Terry Wassall :: Blog
November 22, 2008
Hallo
I have uploaded on elgg community site new language pack for Georgian language. Dear Administrators, please look http://community.elgg.org/pg/plugins/highlander/read/9324/georgia and add it to eduspaces too. Thank you much in advance!!! Keywords: elgg translation, georgian language, language pack, localization Posted by Eduspaces Central - Rusudan Tsiskreli | 3 comment(s) http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=2008031414 I've waxed on about fabbers and the like for some time on this blog and elsewhere, so I was suitably impressed by this presentation on open source hardware by Limor Fried and Phillip Torrone. It sets out the various aspects that make up the "source" of an object, from bill of materials to circuit design, and the standards for exchanging them. Of course this is at the rather more technical end of the fabject continuum. At the other there is the amazing Ponoko site, which enables users to create their designs from regular EPS files, pick the materials, and then have them laser-cut to order. Designers can choose to sell the cut and/or assembled product, or to sell or give away the design as EPS files.
Currently the custom fabjects are a little pricey compared to their mass-produced compatriots, and the processes limited in terms of materials and processes. But add in cheaper 3D printing and other fabbing technologies, and simple programmable wireless platforms like SPOT and Bug, and we'll soon be churning out spimes on demand. Posted by Scott Wilson | 0 comment(s) November 21, 2008http://my-world.typepad.com/rworld/2008/11/what-is-needed-for-a-com ELESIG is a community of researchers that started with a small group of universities, which grew out of eLearning Pathfinding. Elesig has identified a number of functions that distributed (online) group/community members need to fulfill. The slides may be forthcoming. Community functions:
Posted by George Roberts | 0 comment(s) http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=2008070401 I'm not sure what I'd use this for, but its certainly cool and very cybernetic. Pachube is a service for tagging objects that share data from their sensors. Services like Pachube could be useful for some kinds of very high-level business intelligence, particularly analyses that cross organisational or national boundaries. At the moment, however, it does have the feel of a webcams site with graphs and XML, but as more objects, places and devices get wired (or wireless) then something like Pachube becomes an inevitable evolution.
Perhaps someone will find some interesting way of using some of these sensors in one of the many mashup competitions making the rounds currently. Posted by Scott Wilson | 0 comment(s) http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/blogview?entry=2008060512 I've been talking about oAuth a lot to colleagues recently; I'd had it vaguely on my radar for a while, but a conversation with David Recordon from SixApart at EduServ last year convinced me to take a more serious interest in the specification. oAuth is essentially a user-centric authorization mechanism for enabling services to talk to each other. Currently some services enable interoperability by getting the user to delegate authority to the service to interact with another, essentially by enabling it to impersonate the user. For example, you give Flickr your LiveJournal account details so it can cross-post your photos. With oAuth, the same functionality is enabled without the security, trust and privacy compromises: the user talks to both services and explicitly grants permission for the services to talk, but without revealing any account details. There are a great many service-to-service contracts that could benefit from this user-centric approach: employers and universities, for example. Or between employers and applicant's portfolio services. But is oAuth actually being adopted? Well, the evidence suggests it is, with Google announcing adoption, and discussing integration with its OpenSocial and Google Gadgets technology. For Google this replaces its proprietary AuthSub mechanism with one that can be shared across providers. For eLearning, the oAuth spec is an important building block in developing distributed as well as federated elearning architecture. With oAuth, users can choose to connect together services that have no existing relationships using a common authorization method. Even better, oAuth is completely agnostic with regard to identity and authentication protocols and models - it doesn't need single sign-on or any kind of shared identity or authentication model between service providers. The bottom line - if you are developing an application that needs to talk to an external service API on behalf of the user, then you may need to start looking into oAuth. Posted by Scott Wilson | 0 comment(s) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Socialtech/~3/402179481/being-there.
