Skip to main content

Home/ Teaching and Learning with Web 2.0/ Group items tagged Web 2.0

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Dennis OConnor

Five Forms of Filtering « Innovation Leadership Network - 11 views

  • We create economic value out of information when we figure out an effective strategy that includes aggregating, filtering and connecting.
  • So, the real question is, how do we design filters that let us find our way through this particular abundance of information? And, you know, my answer to that question has been: the only group that can catalog everything is everybody. One of the reasons you see this enormous move towards social filters, as with Digg, as with del.icio.us, as with Google Reader, in a way, is simply that the scale of the problem has exceeded what professional catalogers can do. But, you know, you never hear twenty-year-olds talking about information overload because they understand the filters they’re given. You only hear, you know, forty- and fifty-year-olds taking about it, sixty-year-olds talking about because we grew up in the world of card catalogs and TV Guide. And now, all the filters we’re used to are broken and we’d like to blame it on the environment instead of admitting that we’re just, you know, we just don’t understand what’s going on.
  • The five forms of filtering break into two categories: judgement-based, or mechanical.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Judgement-based filtering is what people do.
  • As we gain skills and knowledge, the amount of information we can process increases. If we invest enough time in learning something, we can reach filter like an expert.
  • However, even experts can’t deal with all of the information available on the subjects that interest them – that’s why they end up specialising.
  • There can also be expert networks – in some sense that is what the original search engines were, and what mahalo.com is trying now. The problem that the original search engines encountered is that the amount of information available on the web expanded so quickly that it outstripped the ability of the network to keep up with it. This led to the development of google’s search algorithm – an example of one of the versions of mechanical filtering: algorithmic.
  • heingold also provides a pretty good description of the other form of mechanical filtering, heuristic, in his piece on crap detection. Heuristic filtering is based on a set of rules or routines that people can follow to help them sort through the information available to them.
  • Filtering by itself is important, but it only creates value when you combine it with aggregating and connecting. As Rheingold puts it:
  • The important part, as I stressed at the beginning, is in your head. It really doesn’t do any good to multiply the amount of information flowing in, and even filtering that information so that only the best gets to you, if you don’t have a mental cognitive and social strategy for how you’re going to deploy your attention. (emphasis added)
  •  
    I've been seeking a way to explain why I introduce Diigo along with Information fluency skills in the E-Learning for Educators Course. This article quickly draws the big picture.  Folks seeking to become online teachers are pursuing a specialized teaching skill that requires an information filtering strategy as well as what Rheingold calls "a mental cognitive and social strategy for how you're going to deploy your attention."
Brian Magurn

Nik's Learning Technology Blog: 10 Tech Tools for Teacher Training Courses - 43 views

  •  
    A great progression through the various web 2 tools. However, I couldn't access any of the videos - a message appeared saying they were unavailable.
Kay Cunningham

One True Media | video creation that's simply powerful, easy and free - 21 views

  •  
    'Make amazing videos by mixing your photos and video with our effects, text and music.'
Kay Cunningham

Sketchcast - A new way to express yourself - Sketchcast.com - 23 views

  •  
    free tool for creating online presentations
Kay Cunningham

30+ Cool Content Curation Tools for Personal & Professional Use - 42 views

  •  
    'As the web becomes more and more inundated with blogs, videos, tweets, status updates, news, articles, and countless other forms of content, "information overload" is something we all seem to suffer. It is becoming more difficult to weed through all the "stuff" out there and pluck out the best, most share-worthy tidbits of information, especially if your topic is niche. Let's face it, Google definitely has its shortcomings when it comes to content curation and the more it tries to cater to all audiences, the less useful it becomes.'
  •  
    Lot of links just for collecting links, eh? Phew! I'm a bit concerned that the Diigo reference in the 30+ makes it sound like the whole concept is in beta rather than just V5.0. We know it's been a steady competitor over the years, would you say? ;)
Ann Steckel

100+ Online Resources That Are Transforming Education - 61 views

  •  
    "nine clusters of education tech companies"
Kay Cunningham

Screencast-O-Matic - Free online screen recorder for instant screen capture video sharing. - 23 views

  •  
    'Screencast-O-Matic is the original online screen recorder for one-click recording from your browser on Windows, Mac, or Linux with no install for FREE!'
Kay Cunningham

Your Social Dashboard - 13 views

  •  
    'free web service that enables you to aggregate and manage all your social, content, email, and RSS feeds. Your friend streams, photos, videos, and all your own updates and content in one place. You can also post to other services, send emails, aggregate all your contacts, follow other users, and much more.'
Dennis OConnor

Skype and Kinect could be Microsoft's new killer combo - GeekWire - 12 views

  • Microsoft’s blockbuster agreement to acquire Skype is all but assured now, with multiple reports citing a purchase price of $8.5 billion,
  • The skepticism is warranted. Microsoft has had a rough time with big acquisitions in the past, and Skype will be seen by many in the industry as tying its fortunes to an over-the-hill technology giant that has struggled in consumer markets.
  • But many of the people trying to wrap their heads around the deal are missing an important point — the more than 10 million Microsoft cameras connected to television screens in homes around the world.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • That’s how many Xbox 360 Kinect sensors have been sold in six months.
  • Whether or not all of this justifies the $8+ billion price tag isn’t clear. Google and Facebook were reportedly discussing $3 billion to $4 billion at one point in their talks with Skype, which suggests that Microsoft was willing to pay a premium to keep those competitors at bay.
  •  
    A few years from now when the 'Holo Deck" is real and brought to you via the Cloud by our buddies in Redmond, will we remember it all started with Kinect & Skype?    if games drive virtual presence toward a 3d experience... I'll take the ride and try to figure out how to use it in teaching and learning. 
Kay Cunningham

EdTech Toolbox - 18 views

  •  
    'A place to share e-learning and Web 2.0 tools for education. Computers and laptops in education are important only when used with good pedagogy. Digital content and creation is an important part of the process for educators in the 21st century.'
Michael Johnson

E-Learning 2.0 ~ Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes - 20 views

  • In general, where we are now in the online world is where we were before the beginning of e-learning [1]. Traditional theories of distance learning, of (for example) transactional distance, as described by Michael G. Moore, have been adapted for the online world. Content is organized according to this traditional model and delivered either completely online or in conjunction with more traditional seminars, to cohorts of students, led by an instructor, following a specified curriculum to be completed at a predetermined pace.
  • networked markets
  • In learning, these trends are manifest in what is sometimes called "learner-centered" or "student-centered" design. This is more than just adapting for different learning styles or allowing the user to change the font size and background color; it is the placing of the control of learning itself into the hands of the learner
  • ...21 more annotations...
  • creation, communication and participation playing key roles
  • The breaking down of barriers has led to many of the movements and issues we see on today's Internet. File-sharing, for example, evolves not of a sudden criminality among today's youth but rather in their pervasive belief that information is something meant to be shared. This belief is manifest in such things as free and open-source software, Creative Commons licenses for content, and open access to scholarly and other works. Sharing content is not considered unethical; indeed, the hoarding of content is viewed as antisocial [9]. And open content is viewed not merely as nice to have but essential for the creation of the sort of learning network described by Siemens [10].
  • "Enter Web 2.0, a vision of the Web in which information is broken up into "microcontent" units that can be distributed over dozens of domains. The Web of documents has morphed into a Web of data. We are no longer just looking to the same old sources for information. Now we're looking to a new set of tools to aggregate and remix microcontent in new and useful ways"
  • Web 2.0 is not a technological revolution, it is a social revolution.
  • It also begins to look like a personal portfolio tool [18]. The idea here is that students will have their own personal place to create and showcase their own work. Some e-portfolio applications, such as ELGG, have already been created. IMS Global as put together an e-portfolio specification [19]. "The portfolio can provide an opportunity to demonstrate one's ability to collect, organize, interpret and reflect on documents and sources of information. It is also a tool for continuing professional development, encouraging individuals to take responsibility for and demonstrate the results of their own learning" [20].
    • Michael Johnson
       
      Also a place to receive and give feedback. I believe that one of the things that learners need to have to be prepared for learning in this space (social media or web 2.0) is the ability to evaluate, to give good feedback. Additionally, to be able to receive feedback constructively.
  • In the world of e-learning, the closest thing to a social network is a community of practice, articulated and promoted by people such as Etienne Wenger in the 1990s. According to Wenger, a community of practice is characterized by "a shared domain of interest" where "members interact and learn together" and "develop a shared repertoire of resources."
  • Yahoo! Groups
  • Blogging is very different from traditionally assigned learning content. It is much less formal. It is written from a personal point of view, in a personal voice. Students' blog posts are often about something from their own range of interests, rather than on a course topic or assigned project. More importantly, what happens when students blog, and read reach others' blogs, is that a network of interactions forms-much like a social network, and much like Wenger's community of practice.
    • Michael Johnson
       
      So, I believe he is saying that virtual communities of practice that form naturally are more real and approach what Wenger was talking about better than contrived "communities" put together in classes. That may be true. but does it have to be? If people come together to with a common purpose and the instructor allows the students freedom to explore what is important to them then I would hope that this kind of community can develop even in formal educational settings. Relevance is a key issue here!
  • "We're talking to the download generation," said Peter Smith, associate dean, Faculty of Engineering. "Why not have the option to download information about education and careers the same way you can download music? It untethers content from the Web and lets students access us at their convenience." Moreover, using an online service such as Odeo, Blogomatrix Sparks, or even simply off-the-shelf software, students can create their own podcasts.
  • The e-learning application, therefore, begins to look very much like a blogging tool. It represents one node in a web of content, connected to other nodes and content creation services used by other students. It becomes, not an institutional or corporate application, but a personal learning center, where content is reused and remixed according to the student's own needs and interests. It becomes, indeed, not a single application, but a collection of interoperating applications—an environment rather than a system.
  • Web 2.0 is not a technological revolution, it is a social revolution. "Here's my take on it: Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology. It's about enabling and encouraging participation through open applications and services. By open I mean technically open with appropriate APIs but also, more importantly, socially open, with rights granted to use the content in new and exciting contexts"
  • This approach to learning means that learning content is created and distributed in a very different manner. Rather than being composed, organized and packaged, e-learning content is syndicated, much like a blog post or podcast. It is aggregated by students, using their own personal RSS reader or some similar application. From there, it is remixed and repurposed with the student's own individual application in mind, the finished product being fed forward to become fodder for some other student's reading and use.
    • Michael Johnson
       
