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Top film titles in Wordle
Whilst watching one of my favourite films last night, John Carpenter's The Thing, I took the top 250 films from IMDB and ran them through Wordle, using English translations of titles where appropriate, and setting it to ignore commonly used words. Here is the result. I'm not sure it tells you much, except that sequels will bump you up a bit, and feminists might like to note the prominence of 'man', 'men' and 'Lord' (the last one all from the Lord of the Rings) while the only female terms that arise are Princess and Bride. In truth though it shows that in the top 250 there is little commonality in…
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My 7 stage plan for the film industry
<Image Last Curtain is Falling by Alex//Berlin http://flickr.com/photos/15082599@N08/2710899029/> Alan Parker, Kenneth Branagh and assorted British film people wrote an open letter to the Times warning that piracy is undermining the creative industries. On the radio yesterday I heard the producer of Quantum of Solace stating how in the far east they don't make any money on DVD sales because everyone watches illegal copies. He bemoaned all the promotion and distribution costs they have to bear. Sigh. They still really don't get it do they? They have one model which they keep returning to, again and again. They're supposed to be creative, so get creative about your own industry. Interestingly, they…
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Seesmic and the Nabakov equation
Yesterday AJ Cann posted about his frustration with Seesmic, which he felt was going backwards in terms of usability. This led to an exchange in his comments via Seesmic (and cool, Seesmic founder Loic LeMuir joined in). If you haven't used it, Seesmic offers threaded video dialogue, much like the threaded text-based forums we have been so accustomed to in VLEs. Seesmic has had some financial problems recently, it'd be a shame to see it go under. The outcome might be that this type of functionality ends up as a YouTube add-on. Personally I think Seesmic should pitch themselves much more as a direct educational tool, rather than general use.…
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In defence of Powerpoint
Okay, it's not going to win me any popularity points, but I thought I'd take a look at the fairly standard Powerpoint bashing that takes place. This article features John Sweller, saying that Powerpoint is counter productive because, according to his cognitive load theory, it is more difficult to process information that is coming audibly and visually simultaneously. Garr Reynolds (via Downes) picks up on this, and makes the distinction between Powerpoint as method and as a tool, arguing: "I am assuming that what Professor Sweller means is that the way PowerPoint is used should be ditched, not the tool itself. Suggesting we abandon PowerPoint because it's often (usually?) misused…
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You are your (tag) cloud
My tag cloud for this blog is a bit rubbish, I don't create enough categories, and when I think of adding a new one, I've already blogged about it a few times and so I face the dilemma, do I now go back and republish those posts with a more appropriate tag, or do I carry on with a more general one? Anyway, most of the blogs I read make a better job at tagging than I do, often using delicious as the means by which they categorise both their own, and others posts. It seems to me that your tag cloud becomes a sort of shorthand for your online…
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Booing as legitimate protest
(Warning: Mainly football related post) There was some fuss at the weekend that Arsenal fans booed one of their own players, Eboue, to the point where he had to be substituted. Most of the pundits have been outraged, and the common complaint is that it is counter-productive, as well as vicious. Not being an Arsenal fan, I don't really know the history, but my guess is there is some background as to why they booed Eboue, and it wasn't just a random attack. Football fans may have a mob mentality but it is a highly contextualised mob mentality. A few months ago, a similar event occurred during an England game…
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Shiny Show
In the first of an occasional series I offer up Shinies to the following tools, as potentially interesting in higher education: TwitterFountain – oooh, shiny. Picked this up via a tweet from Brian Kelly. It aggregates tweets and flickr photos that have been given a specified hashtag, in a nice visual interface. Educationally, it's just a nice way of aggregating some feeds that can be embedded in a page. So, a course might decide upon a hashtag and in their course page (WPMU?) have a twitter fountain running. Not sure it adds much pedagogically, but it provides a stimulus for conversation. One problem – it will pull in any flickr…
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We are digitalists – these are our tools
<Image Tatuagem geek no Barcamp – Tiago Doria http://flickr.com/photos/tiagodoria/432822929/> To avoid the digital natives and immigrants debate, let's opt for the term digitalists instead, and define them thus: "Those who are comfortable using a range of digital media and are open to the changes that digitisation brings to society." It's not exclusive, anyone can become a digitalist, and it's not absolute, you can be a digitalist in some areas and maybe have reservations in another. But you're not Andrew Keen. This follows on from previous post, where I took Scott Leslie's post about just sharing to argue that the mode of sharing has changed. Digitalists know this because they do…
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The cost of sharing
I've mentioned Scott's Planning to share, versus just sharing post in passing, but here is a slightly more considered response. Scott sets out his frustration with top down, planned approaches to sharing: "I have been asked to participate in many projects over the years that start once a bunch of departments, institutions or organizations notice that they have a lot in common with others and decide that it would be a good idea to collaborate, to share “best practices” or “data” or whatever… But inevitably, with a very few exceptions, these projects spend an enormous amount of time defining what is to be shared, figuring out how to share it,…
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SatNav – a microstudy in digitisation
<Image Mapa antiguo de America del Sur – thejourney1972> We have only recently got a SatNav system for the car (it's invaluable if you are towing a caravan, no matter how small and trendy, as doing 3-point turns is not easy, or popular). Using it has made me reflect on how the process of digitisation and connectivity changes behaviour and our relation to certain artefacts. I think what is true of SatNav and maps, is probably true across all forms of content. Here are the changes as I see them: The need for a particular skill (in this case map reading) which was previously thought essential becames largely irrelevant. This…
