Now that Ning has announced that it is phasing out free services, it’s time to take another look at our Ning communities and to establish what might be a reasonable alternative to Ning. For my longest-running Ning network, ELESIG, we are prepared: a hard-working group from this community of practice
Sometimes I am accused of being a pessimist: I always treat technology, especially wonderful new inventions, services and applications, with a healthy pinch of salt. So I laughed a bit hollowly to read that Ning are phasing out their free social networks (as well as reducing the number of their
What is it? Delicious (http://delicious.com) or del.icio.us is a social bookmarking service that allows users to save their favourite websites as bookmarks and share them with other people. What is Social Bookmarking? Bookmarking is a way of storing and sharing websites that you found useful or interesting. In the past,
I was intrigued to see that in Canada they are reporting that the use of social networking and other web tools such as Twitter and Facebook is damaging the quality of students’ English skills. Apparently academics at Waterloo University, Ontario and Simon Fraser University, British Columbia are finding that many students
What are known as “rapid elearning tools”, coupled with excellence in learning or instructional design, can be used to create simple but effective learning materials appropriate for many work-based learning needs or as part of a blended course in an educational context. I tried out some elearning just recently –
I’m delighted to be involved in this year’s JISC Innovating Elearning 2009 Online conference which is entitled Thriving, not just surviving. This year’s conference theme reflects the challenges facing further and higher education in the 21st century and it will features keynotes by Charles Leadbeater, Nigel Paine, and ELESIG members Helen Beetham
A study at the University of Plymouth once looked at graduate students’ use of Web 2.0 technologies when they were studying in their daily working environment. The study found that at least 50% of the applications students had open at any one time were actually leisure applications. The kind of
In my previous posts about the roles and tasks within an online community or community-based social network, I discussed the roles of the Community Editor and Community Facilitator. Both these roles, but particularly that of the Community Facilitator, are really a combination of roles, but it helps to categorise the
I had quite a busy week of webinars last week, running a successful webinar on E-portfolios for the ELESIG community at elesig.ning.com. I also attended two fascinating webinars, one on bidding for European funding from the Digital Communications Knowledge Transfer Network and one on Digitisation at the British Library, from the
Blip.tv is an alternative to YouTube, but is not precisely the same kind of thing. Blip.tv is “a next-generation television network.” which makes available user-produced web tv shows. Rather than viral videos or those intended to sell a product or service, blip.tv focuses on original Web shows. It invites “sitcoms,