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Over the years, social networks have lured us from the confines of our existing realities into a new genre of digital domains that not only captivated us, but fostered the creation of new realities. As George Bernard Shaw observed, "Life is not about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself." Such is true for social networks and the digital persona and resulting experiences we create and cultivate. It was the beginning of the shift in behavior toward an era of digital extroversion, self-defined by varying degrees of sharing, connections, and engagement.

"Don't type it, iShowU it Need to show something to someone? iShowU is your answer! iShowU is designed to record anything on your screen, instantly - both audio, and video! If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a movie is worth a million. Imagine the time you'll save writing Grandma an email about how to magnify her dock when you can just shoot a movie in seconds. "

Searching By Looking Elsewhere Published May 11, 2009 BBC , Data , Infoskills , SEO , Search 4 Comments A couple of weeks or so ago, I got an email requesting a link to something I'd spoken about at a department meeting some time ago (the Gartner hype cycle, actually). Now normally I'd check my delicious bookmarks for a good link, or maybe even run a Google web search, but instead I ran a search for 'gartner hypecycle 2008′ on Google Images… …which is when it struck me that searching Google Images may on occasion lead to better quality, or more relevant, results than doing a normal web search, particularly if you use a level of indirection. In particular, it can often lead to a web document or post that provides some sort of analysis around a topic. (Remember, Google image search links to the web pages that contain the images that are displayed in the image search results, not just the images.)

Design your best elearning yet Fun guide helps you create powerful elearning every time The Elearning Blueprint™ guides you through a streamlined approach to instructional design that helps you turn even the most boring content into lean, lively materials. Practical advice and lots of examples make it easy to choose the most powerful activities, organization, media, and writing style.

Digital Citizenship Introduction: Out of Control A spectre is haunting the classroom, the spectre of change. Nearly a century of institutional forms, initiated at the height of the Industrial Era, will change irrevocably over the next decade. The change is already well underway, but this change is not being led by teachers, administrators, parents or politicians. Coming from the ground up, the true agents of change are the students within the educational system. Within just the last five years, both power and control have swung so quickly and so completely in their favor that it's all any of us can do to keep up. We live in an interregnum, between the shift in power and its full actualization: These wacky kids don't yet realize how powerful they are. This power shift does not have a single cause, nor could it be thwarted through any single change, to set the clock back to a more stable time. Instead, we are all participating in a broadly-based cultural transformation. The forces unleashed can not simply be dammed up; thus far they have swept aside every attempt to contain them. While some may be content to sit on the sidelines and wait until this cultural reorganization plays itself out, as educators you have no such luxury. Everything hits you first, and with full force. You are embedded within this change, as much so as this generation of students.

Turning a College Lecture into a Conversation with CoverItLive Alfred Hermida by Alfred Hermida, April 13, 2009 Tagged: coveritlive, journalism school, social media, twitter, university of british columbia Journalists who also teach will know that one of the challenges of teaching a large, undergraduate class is the sheer number of students. It can be hard to foster a discussion in a lecture hall, where many students may be too intimidated to speak up. So instead the lesson often becomes a lecture, as the professor stands up in front of the class and talks at them for the best part of an hour. In this instructor-centered model, knowledge is a commodity to be transmitted from the instructor to the student's empty vessel. There is a place for the traditional, one-to-many transmission. This is the way the mass media worked for much of the 20th century and continues to operate today. But the emergence of participatory journalism is changing this. Most news outlets, at the very least, solicit comments from their online readers. Others, such as Canada's Globe and Mail, use the live-blogging tool CoveritLive both for real-time reporting and for engaging readers in a discussion, such as in its coverage of the Mesh conference in Toronto. Tools such as CoveritLive or Twitter can turn the one-to-many model of journalism on its head, offering instead a many-to-many experience. The same tools may also have a use in the classroom, as a way of turning the traditional university lecture into a conversation.