Photo credit: Invasion by Henryleelucas Dave White's recent post, Not 'Natives' or 'Immigrants' but 'Visitors' & 'Resident' slipped by largely without comment, which is a huge shame. It's a must-read post because it does what a lot of people have been trying to do and not managing that well - move us beyond Prensky's seminal dichotomy of Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants. Prensky's metaphors powerfully explain differences in approach and experience between users who have grown up with technologies (the natives) and older users who find difficulty in accessing new technological cultures and practices (the immigrants) as not just a cultural but a neurobiological one. Prensky's arguments are easy to knock down, particularly if you happen to subscribe to a more fluid account of development. What they haven't been however is easy to replace or move forward from. Dave's work probably succeeds in taking the argument forward precisely because it's user-centric, looking at how users engage with technologies. His research points up the importance of 'being there'; the distinction between users who inhabit a space or place online, and users who don't view themselves as having any kind of non-functional engagement with online environments and tools. Dave calls these visitors and residents (as you may have gathered from his academically typical unwieldy title), and if you haven't gone blind already head over to his post to see the initial sketching out of these roles. These are far more granular distinctions, robust enough to cut across socio-cultural differences, and agile enough to encompass a wide range of behaviors and belonging. my initial thoughts on seeing the post still stand:
Posted by Josie Fraser | 0 comment(s) http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Socialtech/~3/302862833/young-people
I'm delighted to announce that the Young People and Social Networking Services report that I have been working on for Childnet International, with the generous support of Becta, is now available from Childnet's digital literacy and citizenship site, Digizen. It's a pretty comprehensive report, with the whole shebang available for download under a Creative Commons License on site, or from here: and weighing in at 37 pages. The online version breaks the sections up for your viewing pleasure - so you can just dip in to the sections which are of interest or use to you. The report was written from a UK schools and Further Education perspective, although much of the information will be useful to people working outside of these two contexts. It isn't a completely introductory level document, but should be useful and informative for people who have a responsibility care towards children and young people - including governors, principals and senior management teams, Safeguarding boards and local authorities - people who are making decisions concerning educational provision and resourcing. It will also be very handy for anyone working within the sector and wanting to use internet based services with young people. What's in the pack? What are Social Networking Services? looks at where we are in terms of definitions, and splits services up into six main categories: Profile-based services (eg Bebo, Facebook, MySpace); Content-focused services (eg Flickr, YouTube); White-label networks (although I could have written a book about these); Multi-User Virtual Environments (although some of these aren't necessarily social networks - particularly those designed for younger children); Mobile services; and Microblogging/Presence update services (Social Search engines & Lifestream aps also get a mention as adjunct services). The version that's on the site is the short one. you can download the 9 page PDF on site or from here: Download social-networking-overview.pdf Evaluating Social Networking Services comes in two parts: an evaluation chart which has an online version and an easier-for-me-to-read downloadable version: That's designed to be printed off big (well, A3). The services which were kind enough to take part are used as examples to help people make their own evaluations of services. Big thanks to everyone at Bebo, Facebook, Yahoo!, MySpace, Ning, Taking It Global and Google who pitched in and gave permissions. There is also a checklist guide that accompanies the chart, designed to walk you through what to look out for when evaluating services for use with young people. This covers a lot of things, including profile privacy, moderation, customisation, security and access issues, data management tools, and interoperability. Benefits & Opportunities is a section looking at the potential positives for young people and organisations of using social networking services. Barriers & Risks looks some of the issues preventing educators from exploring social networking services and some of the e-safety issues involved. The Ideas and Examples returns to the different kinds of social networking services outlined in the first section and looks at what educators in the UK and around the world are doing. I'd like to continue to develop and expand this section so all suggestions are welcome - and of course you can always enter your fantastic project for this years International Edublog Awards :) So that's it! Except to again thank the fantastic advisory board who worked on the project, keeping an eye on how the research was developing and what the final report looked like.
