The News-Times of Danbury ran a front page story this morning ("Expert urges educators to harness Internet") about a meeting I had yesterday with a group of Connecticut school system superintendents, managers, and staff. It was a prelude to a talk I will be giving on Monday night at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Connecticut. It will be at 6 PM at the student center on the Midtown campus and is free and open to the public. The night before Knovel Corporation hosted a keynote at the Nylink 2005 Annual Meeting, which was held in historic Saratoga Springs, New York. Nylink is a not-for-profit membership organization for all types of libraries and information organizations throughout New York State and surrounding areas.
I enjoy sharing my views about Internet Technology and hope the audiences gain from it. I sure do. It is the Q&A time where I always learn a lot. The librarians and educators, in particular, had a lot of really good questions. With the librarians we had a lot of dialogue about blogging and they got me thinking about how reputation and certification systems might evolve for blogs. With the educators we also talked a lot about blogging but even more about podcasting. They challenged me about how podcasting will be integrated with the educational systems. My answer was that teachers need to embrace the new technologies and that administrators need to recognize and reward those who do.
It occurred to me just how powerful podcasting could be for teachers and for students. For example, a teacher could record a daily "message" — sort of a mini radio program that reviews what was covered that day, what the homework assignment is, and a preview of what will be covered tomorrow. It might be 15 minutes in length. Or there might be recordings by six teachers that are five minutes each. When students get home they see the blog feeds of the teachers and they download them to iTunes and then synch them to their iPods. The next morning the students listen to their teachers on the bus on the way to school — for some of them while also playing a handheld game on their mobile phone. I am confident that some teachers will not only enjoy doing this but will become really good "DJ’s" — so good that the students might even listen more and play games less. In fact as reputations begin to emerge about who the best "TJ’s" are the competition may lead to better education. Let’s hope so.

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