Tales of things brings QR to wider audience

Story telling tagging and a dash of good old QR codes from the BBC click on programme definitely one for myfriend John davitt to hook up with and of course it has an iphone app can we have android one please. But to be honest this is brilliant .
The sites description says it all

Wouldn't it be great to link any object directly to a 'video memory' or an article of text describing its history or background? Tales of Things allows just that with a quick and easy way to link any media to any object via small printable tags known as QR codes. How about tagging your old antique clock, a building, or perhaps that object you're about to put on eBay.

http://talesofthings.com/

interested in the biggger picture take a look at Are the New Millennium Learners Making the Grade? Technology Use and Educational Performance in PISA 2006

Interrested in the bigger picture and what the digital divide looks like and what makes it happen is it acccess to kit or lack of skills or both.

Its from a huige data set and the whole report can be browsed at http://browse.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/pdfs/browseit/9609101E.PDF

Using data from PISA 2006, this book analyzes to what extent investments in technology enhance educational outcomes. One of the most striking findings of this study is that the digital divide in education goes beyond the issue of access to technology. A new second form of digital divide has been identified: the one existing between those who have the right competencies to benefit from computer use, and those who do not. These competencies and skills are closely linked to the economic, cultural and social capital of the student.

This finding has important implications for policy and practice. Governments should make an effort to clearly convey the message that computer use matters for the education of young people and do their best to engage teachers and schools in raising the frequency of computer use to a level that becomes relevant. If schools and teachers are really committed to the development of 21st century competencies, such an increase will happen naturally. And only in these circumstances will clear correlations between technology use and educational performance emerge.

Text anyone Pew report on American teens and mobiles

American teens have got that SMS bug big time. whole report is about much more than this and is well worth a read .

"Daily text messaging among American teens has shot up in the past 18  months, from 38% of teens texting friends daily in February of 2008 to 54% of teens texting daily in September 2009. And it's not just  frequency – teens are sending enormous quantities of text messages a  day. Half of teens send 50 or more text messages a day, or 1,500 texts a month, and one in three send more than 100 texts a day, or more than  3,000 texts a month. Older teen girls ages 14-17 lead the charge on text messaging, averaging  100 messages a day for the entire cohort. The youngest teen boys are the most resistant to texting – averaging 20 messages per day."
Link to report here

QR google muscle in and Clic2c

vThanks to James for point this out now I am a huge fan of splashurl.net that not only shortens urls on the fly but displays them in a huge point size useful if your  presenting but it also generates a large qr code . James Clay with his excellent blog has pointed me in the direction in Dave Hopkins blog http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/

Dave points out Google are now in on the url shortening act in http://goo.gl/ and suggests if you add .qr to shortened urls it generates qr codes not its on of those annoying under control of big G things at the moment but will I am sure creep out to wider use.

On a seperate note I have been looking a propriety (well I think it is is) embedded codes or watermarks these are codes hidden in images as a way of watermarking ownership of images or imparting hidden information behind a graphic picture. I am led to believe getty use it to mark there images . but its worth a look |Clic2c has an app for iphone and android phones   http://www.clic2c.co.uk/ its currently used in marketing but certainly could be used in education

internet user in india and Mobile phone users "a pocketful of worldwide possibilities"

India according to this report has 52 million active internet users and up to 71 million occasional internet users may not be many  in the context of a 1 billion population. but the figure I found much more striking is the growth in mobile 15 million mobile users a month (a figure equivalent to about 1/4 of UK population ).
The move to rural areas over urban areas in terms of growth of internet use is interesting. As Gandhi said "the soul of india lies in its villages".

worth a look it may challenge the way you view the world the fourth fifth generation smart phones may excite us in the developed world but potential using simple 2nd or 3rd generation phones (SMS,voice and maybe simple browser email functionality  ) in countries like India  is quite simple a pocketful of worldwide possibilities .

view article at  http://trak.in/tags/business/2010/04/07/internet-usage-india-report-2010/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+trakin+%28India+Business+Blog+%21%29

Digital Natives , Digital Residents Digital Visitors or are we approaching something like post digital.Digital Native

Digital Natives a phrase that was launched by Marc Prensky in 2001 . Suggesting to some that young people have a universal propensity to use Tech and be comfortable with it. That is the central core of Marc debate but even in conservation has suggested its not universally true or at least becoming less relevant since he wrote.

I have and mentioned many time that the phrase isnt universal digital competency/digital comfort is not totally age or even gender dependent . I have seen a really valiant effort that in my opinion succeeds to move the debate on by Dave White of Oxford University  with vehicle of digital Residents and Digital Visitors with a presentation at ALTC2009 http://tallblog.conted.ox.ac.uk/index.php/2009/10/14/visitors-residents-the-video/ This work has made me think over the last few months and I have thought of adding a phrase how to get your Digital Visa around training and CPD . It fits how I personally view the area than digital Natives V Immigrants even the the "V" suggest confrontation not difference . Whats your view.

This post was sparked by a post on the edtechdev blog at
http://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/the-d...
worth looking at this blog and some of the comments