Aether ICT

Tim Ferriss on learning how to learn

2011-12-01T02:14:00.001-08:00

Tim Ferriss, author of the The 4-Hour Workweek and The 4-Hour Body, is producing a new book. The 4-Hour Chef will focus on learning how to learn, using cooking as a way of showing you the learning strategies that people use when learning new information and skills.

These books are usually very popular, and written in quite an aggressive pro-active style, something that isn't often used in an educational (or cooking) context. It will definitely be an interesting read, and hopefully offer new insights or tips for learning both online and offline.

The 4-Hour Chef will be published as both a print book, and electronically for the Kindle, and is available for pre-order with a huge discount on amazon.com. However, there is a very long wait until it is published in September 2012.

Tim is also offering readers of his blog a chance to win a free Kindle Fire, in exchange for spreading the word about his new book. As a taster, he has released the free 4-Hour Chef Christmas Countdown app, currently only for the Kindle Fire.

I question the timing of the publicity - to get pre-orders for Christmas, but nothing delivered until September 2012 is in keeping with his aggressive style, but feels a little too pushy for me. I hope Amazon.com has their dates wrong.

TED talks for learning

2011-11-07T11:52:00.000-08:00

TED talks are inspiring, educating and extremely interesting. By themselves, the talks are great for learning how entrepreneurs have and pitch their ideas, watching inspired talks on hurdles overcome, and discovering less publicised avenues of research in many fields. (TED on YouTube)

There are a large number of less-obvious ways you can use TED talks for learning, other than watching videos to learn about the topics covered by the talk content itself.

Language learning: TED Translations has a growing collection of subtitled talks in over 80 different languages. You can use this to increase your English (or non-English) vocabulary, learning how these words are used in natural speech, and avoiding the boredom often caused by flashcard reptitions. Or, perhaps you can even volunteer to translate a TED talk.
Networking/event organisation: attend or organise a TEDx event in your local area. Inspiration and enthusiasm for learning is often higher when such events are attended in person. Perhaps involve your students, if you are a teacher. The TEDYouth day will happen on November 19, 2011, with many events planned worldwide.
Body language and presentation techniques: watch the presenter's body language, facial movements, and how they moved around the stage. Integrate those techniques you found effective in your presentations.
Note taking techniques: write a summary of the talk without using the pause button. Fast, accurate and thorough note-taking is an important skill for students. You can re-watch the talk to make sure your notes were accurate.
Learn to think critically: this may be a better exercise when discussed with others. Think about the presenter's background, motivations, challenges, and bias when you listen to a TED talk. Learning how to reason, argue and think critically is not common in many school systems these days. But I believe it is a very important skill.
Learn to teach: the TED-ED Brain Trust is a private community publishing short videos or presentations (under 10 minutes) within an education community. They have several categories in which any member of the community can submit a video, and cover topics such as mathematics, creativity, languages and even questions that have no answers (yet).

University courseware online

2011-10-06T08:01:00.000-07:00

Many universities are offering courseware online for free, typically for subjects that have been delivered in previous years. Often the courseware include lecture material, assignments or other assessment tasks, and occasionally lecture or class recordings. Many will offer links to the readings required in the course. There are many link directory sites for these free online courses, and as with most 'directory' style sites, the links become outdated quickly. One of the pioneers of releasing university education materials online for free is Massachusets Institute of Technology.

Massachusets Institute of Technology, USA
Utah State University, USA
Yale University, USA
University of Michigan, USA
Columbia University, USA
Stanford Engineering, USA
Webcasts from University of California Berkeley, USA
Capilano University, Canada
Athabasca University, Canada
University of Nottingham, UK
Mathematics department at Oxford University, UK
Open University, UK
People's Uni, UK
University of Southern Queensland, Australia
University of Tokyo, Japan

If you find yourself wanting to learn something new, deepen your existing understanding, or get a feel for which direction you wish your studies to take you, browse through and possibly study the university courseware that is freely available. It is never to late to study, and never to early to work out which area of study is the most interesting for you, if you are going to pursue a tertiary education.

Mega earthquake and nuclear accident in Fukushima

2011-03-12T16:34:00.001-08:00

See my post on Athrist for details.

Cat inspires orchestral music

2009-07-21T19:44:00.000-07:00

Nora the Piano Cat, featured regularly on YouTube, has teamed with the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra, and conductor and composer Mindaugas Piecaitis, to publish CATcerto on YouTube (embedded below). I think it is fantastic that social media (video sharing), has enabled and inspired an original music creation.

Never stop learning

2009-07-02T14:16:00.000-07:00

Although I've reached the end of the Learning 2.0 program, I never ever want to stop learning, or helping others learn. This blog will therefore continue, but it will be shifted over to my main blogging account. Web 2.0, social, and other online applications continue to fascinate me, and I can see so many opportunities for using these tools in education, business, and even personal lives.

The Learning 2.0 program was a great jump-start for this blog, and it has helped hone my writing skills are little more. Thank you to my colleagues who have commented on this blog, and recommended it to others. I had heaps of fun explaining all of these Web 2.0 tools, learning, writing and teaching are three things that I am passionate about.

My ultimate aim in life is to learn as much as possible, and to bring as many people as I can along for the ride!

Virtual worlds

2009-06-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

With internet access speeds increasing, more complex virtual worlds can be used for collaboration. Conferences, art gallery displays, and even training regularly occur in virtual worlds that simulate the real world, such as Second Life.

Although text based Multi-User Dungeons (MUDs), Multi-User Shared Habitats (MUSHes), and MUD Object Oriented systems (MOOs), typically based on adventure games, have been used for entertainment and in education since 1975, graphical multi-user online games are being extremely popular (commonly called massively multiple online roleplayer games MMORPGs). Most of these games encourage teamwork and communication, and can be invaluable tools in a classroom to increase participation and allow the students to have fun.

Virtual worlds allow people who normally feel awkward or shy in social situations, to interact with others online, with less fear of being judged on how they physically appear or act. Their avatars (digital representations) move throughout the virtual world, and interact with both other avatars (controlled by people, or computer program robots), and items placed into the virtual world. This can encourage more active and natural participation in group discussions, or it can encourage bullying and other anti-social or aggressive behaviour. The virtual education field is steadily growing, virtual classrooms allow students to interact with other students and their teachers, even when they live in remote areas. Second Life Grid allows distributed companies to build virtual offices, allowing their staff to interact in the virtual world.

Most of the virtual worlds do not have stunning graphics (this would require much higher internet access speeds), but have been steadily improving over recent years. Many graphical virtual worlds require dedicated programs to be installed on the user's computer (rather than accessing the virtual world through the web), and limit the user to specific areas (geographically or server based, to share the computing load evenly). There is still much scope for improvements to be made, before virtual worlds are considered easy to use, feature full, and fast to access.

Social networks

2009-06-17T06:41:00.000-07:00

There are so many social network websites or services currently available, that it can be hard to decide which one (if any) to join! Wikipedia keeps a list of the active social networking websites, two of which have been specifically covered in previous Learning 2.0 tasks (LibraryThing and Flickr). Social networks allow you to create a group of or to "connect to" friends online, either matching your in-real-life (IRL) friends, or people you have never met in person but have something (anything) in common with! Most sites offer photo sharing, and some offer tagging services.

MySpace has been making headlines for years, and is currently offering 27 International sites. Recently, the popularity of MySpace has been lacking, as Facebook is increasingly in the news. Both web applications have been widely criticised (on Wikipedia - MySpace, Facebook), especially for allowing, or in some cases, enabling cyber stalking and bullying, not doing enough to prevent child abuse, and for contraversial decisions to support pro-holocaust and pro-anorexia/bulimia groups, and ban photos of masectomies and breast feeding in support groups. Friendster, which MySpace and Facebook were based on, has not received anywhere near as much criticism (perhaps it was features in popular media less often). Mashable has large news archives for Friendster, Facebook and MySpace. It also has a generic section for social networking news.

Ning allows anyone to create an open or moderated social community, and has recently passed an amazing milestone: one million social networks. LinkedIn is a social network focussed on business, where as most of the other social networks are predominantly for personal entertainment. Many people (over 40 million) use LinkedIn to showcase their resume online, making themselves more visible to head-hunters.

Some of the concerns that many people voice about social networking services are: lack of privacy, potential for data theft, photos being published online, increase in spam and viruses, bullying, etc. Most of these social network sites allow for various privacy settings, controlling what information others in the extended social network can see. Other people argue that having an extensive online (digital) presence makes identify theft harder.

When using social networks, I endeavour to follow a few personal rules:

I do not publish photos of people without their permission (simple courtesy). I know many people who really dislike photos of themselves appearing on the internet - me being one of those people! I publish almost no identifying photos of myself, even though blue hair is rather recognisable.
I will usually only connect to, and accept connections from friends that I know in real life, via extended electronic communication, or through other friends (unless I am specifically looking for new language exchange friends).
I try to never use clearly identifying names (full names), especially of those friends who I know value their privacy
I consider that anything that I publish in a social networking site (apart from specific contact details), is publicly readable - just in case privacy rules fail, or the social network site is searchable using Google.

Online video telephony

2009-06-17T06:21:00.001-07:00

I have been using Skype to make 'free' VOIP phone calls overseas, since it was released. I primary use it to keep in touch with friends overseas, keep in touch with my family when I run training in rural Victoria, and to participate in language exchange sessions. Two popular language exchange websites (Xlingo and MyLanguageExchange.com, both advertise Skype as a great way to work on your spoken and listening/comprehension skills in foreign language. Skype is even available as an iPhone application (but you must be connected to a network to use the voice call functionality).

Skype is also really useful for geographically diverse teams or organisations, enabling face-to-face meetings between two people on other sides of the world. A recent competitor, Oovoo, has made available multiple-user video calls for up to six people. One of the main criticisms of Skype is that although it can handle multiple user voice calls, only two people can have video calls. Google Talk has had voice chat available for some time, but recently Google have added GMail voice and video chat to their line-up of services.

Online video calls have an excellent future in the world of education and training, providing that internet access speeds manage to keep up with the service quality!

Information aggregators

2009-06-10T20:36:00.000-07:00

An information aggregator, also called a news or RSS reader, collects blog posts, podcasts, tweets, forum posts, uploaded images/videos, etc., together in one place. Therefore you don't have to visit each site individually to get to the information, saving you time and effort. Online aggregators are nice because you aren't tethered to one particular computer, which would mean you'd have to 're-process' everything you read while on another computer, using another aggregator program. Google Reader and Bloglines are two of the most popular online aggregators.

