Regrettably, kicking feeds and ideas seems to have distracted many blogs I used to read. I wonder how many bloggers now kick content to micro-feeds – and we are becoming less engaged with the thoughts and minds of those people? The feed runs too fast. I have no idea what Kevin Jarrett is thinking anymore … unless he blogs about it.
I was reading some blog post with a list – telling people what to do and not what to do. I’m never sure what to do. I’m still a kicker, but much less so than a few years ago. Today, I kick most feeds and ideas to Posterous – and usually make no effort to substantiate them in my blog. Blame iPhone for that.
I leave the biggest kicks to Mashable et al, who have professional-kickers.
Most of the people I engage with though blogs and communities would not build a school system anything like the one they are working in — they are talking about a mass-movement away from that — where teaching and learning is important — but in-between is up for grabs. They see a more than possible future of learning that does not require critical mass adoption by current teacher-volunteers at all.
Perhaps I’m just tuned into dystopia, but I am sure today’s education system and exams will not create any utopia for my kids — who are in public school along with 75% of the rest of Australia’s future — the ones that ultimately matter to me most … mmm, spiky thoughts. Yet we seems to orbit the same issues and drag in overseas kickers who can’t realistically tackle any local issues — which is where we need to be in 2010.
I’m not going to get all list-making about it — as there is a place for that stuff– as everyone needs an upstream , however I’m seeing a decline in Australian blogging … and an increase in kicking … not good.
Web2.0 moved on; kicking to new channels; demanding new playgrounds — and some are eating off the same meal – using their blog to push what people into private spaces – where they kick content to a user-pays audience. What do you read that makes you think again or try something new — pushes you out your comfy chair … or have you opted to kick to Twitter and Facebook and quit blogging? I’d love to find out … what Australian bloggers are sending out new smoke?
Playable 
Picking up on a bit of a tangent here…
I wonder, as a ‘parent who knows better’, if you are unhappy with the state of schooling (as I know many are, and I am bound to be, one day), how driven are you to get involved in your kids’ school and help them change?
Is it feasible for parents to do this if they have to work as well? I’m picturing myself…I dunno…making my kids’ school have a blog, and a good webpage, and a good LMS perhaps etc. But I have NO DESIRE to buy into current school structures for parent participation (have had my fill of P&C meetings, thx very much). The library seems like a good way in, but again – I’m probably going to be at work, not over at the school.
Sometimes it’s tempting to say ‘I’m just going to home school’…but I don’t believe in that model either. Plus, I’m not so self-righteous that I believe I’m the only person in the education system with good intentions/ideas. I would LOVE to work with teachers in the education of my kids, but as a teacher, I know how threatening (and awkward) this is for most people.
So…HOW do you sit by and watch your kids go to these schools? Do your kids have blogs? What do they use web 2.0 tools for? Are they engaged in ‘the kind of things Dad does’? Do they value what they do at school? Do you worry about undermining the structures that constitute a big part of their world (undermining it to their face, I mean…not just being subversive out in the world!)?
Ah, the struggles of the utopian!