Engage...

I finally sat down and read through Friedman's The World is Flat this summer. While I tend to agree with Gary Stager on this book, Friedman brings up many points about the changing landscapes that many may just not think about. Will Richardson posts some reviews and thoughts on the book as well (search his blog for "Friedman" too for evolution on his thinking). Those involved in this "new web" have seen these social, economic and educational landscapes changes for some time now. Of course, it's easy to criticize the book for what it doesn't do in offering solutions... but the book wasn't about solutions... and the book was written in '05. The book did however add even more reinforcement to me that we are on the right track here in the RLab. It's a quick read, a bit redundant, a bit sensationalized but well worth the time.

I am about to read Bernard Goldberg's book called Bias. I've been looking forward to reading this book for some time now and I think it'll fit in nicely with our discussions on media and the changing landscape of journalism. I miss Goldberg's regular reporting wit in the news and am happy to see him cast it into books. We'll see how it reads.

Gearing up for the coming school year:

20 new iMacs sit in the lab here, loaded up and ready to go. We just need to move the desks around after the carpets were cleaned. These computers bring new software and power to expand horizons and explore.

For those that didn't hear, the RLab proposal on Google Apps was accepted and will be implemented in the beginning of this school year. While the graduated "RLab Alumni" who worked on this proposal over the last two years won't see the results directly, their work helped forge a new and exciting path here at BBA. Returning Lab Alumni, and it looks like we have a lot coming back in this year, will get to put these new tools in motion along with everbody else here. Immediately the Google Apps program saves us money by reducing licensing, hardware and power costs to run our email system.The program also increases user storage, usability and ramps in integrated threads for calendaring, blogs and chat services along with immediately having more training materials available. Add in that it offers superior spam and virus protection filtering and also eliminates tape back storage and gets the data off site as well... well, that's just icing on an already fantastic cake.

To all the RLab alumni who are moving on to new adventures, my best to you in your new adventures and of course keep in touch. We'll miss you here and look forward to hearing what you're up to as you move forward. Stop in anytime or drop some notes when you can.

A little touch up painting to do... adding new music to the Lab server... and restocking the snacks... new ventures... new projects... new discussions...

Engage...