Horizon Report 2009

Some good ideas here regarding web 2 and 3 technologies, mobile technologies etc.

Cool Stuff

Some cool stuff this week at http://sketchcast.com/
which is like a kind of Youtube for those who want to sketch and upload their creations. Another useful site is http://www.cueprompter.com/ which gives the illusion of a tele-prompter on your computer screen.
One final site is http://www.soungle.com/ which is a search engine for sound clips. If you want the sound of a car engine, a pig, cow or anything else, just search in soungle.

Weblogs Birthday

According to Wikipedia, the phrase "weblog" will celebrate its 10th birthday on 17th December 2007.

Have Blogs had their day?

There are some really good articles here about Social Networking in general.

Video of the week (or should I say 'month' given the infrequency of my postings)

Quiet time and assimilation

Quiet Time and Assimilation

Our students have returned from Reading Week, but surprisingly enough, very few of them have done any reading! I also reflected on my own practice over the past few weeks. In the space of a few weeks, I have downloaded hundreds of journal articles which might prove 'useful' in my daily work. On checking my My Documents folder, I had amassed gigabytes of articles; all with very fancy titles but have read none of it!! Today therefore, in one session, I decided to concentrate on analysing two quality articles (critique, compare and contrast). We sat around a large table, didn't switch on any computers; and generally had a face to face chat. Students then had some time out to read, as well as browse the online stuff that was previously uploaded to the Virtual Learning Environment (another source of contention! Too much information - and not enough time to read, assimilate and reflect). On checking my del.icio.us links, I note that a similar practice exists. I continually find a useful site, send it to del.icio.us for use later on, and never return to that source. Instead, I search out new sources, bookmark those, and the cycle perpetuates. Worse still, in my browsing activities, I get lost in the myriad of web links that lead me to more interesting stuff for which I had not originally intended searching. I started off searching for web statistics on http://www.cymru.com/index.html and before I knew it, I had clicked on a series of links that led me to information about hiding IP addresses and the Darker Web (which was much more interesting than the initial web statistics search. I know I ought to have studied computer forensics; but alas time is running out.)

Students' Blogs

It is always good to see students being pro-active in relation to utilising new technologies to advance their learning. Jonathan's blog at www.teachingsecondaryict.blogspot.com is one such example (but perhaps marketing may not be so happy about the UoC logo being used on a blog as there are strict 'rules' about what we can and cannot do with the official LOGO). Given that some of this work relates to the Internet Issues module and the Web Technologies module, it would be great if you were all happy to share your blog addresses and we could all perhaps provide feedback which may enhance their development. Let me know what you think. If staff and students from both University and Partnership schools shared their links etc, just think how much information we would generate on topics of mutual interest.
The Techie stuff - now that you have had the fun of creating your blog, try to look underneath the structure of the blog in relation to what is happening in terms of uploads, downloads, file compression, changes to HTML template, photobooth imaging for the avatar etc. Lots to think about here.

New video of the week

New video of the week comes from Teacher Tube this week.

New Students; new courses

Web links for new modules appear on the left side of this page. Students on Programming modules may find useful stuff in the Programming, Computing, ICT, Tutorials, tags. Internet Issues and Web Technologies, use the WebTechnologies tag. For teaching and learning modules, use a range from ICT, Computing, Teaching, Learning, Pedagogy, Theories, tags. Those doing Systems and Networking modules - select the Systems tags (more on Networks next semester). Former student work such as podcasts, examples of computer based models etc will be uploaded to
http://web.mac.com/smithspace/iWeb/Site/Podcast/Podcast.html