Periodic Fable

Tuesday, 9 June 2009

Has Twitter lost its hype with only a minority of big users?

According to a Harvard study of 300,000 users, reported by the BBC (among others) today, just 10% of Twitter users generate more than 90% of the content.
I can believe it - we all know that some people tweet not only several times a day but several times an hour. It's in the nature of statistics that such prolific people will skew the data. Of course, those people are not necessarily those who post the most useful information.
We train people how to use Twitter and we're not under any illusions - for some people it will turn out to be useful, it will work for them and suit their way of working. For others it's an interesting experiment that doesn't persist, but they have to try it to find out - and that's probably why Nielsen, who also surveyed people on Twitter, found that more than 60% of (in thier case US) Twitter users fail to return the following month. The Harvard team found that more than half of all people using Twitter update their page less than once every 74 days.
The most ridiculous bit of statistics bashing was to say that "most people only ever "tweet" once during their lifetime" - erm - that's clearly an average and I suspect there are very few who tweet once and never again!
The researchers at Harvard also stated that "Twitter resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network," but that's something I very much disagree with. I've had several mutliway conversations, and many more people who read the conversations but don't necessarily get involved. It is ostensible a one to one or one- to-many commmunication channel, but those of us who use it often have turned it into something more.

Of course, whether that usage can continue is another matter. There are many reasons why Twitter may not last as a really useful tool, not least the recent unsavoury rash of porn-touting followers. Once again a reason NEVER to auto-follow the people who follow you!
Labels: research, social networking, twitter

posted by Helen Whitehead 9:51 AM

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Thursday, 28 May 2009

The Animal School

Here's a heartbreaking video called The Animal School. A nice promo from www.raisingsmallsouls.com about how all learners are unique. Maybe it'll even convince me that learning styles do exist!
Labels: education, learning, learning and teaching, online writing school

posted by Helen Whitehead 11:07 AM

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Monday, 18 May 2009

ColdFusion skills dying out?

According to Global Knowledge, a CISCO trainer, there are a variety of IT skills which are dying - in that the demand for these skills is dying. And apparently ColdFusion is one of them. Taking figures from US job postings, Global Knowledge discuss the "death" of ColdFusion:

"ColdFusion users rave that this Web programming language is easy to use and quick to jump into, but as many other independent software tools have experienced, it's hard to compete with products backed by expensive marketing campaigns from Microsoft and others. The language was originally released in 1995 by Allaire, which was acquired by Macromedia (which itself was purchased by Adobe). Today, it is superseded by Microsoft .Net, Java, PHP and the language of the moment: open source Ruby on Rails."
I had many happy years hacking ColdFusion code, but have been meaning to find a better solution for a while now (as soon as I get time to reprogramme all that CF..). I've found that PHP programmers are in such demand I can't find a good one available... Perhaps also I should look at Ruby on Rails, as I've heard good things about it.

Labels: coldfusion, php, ruby on rails

posted by Helen Whitehead 11:59 AM

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Sunday, 10 May 2009

Free advice, ProHelp surgeries, Leeds 5 June, 10am to 12pm

This might be of use to others with non-profit organisations, social enterprises or community groups.

ProHelp has organised a day of Professional Business Advice Surgeries to provide community organisations and social enterprises with the opportunity to get advice on a one-to-one basis from professionals. Advice available:

Accountancy e.g. Insolvency, Public benefit guidance, business planning, financial forecasting, VAT advice
Architectural e.g. Design, planning permission
Legal e.g. Employment, contracts, IPS or CIC's, alterations to governing documents
Marketing e.g. Branding and advertising
Property e.g. valuations and lease agreements
PR advice

Taking place at Tiger 11, Unit 1, Ground floor, Hillside, Beeston Road Leeds LS11 8ND 10am to 12pm.
5th June

For further details or to book a place, contact Jo Crossley on 0113 205 8202 or email jo.crossley@bitc.org.uk

Labels: social enterprise, support, voluntary sector

posted by Helen Whitehead 10:09 AM

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Thursday, 16 April 2009

Moodle theming

Just a few notes from Moodleman Julian Ridden's workshop on theming at the recent Moodlemoot.

Why might one need to create a Moodle theme?
to meet brand requirements
to match an existing site
to present a more engaging design for your particular audience – engaging content eg in schools, or a more corporate look
establish a unique look and feel for your site – to stand out
don't want the standard “VLE” look, eg for a Moodle used as a collaborative workspace
It is best not to use Dreamweaver to design pages - creating a proper theme is the way to go. By installing Moodle on your laptop/desktop and editing the theme files there, when you are satisfied with the local build and it's been tested locally, you can upload it to the server.

