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

Easy Youtube

Is it just me or is this potentially a great way of viewing YouTube video in a controlled and beautifully usable/accessible way

http://icant.co.uk/easy-youtube/

Thanks Adrian for link.

BBC World Service - News - When mobile internet phones came to a rural Nigerian village

BBC World Service - News - When mobile internet phones came to a rural Nigerian village interesting programme very short five minutes worth a listen

TeachMeetGameOn March 29th The Brewery London

Well those Teachmeet giants are having another outing described by some as the best evening CPD you will ever have this adult show and tell of teacher practices in relatin to Tech is not to be missed.

The organisers of Games Based Learning 2010 http://www.gamebasedlearning2010.com/ have lent a room and free WiFi to hold a TeachMeet that is primarily focussed on use of games in education but in true teachMeet tradition is open to anybody who want to share their practices in using any kind of tech in education. You can do a 7 minute talk a 4 minute nano presentation or just lurk !! Find out more at http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/Teachmeet_Game_on_edition please note its free but you need to register here to gain access to the bulding at http://teachmeetgameon.eventbrite.com/
these are great events see my post from earlier Teachmeet in Scotland for a little flavour of what a Teachmeets about. http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com/2008/09/in-company-of-giants-but-ever-so-modest.html



ss

ARM Powered LEGO/Nokia 4x4x4 Rubik's Cube Solver

Well this involves one of the finest mobile ever built (N95) IMHO , Lego NXT and loads of technics and of course a Rubiks cube.

Very clever and a bit of fun

 

ARM Powered LEGO/Nokia 4x4x4 Rubik's Cube Solver

If you do nothing else today follow this guy on twitter

Ok its not totally tech related but he is using twitter face book and google maps. Adam Wooly a resident of that gem of Suffolk Countryside Saxsted is doing a small bike trip of 10'000 miles . On  2nd of January 2010  he  left from London to cycle the 10,000 miles to Cape Town through 17 countries in around 7 months, all in aid of Malaria Consortium.

He is doing it as sponsored ride for the malaria consortium now first off all visit his website and donate some cash http://www.wheresadam.net secondlyfollow him on twitter as off this lunch time today he had only 242 followers I reckon between us we can give a boost and reach a thousand follow him on twitter @london_capetown so come on everybody follow his progress . 140 characters is a lot of encouragement !!

Web 2.0 in Schools Policy and Leadership by COSN

Great report from our friends at COSN http://www.cosn.org on web 2.0 in Schools in relation to policy and leadership released back in may but Ive just come across it report can be downloaded at
http://www.cosn.org/Portals/7/docs/Web%202.0/ExecSummaryCoSN%20Report042809Final.pdf

Watch telly go on !

Yes TV does exist I suggest you catch the BBC programme on BBC2 "The virtual revolution ! The programme talks

 "web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee,  journeys across four continents and six countries and speaks to more than 50 people who have made the web what it is today – including some rather famous names, such as Bill Gates, Al Gore, Stephen Fry, Jimmy Wales, Arianna Huffington, Mark Zuckerberg, Chad Hurley, Stewart Brand, Jeff Bezos … and the President of Estonia."'
My wife a gorgeous non tech time said she's going to watch it so I suggest you 20.30hrs on BBC2 and UK players can watch it later on Iplayer. The programme home page is found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/index.shtml

Helpfully Dr Aleks Krotoski programme producer and part of team at the Guardian Tech Weekly team discuss the series in the later part of their weekly Guardian Tech podcast you can listen to it at

Latest: Sir Tim Berners Lee on free data and the BBC's Virtual Revolution

ICT & Education: Eleven Countries to Watch -- and Learn From

From the world banks blog on ICT use in Education well worth a read great list of countries looking at 1:1 access and other work around ICT Uruguay, South Korea Singapore Malaysia and Namibia link http://ow.ly/11Tng

also highlight up and coming conference on 1:1 computing

International Conference on 1-to-1 Computing in Education

Together with our co-organizers, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), we are proud to announce an International Conference on 1-to-1 Computing in Education hosted by the government of Austria from 22-24 February 2010 in Vienna.

Results from this event will be covered on the World Bank EduTech blog beginning in March.

For more information and event registration, please see www.bildung.at/nml-conference2010.

One to watch
 

Brandheld by essential research

This report Branded services will make smart phones starts of with following statements
Handsets, cost and connection speed holding back mobile internet adoption


London, 21 January, 2010: A huge 76% of mobile phone users don’t use their mobile to access the internet a UK-wide study into our mobile habits by leading research specialist Essential Research has revealed. The news comes despite industry hype around the success of internet-enabled smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Nexus One.
Even more surprising is that 60% of UK mobile users claim to not even own a mobile with internet access and just 30% of these are interested in getting one. The picture gets worse for mobile operators with the revelation that even for upwardly mobile internet users and owners of smartphones, one third (31%) have never used their phone to connect to the internet, a quarter (24%) use it less than once a week and 8% tried it but don’t intend to do so again.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Now Iam sure this reflects what researchers found but it doesnt reflect what I see around town but still give it a read it makes some interesting points. As always form your own view. Blog post relating to report can be found at http://www.essentialresearch.co.uk/blog/2010/01/branded-services-will-make-smart-phones/

Do it now and save £100 book for games Based Learning 2010

The closing date for early bird registration for one of the planets best games based learning event. Games Based Learning 2010. The presenters/contributors for the event are like the who's who of educational   use of games a list of some of them can be seen at http://www.gamebasedlearning2010.com/conference/speakers . Book by 31st Jan and you get early bird rate and save £100 registration details can be found here http://www.gamebasedlearning2010.com/conference/registration

plus there is free teachmeet event on the first night.

Apple Tablet Moment of discovery video

First predicition is wait and see

But joking aside look at this video from Apple who I do  fully credit from 1997 called a moment of discovery so Apple Newtons etc its not the first foray by Apple into the tablet world though radically different well the video is 13 years old

Moment of Discovery

Iphone projection

This might be another killer accessory for small scale training Iphone/ipod pico projection
http://www.beambox.co.uk/product_details.php?product_id=27

worth checking out other projection of the pico kind at http://www.beambox.co.uk/products.php

Projection is going to get interesting again !!

Mobile Continent

Article worth reading on growth of mobile in Africa . one stat amazed me since 2003 African with mobiles has risen 550%.

The “Information Economy Report” published by the UN Conference on Trade and Development in October, found that mobile subscriptions rose from 54 million to 350 million between 2003 and 2008 – meaning more than a third of Africans now owns a mobile phone.

really easy to read article well worth a read. Article can be at http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/14163

worth a look Social Network Websites: their Benefits and Risks. A guide for school leaders

If your strugging with the evolving worlds of social networks and the relationship young people have with them this could be a good place to look. The author has fourteen years of teaching experience and is currently in a leadership role . This looks at the positives and the negatives of using such media tools with learners . Now as usual not telling you what to do but I tihnk its a good read . A nice short e book that can be found at the following link  http://www.optimus-education.com/social-network-websites-their-benefits-and-risks-guide-school-leaders-254

go on have a look.