Mare Nostrum

I've been reading Tony Karrer's blog about e-learning, and I was struck by his post on mash-ups in the electronic classroom. I like the idea of using tools like polls and forums, particularly since Web 2.0 has made it easy to add widgets for these purposes to the web pages used for a particular course.

I'm also a bit concerned about the information overload these widgets might create. It seems as though the natural tendency of content-driven sites, such as newspapers, is to jam as much content into a single page as possible. I think that has to do more with human nature--an info junky's natural eagerness to provide lots of info to other people--than best practices in web or information design. If the front page of The Washington Post were be a lot less busy, I'd actually find more information.

Still, let's give Tony's enthusiasm for mash-ups a spin. Here's a poll he's taking on this topic, which I'm dropping into this page as a widget. Enjoy.