Useful tools:
Firefox web browser
Firefox web developer plugin
or Firebug
Basic text editor
Local webserver
Start small - edit an existing theme
Create a new theme using standard style sheets
Or start with a theme that is similar to your need and hack it

The files that are edited when producing a theme are:

php files
config.php
styles.php
docstyles.php
meta.php

html files
header.html
footer.html
readme.html

css files
styles_layout.css
styes_fonts.css
styles_color.css

Other files
favicon.ico
screenshot.jpg

After this I got a bit lost so I need to revisit the presentation and Julian's helpful files - everything is explained by Moodleman himself here
Labels: Moodle, themes

posted by Helen Whitehead 1:16 PM

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Tuesday, 24 March 2009

Women Weavers and Web Weavers

Textiles, narrative & technology...
A post for Ada Lovelace Day
Throughout history women have used craft work as an outlet for their creativity. Often deprived by domestic circumstances of education and work, they turned to craft, and particularly needlecraft, to express their creative energies. Simple household objects such as quilts and tablecloths were made into beautiful objects women could be proud of. And women's lives and women's narratives were often stitched into these textiles.

Simple crafts have often been the poor relation of the more mainstream art forms, and now Web weaving is seen in a similar way: a Web artist isn't a "real" artist, a Web writer isn't a "real" writer. Now, women working on the Web have more than a passing sisterhood with those craftswomen of the past.

Philomela

In Greek mythology, Philomela was kidnapped and raped by her brother-in-law Tereus, King of Thrace. He cut out her tongue so that she could not accuse him, and imprisoned her. She had no way to tell her story until, during the year of her incarceration, she began to weave her story into the fabric she wove on her loom, perhaps a tapestry, perhaps a garment. She had the fabric sent to her sister, Procne, who came to her rescue, and the sisters plotted a terrible revenge.

The women of Normandy

Tapestries have always told a story, from simple hunting and family narratives to great battles told in threadwork, the classic example being the Bayeux tapestry (actually an embroidered linen strip), which tells the story of William the Conqueror and his invasion of England in 1066.

Ada, Countess Lovelace

Ada was Lord Byron's daughter, and, perhaps to counter any leanings toward the arty/literary which so enlivened her father's world, was encouraged to study mathematics and science. She collaborated with Charles Babbage, who invented the 'Analytical Engine' in 1843. The machine was probably never built, but contained the operating principles from which the computer was later developed. Ada translated a text by Manabrea about this calculating engine, and her notes, which took up more space than the original text, are generally agreed to contain the first instances of written software. Some parts of the Analytical Engine were derived from the punched cards used by the Jacquard loom to store and process information. The Jacquard loom itself was developed as a response to the demand for weavings with representational imagery, influenced by fabrics from Asia which became popular in Europe in the 18th century.

"Who can foresee the consequences of such an invention? The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves. The engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."

Sadie Plant

Sadie Plant has written in her essay The Future Loom: Weaving Women and Cybernetics and her book Zeros and Ones about the parallels between digital practices and the making of textiles.

"The weaving of complex designs demands far more than one pair of hands, and textiles production tends to be communal, sociable work allowing plenty of occasion for gossip and chat. Weaving was already multimedia: singing, chanting, telling stories, dancing, and playing games as they work, spinsters, weavers, and needle-workers were literally networkers as well. It seems that "the women of prehistoric Europe gathered at one another's houses to spin, sew, weave, and have fellowship."

Alicia Felberbaum

Alicia's project Holes Linings Threads took Sadie Plant's work as its starting point.

"As a former weaver I was interested in and familiar with the manufacture of cloth, its cultural and political weight in the history of ancient and contemporary societies.

"I have often been asked if I don't miss weaving and making. I realised that as in weaving, this change in medium also required a set of new skills. Making does not necessary have to be confined to the physical world. The emergence of computation as a medium, rather than just a set of tools, suggests a growing
correspondence between digital work and traditional craft.

"The need to become skilled in handling the language of the computer was necessary if I was to become confident working in that medium as an artist manipulating this new material. The process was (for me) like learning a new language, to be able later to use it in visual conversations and to weave various texts and images where the pixel becomes the texture.

"In the project Holes Linings Threads, I tried to create an open piece, a network of traces through short essays. In these essays I tried to explore the relationship between textile production, with its punch card operation, and the computers around the world that are powered by switches-the almost addictive and obsessive acts of work, the cyclic repetition of the loom, the assembly of the cloth, the shouting above the noise of the machines, and today, the tack, tack, of the keyboard with the continuous staring into and beyond the screen."

Quilters

Particularly in America, the history of quilting is the history of women's voices, from the friendship and signature quilts of the 19th century to today's narrative quilts. There have also been digital quilts such as trAce's Noon Quilt, which Wired described as:

"a patchwork-in-PERL of submissions from writers all over the world … to create a composite picture of the planet through human eyes as the sun's apex moves through the world's time zones. Writers are invited to look out their windows wherever they happen to be at noon local time, and describe what they see in 100 words. The impressions are woven together on the site."

Labels: Ada Lojavascript:void(0)velace Day, AdaLovelaceDay09, findingada

posted by Helen Whitehead 6:30 AM

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Friday, 13 March 2009

Introduction to SCORM elearning standard for non-techies

SCORM is a standard for online elearning materials for a single user – typically self-paced modules. It stands for Sharable Content Object Reference Model. It’s a very technical specification that governs how the learning materials are created and delivered to learners. The basic idea is that if you create a piece of elearning that is SCORM compliant (the latest version is SCORM 2004) then it can be used in any learning management system (LMS) – so it could be used in or transferred to Moodle, Blackboard, Sakai, Blackboard WebCT, Desire2Learn, SumTotal, or any other VLE.

