Group items tagged

"A new task force to ensure our universities become the first choice across the world for on-line distance learning was announced today by Higher Education Minister, David Lammy.The task force chaired by Lynne Brindley, the Chief Executive of the British Library will advise on a wider strategy to build on our past and present successes and ensure we do not lose pace on increased demand in expanding and new markets.It will be backed by a new Open Learning Innovation Fund aimed at helping universities build on their existing world class reputations to access and engage future markets that are expected to value around £15bn in the future. This is a competitive match funding initiative, with up to £10m from HEFCE and therefore worth up to £20m in total, aims to encourage universities to work collaboratively with each other and the private and third sectors, to bid for money to develop projects to help transform the way people can get a degree." Thanx to cris Sharing this! Awesome, seeing public investment in the right direction!

"Five years ago, we launched a conference based on a simple idea, and that idea grew into a movement. The original Web 2.0 Conference (now the Web 2.0 Summit ) was designed to restore confidence in an industry that had lost its way after the dotcom bust. The Web was far from done, we argued. In fact, it was on its way to becoming a robust platform for a culture-changing generation of computer applications and services. In our first program, we asked why some companies survived the dotcom bust, while others had failed so miserably. We also studied a burgeoning group of startups and asked why they were growing so quickly. The answers helped us understand the rules of business on this new platform. Chief among our insights was that "the network as platform" means far more than just offering old applications via the network ("software as a service"); it means building applications that literally get better the more people use them, harnessing network effects not only to acquire users, but also to learn from them and build on their contributions. From Google and Amazon to Wikipedia, eBay, and craigslist, we saw that the value was facilitated by the software, but was co-created by and for the community of connected users. Since then, powerful new platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have demonstrated that same insight in new ways. Web 2.0 is all about harnessing collective intelligence." Web2.0 aus der Sicht O'Reilly and John Battelle heute. Spannend, wie sie die Entwicklungen bewerten.

There's news and excitement surrounding Google Wave, Google's new real-time communication platform that will launch to the public later this year.

In the Daily Galaxy: "Although It has taken homo sapiens several million years to evolve from the apes, the useful information in our DNA, has probably changed by only a few million bits. So the rate of biological evolution in humans, Stephen Hawking points out in his Life in the Universe lecture,  is about a bit a year. "By contrast," Hawking says, "there are about 50,000 new books published in the English language each year, containing of the order of a hundred billion bits of information. Of course, the great majority of this information is garbage, and no use to any form of life. But, even so, the rate at which useful information can be added is millions, if not billions, higher than with DNA." Thanx to @JulianEdward pointing me to this!

A production time primer for the podcasting beginner. BY RYAN IRELAN So, you've decided to start a podcast. Good for you! For some people, recording and publishing their voice and thoughts is a huge deal. It is for me. You have a great idea, the energy to do it and the hardware you need. All set, right? So, what kind of time commitment should you be prepared for when embarking on producing your podcast? The bad news is that I don't have the perfect answer. The good news is that I can give you some rough estimates of the time it would take and then from there you can plan accordingly. Let's figure it out, shall we?

So what does it take to impress recruiters today? Daniel Pink, an author on motivation in the workplace, agrees that the bachelor's degree "is necessary, but it's just not sufficient," at times doing little more than verifying "that you can more or less show up on time and stick with it." The author of A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future says companies want more. They're looking for people who can do jobs that can't be outsourced, he says, and graduates who "don't require a lot of hand-holding."

Dieser Artikel zählt mit zur Gebrutsstunde des Begriffs Podcast "With the benefit of hindsight, it all seems quite obvious. MP3 players, like Apple's iPod, in many pockets, audio production software cheap or free, and weblogging an established part of the internet; all the ingredients are there for a new boom in amateur radio. But what to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?" @Ben Hammersley im Gaurdian 02(12/2004

The Digital Object Identifier System is new for me and it could make scientific referencing much more easier! "The Digital Object Identifier (DOI®) System is for identifying content objects in the digital environment. DOI® names are assigned to any entity for use on digital networks. They are used to provide current information, including where they (or information about them) can be found on the Internet. Information about a digital object may change over time, including where to find it, but its DOI name will not change. The DOI System provides a framework for persistent identification, managing intellectual content, managing metadata, linking customers with content suppliers, facilitating electronic commerce, and enabling automated management of media. DOI names can be used for any form of management of any data, whether commercial or non-commercial."

During the last of our IM discussions related to the theme upgrade, I told Preshit that I worked my bit of the upgrade entirely using MacRabbit's Espresso. He was surprised, to say the least. Everyone knows me as a Coda fanboy, so did I ditch it just like that? I've always seen Espresso as sort of the underpowered in comparison with Coda. Coda is feature rich, has a splendid user interface, so why switch to something sub-standard? Lately though Coda has been showing its age, especially improvements in the world of HTML and CSS, and its user interface felt a little too heavy, given the current trend towards minimalism. Moreover, with Espresso's 1.1 update, things were looking good for this new kid on the block. So I gave it a serious run-through by doing the theme upgrade entirely in Espresso.

