I have big plans for dtangl, and as those plans materialize I will let you know more about it. For now, dtangl.com will be a little more focused of a blog than this one. dtangl will focus primarily on education and educational technology… similar to what this blog began as.

This blog will continue to be my outlet for all sorts of random thoughts on the world and technology.

In any case, I just posted my first entry on dtangl about living in a world of abundance. The post was inspired by Chris Anderson’s new book Free. You can find an excerpt of my post below.

We are living in an age of abundance. If you are reading this post then you have already experience what I am talking about. Think about the steps that you took to get here. Perhaps you googled something. Which generated a list of a million and one pages of information for you to browse through. And you clicked on a link which just happened to be the link to this article. When you are finished here you will google something else. Or you will follow one of the links that I have placed here in my blog. Or you will spend the next few hours reading Free.

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What I have found promising, though, is the fact that they have begun to personalize their blogs. As I mentioned on Playing with Words – my blog about my experiences with my class – I think that this small step will help them look at writing as something that is enjoyable, rather than as a task. As the weeks progress, we shall see if my assumption is true.

On a slightly different topic, I had a brief conversation with one of my co-workers (and good friend) the other day. And we discussed the possibility of actually integrating a blog into the course description – that is making it a requirement for all the students taking this course, and not just the ones in my class. I personally think that that is a great idea.

But then came the idea to monetize this… make it an optional paid service that parents could enroll their kids into if they wanted to (FYI I work for a for-profit educational institution). While I have no qualms about making money, unless Chungdahm Learning (the academy I work for) can offer something well above what Wordpress or other free blogging platforms offer, then its a cheat.

So to make this service something worth paying for, the platform must have the following options:

• Ability to create individual, customizable blogs – like Wordpress
• Students must have the ability to link to and incorporate outside media – movies, pictures, etc – and also have the freedom to do so
• Must have a Wiki function – this is a great way to have students collaborate on research and share instructional material
• Social Network – allows students to create unique profiles for the purpose of online discussions, commenting, asking for advice, etc
• Forum – allows students to pose questions about homework or continue discussions started in class
• Chat – similar to the functions that are integrated into Facebook or Gmail so that students know who is online at that moment and thus who they can ask questions to or collaborate with on their homework

The only problem that I see is that if you tie a program like this too closely to school, then regardless of the intentions, the students are likely to reject it just because it is school. That is my two-cents. If you have any other suggestions to add to this list, please let me know.

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