Social data analysis anyone?

Candace Lombardi reports that IBM's Many Eyes (alpha mode) project seeks stats freaks or junkies to build "collective intelligence" around data sets and visualizations that can range from baseball stats to Bible word frequency/count. I wonder how this can be useful for data mining social networks. Read more of Lombardi's article.

Are we there yet?

Now the mainstream media in Manila seems to be recognizing the value of blogging in education. 3 general posts so far. Slowly... Steadily ... I hope more Web 0.5 teachers take notice.

Wov sighting of the day

Gliffy: Draw >> Share diagrams on the web


I wonder if it is any better than AjaxSketch.

There's a lot of creative juice flowing for Africa

Take a look at a recent post from Cory Doctorow : Multimachine -- truck-parts-based machine shop for Africa.


I call that social capital in action.

Online ethical behavior

... if the shoe fits.

"Parents need to know that although this site is a fun way to introduce kids to the world of networking, they'll want to sit down with younger kids and explain the situations that can go on in penguin land... "

Read more of the Clubpenguin review.

WOV* sighting

New Talkr (beta): Create > Post > Talk.


*Web of Verbs

This just in (30).

Justin Appel, Assistant Editor of eSchool News reports that:

"Results of the fourth annual Speak Up survey (in the U.S.) reveal attitudes of students, teachers, and parents about educational technology. Among the survey's many findings: Students want to see more integration of technology into subjects such as science and math--and two-thirds of parents believe technology is underused in schools."

More of the article "Parents, teachers, kids speak up on ed tech"

I wonder what it would look like elsewhere. Ignorance is bliss?

Secret Science Anti Gravity Revealed Homemade Video

From Metacafe.com

And here's a version from YouTube.

Presentation tool running on elgg engine

I am currently testing the presentation feature of eduspaces.net which runs on elgg. Before getting my hands dirty on this new e-learning tool, I visualized slide shows that moved right/left and up/down with the usual hodge-podge of transitions. I was freed from the mental tyranny of MS Powerpoint when I saw the following:

Am still looking for a suitable subject for my first presentation. But off hand, I'd like to think that it could be a useful tool for a "Show and Tell" summary of accomplishment or progress report.

Ben Werdmuller's description of the history of elgg development seems like a perfect model.

Web of Verbs*

... for Tests and Quizzes

Quiz School: Create a Quiz, Find & Share (Quizzes), Submit & Discuss Quizzes. It's provided by ProProfs.com

Read Frank Gruber's review where he described Quiz School a Digg-like quiz resource


*Thanks to Ross Mayfield

Twitter on your blog

We know that elgg has the usual affordances of blogs, rss, podcasting and gives the user the ability to embed widgets or scripts from YouTube.

I was looking for a way to push this Friendstery space into a higher level of purposive social networking. So I thought 43Things or Tada list would cut it. Well not yet. So I settled for twitter. After all, you could park your to-dos in progress with as little as 140 characters

I don't know about you but this is so funny.


Would like to vote for it in People's Choice for Creativity and Innovation. Any contest on that?

Thanks to David Pescovitz.

"Don’t be the only podcaster in your school."

That was one piece of prescription from Shawn Wheeler from "Podcasting in Peoria: How is podcasting being used in one school district." Thanks to Terry Freedman.

That might as well be, "don't be the only podcaster in your town or your office or your corner of the world." Doesn't that sound like "Internet killed the TV star"?

Groovenet: Taking Pinoy Social Networking to the NEXT Level

or is it all a fad?

danah boyd, "the high priestess of internet friendship" offers interesting insights.

As boyd argued in "Friendster lost steam. Is MySpace just a fad?" almost a year ago:

• Social technologies succeed when they fit into the social lives and practices of those who engage with the technology.
• People use the social technologies that all of their friends are using.
• Social technologies need benevolent dictators who love their constituents.
• It's not all about productivity. *
  
• It is not about technological perfection.

So is Groovenet part of a major fad?

Taking boyd's bottom line argument: "If MySpace falters in the next 1-2 years, it will be because of this moral panic ."

If the shoe fits.

* although IMHO it would immensely help if it is a major consideration.

Purposive Learning and the Friendster Generation

aka the "Web of Verbs". Thanks to Ross Mayfield.

The following may sound familiar:

• Where do you want to go today? (Microsoft)
• What drives you? (Caltex)

I guess keeping the New Generation of learners engaged requires playing into their "desire lines".

Now what if they say "whatever"?

Just listen. Or perhaps show them 43Things/Tada list.

This is just a marker.

I rarely blog about Politics, but here goes ... Just follow this link.

Happy 3.14 day!


Especially to Cory Doctorow and the folks at Boingboing.

OpenID and Social Network Fatigue

Steve O'Hear reports that Bill Gates "has announced that Redmond will work with the "web 2.0 crowd" to support OpenID. OpenID is an open and decentralised system that allows users to log-in to multiple sites via a single user-name — something which I've previously argued would go someway to combating social network fatigue. But what's in it for Microsoft? Gates said that in return it hoped OpenID would support its own CardSpace standard."

Seems like Explode would be able to play nicely into that strategy.

