The Education Blogs

Randy Thornton, proprietor of the Metamedia blog, rocks! He recently wrote and performed his own song about Twitter called “Still tweeting 4U”. I love this kinda stuff—this is who we are, damn it! It may be a country song, but it’s all EDUPUNK in my mind: have fun, create, innovate, do. And when you bring music into this formula, whatever genre, it’s always good!

Hats off to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Cinematèk once again for their upcoming Punk ‘n’ Pie film series, which looks to be an amazing retrospective focusing predominantly on the UK Punk/New Wave scene (a majority of them I haven’t yet seen, and I’m particularly interested in the November 23rd double-feature).

I got it Tom, thank you very much!

I love this punk song, which is an original composition and performance by one very cool nine year old.

I have to say it, Kirby is a DIY godhead, so very, very EDPUNK!

“Embedded!”

In this episode the EdTech Survivalist tries to help a war buddy unembed himself from the web. But first he has to help him navigate a long, abusive history of being at the mercy of centralized IT, a reality that might just push Johnny Embed over the embedding edge.

Credits:
Tom Woodward, my confirmed partner in crime, brilliantly portrays Johnny Embed, and is responsible for all his own effects and camera work.

While I was trying to record the most recent EdTech Survivalist video, I was hacked by an alter-ego I thought had been laid to rest long ago. So forgive the quality of this recent installation, but I was shanghai’d in to giving a more instructive, albeit confusing, explanation of the syndication oriented framework of UMW Blogs.

From the latest issue of Wired:

Who knew it was a noun?

Thanks to Jerry Slezak for getting me started all over again

“Fishing with Tom”

In our first episode we were ever so lucky to catch up with Dixie’s most impressive edtech survivalist Tom “Catfish” Woodward. We tunneled all the way down to the swamps of Slocum, Alabama to find him, and we were duly rewarded with some invaluable gems about trotlining RSS to feed the entire family fresh knowledge on a daily basis. Bon appetit!

Credits: Special thanks to Catfish for giving so freely of his limited time and unlimited genius. And once again thanks go to Serena Epstein for applying her special touch.

Hat tip to Mikhail Gershovich for the link.

Finding Steve Wheeler’s presentation on EDUPUNK for a F-ALT fringe meeting today was a nice reminder for me that so many of the associations this idea took on over the course of a couple of months really do still resonate deeply with me. I believe Steve’s idea of “unleashing the anarchy of the web” is a perfect way to think about what makes this moment of DIY teaching and learning in relationship to the more traditional institutional framework of course delivery rather radical.

I’m a fan of TorrentFreak, it’s one of those rare blogs that streams interesting news on a very specific subject and openly acknowledges its biases while providing the reader with a ton of information to fend for themselves. In fact, I have come to think of TorrentFreak as one of the outposts in a war over our culture and piracy that goes generally unacknowledged in the educational sphere. We talk a lot about licensing and open resources in educational technology, but I think the 5000 pound elephant in the room that is the internecine battle over cultural distribution for the 21st century is being waged silently on the margins.

Image thanks to characterzero99

“As technology advances, it reverses the characteristics of every situation again and again. The age of automation is going to be the age of “do it yourself.” Marshall McLuhan, from the Essential McLuhan.  Edited by Eric McLuhan & Frank Zingrone. Routledge 1997. Page 283.

Source: bavatuesdays

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Sorry, we’re open used courtesy of oknovokght.

To quote the inimitable Luke Waltzer, Frank "It ain't about me!" Sobotka is “one of the great characters in TV history.” I have to wholeheartedly agree, the stevedore who “knew he was wrong, but believed for the right reasons,” was an amazing presence on television—a working class guy whose not a ridiculous stooge like The King of Queens. For some more great clips featuring Sobotka struggling with the death of the American working class, check out this clip.