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'Meta-reading': the generational differences in consuming news May 13th, 2009Posted by Judith Townend in Events, Online Journalism, Social media and blogging Turi Munthe, CEO and founder of the citizen journalism site, Demotix, shared an interesting thought with participants of the Voices Online Blogging Conference on Monday. The young Demotix interns consume news differently from the way he does. He elaborated to Journalism.co.uk after the panel. 'Meta-reading': "There is a generational split, but not in the way everyone imagines. It's much more recent than that," he said. People only ten years younger - he is in his 30s - consume news differently from the way he does, Munthe told Journalism.co.uk. The interns in the office ('who play a hugely important role: they're regional editors and they get properly stuck into what we do') read slightly differently, he said. "They are getting the Twitter feeds, and the blog posts, and the Facebook messaging and the free papers, and everything else, and are very happy with it. Much more happy with it than I am." "Essentially, they process information differently. It's a 'meta-reading'. It's not about individual brands. They are fully aware of all the back-stories of all the stories they're getting," he says. It's a 'degree of sophistication,' he said, 'which reads the interests behind the news as an integral part of the news'.

"The main scientific problems investigated in this article deal with technical evaluation of quality attributes of the main components of e-Learning systems (referred to here as DLEs - Digital Libraries of Educational Resources and Services), i.e., Learning Objects (LOs) and Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs). The main research object of the work is the effectiveness of methods of DLE components quality evaluation. The aim of the article is to analyse popular existing LO and VLE technical evaluation tools, and to formulate new more complex tools for technical quality evaluation of LOs and VLEs based on requirements for flexible DLE, as well as to evaluate most popular open source VLEs against new more complex criteria. Complex tools have been created for the evaluation of DLE components, based on a flexible approach. The authors have analysed existing tools for technical evaluation of LOs, and it was investigated that these tools have a number of limitations. Some of these tools do not examine different LO life cycle stages, and other insufficiently examine technical evaluation criteria before LO inclusion in the repository. All these tools insufficiently examine LOs reusability criteria. Therefore a more complex LO technical evaluation tool is needed. It was considered that this new more complex LO technical evaluation tool should include LO technical evaluation criteria suitable for different LO life cycle stages, including criteria before, during and after LO inclusion in the repository as well as LO reusability criteria. The authors have also examined several VLE technical evaluation tools suitable for flexible DLE, and it was investigated that these tools have a number of limitations. Several tools practically do not examine VLE adaptation capabilities criteria, and the other insufficiently examines general technical criteria. A more complex VLE technical evaluation tool is needed. Therefore the authors have proposed an original more complex set of VLE tech

Writing in 1992 about technology in museums, Bearman neatly summarizes a profound shift in museums' perception of their mission, which has only accelerated since then with the explosion of the Internet and the World Wide Web . This shift has inevitably placed stress on the curator's central role in the museum. Not that they weren't already under fire on many fronts, from issues of omniscient authority in a postmodern age of multiple meanings to accusations of parsimonious gatekeeping to the challenges of communicating difficult ideas and complex research to a "general audience" (which usually means a lot of very different audiences with specific needs and often-entrenched points of view). Regardless of how the curatorial role is defined, however, the Net in particular and interface culture in general introduce interesting and perhaps profound opportunities, which might also be perceived as competitive pressures in the culture arena quite old but stil interesting

Some general comments on the "Twitter Experiment" by Monica Rankin (UT Dallas) There has been a lot of interest in the "Twitter Experiment" video posted by Kim Smith chronicling my U.S. History class at U.T. Dallas and our use of twitter in the classroom. I have fielded a number of inquiries from educators across the United States and even overseas who are interested in finding ways to use social networking in an educational setting. This write-up is intended as an informal summary of my use of twitter in the classroom. I hope it will help to clarify my experience and I welcome additional questions and commentary, particularly suggestions for how to improve this type of classroom interaction. The class: I used twitter in the basic U.S. History II survey course at U.T. Dallas in the spring 2009 semester. This is a "core" course requirement in the state of Texas. It generally enrolls students from all majors across campus. At the beginning of the semester, there were 90 students enrolled in my class. The class met in a large auditorium-style classroom on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11:30-12:20. I had one graduate student teaching assistant to help with grading and other administrative duties for the class.