After constantly using Google Reader to read a fairly large collection of blogs over a long time, I struggled when I used Bloglines. I exported my usual list of blogs as an aggregate OPML file (.XML format), but this was not imported correctly - several blogs were categorised incorrectly, and blog post counts were inaccurate. Many errors were reported (communication problems, delayed updating of blogs, etc.), which disrupted my reading flow. I found the interface to be quite confusing, cluttered, and slow to respond. Bloglines Beta looks a lot more like Google Reader, but reported even more errors. Whitney Hess, a usability consultant, wrote a great comparison post - Google Reader vs Bloglines Beta, noting that Google Reader was on the whole, a lot more usable than Bloglines Beta.
Note: if you have a Google account, you can log into Google Reader with your normal Google account information.

Many blogs, image sites, or other websites that provide 'feeds' (the information that is displayed within an aggregator), include only a paragraph, or shortened post - requiring you to click through to the actual website to read the full post, or see the images. These websites may rely on advertisements, that are not usually included in feeds (another reason to use an aggregator!) You can subscribe to a 'feed' by clicking the orange 'feed' symbol. It may be accompanied by one of many descriptions, including, but not limited to: subscribe, feed, RSS feed, Atom feed, syndicate, web feed. Most readers also provide a way to add a site's URL from within the aggregator.

Many people like to share the information that they are reading or consuming - to help their friends find interesting or funny information. Personally, I would rather tweet or write a blog post about something I find interesting or useful, rather than 'share' or publicise it from within the aggregator. That way, people who subscribe to my blog/twitter feeds can 'consume' my information at their leisure.

Diagraming and outlining tools

2009-06-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

For diagrams, I used to use XFig on my linux machine, and create documents with LaTeX. At some point, I used Visio, but found it was not flexible enough, and switched to the drawing tools inside OpenOffice on my MacBook. These days, there are many useful online tools that enable you to work with diagrams, outlines and visualise project management, without having extra applications on your computer.

Gliffy has many features that I used in Visio, and is useful for programmers that use UML (at university I used Rational Rose or XFig to create such diagrams - having an online tool like Gliffy would have made creating these diagrams a lot less stressful and time consuming!) From simple flow charts and room plans to network, interface and UML diagrams, Gliffy is easy to use, and seems to support most of the popular browsers.

There are a number of online tools (and other programs) that allow you to create outlines - useful for document planning, project management, knowledge management and software engineering. Most of these outliner tools allow you to 'fold' or minimise sections, fantastic for those who use a top down approach, starting with the big concepts and then drilling down into detail. Office software such as Microsoft Office, and Open Office have an outline mode, and it is an oft-asked for feature in Google Docs. Mark Wieczorek maintains a comparison of outliners on his blog, and Outliner Software is a forum for those who work with, or are interested in outliners.

Mind maps or macrologues, area specific type of outliner, and are useful to explore concepts both in depth and breadth, again using a top down approach. I found that my thoughts are quite circular, and that many interrelated ideas don't result in a nice, clean mind map (is there any such thing). Mind Meister allows you to create an account using your OpenID, such as your Google account, which I find very useful. Mind Jet, iMindMap, VisualMind, and Free Mind are other popular mind mapping tools.

Newsletters

2009-06-01T06:31:00.000-07:00

Newsletters are typically used by clubs and organisations to distribute information that is not usually displayed on their websites, wikis or blogs. Often used to advertise events, publish competition or event results, newsletters may be delivered by email, or via the post. There are several free and subscription services that provide web-based newsletter creation tools (ENewsLettersOnline, LetterPop, ConstantContact, CampaignMonitor, Topica and MadMimi). Some even track reader statistics (VerticalResponse,EmailNow, and MailChimp) . Most are designed for businesses, as this blog post from Listio explains, but many have free trials or low volume free accounts for small community users. Most use templates to set the style and layout, and many can link with your image hosting account (LetterPop can link with Flickr).

Personally, I only subscribe to newsletters when the information within them is worthwhile - well written, concise, information rich, regularly published, and providing more information than what is available on a website or blog. I prefer to receive newsletters as non-fancy, plain text emails - I really dislike receiving fancy HTML emails with various fonts and backgrounds (especially as I often read email on my phone).

LetterPop allows viewers of an online published newsletter to leave comments, and can email your newsletter to a small group of recipients (a mailing list). LetterPop does display Google ads on one side of your newsletter - these may not be displayed if you have a subscription.

Wikis

2009-06-01T04:56:00.000-07:00

Most people have heard of Wikipedia these days. Many children and older students research assignments using Wikipedia as their sole encyclopedic reference, and most teachers don't blink. It's quite expensive to buy the Encyclopedia Britannica as it is released each year, and in book format, Britannica takes up an enormous amount of shelf space. These days, the Encyclopedia Britannica is provided as an online subscription service.

