Get into a huddle to collaborate

Huddle is growing as an application for document sharing and group work, paticularly given that is free for charities and relatively low cost for others. It's a simple enough tool and very easy to use. Useful for group projects and collaboration. It links to facebook and blogs and it will be interesting to see how it compares with the various google and yahoo tools that are out there but riddled with ads! Speaking of which, if you are using Firefox, remember that you can clear the commercial clutter on your browser by installing and activating Adblock or Adblock Plus.

Online Engineering Lectures from India

The Indian Institute of Technology and Indian Institute of Science have released over 1,650 lectures on YouTube and made them freely available to anyone studying a range of technical and engineering related topics. You can access them here. Be prepared for a couple of minutes theme tunes and titles in some cases. The project arises from the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning and its main website is here.

Microsoft demos 'touch Windows'

The BBC website reports on the next Windows OS, with a multi-touch interface instead of a mouse. With beta testing starting later this year, and a 2009 release scheduled, Windows 7 will have to do better than Vista.

Turnitin and International Students

At the 2nd meeting on Institutional Policies and Procedures for Dealing with Plagiarism at Oxford Brookes University last week, I listened with interest to Dr. Niall Hayes of Lancaster University. Niall is involved in a Student Diversity and Academic Writing project, funded through HEFCE. He challenged the notion that using a Plagiarism Detection Service (PDS), such as Turnitin, in a pro-active screening approach, is fair to all students.

His argument is that students patch write (i.e. pick and copy from different sources) when they are trying to come to terms with a new language, when they are new to a discipline, when they may be inexperienced in new forms of assessment or are uncertain about expectations. Reusing sample language structures and common phrases is natural to international students and, where feedback is constructive, supports their learning of the appropriate academic practices. But these are exactly the practices highlighted by a PDS and labelled as plagiarism.

Here at NUI Galway, we have been piloting Turnitin for almost 2 years and are starting to develop good practice guides for its use. Following Niall's presentation, challenging the neutrality assumption, I'm starting to think about a more formative use, where the Turnitin "originality" reports could be used to guide the students, rather than make plagiarists out of them.

RSA Vision

I'm pleased to see that the RSA (of which I am a fellow) is now providing video versions of many of their fascinating lecture series. They have already been podcasting for some time, but their new website, social innovation network and video series all look really promising.

One of the videos is Jonathan Zittrain (Chair in Internet Governance and Regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute.) who spoke on the themes of his recent book "The Future of the Internet and how to avoid it."

New Media Consortium

NUI Galway is now a member of the New Media Consortium, the first in Ireland and one of only a few in Europe. We look forward to participating in events and in fully utilising the NMC Campus in Second Life. The contact point locally is CELT, for anyone who wants further information. Some basic info from the NMC website:

"The New Media Consortium (NMC) is an international 501(c)3 not-for-profit consortium of over 260 learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies.The consortium serves as a catalyst for the development of new applications of technology to support learning and creative expression, and sponsors programs and activities designed to stimulate innovation, encourage collaboration, and recognize excellence among its member institutions. "

Second Life Campus
Over the past two and one-half years, the NMC Campus project has grown to be the largest educational project in any virtual world, one that involves hundreds of institutions and over 7,500 educators and students working and learning in the virtual world of Second Life.

Yves Behar - designer of the $100 laptop

Another great TED talk! Yves Behar, who designed the XO laptop, talks about how he hates the Num Lock key, and demonstrates some of his beautiful, creative designs, including the $100 laptop.



View the video and make a comment on TED.com.

Online Film Festival winner

Congratulations to Brian Deane from NUI Galway's Huston School of Film and Digital Media who has just won an award at Cannes, presented by Spike Lee. Brian's short film can be seen below. The Huston School provides a range of exciting programmes related to film, digital media and public advocacy & activism.

Google sites - collaboration and communication

The latest offering from Google Apps is a collaborative tool called "Google sites" which allows you to embed a range of file types and applications within a web-site, permitting collaboration and sharing.

Revamp for the OLPC (one laptop per child)

The BBC website reports on the new redesign of the OLPC computer. A significant change towards the book motif is in store and it will be fascinating to see how this impacts on the project particularly given all the 'politics' of late.

