BlogDale

Here’s a nice one, brought to my attention by Val Brooks.  Scrumdidilyumptio.us allows you to build relationships between websites .  It’s about building folksonomies , relationships and generally adding to the interconnectedness of all things.

Scrumdidilyumptious is a Firefox extension that lets you describe relations between websites. Want the world to know that you think Digg is better than Slashdot? that Google owns Writely? that Desperate Housewives is available on iTunes? Scrumdidilyumptious lets you do it.

That’s what their homepage says and who am I to argue?

And there was me worrying about Sketchup licences.  With my predisposition towards free and Open Source software the technicians get a bit twitchy when I ask for some obscure software titles to be added to the network.  So at school we’re going through licences with a magnifying glass, not wanting to get caught out by the small print; when we’ve installed something we want to be sure that as an institution, rather than a single user, we are covered for network-wide installations.

I’ve been a bit glum since I’d spotted a page at Google Sketchup that (I thought) suggested a licence was needed.  Not to worry, we’ll find the cash somehow because this is an awesome product.  So today I phoned Google to make sure, just clutching at straws really before I take the plunge and spend money.  To my surprise I’m informed that it’s OK to download and install the free version across the network!  “Splendid”, says I, and asked for it in writing (keeps the techies happy).  So on Monday I look forward to rolling SketchUp out across the network and writing some schemes of work to make use of it’s astounding features.

Such joy. An online image editor. There have been problems recently with the school network, which means that the software I want installed for creating vector graphics hasn’t been installed. But there’s this clever Ajax app called AjaxSketch that allows graphics to be made online and then saved to the local machine as a scalable vector graphic - the format can be changed with your friendly graphics editor eg GIMP. Trouble is, it needs Firefox to work, which ain’t on the network (yet). Curses, foiled again.  ‘Course, there’s still Gliffy.
While I’m at it, I have to say that I like the latest version of paint.net. Very usable and not at all like Paint. I really don’t like Paint. Another favourite image processor is ArtRage, now in version 2. I even paid for the pro version, I like it so much and I felt the need to support the developers. And here’s another great toy - remember those photomosaic posters that were all the rage a few years back? I’ve recently been playing with AndreaMosaic, a freeware application for creating these fascinating works of art. One great thing is that you can tell the software to create a web page, which links to the original image when you hover over the mosaic cells that contains it.

Old standards for me, I can’t do without Photofiltre and Irfanview for simple image processing. Another useful tool is Resize-o-matic for resizing images with a right click. I’m slowly getting used to Inkscape for vector graphic editing, and it has a great function for converting a raster image to a vector with various controls that can be set to make it dance to your tune.

One thing I can’t wait to get on the school system is Scribus. Waving goodbye to Publisher will be the best day of my life.

While talking about image processing, I can’t fail to mention GIMP again.  I had Year 7 using it a couple of weeks ago to create logos.  Some folks think it’s really hard to learn, but it’s all a matter of approach (as with anything.  HTML is really hard to learn but we still expect kids to learn a bit).

From TechCrunch

Flickr added geo tagging functionality and search to its service earlier today. Adding location information on Flickr is done through the Organizr, under the Organize tab. In addition to the “Your Sets” and “Your Groups” tabs in that area, they will add a Maps tab where you can drag photos into a Yahoo Map area. A marker will appear that shows the number of photos included with that marker. Once you have a location you can use the Organizr to search your photos and then drag them individually or by sets into the map.

Splendid, I say. It even automatically adds your geotagged photos for you.

Thanks, Flickr.

Today I was asked by a colleague to define podcasting. On the spot, after some mental humming and hawing I narrowed it down to being simply a broadcast on the web, an audio file placed there for download. Further to this, I suggested it ought to have rss enclosures so that podcatcher aggregators (such as Juice and iTunes) know to download it as an episode.

Here’s how Juice defines a podcast:

Podcasts are audio broadcasts created and stored digitally on the Internet. Instead of being broadcast over the airwaves once and lost, like with traditional radio, podcasts were created to be stored and played at the user’s convenience. Think of them as radio shows waiting to be downloaded.

