StigmergicWeb

This is the last blog post I’ll write here. If you want to skip my droning on about why, you can just head over to the new blog, Open Monologue, at robwall.ca. If you want to stay subscribed to this blog, I’ll be auto-posting the ed-tech links that I bookmark at del.icio.us so and I’ll probably announce when EdTech Posse podcasts are online here as well, so if you want to keep track or our podcasts stay tuned here.

So why close up now? First reason, and I have only myself to blame, is the domain name. Stigmergy is a very cool idea and a key concept for understanding emergent systems. It is also, however, not the easiest domain name to tell people out loud without having to spell it for them.

The second reason is restlessness. Way back in 2003 (that feels like such a long time ago) Alan Levine noted that many edu-blogs seem to be abandoned after about a year. If that is the case, I’ve put in more than my time here. This incarnation of my blogging started in June of 2004 after trying other formats for a couple of years, and I just have a feeling that it is time to move on. When I’ve moved before, I have changed the focus, and I think it’s time for me to do just that.

I think that the desire to change the focus of my writing is probably the biggest reason. Go check out the new blog - Open Monologue - to see a summary of what I want to write about. I am not, as I mentioned before, going to give up writing about education, learning and technology. Those are still subjects I try to think deeply about, but other things will be there as well. Besides, I think the edu-blogging thing is starting to get a little tedious. No offense meant to anyone who is in the edu-blogging camp but I have to agree with some of the points made by Tim Holt in a recent post on his blog.

You know, you have to stop preaching to the choir. I am sorry, but frankly, the people that are listening to you leaders are the ones using the technology already. Have you seen the attendees at the conventions that no one can afford? It is a nerdfest. It should be filled with teachers that have no frikkin’ idea what a blog is or what podcasts are. But that isn’t the case. Seems to me that the message has been, for MANY YEARS, that we need to use technology. Okaaaay…So, you have saturated the ed-techie teachers with that message and most of them have done their darndest to get ed tech in their classrooms. But have you ever stopped to think that maybe after all of these years, the message needs to be changed to appeal to the non-techie educator?

In general I have to agree with that. I think that the conversations are becoming rather circular. (By the way, I disagree vehmently with pretty much every other point on dissent that he raises.) Certainly there are new technologies since this blog started, but I think we are still having the same discussions as we did then. And, generally speaking, we are preaching to the choir. There certainly are many more voices in the choir than their used to be, are we articulating a vision that is coherent in a way that is comprehensible to the teachers I work with who still don’t know how to use their e-mail? Can we show them something that will make them change their teaching practice? We seem to present technology based solutions - blogging, digital story telling, wikis, etc. - as the one true way to reform education. I certainly don’t believe that is true, at least not at this stage in my life. I know teachers who are brilliant speakers and lecturers that can enthrall and educate a class of students just by standing in front of a group of students and talking. My organic chemistry prof in my first year of university did just that (although he did use some very commonly used technology in his classes - an overhead projector and a chalkboard). I learned a lot from him. It was his way of teaching and it worked for him and for his students.

I should stop. I don’t want this to turn into a criticism of what we (speaking with my edu-blogger hat on) are trying to do or of the importance of some of the models of learning that we develop. we have some valuable contributions to make to pedagogy. I just want us to think critically about what we collectively want to achieve. Are our goals for the common good, or is it hubris for us to think that we hold the one true solution?

OK - if I haven’t totally alienated everybody with that, y’all can follow me over to the new blog which is pithily entitled Open Monologue. You’re invited to drop by anytime you’d like. No cat diaries - I promise.

It occurred to me earlier that starting today, there are four significant countdowns in my life:

1. Tomorrow (Oct. 26) Apple releases Leopard. I suppose this isn’t really that significant or specifically involve me, but I am looking forward to the updated OS. I think that having automated backups via Time Machine will be the best feature, not that automatic backups are new but it has a bee-yoo-tee-ful Apple wrapper on the whole thing which looks like it will make backing up and restoring easier to manage. Hopefully this will make backups part of all Mac users lives. Backups are important - I have learned that the hard way! I haven’t ordered my copy yet. I’m waiting to see if it crashes Alec’s dual quad core first. A small, petty, evil part of me is kind of hoping it does. ;^)
2. Two days hence (Oct. 27) I convocate from the University of Saskatchewan’s M.Ed. program in Educational Communication and Technology. I’ll probably have more to write about it after the convocation is done.
3. Three days hence (Oct. 28) is my birthday (sound the trumpets and let the pigeons fly). It won’t be a multiple of 10 (or even a mere multiple of 5) so it doesn’t feel especially significant. But it will be a prime number so I will be, once again, entering the prime of my life. As with the convocation, I might have more to blog about at the time. Then again, maybe not. After a certain age it becomes just another day, albeit a day for sleeping in. Also, my report card marks are due in on Monday, so my birthday will include a whole whack of marking.
   
