Safe Surfing – An Internet Introduction: Spring 2008
Homework Assignment - Week 4b (Extra Credit)
This assignment is not required to be completed by the next class. If you have time and can do some of these Searches, it could make the next class a bit more interesting for you. If you run into a problem, please email your SGL.
Identify and locate three Blogs with a topical discussion that you might have an interest in joining. For more information on blogging, I have attached two articles at the end of this homework assignment:
1) “Third Age Blogs” – An article that I wrote for the Life Planning Network
2) A brief article entitled “Blogs”, written by Jay Cross
You can find interesting blogs in many ways, but here are a few suggested links:
a. Go to www.google.com/blogsearch (to find a Blog on any topic of interest)
b. Go to www.boston.com/yourlife/blogs (to locate Greater Boston Blogs)
c. Go to http://www.google.com and enter “find a Blog”.
Third Age Blogs (Web Logs)
You’re probably familiar with the expression, “It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness”. It comes from a Chinese proverb - 'Don't curse the darkness - light a candle.', and was used by Adlai Stevenson (1900-65), praising Eleanor Roosevelt in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1962 - 'She would rather light candles than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.'
What does this have to do with blogs? I’ll let Jone Johnson Lewis answer that: [From: Women's History at About.com] “The mixture of personal voice and news that is common at many blogs reminds me of … Eleanor Roosevelt's daily columns published as "My Day." Read a few, and see if you agree that these come pretty close to a lot of the longer Web log posts today.” (See: Eleanor Roosevelt "My Day" columns)
http://womenshistory.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=womenshistory&zu=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/eleanor/sfeature/myday.html
Whether or not you accept this stretch for the imagination, that Eleanor Roosevelt may have been a forerunner to the world of blogging, consider this: The EatonWeb Portal reported that at the beginning of 1999 there were 23 blogs. Now, less than eight years later, and 44 years after Ms. Roosevelt’s death, EatonWeb counts 63,445 active blogs, and more than 228 million Internet users who read blogs. About a 270% compound growth rate. (Very similar to my equity portfolio, except for the small hyphen that precedes my portfolio’s performance numbers.)
Well, perhaps it’s time for us to honor ER, and light some candles to see just what’s going on in the world of blogging. Here are five candles that will link you to blogs that are focused on the Third Age.
The ThirdAge Blog ™
http://blog.thirdage.com/
The ThirdAge Blog was created by Sharon Whiteley several years ago when she founded ThirdAge Inc. ™, “… an online media and direct marketing company focused exclusively on serving the needs of midlife adults… and those who want to build a genuine relationship with them.” Now servicing more than a million and a half members, this is a very popular stop for Third Agers with an easy to navigate Blog site. Click on the link at the beginning of this description, or cut’n’paste the following URL into the Address box of your Internet browser: http://blog.thirdage.com/. Browse around; read the bios of the bloggers; follow some of the threads, like: Elder Care, Health, Life Lessons, Love & Relationships, Estate & Transition Planning, Work & Career, and more.
Boomers! Blog
http://www.boomerstv.com/blog/
The Boomers! Blog is a part of “Boomers! Redefining Life After Fifty!” a production of Boomer Media Properties, Inc., hosted by a former NBC correspondent Nancy Fernandez Mills, and her husband, Mark Mills, a seasoned broadcast financial journalist. Many of you may have seen their 13-part TV special on public television. Nancy and Mark have also been actively chronicling both LPN and DWN projects. Click on the link above, or cut’n’paste the following URL into the Address box of your Internet browser: http://www.boomerstv.com/blog/
GenPlus Blog
http://genplus.blogspot.com/
Wendy (last name not provided) founded GenPlus in April, 2005. She is passionately committed to the 50 Plus demographic – “Enabling 50 Plus-ers to contribute to society through meaningful venues.” Click on the link above, or cut’n’paste the following URL into the Address box of your Internet browser: http://genplus.blogspot.com/
Fifty and Furthermore Blog
http://www.fiftyandfurthermore.com/blog.html
Founded by Dr. Dorree Lynn, psychologist and media expert and author of Getting Sane Without Going Crazy and the upcoming How to Cope When the Man You Love is Ill, and co-founder of the Institute for the Advanced Study of Psychotherapy. Dr. Lynn created FiftyandFurthermore for all of those who are dealing with the evolving issues of getting older – and every day to work to show society what SAGING really means. Click on the link above, or cut’n’paste the following URL into the Address box of your Internet browser: http://www.fiftyandfurthermore.com/blog.html Postings include: Dying Well, Coming Soon Turning 65, Creative Refirement-Retirement, Botox Yes or No, and more.
