I’m a big mind map person…just something about the visual tree effect that makes it easier for me to organize stuff. And I have loved FreeMind for a few years now. But the limitation has been that, well, it’s not very flexible in terms of social collaboration and stuff.

Enter MindMeister which has my mind a fluttering. It’s a web-based collaborative mind mapping app that so far, after about an hour’s worth of playing, is really letting me do great stuff. You can check out the intro video on the site, but here are the key features I’ve found so far that I’m liking a lot:

1. Easy importing of my FreeMind Maps. You can do it with MindJet MindManager too. Nice.
2. Drag and drop and easy keyboard tools. I love Ajax. (This is Ajax, right?)
3. Sharing/collaboration. Just invite people in to play.
4. In the best wiki tradition, it has a history so you can track changes. (Awesome.)
5. You can publish your Maps to the Web, even embed them into a blog post.
6. And while they don’t have an RSS feed to track changes, they do let you configure update alerts to your…wait for it…Twitter account.

They even have this cool little extension for MAC users that puts a little app on your desktop that you can post ideas or links to your default map in a flash. Mercy.

This has been a great couple of weeks for tools…Skitch, Jing, and now this. And the thing I love about all of them is that they are solving that little publishing hump in a very easy way by making the upload piece a seamless part of the process.

Prediction: Google buys MindMeister within six months…

Just sending out a request from a reporter who is interested in talking to parents who are using Google Docs with their kids. Leave a comment on this post if you might be willing to be interviewed and I’ll put you in touch.

One of the metaphors I find myself moving more and more to of late is “Aggregator as Textbook.” Google Reader is the place (along with Twitter of late) that I head to first every day when I open up my computer, and on an average day, I end up going back there at least 4 or 5 times. It’s become an important part of my learning process, because my daily study almost always starts and flows from what’s collected there.

That being the case, I’ve been thinking more and more about my own use of RSS, and trying to reflect on the choices I make in my aggregator. Frankly, I am still amazed that so relatively few people (not just educators) have made RSS a part of their practice, but I wonder if it doesn’t have something to do with how disruptive a technology it is when you really think about it. It changes the traditional information structures in fundamental ways, and it forces us to be much more involved with the information we consume. I’m no longer just a reader; I’m an editor who is constantly at work in the process of finding feeds to read, determining what’s relevant, trying to connect ideas and patterns, making decisions as to what to do with all of the information I come across.

The technical side to RSS is not that difficult. But I constantly wonder if I’m “doing RSS well” in the way I use it. So, anyway, here are six things I wonder about my own use of what I think is the most powerful of all of these technologies.

What’s my optimum number of feeds to read? I’ve gone between 25 and 250, and now at about 60 I’m still not sure if that’s the “right” number. And it’s not just a time factor that determines that number, although that has more to do with it than anything else. The scope of topics and a diversity of views also has a lot to do with it.

How do I not become “married” to the feeds I already have? It would be easy to keep the 60 or so feeds that I have for a long time, but I’m not sure that’s the best strategy. As new voices appear, as my interests shift, I need to be willing to let some old voices go. That’s exceedingly hard, at times, because I don’t want to miss anything, and because I feel connected to those teachers on many levels.

Do I rely too much on a handful of feeds? I’ll admit, while I struggle reading every feed every day, there are a half dozen or so that I try not to miss. I think of these as the ones that do the best job of culling out the important ideas of the day. In many cases, these people are reading many of the same sources I am. I wonder if this makes it even more difficult to read more widely.

How many individual pieces of information can I realistically make sense of? There are days when I could easily find 50 or so interesting, relevant posts or links to sites, and I wonder if that’s always such a good thing. If I were to try to process all of that, will the best filter up?

How do I best organize the information that is most useful? I have a del.icio.us account, and I stow away some snippets of things in various spots. I tag and tag and tag. But this is my most difficult struggle. I’ve yet to find a really effective way of processing all the ideas and links that make it easy to return to later.

Should I read ideas, or should I read people? Stephen Downes advocates for the former, and I can understand why. It’s the concept, the exchange of ideas that is important, not the person so much. Still, I find it very difficult to separate the two, and I do think that knowing the person through the writing adds context to the ideas. But, again, reading people also tends to limit the scope and diversity of the ideas, I think.

