Live Syncing (Mirror) Daemon. It uses rsync to synchronize local directories with a remote machine running rsyncd. Lsyncd watches multiple directories trees through inotify. It is a light-weight live mirror solution. When not to use: file with active file handles, directories where many changes occur.
Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, Vol 2, No 1 (2010). PLE, distributed environments, connectivism, conversation, participation.
We often talk about games, simulations and other events in learning, but these technologies support only episodic learning. Equally important are those technologies that provide a context for these learning episodes, an environment where students interact and converse among themselves. This paper describes experimentation in the development of distributed online courses and in software - particularly, the personal learning environment - that support the formation of connections between the far-flung pieces of such courses. This work, in turn, is suggesting and supporting the model of learning described in the first section, that of a course network supporting and informing an ever-shifting set of course episodes. This in turn suggests a pedagogy of participation rather than retention, and even suggests distributed and locally-based forms of evaluation and assessment. Future developments will focus on realizing these concepts as software or at least software prototypes. The intent of such systems is to facilitate the conversation and interaction around episodic learning events in a distributed environment, transforming them from elements in a linear flow-based design to free-floating objects in an environment.
Collaborative book editing platform. EPUB import. Web app. Open source software?
Creative Commons explica els seus plans per a l'any 2010 en relació amb l'educació, que inclouen:
...you can expect to see much more OER-related content and news on the CC home page, main site, and wiki. This is a big win for the open education movement — many more people will learn about OER, and for CC as well — OER may be the single most compelling use of our tools, and one that any member of the public can understand right away.
The reorganization results in the departure of one staff, but the addition of direct open education project responsibility to several of our most senior staff, including our CEO, Creative Director, CTO, GC, and VP.
També s'enumeren alguns dels projectes de 2010, en els àmbits jurídic (llicències, materials creats pels menors a les escoles, formació per a advocats...), tecnològic (metadades, DiscoverEd, assessorament per a implementacions...) i político-social (materials de divulgació, estadístiques, etc.).
David Wiley, iterating toward openness:
Our good friend Cathy Casserly, former Director of the Open Educational Resources Initiative of the Hewlett Foundation, as just been elected to the Creative Commons Board of Directors. While there were already people on the CC board who cared about OER, the addition of Cathy means that the Board now has one of the most articulate OER champions around in their ranks. This is great news! Congrats to Cathy, CC, and anyone who cares about OER!
Video games history timeline and visual timeline (flash, beta). By Mauricio Giraldo Arteaga (Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia). "This site aims to visualize the story of videogames and its most related events".
El Grupo de Tecnología Educativa de la Universidad de Sevilla acaba de publicar las Memorias de investigación (Resumen ejecutivo y versión completa) del Proyecto de Investigación de Excelencia en Equipos de Investigación “Usos del e-learning en las Universidades Andaluzas: estado de la situación y análisis de buenas prácticas”, financiado por Resolución de 19 de diciembre de 2007. Secretaría General de Universidades, Investigación y Tecnología (Orden de 15 de marzo de 2007. Convocatoria 2007). P07?SE?J.02670.
An applescript that watches presenter notes in a Keynote presentation and sends automatic updates to twitter. Configurable #hashtags and @mentions.
L'Open University del Regne Unit ha anunciat que adoptarà el paquet d'aplicacions en línia Google Apps for Education a fi de proporcionar els serveis següents als seus més de 200.000 estudiants (i posteriorment també al seu personal):
Les raons que addueix Niall Sclater (Director of Learning Innovation) són les ja habituals: Google pot garantir una qualitat de servei major que la mateixa universitat i fins i tot pot aportar eines addicionals. A més a més, destaca el caràcter complementari i el valor afegit d'un servei com aquest, quan se suma a un entorn virtual d'ensenyament/aprenentatge de la institució, relativament tancat i segur.
[...] These systems will increasingly start to compete with some of the features of learning management systems / virtual learning environments such as Moodle and Blackboard. They provide a higher level of individual control for students and potentially remove some of the administrative burden from the university. Google’s recent integration of their Groups application in the the Google Apps for Education suite is going to present us with some interesting questions such as:
- What would be the additional maintenance issues for us in turning on that functionality so that any student can set up a forum e.g. dealing with inappropriate comments, flame wars etc?
- Should Groups be a space for informal collaboration with formal teaching taking place in Moodle forums?
Actualització. Comentaris interessants en el blog de Graham Attwell: Personal Learning Environments in the Cloud?
I like D'Arcy Norman's definition of "educational technology" a lot more than Januszewski and Molenda's. Their definition, that "educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological process and resources," defines an academic discipline, rather than the object of study, and for good measure throws in normative elements ("ethical", "appropriate") inappropriate in a definition. It is also essentialist, trying to define something in terms of inherent properties of that thing (as opposed to external factors, such as use). Norman's more colloquial definition, "educational technology is whatever stuff you need to use to support the practice of effective teaching and learning," is also more accurate. It identifies a set of entities as defined by how they are used. And it allows for unethical and inappropriate uses of stuff (still a good idea in a world of SCORM and page-turners).
