January 7th, 2010
Get Back Up, Nick Vujicic
This was embedded on the Four Hour Workweek web site and is incredible.
2009 Edublog Awards
December 9th, 2009
The Edublog awards celebrate edubloggers, twitterers, podcasters, video makers, online communities, wiki hosts and other web based users of educational technology.
They are voted on by and for the community.
My nominations are limited because I find I’m reading fewer and fewer blogs. If I can subscribe via email, blogs get my attention. If not, I might glance at my rss feeds in iGoogle, chances are not so much any more. Am going to put the subscribe via email option on my blog ASAP.
My nominations are:
Best individual tweeter – Middle Class Girl - http://twitter.com/middleclassgirl Funny, informative, warm-hearted, unashamedly herself and never, ever boring.
Best group blog - The people I follow on Twitter – http://twitter.com/kerryank/following my first stop for resources, support, conversation and news.
Best resource sharing blog: Stephen Downes OL Daily http://www.downes.ca/ He sends it out via email and it’s part of my daily ritual.
Most influential tweet / series of tweets / tweet based discussion I’ve had so many this year I can’t pick. Okay, if I had to it would be #edayz09
Best educational tech support blog: Three Green Eggs - three cheers for an interactive script creator for virtual worlds to help those of us who aren’t programmers – http://www.3greeneggs.com/autoscript/
Best educational use of video / visual: Torley Linden is my video tut hero – an educator to tens of thousands whose style and delivery are unique and effective – http://torley.com
Best educational wiki: Second Life Wiki http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Main_Page Linden Labs has riled me quite a lot this year with stupid, community-destroying policies but this wiki, built by the SL community and insiders is a support and information resource I constantly tap into.
Best educational use of a social networking service: Allison Miller aka @theother66 She rocks Twitter and Facebook for education! http://twitter.com/theother66
Best educational use of a virtual world: Kyle Gomboy for Reaction Grid. Setting up Open Sim on a grid then keeping out the porn and violence so educators can thrive. Go Kyle, Chris, Felix and team! http://reactiongrid.com/
Lifetime achievement: Joanna McKay – for her work in Second Life and other virtual spaces, her graciousness in the face of adversity, her generosity in donating time and space to educators with ideas – http://jokay.com.au
e-Sofa for Education.au Estate
December 8th, 2009
In creating assets for Education.au’s virtual world activities, copyright is always front of mind for me. Over the years, any virtual world texture that has been released with open permissions has been recycled and re-used so often that it’s almost impossible to know where it originated and who owns the copyright. Are patterns in rugs or carpets copyright? What about plaids? (Burberry seems to think so.) I know material patterns can be, so taking a photo of the material that makes up your favourite outfit and using that as a texture for a virtual world could be a copyright or IP violation.
So I created a texture for a signature sofa for Education.au using the unique “E” in our logo described as “a unique, hand-drawn signature”. I used our corporate colours (as close to them as I could get using Open Sim), an open script for the sit animation and the result is pictured here.
Covering eDayz09 – today’s coverage/tomorrow’s schedule
November 12th, 2009First up I’ll provide the schedule for live audio streaming and CoveritLive blog chatting for tomorrow (Friday the 13th):
All you have to do is go to the home page of the eDayz conference: http://edayz.org
All times in Australian Central Daylight time – half an hour behind the Eastern States – if you’re from somewhere else, here is a great site for time conversion (use Australia – South Australia – Adelaide as your starting point) http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html
- 830-845am Sound checks – your voluntary participation much appreciated
- 9am Welcome from Marlene and summary of Day one from Frankie Forsyth
- 920-1005am Nancy White keynote “Why shouldn’t “do” community or why not for learning?
- 10:05 to 10:35am Julian Ridden – Adding Variety to your Vanilla Moodle
We’ll then break our coverage until after lunch.
120pm Nancy White – Community and Learning: Going Deeper
205-245pm Michael Coghlan – E-learning: What’s on the Horizon
Looking forward to more good conversations and idea sharing!
I’m covering the conference using CoveritLive and Ustream (Ustream’s chat tool needs work IMHO). As a backup I’m taking a feed out from the board to a recording device that will allow for quick audio turn around. I have Audacity set up ready to add a pre-recorded introduction to recorded audio and the LAME MP3 converter add on for Audacity to output MP3s. Filezilla handles uploads.
I also have Tweetchat set up with my conference hashtag because there may be times I don’t want a Twitter feed feeding into my Coverit Live coverage (people use one conference tag for multiple sessions). I can then copy and paste session-related Tweets from Tweetchat to CoveritLive.
TWO laptops for conference coverage.
Laptop 1: Feeding outUstream. PERIOD. Learned that I need to hit Pause button on the home page of the Ustream site because it seemed to auto play which caused echo.
Laptop 2:Although both laptops have the exact same software and web sites set up and ready to go, Laptop 2 is the one I use for CoveritLive, to monitor the conference home page where I have the Ustream widget embedded, to monitor TweetChat for related Tweets in sessions where I’ve disabled the Twitter hashtag feeding into Cover it Live as well as having the slide images to upload to Coverit Live
I have to admit that I am selective about which slides I upload because there is NO bulk upload tool in Coverit Live at this writing and it’s TEDIOUS. Plus, the way people use slides differs so vastly. My fav presenters have uploaded their slides to slideshare and I can just throw a link in at the start of their sessions…
Finally,KUDOS to the staff at Gilles Plains TAFE . They and the infrastructure here are doing a far better job than larger and more high profile venues. Thanks everyone and look forward to catching up with you online tomorrow on Friday the 13th!
WWI Sim in Second Life
November 9th, 2009
A colleague and I explored a Second Life destination dedicated to sharing the poetry and history of WWI. It included various stops along the way to listen to audio and watch slide shows. It was very well done.
My colleague observed that as an observer, it didn’t feel immersive to her and that she was doubtful that even as a participant that it could stand alone to convey the depth of tragedy and the context of WWI. I agreed with her that no virtual world simulation could stand alone as a delivery tool, but as a supplement could be powerful. I would still want kids in my life to see Gallipoli and read a powerful novel like Ben Elton’s “The First Casualty”. My colleague also observed that delivery method was a matter of personal taste and comfort as well.
Lunchtimes like this make me feel very lucky…