Kevin Bushweller is Education Week’s assistant managing editor. I caught up with him to talk about the future Ning site that Digital Directions is going to launch soon and the most poignant thing he brought up was that he wanted the network to have a goal. To identify the top 10 problems that educators are focusing in terms of technology and possible solutions. I think giving the network a focus and goal will prove to be very constructive down the road. The following is an edited transcript of our conversation.

What vision do you have for beat blogging and how will it play into the rest of the magazine?

In the greater vision of the magazine it fits in perfectly, the task we are trying to pursue is to get this group of people together working towards identifying and coming up with solutions for the top ten challenges in educational technology today. The magazine itself is very organized towards helping people solve their problems and thats how we approach things. So the beat blogging project from my perspective as an editor will lead to some excellent things in the magazine – in helping people tackle the problems they are facing.

So when do you think the Ning site will launch?

We just launched the new and improved website for Digital Directions online. We are still working out some kinks right now, so it’s a hard to know.  Michell has taken the lead and done some things with the Ning site – and is beginning to build a location for the project. Now what we have to do is put the message out to people out there: "Hey, do you want to join us in this social network where we are going to identify problems and come up with solutions."

We have people that contacted us by email who are interested in participation and we have put together a list and soon we will send out invites to get this thing going.

On a day-to-day basis: We are basically going to work on it every day, even if it’s just putting stuff up online related to the social network. But it’s hard to know right now exactly what the day-to-day is going to be like. It will definitely have a prominent place on this new and improved site. We want it to be a strong partner with the site, but until we get it going its going to be hard what to know what that is. But we want to drive people from Ning to Digital Directions and vice versa.

What’s the situation in terms of tech support?

We have no technical backup, that’s why Ning works really well for us. We are a relatively small publishing operation. Everyone wears a lot of different hats. We don’t have the luxury of being able to say – we are going to have the top of the line very complex technological backbone for this, but when Michelle said Ning was relatively easy, simple and something she could figure out on her own, that seemed like a good solution. —

Being able to have Michelle take the lead, that’s how we will make things happen. Otherwise it’s a lot of waiting around. I want to get this rolling to get it successful.

Do you have any fears?

I don’t want it to turn into a giant crowd of noise, where it turns into a gazillion people just yapping at each other and not accomplishing some things that could really help us and help themselves. So figuring out how ot make positive things happen, that’s important. Starting it with this goal of identifying the top ten ed-tech problems and coming up with solutions is key. I just don’t want it to be a giant information noise where a lot of people are talking but nohting is happening.

If there would be another concern, it’s that we wait to long to get things started.