tech-ed collisions

Review 2.0?

My last post for the year in this blog and I'm going to keep it very brief. In the world of 2.0, I only have one comment this year and that's for this:

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What were they thinking? Looking back though I can't really think of too much that was really all that memorable. Probably for me Natal stood out above anything that I have come across. I like the way that a number of mobile platforms are going - it's good to see some competition for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Cheers, and all the best for the Christmas break (obviously using that term with a degree of hesitation now).

Filed under  //   general  

(online) learning spaces

This week I started Stephen Downes and George Siemen's 'Connectivism and Connected Knowledge CCK09' course. What I found particularly exciting about it (apart from the opportunity to learn something that will hopefully turn out to be really interesting for me and also to interact with many other people via the Web) is their approach to the learning space for the course. While there is a Moodle environment in place there is an expectation that participants in the course will use their own personal learning environments (PLE's) and the course conveners are reaching out to those environments rather than impose their own upon the participants. I find this really refreshing. Already the number of blog posts, tweets etc that are proliferating is staggering. I guess this is also a great way for them to test their theories in some way on connectivism (although I don't profess to really understand what it all means). To date I have started my own blog quite separate from other online presences that I have as I particularly don't wish to muddy this blog with my naive reflections on connectivism and it will be interesting to see how I go learning in a potentially quite public (at least to those who follow the course tags closely) way. In discussions that I have had this week with education systems there is an increasing desire to move to more user-centric than system-centric desgin for learning spaces but there still seems to be some very stringent conditions upon these environments. We still seem to be a long way off truly 'personal' PLEs so it is great to participate in something like CCK09 to see what can be achieved.

Filed under  //   general  

We need more pidgeons

A great little story on Reuters about a pidgeon transferring data quicker than the country's leading telecommunications provider in South Africa. I think it would be interesting to do some similar comparisons in parts of our own country at the moment. How good is your broadband connection?

Filed under  //   Internet   general  

on career development

This week I was fortunate enough to attend the first two days of the National Career Conference run by the Career Development Association of Australia. The conference was really useful for me and gave me some great insights into the fantastic work careers counselors do, along with information on a number of programs the Government is funding. This was the first such conference I have attended which is a shame really as it would have been quite interesting to draw comparisons with earlier conferences. There were two quite overwhelming impressions that I took away from my time at the conference. The first and most significant is the impact of the Global Financial Crisis. This was a recurring topic among many of the speakers and quite worrying for a number of the delegates that I spoke to. We are heading into the some of the more difficult economic times in living memory for many of us and those who work in the career development industry are going to play a very important role. As difficult economic times really start to hit hard, many workers will face difficult transitions and harsh times. New entrants into the workforce will also find it very difficult as employment rates rise and the jobs just aren't there. How different this is from just a year ago when we were full of optimism, the mining boom was just going from strength to strength etc and the largest problem seemed to be skills shortages. About a year ago we were seeing videos on Youtube and presentations on Slideshare providing all sorts of wonderful statistics on the changes that technology is bringing about (global mobile phone adoption, increase in use of Internet technologies, amazing social networking statistics, living online, the impact of the Web on our lives and changes in attitudes (eg the rising percentage of marriages where partners met online), and perhaps one of the more interesting, many of the jobs that students will get when they enter the workforce haven't been invented yet). About that last one - now we are looking at something like the jobs just might not exist! So how do we prepare for such an uncertain future? The rate of change is still going to apply - there will be new types of jobs as not much seems to be able to stop the rapid march of new and emerging technologies and the impact that they have on society but we are still facing very uncertain economic times. Difficult questions indeed and it would be interesting to be at the rest of the conference to see how it progresses. The second impression that I took away from the conference was the apparent lack of engagement with technology in this area. The key theme for the conference was 'Get Smart: Career Development value adds for people and business'. Now of course we don't need to have or use high technology to be smart but there are many ways in which it can help. I would think that preparing people for a career in the 21st Century well would almost have to involve technology at some level. While there was some technology featured on the stands in the exhibition area I don't think it really compared to what you see in other education related conferences these days. Whenever I have been fortunate enough to attend an event in the VET or Higher Ed sector there has also been an online 'buzz' about the event with many users of Twitter or bloggers sharing their insights online as it happens and getting together online and consequently offline. I wasn't able to tap into any of this activity at the event and I don't think it was there. So for me the question is whether there is opportunity to add value in the area of career development with technology or whether it doesn't really need it or whether I just missed it? In summary must say that there are some great technology resources in the careers area such as Myfuture and it wasn't possible for me to attend all workshops (parallel streams). Perhaps it was just the lack of laptops and netbooks in people's hands/laps between and in sessions that gave me this impression.

