Well, if it's on Cnet, it's finally here.
Ok, so that is a slightly sarcastic tone. I really like what John Seely Brown has to say, but this article is at least a couple years dated. Also, let's be honest, he's probably not the best spokesperson out there. It's not that he's a bad person to talk to. He's done some great work, but there are so many others out there on the frontlines who are actually doing these things.
If you'd like an intro into the topic, see the above linked article.
Saturday, December 2, 2006
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
2020 Vision
This post links to a great video. I love these near future projections. The EPIC video just floored me when I first saw it. This is in the same vein (same style as well) and it is no less insightful as its predessor. What makes this one different is that this presentation focuses both on general world technologies and business, but it also positions those in reference to education. This is something that EPIC did not do.
Watch and enjoy.
Watch and enjoy.
Friday, November 17, 2006
GIMP - Windows installers
GIMP. No, this doesn't mean lame or walking with a limp, it is an open source image editing software :)
I haven't tested it out yet, but the reviews have been pretty good.
I'll follow up with more later.
I haven't tested it out yet, but the reviews have been pretty good.
I'll follow up with more later.
Friday, November 3, 2006
ELGG - danielcraig's dashboard
Ok, I'm back to ELGG. I'm usually pretty good at figuring this stuff out, but ELGG is rather confusing. At first I thought that I just didn't understand the concept, but that's not the case. I understand perfectly and it's a good idea, but the design is terrible.
How does anyone figure all this out? They seem to be all over the board. It reminds me of MSN Spaces (the early design), which is not a complement.
Don't get me wrong, this space is a great idea. This is an idea that is long overdue. This is social networking on a scale that could really work well for teachers. It's somewhat protected. It allows for a great amount of customization. It allows from grouping. It's really powerful in these ways.
However, it's not what I thought that it would be. It is not a super aggregator. It's not a place where I can merge my Moodle spaces, existing blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, and so forth. Not that this would be an easy task. I'm sure that it would be nearly impossible. However, this is what I want from a PLE.
PLE's should work with existing services. Students shouldn't have to create new blogs for each class that they are taking. Really, they should be able to use their personal ones if they wanted. The same goes for all these other services that we are already using. All of them have rss, they really should be quite easy to pull into a solitary system in some way or other.
PLE's should not only incorporate tags, they should make it easy to filter by tags. del.icio.us does this. I can subscribe to a particular group of tags. PLE's should facilitate this process for services that use tags, but don't filter feeds by tags. There should be an option to filter these feeds. This way users can essentially designate which posts are going to go to which classes/spaces.
In the end, PLE's need to reduce the number of places (especially NEW places) that our students have to go. These days, as the technologies change so fast, we require our students to use more and more of these simply to participate in our class. While many of these are likely beneficial and support our learning goals, it takes students a month or more to get used to these distributed systems.
This is why LMS's are so popular. The users have one place to go (with one password) and they can complete all of their assignments there. Newer LMS's and CMS's are even incorporating aspects of Web 2.0 in a sort of half-assed fashion. These changes also include personal spaces in these systems that enable users to bring in feeds and start groups. This blurs the line between a PLE and an LMS at that point.
In the end, I'll keep following ELGG, but I'm not going to use it with any of my classes in the near future. I'm not even sure if the PLE concept is worth introducing until the concept is out of Beta :)
However, if anyone reads this blog, which I kind of doubt, let me know if I'm all wrong. Convince me of all the wonders of ELGG. I've heard the hype and just can't understand why.
How does anyone figure all this out? They seem to be all over the board. It reminds me of MSN Spaces (the early design), which is not a complement.
Don't get me wrong, this space is a great idea. This is an idea that is long overdue. This is social networking on a scale that could really work well for teachers. It's somewhat protected. It allows for a great amount of customization. It allows from grouping. It's really powerful in these ways.
However, it's not what I thought that it would be. It is not a super aggregator. It's not a place where I can merge my Moodle spaces, existing blogs, wikis, social bookmarking, and so forth. Not that this would be an easy task. I'm sure that it would be nearly impossible. However, this is what I want from a PLE.
PLE's should work with existing services. Students shouldn't have to create new blogs for each class that they are taking. Really, they should be able to use their personal ones if they wanted. The same goes for all these other services that we are already using. All of them have rss, they really should be quite easy to pull into a solitary system in some way or other.
PLE's should not only incorporate tags, they should make it easy to filter by tags. del.icio.us does this. I can subscribe to a particular group of tags. PLE's should facilitate this process for services that use tags, but don't filter feeds by tags. There should be an option to filter these feeds. This way users can essentially designate which posts are going to go to which classes/spaces.
In the end, PLE's need to reduce the number of places (especially NEW places) that our students have to go. These days, as the technologies change so fast, we require our students to use more and more of these simply to participate in our class. While many of these are likely beneficial and support our learning goals, it takes students a month or more to get used to these distributed systems.
This is why LMS's are so popular. The users have one place to go (with one password) and they can complete all of their assignments there. Newer LMS's and CMS's are even incorporating aspects of Web 2.0 in a sort of half-assed fashion. These changes also include personal spaces in these systems that enable users to bring in feeds and start groups. This blurs the line between a PLE and an LMS at that point.
