No more Bat Boy with the bananas

One could always count on the Weekly World News to make the checkout line in the supermarket just a little bit more fun. The wait to pay for the milk and bananas almost wasn't long enough - if one wished to catch up with the saga of Bigfoot, Bat Boy and Hillary's extraterrestrial lover.

I picked up a copy of the Weekly World News whenever I taught students about evaluating the credibility of sources. Even the densest of 7th graders usually smelled something suspicious about the pope being Elvis in disguise. Once one realizes that one print resource is not credible, one views every print resource with some suspicion.

It was recently announced that WWN will not longer be publishe in print format and only be available online. I am saddened. The WWN was never anything I would seek out, but it was always wonderful to encounter when doing something else. Now that it has moved to its "convenient" web space, I doubt I will see it again.

The likelihood of serendipitous discovery has always seem greater in the physical world. The impulse gift found by the checkout counter. The odd news story hidden below the fold in Section C. The just-right book just above the one you were looking for in the stacks of the library or bookstore. The casual encounter at the coffee shop. The majestic old barn glimpsed while lost on a back road.

Amazon doesn't lend itself to the happy accidental discovery. Once it gets to know I am a sci-fi reader, the chances of it putting a historical novel in front of one's eyeballs is poor. At the public library and the Barnes & Noble, I look at all sorts of books before I get to the sci-fi shelves. If I load my RSS feed aggregator with tech and education what are my chances of reading news about medicine or stock car racing or the plight of drought victims in Africa?

Might the Web be narrowing our world rather than expanding it?

If anyone sees the face of Satan in the smoke from an explosion, be sure and get a picture to send to me. I won't have the reports at the Weekly World News to keep me informed anymore.

And good luck Elvis and Amelia Earhart's love child and all the aliens in San Francisco! 

 

I miss Calvin and Hobbes

At the Red Pencil blog.

Dubious notions

I've recently run across an abnormally high number of blog entries that I think ought to be thought twice about. Must be the summer heat cooking otherwise cool intellects.

1.  In "The Birds Will Be Singing" Ryan Bretag asks "how I could possibly make my upcoming presentations deemed as lectures more interactive?... why not use Twitter?" and suggests setting up a special account to allow attendees to electronically converse throughout his lecture. Personally, I always appreciate groups that actually listen when I am speaking. Adding one more distraction to an already overwhelmingly distractive world sends small shudders up my spine. Sorry, Ryan. I am looking for a wi-fi blocker, not another means for people to engage in side conversations. It's an ego problem, I suppose.

2. "I do see that a lot of people are very stuck on the idea of having face-to-face meetings for things that could be better accomplished online just because that’s the way they’ve always done it or because they just aren’t comfortable with the new collaborative technologies." laments Meredith Farkas in her post "No more f2f meetings… EVER!" Actually the title is the idea I dislike. In the entry itself, Meredith gives a pretty balanced look at the the pros and cons of both f2f and online meetings. The  dubious idea here seems to be the complete elimination of either format.

3. Sylvia Martinez does an outstanding job of articulating some of the big questions I've been having about Second Life in her post "Second Thoughts on Second Life." I loved her quote "Second Life is primarily a platform for adults to explore their sexual identity. Ignoring the overtly sexual nature of Second Life is like going to a strip club and then wondering why there are naked people there. The owners of Second Life, Linden Labs, have expressed their support for education, and have discussed their intent to provide more educationally appropriate worlds. However, this is a business model that has to work for them and it’s not going to be driven by education no matter the best of intentions." I've always had the same philosophy as Mrs.Campbell that it doesn't make any difference what you do in the bedroom as long as you don't do it in the street and frighten the horses. Second Life itself just plain creeps me out too much with its half-nekked vampires and programmable penises to ever see it as a viable educational venue. MUVEs, themselves, have brilliant possibilities.

4. Scott McLeod gives "technology advocates" the Vision Challenge Part 1 and Part 2, asking "Can we articulate in a few short sentences or paragraphs what the end result looks like?" and "...what if these visions aren’t compelling enough?" I will forgo the grumble about the label "technology advocate" (if I am to advocate it will be for something carbon-based, not silicon), and get to the heart of this: Who am I to be the one articulating a vision for education, the end result? To a very big degree, I am a servant of the state. I get my marching orders from the people of Minnesota via their elected officials. Is it my job to lobby for the goals of education or only to recommend in a professional capacity the means of best achieving the goals set out for me?  Now as a parent and citizen, I have every obligation to lobby for how I think education ought to be conducted. The smell of hubris hangs heavily on too many edtech blogs...

5. Scott is right now and then (surprisingly often for a college professor). He writes "... I don't like them [Internet filters] because of the message they send to students: in an information economy, we don't trust you with information." Welcome aboard, Dr. McLeod, to the intellectual freedom train. I've been hammering on this one myself for a while...

• Internet Filters: Censorship by Any Other Name?, Emergency Librarian (Teacher Librarian), May 1998
• Maintaining Intellectual Freedom in a Filtered World, Leading & Learning, May 2005.  

We need more technology advocates ;-)  like you willing to speak out against the overuse of filters. 

I hope everyone reads blogs with his/her most skeptical eye and is always alert for the dubious notion. Be especially suspicicious of any blog with Skunk in the title.