Happiness is a warm computer

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I hope you are all prepared for tomorrow – it is supposed to be very, very wet! Get your sou’wester and galoshes out folks

Just to make you feel really cheerful I bring you a post from The Thesis Whisperer. It’s all about getting in the doldrums when you are working on your thesis but I think the principles can be applied to dissertations too – it’s called The Valley of Shit. Not a very inspiring title but it might just help you get that paper finished rather than throwing up your hands in despair and walking out of the University

As I am sure you all know, I am very interested in the use of technology in education, particularly augmented reality and virtual reality. For those of you interested in this sort of thing I thought I’d include a link to a blog I found recently called, Mariis’ explorations of 3D remediation. The post that caught my eye was a discussion on whether Virtual Worlds were games or not – I support the idea that they are communication devices and therefore not games. If you are interested in the academic side of Virtual Worlds and such like you will find this blog and the links from it rather interesting. I found Women Academics in Virtual Environments, a useful ning for getting us girls together

Now just a few things to look at for when the sun has come out again and you can go out and play How about trying out augmented reality with Junaio? Try out some of the augmented reality already created for you or download the metaio Creator tool and create some of your own. If that doesn’t float your boat how about turning your iPad or iPhone into a remote control and track pad using Mobile Mouse, if you are not already a couch potato this might make you into one – so beware If you really can’t be bothered with all that and just want to relax with a good book you might prefer this instead. Try out Free Books, download the app and search away to your heart’s content.

Hope you all have a lovely wet Thursday

Augmenting reality

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So pleased that today we have slightly better weather – may be we will have a summer after all

I’ve been thinking about augmented reality a lot lately. I certainly feel as if it is the next “thing”, augmented reality seems to be popping up everywhere these days. The Horizon report says that it thinks augmented reality will be one of the next big technologies.

At the end of April the ICTmagic blog wrote this post on The Rise of Augmented Reality in Education. Lots here to read about and to try out – I like the explanation of augmented reality by Commoncraft but it was created in 2010 and things have moved on really quickly. The glasses talked about in the Commoncraft video already exist. Do go and try out some of the apps suggested in the blog. I’d love to know how you get on – create a video of your achievements and I’ll post it here

What I find really interesting is what is going on in the printing industry with augmented reality. It is so much easier to understand how something works if you can see it in 3D and walk around it. This post from Augmented Planet is about the Sappi Guide to Design and Print but especially the part on augmented reality. I’m sure lots of you would love to try this out. As before if you make a video of your creations, send it in and I’ll put it on the blog.

I’m just putting this idea in to find out if any of you think this would be useful. The E-LiME blog posted an item about improving learning repositories. Natalie suggested that learning repositories should be more like Slideshare or Vimeo, etc. For example, you could easily share what you find using social media buttons. Read Natalie’s post and let me know what you think.

Post holiday mutterings

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Ah well here we are back again at the factory I hope you are all beavering away at your end of semester papers – good luck everyone

Let me see if I can find a few light weight things to keep you amused over a cup of coffee. One thing I think you all might be interested in is this piece of research about information overload – I promise it’s not heavy, it’s on the BBC News site. It will help you to understand why it is that drawing pictures or diagrams helps you to understand things.

Now here’s something you might like – screen sharing. Just make sure you have java installed on you machine (the site will walk you through installation) and then you can use screenleap to share each others screens. If you are having problems using Excel or something just share your screen with your friends and they can show you how to get it to work. Trying to make your mind map make sense (?) share your problem with your friends with out leaving you desk.

If you are into old news reels, European history or modern languages you must go to EUscreen. Lots and lots of great old film and a chance to practice your conversational French, German, Italian, etc. You’ll love it

Aggression and citations

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Ummm, so many interesting things, where should I start. Oh yes, let’s do the really serious stuff first.

This video on YouTube by Richard Bacon from the BBC gives you lots to think about. Richard has been targeted by a cyber bully and wants to find him so he can talk to him face to face. Richard also talks to some other people who have bullied online. What do you think – is this type of behaviour ok or should we cyber-writers make the bullies sit up and take notice of, what is usually, the silent majority.

Something for the historians out there. 2014 will be the centenary of World War One and there’s loads of stuff happening on the web. This site is run by University of Oxford in collaboration with JISC. If you have something you’d like to contribute to the site why not contact them (details on the web site).

