Full story at: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1315

Massively multiplayer word association ‘game’ – random words are displayed and players type in whatever comes to mind. The result is a giant network of associated words, showing relative strengths of association between them. Fascinating collective activity.
Created:Wed, 25 Jul 2007 10:28:46 GMT

Original: https://community.brighton.ac.uk/pg/blog/jd29/read/95766/human-brain-cloud-view
By: Jon Dron
Posted: July 25, 2007, 4:28 am

Extremely quick and easy way to set up a private discussion board, with eamil posting/receiving and RSS. Would be nice to provide a WYSIWYG editor, and it would be handy to throw in some more advanced features like tagging or threading |(if needed), but otherwise has all the basic features most people would need for on-the-fly discussion boards.
Created:Sun, 08 Jul 2007 18:32:33 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1309
Posted: July 8, 2007, 12:32 pm

Well, not quite ended yet but blogging opportunities may get thin on the ground later. Bebo White gave a wise and thoughtful keynote on Web 2.0 this morning, with lots of sensible ideas and useful resources.  I was struck though by his slightly last-century desire for automation. He wants one right answer to each of his questions, but I think this is wrong.  He wants science, I want art. We need to informate, not automate, to have help making decisions, not to have those decisions made for us. I see it as a strength of Google that a query about the weather in Vancouver returns thousands of results (though in fact this example that he used was a little out of date, as Google now shows the weather forecast at the top of the list of results, so you don’t have to delve further if you don’t want to). I think this vagueness is particularly useful in education, where we don’t want information but the means of integrating new knowledge with old. One answer is seldom as useful as multiple perspectives and representations.  It is good to have recommendations and signposts to useful information, but not useful to hide the stuff that some automated arbiter decides is less useful.

I sat in the large auditorium behind a woman who was nodding and even vocalising her agreement with things Bebo was saying. I wonder whether she does the same when reading things online. My suspicion is that she doesn’t. Interesting that, from the perspective of at least some of the audience, even a lecture to a big crowd seems to be a conversation. Some lessons for virtual learning design, perhaps.

Original: https://community.brighton.ac.uk/pg/blog/jd29/read/80623/edmedia-ends
By: Jon Dron
Posted: June 29, 2007, 11:26 am

Terry Anderson gave a characteristically fantastic keynote today on social learning 2.0. Of course, I may be a little biased as he very kindly gave me some credit for what he had to say and gave a brilliant plug for my book! However, the style and interpretation was all Terry’s, full of rich insights into the nature of groups, networks and collectives.

Terry is a great crosser of boundaries, pulling in ideas from many different fields and pushing out something new, fresh and thought-provoking. I’ve said it before but it’s worth repeating: inspiring things happen at the edges, as we cross into new territories. The previous keynotes have been great, with interesting things to say and deep insights into important areas in which their expertise is unrivalled, but I have not walked away feeling inspired. Reflective, yes. Enthused even. But not inspired. Terry was inspirational.

The talk was followed by a very lively and interesting discussion, attended by many of the great and the good. The underlying themes included all of usual suspects, including the stormy relationship between top-down and bottom-up control, issues of trust and privacy, and concerns about the stupidity of mobs. It is wonderful to me that these debates are at last getting out into the open. 

And while we’re on the subject of social software and inspiration, I have been bumping into George Siemens on and off throughout the conference, who has been making some interesting contributions to several discussions. It is reassuring to know that he is as smart in real life as he appears in his blog. 

Original: https://community.brighton.ac.uk/pg/blog/jd29/read/80606/edmedia-day-3
By: Jon Dron
Posted: June 29, 2007, 2:00 am

Allison Littlejohn gave a great keynote today. Not rabble rousing but clear, measured and wise. The stuff that really interested me was her notion of blending, which took a very total-ecology view, recognising the complex tensions between the top down and bottom up, private and public, virtual and real.  This is a notable departure from earlier naive views of blending, highly situated in the real world of the learner rather than that of the teacher.  I particularly liked her visualisation of the move from dependence to independence, looking at it in terms of a variety of dimensions of space, tools, activity and time. Clear discussion of the challenges of blending the private, the privileged and the public. One small thing that came up as an aside surprised me a lot though, given the nature of the conference – she asked how many people had heard of IMS-LD and there were maybe a dozen or so of us, in a hall full of hundreds of e-learning people. Amazing.

