http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/03/is-bl

A headline in The Register caught my eye yesterday - “Blog refuseniks facing the sack?“. It was actually looking at ‘compulsory’ blogging by marketing staff etc., at Sony:

“If you don’t blog, it’s going to be frowned upon. Ged has made it clear that staff are expected to blog and participate in the community. He sees it as part of people’s jobs.”

One point that caught my eye was a prediction from the Gartner group:

blogging peaked last October, and of the 100 million active bloggers manning the keyboards this year, the figure will eventually fall to 30 million.

I also skim read something the other day (I thought I’d bookmarked it, but clearly not!) suggesting that CIOs are more likely to support the use of wikis within companies for the development of resources, than they are to support the use of blogging. As far as I can remember, the article didn’t state if these were outward facing, or purely internal uses of blogs/wikis. If anyone else can locate that report …

It then struck me that I wasn’t really sure what the current number of blogs is; good luck was on my side, as Technorati have just released their newest set of stats today! Sifrys Alerts. This would seem to suggest a slight slow down in the creation of new blogs (though it should be noted that this is only blogs that register on Technorati - and also that they’re getting better at removing “splogs” (spam-blogs).

.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/03/the-s

The Stingy Scholar: Beths Top 10 Kick-Arse SL Videos Since Beth posted this list on the SLED email list - several people have suggested others. I particularly liked one showing the creation of “H building” - at Leeds.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/16/blogg

Having taken a few days off over Easter, it seemed that every time I opened the paper (well, the Guardian at least!), something about blogs was there! There was the review of the first 10 years of blogs According to Johnson, the first post was “Check this out. Amazing!” on Scripting News.

Blood, in The Weblog handbook, puts the starting point in June 1993 (Mosaic’s What’s New Page), with Bogart’s “News, Pointers and Commentary” in Feb 1997, and Winer’s Scripting News as the “third” entry - in April 2007.

Next came the “Blogging code of Conduct”, proposed by Tim O’Reilly and Jimmy Wales. Somewhat predictably, a proportion of the blogosphere reacted to this; however, looking at the code, it’s pretty much what one would expect from educational blogging.

Finally, on Thursday, they had a summary of Technorati’s review of the Blogosphere - which I’ve already blogged about. A couple of points are raised, perhaps a little unfairly. Keegan points out that of the 70m blogs, only 24m are in English - there are more in Japanese than any other language. He also mentions the fact that some 65,000 videos are uploaded to YouTube daily - though neither how many users YouTube has, nor how many blog posts are created daily. He goes on to add that MySpace has round 170m users (a figure backed up by an article at the end of March, adding that most users have a blog. Surely all that indicates is that MySpace users have blogs, but most aren’t linked to Technorati. Clearly Technorati only list the blogs that are submitted to them. The fact, as Keegan points out, (as I mentioned before), that Technorati is noting a slow down of new listings could simply indicate that fewer users are registering their blogs with Technorati. In order to have a true picture of the number of blogs (in particular active blogs, but discounting splogs) we need to look not only at Technorati registrations - but also at MySpace, and all the other sites where blogs are found. A difficult task! Sites like Technorati do at least give us a starting point

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/16/works

Mobile Learning » Workshop Activity: Paper Blogs Neat idea! I hope to use it in a workshop that I’m hoping to run later in the year.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/16/top-1

Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, March 2007 This is the third of KNight’s lists of “alternative” search engines (i.e. those that aren’t Google). In this list he’s listed quite a few engines that cluster. It was the clustering of Northernlights that I particularly liked when I was doing the research for my MSc (in the days when Google was an “alternative” search engine - all my peers using Altavista)

Though quite a few of the sites in his list are familiar, the “Search Engine of the Month” is new - KoolTorch. [Hmm… I’ve just tested it. No good for “Ego-searching”, but I did get quite a few (predictablish) results for Educational Blogging.]

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/17/scrib

Quentin d’Souza has uploaded his Web 2.0 ideas for Educators to scribd. It’s similar to Zoho, Google Docs etc., in that you can upload Word Documents etc. It differs in that they are then designed for viewing - as .pdf, Word, plain text - and, which I think could be useful for quite a few students, .mp3 files. The real drawback that I can see with the mp3 files is that you’d have to do a bit of fiddlling to get to hear the .mp3 & see the text/ diagrams at the same time. That would be useful!

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/18/100-l

They’ve finally started getting into the hands of children. The post is worth reading, as they’re commenting on the article that most other bloggers have linked to C|NET’s set of photos.

Will Richardson’s comments have triggered an interesting debate on his site, looking at the pedagogy, whether or not they should extend the project to the US. etc.

Via: Stephen Downes

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/18/globa

Following on from my post about the $100 laptops (and linking to quite a few of the comments in Will Richardson’s post)…

As quite a few of you know, I spent over two years in Papua New Guinea, working with children with disabilities (on page 4, you’ll see an article about Imelda - who I worked with when I was at the centre. It’s fabulous to see her progress!).

