School Tools - Class of Web 2.0

Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1: Follow the link above and be prepared to be intrigued, overwhelmed and maybe you'll find something useful... a valuable resource for students, teachers, and school administrators...a compilation of Web 2.0 products grouped into two main categories: “Tools”; and “Office Applications”. Some more specific services include: organizers, gradebooks, research tools, document managers, diagrams, and more.

Create, share, post, earn from videos

Brightcove enters the game- and webcast video takes new turn on the web - the connected web.

Contribute and view your video creation on the Brightcove site or create your own video "station" page in Brightcove or syndicate Brightcove's video offerings to third-party Web sites (blogs and more) offer your videos as paid downloads or streamed for free, with ads. Brightcove will sell ads and pool them among its customers, or it will plug in commercials that content creators sell themselves.
“Launch a business in our system in a week,” said Brightcove's founder and CEO, Jeremy Allaire, who formerly was chief technical officer at “Flash” graphics creator Macromedia Inc. before it was acquired by Adobe Systems Inc."

The concept...Back in the spring of 2004, a couple of us dreamed up the future of television. We dreamt of an open model for TV, fashioned on the architecture of the Web. We saw a world where there were no gatekeepers, but rather a web-like distribution network that could create a marketplace for video distribution. In this new world of video and rich media colliding with the Internet, we envisioned that content creators and media owners would be in control -- that they could directly reach consumers, and could tap the incredible power of the web to match their content to a global, fragmented audience that was incessantly clicking from site to site, from search to search. We thought, how could we help enable and organize this imminent chaos? A lot of existing models and ideas inspired us, including eBay for it's open, self-service and democratized commerce platform, Google for it's ability to organize chaos, and create value through every node of every website on the Internet, and even Comcast and DirectTV, who in their own way have created expanding distribution networks that have contributed to the fragmentation of TV that is underway, while providing platforms that content owners could rely on to reach consumers.

Prof gets funding for virtual Shakespeare world

Reuters/Second Life » Prof gets funding for virtual Shakespeare world: "Prof gets funding for virtual Shakespeare world
Wed Oct 18, 2006 10:10pm PDT
By Adam Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Oct 18 (Reuters) - Indiana University Professor Edward Castronova has made a name for himself as an economist who studies virtual worlds. Now he’s been awarded a US$240,000 grant to create one himself, based on the world of William Shakespeare.
“What we plan to do is have people encounter the texts in Shakespeare and ideas in the text at many points within a really fun, multiplayer game, so without even knowing it, they gradually are learning more about the bard’s work,” said Castronova, (right) author of “Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games.”
But Arden, Castronova’s planned world, will have a hidden purpose beyond teaching: he plans to use it as a Petri dish for testing out economic theories by creating controlled experiments within the game’s population.
“You have two randomly selected populations and do a policy variation in just one of them,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. “What if (Karl) Marx had been able to say ‘Hey, let’s try out communism, we’ll set up two worlds and in one the workers will own the means of production, and in the other they won’t, and we’ll see what happens to equality and growth and all these things we care about.”
It’s a strategy that could give social scientists unprecedented ways to test out their theories.
“If we set up parallel worlds and get people distracted to go hunt the dragons or something, behind the scenes we can run little experiments that they may not necessar"

Sloodle - 3D Learning Management System

Sloodle - 3D Learning Management System: "SLoodle is a project to integrate the VLE platform Moodle with the 3D world of Second Life. Imagine a Moodle course that, if you wanted, could turn into a proper 3D interactive classroom with all your Moodle resources available to your students in the virtual world. "

It had to happen - the creation of a v-classroom. take the 3D artefacts of second life and integrate into an open source LMS and voila - the v-classroom.

IBM eyes move into Second Life v-business

Reuters/Second Life » IBM eyes move into Second Life ‘v-business’: "Computer services giant IBM has plunged into Second Life at the urging of its “metaverse evangelists” Roo Reynolds and Ian Hughes, using it as a location for meetings, training and recruitment. But the company is also eyeing revenue opportunities that could have it vying with Second Life design firms to bring real-world businesses into the virtual realm.
“E-business was a strategy for us, why not v-business?” said Reynolds, known in-world as Algernon Spackler, at the “My So-Called Second Life” conference in London on Tuesday. “I don’t mean to be competitive with Rivers Run Red or Electric Sheep, but just like we set up a bricks and mortar business online, we could integrate a company’s services in a virtual world.”'Integration with services, integration with data — exactly what we helped people do back in the days of e-business, that’s sort of what I envision us doing,” he said. “Mind you, I’m an evangelist, not a strategist, but if I had to guess that’s where we’re going.”
IBM has embraced Second Life to an extent unmatched by any other major company — it has more than 230 employees spending time in-world, and it owns some half-dozen islands. Some are open to the public, but most are private, with restricted access for the public."

