Podcamp NYC 2.0 Thoughts

Podcamp NYC was a blast of fresh air.

Didn’t make it either day before lunch, which may have reduced my experience somewhat, but I can’t really say. Virtually every session had something to excite inspire, and provoke imagination.

Kevin Seal from Pandora led a discussion on “podsafe” music and the future of music-making and distribution in the age of Creative Commons. Many in the audience, including myself were interested in learning more about how to find the good stuff, and everybody shared their music-finding methods. Also present in the session were Ariel Hyatt of arielpublicity.com, Matthew Ebel, a musician and producer of podsafe music, and podcasters and marketers galore!

I attended two sessions by Whitney Hoffman, both about teaching. Whitney comes from an interesting background. Late in life she was diagnosed with ADHD and found that one of her children also struggles with it. Her experience in teaching kids with learning disabilities is the subject of her weekly LD Podcast. Whitney had a lot to say in both sessions about how web tools are being ignored as the valuable educational resources that they are, mainly due to a fear among educators about the potential dangers. In both of her sessions, Whitney stressed the importance of making learning possible by being an engaging, interested partner in the child’s learning. Lecturing is dead, and the success of participatory media is just one example why it is dead and the truly superior teaching methods poised to take its place.

John Herman, a New Hampshire teacher, artist and filmmaker, discussed his un-orthodox teaching methods using blogs, wikis, and the premier “white label” social networking site, Ning.com. John is in a unique and enviable position of being one of the only people in his school (or just the only person?) hip enough to know the ins and outs of Web 2.0 so that he can have a conversation with his students about it. He uses this knowledge to engage his students and educate his colleagues and administration as to what uses can be made of social software.

Finally I attended a really fun session with Jonny Goldstein who discussed his Haiku Project using the phone-to-blog utility Utterz. Though it wasn’t ground-breaking it did showcase an important aspect of the 2.0 landscape: whimsicality over serious utility.

New Penguin edition Orwell Paperbacks are hot!!!

Just got hip to the new paperback editions of two Orwell classics, Animal Farm and 1984, and they’re fantastic! The only thing I really know about Shepard Fairey‘s art is that it used to adorn nearly every lamppost in NYC with his infamous Andre the Giant icon. So ubiquitous is the icon in Fairey’s art that it is actually part of these covers! Quite fitting, actually.

Close-up of the cover

[Via] Laughing Squid

Good Vibes in Brooklyn!

Gothamist posts today (April 11) that students at Franklin K. Lane HS are learning how to make electric guitars and amplifiers!

Lately, I’ve been having fun with my MacBook’s ability to record and burn directly to CD or make an Mp3.  Not to worry, I’m not putting out an album. But I am encouraging kids and teens to share their songs, raps, and poetry by recording them – giving some of them the first chance they’ve ever had to such a thing.  The best part is that they get to take home a CD of their own music at the end, which helps, as I’m usually short on other giveaways 😉 .  One of the recent sessions can be found on the Brooklyn Public Library MySpace, URLibrary (get it? – YOUR Library!)… and more to come, I hope!

Bloomy, lay off the MLK references…

From Dan Brown at Huffington Post: “‘What would Dr. King do?’ might be a good guiding question to consider seriously, not to invoke publicly as a self-aggrandizing farce.”

Basically, Bloomberg steps in it any time he tries to talk about his education record. But this is ridiculous. (Link)