Image - CC from Flickr

Not a hugely inspiring piece of ICT but this data poster has come from New Scientist via Digg. It’s worth a moment of your time.

Things that struck me were the growth in deaths from HIV/AIDS and the relationship between arms spending and number of conflicts among other things.

Thought it might make a nice bit of work in Humanities – ask the group the question at the top of the page to generate a bit of discussion and then give them the data and have a debate to decide whether it’s true or not.

It could be the starting point for a range of ICT activities. e.g. the students creating media resources to back up their conclusions or maybe using your VLE to host an online discussion out of class time.

In the meantime check out their article on “13 more things that don’t make sense“.

Image – venetia joubert sarah oosterveld on Flickr

I’d like your help shaping this. I’d even like it if you told me it was a bobbins idea and not to waste our time.

The reasoning behind doing it is that looking for web2.0 tools can be overwhelming, especially for neophytes. There are excellent blogs that share new finds and ideas and great Tweeters. The main problems as I see it are twofold:

• Finding stuff – Searching these when you have a particular requirement is a pain in the backside. It’s really easy to miss a blog post or a tweet and you may have missed that crucial app which may inspire your students. Finding things in retrospect involves hours of searching.
• Evaluating – A blog or tweet recommending a particular app, however well written, can give a narrow view of what an app is capable of or how it can be applied to learning. Much better if there is a place for a community of people the comment, give reommendations/horror stories etc for the benefit of others. 

So, let me give you a sketch of what it might look like…

• Searching – As simple as possible. No searching for subject, key stage etc. Applications and sites are grouped (inclusively) into Make Stuff (tools for creating – maybe Animoto, XtraNormal, CoolIris etc), Share Stuff (tools like Fliggo, Voicethread,  etc) and Chat About Stuff (tools for getting involved in “the conversation” and recommended blog, good tweeters, forums etc). Make and Share then break down into Video, Sound, Images, Numbers, Places, Ideas.
  Questions: Is this too broad brush? Are there any glaring examples that this wouldn’t accommodate?
  
• Community – Anyone can nominate something so long as there’s an email address (like comments on blogs). Nominations would be moderated and all directory entries would be credited. There’s then a facility for people to star rate the tool’s usefulness in education and write a comment about their experience using it (what age groups, subjects, technical hints and tips). Imagine something a bit like the reviews on Amazon.
  Questions: Is this an effective way of sharing experiences? Is it done better in a different forum?

I hope it would be a useful facility but worry that it would become some massive, time consuming beast that misses the whole spirit of web2.0.

I’m a bit too close to it so need the benefit of some other, better brains. Please give me your thoughts…

Image – quinnanya on Flickr

This is significant. I sucked at Physics.

Came to this by a roundabout route. Basically, OE Cake is a physics simulator for demonstrating the properties of different materials. Draw on the different materials and watch the fun unfold.

It looks great on a whiteboard.

It requires a download and my desktop machine struggles to play it although my dual-core laptop seems to handle it OK. The more memory and processor the better as lots of different elements make it run slowly.

Click here. (Scroll down and click on the Rapidshare link)

Image – icomei on Flickr

Have a go at my nice but pointless example.

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That is all. You may go.

Image - surrealmuse on Flickr

Have a look at the BBC’s poetry season mini-site. Loads of media and bits and pieces about making poetry accessible. If you’re an English teacher you’ve probably already seen it but I thought I’d post it anyway.

Check out the bits with Caroline Bird in the Discover section.

I watched Simon Schama’s programme on John Donne last night. Filthy! I had no idea…

The best bit was watching Simon Schama flirting with Fiona Shaw – kind of sweet. If you’re in the UK try catching it on iPlayer (until 2nd June).

Also, check out the Poetry Archive site, Andrew Motion’s big project to make available as many poets reading their own material as possible.

Image - Eddie Lawrance on Flickr

No  matter where you go on the internet, whatever you discover it is a safe bet that Stephen Fry has got there before you!