Finally another JISC funded project, this time at University of Bristol. The m-biblio Project aim is to create an app that allows “smart phones to be used for the recording and organisation of bibliographic information for students within a library context“. See if you agree with some of the comments the Bristol students have made. If you have a new idea add your comment here

Where we are

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I’ve been working with students and talking to others in Second life today. Second Life is a communication device, it lets us see representations (avatars) of one another, it enables us to talk in text or voice (to groups or individuals), and it gives people the opportunity to build things together, so people can create together anything from art to rapid prototyping. All of this at the click of a button and from anywhere in the world at any time. This tool thus lends itself to teaching (amongst other things), as an acquaintance from Arkansas State University demonstrated for me with the teacher training course they run completely in SL. I don’t intend to dwell on Second Life and how some are doing more with it than others but all this rather got me thinking about communication and communication methods these days.

Like most other people these days I use a whole range of devices from the physical to the virtual to communicate for work, rest and play. We are all Tweeting, Texting and Scoopiting to our heart’s content, all day. We are communicating at a level of incidence never seen before and we are communicating about all sorts of things. Anything we can think about:

• subjects we are working on such as Psyblog by Jeremy Dean from University College London
• journals such as the Association for Learning Technology where I found this article on The Self Organised Learning Environment
• organised opposition to government and industry policies such as the researchers boycott of Elsevier
• information about the changing face of education
• opinion from thought leaders

The above list does not include, of course, all of that everyday communication we carry on all the time with our bank or the local government (for example about housing) or the national government (for example pension claims) or the NHS (for example making appointments at the hospital).

So if we can’t communicate properly in the modern world, using modern devices of communication we will not only, not know what is happening, more importantly we will not be able to let people know what is happening with/to us.

Indulging Digital Literacy

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Sometimes I just feel the need to get back to the roots of my subject. It is often easier to say what Digital Literacy is NOT rather than what it is. Gavin Dudeney always has something interesting to say and he hits the nail on the head with this. I think you will find this video of him, from the end of last year, at the British Council worth watching. The video is called, Teaching English but it’s about Digital Literacy. You do have to pause it to look at the other three videos he mentions and to read the questions – the video editor clipped them a bit short.

I like EdJudo, it’s a blog about supporting technology in high schools (so it’s American) but even though it focuses on school there is a lot here that can be used in Higher Education. The page I’m directing you to has a massive list of apps and, having looked through them, I know there are some here that will be of use to you, and fun. I like playing with the 3D stuff, and you can do more serious things with Blender.

I’ll try to find some more things for you to do next week. Have fun over the weekend

Better now thank you :)

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So much better now – no hot eyes or aches and pains, hurrah!

I’m currently writing (trying to write?) a Social Media Guideline for Learning and Teaching. As a part of this process I’ve been looking around at the advice other universities give and at what teachers have to say about using social media. I like this post from the Teaching the Teacher blog. Stephanie writes about, “when fear extinguishes innovation” for student teachers. I think the student teachers amongst you will enjoy reading Stephanie’s post and the comments it has received. I, for one, can’t agree with her more Do have a read and let me know what you think.

For you history students out there, here is an article from the American journal, the Chronicle of Higher Education. History academics are renowned for not being frightfully interested in anything technological, at least as far as their teaching is concerned. This phenomenon exists on both sides of the pond, it doesn’t seem to matter if you are American or British. Most people won’t know Daniel J. Cohen but he is one of the people who is trying to change all that. Prof. Cohen works at George Mason University where he manages the George Mason Centre which produced PressForward, Zotero and Omeka (all of which I think I have mentioned before on this blog). Do read the article and tell me what you think. Will the history discipline be improved by moving into the digital age or will it destroy something unique?

Now something for everyone but especially for those of you interested in programming or teaching programming. The world now has a very tiny computer which costs about £25, it is called the Raspberry Pi. The original idea was to find something that would enable young people to play with programming on a computer that cost very little – most modern computers just don’t provide that opportunity. Read about the Raspberry Pi Foundation and the launch of the computer here. I rather like the idea of a real computer about the size of my bank card – I can see all sorts of things taking off from this development – how exciting

Eyes like poached eggs

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Right guys just three things for you today ‘cos I have a headache, and eyes like poached eggs.

