Interesting links    3/05/2008
Author : Graeme Daniel

Interesting Links April 29th 2008

In Our Cell Phones, Ourselves   at the annual Technology, Entertainment, Design conference, Nokia researcher Jan Chipchase reflects on how people interact with their cellphones - key references: the importance of what we carry; Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs; compensating for illiteracy through delegation; the phone as ATM; mobile identity.
There are over 200 fascinating TED Talks videos  to explore, many with high value as educational resources.

Learn maths with your mobile with some interesting visual downloads.

Edventure Mazes  are 3D, first-person, walk-through adventures that test knowledge of a given topic - sample maze available, or build your own.

Pictures of Dell’s Eco Bamboo Computer  (Katie Fehrenbacher / earth2tech: April 22, 2008) - only the case is made of bamboo: a step in the right direction.

Cloud Computing Takes the 'P' out of PC  (Asher Moses / The Age: April 24, 2008) - a concise introduction to the concept of cloud computing, with current examples and a link to a video demonstrating Microsoft's Live Mesh.

Google Joins Fight against Pedophiles  (The Sydney Morning Herald: April 17, 2008) - image-matching software helps the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to identify children in sexually explicit online photos and video.

And the Webware 100 Winners Are...   (Rafe Needleman / April 21, 2008) - the 100 top Web apps according to Webware users.

Speak Up 2007 - Selected National Findings (Alec Couros / Open Thinking & Digital Pedagogy:  April 10,  2008) - notes on Project Tomorrow's analysis of data from online surveys, focus groups and interviews with American parents, teachers, school leaders and students, with special reference to Filters, Personal Learning, Emerging Technologies, and Student-Directed Change

OpeniWorld: Europe2008: Federating Resources through Open Interoperability  (Lyon, France / June 24-27, 2008) - to be hosted by the Lyon 2 University in collaboration with MIT’s Open Knowledge Initiative, OpeniWorld will focus on resource federation, a key educational technology challenge.

Designing Educational Technologies for Social Justice  (Lyndsay Grant, Greg Villalobos / Futurelab, Bold Creative: April 2008) - for practitioners designing new projects and adapting existing ones; developers designing digital tools and resources; and funding bodies wanting to ensure robust processes in supported projects.
Themes are: Digital Inclusion, Teachers and Innovations, Learning Spaces, Mobile Learning, Learner Voice, Games and Learning.
Download the pdf or order a free hard copy.

China Opens Access to Wikipedia   (The Age: April 06, 2008) - with limited access to sensitive content.

SKorea's Hynix Announces 'Fastest' One-Gigabit Chip
 (physorg.com: April 06, 2008) - Hynix Semiconductor's new chip for cellphones and other mobile applications can process data at 800 megabits per second.

Financial Literacy  (Barbara J. Feldman / Surfing the Net with Kids: April 27, 2008) - six learning resources. Excellent newsletter available.

Interesting Links 16th March 2008

Rising use of Internet challenges its capacity   (Steve Lohr / IHT: March 13, 2008) - portends increasingly tardy download speeds, especially regarding data-heavy services

On blogs and Web sites, by e-mail and video, the Iraq war is fought on the Internet  (The Sydney Morning Herald: March 15, 2008) - an update on the influence of the Internet on perceptions of the war in Iraq.  

Run Firefox betas without losing your cool (Seth Rosenblatt / Webware: March 12, 2008) - how to try Firefox 3 beta while retaining a stable installation of Firefox 2. For those who can't afford to forego all those handy extensions, not yet supported in the beta.

Web 3.0 has long since passed Web 2.0 in Education for 2020   (Teaching and Guidance Counseling: March 12, 2008) - a futuristic look at ICTs in education; features an interesting graphic plotting degrees of social connectivity against information connectivity.

Social networking translates to tutorial (Carolyn Y. Johnson / The Boston Globe:  March 12, 2008) - MyHappyPlanet is a social network designed to help users learn another language.


The ABC announces four new innovative services  (Friends of the ABC) -

•     ABC Playback is an internet television service providing catch-up TV viewing.
•     ABC Local sites carrying local broadband content
•     Continuous News Centres will provide multiple, simultaneous continuous streams of news content.
•     ABC Shop Downloads offering online browsing and shopping for ABC media products.

