beespace.net » Tools

Spaces and places

Barbara Dieu — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 22:03:05 +0000

Some context on the spaces/places I am immersed in (full screen)

Cooking up a Storm in Education

Barbara Dieu — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:19:14 +0000

Robyn Jay (a.k.a. Bubbling Brooks) and Alexander Hayes (a.k.a Limitless Infinity) invited me to deliver the closing keynote for the Sydney E-learning event organized by Learnscope NSW on November 2nd (check your time). Here is a more complete program of the workshops offered and a link to the NSW Learnscope Blog

I will be interacting from my desk here in Sao Paulo both with the live audience in Sydney and in-world through Second Life and Adobe Connect, which will be hosting a session for those who cannot make it in-world.

This has been an interesting process. Alex and I have been Skyping regularly and he suggested I invite some guests so I kept chewing over how to make the whole thing more interactive using the tools shown during the various workshops. After a very fruitful brainstorming session with Robyn, Alex, Donna Hensley and JoKay, we came up with the title and the idea of mirroring the meal at the live event in Second Life. What could be more convivial than receiving people for lunch/diner around a table?

I invited some guests so that I would not be the only voice dominating the space. Alan Levine (a.k.a. CD Barkley), who will be home after almost two weeks touring AU with his kit of 50 tools , will have more than 50 stories to tell about what he has seen happening there and how social tools help connect . Josie Fraser (a.k.a. Josie Oh) has been doing incredible work on digizen cyberbullying and recently made an interesting post on the limits of homophily. Dave Pollard might want to share how Second Life has stirred up his imagination, creativity and sense of connection and Nancy Whitewill link the threads and bring the event full circle – prepare yourself for a generous serving of virtual and real chocolate

JoKay has used her talent, a load of prims and some of my Flickr photos to build the reception area for people to mingle and talk in-world. It is set in a tropical environment with an incredible view of the sea. Congrats Jo!

For the keynote to be less formal and more interactive, I suggested a back channel through Twitter, with a panel projector on the virtual terrace so that the live audience can have the possibility to send their messages through their mobiles to the guests and people in-world.

We will also be posting some questions on to the various channels (Twitter, blogs, social networking sites and lists) throughout the week so all can throw in their two cents. It will be fun to bring together all the contributions – a collection of artifacts representing our emerging open educational partnership and collaboration culture.

Bon appetit!

Live Blogging Platform

Barbara Dieu — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 02:09:45 +0000

How does it feel to be an independent TV broadcaster?

Although still in beta, Moguluspromises to give you

everything you need to launch your own live 24/7 television broadcaster, blending your webcam, video clips from YouTube, and your own original content into your own unique TV program.

This may transform the dreaded ppt presentations in class or online into something more lively and dynamic as it also allows you to invite producers from anywhere in the world to log and mix the program with you in real-time. Wonderful for language classes!

Share your soul

Barbara Dieu — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 00:46:39 +0000

I have just got an invitation from Patricia Glogowski to join Shelfari , a social media website for book lovers launched last November. You can add titles to your personal bookshelf, connect with friends, browse other users’ bookshelves, recommend books and engage in book discussions. Thanks Patricia, not a bad idea, but something you could easily do in a hundred other social sites, where you can open a special interest group or community. However, this one targets the specific bibliophile niche and as a consequence a hundred thousand educators, who by profession and love are attached to books.

Guesswho has already given its support by investing in it? Any vested interest there, you think?

What else will you be asked to share so it can monetized and commodified…your soul?

Please bear with me, although I love Amazon and their service, I am somewhat not comfortable with the idea and not in a happy satisfied customer/consumer perspective today. Is there any argument you can forward to change my mind?

In and out of the box

Barbara Dieu — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 01:16:37 +0000

Aaron points to the Blogging Toolbox: 120+ Resources for Bloggers.

Useful for beginners, who have it all in one place, lists of links à la Web 1.0 are still useful apparently,malgre del.icio.us

What I really love though is the Flickr Do More and the Toy Collection. Mashups are a fantastic invention and the possibility to post content from one site to another is also a given!

There are just so many creative things you can engage in with your students nowadays. We are making posters and calendars for a Science Project

Awakening The Heroes Within

Barbara Dieu — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 23:25:34 +0000

Through Stephen Downes I got this tip to Make Internet TV, which comes in handy as I am planning to have a group of students produce their own hero journeys using one of Carol Pearson’s heroic archetypes.

Planning, writing , filming and performing their own stories may prove a stimulating quest for all of us. I wonder what kind of dragon I will have to slay to succeed in my task and whether I will succomb to my fear. The reward for all of us, if we get to the end, will be to post the result on Mojiti and have you interact and comment on them.

Update on May 4th: I have opened a wiki to bring together all the ideas.

My students’ blogging environments

Barbara Dieu — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 15:01:30 +0000

Will Richardson’s latest post is on blogging tools and how the different platforms are becoming easier to handle and offering more and more options for educators like privacy and transparency.

My classes are blogging openly using WordPress.com as the main tool to which a number of sattelites are connected (Flickr, 43Things, Places and People, del.icio.us, Bloglines, Community Walk, Wikispaces) constituting a portfolio. The students have linked all their personal accounts to their main space and have also configured the tools so as to be able to post directly to their blog from them (Flickr, 43Trio) However, not all of them can be integrated that smoothly.

In an earlier post on Dekita.org, I explain how we worked last year.

Mojiti

Barbara Dieu — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:07:05 +0000

Lilian Starobinas , blogging at Discurso Citado, points me to Mojiti, a new platform and tool through which you can collect your favorite videos from top video sharing sites online and bring them all together to one place, transforming a passive experience into one that is engaging and exciting . It allows you to personalize the films, add your own thoughts and insights t(captions or subtitles in any language) and comment on any scene to share your thoughts and opinions.

Hierba Buena!

Feevy

Barbara Dieu — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 22:10:01 +0000

Rudolf Ammann pointed me to Feevy, a new cool dynamic aggregator widget by Spanish Compania de las Indias Electronicas.
It allows you to display content from other blogs in your website in order of updates. Check out the result here on the right. I have added it to my sidebar.

Open Participatory Environments

Barbara Dieu — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:37:43 +0000

Later this morning I will be giving the presentation on Open and Participatory Webpublishing together with Patricia Glogowski, with whom I co-moderated the last EVO session on the subject. While preparing the handouts, I remembered the magazine cover and poster offered by Flickr Toys.
Here are the results, which just shows how all these social tools allow you to do your own thing, without intermediaries.

Cover of our handout:

Poster: