Would Edgar Allan Poe like the Rolling Stones or Pink Floyd?

That title has no real meaning, other than the fact that it was one of the subterranean conversations that happened during my six hours with educators in Irving, Tx yesterday.  I’ve written about this before, where I use AjaxChat, installed on my web server, to create a chat room that operates very much like Twitter.  It’s just that everyone has an account, and every one follows everyone else.

That folks were debating the speculative musical tastes of a 19th century American poet, while I was almost certainly saying some very important things in my presentation, concerns me a bit.  But after scanning through the transcript (now extracted to a wiki page), and reacting to some of the conversations, I have to say that I am thrilled with the out come.  I learned, in the reading, because there were teachers and learners in that conversation, and because those roles switched around so much that I stopped keeping track.

Much of what I learned came from questions that pushed me to think.  But one concrete item came from a question, “Is his ability to zoom in and out a Mac feature or can we do that and if so how?”  I use a Universal Access feature of my Mac to zoom in on sections of my screen to clarify a point.  “How do you do that?” is a frequent question that I get, and I have to say, “It’s a Mac thing.”

Guest4223 (most chatters kept the random guest id assigned by AjaxChat) described Virtual Magnifying Glass, a free PC (Win XP, 2000, NT, ME, 98 or 95) application that provides a magnifying glass for zooming in on sections of the screen.  I haven’t tried it yet, but it reminds me of an app I use to use in my Win 98 days.

There were several questions about using this sort of chat application in class (Irving is a 1:1 district), and several people expressed concern about distractions.  Well I worry about that as well.  But it seemed that only a handful of attendees actually participated in the chat.  The real value, I suspect, is that the transcript can then be posted to a wiki page, and the entire class can go in and work on the document, wrapping content around discussion elements, adding value to the experience.

I guess what impressed me the most was this exchange:

Todiehl • 2007-08-07 12:57:45\\
I have to say Walt Whitman would be ecstatic about web 2.0

guest_9999 • 2007-08-07 13:00:59\\
@ TODIEHL: Is this what you’re referring to? “Walt Whitman self-published his Leaves of Grass and only sold eight copies–to friends and family. He couldn’t get a publisher to accept it or even anyone to review it. So he wrote some reviews of his book himself under various pseudonyms and got them printed in different newspapers and magazines. Only THEN did he start seriously selling the book and gain the reputation he deserved.”

Todiehl • 2007-08-07 13:02:48\\
Yeah! I didn’t know that. I was thinking about how much he loved the open exchange of information, and giving everyone a voice and a chance to speak, and combining all those voices. That’s one of the things he tried to do in Leaves – get every American voice in there. He’d be proud of web 2.0guest_9999 • 2007-08-07 13:05:21\\
AND – he coulda self published in less than a day… 😉

jwitter • 2007-08-07 13:05:44\\
So ‘www’ really means Walt Whitman Writing

I really have to figure out how to work Walt Whitman into my Web 2.0 presentations… 😉

The entire transcript has been ported over to my wiki site.  I welcome you to read it and comment here.  If you’ve ever been in one of my workshops or presentations, then you know the password, and you may feel free to go in and tinker with the transcript — adding value.

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Image Citation:
Harry & Tiggy. “Walt.” Hary and Tiggy’s Photostream. 4 Apr 2007. 8 Aug 2007 <http://flickr.com/photos/harryandtiggy/446643763/>.