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more notoriety for us... ;-)
 Yesterday, I wrote about the Badjaos on the island I grew up in, in the southern Philippines. I learned a lot more about the current situation of this tribe via an Instant Message conversation I had with my cousin Maria Fe last night. Encouraged her to weblog about it, and this is what she wrote. It's a unique, and in some ways profoundly disturbing, glimpse at the consequences of modernity and "development" on tribal peoples. Which is not news, of course... and yet, when confronted over and over again, it's not a situation to which we should be numb--even for those of us living in the so-called First World. And for those of us who immigrated to America from the Third World, Ping-Ping's story has a keen, sharp poignancy...
But the above is not what's bringing a measure of notoriety to this weblogging community. This is. On that page, which is Dave Winer's weblog, scriptingnews.userland.com is a pointer/link to us. (Scroll all the way down on the page and find the paragraph beginning I recently discovered this site, done by a Cal professor.) Uhm... Dave, I don't think actual UC Berkeley professors have much time to do a weblogging project like this. *chuckle* My Berkeley colleague Chris Ashley sets the record straight for Winer, in his post here. His is the 2nd post down. I like in particular what Chris had to say:
As a teacher myself I see enormous potential for tools like Manila to enable students to move beyond being mere consumers, and to empower their own voices, communicate and share knowledge, understand audience, and to become intimate with technology.
Dave Winer is the person and visionary software developer responsible for Manila, the engine behind editthispage.com, and for this particular flavor of weblogging tool. (Other blog mechanisms exist, like I showed most of you in class this summer, but Manila was what caught my eye and fancy.)
8:17 p.m. Maui time...
(to be continued. currently working with Spark on his essay...)
Anyway, Dave's link to us resulted in a spike of reads on yesterday's weblog, rather predictably. His audience of course is far broader than our little one here, and it'd be curious to see if random strangers or interested teachers might contact us about what we've been doing here so far. Because this is the important thing here: what we've accomplished with weblogging has been significant and meaningful, the community an unqualified success. To cite just a few achievements:
- our learning community has persisted--and even thrived--past the end of our actual summer session on the Berkeley campus
- the friendships and relationships started then have continued to grow and deepen... and broaden, with the ripple effect of your peers' and friends' weblogs
- we've been able to learn from each others' experiences and life lessons
- through weblogging we've been able to keep in touch in a way that's more permanent than Instant Messaging, and in a more dynamic and open fashion than e-mail
picture of the day, above (click on it for larger version) was of some beach plants at Kamaole.
[with that photo, i discovered that my digital camera's zoom function works better than its macro setting when doing close-ups, but only given the right quality of angling light, such as it was on Monday afternoon at Kamaole Beach Park.]
some recent remarkable weblogs you've written:
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{ net.casting }
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