Behind the scenes - in plain English

Ever wondered how the Common Craft folk (...in plain English) produce their nifty little videos?

Well, all is revealed in their latest offering.

twitter twitter tweet tweet

So many people are talking about it, it's probably now passing rapidly from being 'hip'. Hmm. However, twitter is fun and can actually be used for learning (if you use your imagination!).

tele-vision

Michael Wesch's twitter stream from the "Future of video" provides a link to an old archive movie explaining the wonderful new technology of television. It actually does a great job, but the inherent sexism (wait till the end) is an amazing social commentary.

One Laptop per Child device appears in NUI Galway

Just spotted! A laptop device from the "One Laptop per Child" project, was seen today in the Arts Millennium Building foyer in NUI Galway, just outside the CELT offices.

The owner - an overseas student - gave us a quick demo of the impressive device. He had purchased the laptop for his son, as part of their "Give One Get One" donation scheme at http://amazon.com/xo, which ended on the 31st of December. The device was small and light, with the green rabbit ears facilitating connection to the wifi network available on the ground floor. Three USB ports were visible on the side, along with the speakers, web camera and an SD card slot accessible when the screen was swivelled around. The screen also was adjustable to a backlight-off display setting, to reduce LCD power consumption.

Find out more about this amazing project directly from the OLPC initiative's website directly. As they say themselves, their aim is :

"To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning. "

tweet, tweet

Gosh, is there anyone not talking about twitter these days? Seems to be all over the press. I guess the uber-geeks will have to look for something new to move onto, now that ordinary riff-raff like me are all a-twittter! Anyway, here's a little presentation at this year's TED (just a couple of weeks ago) from Evan Williams inventor of Blogger and Twitter (oh, and Odeo)......

Computer Hardware in Plain English

Fantastic!

Free images!

Flickr Commons is beginning to grow and could end up being a great educational resource. The number of partners is growing

FAQ | Rights Statement

Neurotic, paranoid, delusional? Not me...

A remarkably sad reflection of the level of anti-government paranoia that's rife in the US is the success of this hoax YouTube video which pretends to explain why it is that the government is so keen on everyone switching from analogue to digital television....

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/dtv-converters.html

Locaccino anyone?

Making music with obsolete technologies

Wire up a Sinclair Spectrum, a dot-matrix printer, an old cassette player to a bank of hard disc drives and what do you get? Well, bizarrely a YouTube sensation, it would seem. A student at Glasgow School of Art did it as a project for one of his courses and it spread and has now been applauded by the band whose music it plays - Radiohead. Weird it is, remember on playback it takes a while for those old Spectrum programs to upload so be patient...

What's up doc?

Medpedia has been launched ( a few hours ago, technically). It's aim is to become the ultimate free medical encyclopedia with contributions being made by appropriately qualified contributors. What's also interesting is that it is supported by a number of major medical schools and organisations. Will be interesting to see if it manages to keep pace with the hypochondriac demands of many internet users. Half my major conditions aren't even listed yet....

Blackboard Version 9 Now Available

Blackboard have released version 9 of their virtual learning environment. A product overview tour can be accessed at http://www.blackboard.com/release9/

Insidehigered.com reports that Blackboard is billing the newest iteration as more open and flexible — allowing colleges to use the platform “as an open foundation for whatever complementary technologies they need to support their approach to teaching and learning.”

The new release will feature expanded Web 2.0 and “social learning” tools, such as blogs and journals, enhanced notification capabilities (i.e., “Your paper is due in four hours” – or four days), and a redesigned, customizable user interface.

Blackboard ships with SafeAssign plagiarism detection software bundled in, as opposed to it being available as an add-on. And it includes integrations to allow open-source course management systems — such as Sakai and Moodle, to which colleges have increasingly been gravitating — to be accessed within Blackboard.

Check out Keith Russell's blog review of Blackboard version 9 here.