"Are you a Washington, D.C., metro area non-profit organization ready to take the plunge into blogging? Are you confused, skeptical, or outright frustrated with the process?I'm just getting to know Ken, who is the editor for the new Corante Web Hub and he seems like a pretty smart guy. This looks like a great opportunity for NPO/NGO folks in the DC area of the US to climb on the blog-wagon.
Then Crash Course on Blogging is exactly what you need. This two-and-a-half hour seminar will demystify the technical and social aspects of blogging and get you on your way to increasing traffic to your static web site and connecting with current donors and would-be donors."
A gathering place for helpful info, tips and suggestions to help make email lists easier for both listowners and list members."
"Is it possible to have the sort of productive face-to-face connection or conversation that Ben M. and I had offline in an online world? And what can we, as bloggers, do to facilitate that?"
"the funniest part will probably be the backchannel, use it as you wish but please be nice to the speakers again, except Jason "With all that transpired, this is a great reminder about expectations -- and how they are always more of a wish than a reality! Is the intention that the conference backchannel is a place for the clever to strut their stuff? Funniness? I know I have enjoyed it that way (and being far less clever, caused me to "listen" more than "speak.") What is nice? Was that another sarcastic aside? (I can't tell from a text transcript.) Is the backchannel a place to make meaning with and around the podium presentation? To rip it apart? To agree in substance? To attack or belittle the presenter? Is it that the audience takes on the role of speaker?
"We're proud to announce that del.icio.us has joined the Yahoo! family. Together we'll continue to improve how people discover, remember and share on the Internet, with a big emphasis on the power of community. We're excited to be working with the Yahoo! Search team - they definitely get social systems and their potential to change the web. (We're also excited to be joining our fraternal twin Flickr!)The flikr twin bit is important here. There is a common DNA. The idea of easily assembled and remixed pieces, tied to the identity of a member. Keep that in mind. OK, lets take it a step further.
So, let me explain how we celebrated the end of class and the festive Christmas Season in MDE663 – a Masters of Distance Education degree course at Athabasca University.
The medium used was an audiographic webconferencing system (Elluminate.com) The fourteen participants were spread across Canada and one student was from Barbados and other from the United Arab Emirates (UAE)... The rest of us donned our party atire, filled our not virtual glasses and logged in for our usual Tuesday night class - between 5:00 and 9:00 PM at our local times.
I had set the scene by requesting that everyone bring a Holiday gift (that is a politically correct Christmas present) to share with the class. The gift could be in any medium supported by Elluminate (web tour, graphics, Powerpoint, audio or video file) Since we had been studying podcasts, patterns, copyright and next generation LMS systems, I had high expectations (and was not disappointed) in the quality nor variety of the gifts.
...Then we each took a turn at offering our present to the class. There was a musical recording of a Christmas Carol complete with a life howling dog accompaniment. A wonderful Powerpoint of how Christmas is celebrated in the Bahamas. A gift of a referral to a couple of very useful freeware utilities, a Flip Book http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/FlipbookPrinter/ of a video clip on paper. Of course we visited Santa, saw a few funny Jpegs and shared best wishes all around.
All and all a great party, and best (worst) of all, it is all recorded for posterity as an Elluminate file. I’d share the URL, but then would you really want your staff Christmas Party shared over the Net???
Civility is defined as a courteous act or courteous acts that contribute to smoothness and ease in dealings and social relationships.Definitions are always interesting launch points. 'Nuff for today. Gotta get some work done and it is already nearly 4pm. Another day, swirling down the blogging drain!
here's how to play
1. take a photo of yourself.
2. look at that photo.
3. draw yourself as you are in that photo.
4. email your photo, your drawing and your first name to
eyehandproject AT yahoo DOT COM
5. i will post them here.
6. come back and visit
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyehand
"Yesterday and today I attended the back-channel of the Les Blogs 2.0 conference in Paris. I couldn’t make it to the conference in meatspace, but I could still follow parts of the discussion on the irc chat [log] and via Flickr, Technorati and so on.The second is his post and link to video of an interaction between a presenter (Mena Trott) and Ben Metcalfe who had been active in the back channel - this time on the topic of civility in backchannel and blog comments.
