“One thing we misunderstand frequently when talking about how great and amazing social media is comes from the fact that we’re thinking from the perspective of what we want the tool to do while the people who are receiving the message might be thinking about the tools in the abstract. When we talk about how Twitter forges real time conversations and delivers business value, others show up and see us bitching about a late flight and live tweeting the baseball game. When we talk about how blogging changes the world, other people are slogging through all the crap blogs indexed by Google when they’re looking for actual useful information.”

He makes a very interesting point that when a new technological tool emerges, we spend the first part of its life trying to figure out what it is useful for. At a certain point, that process becomes transparent, when the tool just becomes embedded in our daily lives – think of the cell phone or even email, how they didn’t exist a generation ago, then they were a minority interest mainly for professionals and now are ubiquitous and we couldn’t imagine life without them.

his key point is that social media tools are just that, tools for communication that allow for more “nuance”, the revolution as he sees it is in how we use them.
In his case it is to market products to consumers, but in our sphere i think the key is in personalising learning, so each learner feels more like they are getting a bespoke educational experience that is tailored just to them, a unique learning journey where others have laid out some signposts, but by forming alliances and communities of practice with like-minded voyagers, their journey is a far richer experience than it could have been previously.

That’s certainly been my experience with using blogs in my post grad course, they have greatly enhanced the ‘personality’ of the students for me, and opened up their thought processes in amazing ways.

For me, these tools are about communication, collaboration, collective knowledge and connected knowledge.

In the same vein is this wonderful presentation by Alisa Miller, the CEO of Public Radio International of shows why we get the news we deserve. by mashing stats on seconds of airtime given to news stories on US networks, it comes up with a compelling argument why US foreign policy bears no relation to the understanding of the world of its citizens.

watch it here http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/248

This is from the inspiring and entertaining TED talks series, which i watch every week or so, almost at random, to be amazed and educated at what the world contains. i’ll post periodically from them, as they are one of the best things on the web in my opinion, and since actually attending a TED conference costs thousands of dollars, getting them for free is a real bargain

you are supposed to be in the US to sign up, but i just checked the box and it let me in

it is free at present, and the T&C dont seem too scary in that adobe aren’t trying to take any rights except in the provision of the service

I uploaded a set of images easily, and made a quick album of images of a story as a slideshow i did a few years ago on the threat to orangutans in indonesia from logging

you can view it here https://www.photoshop.com/user/paullowe

at first glance it seems like a high powered version of flikr, you can edit and even retouch images from inside the programme, and then make albums and slideshows that you can either share publicly or just with friends by email invites

(thanks to hao for the heads up on this)