Posted by Josie Fraser | 0 comment(s) November 20, 2008Eariler today, I was unable get in world, and not surprised as I had noticed a SL server upgrade on the grid status blog //status.secondlifegrid.net/ . After dinner & dishes duty - around 17.30 GMT, I wanted to see if group 2 were still in a meeting at MUVEnation island, but they had left. On the map, I tracked someone and teleported there,he was also from the MUVEnation project; he told me the others had left and we made friends, had a conversation, tried a few things around friendship features and played hide and seek with mini map and teleport, good practice for mentor skills. I need to find out who he was as I forgot to note down his name - but I have several photos of him, close up face only,so that will be an identifier. What we actually did not do, was to try out the six helpful posts of informative exercises, which I took up ather he left http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3175/3046043075_973e98b854.jpg
I don't know if he had been taklen there by the course leaders Rosie /Shirley and Pat P. they are also developers at the neighbor island Emerge of the JISC project. What I fould was a powerful training camp with all the nice advice you could ever want for the first few weeks in world. For me, the note collection will serve as reminders t helping me to catch up after half a year away, and a lousy memory. How to change appearance and dress yourself up, where to get useful freebies (in an economy where most beginners are free riders and terribly poor, this comes in very handy!) How to use camera controls, take snapshots - and how to measure your height. This is where I I stumbed into an emergency! I touched the tall talking box, got the expected measure (an am 1.78 meters which is 20 cm taller than in RL ) - and then I touched a second time. Now the box attacked me, and it lookedfun because I am wearing wings these days. I knew I had a note about how to get rid of a box in your face from the helpful Emerge handbook, so I just wanted to send a snapshot to myself before getting out of the box - and then - FREEZE! . Sorry if I made a fool of myself but these things do happen once in a while; I am sure I did not tell the beasty box to become part of my outfit. The picture looks silly. I will have to get back in world and control that I have not really stolen this piece of useful inventory from the Emerge training camp. I did practise my camera skills again, see my Flickr album for evidence.
Another useful thing that I will remember from today: send a postcard with a snapshot to yourself or another recipient, from in world, and it will have the SLURL on it! Oh no! Help! I'm stuck in a box Keywords: mvn08 secondlife Posted by Sus Nyrop | 0 comment(s) http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/11/sounds-of-the-bazaar-special-in Next Monday we break new ground with our Sounds of the Bazaar radio show. We are producing a special issue of Emerging Sound of the Bazaar entitled ‘Into the Dragons Den’. The programme is a fly on the wall special following the progress of a Dragons Den session organised by the Jisc Emerge project. What’s it all about? Emerge supports a range of projects funded by the Jisc Users and Innovation programme. The projects are mainly focused on developing social software for use in education. Part of the support process has been through a four stage development model. As part of that model, at different times during the project development, project developers get invited to a session where they are quizzed by ‘Dragons’ on the progress of their project. The Dragons Den session featured on Sounds of the Bazaar is the Preview project which is developing and piloting models for Problem Based Learning in Second Life. Maggie Savin-Baden will represent the project. Paul Bailey and Chris Fowler wil be the dragons. It is going to be great fun. The programme, whih will last about 45 minutes, goes out at 19.00 UK time, 20.00 Central European Time. To listen to the programme just go to http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk/Emerge.m3u in your browser. The stream should open in your MP3 player of choice. And if you’d like to chat during the programme Crsitina Costa will be in the chat room at http://tinyurl.com/soundschat. Just add your name in the text field (leaving the password field blank) and chat away. Posted by Graham Attwell | 0 comment(s) http://www.pontydysgu.org/2008/11/corporate-reinforcing-greed-fee
I reallly like this work by Ambjörn Naeve called A greed upon reality - the real (e)state of the economic system. The screenshot is taken from his Conzilla (www.conzilla.org) systems model, although sadly I can’t get it to open on my Mac. The work, Ambjörn says, is mainly based on the New(tonian) economics provided by Lisa H. Newton: Permission to Steal - Revealing the Roots of Corporate Scandal. Posted by Graham Attwell | 0 comment(s) |
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