NonProfit Approach for City WiFi

From Wireless Toronto - Following Philadelphia and Washington D.C., Boston appears poised to take the non-profit route to providing “civic bandwidth”.... more and more cities seem to be recognizing that relying on private (profit-oriented) providers may be counterproductive to genuinely addressing “digital divide” issues.

Richard O’Bryant from the Center for Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University has emphasized that there are some key issues that must be considered, lest Boston (or any other city considering public Wi-Fi) end up in a “we built it but noone came” scenario.

According to O’Bryant, these issues (and recommendations for addressing them) include:

1) policy makers should refrain from the temptation of the city becoming an Internet or quasi-Internet service provider. The service should be attached to institutions and entities that will not be so readily subject to changes in leadership and leadership ideologies and priorities.

2) build the system as a public and private partnership. However, the process should be a bottom-up instead of top-down approach. In particular, identify community level individuals and groups to develop specific community needs assessments and gauge, (i.e. through polling/surveys), what the expected utilization rates might be.

3) policy makers should also be prepared to inform and train residents, specifically those technologically challenged, on how to make meaningful use of their new found wireless Internet service.

O’Bryant’s recommendations are right on, and are good starting points for any plan of this nature…

Non-Profit may Run Boston Wi-Fi Network

Associated Press BOSTON — The city is considering an unusual approach to creating a citywide, low-cost wireless Internet network: putting a non-profit organization, rather than a private service provider, in charge of building and running the system. A City of Boston Wireless Task Force Report released Monday recommended that Mayor Thomas Menino assign an as-yet unidentified non-profit to raise the $16-million to $20-million (U.S.) in private money that the city estimates it will need to build and begin running the Wi-Fi network. Other cities have generally relied on a single private contractor to assume up-front costs and financial risk for a chance to expand its business. Although Boston’s strategy depends on the willingness of foundations and businesses to come forward with cash donations, officials believe having an existing or newly formed non-profit in charge is the best way to ensure the project meets its civic goals and steers clear of special interests.

TheStar.com - How long will Toronto's wireless network be free?

Toronto gets it right, then wrong - yes it is wifi as a public service using publicly paid for infrastructure but no they shouldn't be charging a fee back to the taxpayer - Another missed opportunity. Graham Longford, a post-doctoral research fellow in the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, and a co-investigator with the Community Wireless Infrastructure Research Project (CWIRP)and Andrew Clement,professor in the Faculty of Information Studies, U of T, and a co-investigator with CWIRP wrote the article the snippet below is from, see full article here:

...We believe the commercialization of THT's WiFi service wastes a golden opportunity for the city to be truly innovative, and violates Toronto Hydro's public interest obligations as a city-owned utility. That city council and Mayor David Miller have given their blessing to THT's approach makes this an issue for political debate.

Utopia Municipal Fiber Network Lo cost Hi speed in US

From Sascha Meinrath - UTAH - UTOPIA is an 14-city consortium serving hundreds of thousands of people. As UTOPIA user, Brad Thurber sums up, ""The speeds are insane... We've been on the system for a month now and there has been absolutely no down time." According to Utopia's website, "As a minimum, UTOPIA will deliver 100 Mbps of bandwidth to every connected home and 1 Gbps of bandwidth to every business." Services are already available at 10Mbps for $39.95/month , 15Mbps for $44/month , or get Internet, Phone, and Cable services for around $90-120/month .

Lest you think it's just the independent ISPs getting in on the act, AT&T plans on the Utopia network that are an order of magnitude better than their regular service plans . In other words, UTOPIA is demonstrating that municipal ownership of network infrastructure dramatically lowers customer pricing while, at the same time, providing faster services.

