Posts from pab's ning t'ing

Today's the last day I can say:

[I'm a member of pab's ning t'ing]

Free access to such Ning networking sites is phasing out as I type. As a matter of fact, I wonder how long the badge (gadget) that I've embedded above will last.

I've grabbed a couple of posts from My Blog on that site as keepsakes:

pab's ning t'ing

a microcosm in a nanosecond 

Tweaking RSS Feeds on Main Page

• Posted by pab on February 21, 2008 at 6:02pm

In order to show enough, but not too much, of the posts coming in through RSS feeds on the Main page, I have tweaked the settings on the various feeds:

1. Blogger blog feeds: Titles only - five per blog

The first couple of Blogger feeds, if not all of them, were coming through in full - with embedded videos and all the rest of the media dragging down page loading insufferably. So I trimmed them back to titles only. Then I increased the number of recent posts showing from three to five to show more a bit more content, and make it slightly easier to distinguish one blog feed from the next.

2. Edublogs and Vox blog feeds: Extended views - three per blog

Since RSS feeds from both of these types of blogs seem to limit themselves to several lines of text, I went ahead with the extended view option for all of them. However, I limited each feed display to the three most recent post, so as not to make it necessarily to scroll virtually endlessly to read down through the entire list of posts.

Arranging RSS Feeds on Main Page: Like Herding Cats?

• Posted by pab on February 21, 2008 at 5:00pm

Arranging RSS feeds in the Main page today has taken much more time here in Ning than it does on any page in Pageflakes. That is mainly because when you go to Manage - Features in Ning, you cannot see any content in the modular elements, or edit the titles on them to make them readily identifiable. Moreover, you cannot rearrange the elements directly in Ning page view like you can in Pageflakes.

The Main Page of pab's ning t'ing now contains nine RSS feeds, three from each of three educators in the Weblogging in Kumamoto (WinK) community. I've organized those nine feeds alphabetically: first by authors' family names (unlisted), then by blog titles. I reckon the list will stay in that order for a while, at least.

[retrieved 2010.08.20]

Aren't Otters Extraordinarily Cute?

Though I missed it by a week, last week was "the [20th] anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill" (personal correspondence, 2009.03.24).

A family member and friend sent me that picture of two small victims probably no longer inhabiting our planet. Though otters' life-spans may reach 20 years, that wouldn't be the case for those unlucky ones, not even ten years later (Most Exxon Valdez otters sent to zoos are dead, Juneau Empire, 1999.03.30). Otter aren't the only ill-fortuned ones.

Twenty years after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, pockets of oil — an estimated 16,000 gallons — remain buried in small portions of the intertidal zone. ... As the 20th anniversary of the spill arrives, hopes are fading for a natural recovery of herring.

(Hal Bernton, Exxon Valdez oil-spill recovery still is work in progress, 20 years later, The Seattle Times, 2009.03.24)

On behalf of her otter buddies, my friend asked me to do "one thing out of the ordinary ... that eliminates the use of oil and gas ... on the planet." If you're reading this post, I'm asking you to do more of the same.


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Plaxo badge in sidebar

This is a quickpost: I've joined Plaxo, tweaked too many settings to mention or recall, and added a Plaxo widget to the sidebar (currently right). Since Plaxo was a TRUSTe certified site, I had few qualms about linking from it to many other web presences.

A word for today, and beyond!

Sheryl brought this word to my attention, "lagniappe" (Diigo: delicious4educators, Front Page, comment 11, 2008.12.09). It means a little something extra and, as she put it, "more ephemeral."

Balance, on all fours

Balance, on all fours, seems to be what keeps tails from wagging dogs. For educational technologists, these days, the balance and interplay of humanity and technology seem to keep coming to the fore. The technological end of things has been twisting my noodle since I chewed over Achieving Sleep/Network Balance (Ceraso, ELT Blog, 2007.10.21) in pab's potpourri (2008.01.28).

Call it a rush, or addictive, vacuous pressure to adopt more and more diversified web tools, join more and more diversified professional and social networks, hold further discussions - with more people, explore existing topics more deeply, share and try new ideas, compare findings, pool and package resources, ..., and what do we get?

Loud whooshing sounds as our lives evacuate online, or something graphically represented as an exploding head, for which Alan Levine suggests he is "lacking an easy answer beyond shrugging it off, unplugging, letting stuff slide, or just floating along til the groove returns." Nonetheless, he keeps contemplating "how much 'power' we acquiesce to technology tools" (CogDogBlog, Exploding Heads, 2008.07.22).

Without ever having tried twittering, I'm inclined to agree that doing it needn't make everyone who does micro-thinkers. Yet humans are creatures of habits, and Levine wonders, "If some of the most sharp and clever people I know and respect find themselves overly immersed in something like twitter, what does that portend for the many more people who look to them for guides?"

If collection and recollection of both data and thoughts becomes largely and ubiquitously mechanical and piece-meal, it may lead to flattening of the web, and bode ill for discursive thought patterns, coherent conversations, cogent analyses, and deliberative syntheses. When push comes to pull, which way will online educators be leaning - towards the flat, quick, and transient, or the deep, rich, and stable?

It comes as some relief to hear of folks abandoning twitter accounts before I ever got one. However, I felt a twitch of dismay yesterday discovering So Many Nodes, Not Enough Reciprocity (Yet) (Marielle, Authorship 2.0, 2008.07.03), about which I growled on the LTD Project Blog (2008.07.24). Marielle reminds us "not to get lost in a plethora of solipsistic silos, speaking without listening, [and] reinventing rather than building upon each other’s ideas and deepening the collective dialogue." I wonder how long it may take twitter-free digital immigrants to groove deep enough into the web for the rest of the world to hear the music.

Photo by Andrey Sukhanov (2008)
Creative Commons License BY-NC 2.0

Social capital: a definition to ponder

As a quick cross-link to, and reminder of, another discussion just starting on the Online Facilitation mailing list, here's a definition to ponder:

... social capital consists of connections within and between groups who tend to share core ideas and values. It is measured by the level of voluntary involvement in civic organizations in formal or informal networks of associates or friends when professional information, personal or emotional assistance is needed....

[of] Social Capital, onlinefacilitation, Message #10185

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