4. Four days hence, this blog is done (mostly). I mentioned before that I needed to rebrand - change the focus or the scope of what I am writing about, so I will be moving shop. I’ll still be writing about ed-tech kinds of things, but that is only going to be part of it. I want to write about so many different things and I feel like I need a new space to do that. I’ll definitely leave a last post here regarding that. This site won’t be completely gone but I’ll have more to say about that in 4 days.

I think I’ll have a lot to say in the next few days. I hope that I’ll also have the time to write it up and share it with you.

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If you are reading StigmergicWeb via an aggregator, you should update the RSS feed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/Stigmergicweb - I’m routing the RSS feed through feedburner. Why? Mostly just morbid curiousity with regards to how many people are actually reading this. And to make use of the way cool WordPress Reports plugin!

And if you aren’t reading this via an aggregator, this is a good time to start! If you don’t have an aggregator program or site, I recommend Google Reader.

I’m upgrading and clearing out some of the detritus. Things may look a little goofy for a while, until I get the Markdown plugin installed.

Update/rewrite I just installed the PHP Markdown Extra plugin in the blog, and it seems to be working

My main reason for wanting a Markdown plugin is to use the offline blogging capabilities built into Textmate, especially with the introduction of the new Blogmate plugin. If the site blows up … well, I guess if it blows up, you won’t be reading this anyway.

Oh - you might be wondering what Textmate/Blogmate connection is. Textmate is the coolest text editor in the world (although I know the emacs zealots will disagree) which has built in blogging capabilities. Blogmate is an extremely sweet plugin for Textmate that gives the blogging capabilities a nice GUI. I could use straight HTML with either of them, but both have the capacity to work with Markdown, and Markdown is a much cooler way of formatting text as you type.

I’ve found out that my students have found my blog. I guess its time to stop talking about them. ;^)

Just kidding, James (and anyone else who wanders this way). Feel free to check in every once in a while. I spend a lot of time talking about students, so you can even correct me when I make mistakes in my assumptions about you.

Oops. I just got an email from Alec letting me know that his comment on my previous post was not getting through. I checked and it seems that Spam Karma 2 had gone bad on me, and was giving errors on any submitted comments. I deactivated SK2 and reactivated Akismet, which still shows all the comments in the queue (all 2000 or so of them). I still have to go through the backlog to see if there are any other trapped comments, so if you tried to comment on something and it didn’t work, check again soon to see if it is back up.

I was starting to wonder why I wasn’t getting any comments. I was starting to consider blogicide (shutting down the blog) if I didn’t get some feedback ;^). Thanks to D’Arcy, Rob (twice), Dean, Chris and of course Alec for leaving some comments. Keep talking to me, folks - I live for your feedback.

Its a peaceful day in the middle of my Easter break. My family has left me alone to take care of the 1001 projects that I need to get done, along with some house work. Is there a better time to update Wordpress to version 2.0.2 and play around with some new plugins? I think not - all that other stuff can wait for a couple of hours. So - this will either work brilliantly, or fail tragically. Stay tuned for details.

UPDATE - if you can read this, everything so far is good, and the update to WordPress 2.0.2 worked. Now to start playing around with some new plugins!

A great way to get developers to release an upgrade is for me to install it.

I just downloaded and installed this and … the site looks just the same! I don’t even see any difference on the administration side of things. But nothing seems broken, so I think I’ll keep it ;^) K2 at Binary Bonsai

OK - despite borking the upgrade to WordPress 2.0, I did manage to retrieve the site from the backed up database. Sorry if this upgrade has barfed my feed into your RSS aggregator. I’ll try not to repeat that.Now I need to put on a fresh coat of paint and re-theme the site. But I think that just might wait until tomorrow.

UPDATE - As a start to the renovation, I’ve switched to the fabulous K2 theme. Tweaking and fine-tuning will wait until tomorrow.