Book Cover about THE BOOK The first generation of "Digital Natives" - children who were born into and raised in the digital world - are coming of age, and soon our world will be reshaped in their image. Our economy, our politics, our culture and even the shape of our family life will be forever transformed. But who are these Digital Natives? More

The goal was to think "outside the box" to create a web portal environment to help bridge on- and off-campus worlds, improve access to resources, and allow community members to publish their own information portlets and collections. This session podcast explores what one campus came up with as a next-generation web portal.

"The Cognitive Edge Network is evolving a series of open source methods based on naturalising sense-making through the Method Development Cycle. The full list of methods can be accessed here. The Method Template is designed to provide some guidance to users of the Cognitive Edge Wiki and also a cut and paste capability to assist in setting up a new page. In general the following principles should be followed: 1. Consistency: should be consistent with the principles of naturalising sense-making. In other words it should avoid idealistic approaches based on defining future states rather than enabling evolution 2. Minimalism: a method template should contain the essence of the method and should be written so that a practitioner can quickly glance through the sheet (especially the work flow) during use without the need to navigate through a large amount of text. 3. Use HTML: additional material, illustrations, detailed check lists, supporting documents, action forms or whatever can also be stored as files or as new articles and then referenced from the method document. 4. Object based: methods should be descrete items, which can easily be combined with other methods. As such they should be codified at a level which allows that. Assemblies can be written up as Offerings 5. Non-specificity: as far as possible do not make the method description specific to a particular application area or industry sector. If there is a good example of the application then create a new article and create a link to that article 6. Avoid recipes: the Cognitive Edge method is object based, it is not a recipe. We expect adaption in context. Methods should therefore not read like recipes, or encourage people to repeat past practice. The method document is an original from which context specific practice can be developed. "

"About Critical Pedagogy on the Web This site has a dual focus, providing both a general overview of critical pedagogy--its definitions, history, key concepts, and major theorists--and links to other critical pedagogy resources on the web. It began as a final project for an independent study in educational theory in the Fall of 2002."

The answer to almost any question is available within seconds, courtesy of the invention that has altered how we discover knowledge - the search engine. Materializing answers from the air turns out to be the easy part - the part a machine can do. The real difficulty kicks in when you click down into your search results. At that point, it's up to you to sort the accurate bits from the misinfo, disinfo, spam, scams, urban legends, and hoaxes. "Crap detection," as Hemingway called it half a century ago, is more important than ever before, now that the automation of crapcasting has generated its own word: "spamming."

"This evolving consumer mentality might be called "the templated mind." The templated mind searches for text fields, metatags and rankings like the handles on a suitcase. Data entry and customization options are the way prosumers grip this new generation of products. The templated mind hungers for customization and the opportunity to add their input - in essence to do-it-themselves. The templated mind trusts the result of social production more than the crafted messages of designers and copywriters. And this mentality is changing the design of products. "

Caspian Learning has produced a useful taxonomy of immersive learning simulations in their white paper Serious Games in Defence Education (Word or PDF, 4MB). Although the paper addresses a single vertical market, the taxonomy is of general interest.

Defining Tools for a New Learning Space: Writing and Reading Class Blogs Sarah Hurlburt Assistant Professor Department of Foreign Languages and Literature Whitman College Walla Walla, WA USA hurlbuse@whitman.edu Abstract This paper uses specific issues surrounding course blogging to provide a series of reflections regarding the articulation between pedagogy and technology in creating a next generation learning space and discourse community. It investigates the underlying structure and necessary constituent elements of a successful blog assignment and examines the notion of natural and unnatural virtual environments and the roles of the reader and the writer-reader. It suggests that blog assignments may not succeed equally well in all subject areas and gives a number of possible reasons. Furthermore, it posits a more nuanced criterion for the definition of goals and the evaluation of the success of a blog assignment as a learning community beyond the presence or absence of comments. Keywords: Web 2.0, learning communities, reader anxiety, constructivist learning, discourse communities, comments

Wordle is a toy for generating "word clouds" from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

FORA.tv is the world's first on-demand, interactive fully searchable media portal delivering spoken words from the world's great writers, leaders, activists and thinkers. FORA community members can experience content via its immersive website with synchronized transcripts, chapters and user generated posts and content. It is one of the primary goals of FORA.tv to foster discussion and debate on issues relevant to our time. To that end, FORA.tv does not endorse viewpoints expressed by the speakers in our videos. Dissenting opinions are welcome and encouraged in our video comments (but keep it civil, please).

