[mc09] Collecting URLs, creating a monthly newsletter
J.Fine
Hello
As part of dissemination I’ve started collecting URLs related to technical aspects of mathematical content.
http://delicious.com/mathcontent
Some of them are tagged as ‘news’
http://delicious.com/mathcontent/news
I thought it might be nice to gather together the news items into an electronic newsletter (of course). Below is an example of something produced by my colleague Jim Ellis.
Comments (and offers to help) are most welcome.
Jonathan
From: J.R.Ellis
[mailto:J.R....@open.ac.uk]
Sent: 15 September 2009 13:47
To: Lts-Elearning-News-List
Cc: Lts-Perry-All-Levels-List
Subject: eLC Digest 61 - Sep 09
1. eLC News (Ingrid Nix, Chris Pegler & Sarah Davies)
Welcome back everyone. Hope that it was a good break and that you are now invigorated for some lively discussions and activities around eLearning over the autumn.
Ingrid Nix, Sarah Davies and Chris Pegler continue to pull together a programme for the eLC, but we could not do it without you. There is a small thank you to those who have spoken at eLC events on the Jennie Lee Building Media Wall (it’s the colourful one with all the names on it!). Happy to have more speakers and returning speakers for this year's events and, in terms of this Autumn, there are three. Clive Baldwin and Derek Sheills are putting together a programme for the Arts Faculty themed event on 8 Dec and there will be a Work-in-Progress session on 5 Nov. Thank you to those who have volunteered for that one already, but other speakers are still being sought. If you're up to something interesting that you would like to share contact Chris Pegler to volunteer.
Our next event will be on Tue 6 Oct from 10:00-12:30 in the Ambient Technology Lab in the Jennie Lee Building. The twin topics will be SocialLearn (an exciting initiative which got some airplay at ALT-C due to Martin Bean's keynote speech there - see below) and Digital Scholarship. The speakers are Simon Buckingham Shum (KMi) and Martin Weller (IET) and these topics are at the forefront of OU developments around eLearning and in particular informal online communities. Fascinating stuff, so please try to attend; we also hope to use Elluminate to capture this session and more detail on this will follow on the eLC KN site as we get sorted.
2. Mobile Technologies Group (Keren Mills)
The next meeting of the Mobile Technologies Special Interest Group will be on Wed 23 Sep from 14:00 to 16:00 in the Library Presentation Room. The theme will be eBooks and eBook Readers and, as always, we welcome feedback from the group on any related work you've been involved in. Please let Keren know if you plan to attend so she can cater for the right number.
3. Get a Second Life (LIO)
Get a Second Life workshops will be running on 29 and 30 September for anyone who is new to Second Life or would like to explore its opportunities for teaching and learning. The 29th is aimed at newbies who have signed up for a Second Life account and would like some initial support. Sessions on 30th will comprise a real-world discussion of opportunities for teaching and learning in Second Life.
4. UK Conference Call
30 Sep, London, Research & Development 2009: Meeting the Global Economic Challenge.
30 Sep-1 Oct, Birmingham, World of Learning Conference & Exhibition (WOLCE).
5-7 Oct, London, Handheld Learning 2009.
14-15 Oct, Telford, Mobile Learning Early Researcher Symposium.
20 Oct, Birmingham, Leading Innovation, Embracing Technology.
22 Oct, London, The future for part time and distance study.
5 Nov, Bristol, Online Simulations in Higher Education. Call for papers open until 25 Sep.
5. Call for Papers (Google)
Southampton eLearning Symposium will be held on 28-29 Jan 2010. A call for papers is now open (until 23 Oct) covering topics such as student engagement for academic purposes with Second Life, social networking websites, or other Web.2.0 tools; and use of innovative learning designs or creative eLearning environments.