Filed under  //   general  

on predictions

No predictions from me this year or lists of favourites from the year that was. However, TechCrunch just posted a report on this video from 1981 predicting news reporting on the Internet: Cheers, Jerry

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the week that was

so... not much to post about today but here's a few reflections. My iPod Touch is getting better all the time - the release of the iPhone has resulted in a steady stream of new apps that can be installed on the iPod too and with its networking capability its just getting better and better. I like the Facebook app and have tried a couple of Twitter clients (Twittelator and Twitterific, both of which have some annoying features but Twittelator's annoyances are far less intrusive). I went corporate and setup access to the company email which was extremely simple to do and works great - I should have done that ages ago. The remote control app is also another great little program if you use Macs. Browsing through the list of available applications I found a Wordpress client which I immediately installed only to find out later that this blog uses an older version of Wordpress which isn't compatible with it (bummer!). The most impressive app that I have seen so far though is Shazam, which listens to a few seconds of a song and guesses the title and artist and is incredibly accurate. Pity it only works on the iPhone as the iPod just doesn't have the obvious essential hardware! I attended one of those free lunch time seminars the other day where you get an opportunity to see (hopefully) a really interesting presentation and for the privilege, then have to listen to a sales pitch on the company's products. The presentation was on innovation and some recent research into the adoption and impact of new technologies. There were plenty of interesting stats thrown in and on the whole, I walked away with the impression that education, while not leading the way in its adoption and adaptation of new technologies, isn't a complete laggard either. The organisations and industries that are early adopters though are just streaking away from the rest of the field. There was some interesting discussion on the social impact of technologies like the Web though. Perhaps the one that had the biggest impact from the audience was when the speaker mentioned that around two years ago, you probably wouldn't mention (in polite circles) that you used online dating services yet last year, one in eight couples who got married in the US met online. This is a radical shift in the mainstream acceptance of the Web in the way that we socialise and it is incredibly important for organisations to understand what is happening here. From recollection, about 15% of organisations use social networking tools as an important component of their business models, ie using them to drive business, not simply for their employees to communicate. On social networking every now and then I post to Twitter mainly just to try to get a deeper insight into what it's all about and how to get benefits from it. I find that I generally post something if I am doing something a little different or looking at a technology. It seems a good way of connecting randomly with others who might be looking at the same technology. For example, through Twitter I have been able to find out some really interesting stuff about virtual worlds, which we are interested in here at work. Once in a while though, I have posted a more personal comment (ie feeling good, annoyed etc) and what seems to be the case is that these posts attract much more attention than anything else. I am guessing this all comes back to the use of the Web as a social tool. The implications of this are very important in the design of systems that we develop and our use of social networking tools in teaching and learning environments. I'd like to explore this a lot more deeply but am running out of time. Cheers, Jerry

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Filed under  //   Apple   general  

followup on 20% time

A while ago I blogged about companies providing time to their employees to innovate. Google do it, Atlassian are trialling it and being public about it. Here are some updates from the Atlassian blog on the trial so far. Cheers.

Filed under  //   Google   general  
Posted July 9, 2008

User generated content (UGC) analysis

An interesting post on Erik Duval's blog on the quantitative analysis of user-generated content on the Web. The post refers to a presentation given by Erik and Zavier Ochia at the First International Workshop on Understanding Web Evolution (WebEvolve2008). The research builds on the notion that while consumption of user-generated content (UGC) might seem to be well understood, not enough research has been done on the production of UGC. Having read the paper I am now keen to understand the notion of 'fat tails' and 'fat bellies' and do some analysis of our own sites in order to gain an insight into the contributors of UGC in them. An important warning from the paper for me is to determine whether we have any sites that have a few 'very important' users that are really contributing to the overall success of the sites and how we are looking after them.

