Monthly Archives: March 2011

Mar 13 2011

Listed

Alfred Thompson (@alfredtwo) and I have a little standing joke between the two of us.  We get a kick from reading blog posts about “Top 10 Educational Blogs” or “Best Blogs to Follow” or the like.  You may see a message from one of us to the other typically along the lines of “Here’s another list that we didn’t make…”  We recognize that often these lists are written by magazines that have to crank out content but are amused at times with the content.  Often, the lists contain the same blogs just shuffled up differently.  It’s also interesting to read since some of them haven’t had a post in months and both Alfred and I try to express our thoughts regularly.  It’s just fun.

But, there are lists that mean a great deal.  On Twitter, you can create your own lists of people to follow.  It’s very handy to keep track of people based upon a particular theme.  I will have my Seesmic Desktop open and have three lists that I follow daily to stay on top of things.  These lists are:

  • People I’ve Met – People that I’ve met face to face at one point or another
  • Keynotes – People who have given keynote addresses at a conference that I continue to follow
  • Ontario Educators – My personal favourite just to find out what’s happening in Education in the province

These are pubic lists and you can click each to see who made my list and who I like to follow.

It’s also an honour to be on someone else’s list.  Hopefully, that means that someone has read my stuff and is intrigued enough to want to find out more.  Some of these lists are curated manually and others are made by software but, as Alfred and I will attest, it’s just nice to be on a list!    As I look through my account tonight, I see that I’m on a few lists.

Now, I’m not under the delusion that I’m about to change the world, but it’s nice just to be asked.  As I look through the list of lists, here are some of my favourites!

That was a fun walk through the listings.  I am honoured that somehow I ended up on someone else’s list.  Alfred would be proud of me.  Have you checked yourself lately to see who’s listed you?

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Mar 13 2011

OTR Links for 03/13/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Mar 12 2011

So much information

I awoke yesterday morning to a message from my friend @aforgrave who had just seen my #FollowFriday messages about Ontario Educators.  He wanted to know if this was yet another automated thing I had going on and, if not, had I seen the new about the earthquake in Japan.

As a matter of fact, I was awake doing my Friday routine and hadn’t checked into the overnight stream of information as of yet.  I had just roused myself and was doing this before I got distracted with some early learning morning news and learning.  As we know now, the events of yesterday were horrible and the effects of the earthquake were being felt in the Pacific and on Americas side of the Pacific all day.

Once again, Twitter had served to be the perfect conduit of information as it happened.  It absolutely trumped RSS for providing the information to the world and the news channels seemed puzzled as to the importance of what was happening.  In my quest for news, I found that television news was incomplete and I was switching all over trying to find the latest details.  The traditional US cable channels were doing their best and yet the reports were intermixed with weather trivia, the price of gasoline, and an analysis of what the US response to the crisis would be.  I found that for the most considered reports, that I settled on Global’s Vancouver channel and BBC World.

and Twitter.

My saviour for the television news was the remote control.  My saviour for Twitter was the hashtags #japan and #tsunami.  As would be expected, the demand for information forced these types of searches to the top of the suggestions.

There was no shortage of resources reporting on situation.  It really was disconcerting and one of the reports I watched interviewed a professor from Simon Fraser University who was asked if we were experiencing more earthquakes given the Japan and recent Christchurch situations.  I was surprised at the response which was no, we’re not experiencing more of them – they’re just happening in populated areas where we’re equipped with the ability to cover it better.  Certainly, we experienced that yesterday and it continues this morning with the reports of damages to nuclear plants in Japan.

Classroom treatment of situations like this is important.  In this case, watching and dealing with live information may not always be age appropriate given its nature.  One resource that immediately came through was actually a recycled activity from CBCLearning.  It was designed for the disaster a few years ago in the Indian Ocean and was equally as appropriate for yesterday.

Links to this and so many other resources made this form of news aggregation so powerful.  For me, one of the most powerful moments was actually an image.  This was not necessarily an infographic but did convey a powerful message.

There was so much information.  The world will be solidly behind and hoping for a quick recovery from this disaster.  There will come a time when there will be educational reflection on the events.  There will be classrooms where teachers and resources were right on top of this as a teaching opportunity.  There will be other classrooms where access to these resources were blocked and so another opportunity is lost.  There will be incredible opportunities to turn this into lessons about media literacy and global citizenship and awareness.

If you’re an educator reading this, how did you handle it?  How will you handle the next steps as Japan recovers?

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Mar 12 2011

OTR Links for 03/12/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Mar 11 2011

Colliding on a #FollowFriday

I really like visualizations and infographics.  I’m constantly amazed when I see one because of the volume of information that it conveys and the deeper meaning that can be found.  If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may remember my first attempt at creating an infographic for Ontario Educators.

I still have a need to sit down and refine this graphic with the information and the relationships that can be generated by analysing data.  I really like the work that a former student of mine, Jeff Clark, shows in his various projects at Neoformix.  I still pursue ways of displaying the connections, particularly among the group of Ontario Educators that are using Twitter to build those connections.

