Citizensheep. "Michael Grimes lives in Birmingham (UK). This is his blog about anything that he fancies."

Earlier this week Simon Whitehouse enlightened us about Ordnance Survey OpenData (which I still haven’t blogged about); on Monday I will share my limited understanding of the Hansard Society’s recent report ‘Digital citizens and democratic engagement‘. It’s not the easiest report to make sense of: I would have liked fewer paragraphs full of percentages and [...]

I’m concerned about the Digital Economy Bill so I’ve just sent one of those standard lobbying emails to my MP. I used the online form at 38 Degrees because it was easy, but I made substantial changes to the message (I would have added more but I was in a hurry, hence the convenience of [...]

I’ve wittered about this before, but I’m still concerned about the dangers of encouraging new people to use social media tools without supplying some sort of pastoral care, or covering some of the social and legal implications that they may encounter. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that most of the time we evangelists [...]

If the powers-that-be are so keen on digital inclusion, and for citizens to embrace social media, then they need to ensure that connectivity is completely pervasive. For example, the UK government wants to set up a scheme of ‘digital mentors‘. These people would help other people learn how to use ’social media’ to get their [...]

Much has been debated about the merits of blogging: as journalism; as a mouthpiece for the masses; as a platform for the literate and illiterate alike. But what about as a therapeutic activity? Or, rather, as a creative outlet for those of us who may sometimes be uncomfortable in traditional social situations? I’m not going [...]

Last night I went to Education Unbound 2008, a debate on ‘how social technologies are blurring formal and informal learning‘. The panel comprised Dan Sutch (Futurelab), David Noble (Hillside School, Fife), Andy Gibson (School of Everything) and Catherine Howell (Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies). It was chaired by Matt Locke, Commissioning Editor at Channel [...]

Quite often I hear advice to the effect of ‘Don’t express online what you wouldn’t be happy defending offline’. I agree with this insofar as it protects the writer, but I no longer agree with it as an attitude with which to approach the web. If (as I have written before) we should be willing [...]

Social ‘interaction’ is something I’ve never really got the hang of, and now with the internet thrown in it’s so much more confusing. I’ve just posted an item to Twitter that on re-reading I realised might be taken the wrong way by some people, so I posted another apologising if that was the case and [...]

My skepticism has been assuaged considerably since this was originally posted, but it would be wrong of me to alter the post so I haven’t; and besides, the arguments are still worth having. I want to endorse the idea of ‘digital mentors‘ [link updated], really I do; but the more I think about it the [...]

At three o’clock this morning I finished a frantic flurry of blog posts and Twitter tweets, and tried to sleep. Instead I began to panic. When this happens – and it happens a lot these days – I feel that I’m on an irreversible and rapid ascent to the peak of my sanity, at which [...]