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Vanessa Vaile

All too much | The Economist - 0 views

  • QUANTIFYING the amount of information that exists in the world is hard. What is clear is that there is an awful lot of it, and it is growing at a terrific rate (a compound annual 60%) that is speeding up all the time.
  • data from sensors, computers, research labs, cameras, phones and the like surpassed the capacity of storage technologies in 2007. Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory near Geneva, generate 40 terabytes every second—orders of magnitude more than can be stored or analysed.
  • scientists collect what they can and let the rest dissipate into the ether.
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  • What about the information that is actually consumed?
  • households were bombarded with 3.6 zettabytes of information (or 34 gigabytes per person per day)
  • In terms of bytes, written words are insignificant
  • half of all bytes are received interactively
  • “information created by machines and used by other machines will probably grow faster than anything else,”
  • ‘database to database’ information
  • “It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information,” quipped Oscar Wilde in 1894.
  • Only 5% of the information that is created is “structured”, meaning it comes in a standard format of words or numbers that can be read by computers.
  • changing as content on the web is increasingly “tagged”, and facial-recognition and voice-recognition software can identify people and words in digital files.
TESOL CALL-IS

MAKE BELIEFS COMIX! Online Educational Comic Generator for Kids of All Ages - 1 views

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    Children create their own comic strip using characters provided from database. Not specifically for ESL/EFL, but is a nice writing activity, and can be in any of several European languages. William Zimmerman has created a page with his handouts from a workshop, "Creating Comic Strips Online to Encourage Writing, Reading and Storytelling," at the TESOL Denver 2009 conference, at http://www.makebeli efscomix. com/How-to- Play/Educators --EHS
Vanessa Vaile

Weaving a Personal Web: Using online technologies to create customized, connected, and ... - 0 views

