I won’t, at this time, go into why Tagroo powered by OpenCalais really represents a hint of “Web 3.0″ (although I almost shudder using that term!), you can read more about it here. However, I will say Tagroo is a fantastic tool for Wordpress blogs (and also incidentally say why Wordpress is still the best blogging platform)

Basically Tagroo suggests images (from Flickr) and tags using the meta data (facts, places, people) that Tagroo using OpenCalsis automatically generates. Saves time and improves your own metadata. You can go to to the OpenCalasis website for more information. Essentially it extracts semantic data from non semantic documents and then saves that data into a vast database that can be queried by an OpenAPI. There is great potential here for educational materials I think as well as making the internet in general easier to use as well as safer to use as ultimatly the connections made with OpenCalais and other tools like Google Social Graph will make data on the web easier to legitimize.

Sometimes the suggestions are a bit random (such as with this post for instance) but I have no doubt that will improve with time and it depends quite a bit on what you are writing about.

Test (editing post using Adobe Contribute)

A comment on a NECC forum printed in its entirety below explains eloquently and perhaps better than I have read anywhere else the situation schools and educators face with the current generation of students coming in and our of our doors.

The conditions brought about by the cognitive dissonance that the students feel create a surrealistic, unproductive and disengaged daytime experience at school, divorced and fundamentally unrelated to the @home realities of their entertainment channels, culture and social networks. They know better ways to learn and communicate. They are skilled with the digital networking tools that can connect them to an emerging culture with world flattening literacy. I imagine that some of the best and brightest students feel sorry and unable to connect with the trapped and cynical late technology adopters in educational roles that get easily mired in the muck and backwater of an inherently unreliable, oppressive day old school infrastructure and technology. The subversion necessary to stay meaningful connected by day to a personal “digital softspace” in a public education institution, separates those “googling thumb drivers”, networked courageous apprentice educators and younger (in spirit) teachers from the administrators and those making us secure and walled off from all dangers in the emerging webagora. Knowing better while we muddle forward is making the old ways of teaching and learning uncomfortable and ineffective while subverting the new ways of connecting to knowledge and each other.

Thanks to David Warlick to pointing this out.

I’m writing this reflection way later than I intended too! The rest of my time in the States after NECC proved to be a low internet access time for me and since getting back to Hong Kong work has been hectic.
Excuses out of the way what did I think about my first NECC experience?

Overall I think NECC was an interesting, worthwhile experience although not for the reasons I expected. The conference took place in San Antonio at the end of June and into the beginning of July. At 13,000 attendees is probably the largest conference of its type in the world (although the product Expo at BETT in London is apparently slightly bigger). Despite its size (or perhaps because of it) some of the sessions were not that effective in terms of learning. Mainly the sessions with ’stars’ like David Warlik had hundreds of people and you really lose any chance of interaction. That being said there were some very good sessions in more niche areas like programming. The main takeaway for me overall was the product expo which had over 500 exhibitors.

1. Wisdom of Crowds: James Surowiecki was the keynote on the first day and talked eloquently (although a little canned) about the good decision making power of diverse communities. Very relevent for schools and super relevent for those of us making decisions about technology - the ‘echo chamber‘ must be avoided at all costs!
2. Power of Global Connections: Speakers and classroom teachers in posters sessions offered up a lot of examples of the power of global connections enabled by technology. Perhaps this is something we can overlook easily in international school schools we we feel “global” all the time. However, I came away convinced that this is something one should see everyday at a “2.0″ school. Connecting students with other students is such a powerful way to find authentic audiences and get at 21st century literacies.  One canadian teacher who did a keynote on the projects his upper primary class has been involved in connecting to students in Serria Leone spoke passionately and convincingly about how these projects have really helped his students develop intrest in global issues as well as develop communcation skills and charchaer by connecting with people connected to issues, communicating with them and doing so in a respectful manner. There are many tools out there to help enable connected classrooms including TakingItGlobal or the Flat Classroom Project
3. Need for Pedagogical change, supported by fluent use of the tools
4. Disruptive change is OK and the starting point for change in schools you can’t move everyone along one step at a time.
5. ISTE has just released the teacher standards. There is also a new observation tool ICOT. The tool seems to work pretty well at least from a technical perspective… The challege is getting the data by doing the observations!

One thing about the web is that many of the connections you make (professional ones at least) are mediated heavily by content and text. Virtual worlds like second life and now Lively provide a way to connect with people on the web in less mediated situations. True there will still be context to various degrees depending on the rooms you visit but I would say the context is far more informal and level playing field compared with blogs which are hub and spoke in nature; the more visited blogs being relatively more powerful ‘voices’ in that world.

Below is one world I found for K-12 educators. It was empty when I went but maybe it will fill up as this tool becomes more popular. Of that I’m sure as it seem to work fairly well, has lower barriers to entry than second life and is integrated with your google account which should mean more people are likely to give it a try. All that no to mention it is browser based! It would not surprise me though if Google developed a client version to more directly compete with SL. Think Google Maps - Google Earth

A frequent contention found in the ed-blogosphere that I have open found myself espousing in fact is that in the technology rich age in which we live young people do more writing than ever before.

Indeed - the information and communications world that we inhabit is extremely text rich. However, a recent study by Pew media has collated interesting findings that dispute the claim that the frequency and volume of writing that teenagers engage in today does not automatically mean they are going be be better writers.

The study contends basically that teens draw a distinction between the writing they do for school and the writing they engage in on social networks and mobile devices. Whereas a text message or facebook wall post is akin to a brief conversation in the hall at school it is of a different nature and quality than a formal piece of writing one might typically do in an english class.

The study concludes that students themselves believe that being a good writer is important for their future but the writing activities and assessments in school do not do a good enough job of helping them learn to be better writers. One important conclusion in the study is that students write more and are more engaged when they write for interested audiences about relevant topics and are given high expectations. This result is hardly surprising, but I would like to draw attention to the “relevant topics” and “interested audiences” factors. I think what happens sometimes in the discourse surrounding use of Web 2.0 and other modern technology tools in the classroom is a conflation between “relevant to the students world” and “what students use every day”. Just because students use social networking sites and text messaging frequently in their social lives does not mean they will consider them to be meaningful or motivating in a learning environment. When you think about it this is obvious really - we all use text messaging but would we rather text message or wall post than send a work email or write a blog post?