6. ALT Conference
For those who didn’t catch Martin Bean’s keynote at last week's ALT Conference, a recording is available from ALT’s Elluminate recordings page for 9 Sep 09, and there’s coverage and comments in Cloudworks. Also, don’t miss Martin’s forthcoming lecture, ‘The global university – a perspective on current challenges and future opportunities’ in the Berrill on Fri 25 Sep.
Also available, via Niall Sclater’s blog along with his own written interpretation, is a recording of the discussion on “The VLE is Dead” which included various OU inputs.
JISC launched 3 new publications at the ALT conference. 'Responding to learners' is a set of 5 separate PDF guides aimed at different roles based on the outcomes of the JISC e-Learning Programme which comprised ten projects, over 200 learners and more than 3000 survey respondents. 'Managing Curriculum Change' introduces two major JISC research programmes that investigate how the use of technology can help make curriculum design processes more agile and responsive and the experience of learning more engaging, inclusive and rewarding. And 'Learning Literacies in a Digital Age' explores examples of learning literacies provision in FE and HE, given that an estimated 77% of UK jobs involve some form of ICT competence and thus require ongoing skills updates as technology changes.
7. JISC Strategy Review (Tony Hirst)
JISC’s 2010-2012 Strategy Review is now available and the JISC site invites comments via a consultation response form by 24 Sep. Alternatively, you might like to use the JISCpress write to reply site which allows individuals to comment on individual paragraphs and enter into threaded discussions about the strategy.
8. Digital Britain Implementation Plan (ALT)
The Government has now published its Digital Britain Implementation Plan which contains details of the board, agencies, groups, committees and civil servants who are going to drive things forward in a flurry of urgent but well-considered and coordinated activity. Not much explicit mention of education or training, other than in Project 3: Digital Skills.
Prize for most jaundiced view of Digital Britain (and, in fact, any number of other topics on his blog) goes to Donald Clark.
9. Research Grants Nosedive (T.H.E.)
The Times Higher Education estimates that the chances of securing a grant from the research councils have plummeted to all-time low of 23% – a 14% fall, despite a 6% rise in applications in 2008/9. Last year, the Arts and Humanities Research Council had the lowest success rate of any, down from 23 per cent to 18 per cent.
T.H.E. also asks if academics are too busy chasing research grants to inspire their students?
10. Illinois Global Campus Closes (George Siemens)
The University of Illinois had big plans for its Global Campus — an exclusively online branch designed to offer high-demand degrees to non-residential students. With plans for 9,000 students by 2012 and 70,000 by 2018, it was going to prove that a traditional university could use web-only courses to educate non-traditional students on a large scale. Instead, enrolments have been low, the university’s board has voted to phase out the project, most of the staff have been laid off and the remaining 500 or so students will be slotted into other existing programs.
However, according to a detailed study just completed by the US Association of Public and Land-grant Universities with the Sloan Foundation, more than one-third of faculty have taught an online course while more than one-half have recommended an online course to students, citing student needs as a primary motivator for teaching online. The report, Online Learning as a Strategic Asset, is available as a free download in two volumes.
11. Gatlin Online Adult Continuing Education (PRLog)
Gatlin International claims to be the world’s largest eLearning provider and, since 1993, has been collaborating with universities, corporations and governments worldwide. Their new adult continuing education site offers content in 12 languages covering subjects such as management, IT, media design, healthcare, fitness and hospitality. Those registering on the site can also take a free ‘introduction to online learning’ course (now isn’t that a good idea? Somebody…?)
12. The Communications Market 2009 (Rhodri Thomas)
Ofcom published The Communications Market, 2009 last month, covering Radio, TV and telecomms. Highlights include: 65% of UK households have a fixed-line broadband connection and 12% have mobile broadband; mobile phone use has overtaken landlines for the first time, with 22% of socio-economic group DE homes being mobile-only. Apart from standard voice calls, 83% of mobile phone owners also use text messaging, 56% use voicemail, 52% take and store photos and 16% access the internet.
