02/08/2007 by nicola.

The Voices of Africa project.

What a brilliant idea ! More details and the first set of news items can be found on Africa News website .

Using GPRS, reporters from across the African continent are taking part in a new initiative using a mobile phone to send  and publish local news items, using a mix of photos, videos and text. Exciting times, being able to report on key local events and information and being able to publish that back to a global audience ! It appears similar to something I noticed happening in Turkey a few years back, particularly eastern areas of Turkey where being able to connect with other people meant relying on very low bandwidth and the landlines were very unpredictable. Along came mobile phones and internet cafes and suddenly people were prepared to pay to be able to communicate and now the mobile industry in Turkey is massive but alongside this, they have highly developed communication channels and media. My in-laws now communicate with us using webcams, occasionally everyone goes ‘alien’ but on the whole the data transfer is great and the video quality is similar when using messenger to other parts of the UK.

Second Life
Uthango is a South African not-for-profit company that is opening offices in Second Life. Uthango will publish a social magazine and address digital divide, by exploring the value of social networking. Uthango is actively pursuing the creation of a gateway for Africans to access this educational and social 3D-world. One of the main objectives of this step, is to create a dynamic platform for interaction between developments experts and practitioners around the world - in order to contribute to solutions for complex problems. Uthango will be working in parallel at establishing internet hubs in communities. And, they are seeking partnerships with mobile telecoms on mobile applications for Virtual Africa, and to develop links between mobile space and Second Life”.   

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02/08/2007 by nicola.

This report states:
Effective policy to promote technological progress requires a good understanding of how technological change occurs. For poor developing countries, technological change occurs primarily through learning — that is, the acquisition, diffusion and upgrading of technologies that already exist in more technologically advanced countries — and not by pushing the global knowledge frontier further.  

02/08/2007 by nicola.

Subscribing to RSS feeds then becoming quickly overwhelmed by the huge amount of data coming back is a problem shared by millions of people. Yahoo have created a service called Pipes (the lines connecting everything look like pipes) which allows you to remix and mashup feeds. So you can choose the content you want - and you can change it as many times as you like.
You do not have to have advanced technical abilities to create something with Pipes.
Tony Hirst on the OUseful blog documents one for learning feeds that looks very interesting, making a pipe that delivers items from a static RSS feed:
http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/010489.html
Learners can choose how they subscribe to an RSS feed, based on their start time and ‘cycle’ period e.g. receiving one feed per day or one feed per week etc. This is different to subscribing to a blog RSS feed - with a blog, all content is updating regularly so the feed items change. Instead this feed is generated from static content that is not regularly changed.
How could this work in learning?
1.  Book/Booklet/Series of Articles - if you you wanted learners to study but wanted to give it to them in bite size pieces - such as one chapter or article per week. This may work better than giving them one giant PDF to download.
2.  Glossary or encyclopaedia - you could create a feed of specific terms or areas that you wanted learners to examine.
3.  Podcasts - if you have audio books or recorded ’shows’ or talks/presentations - again learners could subscribe and receive the feed according to their preferences.
This is my test Yahoo Pipe, mashing e-learning and m-learning yahoo search with some e-learning blog feeds.
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=EmdMC_gc3BG0_yLxX0sBXw

I have put in a filter which was to include only items which mentioned ‘USA’  so that you only see a few items instead of thousands. This is out of 5 feeds and a yahoo search on e-learning and m-learning. This how the pipe looks in editing format.

To create this pipe in 7 steps:
1. Click on New button.
2. Click on Fetch feed
a) You need to find the location of feeds to add (this is usually shown on a blog page when you click on ’subscribe’ to blog). If you are unsure, you can always email the author of the blog and they can send you the link/URL.
b) Paste the URL (link) and click on the + sign to add as many as you would like.
3. Click on Yahoo Search and enter e-learning, m-learning.
4. You then need to ‘mash’ or ‘remix’ the feeds and the Yahoo search together. Click on Operators menu and Select Union. Its a bit like having a multiple power adaptor !
a)Click on the blue bubble at the bottom of the feeds box and ‘drag’ a blue pipe into one of the empty bubbles on the Union box. Do the same for the Yahoo Search box.
5.Select Filter from the Operators menu. choose what you want from the drop down menu, in this case Permit and All. Click on + to add a Rule and select Contains from drop down menu. Enter USA.
6. Click on the blue bubble at the bottom of the Filters box and connect to Pipe output box.
7. Click Save and give the Pipe a name (e.g. e-learning test). You can then click on Run to test it. If you would find it helpful to see this as a simulation please let me know. 

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02/08/2007 by nicola.

Open Library Project  

Their opening statement: 

What if there was a library which held every book? Not every book on sale, or every important book, or even every book in English, but simply every book—a key part of our planet’s cultural legacy. 

First, the library must be on the Internet. No physical space could be as big or as universally accessible as a public web site. The site would be like Wikipedia—a public resource that anyone in any country could access and that others could rework into different formats. 

Second, it must be grandly comprehensive. It would take catalog entries from every library and publisher and random Internet user who is willing to donate them. It would link to places where each book could be bought, borrowed, or downloaded. It would collect reviews and references and discussions and every other piece of data about the book it could get its hands on. 

But most importantly, such a library must be fully open. Not simply “free to the people,” as the grand banner across the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh proclaims, but a product of the people: letting them create and curate its catalog, contribute to its content, participate in its governance, and have full, free access to its data. In an era where library data and Internet databases are being run by money-seeking companies behind closed doors, it’s more important than ever to be open. 

Interesting that people just sometimes refer to the whole web as a giant library - this feels more realistic, lets build a collection of knowledge that we already have in the ways we are used to do - just the output is different. Sounds like a good idea. 

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02/08/2007 by nicola.

Google have launched an opportunity for mostly NGOs and others to explore and showcase projects using Google Earth KML files. There is an education and culture section amongst others. I’ve just visited the Shimshal Valley in Pakistan and a 3D tour of Tutankhamun’s tomb with no airport delays and hardly any carbon emissions - its early days for this, but it could be a fascinating way to add context to learning pieces, very visually ‘pleasing’. 

MIT’s article discusses virtual space layout and one of Second Life’s designers suggests that Second Life’s virtual conference rooms might be more useful if they didn’t resemble their real-world counterparts.

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02/08/2007 by nicola.

I have started experimenting with Trailfire . Originally created as Mozilla add-on - it can work in Internet Explorer or Firefox (seems quicker in Firefox). 

Its ‘Big idea’ is that when you go searching for stuff, now you can make comments and leave a blazing  trail of comments as you rocket your way across the web. You can add pictures into your comments and others can comment back, so if someone has seen something good about what you are looking for - you can then follow their trail. You need to have the trailbar toolbar (two buttons) installed and from there you can either enable or disable your own viewing of the trail marks. You can choose to make your trails private to selected people or available to everyone. 

My experimental trail about how I search starts here , you can also view the trail summary.