Derek's Blog

"Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love". - Hamilton Wright Mabie

Thus the reason for the quote above. We truly live in an age of paradox, where here in NZ the big news of the evening is that we've broken all records for spending this Christmas, while in other parts of the world there are those who are starving or victims of war and disease. It can all seem a bit depressing and overwhelming - yet there is evidence also that this season, despite its crass consumerism, evokes, for many, a strong feeling of concern for others which is exhibited in a variety of ways.

I really like the notion of a conspiracy of love. At our Christmas Eve church service this evening we took a special offering for the TEAR fund project in Darfur, where over 2.5 million people are caught up in the most devastating humanitarian crisis of the century so far. I found myself thinking about the work I do with eLearning, and what a distant thought this must be for those involved at the heart of such tragedies. Sure, education must be a part of the restorative journey for these people - but only after they've been fed, clothed and housed. And then only after the causes of the wars and famines are addressed in the first place. Imagine what could be achieved there through a conspiracy of love?

I began thinking how easy it is to become excited about the fact that Twitter now has a new feature called "TwitThis", or that Google has added new features to its Google Reader, or that Google has added 23 language translation 'bots'... but at the end of the day, what are these things really worth to us unless we are able to use them in ways that contribute to the development of a decent society, and the spreading of this conspiracy of love?

I believe that eLearning and ICT does have a role to play - particularly in educating our 21st century learners about what is happening in the world around them, and engaging them in ways of finding solutions and taking action. There are, of course, the obvious things we could do, like make greater use of online activist games in our classrooms, engaging in Global Classroom projects such as Taking IT Global or using e-media as a catalyst for dialogue and social change.

Perhaps there's a challenge that I can make for the year ahead - to take these wonderful tools and resources that we have access to in the eLearning world, and use them in ways that may profoundly alter the ways in which our students think about the world, their part in it and the things they might do to help spread a conspiracy of love within it.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a new feature for those who use Google Talk that should be of interest to teachers of foreign languages - 29 translation 'bots' that can be added to Google Talk conversations. It all appears quite easy to use - for example, if you add en2zh@bot.talk.google.com as a friend in Google Talk and send it a message to translate from English to Chinese. You can use it as an interpreter in your group chat, or download the Google Talk client for BlackBerry and use it as a pocket translator.

The Google Talk Blog explains that for more languages, just add any of the 29 other translation bots. They're named using two-letter language abbreviations as "[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com", and the supported language pairs are: ar2en, bg2en, de2en, de2fr, el2en, en2ar, en2de, en2el, en2es, en2fr, en2it, en2ja, en2ko, en2nl, en2ru, en2zh, es2en, fi2en, fr2de, fr2en, hi2en, hr2en, it2en, ja2en, ko2en, nl2en, ru2en, uk2en, ur2en, zh2en. So, for French to German translation, talk to fr2de@bot.talk.google.com.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just in time for Christmas, another free e-book from the eLearning Guild titled 162 Tips and Tricks for working with eLearning Tools. this book is for those who are serious about eLearning, and who are responsible for preparing and presenting online courses, or for the selection of tools and applications used by those who are.

A few months ago the eLearning Guild asked members for their favorite tips for using software for the creation of e-Learning. Members could submit tips in any or all of the following five categories:

• Courseware authoring and e-Learning development tools
  
• Rapid e-Learning tools
  
• Simulation tools
  
• Media tools
  
• Combining and deploying authoring tools

I've found a number of links to applications and ideas that I hadn't previously considered - and was very pleased to note the inclusion of the NZ-developed eXeLearning in the section on Courseware Authoring / e-Learning Development Tools (see page 23).

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 6:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Nigel posted this video on my Facebook Funwall recently, and I've been pondering its usefulness for education. Four things occur to me:

1. It provides a very useful framework for engaging students with thinking about complex issues and reconciling multiple points of view. I've long been a fan of the scenario-planning methodologies, and this framework uses some of this thinking (although I'm guessing is origins are more in the economic modelling and decision making domain).


