Just a quick pointer to newly posted version 1.5 of the RSS Quick Start Guide for Educators. It adds some new information on Furl and del.icio.us feeds, begins a list of cool uses for RSS, and fixes some broken links. At last count, the guide has been downloaded over 2,500 times…Cool! Please let me know if you see any corrections or have any additions to suggest.

Enjoy!
—–

Steven Cohen e-mailed me this link to a story in the Rutland (VT) Herald about a jr/sr high school principal who has banned access to Myspace.com, a blogging site. The reason? Well aside from legitimate concerns about kids publishing personal information, the prinicpal says blogging is not an educational use of computers.

Um, I beg to differ. And if anything, this seems to be what they call a TEACHABLE MOMENT. Let’s see…we have some kids who are doing what tens of thousands of other kids are doing out there, writing about their lives in a public space. Good for the school for monitoring what the kids are doing there and realizing they aren’t necessarily being smart in the way they are doing it. Bad for the school for thinking that denying access will teach them the lesson they need to learn.

Instead, the principal urges parents to check history files and cookies on the computers that their children are using. Oy. This reminds me of Seymour Pappert last week at CoSN when he was talking about the initial reaction of parents in Maine when they announced the 1 to 1 laptop initiative. Many of them said things along the lines of “they’re just going to go to porn sites and play games.” Pappert, who was one of the major players in the project, responded by saying “But that has nothing to do with giving them the technology. What is it about your children that would make you think they would do that?” Amen.

It’s easy to check the history and cookies. It’s easy to ban sites that kids are going to find ways to access anyway. What’s hard is modeling and teaching appropriate use. That is the only way we’re going to help kids protect themselves from the dark side of the Internet.

So I’ve been seeing this link to amaztype for a few days and finally decided to have a look at the results for a “blog” search on Amazon. Sheesh! There are dozens of blog related books out there suddenly. Who knew?

Like Road Blog:

When the Websters leave Normal, Illinois, for a family holiday, Austin and Ashley get pulled right back into the World Wide Web–and this time, Mr. and Mrs. Webster get sucked inside the Internet, too! What began as a relaxing getaway turns into a wacky road trip when they set out to find Lost Lake Resort. Soon, the Websters are stumbling through a long lineup of lost links, like LostKitty-dot-com, the Lost Sea cave, a long-lost Inca city, and a lost round-the-world flight.

Or The Secret Blog of Raisin Rodriguez:

Twelve-year-old Raisin Rodriguez has been uprooted from her life in California and plopped down in Philadelphia with her mother, sister, step-father, step-sister Samantha, and Samantha’s cross-dressing poodle Countess. The only way Raisin can survive the painful transition is by recording every detail in a secret blog she keeps for her best friends from home.

Wow! And how about Baghdad Burning : Girl Blog from Iraq:

In August 2003, the world gained access to a remarkable new voice: a blog written by a 25-year-old Iraqi woman living in Baghdad, whose identity remained concealed for her own protection. Calling herself Riverbend, she offered searing eyewitness accounts of the everyday realities on the ground, punctuated by astute analysis on the politics behind these events.

And, ahem, China, the Sexiest Country on Earth: Blogs of China Business & Life:

Our blog contributors lift the veil of mystery shrouding China …who you meet (students, secretaries and staff) …starting from zero …the wrong freedoms …takeaways (top ten MBA rules to break, top ten business rules to follow, top ten China/USA contradictions, top ten China/USA similarities, top ten adjectives Chinese use to describe Americans). China will be ‘on top of us [U.S.]’ sooner than anyone expects. Similar to the 1980’s economic ‘invasion’ by the Japanese, the impact of China’s economic penetration will erupt unexpected, unforeseen and overnight.

Mercy. And let’s not stop there. Looks what’s on the horizon: Blogs, Wikis, and Feeds In Action:

An innovator’s guide to application development with blog, wiki, and newsfeed technologies, this book introduces the new ways of collaboration enabled by these technologies and focuses on the fundamental concepts needed to understand how the technologies can be used in real world applications.

“Holy Spimoli!” as my grandfather used to say. It’s a veritable feast of blog books. Hmmm…
—–