Social Software Introduction When the web was originally introduced to the world it was seen as a means of dramatically improving the way in which people communicate and socialise. Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, saw it as a place where people could share information through a series of hyperlinked pages. "In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute." (Tim Berners Lee, 2005) Unfortunately, although the web became an excellent repository of information, it became a place where only technically adept users and organisations would author content. The arrival of new services (often referred to as 'Web 2.0') has helped to remove many of the barriers preventing users from participating. Thanks to this wave of new services we have seen a massive rise in the uptake of web authoring and collaboration. The term this new wave of social activity has been given varies i.e. Social Software, Social Media and Social Computing. The key word is 'Social'! Social software tools, such as blogs, wikis and bookmark sharing services, offer exciting new ways to communicate and collaborate online. Their potential is already being keenly explored in teaching and learning, but they also offer considerable possibilities for research and the business and community engagement (BCE) sectors within higher and further education, since their flexibility and ease of use are particularly well-suited to collaboration across different sectors. As a recent article explained, "The advent of social software has brought a new culture of sharing, and this time around, people are willing to give up some of their knowledge..." (Tebbutt, 2007). Furthermore, social software's increased emphasis on multimedia, as well as text-based content, means that universities can find new ways of harnessing and making their knowledge and research accessible, thus creating what has been described as "a new form of acade

Welcome to JISC Casper The copyright advice & support project for JISC e-learning resources JISC CASPER will be supporting the 19 projects funded as part of RepRODUCE (Repurposing & reuse of digital University-level content and evaluation) as they engage with all of the issues related to IPR and copyright. JISC CASPER will be: * capturing their experiences - good and bad * guiding the projects to the wealth of rights related materials currently available and helping them apply it in their projects * developing new materials as required * undertaking rights clearance centrally when it makes sense by saving time and money for all * helping to build capacity in the sector All of the case studies and materials developed as part of JISC CASPER will be made available to the wider JISC community (some already are) on an ongoing basis both from this web site and by their deposition in JORUM.

Edupunk From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search This article is an orphan, as few or no other articles link to it. Please introduce links to this page from other articles related to it. (February 2009) Edupunk is an approach to teaching and learning practices that result from a do it yourself (DIY) attitude.[1][2] The New York Times defines it as "an approach to teaching that avoids mainstream tools like PowerPoint and Blackboard, and instead aims to bring the rebellious attitude and D.I.Y. ethos of '70s bands like The Clash to the classroom."[3] Many instructional applications can be described as DIY education or Edupunk. Jim Groom as "poster boy" for edupunk The term was first used on May 25, 2008 by Jim Groom in his blog,[4] and covered less than a week later in the Chronicle of Higher Education.[1] Stephen Downes, an online education theorist and an editor for the International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, noted that "the concept of Edupunk has totally caught wind, spreading through the blogosphere like wildfire".[5]

SmartPen as Digital Ethnography Tool Mar 11th, 2009 by Prof Wesch This little smartpen from livescribe just might revolutionize my note-taking in seminars, discussions, and ethnographic interviews. If you have never seen it before, check out some of the demos on YouTube. In short, it records audio as you write and links what you are writing to the audio (by recording what you write through a small infrared camera near the tip of the pen). When you are done recording you can actually tap the pen anywhere on your page and the pen will play the audio that was recorded at the time you were making that specific pen stroke. Students are already sharing lecture notes in the community section of livescribe.com. As recording devices become increasingly embedded into everyday objects the days of protecting lectures from being recorded seem numbered.

Almost the first thing that gets built when anything needs management is a good measurement system. It allows tuning, enables detection of deviations from norm, and gives feedback on the effect of changes and initiatives. Communities of practice are complex creatures, and thus their measurement is not simple. The number of perspectives that can be used is enormous. At the same time, the availability of data for each of them is very different, and the temptation to use subjective management impressions is high. So the history of CoP management is full of references to indicator-building, to attempts at significant reporting, and to a wide variety of more or less objective measurements. But we have not found a coherent, complete set of measurements that could be used to consistently evaluate not just one CoP, but a set of them, and eventually even to benchmark different ones, along most of the lines that can be affected by management. So we've attempted to put forth a simple, practical list and brief explanation of straightforward indicators that can be implemented in most CoPs, and especially in those with an online component. The first result of it is the linked white paper, but it should not be the last one.