Broadband rates cheaper in Europe

Published on saschameinrath.com
US vs. EU -- Broadband Rate Comparison. AKA, More Evidence of US Market Failure.
Created 2006-09-11 11:45
More and more European cities are getting into the Municipal broadband game, and they're blowing the doors off of US pricing models. How does this compare with US multi-megabit broadband rates? As it so happens, I have been looking for multi-megabit broadband for several community organizations I work with -- here's quotes from late July from AT&T for their new, supposedly innovative, "Opt-E-Man" services:
3 Year - 20 Mb - $3,300 monthly with a $0 nonrecurring5 Year - 20 Mb - $2,950 monthly with a $0 nonrecurring
3 Year - 10 Mb - $2,600 monthly with a $0 nonrecurring5 Year - 10 Mb - $2,450 monthly with a $0 nonrecurring
In other words, for 20% to 40% of the speed of what Paris is offering, I have to pay roughly 7000% to 9400% more. Let's let that sink in for a moment -- how could we end up with a system that provides a tiny fraction of the service for mark-ups that are tens of times more? Clearly the EU is doing something right that the US is failing miserably at -- and it's now spreading rapidly throughout the EU. Meanwhile, innovative projects across the US are being choked off by exorbitantly priced broadband services. One has to wonder, how many of these examples have to crop up before we start taking telecom companies to task for their continuing failure to maintain competitive pricing with the rest of the industrialized world.
[UPDATE1] A vigilant reader pointed out that one could get the "impression that municipalities are going to be the entities that offer FTTH in the EU. That is not necessarily true. For example, in the Paris situation that you mention, I believe that the provider will be a private entity. Also, there has been a lot of recent attention focused on the sensational take rates in the FTTH project in Hillegon, Netherlands, where the provider of FTTH is also private entity. Otherwise, keep up the great work." Very good point!

Municipal Wi fi -why not?

"Let There Be Wi-Fi" by Robert McChesney and John Podesta:

U.S. consumer pays more for less - and the great divide grows:

"American residents and businesses now pay two to three times as much for slower and poorer quality service than countries like South Korea or Japan. Since 2001, according to the International Telecommunications Union, the United States has fallen from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband penetration. Thomas Bleha recently argued in Foreign Affairs that what passes for broadband in the United States is “the slowest, most expensive and least reliable in the developed world.” While about 60 percent of U.S. households do not subscribe to broadband because it is either unavailable where they live or they cannot afford it, most Japanese citizens can access a high-speed connection that's more than 10 times faster than what's available here for just $22 a month. (Japan is now rolling out ultra-high speed access at more than 500 times what the Federal Communications Commission considers to be “broadband” in this country.)"

Moyers on America . The Net @ Risk | PBS

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/moyersonamerica/net/neutrality.html

There was an excellent Bill Moyers show on PBS last night, and one segment of it dealt with the net neutrality issue. It is excellent and I highly reccomend that people visit Bill Moyer's site and check out the videos. It is a scary time for the voice of the ordinary citizen, at risk as the telcos and cable companies seek to control the internet highway. We are at a major crossroads. For a short while we had a movement toward equality of voice through the web and the connections we can make. Now our short attempt at flattening the earth and chipping away at the controlling hierarchies is at risk - because net neutrality is at risk...

"So why "neutrality?" Because since the Internet's inception, everyone, every site, regardless of the data load, has been given equal-i.e., neutral-treatment by providers, their content transmitted at equal speed. Net neutrality advocates argue that changing this system will give unfair advantage to deep-pocketed content providers, while start-ups, small businesses, and nonprofits who can't pay the piper will be unduly punished. The telecom proponents of the tiered system insist that they need these new fees (in addition to those paid by their users) to recoup the costs of updating their networks to handle all the new data-heavy content. Many also object to the additional government regulation and involvement that would be necessary to enforce net neutrality.
Neutrality supporters worry that without regulation, there's no guarantee that some traffic would move over the net at all. In other words, neutrality supporters say that only with regulation would internet users be guaranteed access to whatever they want to read, listen to, or watch online, and that without regulation, large telecom companies could block or censor things they don't like without consequence.
This past summer, Congress took up the issue. Following a huge lobbying campaign by both sides, including millions spent by the cable and phone corporations, the House voted down an amendment to the Act that would have made the Federal Communications Commission responsible for enforcing neutrality. In the Senate, a similar amendment was defeated in committee, but net neutrality legislators managed to table a vote on the telecommunications bill indefinitely in hopes that they can somehow force the issue back to the forefront."

Another example of how money can buy the votes of a democratic nation.

