Having just aquired probably the coolest laptop on the planet (Macbook Pro), complete with built-in iSight camera and lovely tools for taking pics of yourself, I decided last night to try to update my elgg icon.

An hour later and no matter what stunning effects I applied, I decided close-ups of my nose just wouldn't work, so given all our photo's are now happily stored in iPhoto, decided to select from there.

It's at moments like these that the realisation that you'll never be photogenic really hits home - even with the awsome power of Photoshop there to prettify things.

Added to this is, as I'm the main photographer, most of our photos don't include me, I was left with a choice of around 20 - most of which consisted of me holding fish and, to be fair to the fish, they're the lookers in most of them!!! 

So, I revert to the time-honoured tactic of public humiliation and yet another hat - which is odd as I never wear hats.

Still an interesting exercise in the "revealing yourself to the public" side of social technologies and more reinforcement for the work we have planned to provide a variety of avitars for students to use should they be less inclined to grin at the camera for Elgg and everyone!

Stan 

1. Football is dangerous
2. The male pain threshold is significantly lower than that of women
3. A bruised rather than broken finger has no street cred whatsoever (it doesn't even warrant a bandage from the nurse)
4. He's now got a bruised ego as well as finger
5. Yet the intensity of the playground tackle apparently left him surrounded by  concerned girls so he thinks he's got a result overall

This diagram is an attempt at me getting my head round how Elgg will fit into the University of Brighton's current student learning experience. Our existing MLE (studentcentral) uses Blackboard and, with over 23000 users and 3,500 course areas, it's pretty well established. However, Blackboard don't seem hugely keen on any radical movement away from the propriatory ring-fenced model and the concept of data flows between it and the growing wealth of web 2.0 technologies out there still seems rather remote. Certainlly, just adding RSS feeds doesn't even appear to be a huge priority. So, currently, the centre of our student online universe (for learning at least) is surrounded by a great wall with all this other stuff wanting to get in. When I try to put Elgg into the picture, it doesn't matter how I draw the diagram, Elgg always appears to occupy the centre ground alongside Blackboard and the whole thing seems to scream out for better integration and ease of movement between systems.

It's interesting that the thinking here is that there would be very little reason to move away from Blackboard (and the serious pain that would incur) unless something radically better appears. Good thinking, and I've always assumed we meant a radically better VLE but, as I look at this diagram, I do wonder whether it's not a VLE but something radically different and perhaps a gradual slide towards the radically different rather than one huge jump. So, in that context perhaps the diagram shows a plan for the future and the start of the slide?

Whatever, we've got lots of people with some great plans for Elgg here including:

• PDP and tutor mentoring
• Design project collaboration
• Research communities
• Shared creative writing
• Shared audio production and podcasting
• Delivery of materials via mobiles
• Placement support

I think the one area of the diagram that I'm unclear about (because I'm still getting to grips with all this so am kind of having to admit ignorance which hurts) is tags and whether these are interchangeable - do tags in del.icio.us, Elgg & Flickr match in any way? Do tag aggregators exist? I guess they do or I've got the wrong end of the stick so someone please put me out of my misery!

I guess I posted this partly to try to put my thoughts together but also for anyone who wants to put me right, suggest alternatives or add to stuff as it all helps the students (I hope).

Stan