S.Fjalar :: Blog

Luistxo of Tagzania has come up with a very nice twist on the Artwork Earth idea. He's using the method to create inspiring digital Christmas cards with motivatioinal messages (or any other greetings).

You can read more about it here.

An Icelandic software company named Hugsmiðjan recently introduced a ground breaking new service aiming at increasing web accessability for all web users. The service is aptly named stillingar.is wich I'm going to translate right now as settings.is.

Hugsmiðjan already has a good reputation here in Iceland for it's user centered approach to web development and strict focus on standards and accesibility. It's flagship product Eplica CMS powers over 200 Icelandic websites, including the web of the government offices of Iceland (www.stjr.is). Simply put - they really know what they are doing.

The way stillingar.is works is that any web user can define for himself the settings he's most comfortable with. He can choose from any combination of selected fonts, background and font colors, font height and line and font spacing. Websites that subscribe to the service retreive this information automatically from a central database. So each web user only has to define his settings once (he can of course edit them any time he wants) and then use those same settings on many webs.

Owners of personal websites and none-profit organisations can use Stillingar.is free of

Charge and web surfers don't have to pay anything for using the service. I really don't know but it would come as a surprise to me if Hugsmiðjan hasn't thought of marketing this

interesting solution internationally. You can contact them here and find out for yourself. If you are interested in this approach to web accesibility you can try stillingar.is out for your self. Here is a list of webs that already subscribe to the service. And if, as I suspect, the Icelandic language is the real obstacle on these particular webs you can always give the bookmarklet on this page a go.

Lately I've been using the amazing Google Earth with my special ed class and together we have created some interesting artwork using closeups of our planet earth.

I presented my students with the following assignment:

1. Dive into Google Earth, explore and find an artisticly interesting, or graphically creative places. Choose two images and save them.

2. Create a background, a frame and a title using the Motivator from Flickr toys.

3. Upload the artwork to your Flickr account.

4. Share the artwork on the Artwork Earth group in flickr (created for this assignment)

I must say I'm very pleased with the results and the assignment proved to be a lot of fun as well.

The assignment is a small part of an ICT course I'm developing at a local college. I'm concentraiting on open source tools and freely available software and services on the Net. Google Earth is of course an ideal tool. I'm using Moodle as our LMS and it's been a very interesting challenge using it with my students.

The Artwork Earth group is open for everyone who wants to join us.

I'm must admin I'm a big fan of the fd's flickr toys widged collection and I've used a number of their widgeds with my students.  

I just found out that a new widged, named Profile, has been released and of course I can't resist taking it for a spin. The Profile widged accepts your flickr username, email or user ID and creates a customized image that will automatically update itself very hour. The image shows a selection of ten photos and some statistics about the users flickr usage. My personal image can be seen here below.

Blackboard has been awarded an incredibly broadly worded US patent that covers most of the basic functions of a modern LMS system. Just read the patent abstract:

• A system and methods for implementing education online by providing institutions with the means for allowing the creation of courses to be taken by students online, the courses including assignments, announcements, coursematerials, chat and whiteboard facilities, and the like, all of which are available to the students over a network such as the Internet. Various levels of functionality are provided through a three-tiered licensing program that suits the needs of the institution offering the program. In addition, an open platform system is provided such that anyone with access to the Internet can create, manage, and offer a course to anyone else with access to the Internet without the need for an affiliation with an institution, thus enabling the virtual classroom to extend worldwide.

Having read thru the whole text of the patent I must confess I'm very surprised. Being an Icelandic I'm not familiar with the US patent process and the rules and regulation regarding it. But this surely cant be right? I simply don't understand how the fundemental processes of a learning management system can be patented like this. Processes like posting assignments and resources online and giving grades. To me it sounds like Blacboard is claming to have invented the modern LMS! That's a bold statement coming from a company that can hardly be described as cutting edge when it comes to being creative in developing tomorrows technology for teaching and learning online. I would award that title to the numerous open source LMS systems out there who have without any doubt been much more inventive and productive in that area. Buying out competitors does not count as creative leadership in my vocabulary. I'm very interested in learning more about this patent. What does it really mean? What are Blackboard intentions? What will the reactions of other LMS vendors be?

p.s. I'm thinking outloud here but perhaps this agressive move by Blackboard could in the end hasten the development as well as increase the importance of the next generation of learning management systems. One could even speculate if this will cause the many open source systems, such as Moodle to evolve even faster. Perhaps this will direct more attention to the much discussed personal learning environment and social systems like ELGG?

Now that Blackboard has patented the vision of a LMS system many forward thinking developers consider old and outdated maybe the time has come to move on? I honestly don't know. But this I'm sure of. If Blackboard executives think they can use their patent to bully vendors, users and other LMS developers they will be proven wrong.

Firefox 2.0 will be released later this year. In order spread the word and introduce this great browser to potential users current Firefox users can visit the World  Firefox Day website, fill out a nomination form and send a message to a friend inviting him/her to download Firefox. Should your friend download Firefox before september 15, 2006, both you you will be recognized on the Firefox Friends Wall, and in Firefox 2.

You can only nominate one friend. So visit http://www.worldfirefoxday.com and choose carefully.

I've been taking the O'Reilly Safari Bookshelf service for a testdrive and I must say I'm quite impressed. Safari is an easy to use electronic reference library for programmers and IT professionals and by subcribing I get an access to roughly 3000 books in this area. And it's not expensive at all.

Safari Bookshelf allows me to search accross all the collection. Read any book I like by placing it on my virtual bookshelf and I even have access to unpublished books. Every month I can download 5 chapters and print or view offline.

You can try Safari Bookshelf free for 14 days. Click here to find out how it works.

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