Where do I begin? Yesterday I spent 14 hours immersed in the conversations of some 30 fabulously motivated, serious and committed blogger devotees during BLOGWALK 3, to which I was lucky enough to get invited. As I sift through the impressions, reflect on what I heard and learned, I will blog them. For now (I am sitting in the Q & A session following the first panel of the actual BLOGTALK conference) I can say that people are thinking hard about the next stage for blogs and blogging–about what makes a “good” or “successful” blog and how they create networks, and how they might or might not promote action. Of the 30 there, only a handful are particularly interested in edublogging, but those that are seem interested in some of the same concerns as I am. More later…
The first morning sessions were quite interesting –Mark Bernstein from Eastgate spoke about “The Social Physics of New Weblog Technologies”–advocating hard research on how blogs affect writing and users. The talk about “Snipsnap” makes me want to look at the software that combines wikis and weblogs–good for groups.
Héctor should take a look at the work the Austrian group is doing with Zoomblox which is making blogging exceedingly easy and enticing for children. It’s still in development. Terrific project with the Viennese Children’s Museum.
Jorg Kantel sees blogs as the next step on the continuum from radio to alternative newspapers, and videos–I’d like to go back and see his presentaion text as he was rushed and had to skip a good deal of the presentation.
Jan Hoem from Norway talked about videblogs as collective documentaries and porposed some very easy collective editing features which should have a big effect on the kind of digital storytelling Héctor is doing with the Orton project.
Next session about to start. Will continue anon…
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(the new) bgblogging 
Can’t wait to hear about the conference. It would be great to see feature development specifically for edu-bloggers.
bti – the Zoomblox link doesn’t work for me.
Saturday in VT…
Hi Barbara,
It was a pleasure meeting you in Vienna. Thank you very much for your passionate story about the use of blogs in the courses you teach.
Best,
Ton
Ton,
Good to hear from you. I am now back from Vienna reflecting/blogging on the BLOGTALK experience, and realizing just how extraordinary a three days (with BLOGWALK included) it was. I am hearing quite a bit about the conference through the BLOGOSPHERE, including one of my colleagues here in the States, a big edublogger who did not attend BLOGTALK but stays current with just about every development out there, and so it was quite rewarding to see that Wll Richardson found my talk notes and blogged them.
I especially want to thank you for BLOGWALK3, not so much because I felt any particular conclusion or outcome from the day, but because it gave me a chance to talk one-on-one with all sorts of brilliant bloggers. That one day alone has given me much to consider in my own blogging work as I get this new MT blog onto its feet.
Bravo for your hard work! And I look forward to following your blog on a regular basis.
Best,
Barbara