Nice to know that someone seems to validate your ideas

Almost a year ago, with tongue in cheek, I wondered about the future of Schools/Universities. I even posed this question: Are we prepared to envision schools as physical repositories of knowledge alone?

Today, I read the following:

"Testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said changes to the nation's schools and immigration laws are urgently needed to ensure America's continued competitiveness in the new global economy. He called on lawmakers to help strengthen U.S. high schools by creating an education-data center, encouraging more challenging standards, bolstering math and science education, and making curriculum more relevant and engaging to today's "digital natives," students comfortable with technology..."

I am not a rabid fan of Mr. Gates, but I like his idea. His point doesn't have to apply only to U.S. schools.

Future of Online Education: Dota Anyone?

"It is there amidst the video games and “fun things” that most educators refuse to recognize. With “Web 2.0″ barely taking a “bit” part in most of today’s classrooms, the next evolution of the web, I predict, is not Web 3.0. I think it will be Web 3D."

From Cool Cat Teacher

via emapey

Again. "dota anyone?"

Been offline for far "too long"

I don't know about you, but for someone who makes it a point to post one blog entry a day, then that's too long. Seems like I took the "Waterworld" (Read: vacation) scenario seriously.

How the Open Source Movement Has Changed Education

... MIT's Open Courseware Program, Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, Linux ... Read more about the 10 Success Stories. via gsiemens

Open Sourcing Social Solutions

Ending Corruption: Honesty Instituted Collaborative Competition

Here's a call to participate in an effort to connect innovations with the resources needed to fight and eliminate corruption at all levels.

Submit your entries by May 16, 2007 3:00 pm EST

And the MySpace/Friendster generation moves forward

... with the ability to change and redefine their personal spaces.

Go to MySpace Customizer site to see what I mean. Even comes with a toolbar for IE and Firefox.

Is the tall head noticing the long tail?

aka Old-school days for social networking

What do these have in common?

Ning, USA Today, Cisco

I can sense user empowerment.

"New" mp3 Pricing Model

Just found Amiestreet. Offers an alternative pricing model. "On Amie Street all songs start free. Then the community determines the price." You also "[g]et free credit when you discover and recommend hot new songs to your friends."

Wikinomics, anyone?

The Internet is People@dls-c

This Internet thing never fails to amaze me. So empowering. So dynamic. So social.

Thanks to the people behind elgg. You have just given two South of Manila undergraduate students (JPLoh and Dwek) yet another vehicle to empower other people.

Constructivist 1.5

Julie Lindsay speaks about the Nextgen Teachers:

"What we are doing is taking the best pedagogical constructivist approach, wrapping it in holistic, multicultural and global learning and tying a neat Web 2.0 bow around it."

Just don't know how that can be effective.

Picture this. Brian C. Gray reports that the U.S. House of Congress (H.R. 1120) is considering a social networking bill again, which, among other moral panicky things, "withholds federal e-rate funding from libraries and schools that do not restrict the use of social networking websites by minors."

Seems like the price of progress is openness.

Barrett vs. Negroponte

What's their beef? Sounds like an egotistical Digital Divide.

Follow the lowdown on the $150 OLPC issue here.

TV network executives should have seen happyslip by now

...unless they've been living under a rock.

One Show. One Director. One Camera. One-woman production team. One-line end credits.

Check out the "stolen stapler/picture on e-bay" episode.

Have ISBN, will generate Bibliography

We all know that writing proper bibliographical entries is a pain. Now comes Ottobib which could relieve that pain in the cellar. Sorry works only on books for now.

Are [local]* viewers ready for ‘Camera Café’?

So asks Rica Arevalo of Inquirer.net

“‘Camera Café,’ is a TV series (Read: mainstream media ), an episode of which "runs from three and a half to five minutes".

I'd like to think that the better question is: Is Camera Cafe ready for YouTube viewers/producers?



* meaning, Manila

The Future of music industry

From an Asian perspective (ca. 2003)

Imagine Philippine bands touring Thailand and vice versa. The same things goes for respective bands of country A and country B.

"You believe that music should be free and it is the “performance” that should be charged for (you still have to figure out how your idea will work with movies or books). Piracy can never die. The music companies build a lock to protect their content, and all they do is provide a couple of days entertainment to some Russian hackers. You realize what would work well in Asia is the “Grateful Dead” model. Give away your music for free. Participate in more live concerts. The artists have to work hard but it is more fulfilling."

Could we then start forgetting about copyright, because what could matter more is the experience of band tours?

And so I quote Preetamrai's quote:

“I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing. Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.”
David Bowie (from an interview on NY times in 2002)

Again perhaps, we are moving steadily (?) from an economy of products/services to an economy of experiences. Ok, 5 years to go. I just hope education won't be far behind.

2Ds & 2Cs of Web 2.0

Just stumbled upon Bubbleshare, a Web 2.0 tool "to turn your digital media quickly and easily into highly interactive, Social Presentations™".

So I showcase "Discover, Disclose, Connect and Co-create" using Elggspaces features.

This album is powered by BubbleShare - Add to my blog

Sorry if the animation is a tad bit bouncy.

Open GMail Signup

I ran a search using these key words: [open invitation gmail] and got this sponsored link:

"Search your email like you search
the web. Open an account today!" http://google.com

So I wonder, could this be a tipping point?