Creating Online Communities

What is a community? What is a weblog? How can they be used together? Nancy White has done a great series of postings discussing these issues. Of particular interest is her taxonomy of three types of blogs - single blog centric, topic centric and community centric. Terry Anderson expands on her discussion to explore his relationship with Elgg and his use of Elgg to "generate community" in the MDE program. I am attempting a similar activity with a class of graduate studnts in the Masters in Communications Technology program here at the faculty of Extension at University of Alberta. The commitment of individuals to the "community" is demonstrated by their attention to the blog postings; if they don't come and contribute, there is no vitality to the community, in fact it isn't a community. Without vibrant and ongoing interactive exchanges there is nothing but stale blogs.

CeLEA Free Book Case Studies in E Learning

As announced by CIDER through Terry Anderson In Plan to Learn: Case Studies in eLearning Project Management, edited by Canadian eLearning Enterprise Alliance (CeLEA)/Alliance des Enterprises en eLearning (ACEeL) – http://www.celea-aceel.ca has just released a new free ebook entitled Plan to Learn: Case Studies in eLearning Project Management. This book edited by Beverley Pasian and Gary Woodill, presents authors from both the corporate and educational sectors in eight different countries, to provide a total of 22 case studies of elearning project implementations. The full book is available in PDF format here Congatulations and thanks to CELIA and its members for this access (open access) and significant contribution.

White-Collar Workers Unite!

Barbara Ehrenreich and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have joined forces to create United Professionals, a nonprofit networking agency for “unemployed, underemployed, and anxiously employed” white-collar workers. The idea for the organization grew out of the research for her latest book, "Bait and Switch." Ehrenreich, intending to covertly enter and expose the degrading and volatile world of corporate employment, spent nearly a year searching for a job through websites, networking events, career coaches, only to discover it was worse than she thought.
This organization is for "the 20-somethings who come out of college with an average of $20,000 in debt and are stuck in low-wage jobs. And this is not what they expected with a college degree. The other group is people in their late 40s and beyond who find that they are suddenly judged as too old to be in the work force.”

The goal is to form a voting bloc, or at least a coalition of interests. “It’s not just a matter for the poor, the chronically poor,” Ehrenreich explains. “The insecurity and instability of the middle class is part of the picture and we want those middle-class people to see that things like universal health insurance and a better safety net are in their immediate self-interest. I think we can build a majority movement for economic justice in this country."

Friendship declines as networked society grows?

blog*on*nymity - blogging On the Identity Trail:
A recent study published in The American Sociological Review suggests that "Americans have fewer close friends and confidants than they did 20 years ago"

Odd that the decline in friendship in the last two decades has coincided with the rise of the networked society. Are we losing close friendship as we cultivate less intimate on-line relationships?

Online Rights Canada

Online Rights Canada: "Online Rights Canada (ORC) is a grassroots organization that promotes the public's interest in technology and information policy. We believe that Canadians should have a voice in copyright law, access to information, freedom from censorship, and other issues that we face in the digital world. Join us by using the form on your right to sign up for email updates."

Patents on recipes?

Keep recipes free -- megnut.com
Now I haven't seen copyright notices on my restaurant ordered food. Then again cheesburgers and hot turkey sandwiches are rather "common" fare. But apparently plagiarized recipes, and copy cat presentations are a concern, and addressed in various degrees of indignation. But do we need to slap on a copyright tag to a new soup and charge licensing fees to those chefs who want to make it?

Second Life in growth stage

Second Life now has a population of over 800,000, and more than a hundred of them are earning a real-world, full-time living selling virtual land, clothes, or offering virtual services, notably sex…. Major League Baseball, Harvard University, American Apparel Inc., Telus, have opened operations in "Second Life,". Anshe Chung, a virtual character created by a Chinese-German businesswoman netted more than $100,000 last year trading and leasing land in desirable "Second Life" locations.
How does Linden, the company behind Second Life make money?
Land is limited. It costs $10 a month to own 500 virtual square meters, in addition to the one-time cost of purchasing developed real estate from speculators. The company also makes commissions from operating "Second Life's" currency exchange. "Linden dollars" trade at a fluctuating rate against the U.S dollar — right now it's about US$1 to L$280.
Users own the intellectual property rights to the things they design there. That has attracted tech-savvy designers who craft landscapes of stunning beauty and build objects of infinite cunning.
Apparently most folks just want a nice home with a beach and waterfront in a warm climate. At least they can afford it in Second Life - for now.