2. It provides a great vehicle for encouraging group work by providing the four perspectives that could be explored by different groups for instance. it provides an opportunity to us the ideas promoted by DeBono with his thinking hats to encourage students to explore ideas from a perspective that may not be their own, or the one they'd naturally identify with.


3. It provides a good model for how students could present the efforts of their individual or group research into topical issues - both in terms of the framework itself, and in terms of the video as a way of sharing it. I also got to thinking how effective it would be to create the quadrants in a web environment and add hyperlinks from each statement to supporting evidence etc.


4. It's a ready-made learning object for use with a class thinking about climate change! Students could be encouraged to add their own perspectives to each of the quadrants, debate what the presenter has already added, seek the evidence to support their statements etc.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 10:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Now here's a bit of ingenuity for you - a low-cost interactive whiteboard that consists of a Wii remote and a couple of LED pens. It's the work of Johnny Chung Lee at the Human-Computer interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University who provides a very succinct overview of how it works in this YouTube video - including using both projected images and the LCD screen. He's even developed the software to cater for the use of two pens to allow for two-touch manipulation of the image. The software is available on his website to download. I love it when people come up with this sort of lateral thinking (thanks to Sharon Peters for her twitter message about this!)

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 7:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a great educational resource sent to me by my son-in-law this morning.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 8:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I had a bit of time over the weekend to explore some new web2.0 applications that I've become aware of recently (thanks to some of my contacts on Twitter)! Each of these provides a new and effective way to easily share video and/or audio messages via the web - replacing the need to go through the more complex process of creating audio and video files to upload or attach.

Springdoo is what the creators describe as the answer for a group of emotional and passion filled people who found it frustrating that email did not deliver so much of what they wanted to say, when asked to write down the key ingredients required for their "ultimate personal connecting solution". With Springdoo you can record simple video messages for others to access - as well as search and view other people's messages. It has many of the features we've come to expect from this sort of application, including the ability to email to a friend, comment, capture a still frame - and, the one I like about this, the ability to view the video clip on your mobile device!

SnapVine allows you to record voice comments and then attach them in a variety of ways, including adding your voice to photos and sharing them with friends, creating an audio blog entry - including from your mobile phone!, and sharing voice comments with friends in MySpace etc. SnapVine integrates with a number of social networking applications, including Bebo, Myspace, Facebook, Xanga and Friendster.

Seesmic is a fun and easy to use application for recording short video messages online. It's only in 'alpha' stage of development at this stage, but looks promising and if you're keen to try it you can register to become one of the alpha users. Thanks to Ewan Mcintosh for sharing this one and the test video he created!

Flixn is another online video creating tool with a simple three step approach to creating video blogs, video comments and even video emails to friends and family. Like SnapVine, Flixn integrates with other social networking software and allows you to upload video comments to MySpace, Blogger or eBay!

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 8:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Interesting article in the Guardian who commissioned Web godfather Vint Cerf, now chief strategist at Google, to edit the British daily's media section. The result has been published in an article titled Tell me the future, containing responses from some of the industry's leading minds about what will happen in their respective fields in the undefined future.

Contributors include Chris De Wolfe, CEO, co-founder MySpace on Social networking; Chad Hurley CEO, co-founder YouTube on Video; Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter on Mobile and Peter Norvic, director of research at Google on search. Also included are Steven Huter and Adiel Akplogan, who have pioneered the internet infrastructure in Africa.

Social networking pioneer Chris De Wolfe, co-founder of MySpace, says "these evolving online social destinations are laying the groundwork for the new social Web, which we believe is becoming infinitely more personal, more portable, and more collaborative." The term "social network" would come to more broadly define open development initiatives, like Google's OpenSocial.

Similarly, YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley sees a bright future for streaming video, which he says will become the most "ubiquitous and accessible form of communication." He predicts that online video will be personalized and customizable (i.e. more "social"), delivered to users' homepages in an RSS feed-like format

Posted by Derek Wenmoth at 8:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)