Am I the only one who is grounded by the fact that the Ted Talks videos are just now turning Two years old? One slide in Karl Fisch's "Shift happens" video (http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/06/did-you-know-20.html)says that it takes only 4 years to reach on audience of 50 million on the Internet. I have to believe that the TED site broke that average in a hurry. All you need is top quality material that appeals to a wide audience and you can hit that 50 million mark in far less time.

http://www.ted.com/talks - if you've not been there yet (and I can't imagine that you have not) then this is a gift.

Thanks again to Alec Couros via a tweet just recently. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7472722.stm

Get this - This 1387 ft tall building will house apartments. But, each apartment will rotate 360 degrees, independent of each other, so that the building will never look the same twice. Oh, and they spin - ON VOICE COMMAND!

The picture you see there shows the same building in four different stages. Want one? Me, too. Of course, the price tag right now is between $3.7 million and $36 million and should be ready in 2010.  I guess I'll wait until after the rush and pick one up on the cheap.

Commentary: THIS is what's going on in other parts of the world, and we can't even get wikis opened up in our schools? Hello? Can we PLEASE try to find SOMEONE in this country who will bring some sense to the table when we talk about our filtering policies? WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS NONSENSE ANY LONGER!

Thanks to Kevin White for sharing this with me via email.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Apps/Enterprise-20-Technologies-Worth-Watching/?kc=EWKNLEDP062308A
or http://snipurl.com/2ni7d  [www_eweek_com]

This is a slideshow of some tools that the author (Clint Boulton) feels are tools worth watching. I would certainly agree.

"The Enterprise 2.0 show in Boston June 9 to 12 served as both a launching pad for new products and a showcase for technologies that haven't gotten a lot of attention yet."

Many thanks to Kathy Blair for sharing this with me via the for:jgates513 tag in Delicious.

Since citebite no longer works with Firefox 3 I was happy to learn of this tool. Create an account and add the firefox extension. Then, when you find some text on a page that you’d like to point to, simply click the [AH] icon in the toolbar, highlight the text on the page (up to 2000 characters) and you get a specific url to email to your friends or to post as a link. You can add comments to it, as well. When your friend views that page there is a frame at the top with a button the take the person directly to the highlighted section (Jump to Highlights). They can read your notes, as well. There is even an RSS feed for your page of highlighted sites. Here’s a quick example: http://awurl.com/zchztu102472

This feels much like Diigo to me, but at a much simpler level. I’ve not figured out how to add a note without losing my highlight, but I’m sure it’s MY rush to get back to work that is the issue.

Anyway, it’s a nice way to point someone right to a spot on a page. Oh, and don’t forget eyejot, the site that lets you record a little movie that shows up in the top frame. Like this example: http://www.eyejot.com/et?jgates513-135667

I'm so angry I could spit fire. In planning a workshop for a district in another Intermediate Unit nearby I'm told that all blogs and wikis are blocked - at the IU level! So are most of the other "web 2" tools that I had listed to show. This is SO outrageous that I can't even focus long enough to adequately voice my outrage and frustration. That means that the students in those three counties cannot use these tools unless they happen to stumble on them at home and have reason to use one. What a HUGE disservice this is to those 75,000 (or more) students. SOMEbody there needs to lose a job and get the heck out of the way! Is THIS the best view of 21st Century learning that they can envision? And why are the rest of the curriculum folks allowing that to happen? Who is going to step forward to challenge this nonsense?

Haven't they read "The World Is Flat?" Haven't they seen the "Shift Happens" video?

ARGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!