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Filed under  //   general  

Impressions from BETT

BETTclaims to be the largest education technology trade show there is and after having the good fortune to attend part of it, I believe them (it is also the only education technology trade show that I have ever seen though). My first impression of BETT actually started a couple of train stops prior to it where the platform was overflowing with people - noticeably different from the relatively empty platforms prior to it. These were all educators of some sort on their way to the show. My second impression was the sheer size of the show, the number of vendors and solutions was staggering. I remember thinking 'where is all this stuff being used?' There were technology based solutions for just about any subject I could think of. Walking around the pavilions, all the usual suspects (large vendors) were there centre stage with huge stands, impressive displays and interesting demonstrations. Surrounding them seemed to be the mainstream LMS vendors. As you moved outwards towards the perimeter of the halls you started to find the really interesting stuff from smaller companies and communities of various types. The first row of vendors that I happened to walk down was all about Internet safety, each with 'the best' filtering solution available. The only vendor that impressed me here was Securus, who understand filtering alone is quite inadequate and are taking a more holistic approach to the problem of Internet safety. It was nice to see them working hand in hand with 'the Red Balloon Learner Centre Group', a charity developing safe learner centres for children who have been bullied. As I said earlier, just about every subject I could think of had some sort of technology enhanced learning solution on exhibition. Hardware vendors were out in force as well as software ones. Electronic whiteboard solutions seemed to be everywhere and there were gadgets galore. There was a huge area set aside for special education needs which you could have got lost in for a day alone. It was interesting to see a number of online communities and social networks establishing some sort of presence in the outer wings. Communities of users (of software solutions etc) springing up and helping each other, sharing content etc. Speaking of content, there were two standouts for me. One was the BBC and the other was teachers.tv. Big budgets do help. The other content area that I thought would have been interesting was student.tv however the people/company on the stand where this was shown were more interested in promoting their services. Of interest to me also was the presence of open source vendors/solutions/communities. I have to say that I had to look pretty hard to find them. Moodle had a local provider and apparently Joomla had some sort of presence there too. Openforum Europe were also there and attracting quite an amount of interest (the presence of a few XO laptops no doubt had some attraction). Talking to them, they were very pleased with the amount of interest being shown this year - it seems to have been increasing steadily each year they have been there. There may well have been many more open source stands around but it was a very big place to get through. My last impression really was about the (for me) disconnect between all of this technology and solutions and the adoption of them. If your only exposure to education was via this trade show, you would think that education was one of the most IT savvy industries around with an exceptionally high adoption rate. What a wonderful impression (for a technologist at least)! A couple of pics here.

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Filed under  //   general  

My best and worse picks for 2007

So this is just a personal view of some of the technologies that have been hits and misses for me during 2007. Starting off with the worst, a HP Pavilion laptop running Vista I bought for home. What a worthless piece of (well..) junk! It had an incorrectly installed operating system which required calls to an overseas call centre to get unlock codes etc. When it finally started up it crashed regularly on out of the box Microsoft and HP applications (bluescreens of death are back). I tried installing third party apps such as iTunes and got more bluescreens. In the end I called the distributor who very kindly replaced the laptop. However, the replacement didn't stop the bluescreens from appearing quite regularly. To top it off, the wireless network works spasmodically at most. I get this regular message along the lines of 'local access only' so there is no Internet access. Browsing the Web for solutions, it didn't take long to find out that I am far from alone with this problem for HP Pavilion/Vista laptops with no apparent solution in site. This was a very disappointing purchase! Moving on to better things, Facebook has to rate a mention given its phenomenal success. I must say though that vampire bites, attacks from werewolves etc has long since lost its novelty for me. Added to that, the Beacon fiasco and Facebook has lost a lot of points with me. It was great but... On to the runner-up - the Nokia N95 almost took out my 'Best for 2007'. It does everything I want in a phone and finally there is a phone with a very good camera (with some quite stunning video capability). The list of features is really impressive on this phone. Its only bad point really is the battery life. The phone is constantly in need of recharging. So, the best for 2007 for me was the iPod Touch. You just have to play with one of these to really appreciate them. It stores all my music, photos and videos with plenty of space to spare (at the moment). The user interface is incredible. Video podcasts are finally worth watching on a portable device so I can at last watch them at a time and place of my convenience and enjoy the experience. Its great to have Web (wifi) too. The only disappointment for me has been the Youtube integration. In my experience it takes forever to load a Youtube video - to the point where it is not worth the effort/wait. Despite this, the iPod Touch was a standout winner for me. In summary, given my disappointing experience with the HP/Vista laptop and totally opposite experience with the iPod Touch, I just want to switch to Mac this year. Cheers.

Filed under  //   general