Wikis may be editable anonymously or by anyone registered at the website. Wikis track changes to each article, and unlike forums and blogs, changes made to articles can be undone (most wikis provide detailed version histories, tracking all changes to the content of a page). Many wiki writers and editors are not literary professionals, and may not be experts in the fields about which they write articles. Inappropriate articles, incorrect content and articles about non-noteworthy topics are regularly written. Those users who make changes maliciously, are often known as trolls. Editing wars can also occur, especially over contentious subjects, or between rival organisations (have a look at the list of edit wars that have occurred on Wikipedia). Wikipedia mitigates this by a number of means - a great many registered editors smoothes the incorrect content and ensures content is constantly updated. Trusted editors often regularly review articles written and edited in their areas of interest. Closed wikis grow much more slowly, but don't usually have the problems seen on Wikipedia. Many company intranets use wikis as a knowledge base for their employees, enabling their staff to contribute to procedures, policies, and useful corporate knowledge. Wikis may be used internally to increase visibility of project management or externally with customers to foster regular interaction, provide product information or training, and encourage customer feedback.

Each article is a separate webpage, and usually the title of the article appears in the web address (making it easily readable by humans). Although, not all wikis follow this pattern, and some have unintelligible web addresses for their articles. Links between articles usually have to be added manually, and image/file uploading is often rather user-unfriendly. There are more than 100 different wikis that can be installed on a webserver and integrated into a website. Wikimatrix allows you to compare the more common ones and choose the one that suits you best. The overall layout and style of the wiki is not editable by anyone other than the site owner, ensuring a consistent look and feel to the entire wiki. A wiki is usually set up by the website's webmaster, who may also moderate, approve editors, and deal with any technical glitches with the wiki software.

Markup is applied to format the content of an article using a toolbar and a WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get). Many wikis still require markup to be added manually, using the wiki syntax for that particular wiki (example wiki-syntax on Google Code Support, or Wikitext examples in Wikipedia). There is no standard for wiki syntax, and it can be quite confusing, especially if you write on multiple wikis. For example, using three apostrophes around a phrase that you want bolded, two apostrophes for italics, or five apostrophes for bolded italics. You may like to look at comparison of bold syntax on Wikimatrix to see common variations in wiki syntax.

Wikis rely on an active user-base to flourish, encouraging a large number of users to write, edit, link and and update articles regularly. As with most online communities, many wikis are started with a great initial burst of enthusiasm, only to find that interest quickly wanes as their users find other, more active wikis, forums or blogs. It is typical that a wiki's primary audience will not return regularly, unless content is consistently added and updated. Wikis therefore work well for enthusiastic, active, focussed, and/or large online communities.

Google Book Search

2009-05-10T20:15:00.000-07:00

One of my main wishes, is for there to be one set of rules for the world - the current copyright, region encoding, etc. makes it more difficult than it needs to be. This was evident when using Google Book Search. Some of the books I found were frustratingly not available outside the US. Google really needs to focus on becoming less USA-centric, especially if it wants to succeed in the Asian market).

I do love that they have started archiving magazines online, and found a few useful articles in the Organic Gardening magazine. However, most of my searching found nothing, indicating that the online archive is woefully small. With more libraries joining the effort to digitise their collections, this problem will be resolved sometime, probably in the far future. Unfortunately, some libraries are very protective of their digital collections, and may not share these with Google.

Google Books complements Google Scholar, which is an online repository for research journal articles. Again, the archive is small, and many other research catalogs, have more complete collections, usually available for a fee, and typically tightly focused on one area of research. I was really pleased when I found that one of my research papers had been referenced, but not so happy when I found I had to pay for the article. I did anyway, because it was the first to reference something written by me! I would love for journals and conferences to make their articles available for free, there is not enough funding for education and research throughout the world, and I am sure this would greatly help spur creative research and reduce the reliance on funding.

Google Books on Wikipedia

Working collaboratively

2009-04-19T20:36:00.000-07:00

The days of emailing versions of documents back and forth are over (or rather they should be), because there are several online tools that provide document sharing, version control, and sometimes even real-time collaborative editing. Often, this software is free! It enables companies to achieve (or at least make great steps towards achieving) the following:

reduce costs by reducing or eliminating costly software purchases and upgrades.
increase productivity, because:
- everyone uses the same version of the online software
- the online software automatically keeps track of version histories
- the online tools allow more than one person to edit the same document, at the same time (and even chat about it while editing)
increase employee happiness, especially when partnered with a flexible working environment and telecommuting.

The most commonly discussed online collaborative document system is Google Docs. It is not as feature-full as some of their competitors (such as Zoho), and has a slightly different focus, but it is being actively developed, with new features appearing every few weeks. Unfortunately, I discovered the size limitation when testing with a large spreadsheets used in my current workplace. Office Live Workplace was launched to compete with Google and Zoho, but only supports file sharing, not real-time collaboration. Zoho offer a large suite other tools, although some are not free or are limited in features until you buy access to them.

In Google Docs you can create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, web-based forms (that immediately saves the data from the submitted form into a spreadsheet), and can also store PDF documents. Limited features are available when you aren't connected to the internet, providing you have installed Google Gears and 'backed up' your documents to your computer. You can upload files to Google documents in other many formats (.doc, .rtf, ppt, .xls, etc.) and export to multiple formats, including PDF.

Because version control is included in Google Docs, and the documents are accessible to anyone you have given access to, you don't have to keep emailing different versions around, or storing multiple copies of the document in various places on the company intranet. It saves a time when searching for information, encourages collaboration, and is less likely to result in duplicated work. Tony Karrer wrote an excellent post discussing remote collaboration using e-learning technology in January '09.

