Moving at the Speed of Creativity » Blog Archive » F2F conversations and dialog as the answer

Moving at the Speed of Creativity » Blog Archive » F2F conversations and dialog as the answer: "F2F conversations and dialog as the answer Andy Carvin wrote a thoughtful post today on the Digital Divide Network about the recent controversies over blogs (and all webpages) being censored by some school district Internet filters if they use/mention the word “MySpace.” Andy cites my post “Censored for Relevance,” which I also made available as a podcast over the weekend. In his post and reflection, Andy asks the following: How do you spread a campaign when the very act of describing the campaign gets you censored? Good question. I think the answer is simple, however. We address this situation through face to face conversations and dialog with other educators. There has been a good deal of discussion in the edu-blogosphere about concerns over “the echo chamber.” In other words, are we just writing and ranting to ourselves in the blog ether, and not really affecting the minds, attitudes, and actions of a majority of teachers, educational administrators, and policymakers? This discussion is warranted, but I see little cause for alarm. The blogsophere is going to continue to grow in its scope of access and its impact. RSS is not even supported in the current version of Internet Explorer for Windows. That will change when Windows Vista arrives, and slowly but surely, more people will gain knowledge of and access to the tools of the read/write web, including blogs. The voices of the blogosphere (including mine, Andy’s, Miguel’s, and many, many others) are not going away. We are not going to be silenced. In fact, we are going to grow in power, because we are going to continue collaborating and working together. Just as the Chinese government is not going to silence the collective voice of its people crying out for self-determination and respect for other basic human rights, short-sighted and reactionary school districts banning the .....