Bloggers can unite the world!

Posted on October 16, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

It’s possible that today, more than any day ever, has shown me the power of Web 2.0 to be the catalyst for change and motivation in education. The fact that blogging has lead to an opportunity for face-to-face dialogue with John Connell , Learning Futures Strategist from LT in Scotland is amazing! Thank you John for taking the time out in your short Aussie stay to chat with some of us downunder.

I sound like an excited teenager – and I guess in the world of blogging that is what I am 🙂 John Connell has been leading educators in Scotland for many years through his work with SSDN, and now in his new role, continues to explore the potential of school-based learning.

So the opportunity to listen to John as he shared stories and insights with a small (select) group of my colleagues in Catholic Education in Parramatta was exceptional – and I know that such opportunities to talk with people with vision and experience is greatly appreciated.

Bloggers of the world really were united – as Al Upton from Glenelg in South Australia joined us to listen to John – again, as a result of our blogging and communications that result from this!

The interesting thing was the ease with which two bloggers, from very different walks of life, could be so easily bound together by the common passion of delivering educational opportunities to students that harness the potential of technology in new ways, incorporating Web 2.0 as platform thinking.

I hope to have a podcast available of John’s presentation available, once I get back to work after attending the Global Summit where I have a feeling we will all be engaging in some very good professional conversations – and possibly knock the socks off the world with the resulting ideas that are generated!! If schooling is indeed struggling to find relevance in today’s world, then it is almost certain that solutions that emerge will do so due to as a result of the activism of bloggers and Web 2.0 aficiondos.

Now, about six degrees of seperation?

John talked about Whitby, the place from which Captain Cook sailed to reach Botany Bay. John travelled out to Australia to speak with us at Parramatta, where Greg Whitby is now our Executive Director. Greg dropped in for a short while to listen to John, and will attend the GENIE meeting with John on Tuesday. Al Upton comes from Glenelg, and I live in Glenelg place.

Bloggers of the world unite!

Podomatic excitement

Posted on September 27, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Joseph, a senior maths and IT teacher writing at Computers & 21CEduk8n left a nice comment on my podomatic site about my podcast.

Thanks for the feedback! 🙂

But better still, Joseph followed it up with a great post on podomatic Podomatic = Podmail and the unique options possible with podmail. Now, that’s creative, distributive, digital learning!

Well worth a read.

The Knowledge Tree

Posted on September 21, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

The Knowledge Tree enables the sharing of research and innovation in global e-learning practice.

Edition 11: The Knowledge Tree Goes Communal , looks at what it means to be in community on the Web, that is, examining what is community or communion, the structures being used to create Web communities, the types of communities that are emerging, the processes used to facilitate online communities, the relationships being formed within Web communities and the uses of Web communities in education.
Nancy White of Full Circle and Associates in Seattle, United States of America, is featured in this edition with her article titled of ‘Blogs and Community: launching a new paradigm for online community?’. Nancy has long been a leader in the field of online community facilitation and online community development.

You can join Nancy through ‘live conversation’ in a live Elluminate session on Tuesday 26 September at 2.00pm AEST (Monday 25 September in US). This ‘live conversation’ represents a great opportunity to dialogue with Nancy before she conducts her national speaking tour around Australia from 7 – 27 October.

You can enter this session with Nancy an hour before the scheduled 2.00pm start.

Education au – Creative Capable Connected

Posted on August 4, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

It is 9.30 on the 4th August, and I am attending a seminar in Sydney being hosted by education.au, which will focus on furthering the debate around building a new vision for education in Australia.

There will be a few bloggers here today, and so we hope to be able to provide comments live from the seminar to compliment the podcast of the seminar. Very exciting!

To put you in the picture here is an overview of the day.

Key issues to be addressed include:
* Collaboration * Interactive tools
* Networking
* New ways of thinking and learning. Speakers
The seminar will bring together:
Phillip Adams – a controversial broadcaster, writer and film-maker. As presenter of Late Night Live, he has interviewed thousands and can boast to be ABC Radio National’s largest driver of demand for podcast downloads (50,000 downloads for May 2006).
James Farmer – a Melbourne based online communications designer. James is the founder of edublogs.org, the largest educational blogging community on the web. James has worked as a lecturer in research and education design at Deakin University and is currently the Online Community Editor at The Age.
Annika Small – CEO of Futurelab UK, responsible for developing the strategic direction, establishing partnerships and exploring new opportunities for Futurelab. Annika has focused on developing compelling interactive learning resources for those excluded from traditional education.
Mike Seyfang – a consultant with over 25 years experience in ICT. Mike’s achievements include the envisioning and conception of the Microsoft and South Australian Government Innovation Centre.

Cheap access, cool tool

Posted on July 31, 2006 by Judy O'Connell

Cool Tool: Digital Library Cards

Teachers, technologists, and teacher librarians are always on the lookout for new tools and new deals to help in the research process.

Some time ago I downloaded Flock, intending to try this product out for information gathering and information dissemination.

So go ahead and read about good value digital library cards. The post from Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools is a salient reminder of the changes that have taken place in the information access business – and the new things we can do if we shop around. I guess some might be interested in the NY Public Library Card. Our own NYPLC?

However, the interesting thing to me is the use of Flock web snippets and blogging tool to create this post. I like the feature of dropping web snippets onto a storage space on the fly, which is then available for comment and compilation when I am ready to blog. This snippet can be text or an image. I am not sure about image placement yet, but this “grab and use” from one place technique is great!

I need to be able to move images around and position them in relation to the message. So far this needs more testing for me to be happy with it. However, as an overall approach I think Flock is going to be well worth trying further – particularly with Blogger to speed up creating posts.

There is far more to explore, but I’ll leave the rest of that exploration up to you!