In short, homophily describes how we tend to flock together, seeking out ‘birds of a feather’. Perhaps Aaron Retica (NY Times) describes it best as “…our inexorable tendency to link up with one another in ways that confirm rather than test our core beliefs”.

Online, this tendency can be amplified. Ironically, with a wealth of diverse voices available to challenge our own ideas, we tend to use the internet to reinforce what we already believe – like an electronic pat on the back.

Thus, Zuckerman warns that homophily threatens to make us stupid. If we only seek out things with which we agree, then are we really using the internet as a tool to expand our own humanity?

This has obvious implications for anyone who has built up a social network like Twitter. I’ll be the first to admit that most of the tweets I harvest are from professionals involved in science or education (or both). And I can also see how easily homophily can infect my RSS reader too, as I direct it to intentionally pull out only RSS feeds that I want to read.

As I get the majority of my news from Google Reader, I have to wonder if my feeds are too homogenized and narrow-minded. I also have to wonder if my Twitter friends allow me to accept my own perspectives on life without confrontation or question. Are these tools just amplifying my own stupidity?

Of course, I am painting a fairly grim picture. Of course there are many benefits in developing social networks with kindred spirits; if anything, the internet is quite a useful tool in fostering this type of kinship. The danger lies in blocking out things that we need to see – diverse ideas, differing opinions and news from around the world.

Zuckerman suggests visiting sites like Digg, Reddit and StumbledUpon – sites that collect interesting stories and allow us to discover the world in its serendipity. I’d also suggest broadening your news feeds to include international news originating from different countries. Broaden your social network to include people from different professions and cultures. Allow yourself to be challenged by different opinions when people comment on your posts.

Why might we be concerned about homophily as educators? Think about it this way – you may seek out online diversity to become a better person, and in doing so, become a better teacher that is open minded, compassionate and has an abundant collection of fresh ideas. While you may not actually unearth a ready-to-go lesson plan, you may actually be able to share something about life that cannot be assessed on a standardized test.

In an effort to provide better access to their collections, while symbiotically harvesting more information about those collections, the Library of Congress has created a Flickr page to host copyright-free pictures:

Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist…

…We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves.

More information is available on the Library’s Web site here and on the FAQ page here. You can read Flickr’s take here.

-from the Library of Congress Blog

While this is a tremendous offer, don’t forget about the slew of resources already available from the Library of Congress (including a section for teachers). Check them out for your classes and for yourself.

And there is also an underlying motive here. To help the Library on this project, Flickr has even created a new publication model for public collections called The Commons. Both the LOC and Flickr are hoping to encourage other public institutions to follow their lead. (In fact, the National Library of Australia is already doing a similar project with Picture Australia).

But of course, making these collections easily available has tremendous implications in education. This is a perfect way to teach about tagging and sharing in the classroom, while using historically important content without the worry of students accessing inappropriate content. And these pictures have no copyright restrictions, so they can easily be used by students and teachers in endless and creative ways in many classes. Too bad Flickr is blocked by Websense in my district.

What could you do with these pictures?

Here are his suggestions for showing ‘blocked’ videos in class:

1. Link to the video or embed the video code in a blog or website
2. Video Downloader 2.0 (http://javimoya.com/blog/youtube_en.php)
3. Vixy.net (www.vixy.net)
4. Zamzar (www.zamzar.com)

But the question still remains – even if we can download these internet videos – should we? Some of the content on these sites is illegally posted, so by showing this content in class, you could be violating copyright laws.

Ok – so avoid downloading episodes or clips from major networks. What about content that’s NOT stolen from network and cable television? Here’s the legalese – the YouTube Terms of Use (section 6 part C) allows its users to “…use, reproduce, distribute, display and perform such User Submissions as permitted through the functionality of the Website and under these Terms of Service.” The catch here is “through the functionality of the Website”. So by downloading content outside of the website, you are technically violating the agreement.

Thus, legally – it is ok to link to and embed code from YouTube and Google Video. But be careful when you bypass their user agreements to download their content.

