Years later, Craig Nelson came across the slides in an antique shop. Intrigued by what he had found he took them home, scanned and tidied them up and uploaded them to Flickr. Then he started to look for the original photographer or his family. Craig found Darrell, alive and well, working as an artist in Hawaii . Darrell took the time to comment on some of the uploaded photos and share some of his stories.

Isn’t that a powerful story? It’s the power of the internet to help people make connections with each other and to tell their stories. Or in this case be able to share their stories.

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1. Great Stories on the Internet

This morning’s Sunday Star Times had a spend-up-before -Christmas glossy about some of the exciting new technologies available to consumers at the moment. Apart from giving some computer buying advice that was well out of date (60-80GB hard drive anyone?), the mag had some information about digital audio and video players – MP3 players to most of us.

To most people, you buy your iPod / MP3 player and copy your CDs onto the large empty space. Then you copy all of your friends’ CDs. At some point, people over 40 contemplate copying their entire vinyl collection to their computers and iPods. Most give up when they remember they haven’t got a turntable or find out what a new needle costs.

The problem is that under existing New Zealand law it’s illegal to copy your CDs onto the music player that you just (legally) bought. I’m often asked in professional development sessions about how to do this and teachers are incredulous when I explain what the law says and talk about the implications. Then they’ll ask about downloading music. When I point them to Coketunes or Ampifier they look at me even more incredulously – music is supposed to be free right?

One evening last week I took a cruise around the web and found myself at Sarah McLachlan’s website. I discovered that she had a new album out and decided to listen to a few tracks. I liked what I heard so headed to a couple of NZ sites to see if I could get the CD. $50 to bring it in. I headed back to Sarah’s own site and disovered that I could downlaod the entire album for $9.99 – Canadian dollars of course. Furthermore,

“All audio downloads are available in the popular MP3 format, encoded at 192kbps. The files are not encrypted with digital rights management or copy protection software. Offering this format puts no obstacles in the way of you enjoying your music on your computer, transferring it to your media player, or burning it to CD. This format puts an amount of trust in you to obey copyright laws and not share your files. ” link

Of course I paid my money and downloaded the MP3s. I have the songs on my computer and will pop them onto my MP3 palyer for when I’m away from my computer.

I like this trusted copyright model. The artist (label?) has entrusted me with the right to play her music as and when I choose. I’m perfectly happy to comply with the request to keep the files to myself. Ten bucks Canadian – less than $14 in our currency. What could be better?

Could musicians and their labels in New Zealand do a similar thing? Of course they could. Would New Zealand consumers respect the model? With realistic pricing models like this one and with more information I think that they world. Someone just has to make a start.

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1. Ripper
2. Legal March
3. A New Voice

And share we did. Despite the naysayers and the knockers we kept on spreading our version of the truth. We rejoiced when people listened and converted themselves to our particular doctrine. We were saddened when people didn’t listen to our words, but that was OK because we knew that was the way that it was going to be and they needed to be weeded out anyway.

We regularly got together and held gatherings attended by people from all over New Zealand. It was really exciting when we had a speaker from overseas. One of our conferences would keep us going for months as we remembered and recounted all the wonderful speakers we had heard and presentations that we had attended.

Some of the people in our group struggled more than other people. For some it was because they had more than their fair share of trials and tribulations. We surrounded these people with love and encouraged them to spend more time inside our group where we could protect them from the vicious wolves who were just waiting for them to let down their guard.

Other people suffered because they didn’t Do Things The Right Way. They hung out on the edge of the group and occasionally strayed beyond the safety net of the organisation. Those of us who were good group members always struggled with our response to these people. They preferred to be individuals and associating with them could cause us to question our faith which could lead to us falling away from what the group knew was right. On the other hand, it was our sacred duty to warn these individuals of the folly of their course … And if they didn’t listen and fell away, we knew that it was for the best because they weren’t the right sort of people anyway.

There is a large portion of my life that I look back upon with a sense of disbelief. How could I have ever been so gullible? How could millions of other people be so gullible?

It’s actually really easy and it’s coming really soon right now to a group near you.

Last week someone called me a hopeless optimist. That hit home because I truly do want to believe in the power of something. There is a huge group of singing and waving educators out there who are speaking in the tongue of Web 2.0. I’d love to be right in the middle of them with my del.icio.us tags, Flickr photos and Elgg blog tucked into my conference bag.

But I can’t because I need to stand safely on the edge. It’s a wonderful thing to belong to a group, to hold common views and values and to be able to celebrate and share. But only when you actually fully agree. And I don’t think that Web 2.0 is the answer to all that ails us.
Artichoke calls it Blogger Frottage. I don’t have her way with words but I do know how to spot a problem when I see it.

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He also announced a new project called Wikiversity. It will serve as an online center for the creation and use of free learning materials and activities. It will create and host a range of free content materials, multilingual learning materials, for all ages in all languages. It’ll host scholarly projects and communities to support these materials, and foster research based in part on existing resources in Wikiversity and other wikimedia projects. Launching in three languages, in a six-month beta, within a month.

This will be an interesting idea to watch develop.

In his notes from a Jimmy Wales presentation, Andy reports that the Wikipedia organisation are really concerned about quality.

“We have huge articles on things like Truthiness, like things that Britannica hasn’t even heard of – but I’m just teasing there.”

“We’re not there yet. We’re not as good as Britannica – yet…. So in the coming years we’re going to see a turn towards quality.”

In other surfing, I found a link to another blog called The Best Media in Life. This blog aims to show some of the gazillions of material available under Creative Commons license or in the public domain. It’s a great little site wityh heaps of links to CC texts, music and other audio.

Speaking of the Creative Commons, I have just discovered a new resource on the site They have developed new tabbed Creative Commons Search engine. Find Flickr images, use Google or Yahoo! Good stuff. This willmake it even easier to find “stuff” to use in presentations, movies and podcasts.

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I really enjoyed hearing some of the kids talk about their KWLs and their evaluations and critiques of their own work. A KWL is a simple graphic organiser that allows a learner to look at what I already KNOW, what I WANT to learn about and then identify what I’ve LEARNED.

At the end of the presentation the entire student population (80?) raced onto the field and released their KWLs (attached to helium filled balloons) into space. Who knows where they will end up? And who else might learn something from a Waioneke kid?

Silly me forgot the camera and so these photos are from my iPAQ.

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1. Celebrate!

The teachers in the schools showed off Powerpoints and movies, Kidpix slideshows and lots of examples of what the kids had been doing.

The best thing was hearing the words … thinking … process … ideas. And those words came before skills!

Our kids are much better at making movies than we are. They are heaps better at Powerpoints (mind you, watching those transitions, I have to wonder ). They are so much more on to IT. But, every step along the way, I heard the moderation voices of the proud teachers. They showed off the kids work and said, “this is the process, this is the thinking.”

I just loved it.

But wait, there’s more.

Mark Treadwell came along as our invited speaker and he talked about the “media-tion” of society today. I always enjoy listening to Mark and he made some excellent points. He talked about our kids having access to so many new ideas and technologies, but still needing the filters to sort everything out. He talked about sharing our learning with the extended members of our communities – even, shock horror, the parents .

So, been to the cluster celebration. Got the t-shirt. I blogged this.

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