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I was talking at a conference recently and using an illustration of what a future phone might look like - complete with "roller blind" screen - and to prove I'm not just making it up, Nokia have released their impression of what such a phone might look like (although they've opted for a 'fan' version illustrated above).
Thanks to Adam Frucci in SCI FI Tech for this one!
New forms of social networking services are coming thick and fast at the moment - and here's another, PeopleAggregator . PeopleAggregator is the product of 3 years of self funded work by developer Mark Canter to bridge the gap between all the online social networking services available and move the industry towards a standards-based place of collaboration.
The thing that is worth looking at with this product is that it is all about using open standards to prevent lock-in in one of the most important sectors of the new web - online social networking. PeopleAggregator.net will be a fully functioning online social network in and of itself, but it will share information with other services through common identity standards for our profiles and through APIs (application programming interfaces) for our writing, multimedia and contacts.
For more read the article in TechCrunch While the article itself is interesting, the comments it provide further insights into what some are thinking about the importance of this sort of interoperability - certainly a range of views!
The June/July edition of Innovate has just been released, and in it are several great articles that will be of interest to practitioners and researchers in the area of online learning etc.
My favourite in this edition is an article by S. Pixy Ferris and Hilary Wilder titled Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom. . The authors introduce their research with reference to the notion of secondary orality as a means of understanding the impact of electronic and cyber technologies on teaching - asserting that they see teachers as part of a print paradigm of learning whereas they propose that students are increasingly part of a secondary-oral paradigm of learning.
The article traverses topics such as the way emergent technologies go through phases of acceptance and use (they use Wikipedia as an example here), through to focusing on how wikis can be used to promote collaboration and a shared construction of knowledge in an online environment. Some useful comparisons with blogs and other social software are also referred to.
The article is optomistic in tone and in the view of how wikis can be used by educators, providing a broader picture view of how they may be implemented unlike a number of case study reports I've read recently.
The full list of articles in this edition of Innovate are:
Thanks to Jeremy Heibert for drawing my attention to a report from Australia titled Linking Thinking: Self-directed learning in the digital age (pdf) . It's a pretty big volume to download as the pdf (350 pages), so if you prefer a shorter read the executive summary may be more managable.
Written back in 2004 by Philip Candy, funded under the Research Fellowship Scheme
of the Department of Education, Science and Training, the report is in four main sections:
Not sure why I haven't come across this before - but certainly still a relevant document with some very compelling analysis.
There are many times that I have wanted to create diagrams similar to those that are created in Visio - for flow charts, floor plans, network diagrams etc. Today I found Gliffy - a web-based diagramming solution. It only took a few moments to create an account - which was confirmed by an email to me. Once logged in, I was really impressed by how easy it was to create all sorts of diagrams using the range of symbols from the menus. The files you create are stored on the web for you to go back and modify at any time. The thing that really impressed me was how easy it is to export the diagram you create as a JPG image that you can then paste into other documents etc. Well worth a look.
Wahoo! We've just updated our blog server at CORE to the recent version of Movable Type - ther are lots of interesting features that allow me to do interesting things with the look and feel of the blog, but, more importantly, you can now do things like include linked URLs in the comments space!
enough excitement...
I thought I'd blog about an interesting page I came across this weekend titled Social Constructivism by Beaumie Kim. It's a really useful, succinct introduction to the ideas about social constructivism, and I thought would be useful in terms of some of the ideas explored in the paper from Futurelab that I've blogged about below.
Really interesting research paper from FutureLab in the UK titled Social Software and Learning . The paper is introduced thus:
In the educational arena, we are increasingly witnessing a change in the view of what education is for, with a growing emphasis on the need to support young people not only to acquire knowledge and information, but to develop the resources and skills necessary to engage with social and technical change, and to continue learning throughout the rest of their lives.
In the technological arena, we are witnessing the rapid proliferation of technologies which are less about ???narrowcasting??? to individuals, than the creation of communities and resources in which individuals come together to learn, collaborate and build knowledge (social software).
It is the intersection of these two trends which, we believe, offers significant potential for the development of new approaches to education.
With a growing amount of information appearing on the web about social software and the emergence of Web2.0 technologies, it is good to see some thinking like this that explores what the impat might be in our classrooms and schools.
Looking for a good Wiki tool that's free and easy to use? Wetpaint has until now been available in beta form only, but this week they have launched to the world, allowing anyone to create a free wiki on any topic.
Michael Arrington provides a useful summary of what it does in his article on TechCrunch
At last - a list of Social Networking sites has made it onto Wikipedia! There are sixty examples listed at the moment - I'm sure more will be added to by the Wikipedia community. Each of the sites is listed with its focus, user count and registration details (ie open or invite only etc.) What is staggering are the numbers of users quoted for some of these environments - MySpace 86M, FriendsterXanga 40M for example! Most of the user figures are backed up with a reference that you can check (no doubt these figures will date very quickly)
I've just downloaded and installed the latest version of Flock - and boy am I impressed! Flock is a free web browser that makes it easier than ever to share photos, stay up-to-date with news from your favorite sites, and search the Web. The download and installation went like a dream - importing all of my favourites and cookies from my existing browser, and taking me through a simple set-up that links with my flickr, del.icio.us and blog accounts.
