Social micro-blogging in the scholarly world

Social micro-blogging or twittering, has become increasingly popular throughout the social networking scene. Prominent users include actors Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore to Oprah Winfrey and Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. Sure, it's great to read what type of soup Oprah is eating for lunch, or the latest parody idea from Jon Stewart, but how does twitter connect to education? What do social micro-blogging and twittering mean to the academic world?

A recent paper (How People are Using Twitter at Conferences) presented at the EduMedia Conference in Salzburg, Austria discusses the implications of social microblogging in a scholarly context (academic conferences). This is a draft paper, but does provide a good overview.

A different way to present

At the recent CNIE conference in Ottawa, the opening keynote address used a presentation tool quite unlike Powerpoint. It's called Prezi, and it was refreshingly different, if a bit dizzying when things moved fast.

To get an idea of what Prezi does, here's a brief quote from their site:
"Prezi allows anyone who can sketch an idea on a napkin to create and perform stunning non-linear presentations with relations, zooming into details, and adjusting to the time left without the need to skip slides."

Here's George Siemens' CNIE 2009 keynote presentation on "New Media, new learners? Finding a firm foundation for reconsidering the role and shape of education" (using Prezi). I'd recommend trying the forward and back navigation first, but also take a look at the free-form navigating by dragging the screen and clicking on different areas.

To get more detail on the presentation, here's the related delicious site with links. You'll also see a reference to our very own Mark Bullen!

Visual Search Tool

Here's a cool search tool that returns results visually. Try it out.

Spezify

State of E-Learning in Canada

The Canadian Council on Learning has just released the State of E-Learning in Canada which was "written to improve Canadians’ understanding of e-learning—particularly of its challenges, limitations and benefits—so that Canada may move forward in appropriate and relevant ways."

The findings are not particularly original and include:

• Canada does not have a comprehensive plan for e-learning
• Adoption of e-learning is slower than anticipated
• Lack of communication and collaboration among stakeholders
• The need for more research.

Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World

The following link is to a report of an independent Committee of Inquiry into the impact on higher education of students’ widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies

Supported by the principal bodies and agencies in UK post-compulsory education, the Committee was set up in February 2008 to conduct an independent inquiry into the strategic and policy implications for higher educationof the experience and expectations of learners in the light of their increasing use of the newest technologies.

Essentially, these are Web 2.0 or Social Web technologies, technologies that enable communication, collaboration,participation and sharing.

For more information about the key findings from the Committee go to: Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World

(E-) Learning Commandments

Here are three interesting lists of "E-learning Commandments". I think they probably apply to all learning, not just e-learning.

Abhijit Kadle in the Upside Learning Solutions Blog has reduced Cath Ellis' and Clive Sheperd's 1o Commandments to a more manageable five. The only one that I'm not sure about in the list of 5 is #3 - Use smaller and smaller units.

Twitter Literacy

Twitter is the latest social networking tool to rise to the top of the hype cycle. Celebrities, businesses, politicians....everybody seems to be jumping on the bandwagon. And apparently, just as many are jumping off pretty quickly after they try it out. Here's and interesting article by Howard Rheingold that does a good job of explaining what Twitter is all about and how to make it work.

According to Rheingold, using Twitter effectively is all about media literacy:

"Twitter is one of a growing breed of part-technological, part-social communication media that require some skills to use productively. Sure, Twitter is banal and trivial, full of self-promotion and outright spam. So is the Internet. The difference between seeing Twitter as a waste of time or as a powerful new community amplifier depends entirely on how you look at it - on knowing how to look at it...successful use of Twitter means knowing how to tune the network of people you follow, and how to feed the network of people who follow you."

Read the full article.

Communication Preferences of Postsecondary Learners: Are Net Gen Learners Really that Different?

Here's the latest presentation on the net generation research project. We made this today at the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education conference (CNIE) in Ottawa.

View more presentations from Mark Bullen.

Star Trek, Wolverine Terminator . . . and BCIT

This new LTC-produced trailer for the Engineering program is being shown at 700 Cineplex screens across the province. You can see it before the new Star Trek, Wolverine and Terminator films. Check it out! Props to the LTC's Lindsay Belloc for the concept and production of this very cool ad.

Mobile Learning Book

Athabasca University Press has released an edited book on mobile learning: Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training. The book is edited by Mohammed Ally from the Centre for Distance Education and it is available as a free download or for purchase in print.

Congratulations to AU Press for making valuable resources like this freely available.