families online

A fascinating report from the UK's Ofcom indicates the extent to which ICT is impacting on everyday life and, in particular, people's leisure time, in the UK. The BBC news website has a short summary of the main points. It is interesting to see the extent to which specific 'groups' such as women and retired people are major users of online systems. After reading it, I feel that I should go home to my children and tell them to stop reading those books and playing around outside and sit down in front of a games console or watch TV if they want to be 'normal'!!

From Pilot to Mainstream - pain, gain and fun?

Bit of local news for a change. Here in NUI Galway we've just upgraded our virtual learning environment to Blackboard Academic Suite (Enterprise Licence 7.2) from the Basic Edition. It's been quite an undertaking and has involved months of hard work by colleagues in Computer Services, CELT, MIS, Records and other groups as well as with Blackboard themselves. We now have multiple, high-spec servers and integration with the University's various information systems so that courses and enrolments are handled automatically and with student and staff accounts being managed centrally. It's been nail-biting stuff as the new academic year looms (beginning of September) and no doubt there'll be a fair bit of drama in migrating over content from the old system to the new, in addition to training and support needs. But still, should be worth it in the end and the new functionality and automation should ultimately improve everyone's experience.

How do you feel....all of you?

Artist and computer scientist, Jonathan Harris has come up with some fascinating projects that ransack the web for live data and present it in attractive visualisations. His 'we feel fine' project tracks every mention of the the phrase "I feel" in blogs and categorises them into emotional distributions. His 'universe' project monitors all online news sources for key words and terms and displays links and inter-relationships.

Watch his presentation to TED (Technology, Entertainment & Design Conference) in March this year.

Edinburgh covered in invisible art....

The Spellbinder project is using modern camera-phones to show users art displayed onto buildings and various locations around Edinburgh city. The project was unveiled at the SIGGRAPH conference in San Diego this week. Nice to see technology, art and popular participation in a blend like this.

Watch this and weep......

How about 100Mbps domestic broadband? That's what they are rolling out in Paris just now. Seems that some people aren't happy with the 24Mbps that most Parisians are signed up to...argh. Still the modem for many of us unfortunately, but perhaps one-day.

View the BBC report here.

Glow - putting the spark in learning.

It has been described as the most advanced and comprehensive schools' IT project in the world and it is now beginning to make an impact, providing high-bandwidth desktop videoconferencing, a VLE for every school, personal pages for staff and students, vast collections of copyright cleared digital materials, online Continuing Professional Development, assessment systems, homework submission, attendance records, lesson plans, individualised timetables, coverage for absent colleagues, etc. What is it? It is 'Glow,' Scotland's Schools' Digital Network, linking all schools, teachers and pupils in all of the county's 32 local authorities and regions (ie 800,000 users). For more information have a look at the materials and video clips on the project website. The project will also be running training workshops and promotional events at the national conference that's held in Scotland every year for teachers, the Scottish Learning Festival. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Stephen Heppell is one of the keynote speakers.

Sadly, Ireland still has a some ground to make up before it gets infrastructure and resources on this scale.

EOL - the Encyclopedia of Life

An ambitious web project to provide an authoritative, web-based, open access encyclopedia with entries for all 1.8 million catalogued species on Earth has begun. Promoted by E. O. Wilson, the project has an introductory web presence at http://www.eol.org/ where you can see examples of the types of entry that are being proposed as well as some background on the scale of the task and the role of contributors, content 'mash ups' and the like.

For an introduction to the idea, listen to E.O. Wilson's talk below, or, if you want a High Resolution version, download it here.

pain is in the head of the beholder?

Following on from the previous post, the same union that is complaining about the dangers of YouTube is also now protesting against WiFi. Perhaps, they're right(??), but then if so we're all being fried daily also by mobile phones, TV, microwaves and the lot - might be true, just because there's no evidence, doesn't mean.......;-)

What does the Guardian think, especially the impressive Ben Goldacre (of Bad Science fame)??..stand back..I've lit the blue touchpaper...

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/mortarboard/2007/08/stop_broadcasting_baloney_abou.html

Computer animation and learning

If a picture speaks a thousand words, then what of a multi-million pixel, 3D ray-tracing representation? hah!

Well, anyway, one of the aims of this blog is to spread awareness of a range of technologies that can be used in higher education. Whilst school-teachers in Britain are currently campaigning to ban YouTube (I kid you not - but only one of the tiny unions, so far), others are using it to great effect to share materials. One nice example, is the video produced by XVIVO on the 'inner life of a cell'. The YouTube version is of course not full quality, but has the nice aspect that it can be embedded in your web (or Blackboard) pages, as below, and is a nice way of distributing such materials to students. Have a search also for other relevant materials and try your best to avoid the movies of people falling over and cats sleeping in strange places, unless of course you like that sort of thing....