Google Earth and Google Maps

2009-04-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of confusion surrounding these two Google products, especially as many of their functions overlap.

Google Maps

I find it helps to think of Google maps as an online street directory, only accessible with an internet connection. Google maps has more functionality than a printed street directory, such as incorporating photos from Panoramio, satellite view, street view, and contour view. A Google Map is essentially a flat and static representation of the world (it doesn't show changes over time), including streets and landmarks, and is predominantly useful for plotting a route you want to travel. Google Maps is slightly smart and estimates how long it will take you to travel the route by car, and in some areas, estimated public transport times or walking times are available. Google Maps also provides turn-by-turn directions, which can be printed, along with a map. Street view and satellite view are useful for locating parking, shady spots, or other landmarks.

Google has worked with phone and software developers to bring their maps to mobile phones and other websites. Google Maps is often more up to date than printed street directories, although at times Google Maps does get it wrong (indicates there is a street, but it is blocked or not there, or displays a wrongly named street, etc.). Businesses often include a Google Map on their website to advertise their location.

Google Maps has been integrated into other Web 2.0 applications (often called mashup - when two web applications are combined). For example, Google Maps has been combined with the CFA and DSE list of Victorian fires to make a fire map (pictured above), plate tectonics map from geology.com, geolocated world news (archived since 2005!), MyFitness, Trailguru and other fitness websites use Google Maps to plot and track exercise routes (running/hiking/cycling/skiing/etc.). Many more Google Maps mashups are reviewed at the Google Maps Mania blog. This blog has also posted links to the Google street views of the fire affected towns in Victoria, 2009.

Satellite photos and street view photos are updated rarely, about once every three years. There are still some locations that are covered by cloud in the satellite view, and many regional locations do not have street view. Many of the people I encounter during training classes are very worried that they are being constantly watched and photographed by Google, but surveillance cameras that record movements in shopping centres and office buildings 'watch' everyone much more often and in more detail.

Google Earth

Google Earth is a program that you install on your computer, and then you can use it without being connected to the internet. It is a simulation of Earth, combining satellite imagery, topographic and elevation data, aerial photography, 3D models of some buildings/cities. You can fly around the earth, viewing it from above or at an angle (great for viewing mountains and the 3D modelled cities). Google Earth is much more flexible and extensible than Google Maps, it even includes a flight simulator (see the Wikipedia article for more information).

You can make your own layers to add to Google Earth, with sightseeing or other information. Or you can create your own 3D models of buildings that you submit to Google, and if approved, they are added to the 3D buildings layer.

Street view (originally from Google Maps), has been integrated with Google Earth as a layer, and third parties have made a host of other information layers available (volcanoes, conservation projects, places of interest to local communities, historical maps). If an internet connection is available, Google Earth can show up-to-date related information from Wikipedia, photos from Panoramio, weather information, traffic conditions for some large cities, geotagged videos from YouTube, tourism information, and much more.

Because there is so much information available in the layers, Google Earth is extremely flexible, and sometimes confusing. Many people use Google Earth to plan trips or hikes, or learn about areas for school assignments or in classes. Teachers may use Google Earth to explore topics in history, biology, ecology, and more. But it is also powerful enough to be used to visualise big environmental, health and social trends, such as the avian flu pandemic several years ago, or monitor events in real-time, such as the earthquake monitoring layer. Time lapse tools allow researchers to monitor trends and activity visually, and more easily predict future activity. Researchers in many fields regularly make their own private layers incorporating time-stamped and location data. Building sites can be planned, 3D modelled and viewed in Google Earth to see how the proposed designs fit with existing buildings and terrain. The outreach showcase from Google has some extremely interesting layers that you can add to Google Earth on your computer.

Google Sky (pictured above) was added as a layer in Google Earth, using imagery from various telescopes and observatories around the world to show the solar system and constellations. It still exists as a web application for those who don't have Google Earth installed.

More recently, Google Ocean, which incorporates ocean imagery and research information, and Google Mars with 3D renderings and panoramic photos of the martian terrain, were added to Google Earth, along with a submarine simulator. A low functionality version of Google Earth was also recently released for the iPhone. There are also plans to migrate Google Moon, currently a separate web application like Google Maps, into the Google Earth program.

iGoogle

2009-03-06T00:18:00.000-08:00

Available in over 30 languages, iGoogle is a customisable skin surrounding a Google search box. The search functionality is the same as the normal Google homepage.

A personal iGoogle page is available to each Google user, if you have signed into your Google account. You can access your iGoogle page when you are signed in on any computer. There are an astounding number and variety of gadgets available for iGoogle pages, including dictionary searches, calendars, weather and news reports, photos, games and many, many more. Themes provide customised backgrounds, and some change throughout the day based on the time at your location.

You can create an iGoogle page on your computer, even if you don't have a Google account, but that iGoogle page is only available on that particular browser, on that one computer.

As you can customise iGoogle to contain information and tools that you regularly use, this is a useful page to set as your browser's homepage. It then is displayed every time you start the browser.

I'd love to work at Google, although with the economic downturn, I'm sure the office perks are suffering a little. They have some amazing visitors, such as Beardyman and Nathan Flutebox Lee!