To return to the present VSO (who I went with) are taking part in the Global Campaign for Education week which has has the focus:

JOIN UP: Education Rights Now!

In 2007, more than 6 million campaigners in over 120 countries will ‘JOIN UP!’ and create the world’s longest ever people and paper chain, asking for ‘Education Rights Now!’ As part of this campaign, evidence on the violations of education rights will be delivered to world leaders.

Campaigners will ask why after so many promises and commitments by world leaders, 80 million children and 800 million adults are still being denied their right to education.

While we can get excited about the prospects that the $100 laptops can bring - we still have the issue of 80 million children (often girls) who are not in education at all.

Gapminder, while not having a variable for % in school in total, can show the proportion of girls/boys in school.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/20/msg-n

MSG now with Google Maps, Moodle options

I’ve used BuddySpace in the past, just to test it (required a Jabber account), and have used FlashMeeting with students. The OU have now integrated Google Maps - and renamed BuddySpace. It’s looking good. Now, rather than having to find my Jabber details, it’s the login I have for LabSpace.

I’ve got so far, I can get into the system - I’ve no friends, so not sure if I can actually use it, and the maps referred to in the videocast aren’t showing - however, I have worked that bit out; on the Labspace home page it says it’s coming soon - I guess I just read Marc’s blog post too soon

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/23/how-t

How the Spectrum began a revolution Well, I’m of an age to be able to say “My first computer was a ZX81″ The spectrum was my second. I now have a CD that has lots of Speccy games & an emulator on. I can start to rescue Bilbo again!

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/25/meet-

Edge Hill University seem to have a small number of bloggers. From the way that they’re writing, I’m guessing that they’re Student Union Reps, trying to give an idea of what University is like for freshers. They seem to have a good mix of “work” and social related posts.

Still trying to get blogging really going here!

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/25/citin

At the moment, I’ve been trying to work out how to best cite blog posts. I’ve got a few bibliographic tools - EndNote which is the “standard” one. That’s reasonably OK - the drawbacks being that the database resides on my work networked drive - but I can access that drive from most places with NetDrive. The other drawback at present is that the ToolBar in Word doesn’t quite work. I can post from EndNote to word, but can’t, on my PC, grab from Word. (I can on other PCs). (My PC has a few oddities, but I’m reluctant to let ISO rebuild it, as it will take forever to get back to the stage that I like it!)

Zotero - includes blog posts as a type of reference. It stores the references locally, so I have to export regularly (it also tends to slow down, so I have to clear it up.) There are some good features though, especially the ability to annotate files etc. Very easy with the tablet PC.

CiteULike seems good & I’ve found a several references via it. However, for some reason the bookmarklet seems to replace the page I’m looking at - not be a popup, as Connotea does.

I’m not so familiar with Connotea, but the fact that its bookmarklet is a popup & so I can see both at the same time is a distinct advantage!

Both Export to Endnote. Connotea says that it imports from it, but I can’t get it to. Maybe it’s the wrong version of EndNote!

Googling, to try to find out more about my particular question - citing blog posts, I’ve found a couple of useful sites:

• Jeremy Douglass has created some code to display the citation at the foot of each post. He’s created a WordPress Plugin for it.


• Robin Hansen discusses whether or not blog posts can harm, enhance or make no difference whatsoever to an academic career.


• Dennis Jerz makes some suggestions for how to cite blog posts & comments in MLA style.

The citation plugin is now running, though I have to sort out the formatting!

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/26/citin

Yesterday I tried to install a plugin that would allow the creation of citation notes for each post that I’d created. I’ve now removed it for a couple of reasons:

• In most academic writing, the citations at the end of the piece are for items that are included, not about the item itself.


• If people are going to take my information, if they’re not interested in quoting properly, my giving them the information to do it, isn’t going to make the slightest bit of difference


• I couldn’t get the formatting to look right in Firefox, no matter what I tried!

I may, however, have a look at including the unAPI that nogskat suggested yesterday, for Zotero users.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/26/moodl

In the past, I’ve tried to put Moodle on a USB stick with WoS (Webserver on a Stick) as the server. I’ve never been able to get it going at Work; though I did get it going at home. I was still keen to at least see if I could try to get it working, so finding Pierre Gorissen’s video explaining (very clearly!) installing it on a USB stick with Xampp as the server, encouraged me to try again. Success! I have even had it running on a locked down lab machine.

http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/duke-wie/blog/2007/04/27/setti

Konrad Glogowski looks at some of the issues surrounding setting up communities - and whether or not it is worth joining some of them (e.g. School 2.0 etc on Ning). I think that now I, like Konrad, would be “beyond” needing that sort of support, I’ve found people that I like to read. However, were I starting out now, then I might find them useful launch pads. The drawback is that if you don’t find one that really suits, then it could be more off putting than just getting out there and exploring. But we all differ!