tech-ed collisions

iTunes U

iTunes U has been around for some time now offering its services to universities. It is great to see a number of iTunes U resources being made available to the public. Here are a few examples indicating in a small way the breadth of stuff that is available:

  • MIT - OpenCourseWare and more
  • Broome Community College - physical therapist assistant program
  • University of South Florida - resources for k-12 students and teachers, PD for educators, and much more
There are many, many more resources. If you are an iTunes user, check it out on the iTunes Store. Cheers, Jerry.

technorati tags:

Filed under  //   Apple  

Another call by teachers to shut social networking sites down

It seems these types of calls are still appearing quite regularly. This BBC article reports on a Professional Association of Teachers conference in the UK. There is a desire here not just to ban sites such as YouTube in schools, but to shut them down. Locally we have seen a number of States banning sites such as YouTube etc from use within schools for a number of reasons. The problem in this case is cyber-bullying, both of students and teachers. In response to the problem, the demand seems to be to shut all such sites down, at least in the short term. It is not clear whether a (long term) solution was discussed. Clearly the problem is not the sites themselves so shutting them down isn't going to stop bullying from happening in the broader context. A spokesperson from the Beatbullying charity goes on to say:

""Calls for social networking sites like YouTube to be closed because of cyberbullying are as intelligent as calls for schools to be closed because of bullying. ...Cyberbullying is flourishing for two reasons. First, society is not adequately preventing bullying behaviour... ...And secondly, it seems to be easier to type something hateful to a school friend rather than say it to their face..." "
Sadly, history and society is riddled with examples of individuals/groups using technologies to hurt others. Banning those technologies is a response but doesn't address the cause of the problems though. This is a really difficult issue - we can see so many positive examples from appropriate (there's a value laden term) use of social networking sites but put yourself in the victims (students, teachers, families etc) perspective and try to see how they feel too. Cheers, Jerry.

technorati tags: , ,

Filed under  //   Web 2.0  

on $100/$150 laptops

Like many others I have been watching with interest the development of the $100 laptop. At work we were even fortunate enough to play with one for a couple of days. The olpc is a great initiative with a fantastic vision and it is interesting to see that there are now companies seemingly building on that to make very affordable laptops for broader markets. Here's one with a claim to costing about US$150. The Medison Celebrity has a 1.5GHz Intel Celeron cpu with 256MB of memory running the Fedora operating system. As a Linux home user with children wanting computers for personal and educational use this sounds great but.... here's the problem for me. At home, in the past, we have had a PC and laptop running Linux. We now have a PC running Windows XP and Open Office. Unfortunately at the school our kids attend they use Windows and Microsoft Office. Consequently, the kids just aren't interested in Linux/Open Office. It's Microsoft or nothing with them. They do use Open Office for some of their homework but don't like the differences and also report back some problems with compatibility at school. It looks like I am stuck with having to find more expensive solutions that can support bigger footprint operating systems and applications until the school starts considering Linux. Cheers, Jerry.

Filed under  //   gadgets  
Posted July 30, 2007

on locr: geo-tagging photos

Visiting one of our service providers this morning gave me a chance to play with a photo geo-tagging service. locr provides a service that uses an internal or external GPS receiver to tag your photos with GPS coordinates which you can then upload to their website to share with the rest of the world. It certainly makes geo-tagging your photos very easy - it is all done automatically rather than running a script later which tags your photos by comparing timestamps on them with timestamps in a GPS receiver. I am still coming to grips with a new phone (its turning into a love/hate affair) so the quality of the photos taken here isn't good. locr runs a program on the phone that you use to take photos with. As I didn't really delve too deep into instructions the photos aren't that well focussed - however, in my hurry, I wasn't sure whether there was a way to focus the camera using locr or not. The phone takes a few minutes to pick up the GPS positioning so you really need to anticipate when you are going to take that first photo (something not easily achieved in many situations). Anyway, once the photos were taken, they could be immediately uploaded to the web which was great. You can see these photos here. locr has a javascript 'badge' that you can embed in your site/blog etc but it is misbehaving with our blog software at the moment and I haven't had time for a closer look. Cheers, Jerry.

