I'm the guy -- and I feel like the big, bad wolf -- who took the
ISED-L content and enabled it to blog form and an RSS feed.
One of the reasons I did this is that I didn't want the great content
from the ISED-L clogging up my email in-box. I have taken much of my
reading for growth and professional development to an RSS reader; I
happen to be enamored of Bloglines, but there are plenty of excellent
reader tools out there to help people manage the flood of information.
Anyway, I wanted a method to help me manage the ISED-L content on a
reader, and I couldn't get a Bloglines email subscribed to the list.
I'd requested help from the admins, but the solution just didn't
appear. (Bloglines has a tool where you can create specific email
addresses which get dumped into a designated folder in Bloglines, in
essence treating email as an RSS feed. I could never get the
generated Bloglines email address subscribed to the listserv. I'm
still at a loss as to why it wouldn't work.)
A couple of months after not getting the list delivered to my reader,
I revisited the issue and created this alternative form.
Frankly, I'd thought that since the list is published under a Creative
Commons License, there really wasn't an issue.
Reminds me of the story about Internet guru Seth Godin who published a
book using a Creative Commons License... only to discover that's not
what he really wanted to do. Too late. Somebody took his work and
printed it and sells it... all within the license that Seth chose.
You can be sure that all future licenses Mr. Godin uses will be the
non-commercial variety.
I do know that several people have joined the listserv after finding
the information on the blog site. They never would have known about
the listserv -- and thus missed out on the awesome information posted
to the list, information helping them be better educators -- without
the easily found blog.
As to the blog site, I note that it is not a traditional blog site. A
traditional blog site usually has one or several contributers and
offers the opportunity for commenting and dialogue. This site is
merely a reposting of the ISED-L content. I turned off the comment
feature so that comments could not be made with the benefit of the
group.
The good news, at least as I see it, is that the ISED-L community is
not alone in their apparent pain with the New Media. I work as an
organizational performance consultant for a federal agency, and we are
struggling with this very issue. One of my roles is to help change
our culture so that transparency and information sharing becomes
commonplace rather than the exception. We have found that we must
work to "increase the pool of knowledge" and using New Media is one
way to do that. Even if it is painful, because in the end, it is the
right thing to do for our people, our mission, and our nation. I'd
suggest the same applies to this listserv.
You can find many discussions about these very issues at several of my
various online endeavors.
I certainly did this with no animosity or ill will or evil intent or
desire to pull-one-over on the list membership. My intention was
quite plain: To take what I thought was awesome content -- content
which has been helpful to me and could be helpful to many more people
-- and making it available in a format more in tune with how I (and
many people) want to get their information. This is great stuff
published here.
A couple of responses to comments made by other listserv members:
* I would always hope that no matter where the content is posted or
not posted, we can be honest and helpful to each other.
* I'm not sure how private the list is, at least now. Perhaps when it
was first formed, the members all knew each other in-the-flesh or by
reputation, but that's not the case now. Hey, you let me in... and
you let me in more than once... ;-)
On a more personal note, I guess this means that I'll not be getting
any job interviews this season as I seem to have ruffled so many
feathers.
As to the future of the blog site and associated RSS feed, if there's
overwhelming dissatisfaction, I'll shut it down. With much sadness.
If there's a change in the license, I will definitely pull the plug.
The only way this works, at least in my current way of thinking, is
because of the Creative Commons license. No license, no right to
republish. This might, however, be only a temporary solution as I
suspect the cultural changes brought about by "uploading" (see
Friedman's 4th flattening force) is going to continue to march on.
I'll take comments off-line to my email (pastinson@gmail.com) or here
on the list. I'm well aware that the whippings will continue until
morale improves, and as everyone in the Stinson home is currently
suffering from what appears to be more than a usual run of flu, my
morale has miles to go. Whip away, please.
Peace,
/s/ Peter
Peter Stinson
http://www.peterstinson.com
--
"Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis."
~~ Nicholas Borbonius
"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
~~ Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
[ For info on ISED-L see http://www.gds.org/ISED-L ]
Submissions to ISED-L are released under a creative commons, attribution, non-commercial, share-alike license.