Student Mindset -hardening of the references

For the past eight years, a professor and public affairs director at Beloit College in Wisconsin have prepared a Mindset List for the school's professors, clergy and other faculty so they might understand the "world view" of incoming freshmen. "[The list] is an important reminder to faculty, some of whom are only a Ph.D. older than their students, that what we call 'hardening of the references' can set in quickly. It is meant to be thought-provoking and fun, yet accurate."
Anyone want to begin to Canadianize the list? Let's see, if you were born in 1989 - "Alberta has always been an economic boom province?" "Ralph Klein has always been Premier" "Canada has never been to war" (oops that has changed)

CLASS OF 2007 MINDSET LIST®
1. Ricky Nelson, Richard Burton, Samantha Smith, Laura Ashley, Orson Welles, Karen Ann Quinlan, Benigno Aquino, and the U.S. Football League have always been dead.
2. They are not familiar with the source of that “Giant Sucking Sound.”
3. Iraq has always been a problem.
4. “Ctrl + Alt + Del” is as basic as “ABC.”
5. Paul Newman has always made salad dressing.
6. Pete Rose has always been a gambler.
7. Bert and Ernie are old enough to be their parents.
8. An automatic is a weapon, not a transmission.
9. Russian leaders have always looked like leaders everyplace else.
10. The snail darter has never been endangered.
11. There has always been a screening test for AIDS.
12. Gas has always been unleaded
13. They never heard Howard Cosell call a game on ABC.
14. The United States has always had a Poet Laureate
15. Garrison Keillor has always been live on public radio and Lawrence Welk has always been dead on public television.
16. Their families drove SUVs without “being fuelish.”
17. There has always been some association between fried eggs and your brain.
18. They would never leave their calling card on someone’s desk.
19. They have never been able to find the “return” key.
20. Computers have always fit in their backpacks.
21. Datsuns have never been made.
22. They have never gotten excited over a telegram, a long distance call, or a fax.
23. The Osmonds are just talk show hosts.
24. Undergraduate college athletes have always been a part of the NBA and NFL draft.
25. They have always “grazed” for food.
26. Three-point shots from “downtown” have always been a part of basketball.
27. Test tube babies are now having their own babies.
28. Stores have always had scanners at the checkout.
29. The Army has always driven Humvees.
30.Adam and PC Junior computers had vanished from the market before this generation went online.
31.The Statue of Liberty has always had a gleaming torch.
32.They have always had a PIN number.
33.Banana Republic has always been a store, not a puppet government in Latin America.
34.Car detailing has always been available
35.Directory assistance has never been free.
36.The Jaycees have always welcomed women as members
37.There has always been Lean Cuisine.
38.They have always been able to fly Virgin Atlantic.
39.There have never been dress codes in restaurants.
40.Doctors have always had to deal with “reasonable and customary fees” and patients have always had controls placed on the number of days they could stay in a hospital.
41.They have always been able to make photocopies at home.
42.Michael Eisner has always been in charge of Disney.
43.They have always been able to make phone calls from planes.
44.Yuppies are almost as old as hippies.
45.Rupert Murdoch has always been an American citizen.
46.Strawberry Fields has always been in New York.
47.Rock and Roll has always been a force for social good.
48.Killer bees have always been swarming in the U.S.
49.They have never seen a First Lady in a fur coat.
50.Don Imus has always been offending someone in his national audience.

Lifelong learning - as a prison sentence

Ulises Ali Majias has poked a hole in my thinking about social software. It will take time for me to find a way to put the synapses back together. To quote:

"This is the paradox of social media that has been bothering me lately: an 'empowering' media that provides increased opportunities for communication, education and online participation, but which at the same time further isolates individuals and aggregates them into masses —more prone to control, and by extension more prone to discipline." For example he quotes Deluze (Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations, 1972-1990. New York: Columbia University Press.):

"In disciplinary societies you were always starting all over again (as you went from school to barracks, from barracks to factory), while in control societies you never finish anything... school is replaced by continuing education and exams by continuous assessment. It's the surest way of turning education into a business. (1995, p. 179)"

Ulises goes on to surmise that this perspective "puts a sinister spin on 'life-long' learning. The constant student is not one who engages in an ongoing perfection of the self, but one who is constantly assessed according to the performance standards of a service economy. Thanks to distance education, e-learning and technologies such as the Learning Management System (LMS), education becomes something that can be delivered anytime and anywhere, and which —more importantly— can be used to monitor performance throughout the 'learning' career of the individual. Thus, assessment-based education helps reconcile control and discipline in society by helping to effect, in the case of those who fail, a transition from controlled subject to disciplined object."

perhaps I am not the agent of positive change I've thought myself to be. Maybe I'm just an unwitting agent working toward the increased control and discipline of the populace.

