From its inception, my vision for a new AMST site included a blog and/or resource list that would be produced by both students and administrators. My theory is that more 'content producers' lead to a more active, live webspace-- one that is not an official function calandar. I have been looking around for models of community blogs and fortunately ran across the SXSi (South by Southwest Interactive) community blog this evening. I am looking for more. I know that livejournal groups are pretty active, but I am not very familliar with their structure.

On another note, Marybeth Shea brought up some interesting points re: social networking and teens from a parent's perspective a few weeks ago. Ypulse is an interesting blog about teens and technology. I scanned back a a bit into the archives and there is a healthy mix of tween rags and alarmist traditional media articles interspersed among the web stuff. I was particularly interested in a sort of op-ed piece on the disconnect between those of us who are optimistically looking at the future of technology and the relative apathy of the generation best equipped to take advantage of it (Gen-Y, apparently). This parallels a discussion earlier today in the Library of American Broadcasting, where UMD-grad David Weinstein spoke about the optimism of future-oriented thinkers in the early days of television only to have their beautiful vision of interconnectivity and education come crashing down with American Idol. I haven't been watching, so I can't comment on this next sign of the apocalypse.

[side note: I refrained from using the term "futurist" because of some compelling debate of the term here by Paul Saffo of The Institute for the Future.]