Great news for a friend

Excellent news today for Allanah King a great friend from Appleby Primary School in New Zealand ( seen above on a visit to Cardiff in 2009). Allanah made the following Facebook announcement today:

Happy to announce that I have just won the position of ICT facilitator of Link Learning Cluster of 31+ schools starting next week (one day a week) but I am going to keep my day job- for this term at least- thereafter four days a week so I can still do exciting innovative stuff with my class. 2010-2012

Allanah is a 'world class' exponent on the use of Web 2.0 technologies seamlessly into education for kids, which bring excellent results.

Well Done AK :-)

Social Media Explained Visually

From 'Say It Visually' this link came from Andrew Churches at Educational Origami.

Pixels by Patrick Jean

Pixels by Patrick Jean.... enjoy


( Thanks for heads up @willfinch)

iPad......... lookout the WePad is coming

The iPad has emerged I would say with a great deal of trumpeting and flag waving but not much to back it up as yet. Typical of many Apple initial products it appears again to have come out of the oven 'half baked' for example with no camera or USB connectivity - the kind of connectivity that has become standard even on the simplest netbook. It appears that 'Apple Air syndrome' has struck again.

There are of course many other tablets in the market many of which pre-dated the iPad and most of which quite frankly also lack any 'game changing' functionality.

However following an article from Engadget April 12th on the emergence finally of the WePad from Neofonie in Germany. A quiet entry into the world of tablets, I did not hear many trumpets or see flags - but there surely should have been for this product!

You can see the WePad in action at the WePad channel on Youtube

Check out the WePad v iPad specs at their site it shows webcam, usb, sim card, multicard reader and audio out... yay at last, a game changer!
Apple you have I believe met your match, I for one can't wait to get my hands on a WePad and look forward very much to demonstrating one when they become available in the UK

Amazon Kindle2 E-Reader

At last yesterday my mystery object arrived and of course it is an....... Amazon Kindle2 e-reader!!!!! Sorry for those who believed it to be something akin to an iPad ( I would have to win one rather than buy one!!!
Below is the unboxing of the Kindle2 received from Simply Electronics and delivered rather fantastically by DPD who lived up marvellously to their next day delivery - tracking the order was very easy on their website where I could see that it had arrived at Newbury the night before , at 9am the following morning I could track its journey to Cardiff at 3.30am and onto a delivery van for delivery between 13.48 and 14.48..... it arrived at 13.46 Well done DPD impressive. I would certainly recommend them on the evidence of this service.

Now to unboxing the device... firstly remove outer packaging:

This reveals the inner box:

Including the rather marvellous opening strip:

Inside is the simple but classy machine itself:

Mmmm sleek and stylish:

Hidden below is the instruction manual and power cable:

The Kindle2 started quite quickly:

Revealing the start up instructions inside:

It was simple to join the Kindle Store at Amazon and then purchase my first two books:

The No.1 Ladies' detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith and Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett...... now to some reading.

Thank You

A big thank you to all readers of this blog as today at 21.58 the hit counter registered 20,000 hits since I started. Interestingly looking at the blog stats the most popular post by a very long way was a post on the Asus Eeepc mini netbook from April 8 2008, which is quite apt as I still have a soft spot for the Linux based net-book, and indeed I still own two of the devices (700 and 901) and the 4GB version bought then indeed saw Laura through her A Levels and has just become the property of my 4 year old granddaughter it is currently undergoing an Ubuntu overhaul and having some pre-school programmes installed by a colleague .
When I began the blog I had no real plan or idea where it would go, it began as those who have a long memory will attest as the outlet for tech and Web 2.0 discoveries that one excited if slightly aged primary school teacher was finding and sharing with his growing group of global friends.

As the map above shows there still remains a strong global audience and I hope that what is posted here has relevance even though the teacher has left the classroom possibly for good and the nature of the posts has somewhat changed.

It proves if nothing else that this new technology revolution is certainly a 'grass-roots' one as I would hardly call myself tech mainstream, I hope though to remain relevant.

It is possible that the blog may move to a new Wordpress home soon, I hope that you will come with me on the rest of this great adventure.

Thank You

Dropbox.com

Have you recently had the need to save a large file ( up to 2GB free!) in order to share it with others or to have it somewhere where you can access it on multiple machines including your smart phone?

If so why not give Dropbox a try, it even has an iPhone and Android app making you truly mobile. Other storage spaces such as Box.net offer 1GB but with crucially a 25MB file size limitation, whereas Dropbox offers unlimited upload up to your 2GB limit - check out the features here

Many thanks to @willfinch for the heads up on Dropbox.com

Parting is such tweet sorrow!!!

