"Write now is good."

Be part of a global writing community, this Friday, October 19th

Image: "Miss A Writes a Song" by mrsdkrebs

The National Day on Writing takes place on Friday, October 19, 2012. This year, its creator the National Writing Project (NWP) is being joined by the National Council of Teachers of English, the New York Times Learning Network, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), Edutopia, Mozilla Hive Learning Network NYC, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting to expand the day’s reach.

For 2012, the NWP’s focus is on what people write. (Last year’s campaign highlighted why people write.) To participate this year, post your writing online and then share it via social media. From the NWP site:

We're encouraging everyone to share their actual writing in all its forms via Facebook , Twitter , Google+ , Instagram , or NWP Connect.

When tweeting out links to your compositions, include the hashtag #whatiwrite. If you have space, consider including the hashtags #nwp and #dayonwriting. Also include the #whatiwrite hashtag on Google+ and Instagram posts, and as a tag for your own blog or NWP Connect posts.

By using hashtags, anyone can find and then read or join the conversation. As the use of these hashtags increase, the topic trends on Twitter and more people read about it and can join. A community of self-identified writers grows from the communication.

Why join this community? The National Writing Project believes that "...writing, in its many forms, is the signature means of communication in the 21st century." To write well in the many online forms available today means to be heard and acknowledged. Posting writing online and getting feedback from the community helps writers hone their craft, spark new ideas, and create connections with other writers. All of this leads to more writing, and the more anyone writes, the better at it he or she will become.

Having the power to express oneself well through writing, in any community, has become a vital life skill in this digital and social-media-driven age.

This is my post for the 2012 Blog Action Day conversation on "the Power of We". #powerofwe #bad12

Searching for tweet-blogging

Image via Hjem

As I microblog (tweeting here) when I have a lot of non-blog writing to do, I've been looking for a way to feature choice tweets (of mine) on my blog. I tend to tweet interesting links I find, and I've been thinking about having a function to incorporate more lengthy discussion around a tweet.

At this point, there is no fluid integration which allows tweeters/bloggers to pick a tweet and have it automatically published on their blog. The tweet/blog conversation space I would like to see — and I think many others would, too — doesn't exist yet. If anyone knows of this functionality, please drop a comment. Based on comments I read at Get Satisfaction, I think TypePad may be working on this.

A tweet of 140 characters or less is a completely different way of communicating from a thousand-word blog post. A tweet, however, can be a conversation starter, but only if a space exists for users to carry on digitally, instantly, and easily. Also, I'd like to archive some tweets and present them later for further discussion, which is a blog's function, not that of a Twitter account.

Yesterday on Twitter, I followed a link from @anildash's tweet on his blog post "If you didn't blog it, it didn't happen." If you tweet or are simply interested in microblogging, I recommend reading it, as it brings up many issues for writers and technologists to consider about digital publishing in any format.

I also learned from Anil's post that Twitter will let users retrieve only their last 3200 tweets. While my tweet amount falls far below that threshold now, it will continue to move towards that limit. What do I do once I reach it? While I don't need to save all my tweeted minutiae, there are some that I'd like kept. Perhaps Twitter should incorporate an archive function within it, much like the "favorite" function, and a warning to users once they are within their limit, much like an email account (i.e., "You are using 80% of your allotted space. Please consider deleting files."). Anil also mentions ThinkUp, a social issue media app that "captures your posts, replies, retweets, friends, followers, and links on social networks like Twitter and Facebook." For archiving our social media lives, this is definitely on the right track.

When tweeting fluff becomes microblogging short-but-important missives, users will want a way to keep them. My homemade solution is to choose tweets I want to feature on my blog and then manually (not automatically and integrated between sites) make a post around them. This will help me extend the conversation my tweets have started while I'm doing lots of non-blog writing but still want to blog.

If anyone has any other ideas, please drop a comment. Meanwhile, my first tweet-post is in the works.

"How to be alone" in a hyper-connected world

"How to be alone" by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman and poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis is beautiful and perceptive in word, image and tune.

After viewing the video many times, I realized that the benefits of being alone are visually implied in the film by Tanya's being in nature, outside or away from screens which constantly and digitally connect us to others.

One of my favorite lines is "Start simple: things you may have previously avoided based on your 'Avoid Being Alone Principles.'" What's yours?

Seen many places, like here, here and here.

Update, September 2, 2010: The Next Web's article "How Andrea Dorfman learned to be alone and earned herself a million views on YouTube" provides some interesting details about how the video came together and how social media contributed to its wide online viewing.

Tweets on paper

Hilarious. A few questions:
° How do you get your paper tweet to your followers? Some tweeters have hundreds of thousands, even millions. Mailing them would certainly help the U.S. Postal Service cover its budget shortfalls, though regular paper-tweeting would bankrupt the average tweeter.
° How would paper tweets go viral? Would followers then have to get out their tweet pads and then mail tweets to all of their followers to pass on the info in the first tweet? And so on...
° How would tweeters — both private citizens and news outlets — share breaking news? Paper tweets would certainly slow down that process, moving it back to the age of paper newspaper domination, which was not so long ago. (This makes me view tweets as more akin to radio and TV announcements than paper papers.)
° How do you retweet a paper tweet? I'm assuming a photocopier would be involved.