Composica 4.0 is a social e‑learning authoring system that offers real-time collaboration among team members and provides a powerful programming- free WYSIWYG environment to create and deliver high-quality interactive e‑learning 2.0 content with embedded social media.

JISC Collections mission is to support UK education and research by delivering affordable, relevant and sustainable online content. Funded by JISC, JISC Collections provides its members with a catalogue of free and subscription-based online resources such as e-journals, e-books, full text databases, digital images, online film, and geospatial data. Core to the service provided by JISC Collections is the quality evaluation of online resources, the expert negotiation process and the efficient national licensing undertaken for each online resource. JISC Collections always strives to widen accessibility to online resources, save its members time and money and to evolve licensing in line with members needs and the digital environment.

The present and future of Personal Learning Environments (PLE) - 9 comments This post is recast from an assignment I completed about four months ago in a Masters Degree course entitled Innovative Practice and Emerging ICT, in which I investigated what PLEs are meant to be and where they might be going. It was originally part of a class wiki. Contents 1. Introduction 2. Towards a Definition 3. Driving Forces 4. Developments to Date 5. Barriers 6. Future Potential 7. References 8. Web Links Introduction A definition for the term Personal Learning Environment (PLE), remains elusive. Conception about what should constitute a PLE depends on the perspective of the commentator. For example, the priorities for a PLE are different for a tertiary student, a university administrator, an instructor, a working professional, or an adult who persues an eclectic path of lifelong learning. Metaphorically, an individual may engage in a learning process that is either more acquisitional or participatory (Sfard, 1998). There are inconsistencies across these positions about what a PLE should do. But whether constructively and defensively, interest in PLE appears to be growing. At the time of writing this introduction (August 2006), no particular product or service exists that can definitively be categorised as a PLE, although some prototypical work is in progress. An inclusive, authoritative account about PLEs does not yet exist. Only a handful of articles have appeared in the academic and public press about PLEs since the term gained currency in 2004. This article has been compiled after tracking recent conversations in the blogosphere and following social bookmarks.

Year 2009: Current Passions I spend most of my time these days writing my next book. It is about "what technology wants." I'm posting my thoughts in-progress on The Technium. I solicit comments there, which in turn influence my ideas. It is a wonderful way to craft a book. Writing in public is more work, but it makes the book better. The final draft is due to be delivered in October 2009, and will most likely be published by Viking/Penguin sometime in 2010. In order to finish this book on deadline, I've drastically cut down on travels and speaking, but when I do, I am represented by Monitor Talent. In addition to The Technium I post to 9 other blogs, detailed below. All these bits are consolidated into one uber-blog I call my Lifestream. Anything that I write on any blog will be posted in this stream. (Anything written by other authors on my blogs will not be posted here.) This is an easy way to keep up with what I am working on, thinking about, conjuring with. I am exploring Twitter. My handle is kevin2kelly in case you want to follow.

Videos. Interview recordings. Documents. Photos. Media clips. Music. Podcasts. Whatever your materials, whatever your project, whatever your background - NVivo 8's superior technology lets you explore, analyze and glean insight from your information like never before. If you need to handle very rich information, where deep levels of analysis on both small and large volumes of data are required, NVivo 8 is your solution. It removes many of the manual tasks associated with analysis, like classifying, sorting and arranging information, so you have more time to explore trends, build and test theories and ultimately arrive at answers to questions.