Back-channels at conferences. How do they affect the relationship between those on the stage and the audience?"
...when we started experiencing problems with the class blogosphere, my students were the first ones to notice and complain. I heard many comments which helped me fully understand what our blogging community means to my students. They complained about unreliable access to their work. Many of them actually said that they couldn’t prepare for assignments or test their knowledge of some of the texts we’d been reading. I listened to all these carefully and took notes every single time something was said to me about technical problems. I have included excerpts from my log notes below:So we have the first interesting intersection here between technology, the community and it's processes. They "got used" to things. They adapted and adopted to the container Konrad offered them. And when it broke, the implications emerged. Typically, we don't notice this stuff until something goes awry! Note for community technology stewards: find opportunities to see these cues before the dang thing breaks!
“I feel like I’ve lost all my binders”
“Now that my blog is gone, English feels different”
“How are we gonna discuss things?”
“You know that assignment last night that we did on Word?”
“Yes. Did you do it?”
“I did, but writing it felt strange.”
“How so?”
“It was like - like talking to someone who was not listening.”
...It quickly became clear from what they were saying to me that blogging was synonymous with English class, that their class consisted primarily of a community and that its absence had an impact on learning.
...I realized that they had formed a bond, not just with each other as learners but also with the community itself. My students got used to inhabiting a space which, as virtual as it was, constituted an important part of their learning experience. When the space became temporarily inaccessible, learning itself seemed to be put on hold.
As soon as they were able to create their new individual blogs, the first question was:Hm, so identity as manifest by their artifacts. Makes a lot of sense to me. Would they have felt the same way if it was a wiki?
“What about the old posts?”
The new space, I realized, was not really a blog or a community. It was an empty space and almost all of them were overcome by a need to populate their new blogs. They have been working very hard since but many also insisted on transferring their old entries to the new blogs. Their blogging identity, it seems to me, is so inextricably linked to their writing that abandoning their old work seemed somehow wrong. Many were very disappointed that the comments they received cannot be automatically moved with the posts.
....This experience confirmed my belief that blogging is about creating communities. My students didn’t really miss writing itself. Had that been the case, they wouldn’t have complained about writing in notebooks. What they missed was situated writing, a cognitive activity situated within a specific space that fosters cognitive engagement. They missed interactions, interactions with texts and with each other through texts. They missed the sense of participation and their audience. They missed the exploratory environment of the class blogosphere. The student who, having written his assignment in a notebook, complained about feeling like he was talking to himself, missed making connections, he missed the web of correspondences that they have been weaving since September. Their efforts to transfer their entries from their old blogs to the new ones were really efforts to rebuild that network.What I wondered about here was how much of this was about context. How much about ownership and control of one's artifacts, and how much about the audience -- in this case their teacher who might be grading on those artifacts! I strongly concur about the interiorization, but I also think there are exterior factors at work. And it is the "coming together" of internal (indivdiual) and external (group?) factors that creates this juicy space. Or lets it emerge.
I know that the network will continue to emerge through their writing. The network is not an exterior aid that helps them write. It emerges because of their work, through their work. The software we use to create these communities, to enable this kind of learning, is a tool interiorized - a tool that has become an integral part of who they are as learners
AbstractFood for thought.
Background
Computer-based patient simulations (CBPS) are common, effective, instructional methods for medical students, but have limitations.
The goal of this project was to describe the development of a CBPS designed to overcome some of these limitations and to perform an online evaluation.
Methods
In 1996, patients and families experiencing a common pediatric problem were interviewed, photographed and a chart review completed. A digital storytelling template was developed: 1. patient's story, evaluation and clinical course, 2. problem-based approach to the evaluation, and 3. discussion of disease process. The media was digitized and placed onto the Internet. The digital stories and a 10-question online survey were pilot tested. Online survey responses were collected from 1999–2003. Overall use of the digital stories was measured by computer server logs and by the number of hyperlinks to the CBPS.
