On ReadWriteWeb this morning, I read about the Hadopi law in France, which is a three strikes law. If you are accused of illegal downloads of music or files 3 times, your Internet access will be shut down. OMG! This is so Brave New Word or 1984. In order to prove your innocence–notice that you have to prove you are innocent, the French authorities have provided no place for them to try you for guilt, you have to buy and install tracking software (spyware) that records your every move on the Internet.

Now, apparently the French Constitutional Court has found the law unconstitutional. Great, but the Sarkozy government is seeking to reinstate tracking/censorship with LOPPSI under the guise of terrorism protection.

Red flags waving all around. Of course, the U.S. government can already install spyware on suspects’ computers. The FBI still needs a search warrant to install the spyware, so checks and balances are built into the system.  As long as there are safeguards built into any spying system, I tend to view tracking criminals on the Internet as similar to tracking them pre-Internet. If you have enough evidence to obtain a search warrant, then the warrant should be valid on or off line. Police should be able to track down porn traffickers and terrorists online. However, if you start trying to enact laws that cut off a person’s Internet access pre-trial, then I really start to have problems with the law and constitutional rights.

How many more countries are going to follow the trend of blocking Internet access or Internet censorship, all based on the premise that this is for the better good? I don’t know, but I find blocking the Internet a frightening proposition.

Tonight I learned of the death of one of my professors at the University of Tennesse, Knoxville–Dr. Ed Counts. Ed was sick when I joined the PhD program in Instructional Technology and never really recovered, but I had the pleasure of talking to him and taking the class in graduate school that changed the way I think about how I learn best. The class was Constructivism in Education and Ed was a true constructivist–no syllabus, no academic papers, but multiple projects to be presented in any fashion we chose to present them and with whomever we chose to work.

At the time, I was not overly happy about the lack to structure, but I came to realize that this is how I actually learn best. Project work of my choice with colleagues of my choice working toward a common goal. I remember more about Maxine Green and Aesthetic Education after creating a simple PowerPoint presentation on her life and philosophy than I remember from papers written just this summer. Academic papers bore me even though I apparently am fairly good at writing them. However, that is not how I learn best. How many children are we neglecting by forcing one mode of education on them? I don’t know, but I do know that I had no idea how I learned best even after years of study (B.A., M.A., J.D. and now working on a PhD) until Ed’s class.

If you want to see some of his work, here it is. Enjoy.

I read this article from Wired today about a Stanford professor who has conducted a literacy study. Her findings, writing is evolving, not devolving as some critics of texting claim. Great article. I would love to read the academic version of the study just to see the methodology. In the meantime, here is the link to the Wired summary.

Professor Michael Wesch and his students in a cultural anthropology at Kansas State University created the video below, where they summarize some of what is happening in U.S. classrooms today.  What is touched on in the video is how more text is read online than in print by many of the students. I don’t know how I feel about this, but I have begun to explore the power of multimedia in learning. For more information on video as the wave of the future, take a look at the People of the Screen website.

What do you think? Join in with People of the Screen to give your insights on the “battle” of text v. pixel.

I just read an article on the BBC website about Wolfram Alpha, a new search engine that answers your questions rather than providing you will a list of webpages like current search engines do. I had seen the site mentioned on another blog I follow (Fortnightly Mailing), but hadn’t really paid much attention to it until I ran across the BBC article. The posting on Fortnightly Mailing refers readers to a Slashdot posting, points out that the “computational knowledge engine” as Wolfram Alpha is billed will not kill Google because it is just so different.

I can certainly see using Wolfram Alpha as a fact-gathering tool from its description. However, I will have to wait for the May 2009 launch to see how or if I will begin to use it more than I use Google. It will be fun to watch how long it will take teachers to accept citations from Wolfram Alpha. Remember the furor over Wikipedia, which is now widely used in K-12 and universities (though instructors still say find another source saying the same thing). I know university faculty members who immediately go to Wikipedia for basic information, but would NEVER admit it or cite Wikipedia in a paper.

Once Wolfram Alpha launches, let me know what you think about it.

Well, W. Alpha is online now. For factual information, it is great. For a non-factual search, Google still has my vote.

Elgg, a free open source product (FOSS), which allows you to create your own social networking system. Of course, you will need to have your own web server, but once you get Elgg installed, no more Facebook or pesky ads on Ning. For universities wanting to create their own look and use social networking for e-learning, Elgg is likely a good option. For corporations wanting to connect employees globally, while maintaining their own security and look, Elgg is also a good option.

If you have limited technical skills, Elgg is working on creating a hosted social networking site ($49 to $149 per month). Click here to sign up for a possible trial with their beta version of the hosted social networking site.

For me, I will stick to Ning for awhile or LinkedIn, but I really like the fact that we have an FOSS version that is user friendly.

I just read an interesting post from Smart Mobs about incorporating video gaming into education. I had already heard that some of the best surgeons were those who had spent years playing video games. Apparently they have better eye-hand coordination than non-gamers, but the general application of games to education was new to me.

Of course, in the ESL (English as a Second Language) field, we have been using games for years to teach vocabulary, among other things, so I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised.

So, if you are interested in gaming in education, take a look at the Smart Mobs site, which will then refer you to an article in the New York Daily News.

Okay, I am going to have to start twittering or is that tweeting, since a message is a tweet.  I guess twittering has evolved from everyone telling me when they are going to lunch or how long they ran that day to something much more interesting. I guess, of course, it all depends upon your Twitter Inner Circle.

Take a look at this post from ReadWriteWeb about the Inner Circles of Geek Heroes. Maybe you will find someone you want to follow. Don’t follow me. I am definitely at the beginning user (what I am having for supper stage) and will bore anyone senseless.

If you decide to be bored, I will be tweeting as dleetn.

I first became interested in web overlaps after watching videos created by Prof. Wesch of Kansas State on YouTube. The first video I watched of his (thanks to a fellow PhD student, John) was “A Vision of Students Today.” That led me to other videos and finally to examine all the tools he briefly mentions or uses in his videos.

Diigo is one of my favorites. With Diigo, you can place a layer over a website with highlighting and notes. You can make this public, for all Diigo members to see, or limit it to a class, which is what Professor Wesch does. The real problem with Diigo is that it only works with PCs.

Hmm…so I went on a search for other web overlay programs and thanks to Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day found ShiftSpace which is Open Source and multi-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux). Nice.

Eval: Diigo is easier, but ShiftSpace is fine. Try them and see how they work for you.

Web Out with me to explore all the new tools that are available for those of us who cannot code, but really like to explore and create. I am an English as a Second Language teacher, specializing in Legal English, who also happens to be working on a PhD in Instructional Technology. I came to the world of technology late in life (mid-40s), but I am really enjoying the journey.

Some of my favorite links for keeping up with the Web World will be posted along with reviews/tests of various tools. Some questions to be answered are

1. Do the programs/applications cause me to blue screen? (I have done that before).
2. Are the programs/applications multi-platform?
3. How can I really use the programs/applications in teaching?

What got me started with the blog is the following link about using Web 2.0 tools in the corporate world from the McKinsey Quarterly that I learned about on Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Six_ways_to_make_Web_20_work_2294

I often feel that we (the educators) lag behind the corporate world in adopting new tools and the reverse should be true. If corporations are webbing out, then educational institutions should web out more.