  • Abstract: This paper explores how personal web technologies (PWTs) can be used by learners and the relationship between PWTs and connectivist learning principles. Descriptions and applications of several technologies including social bookmarking tools, personal publishing platforms, and aggregators are also included. With these tools, individuals can create and manage personal learning environments (PLEs) and personal learning networks (PLNs), which have the potential to become powerful resources for academic, professional, and personal development.
  • This paper explores personal web technologies (PWTs) and their learning applications.
  • Connectivism and the need for continuous learning In today’s world, learning needs extend far beyond the culmination of a training session or degree program. Working adults must continually update their skills and behaviours to conform to the constantly changing demands of the workplace (Lewis & Romiszowski, 1996). In times of rapid change, it is not always prudent or possible to offer formal training for each individual’s every need, and some needs may best be addressed by the individual him/herself. Using freely available personal web technologies, employees can create a personal learning environment (PLE) to manage their own learning resources; whether these are wikis, news feeds, podcasts, or people.
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  • Overview of Personal Web Technologies
  • Visualization of a web-based Personal Learning Environment
  • PWTs allow learners to expand their capacity for knowledge by connecting to external resources (other people, online databases, reference sites, etc.). If individuals can sufficiently develop their ability to find, organize, and manage these connections, their available knowledge does not have to be limited by the confines of their own skulls.
  • To navigate the Internet more efficiently, individuals can assemble a virtual toolbox from an ever-growing list of free, and often open-source, technologies to aid in aggregating, organizing, and publishing information online.
  • Social Bookmarking and Research Tools Social bookmarking and research tools allow users to save web pages, articles, and other media (usually to an online storage location) and organize them in personally meaningful ways.
  • Tools that are geared more towards social bookmarking (e.g., Delicious, Diigo, and Twine) place greater emphasis on features that allow users to easily share their bookmarks with friends, colleagues, or the public
  • Tools that are geared more towards academic research, such as Zotero or Connotea, include bibliographic features, such as citation generators and reference list management.
  • Personal Publishing Tools A variety of free and user-friendly tools are available to publish oneself on the Internet. Iskold (2007) sees the range of personal publishing options as a continuum, ranging from content-focused, formal blog posts to socially-focused, informal messages posted on social networking sites, with micro-blogging falling somewhere in the middle.
  • blogging offer learners the opportunity to explore topics in depth and reflect, while the speed and simplicity of micro-blogging lends itself more towards posing questions and collaborative brainstorming
  • more than online diaries.
  • individualized content management system that publishes, organizes, and archives
  • easy to go beyond basic text and incorporate other media, such as photographs, videos, and audio
  • Micro-blogs,
  • 'follow' other members to receive a stream of their posts
  • allow them to easily "ask and answer questions
  • Aggregators Individuals who follow multiple blogs and/or regularly visit news or media sites may find juggling the disparate streams of information overwhelming.
  • tools filter online information and collect articles, media, and conversations customized to the user's needs
  • Metagators, also called portals or start pages, can aggregate feeds, social networks, and widgets to create a central, personalized location for an individual's Internet usage
  • Two of the most popular metagators are Netvibes and iGoogle
  • Widgets are small, adaptable, programmable, web-based gadgets that can be embedded into a variety of sites or used on mobile phones or desktops
  • Using Personal Web Technologies to Create PLEs and PLNs
  • PWTs can be combined by the individual to make a personal learning environment (PLE) and to create and manage a personal learning network (PLN). Due to the fact that they are user-created, there is no exact definition of a PLE
  • In general, a PLE is the sum of websites and technologies that an individual makes use of to learn. PLEs may range in complexity from a single blog to an inter-connected web of social bookmarking tools, personal publishing platforms, search engines, social networks, aggregators, etc.
  • Users can create an online PLN of colleagues and friends from around the world by joining social networking sites, following and commenting on relevant blogs, sharing resources on a social bookmarking site, or by using a micro-blogging platform.
  • Learning Applications of PWTs Because these are open-source, free, adaptable, and user-friendly, PWTs can be of great value to teachers, trainers, and students. However, there is a catch: PWTs may clash with traditional, linear, teacher-centered instruction
  • critical media and information literacy skills, so that students can effectively navigate the online maze and avoid being fooled by false or misleading information.
  • Five Potential Disadvantages of Using PWTs for Learning Although personal web technologies have the potential to support all types of learning, they also have potential disadvantages, ranging from distractions to security concerns.
  • Connection Addiction.
  • Work Interrupted.
  • Popularity Contests.
  • Echo Chambers.
  • Privacy and Security Concerns.
  • Conclusions When learners adopt personal web technologies, it enables and requires them to discard their roles as passive consumers of information and to take on new roles. To successfully use PWTs, learners must become editors who critically question content and sources, librarians who organize and archive resources, and also creators who add their voice to the online chorus by engaging in discussions, collaborating on projects, and contributing their own ideas and media
  • he true quality and effectiveness of a PLE or PLN depends on the learner him/herself
Vanessa Vaile

4 principles of using digital tools in humanities research | nicomachus.net - 1 views

  • what is needed is something more closely approximating fluency in another language: the language of digital environments.
  • ess useful to know one program very well and more useful to achieve a level of comfort navigating digital tools for oneself.
  • 1. Think of your computer less as the place where all your data lives and more as the thing that gives you access to your data.
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  • one program: Evernote
  • Off-site storage is more secure in the long run,
  • you need a backup routine
  • online access to your backed-up files means you have nearly universal access to your work.
  • 2. Let your computer (do some of the) work for you; metadata is your friend.
  • Tag everything.
  • hink of tags less as categories or folders and more as the code words in your own personal index.
  • Documents, images, pdfs, articles, notes can all have as many tags as you want. And items in separate folders can be tagged with the same word or phrase.
  • Use tags to describe an article in a way the author might not.
  • Clip articles to read later using Evernote;
  • install the Evernote clip tools {Chrome and Firefox extensions}
  • Use EndNote or Zotero to quickly grab citation information
  • 3. Learn to search, not just organize.
  • Evernote and Google Docs perform OCR by default
  • , which yields searchable text from what was just an image file. 
  • at some point, you forget what you have written or what notes you have taken
  • Evernote is essentially an easy-to-use personal database,
  • 4. Let these techniques and habits help you find patterns that you would not otherwise see.
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