Catch the Wave?

This was written for the Georgia Library Media Association.

Empowering Learners encourages us to become early adopters of digital sources of information to better serve our stakeholders. I’ve never considered myself a “tech” person but have always liked to stay relatively current and aware of the exciting and ever-changing digital landscape. I blog, I wiki, I can hold my own in a discussion of cloud computing or mashups or whatever. But I’ve never considered myself an early adopter. I didn’t get a DVD player until the price came down and it was easier to rent a DVD than a VHS. I didn’t get a Gmail until 2005. My blog archive only goes back to 2007. I was a late adopter (and early abandoner) of Twitter.

But now I feel all special and “early adopter”-ish with my invitation to Google’s new digital platform, Wave.

I know, I know, some of you are saying “Huh? What’s that?” and a few might be saying, “I want in!”

Well, for those who don’t know I’ll explain a bit about it and what I think it’s going to be good for, but for those desperate others, don’t get too excited just yet.

Google Wave is in “preview” mode which is even earlier than “beta.” They say it’s their idea of what email would be like if someone were to invent email now rather than 40 years ago. It’s part email, part chat, part wiki.

There’s good and there’s bad.

The bad is that if you get an invite you may sign in and find there’s nobody else in your contact list available to “wave” with you and it can seem like a big lonely place. I’m sure that’ll be corrected as soon as they’ve tweaked it and are ready to roll it out to the public. But there are ways to get into the water, as it were, and soon enough you’ll find yourself figuring things out.

The other drawback to instant domination is that it’s not as immediately intuitive as, say, blogging or most social networking sites. With those you sign up, create a profile, and you’re off. With Wave, you would do well to read something like this which can give you the what’s what on the best way to get around. Yes, that’s an online book that will probably be updated constantly as the bugs in the system are worked out. But unlike most other platforms, Wave isn’t strictly chronological, so it takes a bit of a different mindset than a straightforward up and down list of posts or emails. At it’s best, it’s the best parts of the powerful collaboration tools you’ve been using online. At worst, it’s the worst parts of online chat and discussion forums.

So if you’re still reading, you’re probably asking what’s the good and why should teacher-librarians care?

The good is that when you get it going for you, you realize that this will be a fantastic collaborative tool on many levels and that’s what we are all about. It will blow some current tools out of the water.

When you open it up, it looks kinda like an email platform. You have an inbox and folders. You have contacts. You can use it like email, click on one of your contacts, type a message and send it. They can respond. But instead of separate emails, this “wave” can go on and on as long as you like. And if your friend is online at the same time you are it’s like instant chat. And I do mean instant because you can see each other type and edit live. No more “X is typing” messages as you listen to the clock tick. But it gets better because you can start a wave with one person and start collaborating on, say, a document. Then you can add another contact and they instantly have access to the entire wave and can immediately collaborate. So now it’s like email and/or chat and/or online document collaboration and/or a wiki all at the same time.

You think back-channeling at the AASL conference was cool with Twitter? Just wait until you have the ability to do a wave instead. I don’t have a Twitter account, but I wanted to see what I’d missed so I went there and did a search on #aasl2009 and scrolled through pages and pages of interesting but incredibly repetitive tweets and retweets. With wave a presenter could throw up a wave, and you could all collaborate, take notes, comment on and edit the entire thing live. As it’s happening. And keep it for future use or collaboration. No, really. Check out this post for more on that.

But that scenario won’t happen until Google Wave is out of Preview and at least up to Beta. So don’t rush into it yet unless you don’t mind a little mess and confusion. But do keep it on your radar so when it comes to you, you can be ready to catch the Wave.

Learning for ALL Students

In response to this article in USA Today, "NSSE changes how colleges judge success, weakness," Priscilla Gutierrez has this to say:

"How ironic that the five keys to learning identified as critical to college-level learning (i.e. academic challenge, active/collaborative learning, student/faculty interaction, enriching experiences, and a supportive environment) are the very same keys to learning for ALL students.

The irony is that Arne Duncan and the Department of Ed don't seem interested in how students actually learn. Rather they are only interested in the pseudo-accountability of what looks good on paper."

BAM! POW!

(via S. D. Krashen's mailing list)

Corey, The Short Pirate

Another fun cover project from 100 Scope Notes.

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

Here's the official site. Fitting that it's during the International Year of Astronomy. I loved the guy. He wrote one of my favorite books. You've probably heard the following speech, but that's ok. It won't hurt to hear it again. Enjoy.

Edwin Mullhouse

Booking Through Thursday's question this week is about biography/autobiography.

If you really like biographies or autobiographies than you might want to avoid this treasure of a novel. The full title is Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffry Cartwright by Steven Millhauser.

It's an amazing piece of fiction with soaring intellect, humor, and postmodern touches. Ok, maybe more than touches of postmodernism.

It's actually quite a wonderful depiction of childhood in the late 40s-early 50s but it is also a razor sharp satire of the biographical form. You'll never read another biography the same way again. And you'll learn more about writing than most creative writing classes out there.

Happy 40th Sesame Street!

Sesame Street

Sesame Street/PBS Kids

SesameWorkshop.org

Yes, I've grown up with these guys and can still, every once in a while, convince my daughter to watch it with me. When she gives up on it I'll have to find another excuse...

