Howard Rheingold's Latest Work...

I have been an educational design consultant for more than a decade, working for Marquette University starting in 1997, designing distance learning applications for the Colleges of Nursing and of Education. It was while simultaneously studying for a Masters Degree in Education that I discovered the works of Howard Gardner and quickly came to realize that the multi-media computer provides the means to speak to students in whatever manner their particular learning style prefers.

More recently the dawn of social media has added another layer of opportunity to the design mix. I continue to explore and research the ongoing development of social media, educational design theory and the creation of an interactive learning interface. One of the early pioneers in the study and application of social media is author Howard Rheingold.

On Monday, October 06, 2008 Howard Rheingold and Sam Rose launched a new project...





"The Social Media Classroom is a set of free and open source social media—forums, wikis, blogs, chat, social bookmarking, micro-blogging, social video, and other media — together with curricular materials, resource repositories and an online community of practitioners. The set of social media itself, without the accompanying pedagogical resources, is also referred to as the Social Media Collaboratory (or, the Colab for short). It was initially created by Howard Rheingold and Sam Rose, together with a team of developers and educators, supported by an award from the MacArthur Foundation and HASTAC. Ongoing development, maintenance, and support is to be provided by a community of SMC users."

Business Cards 2.0

Today's discovery... Retaggr as Mashable says, "blows Google’s Profile card out of the water with its extensive features, seamless aggregation, and various functionality. Your Portable Interactive Web 2.0 Profile"

I am going to create my own example... at StephenKastner.com so I can:

• Consolidate my online presence into an interactive online business card
• Display content like recent tweets, blog posts, and photos right in that card
• Have it appear alongside my interaction across the web and on my sites and blogs
• Create a great first impression when people discover me online
  

There are currently more than 170 sites supported, and they say I can add my own content from anywhere. I will expand and update this post as I build my new Retaggr business card and apply the knowledge to some of my social media client accounts. If you are interested in learning more about the use of social media to advance your marketing campaign contact me at DesignWise.net.

Blogging Redux... two sites worth tracking

Sixteen days ago Darren Rowse, the ProBlogger launched TwiTip and the traffic grew so rapidly that today he is moving it to a more robust server. Twitip.com is all about using Twitter and is worth tracking...

I also want to note "Smart Advi$e.info; Blog Traffic 101-Tips, Strategies On How To Increase Blog Traffic" a site with several cool incentives to promote traffic and comments - not to mention a bunch of great tips and advice from blogger and template design guru, Shri Nagesh.

I promise to be good, and post more often. I am so busy working in social media that lately I have had little time to comment on social media. This includes the redesign and coordination of a sm campaign for Nourishing