I am finally back to the blogsphere. My haitus caused by the extensive technology reworking has immensely helped me to get back into the process of daily or at least weekly blogging.

Many thoughts have crossed my mind in terms of the use of technology for education, social marketing and such. Where I see education closely paralleling marketing, I often cross the two for interesting results. 

Thus my need to expound upon the use of twitter, blogging, vlogging etc for educational purposes. Recently three articles crossed my path that I thought were not only interesting but combined could be of use. 

First: Edutopia recently posted an article about Place-based Blogging.  I was so excited as the article professed to combine my two most favorite things. Technology and our environment. I have long been a proponent of place-based education and have since created our "business" on this premise. So you can understand why I went directly to the blog to read the article. I was a bit frustrated to find the article focused more on the content rather than the technology, as this is what more teachers need in my experience. But nevertheless it provided some good suggestions for the process. Only it missed a great deal more of the detail that could be used to implement this idea. Thus this is where the Twitter article comes in. 

Second: Twitip from Problogger recently posted an article about using more of the features of twitter. Now for those that do not know what twitter is, think of it in terms of micro-blogging. Hopefully the lightbulb for you has gone off like it had for me when I put the two together. If place based learning incorporates the concepts of understanding, sharing and preserving our surroundings, what better use of technology than Twitter. Furthermore Rowse comments in his article 

"Looking to the future, Twitter, despite its 5 million global
users, is still in its infancy. We continue to figure out the best way
to use the social network. Some people tweet short messages about doing
laundry and baking cookies. Brands view it as a marketing channel.
Newspapers use it as a RSS feed, linking to stories elsewhere. And
folks like me use Twitter to communicate, form and mature
relationships, and network."

So, I know you are thinking what I am thinking, why not use twitter with blogging for this Place-based Project.  Ahh, now we are begining to cross the line of education and marketing, or is that line really there? Are these not parallel universes. (I think there will be a need to elaborate on this concept further in the Our reality Blog.) 

Article 3: The word meme was posted from one of the twitterific persons I follow, Roxanneglasser. What is a meme? (The spread of ideas and cultural phenomenon) Well, thanks to all the @replies, I finally discovered this words reference in terms of technology. Obviously the first thing anyone does is google a word (very carefully, mind you) and or search wikipedia. The standard definition greatly interested me, but I could not understand the connection to technology, blogging/ twittering. After being schooled, the lightbulbs went off ferociously and I was blinded by the light. (Ha!) We have through time found an innate need to understand one another, culturally and personally. The creation of internet, social marketing/ engineering etc.. has built an open source bridge for people to connect. 

Obviously, this is not where the lightbulb went off. But, when placing the three ideas together, you can see that using Twitter, Blogging, and concepts of meme for place-based education brings new meaning to authentic learning. The idea being that students can delve into their communities and environment while twittering their experiences. They than incorporate the many ideas from the twitters into their blog postings about their sense of place. When two differing communities share in this experience, we begin to share in understanding breaking down the walls from marketers creating non-realities. Big idea or just another rethought, retweeted idea?