January 30, 2007 • 10:15 AM
eLearn Magazine just publishes Stephen Downes comparison on online offerings form major institutions. In his article he refers to MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) that is available since 2002. A lot of institutions followed the concept of making their content online available for everybody who is interested in it. These junks of content have to be brought alive by the didactics that a teacher/professor uses to engage student in the learning process. Stephen Downes introduces the two termini “golden” and “green” model of OCW. The latter refers not only to online available learning materials, more so to complete online courses like the once from the Open University.
Filed under: eLearning , eLearning, learning materials, online course
January 29, 2007 • 11:54 PM
It’s time again for the BayCHI monthly program meeting. The meeting in February features Ed H. Chi from PARC and Scott Golder from HP Labs. Ed Chi will be talking about conflict and coordination in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. In the second part of the Program Scott Golder will be presenting results from a study of the behavior 4+ million users of the social network Facebook which is primarily used by college students.
Before the program I am volunteering to coordinate the pre-program dinner which is held at the Pro Bono Cafe Restaurant in Palo Alto. This is a great opportunity to meet the speakers before the talk and get a chance to get them, and other participants to know.
Filed under: BayCHI , BayCHI, case study, Social Networks, wikipedia
Usually I search the Internet with Google and tend to forget that there are other search engines out there that might return better results as Google does. Don’t get me wrong, I personally belief that Google is a great search engine that uses a very good (and very secret) algorithm to return an answer to a request. But there are a lot more search engines out there that do a good job and might be more specific for what you’re looking for. Charles Knight a search engine optimizer just publishes a list of 100 alternative search engines at Read/WriteWeb. Maybe you want to reconsider your personal search strategy after reviewing this comprehensive listing.
In addition to the top 100 alternative search engines there are many variations of search engines out there. For instance Alltheweb.com is owned by Yahoo and uses their database but represents the results differently. A good tool to compare search results from Google, MSN, and Yahoo is the search comparison toll from Dogpile. The nice thing about this tool is that the results are displayed in a graphic which illustrates pretty good how different search results can be when you fire up the above mentioned search engines.
Filed under: Search Engines , alternative, google, review, search engine, Search Engines, tools, top 100, web
January 27, 2007 • 7:31 PM
Marc Canter is the CEO of PeopleAggregator a website where you can create and run your own social network. You either can decide to run a social network on their webserver or you download the source code and run it on your own. Marc Canter strongly believes that the future does not lie in big gigantic social networks like MySpace. No, more so that there will be millions of networks that connect 25 to 150 people with each other, e.g. families and communities. A big plus about creating your own social network is that you determine what kind of content is displayed and what the rules are.
What I like about PeopleAggregator is that you own the data that you feed into it. Whenever you feel like you have to move on you can take it with you. Even though I have no MySpace account I think it will be difficult to take all my friends and content with me once I decided I want to move on.
Filed under: Social Networks, Web 2.0 , social network, Social Networks, tools, Web 2.0, webApp
January 26, 2007 • 10:51 AM
Did you ever wonder who is looking at the same website you do right now? There might be a solution for you out there which is called Zweitgeist (German for second spirit). You install a piece of software on your PC (Apple Macintosh is not yet supported), choose an avatar that represents you in your second, virtual life and voailà it shows up on every website you are looking at right now. This gives you the opportunity to meet other fellow surfers on the same website and communicate with them.
The concept is sort of like the one of Second Life. The difference is the existing World Wide Web is used as the virtual world instead of some “second” world developed by a company. What I like about this Web 2.0 Application is that it allows you to get in touch with people that have similar interests as you do.
I have to admit I have not fully explored Zweitgeist since I am working on a Mac and unfortunately it is not supported for now. If you had any experience with Zweitgeist already or try it out let me know how it worked for you? It could be a cool feature for people who run a blog and can directly and live interact with their site visitors.
