Author: jamesclay

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Academic uses of Twitter

Nice article on some of the academic uses of Twitter which I found out about after reading a blog entry on Twitter from Lindsay Jordan.

The article by Dave Parry says:

I thought I would explain how I use it, specifically for academic related uses, and teaching.

Includes a really interesting observation on the way that learners used Twitter for classroom chatter.

The first thing I noticed when the class started using Twitter was how conversations continued inside and outside of class. Most of these conversations were not directly related to class material, but many were tangentially related. Because the students had the shared classroom experience when something came up outside of class that reminded them of material from class time it often got twittered. This served as a reinforcement/connection between the material and the “real world.”

The whole article is well worth reading if you are wondering about the academic benefits of Twitter.

In case you are still wondering what Twitter is…

One thing about Twitter is that you need to “do it” to really understand it.

Many of these ideas would also work for Jaiku (and in some cases with the threaded commenting could work better).

This article first appeared on e-Learning Stuff.

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Podcasting Doctor Who

Tonight the first episode of Doctor Who of the new series (series four of the new new series and somebody will no doubt be able to tell me which actual series of Doctor Who it is if you take into account all the other Doctors. As it happens BBC Four is showing a William Hartnell Dalek story tonight (on right now as I write)).

Well not everyone knows that the BBC issue a commentary on the new series as a podcast which is available either from iTunes or from the BBC 7 website. Though the new Doctor Who Flash based website may have the audio files there as well, it’s not working for me on my Mac, none of the links work.

The podcast has the cast and crew talking about the episode.

Now what I didn’t know having subscribed via iTunes for the first three seasons which had podcasts, the last Christmas episode did not have a downloadable podcast, it was available as a stream only!

Why we’re doing things a little differently this Christmas. You’re probably wondering why the commentary for Voyage Of The Damned isn’t available as an MP3 and isn’t on iTunes.

This is because the BBC is only currently allowed to offer big downloads like this if they’re related to radio shows.

We’re working to reach a new agreement and get this and future commentaries back as downloads before Series Four, but in the meantime we’re streaming the one for Voyage Of The Damned.

Huh!

Well they did manage to sort things out and thanks to BBC 7 we have the downloadable version back with us.

What a bizarre limitation, I wonder who insisted on that?

It is recommended that you watch the episode without the commentary first and then either listen (as I do) or watch again with the commentary.

I do like some commentaries (the cast commentaries on the Lord of the Rings films are really fun to listen to) and the Doctor Who ones have been pretty good in the past – though season three was my least favourite, here’s hoping that this new series of commentaries is better.

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Children flock to social networks…

BBC reports on how more than 25% of children between eight and eleven actively use social networking websites.

More than a quarter of eight to 11-year-olds in the UK have a profile on a social network, research shows.

Most sites, such as Bebo, MySpace and Facebook, set a minimum age of between 13 and 14 to create a profile but none actively enforce the age limit.

Ofcom’s survey of 5,000 adults and 3,000 children found 49% of those aged between eight and 17 have a profile.

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of this, by the time these children come to College or onto University, they will have been using and immersed into the world of social networking – unlikely I expect that they will be using Facebook or Bebo as who remembers Friendster?

However that they will be use to the concept of communicating socially online. I would also expect that they will also start to use these environments for working together on learning activities as well.

Obviously there are issues with putting personal and embarrassing information online as institutions and employers also have access to these sites and Google, but it would be a shame to focus on the negative aspects of these sites and forget the potential that these places have for learners to interact and engage with each other – in the same way they already do engage collaboratively for learning in the physical social areas within our institutions.

As I write this I am sitting in the cafe area of my college and there are learners here drinking coffee and talking, I know some are talking about non-learning stuff, but there are others who are talking and discussing what they just did or what they need to do.

We provide physical social environments for our learners to socialise and engage with each other, is it too much to ask to provide access to similar social environments which are online?

Originally written for e-Learning Stuff.

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Oh will there be a 3G iphone?

Macrumors reports:

Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney claims to have heard “from sources in Asia” that Apple has placed a 10 million unit order for 3G iPhones, according to an interview by the iPod Observer. This order for 10 million 3G iPhones would reportedly be above and beyond the original 10 million Apple had planned to sell of the initial version of the iPhone in 2008.

Read more.