The Third Age International
http://www.thirdagefoundation.com/thirdageblog/index.php
With a logo that defines: First Age: Childhood; Second Age: Family and Career; and Third Age: The Rest of Your Life. Dr. Peter Brill, and David Deben (co-founders) and Wendy Allen, Ph.D., are the force behind The Third Age Foundation and Third Age International which offers: Workshops, Third Age Groups, Presentations and Speeches, Passion for Life Coaching, National Coach Training, a Radio Show, and a Web site which still calls its blogs, “Forums”. Click on the link above, or cut’n’paste the following URL into the Address box of your Internet browser: http://www.thirdagefoundation.com/thirdageblog/index.php
You’ll find topics such as: Spirituality Information, Divorce Advice, Retirement Planning, Career Coaching, Career Coach Training, Love Relationships, Healthy Relationships, and Widowers
Blogs
By Jay Cross
Learn to Blog, Blog to learn.
Blog stands for Web-log, an informal personal Website. Thousands of people Blog every day.
(Blog is both a noun and a verb.) I’ve blogged for 18 months, and I’m convinced that Blogs are
destined to become a powerful, dirt-cheap tool for e-learning and knowledge management.
A Blog is defined as a Website with dated entries, usually by a single author, often
accompanied by links to other Blogs that the site’s editor visits on a regular basis. Think of a
Blog as one person’s public diary or suggestion list. Early Blogs were started by Web
enthusiasts who would post links to cool stuff that they found on the Internet. They added
commentary. They began posting daily. They read one another’s Blogs. A community culture
took hold.
In 1999, blogging software arrived on the scene, enabling anyone to post content to a
Website. Generally, Blog software comes with a personal Website for those who don’t already
have one. The software captures your words in dated entries, maintaining a chronological
archive of prior entries. In the spirit of sharing inherent to Net culture, the software and the
personal Websites are usually free. Currently, blogging is one of the fastest growing trends on
the Web. Nearly half a million people have downloaded blogging software.
But what’s so special about this way of posting text to the Internet? Blogs are personal and
unfiltered. Real people, rather than corporate PR departments or ad agencies, write them.
"Imagine Hunter S. Thompson writing about the new Mac operating system," writes Carlyle
Adler in Fortune Online. "That's the wacky spirit you can expect when you check out the
online narratives known as Weblogs. While these sites represent both the best and worst of
Web self-publishing (the virtual tour of ugly couches wasn't for us, nor were the angry exgirlfriend
sites), several of the technology Weblogs are worth checking out."
Blogging to learn
Not long ago, a Blog pointed me to Chris Ashley's article "Weblogs: A Swiss Army Website?"
He writes, "Weblog software and the Weblog model of content production and platform
interoperability are proving to be increasingly useful and powerful, pushing and inspiring
innovative developments for, and uses of, the Web. These areas include content, information,
and knowledge management; community building; publishing and journalism; teaching,
learning, and collaboration; and course management systems.… Weblog software, interfaces,
and workflows are helping to realize a Web of increasing organization and interoperability,
ease of production, improved and flexible information flow, and interlinked accessibility…."
After reading this, I asked Ashley to discuss the role of the e-teacher, meta-learning, and
more. Our conversation revealed a half-dozen ways that blogging can support learning.
Essentially, Blogs are a personal writing space to organize our own thoughts and share
information with others.
Blogging pioneer Peter Merholz adds, "the power of Weblogs is their ability to immediately put
form to thought. I can get an idea in my head--however [half] baked it might be--and, in
seconds, share it with the world. Immediately, I get feedback, refinement, stories, and so forth
spurred by my little idea. Never before was this possible."
Also, Blogs are easily linked and cross-linked to form learning communities. A few days after
we met, Ashley emailed, "It was interesting how the next day you posted on your Blog about
our talk, about which David Carter-Tod commented on in his Blog. One of my colleagues,
Raymond Yee, noticed it after we had lunch, and I told him about our discussion. Then, Yee
wrote a post about our circle on his Blog. Of course, then I had to comment about it on my
Blog. It's all an interesting little Web that Blogs make happen so quickly."
