It’s holiday time for me “downunder” so I have time to play, dream, and generally relax.
Imagine my amazement when I came across the AutoMotto’s post about the VW Breathe private delivery commuter (forget car)!
Well I want one – if I’m still around 🙂
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png)
Newer generations of researchers not schooled in more traditional, library-based (pre-Internet) research methods are used to doing keyword searches on the Internet to discover information. “But if you come from outside a given field, you don’t necessarily know what those keywords are,” says Alyssa Goodman, a Harvard University astronomy professor. A Semantic Web setup would enable researchers to craft their queries in more natural language. Goodman adds, however, that a fully semantic Web that can read, comprehend and categorize information beyond keywords requires a level of artificial intelligence that is currently not available, something Rensselaer’s researchers are trying to address with this new tool kit.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a team of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., $1.1 million in October to create a software programming tool kit by mid-2010 that scientists and other researchers will be able to use to make data from their work available to all.
This project is an excellent example of the groundwork happening behind the scenes that ultimately will affect what we in school libraries and our classrooms should be teaching students about effective search techniques.
These are issues I’m very curious about, and am going to spend time in 2010 digging deeper to learn more about the changes taking place.
I will be sharing what I find out at presentations at ACEC2010 and ISTE2010.
I think I’m going to enjoy this!
Posted via web from Heyjude’s posterous
A little holiday madness ~ I am quite interested in this beta release – Mac only at this stage. Maybe it’s the carefree spirit of holidays that makes it seem fun, or maybe it’s the next cool thing. Ommwriter could be an interesting tool for creative writing.
Working ever so hard on editing some book materials, I found I was relying on my online connections to deliver quick answers to curly questions. One port of call was Ask a Librarian from the National Library of Australia.
I logged on for a quick real-time reference query. Wonderful personal service – and a nice chance to chuckle (via text) with a fellow professional. My chat log was emailed to me just as soon as I logged off – containing all the links to information I needed.
This is very cool!
My other port of call was – of course – twitter. My queries resulted in general responses, so quick Direct Message assistance, and some regular help with people willing to go home and ferret around to find specifically the information I needed.
BUT Twitter got Borked! We all went off line – mid conversation! It’s times like this that I realise how having no Twitter is just like having no phone line used to be in ‘the old days’.
From Mashable: Twitter Has Been Hacked; BBC News: Pro Iranian Hackers Hit Twitter and Opposition Websites.
Autoposting Connects the Dots to Twitter and Facebook: For those of us that have multiple social media accounts (think: Flickr, Twitter, personal blog, Facebook), there is always a dilemma of where to post what, and whether to replicate posts across multiple sites. This dilemma is even more vexing since, whereas Twitter tweets are limited to 140 character text and links, Facebook posts can include pictures, text and video of variable lengths, and personal blogs are as custom as you want to get. Here, Posterous really shines, giving you the ability to autopost your posterous posts to one or more services, defaulting the title of the post as the Twitter tweet
This is a very useful post – about Posterous. Of course, I shared my reading of this via Posterous!
Posted via web from Heyjude’s posterous
Each school, each leadership team, each school library team and each teacher needs to learn how to restructure the core business of schooling in order to embrace learning in our changing online world.
We say this often and slowly the ship of state is turning ~ but fast enough for our students?
I came across two things today which brought a smile to my face. What we imagine is possible ~ is real these days!
Take a look at TechXav – seems to be as professional a website as any you might come across….. by 11-15 year old students?
TechXav is a technology blog written by a group of young and zealous teens, ranging from the age of 11-15.
Wait – they’re even located around the world!!
Right – and imagine what they think of being shown a powerpoint! or opening a text book!
I also read a post by Will Richardson about phones and about the disruption they are already creating for most schools (high schools at least) and about the huge brain shift we’re going to have to through collectively to capture the potential for learning in our kids’ pockets. I love the video he shared as well!
Yes, we’re facing a huge challenge ~ much bigger than just the roll-out of laptops in our schools in NSW. It’s a fundamental, seismic shift that likely will swallow some education institutions.
So this little promo video shared by Will also bought a smile to my face.
I’ve been using Twitter for what seems a long time – and in that time I have learnt that Twitter is an important part of my whole toolkit of professional learning and sharing. I have also learnt that it is important to bend Twitter to the purpose I want to use it for!If renowned author Ernest Hemingway could write a full story in just six words (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn”), then teachers and librarians should encourage their students to use Twitter and text messages as part of their literacy lessons
@librarycloud is brand new – and really focussed on learning, teaching, and all things to help organise a fabulous school library. I’m keeping this Twitter account clutter free – so that I can make a Twitter book out of it for you!
@Simplybooks Promoting reading and good literature, as well as providing links and information about quality approaches to reading education.
So you see, I’m keeping myself busy making Twitter work for me – and hopefully for you too!
Is there anything else I could do to help you?
Meanwhile – grab the Complete Guide to Twitter, or one of Tim Davies fabulous One Page Guides.
Seth Godin writes about marketing, the spread of ideas and managing both customers and employees with respect. If you’re not familiar with his books, check them out here.
Seth’s newest ebook What Matters Now is a compilation (or is it a collaboration) of ideas and actions happening around the world.
