect me to do everything from my cell phone. They'll think it's an unnecessary luxury for an employee like me to have two computers.

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    Internet TV and Family
    Mon, 03 Apr 2006 11:37:54 -0500


     

    I guess everyone has a nostalgic memory about watching television. My personal favorite dates back circa 1970 and involves watching Project Terror on KENS-TV, a station out San Antonio, Texas. Project Terror came on at midnight every Friday and always opened with the same line -- "Project Terror, where the scientific and the terrifying emerge." They always showed a couple of really bad sci-fi or horror flicks and yet it was somehow cool enough that my brother and I begged our mother to let us stay up and watch every week. I still remember sitting in the living room with the lights off and scaring ourselves to death.

    In my family, as in most others, TV is a part of our culture. We probably watch less than a lot of folks, but we certainly have our favorite shows and movies. And, as if Project Terror were the beginning point of a lifelong pattern, I still like to stay up late on a Saturday night and watch movies with my kids.

    This past weekend, we added a new wrinkle to the mix. It all started when I told my kids about AOL TV and how you could watch all these old shows for free. They immediately went to the site to check it out and my daughter, a sci-fi fan, said she had heard of "Babylon 5" but had never actually seen any episodes. I suggested that we all sit down on the couch and check out the beginning of the pilot -- you know,. just to give the kid a feel for it. Naturally, that led to watching the entire pilot and another episode or two.

    What I found most interesting about the experience was the convenient freedom this particular content distribution afforded us. At one point, my son decided he wanted to read so my daughter and I took my laptop and watched an episode in the comfort of our oversized chair in a room that does not have a TV. It was fun and it was freedom.

    Later, my son called us into his room to show us a series of his favorite clips from YouTube. We watched this compilation much the same way we would watch a TV show or a movie -- we viewed, discussed, laughed, rewound, and watched again. My daughter and I then proceeded to make our own collections and made the others watch them. All in all, it was one of the most fun and most interesting TV-watching experiences we've had as a family.

    Now, don't get the wrong idea. This isn't a plug for old sci-fi shows or for a particular content provider. Nor am I suggesting that we should start watching more TV or turn our kids loose on YouTube without some supervision. However, our collective family experiences with Internet TV over the weekend did give me a deeper understanding of why flexible video content distribution makes sense. It really is anytime, anywhere watching.

    Of course, the Internet TV race has only begun. Every major network is lining up with distribution deals, and players ranging from Apple to Sling Media are jockeying for position with hardware and content portal and distribution solutions. One of the solutions currently making big waves in Japan is Sony with its LocationFree mobile TV/video software. Sony's solution is to provide a base station (at the originating place, like your home) along with its mobile software so that people can experience broadband TV (from the originating place) anywhere with a broadband wireless signal. This means never having to miss local programming or other favorites when you travel.

    At this juncture, nobody knows what the final list of software and hardware will look like. Eventually, as with analog TV solutions, there will be standardization on software and hardware, and there will be clearer lines of delineation between what is free and what we have to pay for. Meanwhile, however, we are living in the wild wild west of Internet video and there are many many shows and clips worth watching. If you're new to this experience, start with YouTube, Google Video, or AddictingClips for free video shorts and games. If you're always a bit nostalgic for old TV shows that got cancelled against your wishes, check out AOL TV.

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    What's Up and What Matters -- April 2, 2006
    Sun, 02 Apr 2006 15:39:49 -0500


     

    This is Rob Reynolds' weekly assessment of events related to technology, education, and culture. This week's recap touches on the popularity of YouTube and the pressure that site is putting on other players in the video space such as Atom. Rob also discusses the increasingly crowded social networking market, birthday celebrations for Apple and Palm, and product news from Microsoft, Nokia, and Sony. The past week's hot memes in the edublogging space included a discussion about the overall importance of blogging and podcasting in education, as well as posts on NCLB and gaming.

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