Twitiquette is not enough DateThursday, May 1, 2008 at 07:46PM Three days of student information system training (as a participant) has given me the opportunity to use Twitter for an extended amount of time. I really, really, really was hoping to get hooked and discover what all the educational excitement is about this tool. But all I am left with are questions about being "Minnesota nice" in a micro-blogging environment and why anyone would use Twitter. I freely admit that I am not the most social of creatures. I am uncomfortable in environments where I don't know the social norms, the accepted rules. So after feeling edgy for a couple days, I started doing a little digging about Twitiquette. (I thought I was clever in inventing the term, but others beat me to it.) Here's a very short list of sources: * The Twitter Fan Wiki, the etiquette page * Stuart Ciske's 5 Essential Twitter Truths. * GrammarGirl's Twitter Style Guide. * David Jakes Tragedy of the Commons * Global Geek News Blog. Twitter Etiquette (Thanks to Darren Draper for last three links.)

Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it) Post-Oprah and apres-Ashton, Twittermania is definitely sliding down the backlash slope of the hype cycle. It's not just the predictable wave of naysaying after the predictable waves of sliced-breadism and bandwagon-chasing. We're beginning to see some data. Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it - on knowing how to look at it. When I started requiring digital journalism students to learn how to use Twitter, I didn't have the list of journalistic uses for Twitter that I have compiled by now. So I logged onto the service and broadcast a request. "I have a classroom full of graduate students in journalism who don't know who to follow. Does anybody have a suggestion?" Within ten minutes, we had a list of journalists to follow, including one who was boarding Air Force One at that moment, joining the White House press corps accompanying the President to Africa.

Twitter Literacy (I refuse to make up a Twittery name for it) Post-Oprah and apres-Ashton, Twittermania is definitely sliding down the backlash slope of the hype cycle. It's not just the predictable wave of naysaying after the predictable waves of sliced-breadism and bandwagon-chasing. We're beginning to see some data. Nielsen, the same people who do TV ratings, recently noted that more than 60% of new Twitter users fail to return the following month. To me, this represents a perfect example of a media literacy issue: Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it - on knowing how to look at it. When I started requiring digital journalism students to learn how to use Twitter, I didn't have the list of journalistic uses for Twitter that I have compiled by now. So I logged onto the service and broadcast a request. "I have a classroom full of graduate students in journalism who don't know who to follow. Does anybody have a suggestion?" Within ten minutes, we had a list of journalists to follow, including one who was boarding Air Force One at that moment, joining the White House press corps accompanying the President to Africa.

"An e-Literate reader comments on my post about Blackboard owing Desire2Learn money: The amount [that Blackboard will have to pay Desire2Learn, including the original award plus interest] will probably be over $3.8M USD from my rough estimates which is higher than the expected writedown Blackboard took. This should result in additional expenses that will have to be recorded by BBBB. What's also interesting is that Blackboard's top execs made record bonuses before this writedown, at the same time they took away any salary increases and the 401K plans for the regular staff. I think that is the bigger story."

"What is a wiki? A Wiki can be thought of as a combination of a Web site and a Word document. At its simplest, it can be read just like any other web site, with no access privileges necessary, but its real power lies in the fact that groups can collaboratively work on the content of the site using nothing but a standard web browser. Beyond this ease of editing, the second powerful element of a wiki is its ability to keep track of the history of a document as it is revised. Since users come to one place to edit, the need to keep track of Word files and compile edits is eliminated. Each time a person makes changes to a wiki page, that revision of the content becomes the current version, and an older version is stored. Versions of the document can be compared side-by-side, and edits can be "rolled back" if necessary. The Wiki is gaining traction in education, as an ideal tool for the increasing amount of collaborative work done by both students and teachers. Students might use a wiki to collaborate on a group report, compile data or share the results of their research, while faculty might use the wiki to collaboratively author the structure and curriculum of a course, and the wiki can then serve as part of each person's course web site (excerpt from my contribution to a Business 2.0 article --Stewart.mader 11:35, 14 Dec 2005 (PST))"