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May 27, 2004

Centralized Center... or Just What the ____ is This?

Welcome to the home of the Cult of Centralism.

Just kidding! There are no cults, we are all level headed, un-emotional professionals!

Okay, what this blog really exists for is the purposes of a presentation I am doing June 15 with colleagues Brian Lamb and D'Arcy Norman for the 2004 New Media Consortium Summer Conference.

Our session, "Small Technologies Loosely Joined: Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" not only mixes more than metaphors, but we are trying to mix up the notion of the stale conference presentation.

What we are trying to present and demonstrate is the power of using a discrete series of "small" often free/open source technologies in a loosely coupled fashioned, for use in education. It comes from the experience the three of us gained in the last year, working on several presentations and projects from our three geographically distinct locations-- and in our work, we reguarly makes use of weblogs, RSS, wikis, chat tools.

So what we are doing in our conference session is putting the participants into 3 "camps" each will take the position of either a Centralized, De-Centralized, or Mixed Position is best for using/supporting instructional technology. The three of us flipped a (3-sided) coin to take on leadership of a group (noting that it quite may be opposite our true beliefs), and in the session, participants will use all of these small technologies to research, collaborate, and publish information that supports their respective positions.

But we want more participation than just who shows up in Vancouver- at the same time, we are asking other educational technology folks to remotely participant, before, during, and after, by posting things in the wikis, commenting in the weblogs, and making themselves available as "remote experts" via chat tools.

We are asking people who run their own weblogs to Blog this session, and be sure to use the phrase NMC 2004 in their title or at least the first sentences of their RSS feed. Why? Stephen Downes has conjured up a special RSS "Small Pieces" aggregator that will pull all blog entries that use the magic phrase into one coherent site. Cool, eh?

We want you to participate in numerous ways, especially over in the wiki-space.

So come in, comment, and be sure to jump over to the Centralists Wiki to start helping us build the case... Centalized = POWER! CONSISTENCY! RELIABILITY! ECONOMIES OF SCALE!

Note! Content in this weblog is purely for the purposes of the "Small Technologies Loosely Joined" presentation at the June 2004 NMC Summer Conference and should not blindly accepted as the opinions of those who tread here. We are doing this to demonstrate a process of using technology.

Posted by alan at May 27, 2004 10:09 AM in category General Info

Comments...

Hey I am all for it! Let's centralize it all in my basement!

Posted by: B Gates at May 27, 2004 02:20 PM

Resistance is futile. We will crush them with the weight of their own inequity.

Posted by: Big Brother at May 28, 2004 08:36 AM