In the end, I'll keep following ELGG, but I'm not going to use it with any of my classes in the near future. I'm not even sure if the PLE concept is worth introducing until the concept is out of Beta :)
However, if anyone reads this blog, which I kind of doubt, let me know if I'm all wrong. Convince me of all the wonders of ELGG. I've heard the hype and just can't understand why.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Online and Traditional Degrees Differ in Expectations, Not Results
Here's an article from Chief Learning Officer. There's not enough information about the research to make an informed judgement of the validity of the findings, but it is interesting none-the-less.
The main thrust of the article is that online courses and face-to-face courses produce similar results. However, they found that online courses are not the "easy" option that they have been accused of being.
This would be no surprise for those of us who teach online courses and it would probably be no surprise for our students either. I've often heard complaints that my course required too much time. In all honesty, it probably does for people without a comfort with the technologies and the basic theories of language learning (teaching). The latter is an issue in all courses at this level.
The main thrust of the article is that online courses and face-to-face courses produce similar results. However, they found that online courses are not the "easy" option that they have been accused of being.
This would be no surprise for those of us who teach online courses and it would probably be no surprise for our students either. I've often heard complaints that my course required too much time. In all honesty, it probably does for people without a comfort with the technologies and the basic theories of language learning (teaching). The latter is an issue in all courses at this level.
Sunday, October 8, 2006
E-Mail is for Old People
Interesting article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Essentially, this looks at how universities communicate with students and the changing role of traditional email.
They refer to results from a 2005 report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project indicating the teens use technologies like IM or text messenging to talk to friends and email to talk to "old people." Unfortunately, you can't generalize these results and say that teens don't use email. That's ridiculous. Of course they use email. What they don't do is use email to chat the way that many of us "old folks" where socialized into through the last 10 or so years.
However, I do agree that universities should start looking at other modes of communication to get important information to students. In reality, this doesn't mean the loads of departmental or schools emails advertising the latest speaker. Those I can do without (being 7,500 miles from campus). I think that this is most important when facilitating communication between students and professors as well as students and students. This is where the real gap exists.
The problem is coming up with a system that either gets every student using one system (highly unlikely) or developing a system that can monitor multiple systems. Trillian is one example of this. Trillian enables one to monitor multiple IM clients from one interface. Very useful. Now, how about something that sends text messages and monitors accounts in multiple online social networking accounts. I know that I'm likely dreaming.
One possibility that the article discusses is a rather old approach but still around and being reinvented all the time is the portal. For those of us who remember the old portals, this sounds stupid. It's as difficult to get someone to a portal as it is to get them to a Web page. However, newer portals are incorporating a lot of neat features that just may draw users in. Not to mention that many universities have online spaces for each class that a student takes. If these spaces are utilized and students have to access them through the portal, now you have a space that people will visit.
Can't wait to see what happens with this in the next couple years.
They refer to results from a 2005 report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project indicating the teens use technologies like IM or text messenging to talk to friends and email to talk to "old people." Unfortunately, you can't generalize these results and say that teens don't use email. That's ridiculous. Of course they use email. What they don't do is use email to chat the way that many of us "old folks" where socialized into through the last 10 or so years.
However, I do agree that universities should start looking at other modes of communication to get important information to students. In reality, this doesn't mean the loads of departmental or schools emails advertising the latest speaker. Those I can do without (being 7,500 miles from campus). I think that this is most important when facilitating communication between students and professors as well as students and students. This is where the real gap exists.
The problem is coming up with a system that either gets every student using one system (highly unlikely) or developing a system that can monitor multiple systems. Trillian is one example of this. Trillian enables one to monitor multiple IM clients from one interface. Very useful. Now, how about something that sends text messages and monitors accounts in multiple online social networking accounts. I know that I'm likely dreaming.
One possibility that the article discusses is a rather old approach but still around and being reinvented all the time is the portal. For those of us who remember the old portals, this sounds stupid. It's as difficult to get someone to a portal as it is to get them to a Web page. However, newer portals are incorporating a lot of neat features that just may draw users in. Not to mention that many universities have online spaces for each class that a student takes. If these spaces are utilized and students have to access them through the portal, now you have a space that people will visit.
Can't wait to see what happens with this in the next couple years.
Saturday, October 7, 2006
WikiMapia - My Visit to the North
I had two purposes for this. The first is to demonstrate how WikiMapia works. The second is to show you where I took my last vacation.
WikiMapia is a cool, cool application. It uses a combination of Google Earth (with overlays) and wikis to geotag the world. This is not only a great learning tool, but a great toy as well :)
Click on the link above to see my entry for my last vacation. It's amazing the amount of detail that you can see. It's also nice to have these in lieu of the pictures I wasn't allowed to take on the way there (check it out, you'll see why).
WikiMapia is a cool, cool application. It uses a combination of Google Earth (with overlays) and wikis to geotag the world. This is not only a great learning tool, but a great toy as well :)
Click on the link above to see my entry for my last vacation. It's amazing the amount of detail that you can see. It's also nice to have these in lieu of the pictures I wasn't allowed to take on the way there (check it out, you'll see why).
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