Once loaded I could then set up the newsfeeds that I regularly look at simply by dragging and dropping the RSS link from the feeder site. This is where I became seriously impressed - the newsfeeds open in a browser window, with a panel below each thus:
If you click on the "blog" selection it will automatically upload that feed to appear as an entry on your own blog! Now that's nice.
This is another advance in the idea of a browser being the aggregator for a Personal Learning Environment - and it's only in Beta 0.7 release!
Anne Davis has developed a very useful and informative wiki titled Improving Instruction Through the use of Weblogs that provides anyone interested in finding out how blogs can be used in education with some great reading!
I was particularly struck by Anne's personal statement in the Shaping Pedagogy Through Blogging section:
Amid all the hype and speculation about the use of social software in education Terry Freedman of ICT in Education fame has brought together the thoughts of 14 educators from the USA, Canada, Thailand and the UK in an edited volume titled Coming of Age which can be downloaded free as a 1.9Mb PDF file.
I've had a quick read of the volume and found it to be extremely useful - there's heaps here to inform the genuinely interested, from the personal perspetives and case studies of the contributors, to a most useful glossary, excellent book reviews and introduction to the use of things like podcasting, blogs and video blogging etc in an educational setting. Well done Terry - and thanks!
Interesting post from the people at Kineo who've used Google Trends to provide an update on Trends in eLearning. Worth a read - some interesting trends associated with patterns of searching to do with mobile learning, open source LMSs, podcasting etc.
The graph above is the one published by Kineo that shows a gradual decline in searches on the term e-Learning - but when I checked using the variations of "eLearning" and "(e)Learning" the results were different - not decline. Perhaps it's just an illustration of the way in which e-Learning is declining as a way of spelling? (Interestingly, Online Learning shows a similar overall trend to e-Learning is search volumes.
Out of interest, I tried some searches on the terms "synchronous" and "asynchronous" which showed a similar decline to the graph above - as did the terms "SCORM", "Interoperability", "videoconferencing" and "instant messaging".
By comparison, terms such as "Learning Communities" and "Communities of Practice" show a steady interest with a slight increase over three years.
Most interesting were searches on the 'social software' products such as "Skype", "Flickr", "MySpace" and "Del.icio.us" - all of which showed a dramatic increase in searches since 2004.
Perhaps this will inspire others to publish the results of their own research using Google Trends - although it is important to note the footer on the Google Trends page:
With an increasing number of teachers and kids experimenting with the use of blogs and wikis there is a new wave of concern being expressed concerning the issues of privacy and safety of kids in these environments. And quite rightly too - the fact is that there is a lot of objectionable material that can be accessed on the web, and, unfortnately, there are predators who use these environments to connect with kids. This concern is being expressed now at the highest levels - as can be seen in the recent US debate over student use of "MySpace". But with over 78 million users there is a bigger picture that needs addressing in a better way than simply banning it.
Fortunately there are a number of groups who are busy working on this issue - leading to the development of a range of social environments that offer greater levels of online safety and privacy. One example is WhyVille , an on-line community dedicated to learning through exploration and communication. This site has a funky kid-friendly interface, and is loaded with places inside where kids can participate in high quality, learner-centred learning experiences from across the curriculum. If you haven't got time to create your own login and look around you can take the tour from the teacher's page which is pretty informative.
Another example to look out for is Imbee which will go live later this year, is designed to offer a safe place for kids as young as 8 and 9 years old to create Web logs and chat with friends. Imbee will have a rigorous screening process to ensure that users are who they say they are, and will also be a closed site not accessible by the larger Web. Imbee is the creation of IndustriousKid , a company conceived of about six months ago by serial entrepreneur Jeanette Symons, a founder of two telecommunications companies in the US.
I'm sure other products like this will soon appear on the market - providing schools and teachers with safe alternatives for kids to some of the more "open" social networking environments. And it's not only schools and teachers who are interested in these issues - parents are too:
The Family 2.0 site is worth a visit to see the sorts of things being explored and discussed as alternatives for our kids, while the News.Com article titled Here come the Family 2.0 sites is worth a read also for what is says about family networking sites - here are some they list:
I've recently been visiting my friend Paul who is in charge of ICT at a local secondary school. He has begun using a program called Sketchup with his students. Sketchup is a 3D sketching software for the conceptual phases of design. Paul and his students have been using it to develop 3D models of their school buildings, and have created some really interesting 'fly through' views of different buildings etc.
Sketchup is available to download free from Macs or PCs, and there is a useful video tutorial , or a series of downloadable self-paced tutorials to help you get started.
