Next week I do believe I'll be posting the fascinating interview I held (over Skype--he in British Columbia and me home in Nashville, Tennessee) with forefront educational technology spokesperson (sort of that, not really, he defies definition--listen next week to understand more) Ian Jukes. In this "in-betweener" week I want to take the opportunity to share some exciting and rejuvenating resources for all you teachers who are--as we all know you do in the summer--laying around eating bon-bons and watching soaps all day until mid-to-late August when you'll be gearing up for the 9 months of teaching once the kids are all finished their summer work of bringing in the crops. Just Kidding. One big thing I took home to Nashville from NECC in San Diego was a dedication to spreading the word about how Web 2.0 resources can and will, ineluctably, inform the future of education. Will Richardson's stirring session on the topic has me on it like a pit bull on a stranger in the house. With permission from Richardson, I've cut a 5 minute listen from his NECC presentation and mounted it on my school's server, which hopefully will drive you to listen to the whole thing. See the "Podcasting" entry below for more info on how to find the whole presentation. If you teach, you at least need to be aware of the development (or set of developments bunched into a broad concept to enhance its digestibility). Some examples: Blogging: Nature Magazine recently published the top 50 Science blogs, based on Technorati rankings. You don't have to know what any of that means; just visit the site and browse the blogs until you find one you might want to visit regularly. Email me (link in sidebar) if you need help setting up automatic (RSS) delivery... Open Source Software: The NECC podcast by David Thornburg entitled "March of the Penguins: Linux Comes to Student Desktops" is a must-listen. Unfortunately or otherwise, in order to listen ISTE is driving you to iTunes to subscribe to the NECC 2006 set of podcasts. I suggest you bow to that strategic move and do so. Here's a direct link. Podcasting: Assuming you take my advice above, there are a number of other good listens at the NECC 2006 podcast reservoir that you might discover by capriciously downloading and hearing them. I suggest Will Richardson's "A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything" and "One Laptop Per Child" (Keynote by Nicholas Negroponte) at the very least. For a quick and dirty definition of "Web 2.0," see Wikipedia's posting.