When you’re fighting your tools, you’re not being expressive anymore.

Dan Mall (@danielmall) on Tools

I spent the last few days sitting in various meeting rooms, talking to a great community of people whom I normally only interact with over Twitter or otherwise, and having a good bit of fun. I love the HighEdWeb conference. I missed it so much in 2009 when I was unable to attend. This year was just as much fun, if not more, as I’m no longer the new kid.

But. My entire outlook on the web in Higher Education has changed. And I realized that it hasn’t changed to be in line with the rest of the community.
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We Feel Fine / by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar.

This is amazing. One of the coolest mashups I’ve seen. Ever.

I have just finished my final project for Media Literacy entitled, “Are You Media Literate?”

Are You Media Literate?

Check out the project →

If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

via Thoughts on Flash.

That earlier re-blog I did of Brad King‘s Shut Your Digital Native Piehole (52 of 90) got me thinking about the differences in literacy levels. And as I followed the line of reasoning it came around to one thing: class struggle. I think this works.
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Some insightful observations. Why should we teach media literacy? Right here is a good reason.

These children have grown up with digital technologies, but in a very limited way. They know a few things quite deeply, but they – as we did at their age – have no great appreciation of the subtleties of the tools. The expanse and use of the tools. The possibilities for tools that don’t yet exist.

They can push buttons, but they can’t make them.

Brad King: – Shut Your Digital Native Piehole (52 of 90).

Definitely poignant. How do we increase the literacy of kids? This is why we need media and digital citizenry taught in school. Kids grow up with computers, but they don’t know how to really use all the tech that’s out there. There is also Henry Jenkins’ position of ethical standards not being learned in an always-on world. Being native doesn’t equal being literate. And literacy has changed.

Some really interesting metrics from JESS3 for AIGA on the state of the internet.

JESS3 – the State of The Internet by JESS3 for AIGA Baltimore

Online search giant Google recently made its foray into the formal social media sphere with its Google Buzz service. Tied into the popular Gmail web-based email client, Buzz was rolled out to Google’s approximately 146 million most active users, the company saying that a social network has always been beneath the surface of its email technology (WSJ.com). But even with the current social-media craze, many users were unhappy with what seemed to be an intrusion on their everyday social routines. We’ll look at some of these users’ comments and I’ll espouse what I see to be some of the possibilities that we might not be hearing over the Buzz. ¶ Read More…