This week, I was playing around with some of the content from ChromeExperiments.  In particular, there was an intriguing experiment called Social Collider.  It isn’t an instant program and I’m really hard pressed to explain exactly how it works.  The details in the experiment are a little shaky but the results are very impressive.

Essentially, you provide a Twitter name, phrase, or trend and the experiment visualizes the collisions or connections made based on the information that you provide.  Now, there is no way to enter a Twitter list but for giggles, I asked it to look at the phrase Ontario-Educators.  What would it generate?  Click here to get the full sized image.

So, what does this show about the connections among Ontario Educators?  In the centre of the diagram, you’ll see some hefty purple connections.  This seems to be the genesis of the visualization.  I have a paper.li document that’s produced daily from the content contributed by Ontario Educators.  Michael Redfearn has one as well.  In addition, periodically people will re-tweet a message and that ends up in the purple section as well.

Then, the connections kick in.  You’ll see individual nodes that connect with each other.  Move your mouse over a node and you’ll notice that it’s actually a Twitter message and the connectors illustrate the how they collide.  What started as an illustration quickly became a mission as I followed the connections.  The graphic illustrates the conversation from the past week and shows how dynamic and far reaching this group of educators can be.

Above all, I’d recommend putting this in your hip pocket to answer the question if you’re ever asked why would anyone ever want to use Twitter?  Simply enter a name, phrase, or trend and you have a visual answer.

This experiment doesn’t allow access to a document already created so you’ll have to do a little work yourself.  Go to the Social Collider website and enter your own name or phrase.  Give it a few minutes and then be prepared to watch the results.  I hope that it reveals what a powerful network of connections is available.  When you put together a group like our Ontario Educators, it’s absolutely amazing.Tags: , , ,

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Mar 11 2011

OTR Links for 03/11/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Mar 10 2011

Personalized Reading

There’s a new player in the online reading market for the iPad.  Zite is another free app to download for the iPad and falls into the same demand for your reading time as the Flipboard and Pulse applications do.  Navigation and reading stories is just as easy but Zite claims a big difference.

That difference you’ll notice right away.  When you open it for the first time, you’re asked to connect Zite to Twitter and / or your Google Feed.  Zite’s claim to fame is that it will analyze what you’re reading and following and do its best to provide related content.

Like the other products, you can add and customize sections which you see along the right side in the image above.  Pick a section to refine the type of stories to be selected for you.  If you want more, a search routine is there for even more.  So, I added a few sections and let the stories roll.

What is really appealing to me is the claim that Zite will apply some intelligence to search for articles based upon my conversations through Twitter.  This really would deliver on the promise of computers and connectivity.  Imagine a personal devices that hunts and finds the best of what you’re expressing an interest in.  Of course, once you find and read and article, you can share it to your network via Twitter or Facebook or good ol’ email.  Articles can be voted up or down in Digg fashion, and a confirmation message that you’ll receive more stories like that one in the future is displayed.  Over time, if this works as promised, articles for you to read should be tuned to your interests.  I really like the concept and can’t wait to see it in action.

Zite seems to have had a great day with lots of folks giving it a first run.  Even last night when I was testing it, the Zite servers indicated that they were experiencing a heavy, unexpected load and that they were in the process of upgrading.  Nothing succeeds like success.

If you’re into reading the news, and lots of it, you’ll want to give this application a try.  I’d be interested in your thoughts.

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Mar 10 2011

OTR Links for 03/10/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Mar 9 2011

A Must Have Utility

If you have an Apple TV 2, you’re probably enjoying the ability to play iTunes content on your television.  The quality is superb and provided you’ve got it in iTunes, you can send it across to your television.

I remember when I first connected my unit the a certain level of excitement.  Then, I realized how limiting iTunes was.  I did expecting to get the little icon to broadcast from other applications like Quicktime.  I was very surprised and disappointed when it wasn’t there.  But, it’s Apple’s game, right?

Well, sort of…

I’ve been reading about jailbreaking to give more access to the unit.  At this point, I would just like to easily display content on my computer on the television.  Sure, the television does have a VGA input but it’s over there and my chair is over here.  And, I’d have to get down on the floor which is always an invitation for some four legged help.

No more.  I found the answer!

EricaSadun.com is the source for a little application called AirFlick.  It’s got exactly what I need.  AirFlick spots the Apple TV 2 across the room and broadcasts the image, audio, video, or PDF file to my TV.  All without importing into iTunes and dancing with that.  It’s just a matter of drag and drop and the image is on the TV.

I’m really enjoying this.  It’s a great opportunity to share photos from the computer with the family.  There’s even a screen capture button.  Capture the screen and show it off on the TV!

Is there anything up my sleeve?  Well, I’ll try and do my best.  The family has all gone to bed and so it’s just me, on the couch, broadcasting a screen shot to the TV, with my camera and I get both my laptop and the TV in the shot!

Oh, I’m going to have a lot of fun playing around with this!

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Mar 9 2011

OTR Links for 03/09/2011

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.