I’m currently sitting i an interesting presentation from the University of Hertfordshire, talking about getting a computer science placement student into an e-learning role. Excellent process of bringing the student along and involving him in the complete research process. Seems to work nicely from everyone’s perspective. I especially like the fact that it is as much about faculty learning from him as about the student learning from them. Great stuff!

Original: https://community.brighton.ac.uk/pg/blog/jd29/read/80601/edmedia-day-2
By: Jon Dron
Posted: June 27, 2007, 11:11 am

I Just got out from Ron Oliver’s keynote, which was nice: reassuring rather than inspiring. As Ron covered the bases with a very broad discussion of a load of stuff from learning designs to design-based research I was reminded of Clay Shirky’s recent post on the Bayesian advantage of youth.  I have noticed that many of the great and good have such a broad and deep knowledge of the area that their talks make use of a kind of shorthand and are (perhaps) so profound that they actually wind up stating the obvious. It is a bit like the old joke about people calling out numbers to stand in for jokes they already know. It would be quite entertaining to give a presentation in which this idea is taken to its logical extreme, just saying keywords like ‘authentic’, ‘constructive alignment’, ‘community of practice’, ‘blogging’ etc etc etc. Perhaps the audience could applaud after each word, or just nod sagely. No need to expand further.

It is interesting that ignorance leads to the same problem:  I am currently sitting in a presentation by a nice man with a moustache who has done some research that was old news 15 years ago, also stating the obvious (in this case that you have to rethink teaching strategies when doing it electronically and that students like being able to access course notes at any time!).

The interesting stuff happens when we know a little, not when we are complete beginners and not when we are world experts. The people that most consistently inspire me are those that are constantly moving into new territories. As they cross the borders from one subject area to another, sparks often fly. 

Original: https://community.brighton.ac.uk/pg/blog/jd29/read/80595/edmedia-begins
By: Jon Dron
Posted: June 26, 2007, 11:30 am

http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1308

A nice collection of ideas about different kinds of Many applied to blogs. Some lovely evocative metaphors such as ‘cloud’ and ‘carnival’, with some good examples of each of the many Manies.
Created:Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:32:37 GMT

Original: https://community.brighton.ac.uk/pg/blog/jd29/read/80564/library-clips-blogs-the-many-ways-many-come-together-june-2007
By: Jon Dron
Posted: June 21, 2007, 11:32 am

Neat – YackPack for VoIP, Meebo for chat, slideshare for presentation – not exactly state of the art, but still pretty cool web conferencing for free using a simple mashup.
Created:Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:08:48 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1304
Posted: June 17, 2007, 8:08 pm

Interesting tool from Simon Buckingham Shum and gang that combines concept-mapping, argument visualisation and other cool features in a user-friendly, Java-based tool. It is a little clunky when used collaboratively, but is a very helpful weapon in the e-learning armoury, making things possible that would have been difficult or impossible before net-connected computers.
Created:Tue, 12 Jun 2007 10:54:58 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1301
Posted: June 12, 2007, 4:54 am

A rather lovely art installation that maps activity throughout a building using webcams and other sensors, representing it in a large, skeletal 3 dimensional LED structure which changes as the building’s use changes. It is described as a ‘continuous spatial log, concretising the movements as much as the monuments of form within the building.’
I love this idea – augmenting social navigation in meat-space, heightening a sense of community and social presence, and also looking incredibly cool.
For those on smaller budgets and with limited space, it might be inspirational rather than imitable: we might try something similar with a smaller number of sensors, a smaller space and maybe a simpler 2D visualisation on a display panel or two. I guess the security-minded might be a little concerned about what it might tell malicious people, which is a potential weakness of social software in general. On the other hand, there are visualisations that could be both helpful and less revealing than the lighthive, albeit losing the potential of social navigation. At the University of Brighton, for instance, which is spread over multiple campuses and multiple towns, a sense of activity throughout the university might help to bind it all together and reduce the current sense of fragmentation.
Created:Sat, 09 Jun 2007 04:25:39 GMT

Original: http://jondron.net/cofind/frshowresource.php?tid=5325&resid=1300
Posted: June 8, 2007, 10:25 pm