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Is Uniglu what I need?
A warning upfront: I think this post may expose my ignorance, and there may be a 'duh, we've been working on that for ages', type reaction. But based on previous experience, I've found that my ignorance is often shared by others, I'll forge ahead. I'll give you the background: On Friday I had a quick play with video in Googlemail. Naturally it works fine, so I put out a rather facetious tweet about why do we bother to design software specially for education when this stuff is just there. Niall responded saying: "can it be linked to student registration systems for automated population of tutor groups etc? " This is…
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My edublog 2008 nominations
With all the usual provisos about awards not mattering, the Edublog 2008 nominations are open, so I thought I'd spread a little love. Here are my nominations (it's okay not do every category isn't it Josie? I don't have a best use of virtual world). Best Individual Blog – I'm going to nominate John Connell here. John manages to combine quality and quantity. Almost every post sets me off thinking. I have at least ten unwritten posts which are responses to things John has posted about. I particularly liked his grandfather's social network post. Best group blog – Pontydysgu – they're Welsh, they like edupunk, they do a crazy internet…
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Quick play with xtranormal
Tony pointed me at Xtranormal (and the CogDog reminded me that Tony had pointed me at it). It's a service that allows you to create little movies, adding in dialogue, camera angles, music, expressions, etc. So, while having my ham sandwich for lunch I had a quick play and produced the following. It's not very good, but you get the idea: Adblock A better one is this take on FightClub.
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Pregnancy, FLOSS and lightbulbs
Following on from what I hoped was a balanced post about the pros and cons of FLOSS software in education, Mark Ballard at the Inquirer writes a one-sided piece. At least I got to air the celebrity's favourite complaint 'I've been quoted out of context'. It's been a strange process this debate. At the OU I've long been one of the evangelists for open source. I developed SLeD, was the VLE Director who rejected proprietary solutions, part of the team that got the OpenLearn grant, and have blogged often about how the open source method is the best way to produce content. Yet, the outcome of the debate has been…
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All educators are broadcasters
I gave a short talk at the OpenU a couple of weeks back about the changing nature of broadcast and what it means for educators. Although it was aimed at the OpenU audience, I think a lot of it is more widely applicable, so I’ve finally made a slidecast of it. The original had a few audio and video clips, which I haven’t included in the slidecast. It does however, feature the now famous ‘Caravan equation’ (oh, okay famous in my mind only). What does changes in broadcast mean for educators? View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: higher education)
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Should FLOSS be the only option?
The OU has been taken to task by the Open Source Consortium for supporting Microsoft Office. The OU has sent an official response, but here's my unofficial take on it. I ought to say upfront that I love open source. Not necessarily the software (I'm pretty agnostic about software), but the fact that it's there and it works, when all conventional thought said it shouldn't. The very existence of open source gives me hope for the world. And I find the manner in which it is created fascinating, and probably the most interesting business, social and technological development of the past twenty years. But even so, this letter causes something…
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Because it’s MY blog…
I was going to think of a clever (read tortuous) analogy between this goal and loosely coupled pieces, but hey, it's my blog. Spurs fans enjoy: Adblock Music Video Code by FootyFilms.com
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Documentally is waki
The other day social media journalist documentally was invited by Reuters to attend Gordon Brown's press conference. Being a streaming video kinda guy (to put it mildly), he streamed live via Qik: Adblock This went around on Twitter, and I tuned in. It occurred to me that I wouldn't have bothered to watch it live on TV, so why did I watch this time? Partly it was out of curiosity, this being one of the the first times social media type journalists have been in on a big, proper news event (ie a non-techie one). So I wanted to see what it was like. But there was also an element…
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A Twitter love song
When I did my talk on Twitter a few weeks back I said it was a love song to Twitter. Last weekend I had some spare time to myself, so what did I do: did I sort out the back garden? Did I finish reading The Alexandria Quartet? Did I go to the gym? No, of course not, I wondered what a Twitter love song would be like, so I spent the time messing about with Camtasia to produce one. And here it is: Adblock Also available in not so good quality on YouTube
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New ways of being open
I've done a guest post for Ken Udas over at Penn State. It's called Exploring new ways of being open, and sets out some of the evolution of the term 'open' in education, from the Open University's perspective. But more importantly, it contains a Billy Bragg quote, so go take a look.