Digital books

2009-03-03T13:55:00.000-08:00

Books are available in two different digital formats, audiobooks and e-books. Current electronic formats require much less shelf (storage) space, and fewer resources to produce.

Audiobooks

Originally created as an alternative to braille books for blind people, audiobooks have been around since the early 1930s. Cassette audiobooks became popular in the 1960s and 70s, and radio programs often aired serialised 'audiobooks' or dramatisation of existing books, like the famous War of the Worlds which caused panic when it was first aired, and Lord of the Rings. As MP3 players became more popular, audiobook use increased dramatically.

Audiobooks are typically read by trained voice actors, although occasionally stage or film actors, or authors will feature in an audiobook. Poorer quality audiobooks, that have been created automatically by text-to-speech programs on computers, are also available, but most listeners prefer less mechanised readings. Audiobooks are often used when reading is not practical, like when driving or travelling, or while doing other activities (exercise, gardening, cooking, etc.) Audiobooks don't require a written book to exist, they are therefore useful in cultures that maintain oral histories. Many books have been slightly altered or scripted for better presentation in an audio format. Audiobooks can also be used to supplement language learning, focussing on listening skills, something that textbooks can not do.

There are several projects to convert novels that are in the public domain into free audiobooks, Librivox being the most well known, where chapters are read by the public as well as voice actors and made available for free on their website. Some other free public domain audiobook websites include: Audiobooks for free, The Gutenberg Audiobook Project, Audiobooks.org, and Books should be free. Some sites, such as Podiobooks, specialise in serialising audiobooks into podcasts.

Private domain audiobooks including newly released books and best sellers, are available for purchase in iTunes, and on sites such as Audible.com, Amazon.com and the Australian based Soundbooks.

E-books

Electronic books, or e-books, came into existence with the computer, and are becoming more popular with the recent invention of portable e-book readers like the Kindle by Amazon.com which uses energy efficient, easy to read, electronic paper (currently available in America only). Most e-books are simply documents that you can read on your computer and use the popular PDF document format, created by Adobe. There are many other e-book formats out there for the range of portable digital devices such as: Palm PDAs, mobile phones, Blackberries, etc.

Unlike physical books where you are limited to using the table of contents or the index to find information, e-books allow you to search the entire book for word or a phrase. This makes electronic versions of reference books really attractive to professionals who require quick access to the information. Movies, animations and sounds can also be used to enrich a story in an e-book, something that isn't possible with printed books! Until recent advances in electronic paper, one of the disadvantages of e-books is the fatigue that is experienced when focusing on a screen for extended periods. E-books also allow authors to publish their work themselves, and this has caused concern in the publishing industry, both for the financial implications, and for the growing prevalence of low quality writing and information in e-books, similar to the information problem on the world wide web.

As with audiobooks, digitised versions of books in the public domain are available for free from many e-book websites, often in multiple formats for various digital devices (Gutenberg Australia, Free-ebooks.net, Free e-book library, Manybooks.net, Books In My Phone, and Feedbooks. E-books are also sold at most major online bookstores in many formats.

Learning with podcasts

2009-02-27T01:40:00.000-08:00

Audio podcasts, using the MP3 format, and video vodcasts, using various video format, are incredible learning resources which can be subscribed to so that new episodes are automatically downloaded. You can find podcasts by using a program like iTunes, which has a huge catalog of podcasts, or by searching one of the many podcast directories or by using Google. MP3 audio files can be played on any modern computer, and by portable MP3 players. You are not limited to using Apple's iTunes or iPods. Podcasts allow listeners to choose when they want to listen to programs, and where, providing they have a portable MP3 player.

Language podcasts like JapanesePod101.com by Innovative Language Learning, or podcasts provided by Praxis Language and Radio Lingua are very popular offering a range of lessons from 1 minute to hour long episodes, supplementary written materials and vodcasts. There are a huge number of fitness and self improvement podcasts available: Fitmusic and DJSteveBoy provide popular music mix podcasts, Quick and Dirty Tips provide a number of personal development podcasts, including Grammar Girl. Science podcasts are also quite popular, Brains Matter is a science podcast that is produced locally. Companies use podcasts to promote research, events and foster organisation-wide communication (SLV).

Many commercial broadcasters are making their shows available on podcasts and vodcasts, allowing listeners to tune in when they are available, and not be limited to the broadcasting schedule. (ABC, BBC, SBS are just a few examples.

Universities like Swinburne University, schools, institutions and training providers are using podcasts of lectures, training sessions for students who miss classes or want extra revision. Teachers sometimes use podcasts to keep parents up to date, include them in music recitals, or students may use podcasts to complete various communicative tasks within a class. Of course, some of these podcasts are only accessible to those enrolled in the courses, maintaining commercial viability for the provider and privacy for those involved. A special section in iTunes called iTunesU provide greater flexibility for educators and students.

Many sites pull together related podcasts into podcast directories, but usually these sites, like the Education Podcast Network and Podcast alley are not filtered, resulting in many explicit podcasts being listed and advertised. When using sites such as these, you do need to be aware that not all podcasts contain appropriate content.

For those wishing to create their own podcasts, royalty free music for background ambience or mixing can be found at Podsafe Audio. There are a host of programs that can be used to record and publish podcasts, one of the most popular and free, open source programs is Audacity. Microphones and headsets are both quite commonly available at electronics stores. There are plenty of tutorials resulting from Google search.