The first job it defines is how content should be packaged. Data is included in a document called the "imsmanifest", based on XML, which gives the LMS all the information it needs to import and launch the content automatically (without someone having to start editing bits of code). The XML describes the structure of a course both from the learner perspective and as a file structure on the server. Type and name of content is included here, for example.

The second part of the SCORM specification is about data exchange. It specifies how the content ”talks” to the LMS while it is being used. This part of the specification is about delivery and tracking of content. It means that the LMS can find and deliver the content to specific learners and exchange data such as marks and other learner-specific information.

SCORM is a standardized “plug and play” format for elearning modules that was invented by the US Department of Defense but is now acknowledged as the standard across the world. It does not define the look and feel, design or content or even the learning design of the materials in any way. It just makes them easier to use.

Full information on SCORM
Labels: e-learning, elearning, learning design, online learning, SCORM, writing elearning

posted by Helen Whitehead 12:27 PM

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Monday, 9 March 2009

Have a nap? Or not?

So in America it's National Napping Day.

Apparently a NASA study shows that a few winks after lunch can boost a worker's output by as much as 34 percent.

An afternoon nap 'is good for your heart' reported the BBC two years ago.

Various studies have shown that a "power nap" preserves brain power throughout the day:

Hayahsi, M.; Motoyoshi, N.; Hori, T. (2005). Recuperative power of a short daytime nap with or without stage 2 sleep .Sleep, 1;28(7):829-36.

Mednick, S.l Nakayam, K.; Stockgold, R. (2003). Sleep-dependent learning: A nap is as good as a night. Neuroscience, 6(7): 697-698.

Mednick, S. & Stickgold,R. (2002). The restorative effect of naps on perceptual deterioration. Nature Neuroscience. 5 (7): 677-681.

However this week the UK media have recently been reporting that "Taking regular lunchtime siestas could increase the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes, according to research."

So what to believe?
Labels: health, lifehack, productivity, wellbeing

posted by Helen Whitehead 5:26 PM

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Wednesday, 25 February 2009

How different was the Web in 2006?

In his article "Jurassic Web" Farhad Manjoo in the online magazine Slade talks about how unrecognizable the Web in 1996 was compared with the Web today. He concludes that despite early trends which predate blogging and user-generated content, it was all fluff and nonsense.
I beg to disagree. In 1996 I was one of the Web generation, ordinary people who were creating websites, discussing digital creativity and applying it to real world challenges. We were creating early blogs - only we called them metajournals in those days. My first was on a site called LitWeb, which has sadly now gone, but anyone who usesLiveJournal or other blog/social networks would have recognised it.
Community and collaboration were the words that drove us in the early days of the Web - and it feels like it has turned full circle having taken a more commercial turn around the turn of the century.
For Manjoo to say that Geocities was the forerunner of user-generated content is to miss the whole ethos of the Web back then. We were collaborating, sharing information, in a way that would be recognised by the open source community today and we created websites which users were invited to contribute to and collaborate in developing the content for. Look at a project like the Noon Quilt (OK it was two years' later in 1998 but a development of what we were doing at the trAce Online Writing Community from 1996-2006)...
Our children's writing website Kids on the Net was invented in 1996 with a website launched in 1997. From the start it was a place for children to publish their own writing, safely with full moderation. It is still online today and still publishing children's own writing. There are hundreds of thousands of pieces of content generated by the children themselves.

Yes there was no Google, yes for a company to have a website was still unusual. But the Web wasn't all that strange compared with today, because those of us who experimented with the potential of the technology knew what it was going to become and created the forerunners for the modes and behaviours that characterise the Web today.
Labels: 1996, collaboration, Kids on the Net, online community, trAce

posted by Helen Whitehead 2:44 PM

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Wednesday, 4 February 2009

'New and extraordinary insights' at ELESIG

Rhonas Sharpe has made a couple of posts about ELESIG (one of the academic networks I manage the online space for) on her blog. She asked members what benefit they found from the experience of being a member of the community, and got some great answers:
From Esyin Chew's "I have experienced something new and extraordinary insights that have challenged my preconceptions about digital literacy and learners' experience through ELESIG.”

to Jana Dlouha's "ELESIG is the working group with great potential for changes in higher (and other) education system as it works with learners' perspective - this is not as usual as it should be! Access to this research (and meta-research, researching the ways of research itself) is available through ELESIG work - often providing free methodological and other resources."
I'm pleased too that Amanda Jefferies was able to say that "The online NING network for ELESIG has been an excellent way to keep in touch 'virtually' with other researchers into the Student Experience and to be inspired by examples of innovative practice. "

More on Rhona's blog
Labels: communities of practice, e-learning, elearning, elesig, HE, learner experience, onlne communities, Reach Further, research

posted by Helen Whitehead 12:45 PM

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