Follow Along as I Read "The World Is Open"

Follow along as I post my thoughts about The World Is Open while I work my way through the 400+ pages of the book. Starting today you will be able to see my thoughts about the book posted in the Free Technology for Teachers Friend Feed room.

Plurk Makes Updates, Easier to View on Netbooks

Plurk is a mircoblogging and social networking platform that has started to gain some traction in the edublogging community. I find Plurk to be quite similar to FriendFeed because you can post content to your Plurk stream from a wide variety of other services that you use. To be fair though, I don't use my Plurk account often enough to give a complete comparison of Plurk to FriendFeed.

Plurk has recently made some improvements. The size of your Plurk timeline can now be adjusted to fit your screen best. The adjustability should make it easier to view your Plurk stream on a small screen like those found on netbooks. Another significant improvement is the option to search for music on YouTube through Plurk. Once you've selected music it will appear in your timeline and others can listen to it using the Plurk audio player.

Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Tech Tech Boom Gets Kids Talking About School
How Cell Phones, Twitter, and Facebook Can Make History
FriendFeed in Education

21 Must-Read RSS Feeds

Last week after my post about the Free Technology for Teachers FriendFeed room, I received a couple of comments and emails asking me if I would post a list of some of my favorite websites. Here are my 21 must-read RSS feeds. These are the RSS feeds I check first whenever I've been away from my computer for more than twenty-four hours.

These lists are arranged alphabetically only because my RSS reader is also arranged alphabetically.

Feeds directly related to education:
A Geeky Momma's Blog
Dangerously Irrelevant
iLearn Technology
Instructify
It's Not All Flowers and Sausages
Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day
Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Nebraska Change Agent
The English Blog
Welcome to NCS-Tech

Feeds targeted toward the tech early adopter audience:
Ars Technica
Center Networks
CNET News
Google Earth Blog
Google LatLong
Killer Startups
Mashable
Read Write Web
The Official Google Blog

Three feeds that don't exactly fit in the tech or K-12 category:
Daily Writing Tips
Open Culture
Seth Godin's Blog

Interesting Things Not Featured On This Blog

I'm often asked, "where do you find all this stuff?" The simple answer is, every day I read more than two hundred blogs and websites in my RSS reader. I also use real-time search engines to find new and timely content. Throughout the course of a day I find a lot of things that are interesting, but don't quite fit with the purpose of this blog. Those items I post to the Free Tech 4 Teachers Friend Feed room. You can find that room here or in the widget embedded on the right hand side of this blog.

Friend Feed in Education

Friend Feed is a microblogging platform that for some reason hasn't gained traction in the edublogging community the way that Twitter has. That's a shame because Friend Feed has some great features that make a superior communication tool compared to Twitter. I talked to a few people at NECC about the lack of Friend Feed adoption in the edublogging community. From those conversations it seems that people just aren't aware of what Friend Feed offers.

Here are some of the key features that Friend Feed offers.
1. More than 140 characters. There is a good argument for Twitter's character restriction making you choose your words carefully, but sometimes you just need more room in order to complete a conversation.
2. Commenting and "like" system. Similar to Facebook's commenting and "like" system, Friend Feed's system allows users to comment on any of your posts. This makes it much easier to hold and track a conversation. With real-time updates, whenever someone comments on any of your posts, that post rises back to the top of your stream so that you can see it without having to search for it.
3. Room/ Group creation. Friend Feed allows you to create as many rooms (also referred to as groups) as you like. The purpose of creating a room is to have a place to hold a conversation around a specific topic or event. For example I created a room for NECC 2009. I've also created a room for people to share thoughts and resources about technology in education. Rooms can be private (you control who can join, view, and comment), semi-private (only you can post new items, but anyone can comment), or public (anyone can join, view, and post). Setting up a room is very easy, just go to your homepage select "browse/ edit groups" and create your new group.
4. Embeddable widgets. Friend Feed offers a good selection of widgets that you can embed into your blog or website. You can embed your main Friend Feed stream or you can embed the stream of updates from a group. In the right hand side bar I've embedded the widget for updates from the Free Tech 4 Teachers group. If you're a Friend Feed user, you can go an comment in it right now.

Applications for Education
The option to create a private Friend Feed room could be a great way to create a back channel for your classroom or for any workshops that you may lead. You could also create a private Friend Feed room for your students to use as brainstorming area or a book discussion forum. Because Friend Feed's commenting and "liking" system is similar to Facebook's, most middle school and high school students should quickly figure out how to use it.

Find My Notes - Join the NECC Conversation

A couple of people have asked me where I'm posting notes and links from NECC 2009. I set up a Drop.io page for my notes and links from this trip. You can find that Drop here. The Drop.io page is set for public access so please feel free to add your comments and or ask questions.

I have also set up a Friend Feed group for conversations about NECC 09. You can find and join that group here. Again, the group is open to anyone so please feel free to join in the conversation whether. If you've never tried Friend Feed, now might be the time. The group feature makes it possible to have threaded conversations about a particular topic/ event without having to sift through a stream of unrelated content.

Update:
If you don't want to join Friend Feed, you can still see all of the notes and conversations about NECC 09 on this blog in the widget I've installed in the right hand column of the blog. The feed is just below the Google Friends display.