Without question, my aggregated text requires much more intellectual sweat than the traditional form. And that’s actually why I want my own kids to become adept at writing their own texts around the topics they find engaging. I’ve put together Pageflakes pages for my kids built on RSS feeds about horses and the Phillies as a way to get them started. But that’s just the first step.

So, I wonder, what do you wonder about RSS?

From today’s Newark Star-Ledger:

Corzine increases vigilance of Web

Thursday, August 02, 2007BY JOE DONOHUE

Gov. Jon Corzine moved yesterday to expand Internet safety programs in New Jersey, prompting praise from experts who said the initiative was overdue in an era of nearly universal Web access.

In a letter, Corzine called on Attorney General Anne Milgram and Education Commissioner Lucille Davy to help strengthen training for teachers and school administrators by the start of the new school year.

School officials would be expected to better educate students, parents and community groups about ways to recognize and avoid Internet threats from pedophiles and other predators.

“With all of the benefits that evolving technologies provide us, too many unfortunate opportunities exist for adults to exploit children through the use of the Internet or for children to otherwise experience dangerous situations as a result of the doors that technology has opened,” Corzine wrote.

Responding to the announcement, Bergen County lawyer Parry Aftab, developer of the online-protection group wiredsafety.org, said her group is eager to assist state officials in preparing training programs.

“We’re ready to help. It’s time. We have all the leading experts who can make this happen,” she said.

Lynn Maher, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Education Association, pledged her union’s cooperation. “We certainly do care very much about Internet safety, because it impacts the well-being of students,” she said.

The governor cited a study that found 71 percent of teens reported receiving messages online from someone they don’t know, and 14 percent met with people they first encountered online. State investigators so far have found that at least 248 New Jersey sex offenders were registered on MySpace.com, a Beverly Hills-based social networking Web site used widely by youngsters older than 13.

“We as a state have an important role to play in giving parents, educators and caregivers the information and tools that empower them to teach children the safe and healthy use of technology and the Internet,” Corzine said.

Aftab, who shut down her law practice 12 years ago to develop wiredsafety.org, the first group dedicated to safe use of the Internet by youngsters, said: “We can no longer say, ‘No Internet for you.’ We have to recognize our kids are using it. They have to know how to use it.”

Will Richardson, a former Flemington teacher and author of “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms,” said the state initiative may be an improvement over current “piecemeal” programs. But while the safety of children is highly important, he said, the response should not be so hysterical that schools end up stifling access to the World Wide Web.

He pointed to research that shows substantiated cases of child sexual abuse have are steadily declining, and that 95 percent of abuse cases involve family members, not strangers. The same research shows that among the offenses by non-family members, the Internet is involved in only a small percentage of cases.

“If it is just fear and doom and gloom and everybody be scared, that’s not the best way to do it. To me, that just leads to more blocking, more filtering, more reasons we can’t use Web technology in classrooms,” he said.

Education Commissioner Davy said state officials hope to build on existing programs and use schools to quickly get the latest advice on Internet safety to parents and students.

“I would hope in the fall, in PTA meetings and other school gatherings, these can be a topic of discussion,” she said.

Her own son, she noted, opened a page on the social networking site Facebook a few years ago when he enrolled in college.

“It is so important. This is scary stuff when you think of your own children, who can be a victim of a predator or someone else who doesn’t have their best interest at heart,” she said.

Joe Donohue may be reached at jdonohue@starledger.com or (609) 989-0208. Staff writer John Mooney contributed to this report.

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George Siemens pointed to this article at News.com titled Web 2.0: Big app on campus. Some of the highlights:

“That interaction between student and professor is going to become more prominent where you have already read about or watched the lecture online. The days of the large university with a 300-person lecture hall are over,” said Schooley. “Universities will be built very differently, with the concentration on workshop life.”

And:

“Every term I would get someone coming up and saying ‘Dr. Hartman, here’s the paper from the five of us, but I did most of the work.’ Short of rolling out the Spanish Inquisition, there’s not much you can do about it at that point,” said Hartman. “With wikis, I can see who pulled the load and who didn’t do anything.”

And:

Universities are not just limiting tools to professors and classrooms. Students are given server space to develop Web sites, RSS feeds, blogs, podcasts, videos, discussion boards and e-mail groups for clubs, groups and political campaigns.

