You say you want a revolution . . . .

In the tradition of Michael Wesch, who brought us The Machine is Us/Using Us comes this YouTube video, called the Social Media Revolution. The author, Eric Qualman, produced the video as part of the rollout of a new book, Socialnomics, published by Wiley. To read his blog or to see his statistical sources (and the discussions they've produced), go here.

Enjoy!

2009 Horizon Report

. . . is on the horizon. Read it here.

Six Ways to Identify Top Blogs in Any Niche

An interesting post that identifies (and evaluates) options for locating high-impact blogs. Since blogs -- like other new media -- are in the process of becoming legitimate primary or secondary source material for some research projects, it's good to have a guide to finding them.

Berkman Media Re: Public Site

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society today announced "a major research release": Media Re:public: News and Information as Digital Media Come of Age. This series of papers explores the potential and the challenges of the emerging networked digital media environment -- an environment that impacts what we do at the desk, in classes, and in our work with users. It's worth a look!

"The Media Re:public series was put together over the course of a year of examining the news media in the U.S., engaging with journalists, bloggers, citizen journalists, public broadcasters, publishers, advertising networks, researchers, technologists, and many others. It builds on previous discussions, such as the 2005 Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference, and highlights the need for a new public conversation about reinventing journalism in the public interest."

From the project main page, the conversation is being continued via the project blog.

Zoetrope: looking backward on the Internet

is about to take a great leap forward!

View the video

The MIT Technology Review has an interesting article on this soon-to-be-released software as well.

Another view of Wikipedia

Wikirage

This site keeps up-to-the-minute statistics on the entries that are being most heavily edited, on entries with most unique edits, most vandalism and undos, etc. The site allows you to view by different category and according to different time parameters (last hour, day, week, etc.).

The site perhaps has interesting implications(and applications) for our work with students. Beyond that, Wikirage offers a fascinating glimpse into current cultural and social phenomena (and fads).

Compare it to the Wikipedia map of edits.

Reading on Collaboration and Collaboration Tools

An August 2008 Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) paper.

Firefox Video Add-Ons

While we are learning the fine art of video-making and what it can do for us, and until we have Camtasia or Captivate on our machines to facilitate experimentation, you might want to take a look at CaptureFox. This is a Firefox add-on that you can install (much like Harvard LibX) on your computer here. CaptureFox is very recently launched but is generating enthusiasm.

Harvard College Thesis Repository

The Harvard College Free Culture group has created an online repository of full-text undergraduate theses. It's small (but growing) and well-worth promoting among students (and faculty) when you can.

A reading that puts our changes in context?

The Academic Library in a 2.0 World, Susan V. Wawrzaszek and David G. Wedaman, ECAR Bulletin, issue 19 (September 16, 2008).

Interesting article from First Monday

Graham Cormode and Balachander Krishnamurthy, "Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0." First Monday [online], 13.2 (June 2, 2008).  

Wordle: Making Tag Clouds Pretty

Here are our del.icio.us links, recast with Wordle.

You can put in other kinds of  text, too, and have it reshaped visually. A fun tool! 

Where videos go to die . . .

You've heard about TimeTube already.  

A recent WiredNews article introduces us to something else: YouTomb.  

Like the Wayback Machine for web pages, YouTomb captures the fact that a video did once exist, even if it's lost to the world forever due to copyright restrictions and other forms of censorship. 

Our MIT friends down the street are responsible for the project. 

2008 Horizon Report

The 36 page report is linked from here.

Because it forecasts trends in teaching, learning, and technologies, it makes interesting reading as we all think about a Lamont of the future.

Worth a look

JISC (the UK Joint Information Systems Committee) and the British Library have just published a report on "The Information Behaviour of the Google Generation."  It looks very critically at some of "myths" of the Google generation -- at long last!

New Tech gets (Sort of) Old(ish)

Interesting development: humans over algorithms.

Two New Studies

From the Educause Center for Applied Research:

ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2007

From the librarians at the University of Rochester:

Studying Students:The Undergraduate Research Project at the University of Rochester

New Educause Report

ECAR [Educause Center for Applied Research] has just released its Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology, 2007.

"This 2007 ECAR research study is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, and 2006 ECAR studies of students and information technology. The study, which reports noticeable changes from previous years, is based on quantitative data from a spring 2007 survey and interviews with 27,846 freshman, senior, and community college students at 103 higher education institutions. It focuses on what kinds of information technologies these students use, own, and experience; their technology behaviors, preferences, and skills; how IT impacts their experiences in their courses; and their perceptions of the role of IT in the academic experience."

If the entire 122 page report is too long to pore over (especially these days), there's a 15 page key findings that you can peruse. A 4 page "roadmap" for action is also provided.

Interesting Reading on the Next Big Thing(s)

Richard MacManus, who authors the Read/Write Web blog, provides a summary of the Top 10 Future Web Trends here. The experts suggest these developments will unfold over a ten year period.

More on the Web 2.0 / Authority Conundrum

A post on a site called "Academic Productivity" is circling parts of blogosphere at the moment. It's called Soft Peer Review? Social Software and Distributed Scientific Evaluation. Interesting stuff.