Finally~Copyright Clarity has arrived Table of Contents What's New Conferences Materials Join this wiki and you can share your ideas, questions and activities in helping to reduce copyright

There's a lot of misinformation out there about legal rights and responsibilities in the digital era. This is especially disconcerting when it comes to information being shared with youth. Kids and teens are bombarded with messages from a myriad of sources that using new technology is high-risk behavior. Downloading music is compared to stealing a bicycle - even though many downloads are lawful. Making videos using short clips from other sources is treated as probably illegal - even though many such videos are also lawful. This misinformation is harmful, because it discourages kids and teens from following their natural inclination to be innovative and inquisitive. The innovators, artists and voters of tomorrow need to know that copyright law restricts many activities but also permits many others. And they need to know the positive steps they can take to protect themselves in the digital sphere. In short, youth don't need more intimidation - what they need is solid, accurate information.

"Fair use is the right, in some circumstances, to quote copyrighted material without asking permission or paying for it. Fair use enables the creation of new culture, and keeps current copyright holders from being private censors. With the Washington College of Law, the Center for Social Media creates tools for creators, teachers, and researchers to better use their fair use rights. Explore your fair use rights by clicking on one of the tabs above. To listen to Center director Pat Aufderheide describe the issues around fair use, click here."

"Ten tried and tested internet tools for teachers Apr 25th 2009 18 Comments Over the past academic year, my students and I have been experimenting with the use of a number of web based applications (often known as Web 2.0 tools). My aim has been to enhance our schemes of work by providing our students with new and exciting learning opportunities." Summary. Collected Tips and Tricks for ten tools and their use in Education!

Grom the Webpage: "About The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads.  The Free Music Archive is being directed by WFMU, the most renowned freeform radio station in America.  Radio has always offered the public free access to new music. The Free Music Archive is a continuation of that purpose, designed for the age of the internet." Thanx to @anitsirk to pointing us to this!

Self-organised vocational training can benefit a lot from the possibilities offered by e-learning. Dr Stephanie Merkenich from the Glass Working Technical School, Rheinbach, and Dirk Dittmann from the Association of Craft Businesses Märkischer Kreis, Germany, showed that devices and tools such as video simulations, wikis and podcasts can develop intrinsic motivations to learn and to teach.

Are you ready to lead a revolution at your school or in your district? Leadership Day 2009. Intro: The Professional Networked Learning Collaborative Back in 2002 in his book Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution Howard Rheingold predicted that, "The 'killer apps' of tomorrow's mobile infocom industry won't be hardware devices or software program but social practices. The most far reaching changes will come, as they often do, from the kinds of relationships, enterprises, communities, and markets that the infrastructure makes possible." The prediction, as we now know, was spot dead on. The technology has transformed our relationships, how we are able to collaborate, how we now define communities, what constitutes a network, and what kinds of work we are able to do. According to Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman, authors of X-Teams, "…team effectiveness is not just a matter of managing well around the conference table. Success also depends on team's reaching out across their borders to find needed information and expertise."It is this intersection of collaboration and technology that has now allowed us to create and leverage a new form of boundary crossing Professional Learning Community. It's called a Professional Networked Learning Collaborative.

School of Everything is a free site that helps learners find local teachers in all subjects, worldwide. Find a private tutor or class, advertise for new students.

Make Those You Tubes! More Sharing = Faster Learning By Marc Prensky To be published in Educational Technology "Video is the new text". - Mark Anderson "Broadcast Yourself" - The You Tube Slogan Without

Das E-Learning-Länderzentrum, eine der ältesten E-Learning-Einrichtungen auf Bundesländerebene in Deutschland feierte im November 2010 seinen 10. Geburtstag. In der Jubiläumsveranstaltung wurde der Schwerpunkt auf neue Studienformate und die Verbindung von akademischer und beruflicher Bildung gelegt. Das Jubiläum nahm e-teaching.org zum Anlass und sprach mit Dr. Konrad Faber, Geschäftsführer des VCRP, u. a. über die Ideen zur Gründung des VCRP, über dessen Weiterentwicklung, darüber, wohin die Reise in nächster Zeit gehen soll, über das Online-Qualifizierungsprogramm TBDL - sowie über seine eigenen Lieblingsprojekte.

Podcasting pioneer Adam Curry is taking online enthusiasm for home-grown audio onto satellite radio. Xeni Jardin sits down with him to talk about resurrecting the "theater of the mind."