And evidently, he is in danger.

Students are no longer chained to stacks of books at their school’s library. The “library” can now be found at their fingertips on their favorite search engine. Teachers are no longer confined by the traditional four wall classrooms. They now have the ability to tweet or IM their students, many of whom may be several cities or states away.

Another great development is that we are moving away from an obsessive preoccupation with content and moving towards an affinity and total appreciation for the ability to collaborate and share new ideas.

It’s not content that controls how effectively our kids are learning in school or how you’re learning at work. It’s the way that we collaborate that is the most important.

Collaboration is the key. It’s really what matters the most.

This is why I’m loving Dim Dim so much. I found it one day when I was looking for a cheap (read: free) way to brainstorm some ideas about new curriculum I had been creating for a specialized career training program for adults currently out of work. I just didn’t want to forward the materials over to someone randomly, have them read it and then email me back in red all of their suggested revisions. Boring. I wanted to get a group of like minded individuals together, review the curriculum simultaneously and get real time ideas on how to improve and make this program something really great that could truly make a difference for the people who needed it.

Dim Dim made that happen. I got a group of awesome teachers and trainers together online and we rocked that curriculum. After two hours, we had 20 pages of great, relevant material.

Dim Dim lets you run a live meeting or webinar. I know that’s not really that unique because WebEx and GoToMeeting let you host meetings online too.  But if I were to combine those two sites together to form one massive super site on steroids you would have Dim Dim. It’s that cool.

You can chat. There’s a whiteboard in which everyone can access and use together. You can upload documents to share and review. Have a website that you want everyone to check out and discuss? You can upolad the URL and poof, it’s there in your meeting room. Dim Dim has audio and video capabilities. Sessions can be recorded for future use. It’s mind boggling to think about the impact that it could have in classrooms.

There’s no software to install and this is free. Free people. Now if you plan on having larger meetings, it’s $25 bucks a month which is still more affordable than the other sites.

Dim Dim places the focus on collaboration. If you have a computer and have access to the internet, you have the ability to connect and share. It’s that simple.

It truly is an exciting time for education and learning. Excited to see what comes next…

Yes, she’s a good friend.

It was started just three months ago by this 17 year old Russian kid, Andrey Ternovski. First of all, when I was 17, I was stressing out about acne and the SAT’s, not starting a social media phenomenon but I digress…

Basically how it works is there is no log in and no registration. The site actually activates your web cam. When you click “start”, you’re staring in front of someone who is also starting back at you. You have the option to chat via text or voice or if bored, click  “next” and a new face is staring at you. You can chat with as many different people that you want.

You know how you could kind of hide behind an avatar or 5 year old pictures and have a good amount of anonymity? Not any more. Chatroulette completely removes that barrier and puts you front and center. Although you aren’t required to log in or fill out any registration form like with the other big social media sites, you pretty much know exactly what you’re getting. Which can be a good and a bad thing.

Let me go ahead and warn you that the online masturbaters have already found Chatroulette and have made it their home so there’s a chance when you click “next”, something more than a hand might be waving at you. You’ve been warned. I unfortunately wasn’t lol.

But there are lots of people on there who are actually wearing clothes. I actually had a cool conversation with a girl from Seattle, one of my favorite cities. She gave me three restaurants to check out the next time I’m there so that was a win win.

Another conversation I had was with this guy Ben, a teacher from Atlanta. As a person who loves learning and education, we had a pretty good discussion about using social media in the classroom. I was for it, he was against it, so a nice little debate ensued. No creepiness at all there.

It is that complete randomness and unexpectedness that appeals to most people who have checked it out and who return back for more.

Not sure if Chatroulette will be the next Facebook but it’s worth taking a look. With your clothes on please.

AIM is not much to look at.  It is a monotasker (to borrow the word from Alton Brown) and not a pretty one.  It is available for Mac, but is largely unused because iChat, which has the advantage of being both pre-installed and located on the default Dock, uses the AIM chat protocol.  On the PC front, AIM has steadily lost ground over the years as all-in-one IM clients took over.  Chat wars haven’t been a big thing for years, when Yahoo! and Google (which launched Google Talk soon after GMail) and Microsoft and Aol (then AOL) each jealously guarded their chat protocols to prevent interoperability.  The upshot was inconvenience for the user.

MSN Messenger still exists but only as a casualty of the Chat Wars (much like MSN).  Yahoo! Chat still boasts a hearty user base.  And Google and Aol have had an uneasy detente for the past several years, with interoperability in the chat window in GMail as well as in Apple’s iChat.  But now with Google moving once again into the Social Networking field, old truces may fall and new alliances like Aol and Facebook form.

Let us not forget that Google is also in some very nasty fights against Apple and Microsoft.  Google’s Nexus One looks to unhorse the iPhone (that has yet to be seen).  It is working on an OS called ChromeOS which would naturally go against OSX and Windows.  And speaking of Windows, Google also has its own browser to fight Internet Explorer (Microsoft) and Safari (Apple) available for Windows and in beta form on Mac, where Safari holds a lot of traction.  On the Search front, Google is fighting against Microsoft’s Bing!, which, it should be noted, could in theory be supplemented if and when Microsoft manages to buy out Yahoo!

So there sits Google, fighting battles on too many fronts to name and starting more fights of its own.  As I’ve previously stated, I’m not a fan of AIM by any stretch and giving it Facebook functionality won’t make me want to install it on my Mac.  However, this is a prime opportunity for Apple to ride in on a white horse and do a deal with Aol and/or Facebook to add Facebook to iChat.  I’ve been a Mac user (I use all platforms) for over four years.  Since then, I’ve felt that the iChat UI is simply the best-looking interface for chat.  I’ve used Pidgin, Adium and even Trillian years ago.  But, pixel for pixel, iChat works nicest.  On the iPhone, BeeJive, in my opinion a must-have app, works so nicely in no small part because it uses the iChat UI.

The Aol/Facebook alliance provides a unique opportunity for several companies, each fighting their own battle with Google, to strike a blow.  Aol can update not just its client but its protocol to allow for multiple instances to run (opening GMail won’t knock out your iChat connection).  Facebook can give its users another reason to keep a Facebook tab open by having AIM right there.  Apple can get some more pixels from the press by updating a program that is starting to gather dust.

These are all some minor things that Google’s adversaries can do to maybe get Google to rethink its expansionist ideas.