subverted links

  • The Antipodean Podcast Blog: Paid content to gain pace
    The antipodean doesn’t comment much but if you want a great insight into tech in Aus then this is your feed: "A company CEO who believes in the power of technology convergence as a key driver of innovation. In my spare time I am a technology nut."
  • Anecdote: Social network analysis principles
    I just *love* what these guys are doing and how they’re sharing their perspectives. One of the few great Melbourne contributions, business + communication = Anecdote.

The Blackboard Beyond Initiative

I can almost see the finger quotes :)

We have worked year after year with our clients to create powerful networked learning environments for instructors and learners at individual sites. Now, with the Blackboard Beyond Initiative, we are taking a critical next step by fostering a “network” of “networked learning environments”…

But this has to be my favourite:

“Facilitate Social Networking”: “e-Learning 2.0” is about “enabling a social experience” that recognizes the course is but one “social-organizational group” in a broader education environment. To help foster academically oriented relationships outside of the class environment, Blackboard announces plans to “connect” students and faculty across disciplines and across institutions through a new Scholar.com Web service. Scholar.com will provide users with the opportunity to “communicate and collaborate” with other experts in and outside of their discipline and fields of interest

Excuse me for a moment.

……………………………………………….bwahawhawbwah……………

That’s better.

Rough Translation: “We have decided to appropriate every frickin’ buzzword we can and just in case you don’t geddit we’re going to mention 2.0 no fewer than 8 (EIGHT) times. So there. We are innovative and interesting didn’t you know. And to prove it we’re going to give you, um, a “Global Learning Objects Catalogue” [cos that’s a new and proven idea], some bizarre website that connects “students and faculty across disciplines and across institutions” [cos that’s just the natural thing to do, innit, am sure everyone will be jumping at it], an “e-Portfolios-for-life” [please somebody help me, this is too good, I can’t even comment] and a “collaborative data warehouse service” [um, you’re going to do frickin what with my data, it’s going to help who???].”

Sorry Stephen, I couldn’t disagree with you more (well, apart from the Canada bit ;).

Pay attention to the end of the press report all ye who expect empty buzzwords to become anything more than they are:

…Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors…

Learnerblogs might need a new home…

Am currently investigating whether we’ve been the victim of some serious DoS attacks over the last few days or if said ‘attacks’ have actually been enormous computer labs full of students signing up to, logging in to and uploading pictures to learnerblogs all at the same time.

I suspect it could be the latter!

With that in mind, in for a penny in for a pound, I’m increasing the RAM on the server by a gig (any experts out there know if / how much this might help… it’s basically MySQL queries issues that are causing the jam) and also enquiring whether any organisations with a selection of nice powerful servers and would be interested in hosting learnerblogs for a similar arrangement to the Chalkface edublogs.org one?

Let me know if you’re interested.

Group blogs

Yay! Someone agrees with me :)

“Group blogs, however tempting, are a bad idea and do not work!”

Group blogs are very tempting to language teachers: I’m one of them. So far, however, I’ve got to agree with James: they don’t work. Something is stopping students from participating. Those few who do seem to be posting to the class blog often do so in error (they send their posts to a class blog instead of their personal blogs). What’s more, communication seems somewhat “disconnected” in a class blog and students don’t leave comments often enough for the few who try to continue. Possible reasons for failure might be:

subverted links

  • ASU Blog and Wiki Service (BETA)
    Is this the proximal influence of Levine? Arizona State University’s Blogs & Wiki Service is not only looking damn cool but is also using WPMU which makes it even cooler in my book!
  • elearnspace: elearning 2.0
    If I had more time, if I had more time, or if I had half an idea of how I want to put this!!! The problem is that we are always thinking about the integration, rarely about the interface and far too infrequently about the individual. Perhaps.
  • Virtual Canuck » Online End of Class Party
    "First, let me state that asynchronous parties do not work!"