Youtube can be useful too

2009-02-26T23:00:00.000-08:00

Youtube, available in 17 languages, is one of the most popular websites that allows anyone in the world to publish videos of anything they want. This means there is a lot of pointless 'noise' on the site, as well as some rather entertaining videos, but you can also use Youtube to learn new skills or keep up to date with current events.

Television channels and newspapers around the world are increasingly producing short YouTube videos of news items or other programs, as well as hosting them on their own websites. In Australia - Ten, Leader TV, and Sky News, in other areas of the world BBC Worldwide, NHK Online, CBS, ITN News, The Times Online, and many more broadcasters are making videos available on You Tube.

CFA TV provide videos by and about CFA members in Victoria. Wildlife Australia and WWF use their YouTube channel to promote their conservation and research efforts. Oxfam international, Red Cross Australia, and others use YouTube to promote their humanitarian projects.

There are also multitudes of tutorials and lessons on all kinds of topics, as well as some amazing demonstrations. Jesse Tsao has uploaded 60 instructional Tai Chi videos, Expert Village has an astounding 138466 tutorial-style videos on a huge variety of topics, organised into series, with varying tuition quality. There are lessons on all sorts of skills - throat singing, contact juggling, folding origami swans, cooking Jamaican Curry Chicken, composting and crocheting cherries.

You can find some amazing demonstrations, including speed painting in photoshop, 5 year old playing Dance Dance Revolution, a Mentos and Diet Coke 'concert', as well as some incredibly cute cat videos. Some animators also use YouTube to promote their work.

Many people use YouTube to record video diary entries. Most of these are quite non-descript, but people who are learning a language have found it useful, as an online community, to post video logs (vlogs), and receive constructive criticism, helping them to improve their language skills. Sometimes they post in response to language lessons (Japanese, German, French, Spanish).

For most of YouTube, you don't need to create an account. An account allows you to rate videos and leave comments. As YouTube is owned by Google, all you need to do is to log into YouTube with your Google account details, if you have a Google account.

Of course, YouTube is a public forum, so there are many pirated videos and awful comments, so you do need to be careful what you click on, just as you need to be careful when using any search engine.

Books, books and more books!

2009-02-26T01:00:00.000-08:00

Librarything is a website where you can record, categorise (tag), and review your own library. Founded by librarians, it has both free and paid account options, and offers a host of fun tools (once you go through the tedium of entering your entire library into the site, ISBN by ISBN). If you already have a record of your books, there are various import and barcode scanning options.

As with most social websites, you can connect with your friends on LibraryThing, write book reviews, get recommendations based on your reviews/library, and view some fun and interesting statistics about your library. Along with fairly standard library statistics, you can also see the series coverage, and how much overlap you have with the libraries of famous people (legacy libraries). Of the books that I have added to LibraryThing, I have a mean obscurity of 1/26 (I deliberately picked the books I added to be obscure and in Japanese). The Memes section of the site is also quite fun, listing the books that you share with only one other member, the percentage of your books with authors that are still alive, male vs female authors, and a list of duplicate works (sometimes innaccurate). Publishers regularly provide copies of new or soon to be released books for review to LibraryThing members around the world. LibraryThing also provides information about libraries, events, members and bookstores in your local area (based on your location in your profile). The website is available in an astouding 49 languages, including Thingamabraian.

Bookmooch (Wikipedia article) is an online book swapping site, available in 7 languages, where registered users swap books using a points system. They pay for postage to send a book to another member, and gain points when a book is sent, and use points when requesting a book from another member. Bookcrossing (Wikipedia article), with 13 language 'mirrors', is another online book swapping site with a twist. Books are registered on the site, and then are 'set free' or released, sometime being directly sent to another person, or sometimes being left in public places with a sign announcing the book is available for free. Both of these websites have received criticism for devaluing books (lowering sales), but they are in the same category as libraries. In my opinion, anything that encourages reading, is a good thing!

To tag or not to tag

2009-02-25T10:41:00.000-08:00

Tagging is one of the ways which information on the web is organised. Tags provide information about information (meta-information or metadata). Tagging has become very popular, and is used in so many web applications. Photo tagging, especially with place or event names, allows people who visit those places, or attend those events, or who simply have an area of interest, to find related images. Tagging books, reviews, blog posts, etc. allows you to group information in a way that you (and others) find useful.

Of course, no two people will tag in exactly the same way. Librarians are familiar with this issue - books that span multiple categories are allowed one Dewey number, and they must shelve the book in one particular section. As information on the internet can have multiple tags, the accessibility of this information is increased, especially for tagged images, with no other textual description. Search engines rely on text to find information, but are increasingly placing more weight on tags, other metadata and headings, if they exist on a webpage, when finding results for a search.

Some web applications use tags in interesting ways: TagGalaxy (pictured) is a cute interface for finding images and related tags on Flickr.

Most photo hosting sites will also allow you to group photos into albums, sets or collections. They often also have groups, where many people post related photos. Where groups, albums, collections, and even the directories on your computer organise information hierarchically (top-down), tags can group related information from anywhere in the hierarchy together (bottom-up).