Thinking about the humor of this actually brings up many differences between print and digital communication methods and how moving from print to digital has affected society.

Paper email "nifty notes" are also available. (This elicits both LOLs and YIKES!)

Found at KnockKnock

What did it feel like to go to the moon?

As I follow astronauts like Mike Massimino on Twitter as they tweet from space, it's easy to learn bits of what life is like beyond Earth's atmosphere.

Before Internet access and the development of Web 2.0 and social media, there were few widely available, multimedia records of the astronaut experience. Below is a compelling video clip from the documentary For All Mankind, directed by Al Reinert with a musical score by Brian Eno and originally released in 1989. (Its re-release on DVD is now available.) In a 2009 article, Reinert explained his focus behind the movie:

What I wanted to do was make a film that communicated what it felt like to go to the moon. Really put you in the shoes of the astronauts. That's still the kind of movie that I would want to watch.

The powerHouse Arena has just released Spacesuits: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Collection, featuring below image. (So interesting — I would definitely buy a print of this.)

 

Sometimes (actually, pretty regularly) I marvel at amount of quality information available through Web 2.0. I wonder what's next.

Video clip found on YouTube; "Astronaut Style" found at PUBLIC SCHOOL by BMD Love Blog via Gizmodo

Links:

° "Shot on location—'For All Mankind' filmmaker Al Reinert goes walking on the moon one more time" by Robert Faires, The Austin Chronicle, 13 March 2009

° NASA Astronauts / "NASA_Astronauts" on Twitter

Keeping up with Twitter

While I haven't blogged in awhile, I have been busy writing and reading (some online, most brick-and-mortar). One example: I'm closely following news about Twitter and mobile phones because I think they have incredibly potential for communication and creativity.

To keep track of this information for myself and to share with anyone else who is interested, I have started a Twitter articles page. It features links to noteworthy Twitter articles. From the page's intro:

Twitter, the free microblogging service started in 2006, has been used to influence elections in the United States and Iran, break news about natural disasters and political happenings, and gather donations to assist Haitians after the devastating January 2010 earthquake.

While critics deride Twitter, I continually find merit in it. It is powerful in a ground-level way, giving private citizens, companies, organizations and thought leaders (potentially influential) voice on any subject (significant and trivial) they desire. I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

So, will Twitter disappear, as other social networks have? In my opinion, no. It has substantial market share, and while anyone can create their own 140-character microblogging network, terms like "tweet", "tweeting", "followers", "Twitterville", etc. will most likely be synonymous for describing microblogging — referencing the only substantial, well-populated microblogging community existing today.

I read anything I can find about Twitter. Below is my list of noteworthy Twitter articles, including news on new developments, trends and uses of Twitter. It has been sifted to remove much of the fluff: while it's a noteworthy trend that many celebrities have found a comfortable, digital way to constantly communicate with tweet-reading fans, I won't report on it — they are easy enough to find on their own, and are often only "ego-casting" or "life-casting" (brief missives on what they ate for breakfast, what they're wearing, who they're hanging out with, etc.). 

I'll add to this as I find more articles. Questions and comments are always welcome.

(If you want to follow me on Twitter, click here. I don't life-cast, instead focusing on providing useful tech- and creativity-inspired tweets.

I'll announce new articles added in quick posts on this blog.

Regarding life-casting, I found a gem: the Museum of Modern Celebrity Tweets, which shows celebrity life-casting in a humorous light. Above is an illustration of a recent tweet by musician Nick Jonas. Odessa Begay is its illustrator and, I suppose, head curator. Found via Holy Kaw! at Alltop

FYI: My mobile phone articles page is in the works.

Education magnified: lessons from a news hunt

Photo: "magnifying glass" by chrisjohnsonbeckett

NewsTrust has wrapped up last week's education news hunt, and I've put together some preliminary thoughts about what I learned from co-hosting it. I'll soon post additional links and quotations from other NewsTrust editors to add more context, and will include relevant stats from the hunt.

UPDATE (February 12, 2009):
--- Complete news hunt results and analysis, including the top-rated stories, are located here: "Top Stories on Education" by Derek Hawkins, with Fabrice Florin and Kaizar Campwala.
--- I co-hosted this news hunt with fellow NewsTrust editor Dale Penn, whose most insightful take-away from the week is located on the NT blog: "From our host, Dale Penn".

-----------
After participating in the news hunt, I feel much more informed about current issues and major opinions in education. The best articles captured more subtle aspects about how truly complex a school, classroom or a student's life can be; these pieces went beyond a quick, simple, pro-and-con issue treatment.

