virtual worlds - make your own

hmm. Seems everyone is in to virtual worlds these days. Not only am I having some fun beta testing metaplace and have long wandered through Second Life, but now Lively (by Google) seems to really be taking off with its simple web-based interface. Pop into the Google Room or create and share other spaces and let your animated avatar start chatting. My own little venue is here:

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.....

NAIRTL funding award for Wikilingua.ie!

Michelle Tooher of CELT, along her colleagues, Berit Carmesin & Doris Devilly of the German Department, have become successful recipients of the recent NAIRTL funding scheme. The scheme aims to support research studies related to teaching and learning. It received a huge number of applicants, making the selection process intensely competitive. The full list of worthy project winners has just been publically announced on the NAIRTL Website.

Their project is entitled "WikiLingua(.ie): research and idea exchange on the use of Web 2.0 in language teaching and learning".

In its own words:

"This project will support teachers with little or no experience of Web 2.0 and their more experienced colleagues. The project will encourage the use of applications such a blogs for reporting and expression, wikis for project work and discussion boards for constructive discussion in an effort to develop an element of peer review within the classroom. The project aims to build critical review skills in students that are necessary when pursuing research. The project will be aimed towards integration of innovative teaching practice in the disciplines of language and literature and should be easily transferable to teachers of other disciplines."

Congratulations! We'll be looking forward to hearing about their progress over the coming months...

The Open University launches new 'OU View' channel

The Open University launched their 'OU View' YouTube channel today.

There are over 300 videos available to view, along with series of video blogs where Open University staff and students talk about what they’ve learnt from YouTube.

OU View (http://www.youtube.com/ou) acts as a portal to other Open University channels, such as OU Learn, and OU Life. The Open University also plans to launch a research channel later on in the year.

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.

RTÉ: Special Series on Technology in the Developing World

All this week RTÉ are presenting a special news series, Global Classroom, on technology in the developing world, in particular Kenya, India, and Rwanda.

Three approaches to educating young members of these communities are reported on:

• the charity Camara who hold a computer skills workshop in Kenya,
  
• the Hole in the Wall project in India which believes collective learning using a village computer can close the education gap for children around the world,
  
• and finally the One Laptop Per Child initiative which a school in Rwanda hopes to implement.

Clips, blogs, and reports can be accessed from the RTÉ website, here.

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.