The first item is a video (possibly a bit long) from one of the big names in virtual reality, Jeremy Bailenson. Prof. Bailenson is the Director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL) at the Stanford University. Bailenson recently wrote a book with Prof. James Blascovich from University of California, called Infinite Reality: Avatars, Eternal Life, New Words and the Dawn of the Virtual Revolution. In the video Bailenson talks about some of the issues raised in the book – do watch, even just a little of it, it helps in understanding just how far we have travelled in the last few years.

Next up is Videolicious, this looks like fun. Take a few of your dreadful videos and pictures, pull them together with the aid of this app, put some voice over them and presto! You have something worth showing people

Last, I thought I would try to get some feedback from you all. Read this article from Mark Smithers and tell me if you think, “lecture capture the single worst example of poor educational technology use in higher education?” Do you like lecture capture? Read what Mark says and see if you agree with him or not. Your feedback could really help lecturers to give you what you want.

To be or not to be …

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I am often torn about how serious, or not, I should be on this blog. I mostly try to keep things fairly light, interesting and even, dare I say it, fun. However, there are times when I feel there is little out there in the metaverse but serious stuff (times when I often choose not to blog). I tend to err on the side of, “if you can’t say anything real nice, it’s better not to talk at all …”. Today though I think I will say a few serious things just to try to press home what this “Digital Literacy” stuff is all about.

I’d just finished the Research Seminar for February in Second Life at lunchtime and I thought I’d have a look at what was going on in the rest of the world (I mean the corporeal one not the virtual). I opened Twitter and was immediately bombarded by loads of Tweets on copyright issues (these are always very busy streams within Twitter). One Tweet on Digital Literacy though caught my eye from Catherine Cronin from the National University of Ireland. Catherine was Tweeting about a post on the ICTology blog about finding out what Digital Literacy means by analyzing one Tweet. Do read the blog – Ismael Peña-López takes apart one Tweet from Brian Lamb at the University of British Columbia to show just what skills are needed to be a member of the digital world we all, increasingly live in these days.

Moving on from that rather pleasant idea I then came across two items. The first was about Pinterest and the copyright infringement problems it is currently wrestling with. This problem is analyzed by Martin Sloane on the Brodies Law Firm blog (they’re in Scotland), TechBlog. Trying to follow the ins and outs of this problem is also a Digital Literacy issue, any of us could find ourselves caught up in this weird world of digital copyright law – apps like Pinterest are very popular and can be very effective for promoting organisations. What the outcome will be of this tussle is going to be interesting – for all of us. The second was another copyright issue, this time about photography. “Do you need permission to take a photo with a chair in it“. The world is a smaller place these days and we have to be conscious of how laws in other countries affect us. The copyright law and the design rights law in France are clashing over this problem of a photograph of a “designer” chair (designed by someone who worked with Le Corbusier). This is not an unknown issue of copyright law – photographing “famous things” for profit requires the permission of the designer of the “famous thing”. What everyone is complaining about is that the effect of this is to restrict/reduce creativity, the very thing that copyright is supposed to protect and encourage. Read the article you can tell why the photographers are upset.

What does all this mean for the average man in the street? It means that these days he has to be Digitally Literate just as in the past he had to be able to read and write.

Sleep well everyone

Interesting bits and pieces

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Just a few things to chat about today – some are just interesting things, others are things to play with. ok, so what is first on my list?

I think I’ve mentioned Storify to you before as a great way to present interesting and newsworthy content. Today I stumbled across this really useful post from the ReadWriteWeb about the do’s and don’ts for successfully using Storify. It all seems so easy once you read it but the two examples show that the advice given is really helpful.

And now for something completely different Kissing it Better. I thought some of our nursing students (and lecturers) might be interested in this one. I think this is really quite a clever site – it is asking anyone and everyone to share some really simple ideas that help to bring a smile to the face of someone who is ill and/or to their relatives and carers. At the bottom of the page is a link to Notes on Nursing, written by Florence Nightingale – you can buy the book but you can also have a quick peek inside. Flo knew what she was writing about all those years ago – it still applies today.