Filed under: How-To, Social Networks, Web 2.0 , How-To, howto, social network, Social Networks, tools, Web 2.0, webApp
January 22, 2007 • 10:50 AM
I know, I know, there are a lot of trends and predictions being published and released right now. After all it is this time of the year to reflect on what happened and to predict what might be.
However, I just received the wwwtools for education newsletter with a nice assembly of “Trends from 2006, Projections for 2007… and Beyond“. Graeme Daniel put a nice list of notes and trends in education together. He split these different areas up into the following categories:
- Highlights: Technology in education, 2006,
- Technology 2006,
- Forecast for Technology, 2007,
- At the hardware trade shows,
- The iPhone – Rising Star of Macworld?
- More mobile and wireless trends,
- Converging technologies: Computers, TV, Video and Net,
- A mixed bag (e.g. Web 2.0, Nanotechnology),
- Just for fun, and
- Books.
Enjoy once again the trends of 2006 and predictions for 2007. If you want to sign up for the wwwtools for education newsletter you can do so by clicking here.
Filed under: Blogging, Technology, Web 2.0 , Blogging, Education, learning, predictions, Technology, trends, Web 2.0
January 21, 2007 • 9:17 PM
Bersin & Associates’ judges have made their choice in the Winter 2007 ELearning! Magazine and nominated companies that “… have demonstrated innovation and excellence in corporate learning“. The winners have been chosen in the following five categories:
- Operational program excellence,
- Leadership program excellence,
- Technology excellence,
- Organizational and management excellence, and
- Initiative Excellence.
Each category starts with a description of the criterion on which the decision is based upon. Winners range from General Motors Corp., Philips Medical Systems, Bellevue University till Saks, Inc..
In the same issue (page 23) Elliott Masie lists 7 Trends and Features on Learning “… that will morph the training function“. Well, I guess it is time again for some prediction that can be revisited to see if someone was right or wrong in their prediction of the future. However, Trend #2 (“Content becomes democratized”) isn’t really a NEW trend. Web 2.0 and the buzz about it is going on for quiet while now, and what is it all about? Right, among other things the creation of content on the web, e.g. Wikipedia.
Trend #7 is interesting: “Finding courses will be more important than creating courses”. I personally belief that the fulfillment of this trend lies not in the near future, if taken into consideration that we are talking about qualitative courses here that allow the learner to participate on a outcome based learning approach.
Filed under: Corporate Learning , awards, Corporate Learning, eLearning, trends
January 6, 2007 • 9:20 PM
Who does not know the Website Digg.com where you users can vote for stuff they found on the web and that they want to promote. I have to admit that I have never used Digg so far. However, I just ran across a website named Edumio which basically works like Digg.com only that it targets the academic and educational field. Edumio offers the opportunity to share resources and meet other who have a similar interest. Well, the later one I found already at the CiteULike website.
Using Google with the term “edumio” today resulted in 120 pages that mention/link the website. Nothing compared to the 35 million and more websites that have been returned when I googled for CiteULike. However, we’ll see what will happen to Edumio and there service to digg academic and educational resources/article. – Happy Digging!
Filed under: Social Networks, Web 2.0 , academic, Education, Social Networks, tools, Web 2.0
January 4, 2007 • 9:44 PM
It certainly is the time of the year, either at the end or beginning of one, where magazines, journals or whoever publishes a Top 10 list. Well, Time Magazine did so and published 25 Top 10 lists ranging from TV Shows, Web Sites, Books over Videos and Buzzwords till Breakups and Scandals. Does this leave any questions open for 2006? I personally hope so…
The Top 10 list of Websites starts with Prosper.com, which I never heart of before. Followed by Google Calendar on place number two. I am using this service from Google too and recently moved my whole personal schedule online. So far I am impressed since it allows me to share my appointment with friends and family members. The Online Video Guide closes the list of these Top 10.
Filed under: WorldWideWeb , google calendar, time magazine, top 10, WorldWideWeb
