move over to electro-textual

Well, i've had enough of too many blogs .. so i'm combining all my work / professional blogs, and shifting everything over to my main home at michalk.id.au/

New blog: electro-textual, c/
michalk.id.au/txt
and i won't be posting here again.
Please update your RSS feeds ;-]

Latest posts from that blog here:

death of education .. dawn of learning (?)

Some very good "video bites" in this short piece about how schools need to change. i like the way the video is put together - short, snappy and sharp; with plenty of good ideas about how young people are learning more outside of school these days, via the social networking sites - which are all blocked inside schools.

But 21st century learning will need to dig deep into wider educational networking possibilities, say these talking heads.

i spoke recently with someone from one of the bigger TAFE colleges .. who explained why places like You Tube are blocked. There's only a certain amount of bandwidth available, and if students are using it all watching music videos in the break (or in the classroom), that creates a huge problem.

Others of us, from the smaller community centres, were asking why they didn't use "bandwidth shaping", so that You Tube would get eg 5% of the bandwidth or even less at certain times of the day.

The TAFE people probably though we were know-it-all smart-alecs who just didn't appreciate the difficulties of working with huge institutional information technology departments.

i remember Robyn and Alex's enormous frustration last year during their NSW Learnscope travels; when they would arrive to find everything blocked.




(via Betch @ edublogs)

tried to make me go to Wiihab

A very funny take-off of Amy Winehouse, here we have Amy Brickhouse singing about the Wii.

Why did they call it a Wii? (Oh, of course, it's wireless and the (ii) represents two people standing, waving their arms in 3D space.)



i wonder how long before we'll get wii-based games in the classroom? They could suit some people better, because of the different physicality - you're really bodily involved in the game (from what i gather .. never touched one. What a dullard.)

Must confess i'm waiting for the day when we put on virtual reality gloves, and join the multiple-input computer. Sure, wireless keyboards, tablets and Wii-gadgets are a good start ..

Did everyone see Johnny Chung Lee's remarkable hack to make the Wii recognise fingers moving in space? (More details, more ideas at his site.)




That reminds me, must see if i can persuade workplace to buy a wireless graphic tablet this year.

Fix the Web?

i thought this was a joke video at first. You know, the web is broken, and you can fix it from your own work station. No, i hadn't thought what the punchline might be, which is why i watched the video. An engaging, well-told three-minute overview of how you can fix web sites that you don't like, using Greasemonkey, a plugin for firefox.



i've had the plugin for ages, but never known what to do with it; always seemed too technical, even for me. But this quick flick shows you how to
a) make myspace palatable
b) find plugin scripts for your plugin

Maybe i'll give it another go.