technorati tags: ,

Filed under  //   Web 2.0  
Posted July 20, 2007

on Podmo

Here's a great local innovation (I like those). Podmo provides 'free community networking for mobile phones'. Its a great service which provides access to content and other services such as messaging at no cost to users. All you need to setup a 'podmo free zone' is a server with Bluetooth radio capability that has access to the Internet (I set mine up on a laptop). The Podmo Server can be downloaded for free from the website. Many mobile phones now support Bluetooth so connecting your phone to your Bluetooth network is pretty easy to do (most of the time). Podmo supports an increasing number of mobile phones and the list on their website is pretty comprehensive. Unfortunately for me, my phone just happens to be an LG phone for which there is no support. I understand there may be some differences in their Bluetooth implementation (so much for interoperability). However, with a bit of begging, I managed to borrow a Nokia N73 for a short time to test this out. To run Podmo on your phone you need to download the podmo player. This turned out to be very easy now that I had a supported phone. Once that was done, registration was simple and away I went. There were a number of different types of downloads to have a look at, some news/information services and a messaging service. What Podmo really needs is more content and services - I'd like to see a web browser in there so that I can get out to the web without incurring charges from the mobile phone carrier. Their website provides a facility to upload content as well if you want to contribute. To me there seems to be enormous potential for education and training with services such as Podmo. It is very simple to setup a Podmo network anywhere. This could be in an education environment, work setting or any number of locations where it would be useful to establish some sort of connectivity. Since most mobile phones support Bluetooth, and the number of phones supported is pretty good and should only get better, the cost of providing network devices could be extremely cheap (get users to use their own phones). Using the Podmo network the connectivity, via Bluetooth, is free which removes a substantial barrier for using mobiles. What is needed is some good educational or training content. There are some obvious limitations such as the range of Bluetooth and perhaps, the number of devices that you can connect, depending on your bluetooth radio/server. Given the vast number of mobile phone models there will always be the possibility that some users may not be able to connect as well but the popular ones seem to be covered. Despite these limitations, I think that this sort of networking is really worth further investigation. Cheers, Jerry.

technorati tags:

Filed under  //   gadgets  
Posted July 10, 2007

on blogging (part 2)

Thanks to Tim for this. I like Tim's approach to blogging - his blog is work related but not on a work blog which provides a nice level of independence and freedom to discuss, well anything really. Also, separating the time to blog from work allows inspiration to write about something whenever that takes place, not just during 'traditional' work hours (when and where we work could be the topic of many other posts I guess). Speaking of timestamping, this blog seems to be timestamped by default. It was interesting to go back and have a look at what times of day I blog and, while unintentional (I don't reserve a time to do this) there are some very definite patterns there. I do think though that the ideas for most posts happened outside these times. Cheers, Jerry.

Filed under  //   Web 2.0   blogging  
Posted July 10, 2007

is Google my ePortfolio?

