E- Learning and global warming

I've always thought one of the major appeals of e-learning was it's potential to make a difference environmentally. Less cars on the road, less building and construction, more time for other activities etc but recent discussion about the impact of computer use itself may be calling this into question as is indicated by this article on digg There has been a longer history of concern about energy usage from buildings and as this article from Inhabitat points out 40% of landfill is building construction waste. For a long time now I could not see the logic of people having to travel for meetings and or study but if the solution is no better than the problem what is the point? There is little sense in substituting one type of problem for another so as computers are ubiquitous now the emphasis should be shifting to energy efficiency how energy is generated. If that happens then both sets of problems are being addressed.

It's easy to add online video to your courses

It cant be much simpler than this to add video to your educational content. Flixn allows you to simply record, review, and save your content for use in your pages. It took about 5 minutes to get this together, it wasn't really that difficult at all. As for the content anyone who knows me knows I play guitar - but not much slide- except last weekend I caught Steve Edmonds absolutely ripping on slide during his show at the Crowne Plaza Terrigal -he really brought the house down with his rocking blues and Hendrix covers - he has inspired me to have a go. I thought this would be better than doing a talking head piece to the camera.

Why blog when you can Ecto?

I recently discovered and signed up for Ectoa Web 2 Learning Management System. I know Nuvvo has gone before but this looks really good. Much of the horsepower is provided by embedding Google gadgets into your page. There isn't much you cant do with this, it's free, hosted and simple to understand and work with. I cant really see why anyone would prefer to host their class content using a blog when this level of sophistication is available.

Teacher's worst nightmare or business opportunity?

For some the future must be a scary prospect their worst fears realised. This virtual newsreader project clearly shows how some of the basic show and tell aspects of vocational training could be handed off to electronic assistants.In fact they could achieve a lot more than that. Northwestern Uni Newsreader
newsreader video on youtube
The situation could be more interesting in the university lecture scenario. Here is a link to the proceeding from the recent Learning Technologies conference in Queensland Australia.
Conference keynote on the videoloinq site via mediasite
As you can see from an audience point of view considering most lectures are a one way knowledge transfer, there would not be much difference between the live experience and the presentation you can see on the screen. (By the way check out the holographic? ultra minature laptop in this presentation complete with virtual keyboard!) It is easy to imagine a scenario like those in the art community where a single painting is printed and sold using numbered copies. Perhaps this is the way teachers and lecturers can monitise the E-learning phenomenon.

Wikis that aren't geeky

I'm not really that struck with wikis perhaps its the way they look,I dont know. There are exceptions of course wikipedia is one of my favorite things on the web and this new one for global curriculum sharing Curriki also strikes a chord for it's vision of global curriculum sharing. (original link on ehub) Perhaps its when this type of site gets a critical mass happening that they become more interesting - lots of them seem pretty empty to me otherwise.

$ 5.8 million up for grabs

More than $5.8 million is being made available in 2007 for E-learning projects from the Australian Flexible Learning Framework. By far the largest amount is going to to the training of teachers (2.8 million). For more details check the website. AFLF

The big picture

Sometimes it is valuable to think beyond the commonplace and the familiar and come to grips with some of the broader issues behind phenomena like Web 2. An article on RoughType discusses the ownership issues around Web 2 in a way that is overdue in the vocational education community. Original link courtesy of new master media

Best free web 2 applications

Here is a short list of web 2 apps that I like including free office suites and file conversion.
online office suites
ajax13
think free
zoho presenter
collaboration
thinkature
dimdim
photo editing
fauxto
pikipimp
video
bubbleply
flixin
democracy
pixpo
jumpcut(online editor)
blogs
edublogs
pbwiki
file conversion
zamzar