Another iWorkshop Part I and a new Part II

Another Part I
We've scheduled another iWorkshop Web 2.0- Just the Beginning for Oct 5-20, 2009. This time, North Cook Intermediate Service Center (NCISC) in Des Plaines, IL will be the host for the first and last meeting (Oct. 5 and Oct. 20 respectively) with the time in between spent collaborating online. Please see http://web20b.wikispaces.com/ for the details of the workshop. Your comments and emails are welcomed. And please register at http://ltc1c.k12.il.us/Workshops_Online.html.
The first iWorkshop was in the early summer after the school year was over. This second repeat session  is scheduled in the midst of a school year -- in a different venue. We are hoping to gather a group of 15 participants at NCISC, in DesPlaines, IL.

A new Part II iWorkshop session is scheduled for Oct 22- Oct 29.  The content here will focus on Wiki collaboration and plugin tools to enrich the wiki's content. See http://bfurst.pbworks.com/ for syllabus and other details. Please register at http://ltc1c.k12.il.us/Workshops_Online.html. Again your comments and emails are most welcomed.

Future of the news as a publisher/journalist

Who is writing it - barriers to entry are virtually non-existent. Everyone with an internet connection has the tools to be a journalist. Writing about what one sees, reads, and hears about, and putting ones own spin on a topic is a large part of the blogging world. Building an audience and, more importantly, authority, is the big difference between a blogger and the Associated Press.

But, any news paper (by the way, no longer single media but multimedia) needs to have the Associated Press type services, as well as their own reporters and journalists. Someone has to construct all this into a consumer friendly form and filter (edit) the content for presentation. Some decide to stay with authoritative sources, but others are most willing to branch out to non-authoritative "citizen journalists".

Consider CNN, already in the multimedia business, with its use of Email, Twitter, and iReport. The news channel constantly reads emails for watchers. Type CNN in a http://twitter.com/search and find no less than 25 authoritative CNN journalists reaching out for folks to contribute to the news. They also give "citizen journalists" multimedia opportunities to summit videos and stills to their iReport service.

You comments are welcomed...

The future of the news as a consumer.

Newspapers on our doorstep are becoming a thing of the past. My wife always enjoyed curling up with the Chicago Tribune, especially on Sunday, but personally, I always hated fumbling with all the different sections -- stories starting on one page and continuing deeper into the publication. And all the advertisements, what a nightmare... but I digress ...

The reality is that both major Chicago papers, the NY Times and other city papers are in trouble. It could be argued that financial miscues could be the reason, but certainly they are playing catch-up with the "Internet method of delivery" of the 21st century. You can subscribe for free via the internet to these and other city's papers (try http://www.nytimes.com/ as an example), and customize the subscription to personalize your areas of interest. But then, as some people may think, you then "lock" yourself into the views and politics of that particular news source. On the publishing side, the revenue stream for this type of delivery may not as lucrative as the paper version (more on that in a future blog entry). So now, we have two reasons for the news consumer to think differently about their method of news retrieval.

So, OK then, subscribe yourself to a number of city newspapers and try to keep up with the news reading through 3,4,5... of these type of subscriptions. However, there is an interesting ( and possibly more efficient) concept of a newsmap -- a site that aggregates all the news from sources worldwide , and gives a global view (11 countries) of news item headlines in 7 different categories (World, Nation, Business, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, and Health). You have the option of filtering which country(ies) and/or which category(ies) of your interest. And, even better filter by a search term. Now you can see a picture of the news with the more published items in larger print and less published in diminishing size print. Try the newsmap at
http://newsmap.jp/. If you register, the service will remember your personal filtering criteria.

Try it... comments welcomed.