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Sunday, December 17, 2006 |
Second Life is starting to grab me.  I[base ']ve kinda sat on the fence with Second Life. But really, there[base ']s no arguement about it. SL is an intensly engaging and inspiring space to be working in. Ever since the Future of Learning in a Networked World and talking more with Jo Kay and Sean FitzGerald I can see it more clearly.
With surprisingly little effort, IT here opened the communication port to allow access into SecondLife. Gotta hand it to the IT crew here at Otago Poly, for all my moaning about the profession generally (mostly legacy attitude from a gestapo like IT department in NSW DET), they have mostly been very responsive in taking off filters, allowing me to install software and try out things like Second Life.
Anyway, today I pulled a group of Occupational Therapy lecturers and others, to meet and watch as I met Jo in Second Life. In an intense hour of moving around, riding a balloon, visiting Harvard Law[base ']s SL school, and a Medical Library, not to mention bringing up a heap of Youtube videos, related websites, wikis and blogs, I think the group began to see how all this stuff can tie in together. (Links follow)
But, the usual overwhelmed feeling still pervades - that I fear will paralise anyone from moving into trialing out new practices with this teachnology. I[base ']m ready, give me a project, I[base ']d like to get iinto this I think[sigma]
Great links:
Jo Kay[base ']s BlogHud - where she is intergrating Blogging in with SecondLife
Jo Kay[base ']s Flickr photos - a bunch of screengrabs from Jo[base ']s SL experiences
SAE in Second Life - an excellent wiki page by Sean and Jo to support their presentations about edu use of SL
NMC Campus: Seriously Engaging - Youtube vid
Second Life Medical Library - an amazing range of information in a virtual library!
A Masters in Digital Media course blog - that also has a campus in Second Life
Cyber One - Harvard Law course that has a blog, wiki and Second Life campus
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license.
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[Learn Online]
10:33:02 PM  Google It!.
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Give an Internet Freedom Disk. An anonymous reader, perhaps the blogger himself, writes to tell us about a new blog aimed at getting non-techies excited over the idea of running from a Live CD. The blogger doesn't call it that, preferring instead "Internet Freedom Disk"; Linux is never mentioned. The submitter adds: "This is just a great gift to drop on your non-geek friends and potentially wake up a sleeping giant." Cheap, last-minute, and you can make them yourself. The blogger isn't selling anything; he provides links to Ubuntu and Knoppix Live CDs. Or pick your favorite.[Slashdot]
7:45:39 PM Google It!.
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Wengo Releases Flash Softphone For Web Pages. bolsh writes "Wengo, a French company specializing in VoIP and instant messaging, and patron of the OpenWengo project (previously featured in Free Software magazine and here on Slashdot), has just released WengoVisio [~] a Flash softphone that you can download and embed in your Web page, to allow readers to call you when you're available through their browser, without downloading any software. (Disclaimer: I work for Wengo, on the OpenWengo project.) It's functionally cut down from the full Wengophone, but it's enough to be able to make a phone call in a Web page for the first time."[Slashdot] this could become a powerful networking tool --BL
4:15:53 PM Google It!.
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Adult Brains Grow From Specialist Use. Xemu writes "Researchers at University College of London's Institute of Neurology have discovered that taxi drivers grow more brain cells in the area associated with memory. Dr Eleanor Maguire says, 'We believe the brain increased in gray matter volume because of the huge amount of data memorized.' She warns against the use of GPS and says it will possibly affect the brain changes seen in this study. This research is the first to show that the brains of adults can grow in response to specialist use." London cabbies, unlike their American counterparts, have to learn the layout of streets and the locations of thousands of places of interest in order to get a license.[Slashdot]
4:08:52 PM Google It!.
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MacHeist "Week of Mac Developer" Causes Schism. ernesto99 writes "MacHeist began selling a software bundle of ten highly sought-after OS X applications last week with the stated goal of raising the profile of Mac shareware developers. 25% of the money brought in goes to charity. The bundle sale will go down as possibly the biggest success in Mac shareware history, as total revenues are approaching $650,000 after only six days. But some observers, including Daring Fireball's John Gruber, have called into question the ethics of MacHeist. MacHeist advertises itself as 'The Week of the Independent Mac Developer,' yet the MacHeist organizers stand to make vastly outsized gains relative to the very developers they have championed. Gruber calculates that MacHeist will record double, if not triple, the profits of all ten participating developers combined. (In fact the promotion has done so well that the promoter-to-developers profit ratio now stands at about four to one.) In an interview, Delicious Library developer Wil Shipley defends his involvement in MacHeist, saying that the publicity and reach of MacHeist has already paid him dividends. The whole affair has created a heated dialogue, resulting in a direct clash among some of the biggest names in the Mac community."[Slashdot]
4:06:16 PM Google It!.
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NY Times Tries to Untangle Analysts and Shills. twitter writes "The Register and others are examining a New York Times effort to eliminate bias from technology reporting by not echoing paid opinions. (Other coverage here.) They target Microsoft specifically. InfoWorld has an insightful summary of the two sides of this old debate. Fake think tanks, dubious sponsored research, and Astroturf are not considered but should be. Companies using these tactics deserve to be held at arm's length, but that's hard to do when the company is also a monopoly able to make or break any 'expert.' It would be refreshing to see the New York Times discover the FSF, opensource.org, EFF, and other sources of computing expertise."[Slashdot]
4:03:50 PM Google It!.
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Skype. Anything your phone can do, Skype can do better. Skype is wonderful. If you don't know what it is, look here. In addition to free computer-to-computer calls (with video and IM), you can call from computer to landline for next to nothing. You can make conference calls for up to five people. You can check a chronology of past calls and chats. You can set up group chats for up to 100 people. But wait, there's more... The Skype Plug-In for Firefox highlights phone numbers in emails and web pages. Click a highlighted number and Skype calls it for you. You can download code for a button that shows your status and gives one-click access to you. Skype 'My status' button http://www.skype.com/go/skypebuttons --> For $25, I bought a lifetime license to Skype add-on Pamela that lets me record calls as wav or mp3. It's also an answering machine, offline recorder, and voicemail manager. Skype 3.0 beta is now available, as is Pamela 3.0. Informal Learning Blog, December 17, 2006. [Conversation]
[Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]
4:01:05 PM Google It!.
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Moving from Furl to del.icio.us. I've been using Furl as a social bookmarking tool for a few years but the RSS feed has not worked since September 2006. I decided to try to transfer my Furl archive (+800) to del.icio.us. I used the export as Mozilla bookmarks function in Furl and then saved the page as an HTML file on my desktop. In del.icio.us, I used the import/upload function and uploaded the file. It worked quite well and saved my files with their tags. One glitch was that all of my imported bookmarks were marked private and I had to individually change the settings to public. The other problem was that del.icio.us only imported about 500 of the bookmarks. However, I have most of my bookmarks in del.icio.us and will be using it as my primary tool for sharing web pages because it seems to be more collaborative and the RSS feed works. Harold Jarche, December 17, 2006. [Conversation]
[Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Edu_RSS Most Recent - RSS old]
3:58:08 PM Google It!.
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© Copyright 2007 Bruce Landon.
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