The special track "Mashups for Learning" (MASHL 2009) took place within the "International Conference on Interactive Computer Aided Learning" (ICL 2009) in Villach, Austria. Personal Learning Environments (PLE) are the application type for mashing up learning services. We asked for contributions for an increasing research field. MASHL 2009 provided an excellent space for discussions in order to improve the learning and teaching routines of tomorrow. This special issue consists of the outcomes of this intensive process with international experts.
"The Data Liberation Front is an engineering team at Google whose singular goal is to make it easier for users to move their data in and out of Google products. We do this because we believe that you should be able to export any data that you create in (or import into) a product."
"Your Bookmarklets, On Steroids". An extensible bookmarklet that uses text shortcuts to access your bookmarks and bookmarklets ("like a command line for your browser").
Cinc eines -alternatives a Twitter- vàlides per a implementar un back-channel a l'aula.
Via OLDaily:
Many people use Twitter as a backchannel, but there are some people (like me) who would prefer a different solution - because, otherwise, audience members must obtain Twitter accounts participate, which they may not want to do, and the conversation may be more public (i.e., broadcast to the entire universe) than some people might like. Also, it's really annoying to read one half of a conversation through an individual's tweets (whch is what hashtags address, of course, provided people use them correctly, or consistently, and... sigh.) anyhow, here are five alternatives for a classroom back-channel (and I know, I know, you love twitter and think everyone should - but you'll have to get past that and realize that the world has more than one religion).
Vilaweb es fa ressò del portal Materials Docents en Xarxa, repositori cooperatiu d'universitats catalanes que conté materials i recursos digitals resultants de l'activitat docent, i el compara amb iniciatives com Patatabrava.com o Rincón del Vago.
Using the file system for your notes, dougist.com.
Graham Attwell. Recursos educatius oberts, ensenyament vs. aprenentatge (?) i el paper de les institucions d'educació (superior) en el futur pròxim.
[...] My prediction of trends for 1010 is that the crisis over the future role of institutional education will continue to deepen. The crisis, engendered largely by technological and social change, can only be exacerbated by the financial cutbacks facing higher education in many countries. At the moment education institutions can fall back of their function in providing recognised qualifications. Although the degree of regulation regarding qualifications and the weight such qualifications carry for employment varies between sectors and countries, in general we might expect that increasingly employers will look to a person’s digital identity and digital record of learning, rather than accepting qualifications as the basis for employment.
So do educational institutions have a future? I think they do but this will require profound change. Already a few pioneers like Dave Wiley, George Siemens and Stephen Downes have tested new models for online courses including both participants registered for a course credit and those not registered. But more fundamentally institutions may have a role in motivating and supporting the learning of students at particular phases in their (lifelong) learning. But this requires far more flexibility than our present (higher) education systems provide [...]
Un altre examen de les novetats més destacables de Moodle 2.0 (que encara tardarà mesos a sortir). En aquest cas, Timothy Hart (College of Education and Human Development, University of Maine) destaca els aspectes següents:
oEmbed is a format for allowing an embedded representation of a URL on third party sites. The simple API allows a website to display embedded content (such as photos or videos) when a user posts a link to that resource, without having to parse the resource directly.
Article en ReadWriteWeb. Analitza molt breument la tendència a la baixa del RSS com a mitjà per a mantenir-se al corrent de les novetats, amb la competència ara d'aplicacions com Twitter, Facebook, les pàgines d'inici de l'estil d'iGoogle o Netvibes, etc. També, significativament, el predomini a què ha arribat Google en aquest camp del RSS.
Hans de Zwart ha assistit a les darreres presentacions de Martin Dougiamas sobre Moodle 2.0. En aquest apunt del seu blog resumeix i comenta quines seran al seu parer les novetats més importants. El nou sistema de plantilles i temes, les activitats condicionals o el redisseny de la navegació, entre altres. I sobretot la reinvenció de Moodle com a plataforma mitjançant les API de repositori i d'eportfolio i la capa de serveis web.
[...] Moodle was approaching the end of its life cycle as a “Walled garden” product. Moodle was ahead of the game in 2001, but has been passed by many of the developments on the Internet since its inception. When Moodle was first conceptualised things like WordPress MU, Ning, Flickr, Delicious and Wikipedia did not exist. Moodle needed to reinvent itself. The repository and portfolio APIs in combination with the Web Services layer will allow Moodle to become much more a platform than an application. Moodle will keep its relevance or will become relevant again (depending on your viewpoint on the state of educational technology). I am already imagining the Moodle App Store.
DIY Web Guide: "An easy way to create a simple static web site that you can easily get published using Google App Engine".
Jornada de treball de la Red de Coordinadores del Campus Virtual dels centres de la Universitat del País Basc. Vídeos i presentacions de les conferències de Jordi Adell, director del CENT i Amelia Sanz, subdirectora del Campus Virtual de la Complutense de Madrid.