There’s a great article in today’s Guardian “Tracking technology in the corridors of learning”, it reports on the use of RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) antennas and tags at the University of Washington’s computer science department. Rather than the Orwellian overtones you might expect, where the ‘evil overseers’ monitor our every move, the system is open…
Read moreCategory: Web 2.0
Eliciting Answers using web 2.0 tools.
Linked-In is a tool for maintaining and developing contacts – one of the features is the ability to ask questions of your network of contacts and the ‘public visibility’ of these questions. I thought it might be interesting to pose a question around web 2.0 and then see what sort of answers we got back.…
Read moreU&I Showcase: The Web2Rights Project
One of the joys of working as a programme manager at the JISC is working with a group of people that you can bounce ideas off, find gaps and then elicit solutions. Following a series of reports about IPR and Copyright issues around new and emerging technologies, we, (JISC, and the JISC Users and Innovation…
Read moreConnectivism at the Blackboard Users Conference
Last week I spoke at the Eighth Annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference (metaphors on a postcard!). The theme of the event was Connectivism and suggested reading prior to the event was George Siemen’s paper ‘Connectivism: a learning theory for a digital age’. I opened with a quote from Dave Cormier’s blog: Many of us have…
Read moreDigital footprints
Dotsam. Defined as: The wasteland of abandoned Web sites, Hotmail accounts, blogs, wikis, MySpace pages, etc., that their creators have ignored for months or years but which remain accessible. The word was coined in imitation of flotsam and jetsam; “flotsam” refers to goods that float in the water without having been thrown there, as after…
Read moreTowards digital exclusion?
Earlier this month I read a great article – Social networking: Not as inclusive as you might think! Some people will know that I have a passing interest in accessibility and that I have written a little on it in the past. So, when I saw the article it piqued my interest. I won’t repeat…
Read moreWhat’s on your business card?
A colleague from a library in the North East sent me a SodaPDF of his new business card this week. It looked for all intents and purposes like a traditional business card but I noticed that other than just the institution’s website, his email and directline, there were two additions. These included his MSN messenger…
Read moreSocial-learning mash-up?
I was sent a link this week to an application within Facebook, CourseFeed. This is a small application that integrates your Virtual Learning Environment with Facebook. At the moment it seems to support Blackboard® only, with some limited functionality for others. The full app when used with Blackboard® allows (using their words not mine): Course…
Read moreTechnology and language: a plea for calm…
Over the past 18 months I’ve been immersed in activities with staff across the UK higher education sector looking at technology that is characterised as web 2.0. Purely from anecdotal evidence it is, to me, becoming apparent that some of us are not speaking the same language as the practitioners that we seek to influence.…
Read moreWeb 2.0 Briefing Paper
For the Association for Learning Technology conference 2007 I was asked to prepare a short Web 2.0 briefing paper. Limited to 2 pages this has not been an easy task, the paper can be found at http://www.jisc.org.uk/publications/publications/web2socialsoftwarev1.aspx. However below is a longer version with live links. The terms Web 2.0 and social software are now…
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