More Webcasting

In a little less than 1 hour (0200 GMT Friday), I'll be hosting my 4th webcast for edtechtalk.

Tonight I'll be hosting EdTechTalk Brainstorming Session 19A. I'm a late fill-in for Jeff, but I'm really looking forward to a discussion with Brian and his students.

I'll also be hosting a webcast at 1800 hrs (GMT) on Friday about literacy. I'll be joined by colleagues from Project Literacy Victoria as well as from the GRAIL project at OISE/UT.

I'm especially interested in discussing new and emerging technologies and the role they have to play in literacy and I hope tomorrow will be the start of regular meetings to get together and share ideas and "best practices" when it comes to using technology for learning and community building.

Blogging and wikis

Brain Lamb has recently posted a call for submissions in support of a talk he's doing next week in Vancouver, BC.

I recommend that you visit the link above for the complete list of Brian's questions, but I thought I'd respond to a couple here:

In your mind, what is most misunderstood (or little understood) about these tools?

The most "misunderstood" aspect of these tools is the whole notion of public/private and walled gardens and the need to "protect" those in online environments. While I agree that certain age groups, and perhaps new and beginning users, need to be sheltered from the "black hats" that one finds on the 'net -- it's also imperative that we teach individuals how to conduct themselves in online environments from the outset.

Call it 'net-proofing if you like (although this may engender a false sense of security), but I think it's important to turn the responsibility for one's "online persona" back to the individual.

Those participating in the "read/write web" need to be responsible for both deciphering the semiotics of the web, but, just as importantly, have an appreciation of the fact that what one is posting is indeed accessible by anyone with a connection to the 'net.

Of course this means that the potential--good and bad--of posts to impact one's life is huge. Rather than be intimidated by this fact, I think we can do a lot to educate and encourage the effective use of blogs and wikis as a tool for sharing and building knowledge and communities of practice.

Are blogs and wikis evolving into something else?

I think that blogs and wikis are definitely evolving. I believe that audio and video will continue to play an increasingly important role in online environments. I think this is true for all kinds of 'casts -- be they audio, video, or screen, "canned" or streaming. I think that interfaces like elgg are examples of how blogs and wikis are evolving.

Elgg is "open source, learner centred, community building platform" that allows for the incorporation of "media" files into the interface and also provides for the tagging of objects and syndicated feeds with publishing details. This is one example, but I think that "sky's the limit" in terms of what we might see in terms of open source "mashups" and hosted web services applications.

I also think that "services" companies who provide "solutions" based on open source platforms will continue to drive "the open source movement" and make it viable and sustainable.

Backup

Once again, I'm happy to have this space as a "backup" for my "online presence" when an experiment at my web site doesn't work as it might >;-)

Dave and Jeff were talking about PLE near the end of last week's show, and I think that "personal learning environments" are great, but they aren't all gravy. I use my site as a "sandbox" to play with "free" and open-source" software applications. For the last while I've been using Drupal. I hadn't bothered to try accessing my site with IE, until in a meeting downtown today.

Here's what Rob at my ISP had to say in response to an email.

Updating a production site to a beta piece of software is a very bad idea because things like this can happen and there is really nothing we can do until they release a final version.

Rob recommends that I restore a pre-update version of the site and I may do that, but I figure I might as well keep "messing around" given the fact that it still works in Firefox, and it seems as tho' only the "front page" is broken in IE (links to "non-front-page" pages seem to still work). I'm also confident that it's something I've done whilst messing with settings that causing IE to choke.

Those who seek out my ramblings on the 'net. And yes, I do have an audience (meagre as it may be ;-) and the "die-hards" know to check this space when one of my "experiments" at samlab gets away on me.

I've begun hosting the EdTechTalk Brainstorming "B" Sessions at 0300 am GMT on Sundays (Saturday night in North America).

Join us in the chatroom or VoIP with Skype and join the conversation. In addition to a computer with Skype installed, you'll need a microphone and headphones. As a listener to the stream, you need to stop the stream BEFORE joining the conference. This serves three purposes:

1. It prevents hearing loss on the part of participants of the "live" show


2. Greatly improves the quality of the audio


3. Cuts down on the amount of "post-production" needed

Hope to "see" you online this weekend. Here's a link to a chat I had last night with Art Gelwicks. It's about 13 minutes long, and just over 3 MB in size. I'm posting it here to test how it reacts in Internet Explorer.

keeping up

I haven't been keeping up with posting here. I've become intrigued by the possibilities presented by the API from Google Maps and have been playing with that. The reason that the video below (in the previous post for those of you in the archive ;-) isn't playing may be due it's file size (too big for my account at elgg.net). From what I can see of the code, it should work.

Blogging Anniversary

edit from 06Jan06--the videos in this page show in Firefox, but I can't get the first to show in IE and will keep working on it.

Today marks the 4th anniversary for this blog. I'm still enjoying the "blogging experience" and am especially thankful for the opportunities it presents to interact with a very dynamic community of practice.

Lately my attention has returned to media--especially video--for the web. This "vlog entry" contain my thoughts on the "biggest challenge" for online video producers. Thanks again to the good folks at for hosting the videos.

The videos are in QuickTime format and running times for the videos are 26 and 13 seconds respectively:

What's the biggest issue facing a prospective audio-, screen-, video-, or web-caster of multimedia for the web?







ok, so what do we do about it?






I used the Embedded Media HTML Generator to build the code to embed, and "objectify", these *.mov files.