Results
Eight stories were created using this system. Over 4.5 years, 814,148 digital story pages were read by 362,351 users. Hyperlink citations from other websites to the CBPS were 108. Online survey respondents (N = 393) described the overall quality as excellent or very good (88.4%). The stores were clearly written (92%) at an appropriate level (91.4%). Respondents felt they could begin to evaluate a similar case presentation (95.4%), and would remember the case in the future (91%).
Conclusions
A new type of CBPS, the digital storytelling system, has been developed and evaluated which and appears to be successful in overcoming some of the limitations of earlier CBPS by featuring patient's stories in their own words, by focusing on problems rather than diseases, and by having stories that are quick for students to work through.
Squidoo is a co-op run on behalf of its members, the lensmasters.Check out the full team too. I was happy to see Heath Row in the gang.
We have built an online platform that makes it easy for anyone to build lenses on topics they are passionate about. These lenses help you find a unique, human perspective on things that interest you... fast. Not only can Lensmasters spread their ideas, get recognized for their expertise, and send more traffic to their Web sites and blogs—they could also earn royalties.
Once our closed beta is over, lensmaster royalties will go to the lensmaster directly, or to organizations chosen by the lensmaster, or to our charity pool. Squidoo's goal as a co-op is to pay as much money as we can to our lensmasters and to charity.
"Wow. I know you’re a real person…yet I feel as though my blog has had a supernatural visitation.Text book example of what can happen when you use online media to "hear" what people are saying, and even better yet, show you are listening as a real person.
Yes, the three no-shows in a row did leave me pretty cranky. I did get a lot of good tips in the forums from other small landlords about how to reduce the number of no-shows. That was nice.
I’ll try again. "
"Welcome to the brand new WikiMatrix.org, your number one source to find the Wiki engine that matches your or your company's needs."Thanks to EHub for the link.
"The Bibliography on Gender and Technology in Education has been created by gender equity specialist Jo Sanders. Focusing primarily on information technology, the bibliography is comprehensive as of 2005 and draws on international research as well as intervention literature. It contains nearly 700 entries and is extensively annotated, key-worded, and searchable. Sanders compiled the bibliography for her 2005 review article, 'Gender and Technology: A Research Review.'"You can get it via PDF or EndNote. It is 94 pages of mostly print references. If you are studying women and technology, this looks like a gold mine. I'd love to see a web version with links to online resources and ways to contribute/keep it alive. I know, I always want more! :-)
"Welcome to the WikiWikiWeb, also known as WardsWiki.
This community has been around for a long time. This is the first wiki, created in 1995, and consists of a large number of people. Many people have their first wiki experience here, and we always accept newcomers with valuable contributions. If you haven't used a wiki before, be prepared for a bit of CultureShock. The beauty of Wiki is in the democratic freedom, simplicity, and power it offers."
As we celebrate those who have been lost, who struggle on, and who are fighting to end the global AIDS pandemic this World AIDS Day 2005, I wanted to share with you two exciting ways you can share uplift.Art, technology, time, money, heart, mind -- we need to use it all to do so many things, including heal the world from HIV/AIDS, particularly in 2/3rds worlds where the impacts, deeply intertwined with poverty, are wiping out generations. At the same time, my plea is not to paint with a brush that wipes out the diversity, the locality, the individuality of each life and community.
First, you can compose your own Peace Tiles "mural" and send it to a friend by using the Peace Tiles "ecard" maker designed and produced by TakingITGlobal founder, Michael Furdyk:
http://www.tighosting.com/tiles/rc1/
You can also check out a selection of more than 80 art works produced by more than 1,000 young people in 11 countries spanning four continents. The images you can see were produced in Peace Tiles workshops convened by our passionate and dedicated colleagues around the world. The images are here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peacetiles/sets/1112725/
Finally, you might be excited to know that Peace Tiles are have been evolving around other issues as well. One such issue is child soldiers in Uganda. Have a look at the following video clip (hint: the *good* part comes toward the end!).
http://iact.zeromargin.org/content/Day10.mov
In case you can't access the video, you can read about the effort here:
http://www.stopgenocidenow.org/iact/tiles.php
If you would like to find ways to use Peace Tiles to tackle other issues, locally and globally, please consider starting a discussion forum when you register and join www.peacetiles.net
Knowledge management as social system change requires an inner reform of people involved. Where KM projects are usually 'sold' on the basis of business cases, they should be sold on the basis of 'humanity and consciousness cases' to be effective drivers for social system change.