Killswitch - your system is dead!

� What Microsoft still isn�t saying about WGA and Volume Activation 2.0 All about Microsoft ZDNet.com

Awww c'mon, this is just getting out of hand. The next generation of Microsoft products will be checking your system for any unauthorized software and if detected you have x amount of days to rectify or system will be shut down! Big brother in the belly of your beast waiting to slap you down. Couldn't Microsoft make better use of time and resources - likee working on making their products better, more secure AS A PRODUCT?

"The Software Protection Platform, according to a Microsoft Volume Activation 2.0 FAQ that I saw recently, includes the following: “An Activation Service, client services and API that ship in Vista, and tools and technologies designed to better protect software through stronger security measures.” What kinds of code-protection technologies are we talking? “Code protection technologies such as tamper resistance, code obfuscation, and anti-reverse engineering measures have been considerably strengthened for Vista. The SP Platform has enabled Vista to improve software security, including new product activation technologies and policies for Retail, Volume, and OEM customers.”

Teen learner as teacher

The Thinking Stick � The official release of Teentek.com Jeff teaches in Shangai - or does he? - that is, his students are teaching and he's learning, and we are all impressed! Middle school kids building a drupal site, creating a brand and a presence, uisng tools to create, share, mix, and planning a marketing plan to generate enough dollars for pizza money! Teentek - which brings us to a dileema for educators and parents - first, we have to allow experiementation, creativity, and we need to give credit where credit is due. Forget assessing content knowledge, let's assess based on creativity, initiative, teamwork (virtual and physical), and building connectivity!

K-12 is coming to get you

Think of it:
1. a free online conference
2. it deals with the future and the present; kids today are experimenting with social software at a pace that outstrips us
3. the pace of their experimentation does not bode well for future educators - if through K-12 these kids are immersed in a world of "connections" then they get to university and are stuck within a walled space with people they did not choose to socialize with listening to one person spouting out one view of the world as they see it?
4. catch some - if you can

When
Monday, October 23, 2006 - Friday, November 3, 2006
WhereOnline Conferences - Workshops
On the InternetWorld Wide Web, World Wide Web
(Yahoo! Maps, Google Maps)
CategoryEducation
DescriptionThe “K12 Online Conference” is for teachers, administrators and educators around the world interested in the use of Web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice! This year’s conference is scheduled to be held over two weeks, Oct. 23-27 and Oct. 30- Nov. 3 and will include a preconference keynote. The conference theme is “Unleashing the Potential.”For more details, please refer to:The conference announcement postThe Submission guidelines postOur growing FAQ pagePlease share this event with other educators you know. Everyone is invited, admission is absolutely free!
Homepagehttp://k12onlineconference.org/

Kid Flattens World

Will Richardson link... the power of social software - a young boy in U.S. creates a video series about the importance of wearing seat belts - calling himself Buckle Boy and publishes to YouTube. Then kids in Shanghai want to raise seat belt awareness, check resources on web and discover Buckle Boy. Kids love it - Buckle Boy makes special video for Shanghai kids and also line up opportunity to travel personally to visit.

As Will aptly puts it "Buckle Boy saves lives, teaches kids AND flattens world"!

Kansas State 6,000 Podcast

Kansas City infoZine News - Kansas State University Launches World's Largest Course Podcasting Initiative - USA

Kansas State U is creating 6,000 recorded classes using Tegrity campus lecture capture tool that will be available for podcasting. While I applaud the desire to make learning more flxible, more mobile, more in tune with the technology the students have and use - still...are we walking into another "capture the classroom" approach? I hope not. We don't want to use new technology to recreate old world teaching - like the LMS electronic classroom. I would hope we might be wiser about this by now...then again...

Turnitin vs. Student Intellectual Property Rights

Ed-Tech Insider: Turnitin vs. Student Intellectual Property Rights

So how did turnitin get all those asignments and papers to make comaparisons and identify plagiarism? Well apparently they were not submitted by the original authors. Tom Hoffman tells us about the students at McLean High School who have not only twigged onto this practice but recognize that is a hypocritical and illegal use of their intelectual property and are taking action!

PC on a stick, finger computing

moka5 www.moka5.com

A true anytime, anywehere, multiple incident of a PC environment - and all you need is a USB. This could be a really big change in everyday computing opportunities - now my x86 computer is worth something other than a paperweight!