13. McKinsey Web 2.0 Report (Robin Stenham)
A McKinsey global survey considers How companies are benefiting from Web 2.0 and finds widespread but careful interest. Expressing satisfaction with their Internet investments so far, respondents say that Web 2.0 technologies are strategic and that they plan to increase these investments. But companies aren’t necessarily relying on the best-known Web 2.0 trends, such as blogs; instead, they place the greatest importance on technologies that enable automation and networking. The report also finds that three aspects of management were particularly critical to superior performance: a lack of internal barriers to Web 2.0, a culture favouring open collaboration, and early adoption of Web 2.0 technologies.
14. Second Life Out as Techies Embrace Cloud eMail (Ekkehard Thumm)
T.H.E. brings news of a Gartner analysis of the hype cycle of technology in education. The annual study looks at the popularity of emerging technologies, from internet TV and eBooks to Twitter, across a range of sectors. It tracks their progression as a function of expectations and finds that virtual worlds are about to plunge into a “trough of disillusionment”, lecture podcasts are fast becoming obsolete, but cloud computing will soon be on the “slope of enlightenment”. Interestingly, no technologies seem to have yet made it onto the “plateau of productivity” (Gartner obviously haven’t heard about Structured Content).
15. Tony Hirst Alive and Well (AJH)
I thought Tony had retired but, now he wants some publicity for his latest ventures, I find my inbox bombarded by an Isle-of-Wight-o-gram. During the summer he appears to have been constructing scripted relationship diagrams with diagrammr and squeezing two web pages into one browser window with some nifty PHP (“On a server somewhere, place the following script…”)
But his pièce de résistance, surely causing Simon Cowell and Philip Green to put their own plans on hold, has been the launch of his own TV channel. Being a media mogul clearly opens doors because he’s also managed to break into the lucrative Canadian market, catching the attention of George Siemens:
“Breaking things down into smaller pieces was a necessary step to lead into the more important work of repacking elements to reflect varying contexts and interests. Tony Hirst is brilliant at this - he treats data as a paint brush to create new information canvases (i.e. overlaying twitter feeds to YouTube presentations).”
16. Sony Moving to Open eBook Format (BBC, TechCrunch, Andrew Hedges, engadget, Timesonline)
Sony will convert most books in its eBook store to the ePub open format by the end of 2009. "Consumers should not have to worry about which device works with which store," said Steve Haber, president of Sony's digital reading business division, adding that the shift "allows Sony to make its e-book store compatible with multiple devices and its Reader devices open to multiple sources for content". US wholesale eBook sales jumped from $25.8m to $37.6m during Q2 of 2009.
Google has also just announced the release of over one million public domain books in the ePub format. This includes a UK deal with Reading-based Interead, makers of the £189 iPod-wannabe Cool-er eReader.
If you’ve never used an eBook reader, this 10 min video review of the new PRS-600 gives a good clear overview of features and operation.
Sony is launching a wireless Reader Daily Edition e-reader which allows users to download electronic books on the go. The $399 device stores up to 1,000 novels and can download books over a high-speed mobile network; it has a 7” touchscreen which can be used to read portrait or landscape form. It also has an application that can be used to "borrow" books from local libraries for 21 days. "At the end of the library's lending period, e-books simply expire, so there are never any late fees," Sony said. This should eat into Kindle’s current market dominance.
Another serious threat to Kindle and Sony comes from Asus, rumoured to be launching a twin-colour-screen eReader with webcam, wireless and Skype before the end of the year at around the £100 mark. Great if it’s true, but that sounds like a conventional (power-hungry) display and more than £100 worth of goodies to me?
17. Californian Free Digital Textbook Initiative (CK-12)
Renowned bibliophile Arnold Schwarzenegger is behind an initiative to provide free digital textbooks for Californian high school children. Sixteen have initially been made available in the fields of maths and science, including a number from the non-profit CK-12 foundation.
