Inaugural Symposium on Communities & Shared Digital Resources for Teaching & Learning, (NDLR2007)

The inaugural NDLR (National Learning Digital Learning Repository) symposium has recently been announced. Further information is available on the NDLR website.

"The 2007 International Symposium on Communities and Shared Digital Resources for Teaching and Learning (NDLR2007) will take place on Tuesday 11th December in University of Dublin, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.

This symposium is aimed at members of NDLR Communities of Practice (CoP) and academic staff across many different subject disciplines across Irish Higher Education. Participation and attendance is also invited from International Subject Networks or Communities of Practice."

The man who invented Google Earth..

Berkeley's webcast service has provided a link to a recorded lecture by John Hanke, Product Director for Google Earth. John has had a fascinating and varied career in technology innovation as can be seen in his brief biography from the Berkeley site, reproduced below.

"Product Director for Google Maps, Local, and Earth, John Hanke has an accomplished career in the world of interactive software where he has pursued advances in technology to pioneer new kinds of products. In the early days of the web, Hanke was involved in the start up of one of the first massively multi-player online 3D games ("Meridian 59"), which was acquired by 3DO in 1996. He co-founded a second company, Big Network, to pursue "casual gaming" online. That company was acquired by eUniverse in 2000. He co-founded Keyhole in 2001 to create a new kind of global 3D map of the world. He forged partnerships with Sony, Nvidia, CNN and others as the company introduced its "earth browser" to the world. Keyhole was acquired by Google in October 2004. The Keyhole technology re-emerged as "Google Earth" in July 2005. After receiving his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in 1996 and BA in Plan II from The University of Texas at Austin, Hanke worked in foreign affairs for the US Government in Washington, DC and Southeast Asia."

democratic participation online

Pat Kane flagged up the "CanadaJam" event that's looming in January in one of his recent blog entries. Essentially, its about taking IBM's online brainstorming and policy making "jam" technique and extending it into the realm of political debate. Incorporating wiki type approaches and online discussion postings, with a lot of analysis, the scheme is an attempt to stimulate national debate on key topics of public concern. The World Urban Forum was informed by such an event and you can learn more about that at HabitatJam which managed 25,000 participants! The CanadaJam document explains the process.

Sounds fascinating - does it always work? How are the practical aspects handled? Fancy one for the future of education? I note that the costs are (Canadian)$2 million for the event in January.

you've been Googled

Jaiku, the little mobile phone text-blogging tool that I've demonstrated earlier (have a look down the right hand side of the page) has now been snapped up by Google. Initial information about this can be found on the jaiku website in a Q&A format.

http://jaiku.com/help/google

you stream, i tube, we pod....hmm

Well, ustream.tv the simple, open access video streaming service is continuing to spread across many websites , judging by some recent surfing. I have to say that the quality of streams that I've tapped into hasn't always been great, but it is free and very easy to use. Essentially built on Flash and similar to a service we already have within NUIG ("virtual meeting rooms"), ustream let's anyone set up a live link between their PC and webcam to anyone who chooses to watch/listen. Passwords can be set for restricted access or broadcasts can be public. Some of the better examples online at the moment have been associated with conference keynote presentations, etc. Gordon Moore, of Intel and Moore's law fame provides an example here. Interestingly, ustream is now also available as an application within facebook. So to paraphrase the BBC's motto: geek shall speak unto geek!

Fidelity Investments Technology Conference in Galway

For those of you based in Galway, Fidelilty Investments are hosting a Technology conference on the 18th October in the Ardilaun Hotel. Areas such as Mobile Web 2.0, Social Networking and Collaboration platforms, the emergence of Virtual Worlds as well as security concerns with Web 2.0 architectures, will be discussed.

Speakers include Chris Horn (former CEO of Iona Technologies), John Breslin (DERI), Ajit Jaokar (FutureText), David Burden (Daden Ltd., UK) and Richard Mooney (Vordel Ireland).

As far as I am aware, there is no registration fee.

ICT initiative of the Year in UK HE

Over in the UK, JISC has announced the shortlist for outstanding ICT initiative of the year (in HE). Some 'weel kent faces' (as we say in Scotland) are in the list and all are worth noting. The open source software Elgg raises its head since that's the basis for community@brighton (as I understand it) and the OU's OpenLearn initiative made it to the list also. Have a look at the listing here and place your bets as to the ultimate winner!.

Dictionary - paper or electronic?

Lexicographer, Erin McKean talks passionately about the nature of dictionaries and the ways in which print based formats are challenged in the new electronic age. Very entertaining presentation.

Miro - the best internet video and TV player?

My video player of choice, Miro, continues to bound ahead technologically speaking. Some recent upgrades have taken place as it heads to version 1.0. At the moment it is an excellent means of suscribing to channels from a wide variety of providers, including the growing number of HD (high definition) programmes out there.

Best of all, though, is that it is run by a non-profit organisation and is open source. Previously, this same group provided 'Broadcast Machine' an impressive tool for uploading, cataloguing and serving video content, but that is now being frozen with a decision to start building a replacement system from scratch that incorporates new technological advances and is more robust and resilient. Miro, itself, though is worth a try and it happily trundles away in the background scurrying around for updates on my favourite subscritions (mainly documentaries and news).

From palm pilot to neocortex

Jeff Hawkins the tech guru behind the Palm Pilot and its offspring spoke at one of the TED events a couple of years back and the recording has now been made available. He speaks about his other main passion, that of understanding aspects of how the brain works. Once again, an interesting presentation from this series that we thought you might be interested in.

families online

A fascinating report from the UK's Ofcom indicates the extent to which ICT is impacting on everyday life and, in particular, people's leisure time, in the UK. The BBC news website has a short summary of the main points. It is interesting to see the extent to which specific 'groups' such as women and retired people are major users of online systems. After reading it, I feel that I should go home to my children and tell them to stop reading those books and playing around outside and sit down in front of a games console or watch TV if they want to be 'normal'!!

From Pilot to Mainstream - pain, gain and fun?

Bit of local news for a change. Here in NUI Galway we've just upgraded our virtual learning environment to Blackboard Academic Suite (Enterprise Licence 7.2) from the Basic Edition. It's been quite an undertaking and has involved months of hard work by colleagues in Computer Services, CELT, MIS, Records and other groups as well as with Blackboard themselves. We now have multiple, high-spec servers and integration with the University's various information systems so that courses and enrolments are handled automatically and with student and staff accounts being managed centrally. It's been nail-biting stuff as the new academic year looms (beginning of September) and no doubt there'll be a fair bit of drama in migrating over content from the old system to the new, in addition to training and support needs. But still, should be worth it in the end and the new functionality and automation should ultimately improve everyone's experience.