http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/08/08/all-seems-wel

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to finalise the move from the now deceased tech server to this one. It wasn’t particularly easy initially, as I had to manually edit all the pages …

It also wouldn’t import into Eduspaces - which I found annoying.

There were a number of suggestions from people as to why I could have been having difficulties:

• The fact that there’s a ~ in the URL - but Terry could get hers to work without all the editing.


• My files had got corrupted in the move - well, they didnt’ seem to be, and installing new ones didn’t work anyway


• The fact that I’d got a - in my URL; a possibility as others hadn’t.


• The fact that I’d reset the permalinks to be “pretty” …

The last point seemed the most likely, so I disabled, and was able to upgrade to 2.0.11 - without having to edit the files. Seemed like a distinct possibility!

Then I tried the upgrade, having re-enabled the pretty permalinks; and it still worked! Finally, I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.2.2 (I wasn’t able to do that until the version of MySQL on the database was updated)

So, either someone has altered something on userweb, or the update to MySQL also included other updates; or the server just didn’t like me at first & has changed its mind.

Whatever the reasons, it now works without me having to edit all the files, and the feeds into Eduspaces also works.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/08/23/wikis-in-plai

A nice, simple video looking at how wikis work and can be used.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/08/23/new-report-sh

Graham Attwell summarises Ofcom’s recent report into online usage. The actual report is very long & covers radio and television as well as Internet. (I heard this morning on the news that TV usage is down 4% & radio 2%, while Internet is up (c.150%); I’m assuming this survey was the source.

Some care does have to be taken with the raw data. The Guardian has some graphs, which on first glance make the over 65s seem like very heavy net users. However, on closer examination, it seems that if they go online, they do it for longer, but, the report notes that while 2/3 of children do not believe that they could live without mobile/the internet, only 16% of the over 65s actually use the net.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/08/24/zoho-writer-e

Zoho Writer Enhanced With Google Gears Interesting; as far as I can tell, Google Docs doesn’t integrate with Google Gears, but Zoho writer does. However, I’m not quite sure what use it will be at present, as it’s only possible to read documents off line, not to edit them. I guess for those who don’t have Word, it’s useful to read offline.

I can’t decide if off line editing would be useful. If it’s just one person editing, then yes, no difficulties with over-writing etc., but if there are several editors, then problems could arise.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/08/24/sns-for-stude

Wired ran a series of articles entitled “Education 2.0″. This particular one focussed on Social Network Tools. Given that Marc Canter at the Web2.0 conference suggested an average user is active on five social networks, they’ve created a list of 5. (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn [particularly for those leaving education], Bebo [which, they note is most popular in the UK], and Hi5 [again, not as popular in the US as in other areas])

Hi5 was new to me, though looking at it, it seems to be very similar to others, albeit with a choice of languages.

I was surprised, though, that Marc Canter suggested users (I’m assuming here he means SNS users, rather than generic web users), are active on 5. I’ve got accounts on Eduspaces, Ning, Facebook & MySpace. However, MySpace is more or less a virgin a/c - so definitely not active; and I wouldn’t really call myself active on either FAcebook or Ning. It’s more little bursts when I remember them!

A useful thing, though, if that 5 is true for many users, is that if we are going to encourage students to set up accounts on a more education focussed SNS (e.g. Elgg), we probably won’t be stopping them using other networks, just adding to the range. The argument that I’ve seen in several places “use Facebook, because that’s where the students are”; yes, they are there, but they’re also capable of being elsewhere too.

I’ll see if I can find Canter’s statement & preferably evidence of it.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/08/29/hea-ics-07-sl

Yesterday we held a SecondLife workshop at the HEA-ICS Conference in Southampton. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people we got; given that it was at 10.30 on the first day of the conference.

We’d got a set of USB sticks with SL pre-installed, and managed to find enough working PCs to get going. The PCs were well spaced, with two screens - which did mean that we were able to have people working in pairs when needed. Not that many people had already got accounts, so quite a bit of time was spent just getting accounts….

Anyway, here are a few images…
- Getting going …

- Editing appearances…