Learning with the Fang

Just attended the annual EduBlog awards in SecondLife - hats off to all concerned for having a go at this perilous experiment.  There were lots of issues, but that is the spirit of the Edublog community in general and the EdTechTalk dudes in particular.

I could not logon to the event because the region was full.  I did manage to grab a few minutes of the backup Ustream audio but that stopped.  Then I got into the SL event but things were way laggy and the audio extremely choppy.  Never mind - was worth a try.  The twitter back-channel provided the most comprehensive update as to what was going on,.

As usual there is a collection of flickr images HERE, and for FaceBook types there is a facebook event HERE that contains a lot of good info.

I have to agree with the choice of #1 Educational story of the year being young Aussie Hacker Tom Wood who more than just hacked the Government $80m ‘Porn Filter’ (in 30minutes) but sent the message that there are better ways to address the seedy issues of the internet.  As one commentator said - the money could be spent on more useful things (like say, for example, education).  I have long held the view that it is impossible to blacklist enough sites to make the internet ‘SAFE’ or to whitelist enough sites to make Web2.0 ‘USEFUL’ - the very notion of a porn filter is ridiculous.  Since such a filter contains a list of nasty sites, it is potentially more useful as a porn FINDER once hacked. Once hackers like Tom have done their work, an army of script kiddies can run exploits and share lists of where to find the good stuff.  Now maybe that’s educational ;-)

Any how - end of rant, great event, sorry I couldn’t interact with more of the cool dudes in attendance.  It is way to early on a Sunday morning for me so I am going back to bed.

Fang - Mike Seyfang