Users get access to film clips  (Boston Globe : March 10, 2008) - Paramount Pictures will make movie clips available online via Facebook

E-schooling grows, but what about the teachers?  (Eve Tahmincioglu / IHT: March 09, 2008) - pros and cons of online education.

Education through Exploration: A New Theory in Teaching and Learning Science  (Caleb M. Schutz / Education through Exploration: Winter 2008) - introduces an addition to learning theory  based on the JASON Project , a middle school science program; the idea is that connecting students with great explorers and events sparks a deeper engagement in learning, leading to enhanced outcomes.

The Encyclopedia of Life  project aims to document the 1.8 million species which comprise life on Earth. Check periodically for progress.

At UNdata: A World of Information , the DESA Statistics Division presents a new online data search service covering a variety of statistical resources within the UN system.


Interesting Links February 2008

Marylaine Block's subscription list for Neat New Stuff has been distributed for the last time - however, weekly updates and archives are still available at the Neat New Stuff   website. This week's selection includes a promotion for  Doodle 4 Google , a Google logo competition for K-12 students - register by March 28, send entries by April 12.
The Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)  carries links to high-quality resources for those involved in teaching and learning about the Earth system at all levels.
Education Week's Digital Directions  is a valuable current awareness resource for educators - American emphasis, with some Australian presence.
Breakthrough in 3-D technology   (Dawn: February 07, 2008) - introducing next-generation 3D technology for providing realistic, updatable holograms in (nearly) real time. Medical examples.
Google sponsors new race to the moon   (Brad Stone / IHT: February 22, 2008) - the Google Lunar X Prize is a competition offering $30 million in prizes for the first two teams to land a robotic lunar rover and return images and other data.
$10 chip puts Australia on the fast track  (Nick Miller / The Age: February 22, 2008} - a new 5mm square chip wirelessly transmits data at 5 gigabits/second over distances of up to 10 metres. Implications for home and office networks, televisions, phones and DVD players are immense.
Microsoft set to scan 25 million pages  (Raissa Kasolowsky / Cape Times: February 12, 2008) - Microsoft's Live Search Books project will scan about 100,000 books from the British Library's 19th-century archive over the next two years.


The HD-DVD / Blu-ray issue seems to have been resolved at last:
    Blu-ray winning the format war in Australia (Jennifer Dudley-Nicholson / news.com: January 23, 2008) provides background.
    Toshiba drops out of HD DVD war  (BBC News: February 19, 2008) - the end of the battle to establish an industry standard.
    No refunds for HD DVD early adopters  (Asher Moses / Sydney Morning Herald: February 20, 2008) - although Toshiba will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players, all existing HD DVD owners will get full product support and after-sales service.
    Owners offload their pre-loved HD DVD players  (Asher Moses / Sydney Morning Herald: February 21, 2008) - consumers can now make informed decisions on hardware purchases.
    Why did so many companies dump HD DVD?   (David Pogue / IHT: February 21, 2008) - the logic behind the need to settle on a single format
    Five unexpected effects of a Blu-ray victory   (Angus Kidman / apcmag: February 22, 2008) - some technical considerations.

Interesting Links November 2007

Couriermail.com.au Wins Top Award (news.com.au: November 17, 2007) - the Courier Mail's site has won the Website of the Year section of Rupert Murdoch's 2007 News Awards for its "innovative use of video and other multimedia content". Although there is no specific Education section, the Technology  page is worth following.

Enquiring Minds   - developed by Futurelab, is 'an approach to teaching and learning that takes students’ ideas, interests and experiences as its starting point, and provides them with more responsibility for the direction and content of their learning.' Includes practical ideas for introducing Enquiring Minds approaches in schools.

School Leads Way into Hi-Tech Future  (Elizabeth Gosch / AustralianIT: November 15, 2007) - one school's
integration of computers and computing across the curriculum; is this the model for the "Education Revolution'?

Fingerprint Roll Call Plan for Schools (Evelyn Yamine /  news.com.au: November 13, 2007) - New South Wales schools begin to use biometric identification.