For me one of the downsides for the iPhone was the lack of 3G, it had EDGE, but for most purposes that can be really too slow. I decided not to get an iPhone as it did not have 3G. So will I get one now when they release the 3G version? Probably not, in the main as though it will have 3G it probably still won’t be able to be used as a 3G modem with a laptop which is another reason why I didn’t go for the iPhone.

Oh and the price as well…

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Evolution of the social network

BBC Click reports on the evolution of social networking.Evolution of the social network

Recent reports of social networking’s demise may be slightly premature.

Sure, some users are completely fed up with receiving friends invites, being “bitten”, “poked” and indeed having sheep thrown at them.

And there has been a 5% slowdown in new UK users to the larger social networks, Facebook and MySpace, between December 2007 and January this year.

But Alex Burmaster, an analyst at Nielsen Online which compiled the figures showing the decline, says: “The slow down in social networks is being somewhat exaggerated. It’s a natural form of any growth that we see in the online eco-system.

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Photoshop Express

Adobe have released an online photo editing app which they have called Photoshop Express.

You shot it — now do something to it. Make it pop. Make it impossible to ignore. Upload, sort, polish, and store up to 2GB of photos. All for free. Resize, tint, distort, and more — add your mark to all your images. Then show them off on Adobe® Photoshop® Express or your Facebook page.

Photoshop Express

Now before you run off and think wahay! This is not an online version of Photoshop. This is an online photo editing application which Adobe have called Photoshop Express.

It reminds me a lot of iPhoto and many Mac users will find it pretty simple and easy to use and very familiar, but obviously Photoshop Express also works on Windows PCs.

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Mucked about by…

There are credits and then there are credits.

There I was watching the Colour of Magic when I noticed Terry Pratchett’s credit.

Mucked about by…

Mucked about by….

Excellent.

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Where did my Flash player go…

So there I was browsing on the Nokia N810 when I noticed that I couldn’t play any Flash movies or animations.

Now initially I thought maybe the Nokia N810 didn’t come with a Flash player installed, but I was sure I had seen Flash animations before on the device and after checking the Nokia website it said that it came with Flash Player Version 9 installed.

Web Browsing 

Browser based on Mozilla technology with state-of-the-art web standard support including AJAX

Page navigation with scrolling, panning or using hardware buttons, zooming in and out of web sites.

Full desktop Adobe® Flash® 9 plugin, including video and audio streaming

But it seemed to be “missing” on my Nokia N810.

So I did a Google search and that came to nothing, no one else seemed to have the same problem. It wasn’t mentioned in the FAQ on the Nokia site either.

It was looking like I was going to need to reset the device and start over.

As a last resort I started checking the browser settings and there it was the Flash player was unchecked (as was the browser video player.

Checked the checkbox for the Flash player and yes now it works.

Now I didn’t switch it off and I don’t know how it got switched off, but it was off.

Now it’s back on again.

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So where is the video out then?

If you have a Nokia N95 8GB model which came with Spiderman 3 you will know that it came with a composite video AV cable (well in the UK it does) which not only allows you to connect your Nokia N95 to a television, but also allows you to show what you are doing. This video out can also be captured using the right equipment. This video out is a really useful feature.

One of the disappoining non-features of the Nokia N810 is that there is no video out, so any video on there has to be watched on the small screen (nice screen, but it’s not very big).

Alas this also means that I can’t capture screen video this way either.

Hmm, a wasted opportunity methinks.

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The Light of Other Days

With the death of Arthur C Clarke last week I thought I would post my choice of his books.

The Light of Other Days

This is one of my favourite books and I have read it quite a few times now.

‘Space is what keeps everything from being in the same place. Right?’ With these words Hiram Patterson, head of the giant media corporation OurWorld, launches the greatest communications revolution in history. With OurWorld’s development of wormhole technology, any point in space can be connected to any other, faster than the speed of light. Realtime television coverage is here: earthquakes and wars, murders and disasters can be watched, exactly as they occur, anywhere on the planet. Then WormCams are made to work across time as well as space. Humanity encounters itself in the light of other days. We witness the life of Jesus, go to the premiere of Hamlet, solve the enigmas that have baffled generations. Blood spilled centuries ago flows vividly once more – and no personal treachery or shame can be concealed. But when the world and everything in it becomes as transparent as glass and there are no more secrets, people find new ways to gain vengeance and commit crime, and Hiram Patterson finds new ways to keep his Machiavellian schemes secret.

The idea of the wormcams is really scary and the impact they have on the world is immense and explored in this novel.

You can get the book either from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com.