Trying out a new theme. ‘Digg 3 Column’
Better: 3 column layout is an improvement.
Worse: Colour scheme not modifiable, and a bit yucky. Bulky page tabs at top.
I expect I might revert in a week or so, but I’ll live with it and see if it grows.
This conference post is several days late…
I decided not to live-blog so I could participate more in the discussions. When I got home my wife was ill. When I got round to firing up the computer, I discovered the internet connection down. When I eventually got to work the day after (which took a while, because the car battery had died, I had to call out for AA Homestart and then go buy a new battery), my work PC wasn’t doing too well. It wasn’t all bad - the fan still worked. Nothing else did.
Anyway, on day one of this years JISC CETIS conference I gave a Sloodle talk, Mark Bell updated us on the Arden project where he is working with Ted Castranova and Sarah Robbins sold everyone on teaching with virtual worlds and web 2.0… more below.
From the Virtual Worlds Weekly…
The GeoWorlds project to study science education in virtual worlds has received a grant of $700,000. This is a huge grant for a virtual worlds project, certainly one of the largest that has been awarded. From the project summary:
A draft of this post has been waiting for me to hit ’submit’ for many months now… oops.
A news piece on the BBC revealed that:
High levels of computer technology in schools can improve attainment to an extent, a four-year study has found.
(My emphasis added to the very key phrase ‘to an extent’, but the results are worth looking at a little closer)
The Open University have found an interesting way to let students bring their courses into Facebook…
After a month or so of teasing, the first major push of our skunkworks OU Course Profiles Facebook app went live yesterday. Since mid-September, we’ve been quietly running an application on Facebook that allows OU students to declare the OU courses they’ve taken, are taking or intend to take.
… our intention has not been to develop a marketing tool … we have been more interested in exploring the potential for cross-unit, agile application development … and the possibility of leveraging both the Facebook social network, and our users’ self-declared OU course codes network, as a way of building OU student communities.
More here.
One thing Google docs doesn’t do (yet!) is allow you to create and share diagrams. Gliffy does. I hadn’t heard of this before, but it has been around a while now. Includes a nice range of diagram types (including basic UML support). You do need to pay for premium account unless you are happy with all your diagrams being public (about $20 a year), but a neat tool for sure.
(Via Dangerously Irrelevant) Seth Godin’s blog has a piece on using Wikipedia in education, which I have an issue or two with. To some extent the post appears to be along the lines of the typical ‘who needs knowledge when you have search?’, but the point I think he’s trying to make is that synthesis is more important than search:
Got an email today from Futurelab…
A new report published by Futurelab, commissioned by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, seeks to address the challenge of finding ways of understanding, valuing and supporting initiatives that develop the skills and competencies young people need to survive and flourish in today’s society, in ways which both acknowledge their diversity and which enable children, parents, teachers, policy makers and others to develop a shared language for talking about and developing ’21st century skills’.
Almost a week since I saw the first episode of ‘Visions of the Future’ on BBC. More on the programmes here, along with some related links.
Presented by Michio Kaku, a physicist whom I’m sure I saw ice-skating on a previous BBC documentary (no, really), the programme tried to balance the gee-whizzery with a hint of skepticism, and almost succeeded.
Just recovering from a busy travel and conference year (compared to usual anyway), and now to start planning what conferences I’ll be applying for for next year. Some of the contenders currently vieing for my attention are listed below. Listing them here does not mean I’ll be going, but I will be considering it!
