Optimus mini three keyboard

Borrowing one of these for this session at ALT C in Edinburgh first week in September !!
http://alt.ac.uk/altc2006/timetable/abstract.php?abstract_id=764
a lot more excitng than title of this posting !!

http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus-mini/overview/


Basicallly a add on allowing quick access to application button each button displays what you access when you hit it. ie video web feeds etc seems amazing !! Will post some reflections when i have used it !!!

15 websites that changed the world !!

Facinating article from the guardian !!!


http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1843263,00.html

does make me think which ones I would list . Have to think on that I can feel a poll coming on !!

Big rise in broadband connections

Interesting statistic that 75% of home connections to the internet are now broad band !!!


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5278856.stm

Broadband britain !!

test

test

DfES website now using RSS feeds

Want to keep up to date with what Ministers and DfES are talking about subscribe to the RSS that can be found http://www.dfes.gov.uk/feeds/

This is a postive step !

DfES website now using RSS feeds

Want to keep up to date with what Ministers and DfES are talking about subscribe to the RSS that can be found http://www.dfes.gov.uk/feeds

This is a postive step !

test

Does this work http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5234668.stm

Search 2 technologies

A really interesting article on the evolving world of search and so called searcg 2 technologies often described as next steps for google and yahoo !!

Its so called third genration search techonlogies Richard MC Manus definition is really neat ;

• First-generation search ranked sites based on page content - examples are early
  yahoo.com and Alta Vista.
• Second-generation relies on link analysis for ranking - so they take the structure of
  the Web into account. Examples are Google and Overture.
• Third-generation search technologies are designed to combine the scalability of
  existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into
  the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user
  experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive.

Examples: Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty, Wink, Lexxe

article link here

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Access to Learning Award

Serious cash

If your library or similar organisation provides access to

information using computers and the Internet free of charge to users,
we should like to hear your story.

We invite you to apply for the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation’s annual Access to Learning Award. This award
recognises excellence in providing access to information through
computers, at no cost to the user. The recipient will receive an award
of up to US $1 million.

The award is administered by the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP).

Deadline for the 2007 award is 31 December 2006.http://www.inasp.info/ldp/awards/

English (244 kB)

BlogSafety Forum

This stateside forum seems likely a healthy way to look at issues relating to young peoples use of social network tools like beebo and myspace rather than just banning them.

The BlogSafety.com forum, where parents, teens, educators, and experts discuss and learn about safe blogging and social networking. You might call this social networking about the social networks!  http://www.blogsafety.com/index.jspa   

Web Tools by Andrew Hill & Tim Rawe

Excellent glad to see the Eatern region e learning fair is still doing the business you must give it a look .

 http://ahi2000.com/studyzone/webtools/intro.htm This catalogue of interesting
web tools and free software is a development of a site used to entertain
and inspire visitors to an e-learning fair in early July 2006.

We welcome suggestions for additions and no
doubt some entries may turn out to be inappropriate or just not
very good - so regard this as a place to pop into from time to time
rather than a definitve guide.

We shall also be including examples of tools
in action and would be keen to have links to how you have found
any utilised to good effect.

It is an assortment
of tools and services from a wide range of sources, all of which
are accessible via the internet, and most of which do not require
a software installation on either your home machine or a college
PC.

We hope to encourage you to think
more about what the web can offer for a particular task or idea,
rather than thinking that everything must revolve around the PC
you're using.

testing rss feeds

Copyright again . . .free beer

Stuck on a train and saved by a podcast of digital planet planet by the
BBC and there is a piece on copyright creative commons licensing and an
open source recipe for amongst a few other things a licence for a recipe
for free beer . So go on download the piece or listen again. At
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/downloadtrial/worldservice/godigital/r
ss.xml

I also discovered juice downloads simple show notes at the same time as
the audio posted below.

"On Digital Planet this week, Gareth Mitchell hears from Rio de Janeiro
how Microsoft now include a Creative Commons license for documents and
how the same scheme can get you a free beer. Clark Boyd reports from a
conference in New York on ?persuasive gaming? - video games that teach
about global conflict"

Enjoy

Andy Black

BBC blast tour go on it will be great!!!!!

Those BBC `and Ultralab chaps have done it again

Blast is taking to the road this summer with a mobile creative studio
offering digital media and creative experiences to young people. It's
more than a truck - think dream workshop space crossed with media
production studio.


Basic detail at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/opportunities/blast_on_tour/about.shtml

Timetable at

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/opportunities/blast_on_tour/diary_2006.shtml

Futuerlab do it again Social Software and learning report and potential of open source for education

Two right on reports on hot issues
Number one




Social software and learning
By Martin Owen, Lyndsay Grant, Steve Sayers and Keri Facer


This report explores the relationship between the emergence of social
software and the personalisation of education. It suggests that there
is a changing view of what education is for, with an emphasis on the
need for young people to develop the skills necessary for today's
evolving global knowledge economy. Alongside this development is the
rapid growth of social software, characterised as software that
supports group interaction, and by combining these two trends there is
significant potential to see a new approach to education.

The potential of open source approaches for education By Seb Bacon and Teresa Dillon Free, Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS) refers to any software distributed under a licence that allows users to change or share the software source code. Futurelab’s interest in this area stems from the belief that FLOSS provides an example of peer-production which is driven by collaborative, social modes of interaction and knowledge exchange. This paper discusses some of the potential ways in which the approaches that characterise FLOSS might be applied in educational contexts. For both pieces of view online and PDF versions at http://www.futurelab.org.uk/research/opening_education.htm great stuff another thing to read !!!

Technews survey

Well you know how good technews is if you picked it up please help the team at Becta and do there survey .

Survey can be found
Government & partners - Becta

If you havent seen technews get it from www.becta.org.uk/technews and subscribe to the regular postings .

Read Write Talk Web

Listening to Lee Bryant of Headshift www.headshift.com  and Terry Freedman talk at seminar on web 2 and blogger creating a system so one can phone in audio bloggs http://www.audioblogger.com the following thought hit me. The situation of 2.0 is not read write web but a read write talk listen web or maybe more  .

Please note service is to a US number

RSS to SMS

Hows about this for neat txttools www.txttools.co.uk who also produce excellent SMS messenger service Edutxt. Have produced a system that converts RSS feeds on websites,blogs and feeds into mobile phones using SMS various option are available. For example just subject header or actual content.

RSS to SMS

Hows about this for neat txttools www.txttools.co.uk who also produce excellent SMS messenger service Edutxt. Have produced a system that converts RSS feeds on wesite,blogs and feeds into mobile phones using SMS various option are available. For example just subject header or actual content.

Ukerna survey on SMS

Those who have been demostrating the use of SMS messaging are interested to see Ukerna canvassing opinion of the sector . So please fill in the survey on

SMS in Education at http://webdev.ukerna.ac.uk/smssurvey/html/main.php