Dang. Does this mean we have to start preparing our high school kids for that?

“So let me get this straight…you’re just letting people know what you’re doing when you do this?”

“Right.”

“And you call it ‘Tweeting’?”

“Well, uh, yeah. It’s kinda like a bird letting you know where he’s at, I guess.”

“And you do this how often.”

“Depends. Maybe 4, 5…10 times a day. It doesn’t take that much time, really.”

“Like how much time?”

“Dunno…maybe 10-15 minutes, total.”

“And all you’re doing is letting your friends know what you’re doing, right? At any given moment.”

“Right. But they’re not all friends in the standard sense. I mean I’ve never met some of these people.”

“And they let you know what they’re doing.”

“Right.”

“Even people you don’t know.”

“Right”

“Why?”

“Dunno.”

“Like that guy teachanlearn is ‘Reading RSS’ and he wants you to know that?”

“Um, I guess. But he also wants me to click the link there too.”

“Well, where does that go?”

“Dunno…let’s find out…it’s a blog post about a new WordPress theme.”

“And he felt the need to ‘tweet’ that?”

“Apparently.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I know. It’s kinda hard to explain. I mean I didn’t really get it at first…still not sure if I do.”

“You know all these people…how many?”

“Twenty-eight right now. They’re all in my network.”

“The network.”

“Right. My teachers…my classroom…remember? We talked about this.”

“Right. And these other people, these ‘followers’. How many?”

“Um, 209 right now.”

“209! And they want to know what you are doing?”

“I guess so, though I can’t imagine why.”

“But you only follow 28.”

“Right.”

“Does that upset them?”

“Who?”

“All those people who are ‘following’ you that you’re not ‘following’.”

“I dunno. I hope not. I can’t follow more than this many right now.”

“But I still don’t get it. Why do you want to follow them at all?”

“It’s just another layer of the connection, I think. I mean on some level, I like knowing that Chris missed his plane or that John’s doing a wiki workshop or whatever. It’s not important stuff on any major level, but it adds something.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Just…just…presence. Just this weird presence thing. And depth. I can’t really explain it.”

“Presence.”

“Well, more than that. I mean a lot of people post links and resources and ask questions and stuff. I learn from it too.”

“And people answer? So it’s like IM, right?”

“Um…no. I don’t do this for conversation, though it turns into that sometimes.”

“I don’t think I get it.”

“I don’t either.”

“Then why do you do it?”

Laura D’Elia was in Boston a couple of weeks ago attending the Building Learning Communities Conference and she’s put together a VoiceThread presentation that she’s going to present to her colleagues. And the cool thing is that she’s invited some of the BLC folk to add their own voices to the presentation.

What a concept, huh? I wonder what would happen if every conference goer at NECC and BLC and where ever else went back and used one of these new tools to communicate what they had learned and to model the ways we can create and collaborate using the Web. Think we’d get a little further down the road?

I know I repeatedly say that creating and publishing is only half the opportunity here, that it’s the conversations and connections that occur around that content where the most potential for learning lies. But this is a great example of beginning to participate in the virtual community that is “out there” for anyone (with access) that wants to take part.

I have to say that one of my favorite reads of late is Doug Noon, for a couple of reasons. First, because he writes about things that are admittedly out of my comfort zone in ways that compel me to reach (like all good teachers do) and, second, because he does blogging (the verb) really, really well. I know most people don’t spend a lot of time deconstructing blog posts for style, but at the risk of bringing up a whole slew of old debates from past years

And so I think Doug does this exceptionally well, as evidenced by his “Like Cranky Talk Show Hosts” post yesterday. In it, he weaves a whole bunch of different sources into a pretty tightly knit piece that pushes back against the standards movement and instructs as to the real motives behind those pushing “reform.” Doug writes:

Consider who profits from education reform. The standards movement is not a national response to a grassroots outcry. It’s a corporate business-initiated movement that has been sold to a fearful middle class worried about economic and social insecurity.

Which made me connect to a post I read by Sylvia Martinez a couple of days ago that reviewed some of the latest educational reform rumblings from the political left.