Seth explains:
We want to shake things up. More than seventy extraordinary authors and thinkers contributed to this ebook. It’s designed to make you sit up and think, to change your new year’s resolutions, to foster some difficult conversations with your team.
Over 70 authors pitched in, and it’s now free to download here, or on Scribd. Some great ideas to grab for education too!
Did you know that last year 1.2 million books were loaned out in developing countries through Room to Read?
Take one of the pages, and use it as a discussion starter with your students, or your next faculty meeting.
Connectivism and Connective Knowledge – my favourite concepts!! By the way, I get a lot a weird looks when I talk about what’s in slide slide 24 – but it’s true!!
A learning management system is a great tool for the wrong era!
But maybe it’s only true if you haven’t travelled the journey of having one and realising what it’s not good for? Small steps – BIG journey…..quick 🙂
Thanks to George for tweeting the link and inviting us into the Elluminate session for the presentation being held at the Centre for Educational Innovation & Technology in Queensland.
Visit the tweets at the hashtag #CEIT_gsiemens
Everyone likes to score maximum points in each subject. It’s what the final public examinations in our country are set up for – to see who can get ‘full marks’!
Do you detect a cynical tone in my voice? I love learning it’s true – but I also love learning and teaching to include an understanding of the online world that our students will be living and working in when they leave school. So as the next round of marks are about to come out in NSW I wonder what these marks will tell us about the flexible and agile minds of our students and their potential to succeed in a world wrapped in new media. New media? Social Media? Is it really relevant? Do teachers need to know any more than the basics? Perhaps it’s Business Studies that should take the most note of the shifts taking place, while other subjects should incorporate social media more into the whole learning process. Why? Because from what I’m reading below – it’s driving a lot of change in the workplace and in marketing.
2009 was surely a banner year for new and social media. Fueled in large part by the impressive growth of Twitter and Facebook and the adoption of both by major brands and recognizable individuals, it’s safe to say that social new media truly went ‘mainstream’ this year.
The Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth recently conducted a new in-depth and statistically significant study on the usage of social media in fast-growing corporations. This new study revisits the Center’s study of Inc. 500 social media usage for the third consecutive year, making it a valuable and rare longitudinal study of corporate use of these new technologies. Questions probed respondents about their familiarity with six prominent social media (blogging, podcasting, online video, social networking, message boards and wikis) tools. This included the popular microblogging service Twitter and other popular social networking sites like Linkedin, Facebook, and MySpace.
Adoption and awareness continue to trend upward, with 91% of firms using at least one social media tool in 2009 and three-quarters describing themselves as “very familiar” with social networking. Social networking and blogging have seen the most growth in adoption, while other technologies have flattened or even declined in use, including wikis and online video. Twitter usage, of course, has caught on quickly—more than one-half of businesses reported tweeting in 2009. This was the first year respondents were polled about Twitter.
One impressive change over time was in the percentage of Inc. 500 companies that did not use any form of social media. It dropped precipitously from 43% in 2007 to just 9% in 2009.
The Internet has provided us with the platform of information sharing. In the Web2.0 era of social media marketing and information – so much is FREE!!
| Item | Price | Supplier |
| Courses & Tutorials | FREE | Youtube, Blogs … |
| Global Client Database | FREE | Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter … |
| Market Insight & Trends | FREE | Twitter, Google Wave … |
| Customer Feedback | FREE | Facebook, Twitter, SurveyMonkey … |
| Global Talent Pool | FREE | LinkedIn … |
| Viral Marketing | FREE | All of the Above … |
| Infinite knowledge | FREE | All of the Above and more … |
It’s like fishing where the fish are. Social media is where our consumers are at the moment. There’s no better way to amplify your message…..
…according to Michael Donnelly whose role in Coca-Cola’s global interactive marketing group is to help increase the understanding, testing, adoption and use of digital marketing and emerging media among the company’s marketers.
Coke used crowdsourcing to enable all of their consumers to vote on which team will travel the world for a year in search of what makes people happy. It’s a program that will be completely socially enabled. The team will blog, shoot video, conduct interviews and participate in events. Voting concluded and the three-person team of “Happiness Ambassadors” was announced online on November 16. The trip begins in January 2010.
Oh my!! I feel as if we have a bit to learn don’t you think?
So I thought this study presented at Harvard University by the “Society For New Communications Research” (SNCR) in November 2009, was a rather interesting read.
Amongst the findings that caught my eye (which should have relevance to educators) were:
Professional decision-making is becoming more social, traditional influence cycles are being disrupted by Social Media as decision makers utilize social networks to inform and validate decisions.
The big three have emerged as leading professional networks: LinkedIn, Facebook & Twitter.
The average professional belongs to 3-5 online networks for business use, and LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are among the top used.
The convergence of Internet, mobile, and social media has taken significant shape as professionals rely on anywhere access to information, relationships and networks.
Reliance on web-based professional networks and online communities has increased significantly over the past 3 years.
Social Media use patterns are not pre-determined by age or organizational affiliation with younger (20-35) and older professionals (55+) are more active users of social tools than middle aged professionals.
There are more people collaborating outside their company wall than within their organizational intranet.
Connecting And Collaborating Are Key Drivers For Professional Use of Social Media.
So how are you as a teacher or teacher librarian using social media to help your students ‘score full marks’??
judyoconnell.com 