Thanks to profhacker in The Chronicle of Higher Education for this next piece of information. The post about screencasting tools, the first one mentioned might be of a little interest to you all (‘cos it’s free) but I think you will probably prefer the second one (let’s face it it’s only about £2.00) Explain Everything. The post gives it a very good write-up and, although it is an iPad app it also works on a PC or Mac. It sounds like a very good way of keeping notes, etc throughout the day.

To end up, here are four links that will interest quite a few of you for one reason or another – they will especially interest education students (and lecturers). The first link is Confusing Words, where you can type in a word you confuse with another and find out its meaning, a cross between a dictionary and a thesaurus. Next is Cool Tools – a whole load of tools you can use with learners to help with their understanding of English, Maths, etc or just for fun. I really like the Oatmeal Grammar Pack, unfortunately it’s American but a smashing idea someone could work with for people on this side of the pond. Finally we come to The Free Dictionary site – you could use this stuff to embed on your own web page or you could just make personal use of it on this site. A great idea with lots of different discipline specific dictionaries available, go and have a look I’m sure you’ll find it useful.

A nice mixture

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I have a whole variety of things for you today. I was a bit busy last Thursday, off in Bristol at a JISC Workshop on Managing a Digital Media Collection. I know that might sound pretty boring to some of you but it was quite good fun. If you are really keen on something, want to share it with others and want others to share with you, you might find Omeka.net interesting. For £30 per year you can store 1GB of your work on Omeka’s server in America. This gives you an opportunity to produce a product like this one called, “Hurricane Digital Memory Bank” which runs on Omeka on its own server or this one which runs on Omeka.net, “Eastern Oklahoma Tuberculosis Sanitorium”. As you can see on both these sites they provide an option for people to contribute their own pictures and stories to the sites. If you do have a go let me know and I’ll put a link to it on the blog

Here is something for all you iPad owners to try. I guess a lot of you have tried using iMovie to edit your family videos, well here is an app that looks as if it provides more for your $4.99. I found this on the “iPadinCanada” site which has a very helpful video on how to use the app which comes from Avid who produce editing programmes.

I just love this article from the European Space Agency. Unfortunately you can’t get any of this kit on the high street yet but you can see where all this might lead. I can see a time coming when you will all want your own augmented reality medical kit

I would love to know how many of your lecturers are using the “clickers” like this lecturer does. Lorraine Weaver has a post on the UoW Interesting Practice site on her use of these gadgets in the Biological Sciences department. Would you like your lecturers to make more use of these “Personal Response Systems”? The biology students seem to have found them very helpful.

Developing Digital Literacies

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I was going to write about something completely different but then I saw the Tweet in the #jiscdiglit Twitter stream from CosmoCat. I’m not sure if many/any of you are aware that JISC is currently running a Programme called Developing Digital Literacies (unfortunately we were a little too young to join in). The Programme comes under JISC Cetis and on the Programme homepage it says,

“We’re working with colleges and universities to embed core digital skills into the curriculum. By digital literacy we mean those capabilities which fit an individual for living, learning and working in a digital society: for example, the skills to use digital tools to undertake academic research, writing and critical thinking; as part of personal development planning; and as a way of showcasing achievements.”

Which is, more or less, what we are trying to do here at Worcester. (I must say I really dislike the JISC homepages their new sites are much nicer. Have a look at the range of projects in the programme) What CosmoCat drew my attention to was Sheila’s work blog, which provides an excellent round-up of how the programme is progressing so far and what is happening with each of the projects. You can get a good idea of what it is like to work on one of these projects by looking at the blogs from them.

Do go and look at all the information in the links above as it will give you a better idea of what this blog and the Digital Literacy Services in general are all about:)

Gadgets

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I do love gadgets – let’s face it they are just toys that actually do something; they’re just the next step on from Meccano I try not to fill this blog with too many gadgets as I know a lot of people are not addicted to them like I am. However, there comes a time when I just have to give in to my inner child – so here is what I’ve been looking at.

The Guardian Newspaper produced a list of the top 50 apps for the iPad. Yes I know that not everyone has an iPad but lots of you do and I just want to show the others how useful and how much fun they can be. I wasn’t particularly interested in the first section it’s stuff for the home, recipes and interior design, things like that but I can see that the interaction they provide could be helpful. The other sections (except for the Kids) have lots to interest people. Things like eBay for iPad, Skype, Flipboard to create your own magazine, eBook Creator, Painterly, Garageband and loads more. I’m definitely going to be trying some of these out.