Wikipedia is a bit more fulsome:

Podcasting is the method of distributing multimedia files, such as audio programs or music videos, over the Internet using either the RSS or Atom syndication formats, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. The term podcast, like ‘radio‘, can mean both the content and the method of delivery. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. Podcasters’ web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their files; a podcast however is distinguished by its ability to be downloaded automatically using software capable of reading RSS or Atom feeds.

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Google have opened the door to Writely so that people can register once again. I regard this as a Good Thing since Writely brings easy access to collaborative documents, a valuable tool in educating youngsters to be part of a responsible online community.

Steve goes through the features of Writely here.  Additionally there is the facility to use Writely to post to a blog which might be an interesting use of this software.

I’ve tracked this back to Steve’s blog to show how trackbacks work.

Steve’s presenting on Web 2.0 but only has 30 minutes. Best of luck - there’s so much to get through that’s of worth. I’m sure he will adhere to Levine’s Law. I’m doing a trackback on this post so that he can demonstrate how trackbacks function in the blogosphere.

What’s my favourite Web 2.0 app at the moment? Hmm. Difficult to pin it down. I would find it hard to function without Skype, although I thank the stars that Wordpress Mu is such a reliable platform to run blogs on (it’s what I use for eThink). I love the collaborative potential of wiki, especially in it’s raw form like MediaWiki rather than the word-processor clones like Writely and ZohoWriter (et al). It’s so easy to create links and new pages in wiki, and huge banks of knowledge can be built up rapidly by teams. Wikispaces goes a long way towards the ideal but oh my, those adverts.

Flickr is great when you can get it through a filtering server. ZohoCreator allows the creation of web apps including online database forms so you can survey a huge sample.

But what of learning spaces? I haven’t delved too far into Elgg yet apart from trying the concepts but it’s a beautiful idea to have that “learning landscape” for learners to inhabit and collaborate through, especially if hosted on your own server to keep the blackhats out. Moodle is still top of my favourites list and the Moodle/Elgg integration gets closer. On its own, Moodle wouldn’t rate as Web 2.0 I suppose but it has all the elements of collaboration and social constructivism, like wiki and a rudimentary blog. When does a blog become a forum? I was asked this by a Mr M. Mouse who left a comment on one of my blogs recently. It all depends on the use to which it is put I suppose.
Here’s a list of Web 2.0 apps. It’s getting a bit long in the tooth now but is still well-respected, and there are plenty of others. The “2.0″ suffix is appearing everywhere these days - learning 2.0 (what? Learning is still learning in my book), elearning 2.0 - I even heard “Voice 3.0″ today applied to telephone networks. Ian Davis discusses what Web 2.0 means to him - “Web 2.0 is an attitude not a technology. It’s about enabling and encouraging participation through open applications and services.” - and there are plenty of other ideas of what it means, including Tim O’Reilly who first coined the term. Really, in terms of technological evolution I suppose this new 2-way web should be designated Web 0.0 since this collaboration is what Sir Tim Berners-Lee designed the whole thing for. It’s just taken the rest of us 10 years to catch on.

I think the real strength of this new way of using the web lies in the ways that connections are made between people, between ideas. I think it’s what I was getting at here , that we now have the facility to publish and share and tag whatever ideas we want to an unknown audience, which has the opportunity to respond. This connectivism builds on notions of social constructivism to build a huge learning community that we, as learners, need to use to our advantage.

Just noticing the time, I’d better turn in for the night. Doesn’t it get late early these days?

A group of us have been thinking about ways to make the KS3 curriculum more contemporary. Jude has some superb schemes of work using kitchen designers and Rollercoaster Designers - the pupils at Lacon Childe love them if the blog’s anything to judge opinion by. Similar pupil enthusiasm appears at Thomas Adams where Gill’s pupils collaborate on MissionMaker programs, and at Priory where Trina’s Gamemaker and Missionmaker pupils are blazing a trail with their authoring.

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