So it is with AudioBoo. Basically, it’s Twitter for audio.

I’ll start with the bad news, unless you have an iPhone you can’t upload stuff to it. It’s an iPhone app which allows you to record audio (max 5mins) using the in-built mic, tag it and publish it almost instantly along with a photo and your GPS location.

Without an iPhone you can still sign up and follow other people’s Boo’s but that limits the educational possibilities quite substantially. Much better if you can publish or have a “boo-versation” (I made that up, can you tell?).

As far as what to use it for, it extends podcasting by making collaboration, reflection and commenting a lot more immediate. The ability to geotag is really appealing, especially for fieldwork (for some reason, seeing where Stephen Fry had been when he recorded his Boos was eerie in the extreme).

What other iPhone apps have you come across that have great educational potential?

Image Credit - Forklift on Flickr

The Guardian’s Digital World blog has highlighted the outbreak of map mash-ups tracing the spread of the H1N1 virus currently centred on Mexico. The Guardian have their own site with the raw data available (their Data Store is an interesting development in itself) but also there are a load of others out there (see Google Maps Mania for a good selection).

Could this be the fist global pandemic to have every single case  mapped and online for us all to see within hours?

It obviously makes for a useful science and geography resource. There’s been quite a lot of discussion about using Twitter to follow developments in significant events and this is similar if a little less immediate.

I remember following natural disasters when doing geography at school. The Kobe Hanshin earthquake in 1995 sticks in my mind (mainly as my bro is about to emigrate to Osaka for 4 years and it’s just across the bay from there) but it was always filtered through the traditional journalistic media or later through text books.

Now we have the opportunity to watch events unfold in near enough real-time which is amazing but brings with it a couple of issues:

1) Educationally, these map mash-ups, Twitter feeds etc are the domain of the great unwashed (I count myself in that) so everything that appears has to be viewed critically. We’re used to encouraging students to view the press critically but it’s easier to do with a media institution like Fox News (where you can establish a political/commercial bias) than with a myriad micro-blog entries. It requires a different sort of skill to strip out the subjectivity with stuff on the web as you don’t know where people are starting from.

2) Socially, with all this extra info available to us about the spread of a disease are we going to be better placed to counter it or worse off. Control of information and the associated emotional reactions in society are an important element in disease control. What happens to human behaviour when this info is in the public domain.

I’m not saying that information should be censored. There be dragons! It’s just that the impact on behvaiour is going to be just as interesting as the technological developments themselves.

And before I get carried away with all this sociological guff, I have to keep reminding myself that people are actually dying!

And we beheld it and lo, it did exactly what it was supposed to in a drag and drop-type way.

I really wanted to take it forward and provide a nice easy way for the students to give comments and rate the videos but that would have taken up hours of developer time. 

Now, along comes Fliggo! Yay!

In short, Fliggo allows you to set up your own video sharing site for free. You can then control who has access, who can upload and comment etc.

I’ve had a go so I can formally announce the arrival of “CHALK TUBE” our very own TV channel! Mostly as an experiment to test the software but if any of my faithful readership (both of you) want to post any videos to do with teaching using digital video please feel free – it’s moderated, mind so no filth!

It took about 5 minutes to set up and I’ve just uploaded videos I have elsewhere on YouTube. The picture quality is not great but will do for now. Nice and easy for us sub-genuis techies.

It would be a great free resource in schools and reasonably secure. Great for primaries who have been working on video or animation projects, excellent for media teachers who want to encourage their students to experiment and collaborate.

It’s free for the basic account but you can pay $15 a month for higher video quality, the ability to host on your won domain etc.

Into the Electric Chalk Resource page it goes…

Hello,

We collect a minimal amount of information about each student, which is held in the same type of secure database used for ecommerce websites. Access to this is limited to the small number of technical staff that are required to work on the project.

Thanks,

John

I sent a follow-up email asking if their technical staff were Criminal Records Bureau checked. I haven’t received a reply yet but will post it up when I do.

Am I being over-zealous about this?