Howard Rheingold: Attention!

I interviewed Howard Rheingold about his new book, Net Smart. It was a broad-ranging conversation, which was published on PBS MediaShift. Here is what he said about the importance of attention: You are known for giving students exercises in attention — rather than just ordering them to close their laptops… Continue reading

Social discovery services turn the world into a virtual environment

There is something strange going on with virtual worlds. MixedRealities used to focus heavily on worlds such as Second Life, but these days less so as I no longer think that Second Life is “the future of the internet”. It’s an interesting niche product, but not about to go mainstream,… Continue reading

The Daily State of Disruption: Controversy about viral #stopkony campaign

Today’s The State of Disruption is about the the campaign to stop Joseph Kony, a cruel warlord who is accused of abducting, murdering and raping children in Uganda and neighboring countries. A video produced by the Invisible Children went totally viral, and #stopkony was a worldwide trending topic. However, there… Continue reading

So, the core question is around engagement

These days I’m working on my contribution for Howard Rheingold’s Peeragogy project. I’m working on “connected learning”, much inspired by the Massive Open Online Courses organized by Stephen Downes en George Siemens. I’ll add some stuff I learned by organizing daily chat sessions and (live)blogs for my newspaper (I wrote… Continue reading