Social Software - Social Learning

Notes from the Keynote presentations by John Erpenbeck, Helen Barrett and Lee Bryant at the Social Skills - Social Software conference at Salzburg.

Continue Reading 1 comment May 26th, 2006

Change Management infokit

Change is endemic in the education sector. The pressures for change come from all sides: globalisation, government initiatives, doing more with less, improving the quality of student learning and the learning experience, and the pace of change is ever increasing. Living with change and managing change is an essential skill for all.
Change is also difficult. There are many different types of change and different approaches to managing change. It is a topic subject to more than its fair share of management fads, quick fixes and guaranteed win approaches. Finding an approach that suits you and your situation goes to the heart of being an effective and professional manager in the education sector.

The latest infoKit on Change Management aims to help you in this challenge.  This new resource, free to the education sector, is now available from the JISC infoNet website at http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/change-management

Add comment May 22nd, 2006

Whose Space?

This is an excellent article by Ben Werdmuller talking about the real reasons behind some social networking sites such as MySpace, Yahoo Groups etc

Picked up by:

Stephen Downes

George Siemens

Add comment May 18th, 2006

Educational Technology is NOT Neutral

Abstract and slides for a presentation entitled ‘Educational Technology is NOT Neutral - Chancen und Risiken von ePortfolio Design’.

Continue Reading 1 comment May 18th, 2006

Open Source Maps

A new initiative in the UK is creating maps that are free for anyone to use for any purpose

Continue Reading Add comment May 18th, 2006

Sounds of the Bazaar 2

Sounds of the Bazaar 2

This week Graham Attwell spends time providing further reflections on ePortfolios and Personal Learning Environments. Due to the feedback received after last weeks Sounds of the Bazaar, he has plenty to talk about!

This week also sees the introduction of two new regular features:

Blogspot and Website of the week.

There is also the first in a series of interviews. This week Graham interviews Georg Spottl.

If you want to listen to the whole programme but can’t wait to hear a particular segment, here are the start times for each section:

1. Further reflections on the development of ePortfolios and PLE’s [1:20 mins]
2. Website of the week [7:04 mins]
3. Interview [8:30 mins]
4. Blogspot [15:40 mins]
5. Wrap up [17:03 mins]

For those only wanting certain sections of the broadcast the individual segments are available below.
Credits:
Script, voice and production: Graham Attwell
Technorati Tags: Open source, podcasts

 Sounds of the Bazaar No. 2 [17:43m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (236)
 Welcome [0:50m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (190)
 Blogspot [0:58m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (179)
 Website of the week [1:21m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (186)
 Graham talking about PLE\'s and ePortfolios [5:45m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (176)
 Graham interviewing Georg Spottl [7:17m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (214)
 Closing statement [0:40m]: | Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (174)

1 comment May 11th, 2006

First Bazaar Show-me Day in Cologne, May 15th 2006

The team at the University of Cologne proudly presents the 1st BAZAAR Show-me day. Matthias Kunkel and Carsten Kozianka will provide hands-on experience in creating, exchanging and re-using e-learning materials with Open Source software and tools.

To ensure direct hands-on experience every participant will be equipped with his own computer in one of our local university pools (15 workstations). Due to a great demand for participation from local and regional teachers the event is already fully booked.

Topics:

• From a text file to an e-learning module: Firstly, we are going to demonstrate how to turn a simple text file into an multimedia-enhanced e-learning module – using the ILIAS OS LMS, OpenOffice and a small tool called iLEX. Then we will show how to keep your content from being stuck in a particular system and re-use it in other contexts. This will include the transfer of an ILIAS module to another ILIAS installation, LMS or CMS.
• Using Open Content for education: The increase of content published under so-called “Copyleft” licenses opens up new vistas for education but also causes concern about legal implications. We will explain step-by-step how you can safely copy, modify and redistribute Open Content in combination with your own learning material.

• Creating and formatting WIKI pages: If a WIKI can be integrated into the daily routines of an educational institution – which means that employees are actually making contributions to it – it becomes a powerful tool for aggregating knowledge from staff. To use this unique power of collaborative writing one has to be familiar with the WIKI syntax that we will give an introduction to.

Add comment May 9th, 2006

Web 2.0 awards

The SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 Awards

For me, this list highlights just how many Web 2.0 apps there are. The ones mentioned here are only the tip of the iceberg.

Add comment May 8th, 2006

Coming of Age - an introduction to the new world wide web

From Josie Fraser’s Weblog:

“Terry Freedman has edited a book about the current state of play in education. Things have changed rapidly with the wild-fire spread of the current generation of social software, and the equally speedy ways in which web 2.0 has been seized upon within education to support engaging, exciting and inspiring learning.

After much hard work, Terry has now released the final, freely available version:

Download Coming_of_age_v1-2.pdf

(2MB PDF)

Please do feel free to pass it on to anyone who might be interested in an overview in recent web developments. There’s some great stuff in there - 20 (!!!) chapters on all kinds of web 2.0 goodness, with contributions from Miles Berry, John Bidder, Mechelle De Craene, John Evans, Peter Ford, Terry Freedman (Ed), Steve Lee, Ewan McIntosh, Alan November, Chris Smith, Dai Thomas, David Warlick, and Shawn Wheeler, And if that list of international edu-luminaries still isn’t enough to tempt you into a 2 meg download, why not take a peek at Peter Ford’s index & biog post.”

Technorati Tags: edublogs, education and training research, Open content, Open source

1 comment May 8th, 2006

Complexity, Operating Systems and Open Source

John Naughton - my favourite newspaper IT pundit, has written an article about the problems Microsoft has hit in introducing a new operating system.

“The really interesting comparison,” he says…

…is with Linux, a product of comparable complexity developed by an independent, dispersed community of programmers who communicate mainly over the net. How come they can outperform a stupendously rich company that can afford to employ very smart people and give them all the resources they need?

Here’s a possible answer: complexity. Modern operating systems are staggeringly complicated. In terms of the number of their components, and the richness of the interactions between them, they are far more complex than an Airbus or a jumbo jet.

Microsoft’s problems with Windows may be an indicator that operating systems are getting beyond the capacity of any single organisation to handle them. Whatever other charges might be levelled against Microsoft, technical incompetence isn’t one. If the folks at Redmond can’t do it, maybe it just can’t be done.

Therein may lie the real significance of Open Source. In a perceptive book published in 2004, the social scientist, Steve Weber argued that it’s not Linux per se but the collaborative process by which the software was created that is the real innovation. In those terms, Linux is probably the first truly networked enterprise in history.

Weber likened Open Source production to an earlier process which had a revolutionary impact - Toyota’s production system - which in time transformed the way cars are made everywhere. The Toyota ’system’, in that sense, was not a car, and it was not uniquely Japanese. Similarly, Open Source is not a piece of software, and it is not unique to a group of hackers. It’s a way of building complex things. Microsoft’s struggles with Vista suggest it may be the only way to do operating systems in future.

A problem too jumbo-sized for Bill Gates to solve? John Naughon, Sunday May 7, 2006. The Observer

Technorati Tags: Open source, OSS

Add comment May 8th, 2006