Maps galore

With Microsoft's Virtual Earth beginning to compete with Google Earth there is an increasing amount of detailed geographical information available online to even the casual surfer. Google is now sweeping the streets of major European cities (and tussling with the privacy laws) in much the same way as it has done in the US for its 'street view' which is essentially photographs of every street and building, so look out for the Google vans with cameras sticking out of them! Meanwhile Microsoft's planes have been flying overhead for their "Bird's eye" view which gives unprecedented levels of detail (I can even see the broken tiles on my roof here in Galway).

Microsoft's software is of course only available to Windows users, but an increasing number of third parties (including An Post's GeoDirectory) are providing browser access and some, such as Map Channels, are even allowing you to easily display combined perspectives from both Virtual Earth and Google Earth in the same browser window.

Have a look/snoop around on their website, but in the meantime here's a simple combination of NUI Galway.

Virtual Prizes, real money!

The New Media Consortium have just announced their new Virtual Learning Prizes which are aimed, this year, to support small scale projects in Second Life or Project Wonderland.

"Each of the US$5,000 awards will provide a cash incentive paid to the awardee of $500 as well as $4,500 in expert development assistance from the NMC Virtual Worlds team to create the learning experience. The range of in-world services available to awardees to actualize the proposed ideas includes professional building, scripting, design, animation, avatar design, and/or related services. "

Application forms are available here.

Doodle, scribble and sketch

Sketchcast is a rather nifty little tool that is featured in this week's Chronicle, allowing users to basically record an audio track over whiteboard drawings. Very handy for an alternative animation approach and also, presumably for those teaching mathematics or solving equations, etc. The only problem, and from playing with it I think its a signifcant one, is that drawing with a mouse is pretty awful and you probably need a pen /tablet type device to get the most out of this kind of tool. Certainly that's always been an issue with computer art anyway, but try writing text and numbers with a mouse on click-and-drag.....argh! However, if you do buy a pen/tablet (and they are pretty inexpensive) and have a microphone, well the world's your oyster as they say!

GradeGuru - notes sharing by students for students

Back in second year of my undergraduate Science degree (back in the Dark Ages), one of my friends instructed me to write my Physics notes in black pen so that they could be more easily photocopied. I complied, because that's what you do for your friends, right?

GradeGuru seems to take this to a new level. This is a McGraw-Hill Education start-up which appears to combine social networking with note-taking (see GradeGuru - Facebook for Learning). Students submit their notes, which can then be searched and rated. There is a reward system in place, so that high ratings earn extra points, which can be traded in for rewards.

In a sentence: GradeGuru is a notes sharing website where students who need relevant, course-specific study notes can find them, and where students who have study materials can share them to get rewarded with cool stuff and recognition.


So, what's the difference between this and an essay-mill? Well, students have to register with their university email address, and give their affiliation. Hidden in the depths of the faq, I found the following:

Q:

Isn't sharing a form of plagiarism?

A:

No, GradeGuru is to be used for reference purposes. We do not encourage copying or plagiarism of any form. In the near term we plan to partner with anti-plagiarism tool providers to ensure our site is not misused and that our contributors are encouraged to share the way the got to their answers, not just the answers themselves so as to prevent any form of cheating.


It certainly raises some concerns, but is it any different to writing in black ink?

Learning to Change

Thanks to Jim Gates I came across this video. It features, among others, Stephen Heppell, our very popular keynote speaker from the CELT conference 2007.

RSS Day 1st May

I just found out that it's RSS day!

94% of the world's internet users are unaware of the benefits of RSS. The people at Daily Blog Tips are attempting to raise awareness.

Visit rssday.org for details!

Learning via the Social Web (Seminar)

John Breslin from the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) came to speak at yesterday's CELT seminar. In his presentation, he looked at some popular applications from the "Social Web": blogging, wikis, podcasting, social networking, social bookmarking, etc., and examined the usage of these tools in the education domain.

John has an uncanny ability to make this topic accessibile and raptly engaging to any audience. There wasn't a seat left in the room, as attendees crammed in to listen. He spoke about the evolution of social networks, and outlined the importance of an object-centered sociality to faciliate meaning and communication, but also add value, so that "everything we make and do can connect us to other people". The session prompted much debate as to how the social web might benefit learning in Irish Higher Education.

If you'd like to see a full recording of yesterday's presentation .
If you prefer, you can also download the recording as an mp3.

If you'd like to hear more of John's thoughts about the phenomenon of online social networking, he also spoke on this morning's RTE Morning Ireland programme (1st May 2008). The podcasted version will be available on their site later today.