Some Interesting Aussie Edubloggers  (Jo McLeay /  The Open Classroom: November 06, 2007) - shares  discoveries from the Directory of Australian Edubloggers

Elearning07 : Podcast Downloads  (Alexander Hayes / NSW LearnScope Blog & Podcast: November 06, 2007) - complete recording from all panels at Elearning07. Topics include:

•     how elearning methodologies challenge the status quo
•     teaching digital literacy skills
•     using social networking spaces to engage youth
•     using technology to support assessment
•     addressing disadvantage
•     employers' engagement with emerging technologies
•     achieving critical thinking online
•     fundamental changes for VET
•     copyright online
•     virtual worlds  

Aussie Maths Whiz Supercharges Net  (Asher Moses / Sydney Morning Herald: November 05, 2007) - Dr John Papandriopoulos, research fellow at the University of Melbourne, has developed an algorithm to reduce the electromagnetic interference that slows ADSL connections. Could 100Mbps soon be a broadband reality?

 Flock 1.0 - a social browser offering integrated photo-sharing, instant messaging, and interaction with social networking sites.

The Semantic Web Goes Mainstream (Kate Greene / Technology Review: October 29, 2007) - Radar Networks has released Twine,  a free Web-based tool that may change the way people organize their information. Registration for the Invite Beta is required.

Wikipedia Project Is a Class Act  (Asher Moses / Sydney Morning Herald: October 31, 2007) - academics are now using it as an educational tool in classrooms around the world. Might those much-denigrated errors turn out to be a virtue?

Interesting Links September 16th

Online Education Glossary Sites  (Kate Britt / What's New in PinkFlamingo's Resource Lists: September 09, 2007)

New URLs for Our RSS Feeds  (Gary Price, Shirl Kennedy / ResourceShelf: September 16, 2007) - feeds for both ResourceShelf and DocuTicker.

Inquiry Based Learning (Educational Resources Online: September 12, 2007) - emphasis on Big 6.

“Unlearning” and the Future of Education  (Judy O’Connell / Hey Jude: September 06, 2007) - refections on innovation in the way schooling happens.

Acer Bags NSW Laptop Contract  (Andrew Colley / Australian IT: September 14, 2007) - the NSW Department of Education and Training proposes to issue 100,000 computers to schools and TAFEs over the next four years.

Teaching Not Wooing the 'clever'  (Jewel Topsfield / The Age: September 14, 2007) - should trainee high school teachers obtain an Arts or Science degree before studying Education?

Google Sponsors $A35.7m Moon Contest  (The Sydney Morning Herald: September 14, 2007) - a prize for the first private company to safely land a robotic rover on the moon and beam back a gigabyte of imagery.

Robot Maker Builds Artificial Boy (Matt Slagle / breitbart.com: September 13, 2007) - David Hanson's Zeno is intended to meet an emerging demand for social robots.

Google and YouTube  platforms for the upcoming Australian election should reinforce levels of public participation.

Social Networking Sites Take Notice of Seniors  (Matt Richtel / International Herald Tribune:  September 06, 2007) - a nice convergence with the theme of lifelong learning.

Windows Live  - Microsoft's free download includes email, instant messaging, photo gallery and blogging software, as well as a security program; automatic updates.

Fading Away: the Problem of Digital Sustainability  (Danny Kingsley / On Line Opinion: September 05,  2007) - suggestions for solutions: run regular back-ups; put versions of work into institutional repositories; print paper copies of photographs.

One of UK's Largest Universities Selects Desire2Learn to Enhance Student Learning  (Marketwire: September 04, 2007) - Nottingham Trent University will adopt the Desire2Learn enterprise solution as its Virtual Learning Environment.

Interesting Links August 28th

Government Unveils New Citizenship Test  (Herald Sun / August 26, 2007) - draft of the proposed test for migrants is now available. Does this mean that all incumbent citizens who don't meet prescribed standards in English language, values and historical knowledge may fail an assessment sooner or later? Could a Pacific Solution cope? The Australian Government's Civics and Citizenship Education site is well placed to address such fears, through its wealth of learning resources for teachers, students and parents.

Free DVD for Every New Parent   (Sydney Morning Herald: August 20, 2007) - the Raising Children DVD is a comprehensive guide to parenting young children, covering basic information regarding child health, development and care, and family management.

It appears that the drive to limit access to p