Regarding which stories I chose to review, I realized I'm often drawn to local stories because I want real examples to learn from; theory only goes so far in the classroom. Local stories often looked at specifics of problems. As reviewers—and as educators, parents, teachers and students—we're interested in case studies, as successful ones could be models for use in other—even our own—venues. Many national opinion pieces primarily discussed national policy, and they are sometimes confirming or enlightening, but are often not practical or useful in solving specific educational problems.

In rating quality stories, a well-written, solidly sourced and in-depth piece about a local issue trumps a more general opinion piece about national policy. During the news hunt, I read many echo pieces in various sources which nearly repeated other opinions or editorials. While important in reaching different markets, they didn't always add much new to the debate, or inform.

Most opinion pieces were about national (not local) education policy, and this may be a trend for awhile. As education issues come into sharp national focus through debate about the new stimulus package, education policy makers will continue to make themselves heard. As school budgets get cut during this recession, communities will clamor to save threatened electives and programs. After seeing many educational opportunities slip away during the past eight years (the limitations of NCLB, being one example), there is a cogent urgency now for communities to own education again. If citizens want better schools—and a better world society—then everyone has to stay vigilant in speaking up and making sure that happens. With President Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan, the tone has changed and there seems to be room again for many voices. This could inform a higher level of debate going forward. Time will tell if this is fully reflected in media coverage.

Even though education is often not breaking news, this topic is incredibly newsworthy. Thoughtful, thorough and consistent education reporting—particularly on state and local levels—could make local communities more aware of and interested in what is happening in their neighborhood schools. It would be a great public service if media outlets invested more in covering education. With the current newspaper crisis, however, many outlets have their very survival driving editorial choices; how education (and all topics, really) is covered depends more heavily now on a variety of external market forces and not necessarily journalistic principles.

More information to be added soon. Information added—see above update.

Tweets throughout the ages

Today, I learned something surprising. Twitter, the purportedly new microblogging service, has been around for thousands of years. The digital archeologists behind Historical Tweets are slowly unearthing relevant 140-character messages from the past and revealing them via their blog for posterity. (See above tweet from Abraham Lincoln.)

So, this form of social media is actually a bit ancient. Since humans have been tweeting for generations, it makes sense that many 21st-century technologists have adopted the practice so readily.

I wonder what the first-ever tweet was. (If you have some inkling about the tweet which started it all, please leave a comment. I'll post the ideas and link to your blog if you do.)

Mined from a tweet by CrossTheBreeze.

UPDATE: Two bloggers so far have submitted possibilities for the "first-ever tweet." They are:

1. "Hello, world" — Leah
2. "Got fire?" — Tumblewords

If the Internet is a copy machine, then...

Photo: "You've reached the office of Mr. Copy Machine" by Shoreline 

The opening words of "Better Than Free", a new ChangeThis manifesto by Kevin Kelly, grabbed my attention:

The Internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it. In order to send a message from one corner of the Internet to another, the protocols of communication demand that the whole message be copied along the way several times. IT companies make a lot of money selling equipment that facilitates this ceaseless copying. Every bit of data ever produced on any computer is copied somewhere. The digital economy is thus run on a river of copies. Unlike the mass-produced reproductions of the machine age, these copies are not just cheap—they are free...

This made me think back to my pre-Internet days. While listening to a favorite band's song on the radio was free, getting access to that band's entire album usually meant buying it at the record store. Getting access to a new book meant either borrowing it from the library (if other voracious readers hadn't gotten to it first) or purchasing it from a bookstore.

Most people bought newspapers and magazines without reservation. Home delivery subscriptions — right to the front stoop — was often the preferred method of receiving them.

Before we knew what the World Wide Web was, we had free access to creative works, but that free access seemed a lesser alternative to owning an actual copy of that work. If we could afford a record, CD or book, we would buy it, and that money went to the creators — after a long line of creativity-related (sometimes) middling "middlemen" first took their cuts. We fans then had full access to our beloved works; we could listen to or read them at a whim and could share them as we wanted, within strictly defined technology boundaries (e.g., having access to a dual-cassette recorder or a wondrous Xerox machine).

While libraries had copies of periodicals and publications in "reading rooms", they would not let them to be checked out to take home. The only viable way to enjoy a magazine or paper was to buy a copy, and it was affordable.

Seeing how many media outlets now struggle daily to survive, as their collectives staffs work to produce content that Web users now expect to be free — yet costs real money to produce — I read Kelly's treatise very closely. In proposing what is "better than free", he describes "eight uncopyable values".

What are they? You'll have to read his manifesto to find out.

It is a concise, focused read. Solutions for this painful period of media transition are out there, and Kelly's eight "generatives" could be a basis for many of them.

If you create online content, are involved in social media, or just want to catch a glimpse of what the future may hold for media, reading it will be worth your while.

And, if you want to discuss "Better Than Free" after you read it, head back to this post and comment.

Election t-shirts build community for candidates

A quick FYI: For those interested in the U.S. presidential election, social media, and t-shirts, I have a new post on The Huffington Post's OffTheBus which may interest you:

"Election T-Shirts Build A Community of Supporters"

To read my other Huff Post/OTB pieces, click here.