      I like the idea of students passing on their work to be fodder for someone else's learning. In this way we change to from a learner to a learner/teacher! (See Dillon Inouye's work and Comments from John Seeley Brown)
  • More formally, instead of using enterprise learning-management systems, educational institutions expect to use an interlocking set of open-source applications. Work on such a set of applications has begun in a number of quarters, with the E-Learning Framework defining a set of common applications and the newly formed e-Framework for Education and Research drawing on an international collaboration. While there is still an element of content delivery in these systems, there is also an increasing recognition that learning is becoming a creative activity and that the appropriate venue is a platform rather than an application.
    • Michael Johnson
    • Michael Johnson
       
      Jon Mott has some cool ideas related to this paragraph.
  • he most important learning skills that I see children getting from games are those that support the empowering sense of taking charge of their own learning. And the learner taking charge of learning is antithetical to the dominant ideology of curriculum design
  • game "modding" allows players to make the game their own
  • Words are only meaningful when they can be related to experiences," said Gee. If I say "I spilled the coffee," this has a different meaning depending on whether I ask for a broom or a mop. You cannot create that context ahead of time— it has to be part of the experience.
  • A similar motivation underlies the rapidly rising domain of mobile learning [24]—for after all, were the context in which learning occurs not important, it would not be useful or necessary to make learning mobile. Mobile learning offers not only new opportunities to create but also to connect. As Ellen Wagner and Bryan Alexander note, mobile learning "define(s) new relationships and behaviors among learners, information, personal computing devices, and the world at large"
  • "ubiquitous computing."
  • what this means is having learning available no matter what you are doing.
  • The challenge will not be in how to learn, but in how to use learning to create something more, to communicate.
    • Michael Johnson
       
      I still think part of the challenge is how to learn. How to wade through a sea of all that is out there and "learn from the best" that is available. Find, organize, evaluate, analyze, synthesize, as well as create. I agree with Chris Lott (@fncll) that creativity is vital! (I am just not so sure that it is a non-starter to say that we should be moral first...though it could be argued that we should become moral through the creative process).
  • And what people were doing with the Web was not merely reading books, listening to the radio or watching TV, but having a conversation, with a vocabulary consisting not just of words but of images, video, multimedia and whatever they could get their hands on. And this became, and looked like, and behaved like, a network.
  •  
    Stephen Downes' take on eLearning and what the future holds
Dana Longley

Copying Right and Copying Wrong with Web 2.0 Tools in the Teacher Education and Communi... - 27 views

  •  
    in CITE Journal - Language Arts Volume 10, Issue 3 (2010) ISSN 1528-580 Ewa McGrail Georgia State University J. Patrick McGrail Jacksonville State University
Dianne Rees

Guiding Learners with Trailmeme | Instructional Design Fusions - 0 views

  •  
    Trailmeme is an interesting way to get learners involved in web searches and organizing their results
Kay Cunningham

Free Technology for Teachers: Five Real-time Search Engines for You to Try - 0 views

  •  
    'What makes real-time search results different from standard search results is that the most current links are given priority over older links. Real-time search is very helpful for finding information about the latest trends or news in a particular niche.'
Kay Cunningham

50 Open Source Tools That Replace Popular Education Apps - Datamation.com - 3 views

  •  
    'For this list, we've collected educational apps from a variety of categories that can replace popular commercial software. In many cases, the open source options listed here offer features that aren't matched by their closed source counterparts. And while we limited our list to 50 apps, you can find many more on the Web. '
Alfonso Canady

What is Poll Everywhere? - 20 views

  •  
    Using this website you can poll your students about politics, current events or even quiz them on the fly through sms text messages, twitter, or the web.
  • ...1 more comment...
  •  
    'Poll Everywhere replaces expensive proprietary audience response hardware with standard web technology. It's the easiest way to gather live responses in any venue: conferences, presentations, classrooms, radio, tv, print - anywhere. It can help you to raise money by letting people pledge via text messaging. And because it works internationally with texting, web, or Twitter, its simplicity and flexibility are earning rave reviews.'
  •  
    I have never heard about it before. Thanks for introducing this tool to us, this is definitely helpful in teaching!
  •  
    It's a paid tool if I were to use it via sms across the globe unfortunately. Personally I prefer using Socrative.
1 - 20 of 33 Next ›
Showing 20 items per page