The mission of MIT is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century. The Institute is committed to generating, disseminating, and preserving knowledge, and to working with others to bring this knowledge to bear on the world's great challenges. MIT is dedicated to providing its students with an education that combines rigorous academic study and the excitement of discovery with the support and intellectual stimulation of a diverse campus community. We seek to develop in each member of the MIT community the ability and passion to work wisely, creatively, and effectively for the betterment of humankind.

Science fiction novelist William Gibson is attributed with the quote, "The future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed." He was speaking of course about the science facts upon which much sci-fi is based, and learning professionals also know something about understanding the realities of right now such that we can begin to support the organization of tomorrow. The fact is that the business of learning and development is about always looking forward. Whether gaining awareness about Millennial generation talent, the future of the LMS, or the promise of more successful remote collaboration, the realm of knowledge is very often tied to the practice of thinking ahead. We spoke with leaders and thinkers in the learning industry to get their insight into what the next decade holds for workplace learning and why we should be paying attention now.

The Future of Work - good-bye martini lunches, hello working poolside Posted by Erik Larson at 04:28 PM Will social networking and instant messages replace the standard business phone call, the client lunch and the handshake? The Acrobat.com team recently completed a survey with Directions Research, Inc. that points toward an evolution in office workplace culture, including the changing ways white-collar workers are interacting and coordinating their tasks, and how business will be conducted in the social media-rich environment of the 21st century. The survey identified four key categories of knowledge workers: Leaders - Young professionals who use a variety of emerging technologies both at work and in their personal lives Actives - Largely over-35 year old professionals who have adapted to emerging technologies to meet the changing demands of the workplace Followers - The less technically-inclined who rely on e-mail at the exclusion of other technologie Resistors - Generally older workers who are reluctant to adjust to shifts in the workplace and office technologies

Some of us on the Friends of Live Earth team recently had the opportunity to sit down with Charles Porch from ning, who gave some general pointers on network building best practices. Porch has worked with thousands of the 1.1 million communities now using the ning social community platform. So here's your quick jujitsu: 1) The network should have a purpose. It shouldn't be just a fan club, instead it should try to achieve something, and if it's a nonprofit have a clear call-to-action.

The "Google generation" of today's students has grown up in a digital world. Most are completely au fait with the microblogging site Twitter; they organise their social lives through Facebook and MySpace; 75% of students have a profile on at least one social networking site. And they spend up to four hours a day online. Modern students are happy to share and participate but are prone to impatience - being used to quick answers - and are casual about evaluating information and attributing it, and also about legal and copyright issues. With almost weekly developments in technology and research added to increasingly web-savvy students' expectations, how are British universities keeping up? Pretty well, according to Sir David Melville, chair of Lifelong Learning UK and author of a new report into how students' use of new technologies will affect higher education.

A history of technology-mediated learning The following is a section from my PhD thesis. It is part of the "Past Experience" section of the Ps Framework. It aims to give a potted history of technology-mediated learning and show how it connects with e-learning. Since these terms are somewhat overused, it starts with some definitions. The plan is that this history will be used to identify lessons from history, which e-learning (generally) hasn't learned. I've been working on this for at least a month. I have been doing other work on the thesis, but the fact that this has take soooo long is not all the heartening. I think perhaps may sights are set a little high. The alternatives are that I'm either a crap writer or I'm currently not in the mood to write. We'll see where we go from here. The following has not been proof-read thoroughly. I'm leaving that for a later task. If you have any suggestions for improvement, fire away.