ePortfolios have been around for a long time now and the range and diversity of ePortfolio implementations is, well, staggering. There are a lot of commercial software offerings and most eLearning platforms seem to have a portfolio component. Large numbers of schools, training organisations and higher education organisations have developed their own and some of the larger ones have multiple eportfolio implementations. Some of these are great, particularly while you are engaged with that institution. Some allow you access to your/their portfolio (of you) for a long time after you leave, although who actually owns 'your' portfolio could be problematic. It could be, and is often, argued that many of these 'formal' eportfolios do not meet all the requirements of their user base. Take a look at the rich information hundreds of thousands of Internet users are pouring into social networking services daily. Many Internet users would be quite comfortable with the notion that their myspace presence or similar service serves them well as their ePortfolio. Blogs make excellent (components of) eportfolios. Linked to your FLickr account, Facebook and dozens of other Web 2.0 services, you can create a very compelling Eportfolio of yourself. Which of these services should you or could you use? You might be able to find out information about me through Facebook, pageflakes, Windows Live spaces, several personal blogs, flickr, our company blog, Zoominfo, maybe even a myspace account, my EuroPass resume, and any one of dozens of Web 2.0 services I have reviewed over the last 12 months or so. None of these presences have been populated by me to serve as an ePortfolio but it is entirely reasonable that they could have. Some services, such as ZoomInfo aren't even maintained by me and are at best, very incomplete, at worst, wildly inaccurate. If I do a 'vanity' search on Google, I can find references to me on other services too, along with papers, presentations that I have delivered at conferences and all sorts of other 'portfolio' related information. Fortunately (?) for me, I have a relatively uncommon name. However, what if my name were 'John Smith', a reasonably common Western name. Trying to sift through Internet content that is 'me' would be a nightmare - even coupled with location and time based information it could still be very difficult. Another problem for me is that I only seem to have existed for a few years - at least on the Internet. For those of us young enough to have grown up in the Internet era this may not be so much of a problem but many of us have done some pretty interesting stuff, that would be valuable for potential employers to know about, a long time before we started publishing it on the Web. I guess that is just another illustration of the radical change we are undergoing as a result of the Web - some of us existed prior to this change as well as existing during it. For a portfolio service to be valuable to me, I need to be able to store, or refer/link to all sorts of content that may reside locally or on a wide variety of services. I need to be confident that the content will be available and accessible for a long period of time. I would like to present this content, or parts of it, in any number of formats/layouts to different audiences at different periods of time. It is about me so I would like to have some naive notion that I have a semblance of control over what it contains, how it looks, who can see different parts of it and when. Importantly, I would also like to refer to authenticated information about my achievements from time to time. An example would be proof that I completed a degree at a specific University. Of course, this is just one component of an eportfolio. In addition to providing evidence, artefacts, etc, I may also like to use it as a learning tool which means I would like a range of other services to be aggregated, or available at a single place of my convenience using whatever device I feel like at whatever time. I may like to reflect on what I am learning and other experiences or use my portfolio for planning too. This brings to mind a number of tools that I am using at the moment with Google's increasingly large range of services. So where does this leave me. To date I have a number of great services that I would like to incorporate into my ePortfolio space but I would also love to be able to link in authenticated, validated content from education/training organisations as proof of some of my achievements. Cheers.

technorati tags:

Filed under  //   Google   eportfolio  
Posted June 8, 2007

on blogging

Technology plays a large part in the work I do and while I have made a commitment to try and blog about technology and its application relation to our work it is interesting to see just how difficult this can be at times. There are some quite natural constraints for work blogging which in essence, reduces the number of things that I might like to blog about considerably. Then there are time constraints - I am putting this post together while eating lunch. Sometimes it seems that I have been so occupied in day to day operational tasks that there is just nothing new to comment on. During the first part of my lunch, I came across this interesting article on twopointouch. It provides some really interesting perspectives on blogging. There are some great reasons why people do blog, a pile of barriers/reasons why they don't, some discussion on microblogging (I've joined the Twitter crowd and can see the attraction but haven't 'drank the cool-aid' yet). More interesting to me is the notion of passive blogging - I think I have a lot to say but just don't have the time etc to devote to blogging it. I am definitely going to follow this up. Cheers.

Filed under  //   blogging  
Posted June 5, 2007

the Net at work

Just heard from a colleague about an unfortunate? release of a new cookbook. It seems a very well known chef who is also an international television personality has just written another book and unfortunately it seems a Word version has escaped from the publisher so it is now flying around the Internet uncontrollably. If this is all true and the leak was accidental, I wonder what happened to the poor person who was responsible. Here's a dilemma for the author - what should he do? He is extremely well known and well liked and very, very successful (ie well off). Here's a suggestion - the book's out now so potentially hundreds of thousands of Net (email) users have it already or soon will. How about making it an 'open source' (excuse the pun) cookbook. Make it Creative Commons or something similar. No doubt many, many people will purchase the high quality print version but why not have a free one too? Give it to the community although as I understand it, the cook in question is already one of the most generous and does an awful lot for people in need already. The Internet is a fantastic thing but this does serve as an illustration of how seemingly naive actions can very quickly get out of control. If this all did happen a number of people will probably have been hurt in some way because of this unfortunate event. Following up on this story - it appears it was a hoax (and also not so new) but it is still makes an interesting hypothetical. What could you or would you have done in if you found yourself in a similar situation - try and recover some of what may have been lost, turn it round and exploit the marketing potential of it through the web's viral marketing reach etc. Cheers, and good cooking.

Filed under  //   Web 2.0   rant  
Posted May 25, 2007

Congratulations and well done Leonard

A little belated but happy birthday to the mobile learning blog and well done Leonard on the success you are having with this blog. Cheers, Jerry.

Filed under  //   general  
Posted May 25, 2007