- via Student Affairs Collaborative:

I love how the video gives props to the “first follower.” While it is important for a leader to take the first step, push limits and set an example — the first follower is a central piece of the leadership puzzle. The first follower is the person who helps start the momentum in creating a movement. Without the first follower, the rest of the crew might not join the cause.

As consistent concert attender through the years, I have witnessed many brave souls who let the music take them over while they dance to their heart’s content. (Some may argue a controlled substance spurred them to dance like that, but that’s besides the point). It almost never fails — one fearless person joins in on the dancing, becoming the first follower, who then starts a movement as others join in.

What a wonderful example of this concept!

[ps--It appears dancing dude is at The Gorge Amphitheater in George, Washington, which is an awesome venue to see a concert btw!]

Then this evening, I read a timely post from Kansas State University Professor Mike Wesch’s blog Digital Ethnography. The post was about a video created by Lynn Schofield Clark’s Innovation in Mass Communications class at the University of Denver. This video is a mini-mockumentary of a professor trying to teach his digital native students about technology. If you are a fan of The Office, then you’ll enjoy this take on a professor trying to teach a class of young students about technology.

Here’s the actual video, “The Class” (which would be an example of how not to integrate technology in class):

By the way – if you don’t follow Dr. Wesch’s blog, I highly recommend you do. And, if you haven’t seen other videos made by him and his students, check out his youtube channel. One of my favorite educational videos from Dr. Wesh (in collaboration with 200 of his students!) is about students today, aptly titled “A Vision of Students Today.”

I also recommend The Machine is Us/ing Us because it provided a timely look into Web 2.0. (Note that this video was created in 2007, so it was right on time/at the cusp of the proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies).

via Library Secrets

Some of Crackle’s Minisodes:

* Fat Albert
* The Partridge Family
* One Day at a Time
* Good Times
* Starsky and Hutch
* 227
* The Facts of Life
* Charlie’s Angels
* Party of Five

To view more of Crackle’s minisodes, go to this link and click on the drop-down filter on the right hand side of the screen to filter by minisodes. Unfortunately, I could not find a direct link to them (which would be a recommendation to Crackle for a mini-improvement to their website).

I’ll leave you with a minisode from The Facts of Life. (Take note of a very young Helen Hunt as a drug pusher!)

Check out Collecta‘s real-time search engine. Collecta searches news sites, social media and blogs for constant updates. (These are the places where breaking news is likely to show up first). So let’s try it out…

Pick a subject.

Any subject.

President Obama’s Health Care speech to Congress? Michael Jackson’s death? The war in Iraq or Afghanistan?

How about Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift during her acceptance speech after winning the Best Female Video? Lots of folks weren’t too happy about that, which you can see in the real-time search. I captured the real-time action in the video below. (Warning: watch out for the potty mouths). I typed in “kanye west” in the search box and Collecta gave me the results and constantly provided updates from people’s blogs and tweets. It was pretty interesting to watch for a few seconds to see what the mood is like out in TV-land.

HGTV’s Design Star is also on the tube at the moment so I did a little search on that too.

While a lot (most!?) of this information is fluff/non-consequential, I see several benefits in real-time search:

1- To get a feel of the mood about certain subjects
2- To know what’s going on right now – be in the know
3- Find out what’s popular

Any other ideas of the benefits of real-time search? Implications for use in higher education, libraries or businesses?

For an example of a video from UI, here’s a short clip of Nellie McKay talking about pirating music and the Recording Industry.