The Royal Shakespeare Company ( RSC) is using social networking ( Twitter) as the medium for delivering a 21st Century Romeo and Juliet. They have a cast of six who will tweet and supply links for those who want to follow the story over the coming five weeks. I heard Juliet ( Charlotte Wakefield ) Twitter @julietcap16 and Romeo on Richard Bacon's Radio Five Live programme this afternoon discussing the premise of the project:

Romeo James Barrett will make his appearance shortly. Michael Boyd, artistic director of the RSC, said: "Our ambition is always to connect people with Shakespeare and bring actors and audiences closer together.
"Mobile phones don't need to be the Antichrist for theatre. This digital experiment... allows our actors to use mobiles to tell their stories in real time and reach people wherever they are in a global theatre."

Interest must be high as their website http://suchtweetsorrow.com/ was recently down, but appears now to have come back on stream

Malcolm McLaren

Following the untimely death of the arch agent provocateur of the punk scene Malcolm McLaren at the age of 64 from Mesothelioma, Graham Brown-Martin of Handheld Learning 2009 where Malcolm spoke in October of last year has paid this tribute followed by Malcolm's presentation ( hopefully uncut!). It was great to hear Malcolm speak on this occasions to hear a speaker who sees PC speak and just blasts straight through - Love him or loathe him, we sometimes right off people who don't just follow the party line - thank you Malcolm for straight talking.

We first noticed that he was unwell when arriving to give his speech at Handheld Learning 2009 when he arrived later than planned complaining of fatigue. Diagnosed with the flu he continued but soon after the conference was admitted to hospital for investigation and removal of fluid from his lungs. It was only at this point was it was understood that his condition might be symptomatic of Mesothelioma. Even when we spoke over Christmas when Malcolm was working as hard as I have ever seen him we did not know how quickly this cancer would steal him from us.

For me Malcolm was not only a friend but a mentor & confidante. His passing leaves a gap in my life but also some happy memories.

This talk from Malcolm at the Handheld Learning Conference 2009 will, I believe, stand the test of time. The speech doesn't elaborate about the period of the Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, Vivienne Westwood, his impact on design, fashion and music culture and the many other important achievements of Malcolm's life that will be reported in obituaries over the coming days. Instead and in keeping with the theme of the conference Malcolm discusses in his inimitable style - his life, learning, authenticy vs karaoke culture and what we gain from the experience of failure. Ironically, failure was something Malcolm never achieved. The talk was anything but ordinary, it polarised our audience and instantly trended globally on Twitter but what else would you expect?

Bravo and rest in peace, Malcolm!


"Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Txt Pistols" Malcolm's McLaren's "Reflections on Learning" keynote presented at the Handheld Learning Conference 2009, London. Contains mild references to adult themes and occasional use of adult language.

The Global Digital Divide

Leading up to the Peterson Symposium in April a series of Reading Groups have been considering issues around the global nature of technology in schools by both teachers and pupils. Recently the issue of inclusion/the digital divide was on the agenda with the article ' Distance training of teachers in a rural area in Kenya' by Chiara Pozzi, Sociologist, e-learning didactic designer, Centro di Produzione Multimediale, University of Milano-Bicocca, as the main point of discussion. The study looked at the effective models that worked in the training of teachers in rural Kenya. The main reason for the selection of the text was the image which appears in the paper which shows the world at night with electrically lit areas glowing brightly while some areas of the globe are in darkness in more ways than one. The question raised was how do we bring digital literacy to those dark areas of the globe in Latin America, Southern Africa, India and South East Asia.

I must admit that my view is that we must make use of the technologies which are or have become part of the community - mobile (cell) phones and Television being two powerful media for digital literacy. I firmly believe that Stephen Heppell is an important voice which organisations should pay heed to.

If we are going to go down the route of 'one laptop per child' for the developing world then we should also consider the OLPC project:

Below you can see a video from Noah Dumahasi, project manager for Together Ghana, weighs in on the digital divide across Ghana and the development of communication technology in rural Africa. - Providing a Voice

Africa takes on the digital divide
And below an article about The digital divide or access to the latest technology, is far from being equal. An attempt to remedy this is the Digital Equalizer programme of the America India Foundation, started at the initiative of President Clinton in 2001. "We have learnt how to use the camera to record, edit and make a movie from what we have edited and to burn a CD," said J M Manu Kumar, a student.

Update - interesting reading to add to this mix - the 2008 Millennium Goals from UN
I feel sure that this will provoke a wide ranging discussion as we all consider what steps are required for the future.

