Notes to me on Andy!

Andy - blogging and art
Andy - web 2.0 artworks

Web 2.0 group

Well, I finally found myself in a group of people who have the job of looking at web 2.0 and how it can be used for adult education. We are putting together a Wiki for our organisation on the subject. At the moment it is fairly basic but I think we can develop it into something useful.

Murder 2.0

The ITC revolution we are living through is in many ways value free. It is producing a new media which can be used for both good and evil. The title of this piece comes from a Guardian podcast which takes up the murderer Cho Seung-hui and his video package.

Critics of this change in society tend to cite the darker sides of this revolution. I listened to one such critic, Lars Svedberg, at Åsa folkhögskola two days ago. He is an excellent speaker and presented a historical background to developments focussed mostly on the TV revolution. I found it hard to disagree with his critique of media developments but I didn't really understand the solutions he suggested. They seemed to involve an attempt to put the genie back in the box although in another connection he has said we cannot go back and indeed we should try to awaken people's interests outside of the academic domain (Link to an article in Swedish).

Putting the geni back in the box is not really an option. What is an option is to use the new media in a positive way and by doing that to reduce the impact, or even to counteract, the negative uses of this media.

MA answered LS's critique by pointing out that young people, our future students, already live in the world where this media is just a part of the background (not a NEW media as it is to us) and they will expect to be using it!

Using the new media for education connects education to the world that many young people inhabit, uses this world in way that is positive, and helps to weigh against the less savoury side of internet and web 2.0

Saving old formats to DVD

This is just to get a record of this article for future reference.

Work and spa

It has been an intensive time of looking at web 2.0 tools and reading about web 2.0, a time of both practical and theoretical input.

Part of the fun with this is that although it is work it is also an interesting subject in itself - therefore not entirely work. On Tuesday evening I found myself on a sunchair, looking at the fantastic view from maskrosen spa in Sundsvall and reading about web 2.0 in a portfolio of printed documents! What a mixture of ancient and modern!

Presenting a seminar

A small group of us, led by one of the information department, are discussing if we should issue guidelines for how we should behave when leading a seminar. It seems there have been reports of less than professional behaviour from one of our co-workers. However, we felt that such a problem should be dealt with by the person concerned's boss, rather than seeking to corral all of us into some sort of approved behaviour - responsibility and creativity should be encouraged, not restrained!
There were some constructive ideas which could be usefully spread if we can find a suitable way to pass on these ideas.

Podcasting

Well, I got my first podcast up and running. The only problem was finding a place to store the sound file. I solved it with box.net but this is only temporary. I must try storing them in kursnavet and see if that works well. Click on the file in the box.net widget (top of blog on the right) to listen.

Splashr

Pier
Originally uploaded by seamus */.

Today I found another teaching tool - Splashr!

Splasher creates presentations which you can view directly or via a web page or blog. Here is a splashr presentation which was created using pictures tagged on Flickr with the tag "harnosand". It opens in a pop-up window.

Here is another Splashr presentation, this time tagged with "woodbridge" and "suffolk" and in another format. Both presentations could be clipped directly into the blog but that would take up a little too much room for my taste.