Every person has their own preference for finding information, tags are just another way of enabling information to be found more easily!

Online photo hosting sites

2009-02-24T21:58:00.000-08:00

Online image hosting can be both good and bad. It allows your friends and family who live far away to share your life. It may help a cause, or document a a place or event. Digital photos are less expensive than printed photos, and providing you have a good quality camera, you can still print these photos. Online image hosting provides a backup away from your computer, which may be important when natural disasters strike, like the Victorian bushfires. One of my friends had photographed one area of the Eastlink toll road when it was a nature reserve, and recently posted all the 'before' and 'after' photos.

Not all online image hosts are free, or they provide limited services for free accounts and are often supported by advertising. Because digital photos are easier for people to take and share, it is difficult to control what photos of you are available on the internet. It is purely netiquette that suggests that you have the photo subject's permission to display a photo of them on the internet, but permission is rarely sought. It is common that photos from long ago surface in websites like Facebook, where people in photos are identified with tags. It is also difficult to control who can view your photos, although most image hosting websites provide privacy settings, allowing you to invite your audience, and block the rest of the world from viewing some or all of your photos.

Flickr is one of the larger image hosting sites. For most casual photographers, a free account is all they need. Flickr is available in 8 languages, and has a host of tools and add-ons to upload and manipulate photos. fd's Flickr toys are especially popular, contributing to the popularity of Lolcats and other captioned photo sites. Panoramio hosts photos of places, and is integrated with Google Maps. Image editing programs (Photoshop, Picasa, iPhoto, etc.) typically have some level of integration with an online image hosting service.

Photobucket, Imageshack, and Bubbleshare are other free, popular web-based image hosting sites. Fotki has the most coverage of languages that I have found, with 16 languages available, Fotolog isn't too far behind with 12 languages.

There are other types of image hosting sites: Fotalia and Fotosearch are useful to find and publish stock photo images for use in media, you can use Slideshow inside several social networking sites (Facebook, Orkut, MySpace and more), to publish slideshows of your photos inside an application (or widget) on your profile at the social network site. Most photo hosting websites provide a way to post photos to blogs, websites and social networking websites. A search on Google for photo hosting yields about 24 million results!

There are other ways to share your images online, one of the most common is to send a photo by email. Many email systems do not allow large attachments, so large photos (or emails with lots of photos) are not delivered. Voicethread allows you to create a presentation in which you can voice-over, annotate and even hold a discussion about your images, documents and galleries. Many photo editing programs can produce a web page gallery, which can be hosted on a personal website with your photos.

Third-party web galleries, tools and news photo sites often automatically collate photos from online image sites (Photo Gallery, Flickr Hivemind, Flickriver, etc), using the tags on photos to group like photos from multiple websites or people together (more about this in my next post). Other sites contact owners of photos on the internet to get permission to publish them in other websites (Schmap, amongst others).

The Roadshow team are asked by participants all the time about digital photography, sharing photos and blogging. Perhaps there is scope for future training modules, one on uploading and organising photos online, and one on blogging.

Which language to blog in?

2009-02-17T04:27:00.000-08:00

どの言語をつけてもいいですかね？

The Google Blogger interface has been translated into 50 languages, and Livejournal into about 35 languages, and Wordpress have 125 languages listed, but none other than English are 100% supported. Wordpress relies on community members to translate their interface, and provides rankings showing how much of the website has been translated into the listed languages.

Smaller blogging websites support even fewer languages. When choosing a website on which to host your blog, keep in mind what languages you are likely to write in!

Blogging in libraries and education

2009-02-10T15:05:00.000-08:00

Blogs are used in many situations in both education and libraries. The blogging world is now quite mature, with the focus being more on information, rather than flashy presentation and cumbersome websites, which are often difficult to update and maintain. Most blogging software provides an easy editing interface, requiring little or no knowledge of HTML and CSS coding, enabling many more people to take advantage of this useful tool.

Library staff often write blogs to keep their patrons informed about events, displays, new books and may even include book reviews or information on specialised topics. Teachers may write blogs to record their explorations of new tools, techniques and maybe even comment about how these were received by students when used in a lesson. Students may write blogs as part of assignment requirements, to keep their friends up to date, for language practice and exchange.

Many people find it difficult to regularly post to their blogs, many are abandoned after a short while. Sometimes when a person's focus changes, they find they are no longer interested in maintaining their blog, but they may not delete it. Google blog search categorises blogs, and allows you to search within the blogosphere.

There are many free and non-free blog hosts available, the most popular being Blogger, Livejournal and Wordpress. Wordpress is more easily customised than Blogger, and has a large range of free templates available, whereas Blogger has only a few templates. Changing the style of a Blogger blog does require HTML and CSS knowledge. Livejournal is more often used for personal journals, with authors frequently locking their posts so only approved friends can read them.

Some interesting and useful library and education blogs include:

Reading Victoria - SLV blog fostering reading and detailing events at the library.
Reader's corner reviews - Reviews of books by patrons of the Eastern Regional Libraries.
What's new @ your library - News and events at Eastern Regional libraries.
Edublogs - an annual award where readers nominate and vote for the year's best education blogs in up to 16 categories.
eLearning Technology - a long running blog discussing eLearning in corporate environments.
EdTechLife - Notes on professional and IT development for schools and teachers.