blam!

we like to see comments on our blogs. activity on our pages let us know we are doing something useful to others, something that generates interest and thought in at least one or two people. however, i have noticed commercial commentary on a number of blogs, especially those of some of my classmates. i guess this is not a new phenomenon, but blog spam or blam seems a bit less checked that email spam. the conspicuously translated wording is very similar to the various viagra (and herbal analog) spam messages i get via email. does anyone know of a filtering widget or service that can help reduce these abusive commenters without blocking desirable contribution?

DOPA: onomatopoeia or necessary protection?

anyone care to comment on the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (DOPA)? this bill passed the house of representatives, but stalled in the senate before session ended, forcing a reproposal next session. i ran across a detailed reposted july 2006 discussion of DOPA at Vicki A. Davis's Cool Cat Teacher Blog. i particularly enjoyed one of the comments in which it was noted that many of the students who are the apparent targets of "protection" know more about how to protect themselves from malicious online activity than those designing this clumsy legislation. maybe we can help our lawmakers feel this one out. can we afford to block students (and teachers while at school) from using online networking and idea exchange tools? how might we decrease students' exposure to malicious activity without eliminating their ability to use the online tools available to learn and interact with their peers and the rest of the world?

one voice good, two voices bad

i ran a blogsearch for 'collaborative art' hoping to find like-minded collaborative artists and educators. instead i found this.
consider the following, quoted from the above-linked site:
"The best writing is always writing created by one person because good writing is characterized by an individual vision and style." ~Shelley Uva
is the best writing that which is produced by only one person? though this is written in reference to a particular type of writing, the comments seem to be intended as much broader strokes. can multiple authors produce a single piece of writing with strong voice and style?

zoomquilt

here is a gorgeous online collaborative electronic zoom project: the zoomquilt. what do you think about it?

social constructivism

i have been perusing dawn hogue's online english resources site and her many linked resources, finding a lot of content that relies on, operates in support of and discusses openly the social constructivist approach to learning and teaching. as is evidenced, i hope, by my last post, i believe this is an essential consideration in education, though it seems neither embraced nor understood by most educators. with the increasing importance of and reliance on wiki resources, social constructivism is the primary framework within which we are creating and accessing knowledge. i weep for door-to-door encyclopedia salesmen, though only for a moment, because they have become extinct as a result of the evolution of knowledge itself, not merely the changes in methods of knowledge development. as we change our ideas about what words, places, ideas and people mean, who can cause this change but we who think about them? education is not a unidirectional heirarchy as it once was. education operates in all directions: student to teacher, teacher to student, student to community, country to student, world to teacher, student to world, student to student. many of these avenues are restricted by one limitation of schooling or another. we are peeling these restrictions away bit by bit, though we seem to be approaching it in a straightlined chronological method, placing obstacles behind one another clearing only one at a time and without looking ahead to the next barrier. the collaborative communities i see forming will help change this, as each of us work on our own ideas and those of others, sidelining isolated patterns of thought to put collective cognition on the field. since we are all students as well as educators, it makes sense that we should learn how to teach in the same way we teach students how to learn.

call for collaboration

i would like to postplug the art event dubbed "the feral i" that succeeded this past monday. we held this event in the art lounge in the south end of the CSU student center. the exhibit is still up and will be until february 17th. it was an interactive art experience, combining the exhibition of various untrained artists' work with video, music, spoken word, collaborative painting writing drawing and improvisational synergy rhythm. this was the first public event from of a variety of ongoing collaborative experiential efforts by myself and lifebound synergistic triumvirate partners, dan weddle and jamee warrenfeltz . all of us educators, we work not only to offer our creativity to advance the future generations, but also to facilitate personal creative potential that exists so strongly in so many of our peers and community members of any age. i am incredibly impressed by everyone who attended the event. everyone created something that night, often combining talents and ideas with others to birth incredible communicative offspring. there was no pretense. there was no embarrassment. there was no popularity. there was no anxious inhibition. there was no stagnation. we all moved ahead, and with unpredicted vitality. we would like to continue to create in this way and to encourage others to experience the same restrictionless progress. this has been, from inception, a collaborative vision, constantly evolving, unpredictably advancing. we need your help to keep moving forward. let us know what you want to happen in your mind. we will do this again and again, but we need you.

full throttle thinking: maybe learning

what prevents thorough and timely exploration of ideas? have we so completely compartmentalized each aspect of life that interconnectedness of learning has slipped quietly into the night behind us, leaving us to squint at 100,000 watts of flourescent facade? my schedule prevents me from completing anything cohesive, whether in mind, on page or in three dimensional prismatism. very little escapes its chrysalis. my memories are fringed with myriad loose ends and the future looks hairy from this distance. perhaps nothing can retain conclusion and loose ends are the essential tie-in points for constructive cognition. but we don't always tie these up properly. we rush, thinking we only need a connection to hold for a minute and then the knot slips, dropping that portion of understanding. the higher the point from which it falls, the less likely we are to find it intact and breathing. these haphazardly connected ideas are the sacrificial offerings we make to obscure, promised gods who only wish we would save our thoughts and think for ourselves.