Wednesday, February 28, 2007

The 1% 'rule'

Here's an article that discusses the 1% rule of online content creation!

"It's an emerging rule of thumb that suggests that if you get a group of 100 people online then one will create content, 10 will "interact" with it (commenting or offering improvements) and the other 89 will just view it".

Sad but true - how can we get over the 1% threshold? Ideas?

Friday, February 23, 2007

SMS Post

Wireless 3G connectivity. Its great to have connectivity via wireless technology, enabling things like mobile blogging via sms!

Via Letmeparty.com

Create a free account with http://www.letmeparty.com , register your Blog address (e.g. http://puriri.unitecnology.ac.nz/wp/xmlrpc.php ) and your cellphone number, send a text message to +13128047068 , and you're mobile blogging!

Why bother?

“New mobile and context-aware technology can enable young people to learn by exploring their world, in continual communication with and through technology” (Sharples, 2005).

“A review of current practice suggests that mobile and wireless learning is the natural next step wherever institutions and practitioners have already adopted e-learning” (JISC, 2005b).

Sotillo (2003, p5) describes the pedagogical impact of ubiquitous wireless computing:

In summary, the advantages of wireless computing in education are ubiquity, portability, and flexibility for collaborative learning projects. Computer power everywhere and all the time means the ability—and the challenge—to integrate computers into every aspect of teaching, learning, and research. This represents a Copernican revolution in instruction, with the professor as guide and mentor rather than "fount of knowledge" or ultimate classroom authority.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

DipLSD Mobile Trials 2007

Got a really encouraging response to suggestions for setting up mobile web2 trials with the Diploma Landscape Design course at Unitec today!

Trial goals so far:

  1. Students purchase their own Palm Treo 680, and monthly data plan

  2. Regular weekly technology support/exploration sessions

  3. Tentative Dates:

    March 12, 19, 26?
    May 14, 21, 28

  4. Project culminates in eportfolio for Ellerslie Flowershow

  5. Setup COP with DipLSD staff

Monday, February 19, 2007

MOLTA Conference disappointing


MOLTA Conference
I was a bit stunned at the limited understanding of web2 technologies (over half the audience had not heard of RSS!) by conference attendees! Many of the presentations were out of date - promoting 3-4 year old technologies, and badly informed on the current state of wireless data in NZ! :-(
I was also frustrated by the persistence in developing institution specific applications - instead of using the fantastic web2 mobile applications tat are already available!!!

One of the exceptions was Selena Chans workon mobile eportfolios and web2 mashups, including the use of VOX. Interesting restyling of Moodle using 'Firebug' plugin for Firefox, to make it more mobile 'friendly'.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

WordPress

I've been experimenting with WordPress recently - and so far I'm quite impressed with its ease of setup and options, particularly the ability to associate 'static' pages with your main blog page. Thus you could almost use Wordpress as a basic website solution.


http://www.wordpress.com

Mobile plugin for wordpress available at http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Google Blogger Widget

Google have produced widgets for OSX for both Blogger & GMail! Cool.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Monday, February 05, 2007

Scratch All Future Conference Presentations on Web 2.0

Scratch All Future Conference Presentations on Web 2.0: "Scratch All Future Conference Presentations on Web 2.0
And maybe instead, we can get it with 5 minutes, no bullet points, no lecturing in Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us, a YouTube gem:

This comes from Digital Ethnography @ Kansas State University, ‘a working group of Kansas State University students and faculty dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography.’"



(Via CogDogBlog.)