HotChalk is a learning management system that provides a community for teachers, students and parents that “…includes curriculum management, lesson plan development, automated assignment distribution, collection, and grading in a web-based environment.” [See About HotChalk]. This is a free system that relies on advertising that can be controlled by the school, but is not shown not during the school day (and never to students under the age of 13).

Beyond the regular features in HotChalk, you can sign up now and get access to over 70 years of NBC news (through January 2008). NBC News Archives on Demand provides video clips, text resources, primary documents, photographs, drawings, charts and graphs.

After signing up (for free), I went directly to the archives. I found that the search engine was a little limited (i.e. I found no coverage for the completion of the “human genome project” – a major scientific accomplishment, which was completed in 2004). I think this is in part due to the search engine using a limited set of keywords, and the fact that the archives seem mostly geared towards history, communication arts (English), and government/politics.

Still, I was able to find original news footage of the moon landing, Sputnik, and the Manhattan Project, making it well worth the hassle of signing-up.

But Microsoft (not feeling quite so whipped by other Google products) recently announced that it was launching Live Search 411 (800-225-5411). Microsoft claims that customers can access (800) CALL-411 “from any phone to find and connect to local businesses and other local information, such as weather updates, movie show times and airline information. People using a cell phone with Internet access can also receive links to traffic maps from Live Search 411.”

Another 411 service? How do I choose which is best for me? Fortunately, PC World compared the two products in a recent article. As advertised, Live Search offers more extras – weather, movies, airline info, etc. But if you want to stick with business listings, the author suggests sticking with GOOG-411.

From Lifehacker [Link]

My biggest problem is that our district has blocked Google Docs via Websense for fear that students might use it to chat (in a quite convoluted way) and import inappropriate content from outside of their safe little fortress of an intranet. This same mentality has them blocking flickr and slideshare.

And this is also why the district blocks YouTube (I might remind you that Google owns them). But stupefying as it may seem, Google Video is open!

When I question these practices, I usually get this response: “what happens if a student imports porn this way?” To which I mentally reply “yeah, that is a LOT easier that plugging in a USB drive full of porn into any district computer.”

While I realize that some of you still open books and read them cover to cover, Mark has created a blog for his book that caters to some of us who like to get information in short, abridged segments.

Most of these episodes are actually short audio segments, and you can easily listen to them with the embedded Pickle Player. Here are a few of the latest ones:

• Episode #14: How do I restart an interrupted download?
• Episode # 13: How do I buy a good domain name as soon as it becomes available?
• Episode # 12: How can I share large files with other people?

You’ll note that these episodes are fairly new, so this is your chance to get on board with a new resource from its beginnings!

The editor takes a little getting used to, but seems like it has quite a few features. For instance, I can do superscripts and formulas, which is definitely important to me as a science teacher. I realized that it isn’t very easy to paste old notes (taken from MS Word) into the editor, but when you are done, you can easily export the notes out as a Word document or a pdf.

Perhaps the neatest functions of NoteSake lie in the ability to tag your notes and to share them with others. Imagine being in a class where all students took notes with NoteSake, and were able to collaborate their notes together in a group.

However, this is an ideal tool that is not realistic for most public high schools. Most kids do not have laptops or even computers in their classroom, and may have limited internet access. In order for this to be effective, students would have to transfer their notes (which is not that easy) into NoteSake instead of taking them on-the-fly.

Blogger David Brunelle (Geek for Life) reveals some hints to effectively use the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us.

“Del.icio.us can be used as a place to store bookmarks, share bookmarks, and discover web sites, blogs, downloads, and more, that would otherwise largely go unnoticed.”

[Link]

• Yotophoto is the first internet search engine for finding free-to-use photographs and images. Now indexing over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other ‘copyleft’ images.
• everystockphoto.com is a search engine for creative commons photos, located in Vancouver, BC. We aim to be a community for designers, developers, photographers and other media publishers who want better, easier access to license-specific media on the web.
• Edit pictures online with Pixoh
• Google SketchUp is a simple but powerful tool for quickly and easily creating, viewing and modifying your 3D ideas.
• YackPack allows you to create online voice messages (“yacks”) and share those messages with private or public groups (“packs”)
• Video Resources, Reviewed by DEN member dalebasler
  

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