This next one won’t be in everyone’s homes just yet but I can’t wait for it to arrive. It’s not known by a very catchy name yet but it is gesture and voice controlled TV. Hurrah! No more losing the TV controller just when I need it in a hurry I picked up this little news item from the journal of the International Society for Presence Research. If you’re into virtual reality these people are the ones to follow. Originally the article came from the Los Angeles Times where the reporter goes on to talk about the research that is continuing into the technology that supports Microsoft’s Kinect. This technology is still comparatively young and it is believed that there are lots more to come from it.

The last item is another one from Microsoft – as you know I’m not a great fan of Microsoft but their research department is very good. There is an article from Tech Crunch about Surface SUR40, a piece of technology that was introduced to us, I think, early last year – it was interesting but not that exciting and rather clunky. The researchers at Microsoft have worked on it since then and produced a table four inches thick. That sounds a bit big but the argument is that it has to be robust to survive in the real world. At nearly 9,000 US dollars this really isn’t aimed at the household market but have a look at this video (it’s a bit slow at the beginning) demonstration and you can see how it might be used in shops and in business.

Umm ebooks

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I’ve been thinking a lot about books just lately. I do buy books in hardcopy, they are very special books, lovingly cared for. Most of the books I buy, for work or just ‘cos I want a good story, are ebooks. These ebooks are books that have to be very portable, books I can put down anytime and pick up again whether I’m on a train or stopped for coffee. I have always read a lot but I think I probably read more now, simply because of ebooks. My phone goes with me everywhere and so my books do too. The end of 2010 saw a massive increase in the purchase of ebooks because of the success of the Kindle, and there is no indication that the rate of increase is slowing down. I’ve been looking at a few sites about ebooks and thought I’d share them with you.

I sometimes think that people have a conception of ebooks as just being like any other book but produced electronically. This isn’t so, publishers are working hard to produce books that have more interaction and more features than hardcopy books do. This graphic that I found on Tony Bates blog is a little old but it does provide a concise overview of ebooks. the graphic covers 2009-2010 but doesn’t appear to include the massive increase in ebooks at the end of 2010.

There has been some talk around for a while now that Apple has been working on digital publishing for the masses. This article on, “Ars Technica” looks at the latest Apple announcement and I can’t wait to see what follows. There are quite a few links worth following in this article and it provides an interesting read about this subject.

If you’re interested in ebooks, you will really like this Scoop.it site, Perspectives on ebooks. Smashing, just loads of stuff on ebooks, the technology, the publishers, effects on reading, just loads. Have a look, if you hate ebooks it might just change your mind, if you love them already you’ll find lots to interest you. Let me know how you get on

Adrift on a choppy sea

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Oh busy, busy days! I think I’m beginning to feel sea-sick – every time I think I’m going to put my metaphorical foot down on something solid, the ground isn’t there! I just keep trying to reassure myself that it will all calm down in the not too distant future – huh who am I kidding I’ve made notes about lots of things I want to mention to you – give me a moment whilst I sort through them.

For all of you out there who are struggling with getting down to work. This post from The Thesis Whisperer is for you. Do not worry anymore you are not lazy or lacking in motivation you just have a problem with commitment:) Have a read, it’s good.

UK Access Management Focus (what a name!) blog is part of JISC Advance. It’s not a very regular blog but interesting stuff appears there, like this post. The post doesn’t have a very inspiring title, “How can we create an identity economy for research and education?” but the contents are interesting. The post will probably interest lecturers and students, it’s a discussion about how HE uses the Web, the apparent attitude of the HE community towards the use of online resources. Get back with some thoughts on this – it’s all about Digital Literacy – I’d love to know what you think.

This next piece is about Barcelona putting swipe card facilities in all over the city. I want to know why, if Barcelona can do it why can’t Worcester? I would love to be free of cash – ever since they got rid of half-crowns and threepenny bits in 1971 (for those of you who don’t know threepenny is pronounced “thrupenny”)! Have a read – would you like Worcester to have this system too?