In another setting, innovative teachers are encouraging students to maintain class and
personal school Blogs. Enthusiasm grows as students take ownership of the content. They
write, edit, review, and publish content. They also critique each other and present different
viewpoints. Teachers make articles available to read electronically. Blogs maintained by
individual students enable teachers to assess their students’ thinking patterns and depth of
understanding. In the future, students may learn by assembling personal digital portfolios.
Former MTV-vj Adam Curry is working with teacher Peter Ford to offer free school Blogs and
advice on how to use them. They note that "Children are vain, just like adults. They desire and
require an audience for their thoughts and achievements." they add, "The simple intuitive
nature of School Blogs is precisely what's required to allow students to express themselves on
their own terms. Children's involvement with Websites has to be more than a posting of a few
pieces of their work on a third person's static Website for a non-existent world to see. There's
no ownership in that. School Blogs can give children their own soapbox, their own voice. They
become habitual writers. They are in control." (See Weblog-ed for additional accounts of the
power of Blogs in schools.)
Although everyone would like to learn a craft by apprenticing to a world-class master, it’s not
always possible. Workshops held by master craftsmen don't scale. By combining Blogs and
digital storytelling we get the next best thing, a virtual apprenticeship. The Center for Digital
Storytelling believes that "in the not distant future, sharing one's story through the multiple
media of digital imagery, text, voice, sound, music, video, and animation will be the principle
hobby of the world's people." Imagine learning to teach by observing and learning from stories
told by a world-class instructor.
Sample Blogs
The best way to understand Blogs is to visit a few.
ElearningPost (http://www.elearningpost.com/). Maish Nichani’s Blog deals with corporate
learning, community building, instructional design, knowledge management, and so forth.
Every weekday Maish links to four or five interesting articles. Sample sources are Wired,
Chronicle of Higher Ed, Syllabus, First Monday, Training, PBS, and CIO. Maish writes a brief
paragraph to describe each link.
I no longer read three-quarters of the magazines I once felt obligated to, but I do read elearningpost
religiously to find out what I need to read. It’s also more fun to read from a variety
of voices--an article from Fortune, a story from Learning Circuits, or a white paper from IBM.
Research on Learning and Performance (http://metatime.blogspot.com/). This Blog began
as a personal tool to capture ideas that I would later add to the e-learning page of my
company's Website. As more information about e-learning became available, keeping that
page up-to-date became a burden. Now, every couple of weeks I harvest worthwhile entries
from the Blog to post. What sort of content do you find on this Blog? Whatever I found
interesting at the time. Essentially, the Blog is a clipping service. Love me, love my Blog.
Some sample content includes
• photos and impressions of ASTD TechKnowledge in Las Vegas
• notes from a Centra press event (posted during the session)
• poetry about meta-learning
• a pithy quote from Cisco’s Tom Kelly
• notes from a meeting with Chris Ashley at The Interactive University.
My Blog contains more than a year’s worth of items like those. The content comes in small
bites. How do people retrieve needles from this haystack? Most use the Google search box
that appears atop each page.
Here are a few other Blogs.
Personal
• Evhead http://www.evhead.com/
• Rebecca’s Pocket http://www.rebeccablood.net/
• Kottke.org http://www.kottke.org/
News
• Robot Wisdom http://www.robotwisdom.com/
• The Guardian http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/
• The Obscure Store http://www.obscurestore.com/
Bottom line?
For me, Blogs highlight useful information that I may never find on my own--or think to find on
my own. Cameron Barrett's Blog has taught me more about Web design than any course.
David Weinberger’s Blog mentors me on knowledge management, and often it has me
laughing out loud. Chris Pirillo keeps me abreast of Windows' developments. Recently,
Stephen Downes began augmenting my understanding of how people learn.
I know what you're thinking. Why couldn’t I get the same insight from reading a book or a
magazine? Let me count the ways. First, the informality of Blogs makes them engaging.
Second, they're a time management tool. Because bloggers read one another's stuff, the best
of the best rises to the top and eventually appears on the handful of Blogs I read. In addiiton,
Blogs offer personal and even contrarian viewpoints. Third, Blogs are current. For example,
and unfortunately, I first learned about the World Trade Center disaster on DaveNet rather
than CNN.
Basically, Blogs work.
Published: April 2002