Conference Day 2 and a modest proposal” Scott Leslie starts by discussing the tedium of yet another Powerpoint presentation .The link to Alan Levin’s comments about Powerpoint & how projects should be presented are well worth following, though you’ll learn nothing new – just remind yourself about what you shouldn’t do! Leslie then says: We…
Blogging IT and EDucation
The new commentariat
The Guardian has an indepth report on Political Blogging (not blogs by politicians). The blogs themselves cover a wide range of political view points. The article suggests that the phrase “weblog” was probably coined by Barger, posting daily updates in 1997 to his webpage about the Israeli/Palestine conflict. They also suggest that the shortening to…
UN debut for $100 laptop for poor
It seems that the $100 laptop is finally in existence – albeit in protoype form. It’s lime green …. Images from MIT site. More information: MIT’s official site – also includes more images & a webcast of the launch (warning: just over 1 hour long) Worldchanging blog – other links etc; including the potential problems….
US heads for internet showdown
The UN World Summit on the Information Society was meant to be concentrating on getting the majority world online … however they’re likely to be looking more at who’s controlling the Internet. “The rest of the world doesn’t want to see US hegemony here, in large part just for symbolic reasons,” says Jonathan Zittrain, Chair…
All new teachers must have a blog
leigh Blackall reports on an initiative in New South Wales, requiring all new teachers (in schools) to undergo a minimum of 100 hours training (over 5 years). In addition, they have to keep an online log (aka blog) of their professional training needs. All the courses that they attend will have to be evaluated (online)…
feedmap .net (BETA) : Where Blogs Meet Maps
feedmap .net (BETA) : Where Blogs Meet Maps I’ve just registered my Blog with BlogMap. In so doing, I’ve discovered Geo-tagging, which is, presumably behind a lot of the systems that allow you to locate the nearest … The help pages in BlogMap give links to sites that can be used to create them….
The Weblog handbook
While some of the reviews on Amazon weren’t particularly inspiring, I do like this book. It’s not good if you want a “how to” on aspects of blogging – how to meaning “which code do I use to do italics” or “how to do I create my own WordPress theme”.
However, if your how definition to includes aspects such as “becoming a critical writer” or “how to avoid flames” then it’s got a lot of useful pointers.
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Is PowerPoint Evil?
Doug Johnson makes two particularly pertinent points: PowerPoint doesn’t bore people: people bore people and If we are teaching kids how to use this software, it needs to be within the context of good speaking skills, not in a computer class….
Structured Blogging
One of the aspects of Warwick blogs that I particularly liked was the ability to have a number of “templates” to allow users to structure their posts, such as the Book Review posts. Today, in our “research” meeting, we discussed whether or not a blog might be a suitable format for a student to review…
MindCanvas
A research service This is a commerical research service. The reason for including it here is that I like the look of the way that they are approaching things. In many ways it’s replicating the sort of approach we might well get the students to take in say, WDIE, but, they don’t all have to…