Shock news: Flinging iPods at learners does not facilitate learning

OK, perhaps that’s a bit OTT but from what I can gather Duke have set themselves up for a nasty fall if they’re looking for a 6 month impact on T&L outcomes.

Via Ray, this article goes into some serious detail about the project. Media stunt or not it’s an interesting experiment in the use of new technologies in a HE setting although unfortunately it looks like this might be another case of starting in the wrong place…

Let me put it this way: if all your students have iPods they’re pretty much useless for any T&L purpose unless your teachers / peers are regularly ‘casting .mp3s which they might find useful & engaging. Granted, students can use them to record lectures (like a dictaphone) or listen to language learning materials (like a walkman) but that dual purpose really isn’t worth $500k, is it?

I’m not at Duke so it’s hard for me to speculate much further but perhaps the biggest mistake I’ve seen educational institutions of all shapes and sizes make over and over and over again is to put the students ahead of the teaching staff. In basic ‘satisfaction’ terms this is daft as happy teachers = happy students (you can’t bypass that, sorry!) and perhaps in this case, not hitching up to student use (as, say an implementation of IM might), teachers using the technology = students needing/wanting to use it too.

So you can throw iPods at as many of them as you want and they’ll be utterly useless… get the staff podcasting first though and then when you do give out the players you’ll see some results!

Raindrops falling into the pool

raindropsWow, Chris Abraham leaves the kind of comment on one of my OSN05 posts that really deserves more than comment status.

Essentially I was trying to describe a semi-latticed environment in the usual “So how do you draw a circle in Fireworks?” kind of way and Chris commented that he sees the online environment more as:

“Cascading, realtional, asynchronous call-call-response ripples. And although those diagrams above make a lot of sense, I do believe that the true diagram would look more like raindrops rippling in concentric circles, interfering, intermingling, comingling, and then becoming still (or at least invisible to the naked eye) until reanimated (or amplified) by new rain drops. Without the energy of the rain, the water returns to balance. The Internet, like the pond, is merely a neutral solution in which things (sound, light, color, dye, etc) can be suspended or introduced. Without external energy, entropy takes over and then, to return to my analogy, the pond is again a placid mirror, glassy and neutral.” [Chris Abraham]

Fantastic.

Kid-safe blogging

Via Will and the (never paranoid) Australian Federal Government … comments from moi in [bold]:

* Blog Topic – Select a topic for your blog that is sensible and you think other would enjoy reading about. [others, right… so first up you should write about what other people want to read… hmmmmm]

* Password Protect your Blog – Make sure nobody else can enter information into your blog. [Alright, a reverential link to the first person who can share a default unpassword protected blog]

* Email – Use an email that is not identifiable. Use your online name instead of your first name and surname. [because then, god forbid, someone might know who you are, and then they could, um, ah, um, maybe look you up in the phone book???????]

* Use of Avatars and Photos – Select a picture of an avatar that suits your personality but doesn’t disclose your identity. Refrain from using your own photo on your blog. [we don’t think that every net surfer is a paedophile, honest]

* Hide Profile from Public View – If possible stop others from looking at your profile by password protecting it, or setting up any options that let only those people you choose to view it. [absolutely, heaven knows what would happen if someone actually knew enough about you to start a conversation… that’d be almost as scary as letting you walk to school, no?]

When you are Blogging

* Personal Information – Never enter in personal details or anything that can identify you. Remember, once something is entered on the Internet it is often very hard to remove. [it’s like a criminal record you know, likely you’ll be either assaulted or locked up for the kind of stuff you do]

Surely this has to compete for the most ridiculous, fear-driven, insanely paranoid piece on blogging this year????

Domain Names

Hmmm, am thinking with the brewing relaunch of IncSub (which part of is going to be offering up my services in a kind of solutions / consulting capacity… outside of the day job of course!) that I’d do well to get an .au domain as well as the .org (so a .org.au which comes to the same place as the .org)

Anyone have any domain registration services they’d recommend (i.e. are cheap) for this kind of thing.

And do you reckon there’s any point?

Also, if I’m offering my services and some sort of hosting service but am also fully backing / maintaining the free / open source hosting / support service (actually expanding & developing it) is it OK for me to have a .org? Am confused about this…

Seems like it’s OK to make some money and have a .org in some cases (this online soccer game as an example) but am not sure how this works… naturally I’m reluctant to change domains too. Whaddyareckon?

‘All in one’ multi-user blogging tools

A definite distinction is starting to form in this whole multi-user blogging approach between the ‘all in one’ solutions and the more-or-less independent possibilities.

For example with Drupal you can either give each user an install of Drupal as their own blog/CMS or you can have one install of Drupal and users can maintain their weblogs within that.

Also, there are quite a few systems coming along at the moment which incorporate Social Networking Tools (FOAF etc.) as well as providing blogging tools, such as Elgg (which Seb reminded me I am actually a member of the other day ;o). Drop me a comment on this post if you’d like an invite to try it out.

And I guess LiveJournal is a well established kind of independent / linked in approach.

I feel some sort of examination coming on… Xanga springs to mind… any other significant social-network-integrated blogging platforms out there? Open source ones? ‘Integrated’ blogging systems as opposed to the kind of independent ones I’ve rolled over so far? (or do any of those have ‘integration’ capacities I’ve overlooked?)