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The Passing of Salvatore Lombino: Farewell, 87th Precinct
 
Finding an Audience: First, Trust Them
 
Making Wiki's Conversational: Get the RSS Right
 
The power of student-teacher interaction?
 
Happy Father's Day, Steve Jobs
 
Open Minds, Yes Let's Have Some Open Minds -- and Facts, Open Facts, that would be really good.

Making Wiki's Conversational: Get the RSS Right

GTDWikiDiscussion.  I have been frustrated by the ways that wikis provide RSS feeds.  These are basically announcements of the fact of change, but there are no changes.  Furthermore, the announcement is something like

orcmid made 5 changes, jeff made 3, and jake deleted everything on page GimbleFribbitCamelCase

That doesn’t work for me.  It’s like content-free voicemail messages that just tell me someone else called or that they want me to call them and there’s nothing conversational about it.  It is the absence of conversational structure that dawned on me and led to this comment in sideways-response to a question from Jeff Sandquist:

The wiki RSS feeds that are basically little announcements that edits have occured are useless. I want content in the RSS! It might be anytime there is a fresh series ending in a stable edit (to counter-act for people like me who edit and revise and edit in rapid succession until it all looks good-enough-for-now). I can always get the diffs in the wiki. But seeing recent resulting content really helps me in deciding whether or not I want to actually come and look, or even have something to say about it. So here's a killer addition to making wiki's conversational and allowing people to keep an eye on the activity without having to come over here and figure out what happened lately. There's probably some way to tie this into an alert system too, but I don't want to think about it any further now.  Also, while the whole page might be good, micro-content might be useful too, for wikis that have micro-content.

There just needs to be a way to weave in and out of the conversation that a wiki collaboration is, and that means not only knowing that someone else has spoken, but what they have said before choosing to divert one’s attention to the wiki itself.  I can drag the feed note (in Outlook via NewsGator for me) into a GTD item or something that makes a synch point between my asynchronous life and whatever is coinciding on the wiki.

I figure this is already being thought about by someone somewhere, but I haven’t run across it and in the mood to speak up.

The power of student-teacher interaction?

ACM News Service: How Computers Make Our Kids Stupid.  I don’t know what to make of this, Maybe I’m just thinking too hard.  According to Sue Ferguson’s 2005–06–06 Mclean’s article,

the evidence is mounting that our obsessive use of information technology is dumbing us down, adults as well as kids. While they can be engaging and resourceful tools for learning -- if used in moderation -- computers and the Internet can also distract kids from homework, encourage superficial and uncritical thinking, replace face-to-face interaction between students and teachers, and lead to compulsive behaviour.

It’s a lengthy article, and the prognosis is not so clear as the title and early tilt might suggest.  There are studies that indicate the distractions away from reading and study are detrimental to school children, just as adults seem to pay a toll for multi-tasking and high levels of interruption from focus-requiring tasks. 

There are also the observations from teachers in individual settings that suggests the children are highly-engaged and effective when there is classroom computing.

It does look like there is something to pay attention to here, even though I am not confident that the case is made here.  There seem to be too many apple-orange-pineapple contrasts flying about.

Happy Father's Day, Steve Jobs

O'Reilly Radar > Steve Jobs' Commencement Speech at Stanford.  I digest, slice and dice, and otherwise transmogransclude other people’s blog items, but I don’t often just do links.  Here’s short announcement from Tim O’Reilly that is short and direct and I’m quoting the whole thing.

Steve Jobs' recent commencement speech at Stanford was moving and deeply wise. I saw the text when someone posted it to Dave Farber's IP list, and I immediately forwarded it on to my wife and kids, and a moment later, to all my employees. It's a must-read! The official transcript is available on the Stanford web site. 

If you think at all about how to bring more meaning and passion into your life, read this speech. If you have kids who are old enough to be thinking how to spend their life, give it to them. Just wonderful.

Read the Steve Jobs’ commencement address.  Every word.  I cried too.