chrome - slightly tarnished by licence debacle

Google's new chrome browser has been the subject of the geek-chat this week. At first glimpse it looks simple and clean in design, matching the general google philosophy. It seems quick to respond, but then I wonder to what extent browsers other than IE manage that partially by looking sleeker (digital placebo effect?). Must try some speed tests with Firefox, etc.

The most embarrassing issue on the launch appears to be an over-zealous part of the licence agreement (you know the stuff that you don't read before clicking "accept"?) that gave ownership of everything you do through the browser to Google! Apart from that sudden correction, things seem to be running smoothly and it will be interesting to see how things like google docs and the new video-communications packages integrate. Meanwhile it seems that Microsoft are effectively painting themselves as the champions of freedom with the new privacy features on the latest version of IE. Hard to work out who is supposed to be the 'evil empire' these days.....

Institutional social networking sites

Two UK universities are exploring Ning as a space for institutional social networking. The University of Bradford are using this for their campus community, facilitating conversations relating to living in the area, life at the University and students' studies and academic progress. The University of Wales Newport have adopted this approach for new or prospective students.

Michael Web, from Newport, discusses why they choose Ning, and the potentials and pitfalls they encountered. Read more from his blog...

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

Michael Wesch, the man who brought us A Vision of Students Today and Web 2.0 The World is Watching Us, delivers this talk at the Library of Congress. It is an interesting watch, but at 55 minutes long, make sure you have enough time. I watched it over two days, dipping in and out.



You can find out more about Michael Wesch's Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University over on his blog.

London Pedagogy Planner

A recent article in this month's eLearn magazine describes an event at which Diana Laurillard (London Knowledge Lab) describes a tool she has been involved in developing, called the "London Pedagogy Planner (LPP)". This is essentially a java application - a version of which is freely downloadable here - that prompts one to articulate lots of information about one's course, including learning objectives, assessment methods, etc.

The creators claim "It focuses on the critical aspects of learning designs, and makes the pedagogical design explicit, capturing it for testing, redesign, reuse and adaptation by the originator, or by others. "

The utility of the application is a little unclear to me, unless this information can be in turn communicated to students or others involved in the course design, and be easily exportable into a VLE, or printable format. Without such opportunities for dissemination, it seems like a considerable effort merely to gain a means of making practices and objectives explict for one's self alone. I've just downloaded the application, and hope to give it a second look.

The LPP project has been funded by the JISC's Design for Learning programme, and has been developed by the Institute of Education, University of London and Institute of Education, London Metropolitan University in partnership with LAMS International Pty Ltd led by Diana Laurillard and Tom Boyle.

How 'Cuil' is this?

A new internet search engine has just been launched by some former Google employees. Named Cuil after the Irish word. It uses the context of words on web pages to facilitate more effective searching. You can find out a little more about it in this report from the BBC or go straight to the company themselves where you'll learn about the Irish connection!

knol vs wikipedia

Google's 'rival to wikipedia,' known as Knol is now being made more widely available. Edits to articles can only be approved by the page authors and the aim is to have a more authoritative encyclopedia than the ever popular wikipedia. Example articles on display in the home page include those on leukemia and unblocking toilets.

Clickers in the Classroom

Today's Inside Higher Ed reports from the Blackboard World conference in Las Vegas about the use of audience response systems in the classroom, and whether it is a fad or a useful educational tool. It points to an interesting report on a study at Ohio State University, where clickers are used to engage and involve Physics students. It was found that students who used clickers earned exam scores that were 10% higher than students who didn't use them. Moreover, it seems that female students in particular benefited from the anonymity that clickers give, allowing them to actively participate in lecture sessions while keeping their involvement private.

the Hidden power of the GPU

Sometimes the sluggishness of this computer becomes really annoying, particularly when it is doing what is a relatively simple task conceptually but is encumbered by 'bloatware'. Despite a fast processor and lots of RAM there are times when it just trundles along. Interesting then to read that programmers are working on unleashing the often underused power of the graphics card. Bristling with processors that lie largely idle (except in the heat of intense gaming) they represent an untapped power that could supercharge a PC's performance. The Guardian, yesterday, carried the story.

Wordle

I've been having fun with Wordle, a little tool that allows you to create word clouds based on text that you enter. It's very easy to use, with a simple set of options for changing font, colours and format. To save locally, you need to install a pdf writer, if you don't already have one, but this took me all of 5 seconds.

My first creation is based on our recent Teaching Awards scheme, and I'm quite pleased with the result.