Distraction Devices?

Doug Johnson would like to know: "How do we deal with the distractive qualities of technology in schools?" Go to his post and answer him if you've got a good one. I'm sure it depends on if it's elementary, middle, high, or college and beyond. Different ages and technologies would lend themselves to different distractions. I've noticed this is true even without technology.

There's also the worry that the internet and all this texting and chatting and tweeting are all cutting us off from the real live, face to face people and groups in front of us. We're old to "get a first life."

But check out this great nine minute video from TED talks. It's sociologist Stephana Broadbent on how technology actually enables intimacy rather than putting us in our own little bubbles.

Now I know this isn't the same as the school distraction issue, but I think if we were a bit more open to allowing the technological chips fall where they may, we might find it's not as bad as we think it will be. I'm sure there are students using their cellphones to buy or sell drugs or whatever. however, I don't think banning cellphones is the answer. Maybe banning that kid's cell phone. But I'm also sure s/he is clever enough to use another. You may be shocked to know that I was aware of the occasional drug purchase at my own high school back in the days before cell phones and pagers. It didn't seem to be a problem to the truly motivated.

Going to graduate school for me (this time around) has been an interesting experience. This is the first time I've sat through classes in which everyone had their laptops out. Some professors apparently ban this practice. But tell me, if everyone in the class has no laptop or cell or anything other than a paper and a pencil to take notes with, how can you tell they're still not tuning you out? I know I did. I don't need a laptop with twenty-eight tabs open on my browser to zone out when you start to drone on.

It's not a competition either. I hear that one a lot too. "We have to compete with_____" (video games, texting, social networks, etc.) No. Like Ms. Broadbent points out., most of the people are probably going to quickly check on someone in their immediate circle and get back to the business of class. Like I said, this is new to me as well. I was surprised to see someone in one of my classes checking the score of a college ballgame during class last year. Then I thought, hey, s/he's more likely to pay attention now that that itch of curiosity has been scratched.

What do you think?

(image cc wikimedia)

Blurb

What a funny word. Sometimes I just like to say "blurb." Blurb, blurb, blurb...

Booking Through Thursday's question this week is about blurbs you find irresistible. They're talking about certain words or phrases that get you to pick up a book, but for me they don't really work that way. I think I've already picked up the book because I've heard or read about it or am familiar with the author. I think I tend to be ore impressed by the writer of the blurb and even then it would have to be more than one. And it has to be for that book! Many times a writer will get some great blurbs for an earlier book that the publisher keeps slapping on every subsequent book. I hate that.

But if I turn over a book and it has four or five glowing blurbs from authors I respect it definitely adds something.

NOT review blurbs from other media. I don't even glance at those. It always cracks me up that a publisher puts something like three pages of these kind of blurbs in genre paperbacks. "THRILLING!" -Kansas Tribune. Really? The entire staff of the Kansas Trib found this series mystery "thrilling?" It's one word for crying out loud. How do I know it didn't come from a sentence that said "This formulaic nonsense was thrilling in it's ineptitude!"

So no, most blurbs don't work on me and certain words or phrases don't have much impact. Of course, the best one I've read lately is from Phil Plait's new one which is in fact on my To Be Read pile. Daniel H. Wilson said of it:

"Reading this book is like being punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, yet oddly exhilarating."

Now that's a blurb!

Death By Black Hole

I'm reading just as much as I ever have--maybe even more, but not much in the way of books. Many research articles, papers, and web-related reading. Grad school is going to eat up a huge chunk of the next six months, so I don't see it changing much.

So thank goodness for Neil deGrasse Tyson's book of essays! I've been sipping these down for the last few months and it's a delightful collection. If you're a big reader of Natural History, then you've probably already run into a few of these, because this is a collection of his essays for that magazine. I think it lends itself to the occasional dipping in because he does use some of the same examples more than once, but by spreading these out I never felt bothered by this aspect of the collection.

He is a man of far-ranging interests, a clear writer, and entertaining as well. You'll read about what it would feel like to be ripped apart atom by atom by a black hole in a process which has a great technical term: "spaghetti-fication." Nice. But there is much more. The Oort Cloud, extremophiles, and one of my favorites: Lagrangian points. These are perfectly balanced points in space between objects such as the Earth and the Moon in which we could dump tons of building materials for future space stations without worry of their drifting away. Then again, there are plenty of cheery essays about "all of the ways the cosmos wants to kills us" that are fun as well.

Science popularizations are becoming more and more important. I've run into staggering amounts of science illiteracy lately in encounters with allegedly educated adults recently and don't even know how to broach the subject with them. As part of my media committee duties, I was asked to read this early reader chapter book, Andrew Lost #9: In Time because there was a concern. Apparently the concern is that the book reiterates the scientific fact that the universe is billions of years old bothers some. I don't know what else to say other than: Tough.

Invite Me To Google Wave

If you have it: Try this! I'm looking forward to it, but still sitting on my thumbs waiting for an invite...

Thanks.

Update 10/30: The awesome Rob T. over at SCIENCE-BASED PARENTING invited me. I don't know how long this process takes, but as soon as I'm up on the Wave, I'll post about it. Thanks, Rob!