Connected Learning

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Want to follow along at the ADDES conference?

Follow along here

Michael Wesch presented this at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. He says it was tons of fun to present. He decided to forgo the PowerPoint and instead worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation. This is the result.
more info: http://mediatedcultures.net

Anthropology & You Tube

Again from the New York TImes is the free giveaway of the Thomas L. Friedman audio book “The World is Flat”. a colleague lent this to me recently adn I’m only a short way through it, but it is an excellent and thought provoking book for educators and others.

Best part, the price is absolutely right!

FREE

Giveaway | Thomas L. Friedman

Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTimes.com

A really interesting article from the New York Times on the effects or otherwise of reading online.

Have a read an comment your thoughts.

VidBlaster is a relatively new product from Mike Versteeg, well known for his work on CastBlaster, a podcast production tool.

I tiraled the product with a simple 2 camera set-up using ambient light. Have a look and see for yourself!

Leave a comment about how you think you could use this product?

BTW, if you are using Firefox (as I would recommend!) you may need this plugin which allows you to run windows media inside of firefox.
http://port25.technet.com/pages/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-download.aspx

Today is iPhone launch day in Australia.
In the small office where I work at least 5 people took the day off to be one of the first to get one (admittedly I work with Geeks), but its influence and impact cannot be denied.

Simply put this may be one of the first truly mass market mobile internet devices which will be in the hands of many of our students after the school holidays and even more so in the months and years ahead. For the foreseeable future it will be the device to have. Well known futurist Mark Pesce said:

“Now we come to iPhone 3g. It is already known, from data gathered in the US and Europe, that iPhone’s ease-of-use for mobile internet is unparalleled. Nokia, Motorola and Microsoft have been caught flat-footed, and, even now - a full year later - have nothing new to show. Their mobile web browsing is as complicated, unfriendly and ugly as it was a year ago. This is a real pity, because it means, in the near-to-medium term, Apple has decisively won the battle of the mobile Internet. Everything now hinges upon iPhone, and its ever-expanding base of users.”

So our students, being the connected generation that they are, are going to LOVE this device as it offers them talk, text and My Space, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed etc in a live ongoing way.  They don’t have to wait to get online, they always will be!

Ok, so the logical conclusion for most schools will be to ban them!
However we can actually exploit them for student learning (same holds true for the iPod Touch). Consider a school with a nice WiFi network to which the students could login, a Learning Management System (LMS) which was optimised for a mobile browser, which included high quality audio and video which enhanced the learning, Student produced video based news and updates etc. Sharing would become ubiquious and a matter of course rather than the exception. It would offer potentially a safe closed environment for students which they may choose to use as it would preserve their precious paid data (this is very relevant in .au where the Telco’s have rediculous data limits, those of you in the US don’t know how good you have it!)
The key would be in providing the networking (people not bits) applications that allow students to stay in touch and exploit their social networking abilities for increased learning outcomes.

Living online and being socially aware is the new world and students need to become good at it, that’s not to say that they aren’t already, but they need to learn (from us) how to manage it, focus and exploit to their advantage.

The iPhone is the thin edge of the wedge in education and the Australian landscape in general. This device (and all the copies that follow) will produce an always connected population who accept that the internet is everywhere they are.

We need to prepare NOW!

Thanks to another blogger (rodneyolsen.net) I came across this special offer:

This is great offer in July - A initiative has been developed by our service with positively support of partners, friends and member to make a better Free Software Download Service (thanks to Michael @michaelaulia.com and his friend for this suggestion)

Now the first three Famous Softwares will be publish in this week is:

• Microsoft® Windows Vista Ultimate (UPGRADE with SP1)
• Adobe Photoshop CS3 (including optional plug-ins, sample files, textures, web swatches and stock photography)
• VMware Workstation 6 for Windows

o how to win ? Very simple, all you have to do look like below:

For website owners, bloggers:

1. Write an article about this offer ( or our services ) on your site, be sure to link to us from this article.
2. Subscribe to my website for updates via email.
3. Stumble this article with your comment.

For other:

1. Write at least five quality reviews ( or comments ) for five distinct softwares listed in our website ( be sure to write quatilty review, we will check it after you submit )
2. Subscribe to my website for updates via email.
3. Stumble this article with your comment.

After you have finished please send an email to admin@bastillwork.netThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it from the same email you used to subscribe to our RSS feed. In this email please includes:

1. State where your post about us on your site is.
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We will send the license to your email after 48h.

With the recent release of the Firefox version 3 browser (which I particularly like btw) comes an opportunity to review some new and not so new add ins.

Currently my favourite ones are:

• PicLens: this great plugin transforms your browser when you are visiting Flickr, Youtube etc into a great full screen experience.
• IE Tab: A simple answer to those poorly written pages which need IE to run. A simple button on the bottom of the page and you are running in IE!
• QuickProxy: Do you have to turn your proxy on and off between work and other environments? This adds a small button to the bottom of the browser which quickly and simply allows you to turn your proxy settings on or off.
• ScribeFire: An outstanding blogging tool which takes over the bottom half of your browser, particularly ahndy when you are blogging about a web page.
• FireShot: allows you to take, edit and export screen grabs of the browser

These are currently my top picks. I run quite a few others, but these are the ones which make my experience better and easier.

What are yours?

This video is quite old now but a great introduction into why the iTunes selling TV shows in Australia is really such a big deal.

Watch again and enjoy