18. Digi-Novel (Giles Clark)
Anthony Zuiker, creator of TV’s CSI series, has just launched the world’s first digi-novel. “Level 26” is a crime novel that also invites readers to log on to a website about every 20 pages using a special code to watch a ‘cyber-bridge’ - a three-minute film clip tied to the story. Readers can buy the book, visit the website, login to watch the cyber-bridges, read, discuss and contribute to the story.
19. Google Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars (Chronicle for Higher Education)
The Chronicle’s Geoffrey Nunberg writes at some length about Google’s book search, expressing concerns over whether Google’s aims match the needs of its users, and particularly scholarly users. He hopes so because Google appears to be the only serious game in town: “Google's five-year head start and its relationships with libraries and publishers give it an effective monopoly: No competitor will be able to come after it on the same scale.”
20. Games for Learning (Keren Mills; eLearnMag)
Keren forwards news that Futurelab has opened a call for ideas about meaningful, mobile or locative games, with responses required by 8 Oct.
It may not be ‘mobile’ but National Geographic’s JASON project allows students to apply their scientific knowledge by designing their own rollercoaster, factoring-in estimates of heights, speeds, kinetic and potential energy. My own effort didn’t even make it round my first loop, clearly indicating (to me anyway) that there must be some major flaws in the programming.
21. Creativity and Business (Academy Class)
David Parrish has made his eBook, T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity, available as a free download. It comes complete with a foreword from Shaun Woodward MP - someone eminently well suited to comment on creativity if Telegraph reports of his allowances are to be believed.
Stanford has an ‘Entrepreneurship corner’ that hosts a range of goodies, including nine short videos from Prof Robert Sutton on creativity which, he believes, is “…simply making new things out of old ones.”
22. Who Needs Learning Objectives? (BILD)
Former Reuters CLO, Charles Jennings, tackles the thorny issue of learning objectives. It’s a readable article with no big surprises (yes, they’re important but many people aren’t using them in the right/best way). Just as interesting is the stream of comments that follow from impassioned trainers and educators.
23. MedMovie (PR-USA.Net)
MedMovie is a bit of a curate’s egg. The site looks quite uninspiring and dated (the last ‘news’ item when I visited was dated Dec 08). However, the content – anatomical and healthcare animations – is very good and the company has just done a deal with courseware creation toolkit supplier and content hosts, Coggno, to enable developers to easily embed MedMovie content.
24. i-Learnsmart (eLearning Guild)
And I quote: “i-Learnsmart is an e-learning portal from White House Business Solutions that intends to make learning more interesting and engaging. It provides multimedia rich interactive content for K-12 and higher education students…” Based on their demos, I beg to differ.
25. Multitaskers are Bad at Multitasking (George Siemens)
People who regularly engage in media multitasking – surfing, texting, gaming, watching TV, etc – are those least able to do this well, according to researchers. In a series of three psychological tests for attention and memory, a group who multitasked rarely or to a limited extent, consistently outperformed their highly multitasking counterparts.
26. Shorts…
An international Moodle Moot will be held online, 24 hrs per day, from 7-10 Jan 2010.
Aberystwyth has selected pFACT software to monitor the full economic cost of each of its research projects.
edCetra has launched sLML as an open source markup language for learning designers and developers.
Adobe has released two Flash Platform frameworks as Open Source, plus a Durango framework for AIR developers.
Talis will provide funding of up to £15,000 to help individuals or small groups with projects that further Open Education.
27. Exam Bloopers (T.H.E.)
Along with the release of this year’s school exam results, also comes the latest crop of exam bloopers, as submitted by examiners to the Times Higher Ed. So, if you want to find out the truth about human rights abuses in Gaza and the Best Wank…
Regards
Jim
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jim Ellis
Strategic Development Manager (Learning Processes)
Learning & Teaching Solutions
Perry Level 4
Ext 58849
________________________________
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in
England &
Wales and a charity registered in
Scotland (SC 038302).
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).