http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/13/periodic-tabl

Wellington Grey has developed a periodic table of the internet, with groupings such as “Search Engines”, “Blogs”, “Social Networking” etc.,

I like the navigation icons as well.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/03/12/many-eyes/

Another rather nifty visualisation tool. I’ve already pointed out Gapminder, and more recently, linked to maps representing a US view of news.

In the past, I’ve also looked at some of the sites that present visual maps of the results of searches. ( Kartoo, Quintura [and Quintura for kids] and Touchgraph [which now has a Facebook option]).

However, Manyeyes, (from IBM) on first glance seems to be rather more than any of these. It’s possible to Geographical based data, text based data (in this case comments on a blog), regular graphs, and family relationships (from Adam to Jesus)

Fascinating!

Via: Social Sim

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/14/metadata/

Metadata. A clear animation explaining metadata (though I’m still confused about some of the icons on the spacecraft!). They’ve also got a link to a metadata creation site (UK use only; Athens authentication required).

I’m still unsure about metadata. It requires effort to create, and it can be open to a lot of personal interpretation. Much as I have a difficulty with tags - forgetting what I’ve used; and it’s just me that’s using it. The more I think about metadata, and the difficulty of getting agreement on what terms should be used, what level is what … I think that it requires a lot of extra input on the individual to create the data. Time which might be better spent on something else…

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/14/how-much-time

This was originally a post about Web2.0, in the context of libraries. It doesn’t take long to change it to “Classroom 2.0″ or “eLearning”. From a staff point of view, if we’re going to start to get our students to use Web2.0 tools to support their learning, how much time we can allocate to supporting them?

Via: George Siemens

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/14/a-free-learni

ZaidLearn presents a list of tools. It’s quite long, most are familiar to me, though there are some new ones. I’d heard of “DimDim” before, but I’ve not checked it out; Courselab, was new to me. I was sorry not to see Elgg in his list; but perhaps he’s been bitten by the recent hiccups at Eduspaces.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/14/uses-for-blog

I’d not seen Scott’s original matrix (or, to be strictly honest, I think I have seen it before, but I can’t remember where/ when / I certainly never did anything with it at the time!). The first interactive one rings a bell, though I think that it is a shame they’ve removed the gradation from “self” to “rest of the net” that Scott had in the original. I did wonder, however, should “For others students” come before or after “for instructors” for the students… to me, I think I’d put other students nearer “self” for students, than the instructor. As students, we may have a (albeit select) group of close peers we’d rather share something with before sharing it with an instructor. To be fair, Scott said that he was looking at the formal side of education; when we might see the blog as an assessment item; hence it might be only the instructor who can see it. That raises the question of whether or not we should be assessing blogs; or if they should be a more personal, reflective space…

Leaving the finer details aside, the latest version allows for users to add their own labels. - which I like. It’s also “wiki-ised”. So the view that you’re seeing probably isn’t the view that I saw. You can drag the labels round to your hearts content.. That said, I think I’m going to go low tech & incorporate this with a paper blogging exercise. Get out the flip charts & postits!

Via: Stephen Downes

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/15/cms-conversio

Scott Leslie has started a useful wiki, recognising that many are tied to a CMS (i.e. VLE), but may, in the future want to get the stuff out … We’ve now got WebCT Vista (locally known as Victory), and it seems that it’s not the easiest to get material out of. Maybe it will get easier in the future.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/15/vle-what-do-y

Cristina Costa has a guest posting on Graham Atwell’s blog: VLE? What do you exactly mean by a VLE? She says:

The learning environment doesn’t come with the software, that much I can assure you. The learning environment is the world the moderator creates together with the learners, while engaging (with) them in a relevant way.

How true! And, I don’t think that we really help matters by concentrating the training for both staff and students on “which button to click when”. We tend to forget “why”

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/23/facebook-chat

I read about Facebook Chat a while ago, and I’ve now just seen that it’s been enabled for me.



I’ve not yet tested it, but I think that it may well be a very useful extra (as I’ve mentioned in the past when it didn’t exist)

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/28/slideshare-ti

Andy Powell comments on the DOS launched on Slideshare recently, seemingly in relation to presentations about the situation in Tibet. (He also noted how quickly someone from Slideshare emailed him, after he’d twittered about it.

This highlights not only the problem of putting material on Slideshare (though the VLE at work has been known to go down, nothing is 100% reliable!), but also the impact that others can have on “open systems”. We get used to a service, and it goes away.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/28/webtools4u2us

WebTools4u2use is a *very* comprehensive wiki listing lots of Web2.0 tools - and ideas of how to use them in education.

Via: Dave Warlick

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2008/04/28/7-things-you-

EDUCAUSE CONNECT’s latest 7 things you should know is about Ning. I’ve mentioned Ning in the past, including the fact that I find it frustrating that it requires a lot of logging in. My fear for using it for social networking in Education, is that if you have one network per unit / subject (whatever you call them in your university), then students will continue to get the idea of knowledge being in parcels. That’s what I like about Elgg - and even facebook, a student can see information about all their groups in a single place.

7 things mentions some of the drawbacks (e.g. potential issues of hosting data outside a university), as well as some of the advantages, (e.g. making use of students’ skills in using social networks, but without lecturers having to use Facebook etc).

Other recent “7 things” have included Google Apps, Flickr & Lulu