On the theme of mobile web accessibility (#thereisawebappforthat) I did some more exploration of the BBC’s mobile (http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile) web site and discovered that there is a mobile version of iPlayer at http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer which streams video in MP4 format suitable for the iPhone. Thus, I’d have to regrade the BBC’s mobile accessibility to A+ … providing that you enter the site from the root URL. In the spirit of research, and because I teach some of this stuff, I dug a little deeper and discovered that if you visit the BBC with a conventional browser, the pages are returned using the XHTML 1.

Interesting follow-up to yesterday’s mobile web accessibility post (#thereisawebappforthat). When demonstrating mobile web page accessibility to my wife, I went direct to the BBC web site (http://www.bbc.co.uk). Interestingly, this page recognizes that I was using a mobile device and switched to a presentation suitable for a mobile (See http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/web/ for a live demo). Clicking through from here gets you to the news site http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/ and this is accessible to mobiles. The question is then why doesn’t a link to http://www.

There should be a web app for that! Earlier today I tweeted A bit disappointed to be finding that major media outlets like the BBC make apps instead of making website mobile browser compatible. After that outburst I felt some explanation was called for. I also felt a campaign coming on. So here goes. The Explanation If you have an internet enabled smart phone, then you almost certainly have a mobile web browser.

I’m thinking that I need to optimize my social network sharing strategy. Ideally, I’d like to reach the maximum number of people with the minimum effort and I think that I may have too many channels. There is also some duplication that I want to eliminate. To achieve my aims, I think that I first need to analyze my sharing habits and who sees what I share. This might take several posts to untangle.

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.

Learning Objects Campus Pack, used to provide for blogs, wikis and podcasts in Swansea University’s VLE, was updated at the same time as Blackboard. If you have one or more Learning Objects blog(s), wiki(s) or podcast(s) in your Blackboard (learning portal) module sites, they will be upgraded the first time you or your students visit them. If you have a large number of these installed in a module site, as I have for some of my modules, you may want to do the upgrade before your course is opened for new enrolments.

Today is the day when Blackboard 9.1 was rolled out at Swansea University as the new Learning Portal. I haven’t logged in to check my courses yet, but I’m sure they’ll be fine. Clive and his team promised to deliver the update on July 30th, and that’s what they’ve done. I know a lot of planing and work has gone into this and it’s been done with minimum fuss and negative impact.

I love this video from the first lecture of [CS 106A Programming Methodology](http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs106a/) (Recorded in Fall 2008). Apart from the enthusiasm of the lecturer Mehran Sahami, which is infectious, it’s a great source of inspiration for learning and teaching: - Grading without numbers - The Stanford Honour Code (approach to Plagiarism) - Use of undergraduates for peer/mentor support (even grading!) - Use of sugary snacks as rewards for contribution - Use of continuous assessment with later work given more marks to encourage work to the end - Midterm tests - Personalized feedback via “interactive marking” - 2 Free days for late submission of coursework – avoids extensions.