As educators find themselves re-imagining learning based on their own tech-based awakening, the sense comes quickly that this is not about new technology, access to information, 21st century skills, or even 2.0-goodness, but broader-based education reform. But just as quickly, it starts to feel like there is no hope of changing a lumbering, entrenched educational system with a tiny lever called technology. However, we are not alone, and it would be a win-win for both tech-loving educators and education reformers to join forces. The tools of Web 2.0 could tip the balance in the effort to reshape education “in more productive and democratic fashions.” The virtual voices of students and teachers alike could finally be heard in force.

Which pushed me back to a conversation I had last week with a new physical space connection (what a concept,) someone with a great deal of traditional creds (Stanford Ph.D.) but little facility with technology (or the Read/Write Web), and someone who has been working to bring change to districts for almost 15 years. We were talking about the roles of technology and how they have pushed the conversation in many ways, and how now more than ever, we need to start crafting a compelling vision of what schools can become for our students. After we both agreed that schools in their current structure are not going away any time soon, she point blank challenged me to begin to really fashion a vision for myself of what “reform” looks like, to articulate it, make it real.

Which brought me full circle to Doug again, remembering a post he wrote a couple of weeks ago, a post that “attempt(s) to make sense of what ’school 2.0′ might mean,” one that has been sticking in my brain ever since. In it, he writes compellingly about the friction point we’re at:

Right now, most of the discussion that I read among teachers on the web assumes that technology will deschool education by subverting institutional norms, and we’ll migrate, somehow, from classrooms to distributed networked learning systems without disturbing the institutional death grip that schools and the economy have on each other. Economic motivations encourage people to see education as a means to acquiring certifications of technical competence. Communications technology can facilitate networking, but the need for technical certifications is still going to ensure the preservation of existing educational structures. Even if the uncoupling of curriculum and certifications happens as an unintended outcome of testing and the standards movement (since testing may make schooling optional) schools in some form will still be needed.

And to this statement in an even earlier post, which I hope he’ll pick up on:

The real issue now is deciding what’s worth keeping and what form that should take.

So that’s a question I’m going to try to focus on more and more in my personal “study” this coming year. Knowing what I know about how my own learning has changed and the influences that these technologies are having, and knowing pretty well what I don’t know about the fundamental educational influences that have gotten us to where we are as a society and a system, I’m going to try to put a curriculum together for myself that can inform an answer. It may not be a compelling answer when all is said and done, but I really do think the time is now to try to make sense of it for myself, if for no other reason than my kids turn 8 and 10 next week. Not a lot of time left…

Plain and simple, despite some down moments, this was the best NECC I’ve attended. It was, for the most part, a fun, creative, good space to be in, and I learned a great deal even though I realized yesterday that I hadn’t attended a formal session. (That is actually kind of bizarre, isn’t it? And now of course I realize I missed a great deal.) But it just felt like I was getting so much from the conversations in the Blogger Cafe/Camp and at the other meet-ups throughout the five days that the sessions felt kind of unappetizing. And when I was prepping for my spotlight yesterday, I kept struggling with the same thing…the feeling that that model of someone standing on a stage talking for an hour paled as compared to just having a conversation. The whole experience has challenged my thinking a great deal.

And one other thing that kind of blossomed out of this whole thing was the Twitterish, synchronous conversation that started popping out everywhere. Jeff posted the Skypechat transcript that a bunch of people were having during my presentation. Many of them were in the room, but Clarence Fisher was supervising a science exam in Manitoba and Dean Shareski was out in Moose Jaw. And as Jeff Twittered out the fact that the chat was taking place, more people joined in along the way. It reminded me of ILaw at Harvard a couple of years ago where they actually projected the back channel IRC chat onto the screen as the presenter was presenting. (Now THAT was chaos.) For me, the benefit of tracking the reaction and thinking as I read through it a day later is really fascinating. The learning continues.

So I’m leaving NECC with a lot more optimism, not necessarily that things are going to move any faster or that the challenges are any smaller. But with a real sense of glue. We may not have succeeded at EdBloggerCon at crafting the elevator pitch or figuring out what the new story is, but there is now a sense, at least to me, of more of a collective mission. One that we can already start thinking about for next year in San Antonio. What are our goals? What do we want to have accomplished by then? What are the benchmarks? I took the liberty of adding a new page to the EBC site.

There is an election next year, you know…

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to my learning this year. Hope I added something useful to the conversation.