Posts

I participated in my first #lrnchat session on Twitter this afternoon. I found it difficult to cope with the volume of information coming in – hence the allusion to fire hoses in the title. While I was composing my next 140 characters of wit and wisdom, 27 messages would scroll by! But I did discover Tweetchat. There were some stand out moments such as the comparison of Google Wave (topical on the day) with Pet Rocks1 and the comic reflection on the Twitter chat experience: “I once was lost, but now, profound....

One of the best responses so far to today’s news on Google’s wave was this reminder us of what it could be good for Tweeted by Jack Schofield. Warning: the embedded video contains language (in spoken and written form) that may offend! I guess the problem was that for every creative that found a new medium there were hundreds of the rest of us who just saw the question marks!

Although I missed the original announcement, I am indebted to Jane Hart who shared the announcement Update on Google Wave (posted by Urs Hölze on the Official Google Blog) of Google’s decision to cease development of Google Wave: We were equally jazzed about Google Wave internally, even though we weren’t quite sure how users would respond to this radically different kind of communication. The use cases we’ve seen show the power of this technology: sharing images and other media in real time; improving spell-checking by understanding not just an individual word, but also the context of each word; and enabling third-party developers to build new tools like consumer gadgets for travel, or robots to check code....

My University has invested in a license for Learning Objects Campus Pack 4 and I’ve created a new blog in my new Personal Learning Space. I’m calling it Reflections for now and I’ll be using it to record ideas and thoughts on my personal learning and teaching experiences. I’ve changed the permissions to make the blog public with open comments. I can always change this later if it turns out to be a bad idea....

It’s actually a fortnight since the last one but … this week’s Podcast of the Week is The Guardian’s excellent Tech Weekly podcast. Every Wednesday, regular host Aleks Krotoski along with regular contributors Guardian Technology Editor Charles Arthur and Digital Media Reporter Jemima Kiss, discuss the big technology news items of the week. Since the demise of The Guardian’s Thursday Technology supplement, the podcast is the quickest way to keep up to date....