To the southwest of Anchorage, AK are four volcanos that are fairly active. Every decade or so they blow some ash. Mt. Redoubt is currently grumbling and according to a scientist at the Alaska Volcano Observatory: “this activity is going to culminate in an eruption.” (cnn)

For those seeking the latest information on Mt. Redoubt, here’s a collection of resources.

Realtime seismic graph. This is about 5 minutes short of being realtime, and shows the last 24hrs of activity:

Another realtime graph that shows aggregated readings over a longer period is also available:

The Alaska Volcano Observatory is posting updates every hour or two. You can get them by following alaska_avo at http://twitter.com/alaska_avo. Here’s a direct RSS link if you prefer to subscribe in your email program or reader.

Also thanks to Twitter, a stream of people sharing news and links with the word “Redoubt” in them: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=redoubt.

For the authoritative source of information, visit the Alaska Volcano Observatory Mt. Redoubt website which includes the same updates posted to Twitter, along with links to ashfall trajectory, preparedness resources, seismic charts, and other relevant and historic information.

For more preparedness information, particularly regarding falling ash, the USGS has a number of resources.

If you’d like to get email updates sent to you, you can subscribe here.

A couple decent webcam views (if only the clouds would get out of the way):
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/avo/webcam/redoubt.jpg
http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/avo/webcam/redoubt-2.jpg

UPDATE: In the early hours of March 23rd Mt. Redoubt erupted five times, spewing ash as high as 50,000 feet.

At the upcoming Alaska Society for Technology in Education (ASTE) conference (Feb 25, 2009) I’ll be giving a short overview of lifestreaming. Here’s the synopsis:

Last year and the year before I gave talks on Web 2.0, and this year the conference sectionals are brimming with subjects around blogs, wikis, and even social networking. Few of our schools have yet to figure out how to integrate such tools into actual curriculum (and show with data they improve test scores), but they definitely realize that in order to keep school relevant to students they need to. The sheer quantity of Web 2.0 sites and services launched just in the last year is a testament to the fact that the true special sauce of social media isn’t inside any particular website, but in the power of aggregating and disseminating bits of information across multiple websites.

The cool toys of my childhood aren’t necessarily relevant to children of the up and coming WWW generation: Whatever, Wherever, Whenever.

Many toys and games are of course timeless: dolls, legos (in my daughter’s case a large empty cardboard box provides hours of enjoyment). But today’s world requires brains used to making quick, accurate choices, and modern toys reflect that. Once children have the fundamentals down (IE: gravity) it’s time to get them multitasking, point-clicking, and making decisions on their own.

The same is true for television shows. The “classic” cartoons are all story-based, and often the stories are secondary to characters just goofing around demonstrating their traits. More and more of today’s shows include decision making. Often they actually stop the action to ask the viewer to express their opinion (for examples check out modern versions of Mickey Mouse, Pooh “Super Sleuths”, and of course Dora and all her spinoffs).

In his blog post “The Case Against Candyland“, Steven Johnson notes how the games of his childhood, in contrast with modern ones, are generally “moronic” and based on random chance rather than critical decision making.