Also thanks to Judith Fabian ( IB Academic Director)for the reference below to the recent Education Guardian article on the 'Hole in The Wall' project begun by Sugita Mitra to consider

Blog post from daily blog

Much of our work today has been in the design and completion of the IB online professional development web portal ( see below) - the astute amongst you will notice that the site http://onlineworkshops.ibo.org/ will now operate in English, French and Spanish and also that we have grown a 'work with us' tab leading to a dedicated page for those who wish to join us in the IB's online PD project

We would really appreciate feedback from readers

#savewordle

Sorry if I am late to the party however I was concerned when I read Jonathan Feinberg's news blog post from 1 March referring to the WORDLE site being taken down temporarily due to a 'perceived trademark infringement' the global alarm was raised by Techcrunch following the news being spotted by @jackschofield and @digitalmaverick - there was set up a Twitter hashtag #savewordle which swung into action, and thanks to a good IP lawyer it would appear that Wordle may be safe. We wish Jonathan and Wordle our best wishes and please feel free to join the hashtag campaign.

Improvements to the impressive DimDim

The message above arrived on Tuesday 23rd February from those great guys at DimDim who are constantly developing their product into I believe one of the premier online meeting spaces offered to professionals globally. I have long been impressed with not only their product but also in their drive to improve what is offered. Do take a look and perhaps try out a free DimDim training session, it is the ideal way to see how well the system works in your browser with 'no downloads'.

Below you can see a logged in view which shows the 'Big Red Button' with which you can start a meeting.
I am also a fan of the use of social media to spread the URL of your meeting space.

Don't just take my word for it..... do give DimDim a try, I think that you will enjoy the experience and also will instantly have ideas regarding how you can make use of it in your organisation.

No, I do not have any connection with DimDim I just rate it highly :-)

Blaise Aguera y Arcas and augmented reality mapping.... Wow!!!

For those who can remember the amazing TED video of Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrating Photosynth in 2007 where using Microsoft Livelabs projects he showed how you could render objects using photographic views of that object taken from different angles would not be surprised to find that in February 2010 the magician of the digital age is back this time to show us the power of augmented reality in mapping.

Watch and be truly amazed as we see the next stage of Photosynth as Blaise demonstrates the ability to overlay images over a 'streetview', in this case showing a scene with shots taken at different times of day.... but the truly magical experience is when we see live video overlay inside a 'streetview' scene which is itself from inside a building. This is truly the future where we will be able to render inside a map using user generated content both still and video to enhance our view of the digital world. There are obviously privacy and other issues that will have to be dealt with however the ability to view the world and places in this way is truly in the world of Web 3.0 or even Web 4.0 - I feel Web 4.0 will be our ability to actually place ourselves within this scene using whole body systems such as Pravan Mistry's Sixth Sense.... I can't wait!!!

BUZZ......off!

Oh dear! It would appear that Google released BUZZ without thoroughly testing it was reported today by the BBC Technology News resulting in security and privacy issues for users of the new social networking tool which operates within Google services such as GMail, Maps etc.

Google has admitted to BBC News that testing of its controversial social network Buzz was insufficient.

The firm has had to make a series of changes to the service after a ferocious backlash from users concerned about intrusions of privacy.

Buzz was launched on 9 February. The service, which is integrated with Gmail, allows users to post status updates, share content and read and comment on friends' posts.

One problem that immediately caused concern was Google's decision to automatically give users a ready-made circle of friends based on the people they most frequently e-mailed.Unless users changed settings in their profile, this list could automatically be made public, allowing anyone to see who a user corresponded with most frequently.

Mr Jackson told BBC News that the decision to create these automatic lists was borne out of the idea that Google "wanted to provide a great user experience straight out of the box".

But privacy experts immediately pointed out this could cause problems for journalists, businesses or even people having an illicit affair.

Evgeny Morozov, a Belarus-born researcher and blogger who looks at the political implications of the internet, also raised concerns.

"If I were working for the Iranian or the Chinese government, I would immediately dispatch my internet geek squads to check on Google Buzz accounts for political activists and see if they have any connections that were previously unknown to the government," he wrote.

As a result of complaints, Google said Buzz would now only suggest people who a user might want to be friends with.

The company has also announced steps to make it easier to disable Buzz altogether and to ensure that people's accounts do not automatically connect with online Picasa photo albums and items that people may store in their Google Reader accounts.

The changes were in part thrashed out at a company-wide meeting on 12 February at Google headquarters.

"We realize that we didn't get things quite right - we're working extremely hard to fix this," said Mr Jackson.

He said that "transparency and control" were "top priorities" and that users would "continue to see improvements".

Asked if the Google founders - Larry Page and Sergey Brin - or any of the executive team would issue an apology for breaching their user's trust, a Google spokesperson said: "Google has apologised - we're very sorry for the concern we caused."