What can we do if we cannot cope with some aspects of our lives, if we fail in our relationships with other people, if we destroy our opportunities for the future, if we become ill because of work stress? Good chance that we will be advised to start psychotherapy.
What happens if our organizations destroy societal trust relationships, opportunities for future generations, if they make workers ill because of work stress, or exploit workers and children in low-wages countries? Good chance organizational leadership receives shareholders' praise, bonuses, and fame as a captain of industry. No psychotherapy there, and one could only wonder about this double standard.
Corporations and governments debate endlessly on corporate social responsibility, draw up sustainability reporting schemes, codes of conduct etc. I do not deny these agreements can represent steps forward toward sustainable corporate policies. However, what is right or wrong for companies and company leaders to do is not so hard to imagine"
"In my quest for creating simple, pragmatic exercises that promote elements of design thinking, I’ve been looking at games as a core model.
I just submitted a conference proposal looking at games as a way to affect stakeholder mindsets, and am looking at how games provide an avenue for accomodating new perspectives that reframe individuals’ views."
"I gotta give props to my friends Jesse and Nate of Hidden Frame Productions for taking the time to put this video together. They did their best to capture the overall vibe and energy that went on at Seattle Mind Camp, whether you were there, or if you missed it, you should take a look at the mini documentary.Only downside of the documentary? As usual, I look like a dork. I guess that's ok at a geek event!
"Each writer will be randomly assigned a chapter (I will really pull names out of a hat, cos I hate making decisions). Illustrators the same. If you are joining in, write me an email when you read this (to vitriolica@gmail.com) so that I have your email address and to let me know whether you are writing, illustrating or both (and if you would like to illustrate more than once, since there are fewer of us than there are of them!). If you still wanna join and missed the deadline...ach, deadline, scheadline.... , write to me anyway... we can still aspire to 'suitable boy' or 'war and peace' length!I'm particularly excited about this because it is writers and illustrators. My partner for chapter 8 is Andre! Whahoooo! Eu gostu disso!
I'm going to set up a fresh blog for the greatest novel ever written and I'll host and post the stuff you email to me.
As soon as I receive each finished chapter I will send it to the illustrator for that chapter and to the writer assigned to the next chapter. As soon as the illustration is ready, I'll post the two together.
Length and style of chapter or style of illustration are purely, simply and entirely up to you. I'll just suggest a tiny something as a start point for the whole thing ... it may be a word or a erm... a bearded nun! "
e/merge 2006 - Learning Landscapes in Southern Africa is the second virtual conference on educational technology in the SADC region and builds on the e/merge 2004 conference. e/merge 2006 will take place online from 10 - 21 July 2006 may include associated face to face events in a number of cities.
This conference focuses on online collaborative learning in our regional context of unequal access to technology and to education. This could involve both online and face to face interaction. We will prioritise high quality papers and presentations which demonstrate responsiveness to the context of learning in Southern African tertiary education including issues of digital divide, differential access to education, and diversity. We would envisage papers in the following areas:
* Research Methodologies
* Access to Learning Technologies
* Theories and models of computer supported collaborative learning
* Learning Communities
* Staff Development
* Learning Environments
We are also interested in receiving proposals for technology demonstrations and online workshops focused on the regional context.
All abstracts will be peer reviewed to ensure that an appropriate range of high quality presentations will be selected. There will be a maximum of 32 presentations in the formal programme. Presentations will be accepted in forms such as full "