Google Chrome Extensions :-)

At last, and I am not so sure how many days ( or possibly weeks) ago the new extensions for Google Chrome appeared but now they are here and ready to roll don't forget to give them a try. Unlike Firefox they do not appear to cause additional headers but fit in the the right of the address bar on the browser and either open as a pop out - as bit.ly does in the screenshot below, or as new tabs in the case of something like CoolIris ( which if you haven't used yet you absolutely should)...... Go get your extensions..... now!

Google Buzz new today

Google has announced on Tuesday that it is immediately rolling out Google Buzz, a location-aware social networking tool highly integrated with its Gmail client, Google Maps and a new Android app.

It was announced on the Google Blog today:
'Today, we're launching Google Buzz, a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting and share updates, photos, videos and more. Buzz is built right into Gmail, so there's nothing to set up — you're automatically following the people you email and chat with the most.'

'We focused on making the sharing experience really rich by integrating photos, videos, and links. No more fuzzy little pictures: Buzz makes it easy to quickly flip through photos and experience them the way they were meant to be seen: big and full-resolution. And videos play inline so you can watch them without opening a new window.

You can choose to share publicly with the world or privately to a small group of friends each time you post. And you can connect other sites you use, today there's Picasa, Flickr, Google Reader, and Twitter, so your friends can keep up with what you're doing around the web — all in one place.

To make sure you don't miss out on the best part of sharing, Buzz sends responses to your posts straight to your inbox. Unlike static email messages, buzz messages in your inbox are live conversations where comments appear in real time. '

Once again Google wait and then enter the arena - I do like the way they are continually attempting to build in real time interaction into their applications.

I am looking forward to Buzz coming to my HTC G phone - an update for Google maps 5 minutes ago does include the new app, I am now awaiting the GMail update!

Bulbdial Clock

My love of timepieces ( blog post 16 01 2010) has been sparked again today in the 'Play Section of WIRED for March 2010 on page 058( see below) where lies the amazing looking Bulbdial Clock from the Evil Mad Scientists.

The clock using LED technology is an object of beauty as you can see below thanks to Oskay they are also being offered in kit form so that you can make one for yourself..... yay

All I can say is that...... I want one!!!!! See one in action below:

OLED transparent screens..... WOW!!!

You can keep your Apple locked iPad Mr Jobs the future is OLED......

Above is the transparent OLED screen of the Samsung laptop shown as a concept at CES 2010 it now appears that this device may be on sale before the end of 2010 ( T3 article 06 02 2010). Now this device really could be a mould breaker, I agree with the article that this object certainly is desirable.... move over Mr iPad, as the OLED device not only looks 'truly cool' and highly desirable, it also heralds the use of OLED technology for things such as Satellite Navigation devices built into things such as windscreens ....... Combine this with Augmented Reality ( as seen with Sixth Sense MIT )and all I can say is WOW!!!

Just the thought of having this kind of technology built into surfaces taking the computer out of the box and beginning to develop a truly interactive UI just has to be the way forward ...... seeing these I am transported back to when I was a boy in the late 1960's looking at the fantastical devices in my coveted Look and Learn magazines.

Apple's iPad Arrives......... is it a step forward?

The much anticipated Apple tablet the iPad arrived today. My first impression was, 'why is Mr Jobs holding that XXL iPhone?' Of course we are all aware of Apple's ability to watch a market (mp3 players, cell phones... and now tablet PC's) and then enter with the killer must have machine which re defines the market. On this occasion they may have done this again, however I was not convinced prior to the iPad's arrival and now having seen it and read the specs at TechCrunch I still remain unconvinced, it is a XXL iPhone!

I am not aware of the tablet market being that huge as yet ..... does this device help this grow? E-Readers have been gaining ground of late, however I still believe to a niche market ...... am I old fashioned, I prefer a book? The iPad may see them off ...... although they still compete on price and straight usability.

The iPad is of course an Apple machine and as such is locked to Apple software and I believe would need to be hacked to run something like Google Chrome, it also lacks a card reader ( even my TV has one of these!) and a USB much as the MacAir. There is the whole 3G contract issue ( there will be a wi fi only iPad first) for contacting to the web on the move. The screen size is a bit on the small side.

Battery life looks good as of course the device does with its lineage. However I believe that this machine is only a step along the way to where computing needs to go - things such as seamless user interfaces that can be controlled by hand gestures not a touch screen.

I see people with an iPad being a little self conscious of those looking!

I hope to see one of these in the flesh soon and will then truly be able to give a full report. I can't see this tech geek getting one anytime soon............. however they are pretty!

Update 28 01 2010 - it is sad when I here people say I will buy the next generation machine......why oh, why can't companies like Apple bring out the finished article at their first attempt? I am sure that this machine has been discussed and discussed at Apple and yet they have still produced a big iPhone without a camera that you cannot fit in your pocket!
Apparently it was unfortunately being called the 'iTampax' on Twitter yesterday... sad but true!