The Future of Learning

Google Buzz: an update

It's less than a week since Google Buzz was launched, and my initial posting about it, and since that time, like many others I have been trying it out and reading a lot about it.

I've been collecting the good articles I find here in my Google Buzz Reading List, but my favourites so far are

• Google Buzz Has Completely Changed the Game: Here’s How (Ben Parr, Mashable, 14 February 2010)
  I think this sums Buzz up neatly for me
  
• How To Use Google Buzz. The Unofficial (and Frequently Updated) Guide (The Next Web, February 2010)
  A good place to find out how to get started
• Google Buzz Tips and Tricks (12 February 2010, WebWorkerDaily)
  Some extra tips and tricks to make the most of Buzz
  

What I particularly like about Buzz is

• sharing items in Google Reader more easily
• findng interesting people to follow who have commented on other people's postings
• being able to see all the buzz from a particular user
• being able to mute a posting when I've seen enough

What do you particularly like about Buzz?

Follow me on Buzz

Readfresh - watch your favourite websites in real-time

Readfresh watches sites for you and brings the most recently updated sites to the top, so you can see what's new at a glance. To add a site, just type its URL into the box and click Add Site.

Readfresh

Sketchpad

Thanks to Pauline Randall for suggesting today's Pick of the Day

Sketchpad

A Brief History of Pretty Much Everything

The following video was made by Jamie Bell, a student, who shared it on YouTube -  and writes

"This is the final piece for my AS art course, a flipbook made entirely out of biro pens. It's something like 2100 pages long, and about 50  jotter books. I'd say I worked on and off it for roughly 3 weeks."

He also adds:

"UPDATE: It (the final piece) got full marks! YAY :D"

Well done Jamie!

[Via Geeks are Sexy]

Google Buzz launched

Yesterday the Official Google blog announced Google Buzz, explaining:

"Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time."

There are also a couple of videos to explain Buzz.  Here's one  ..

Find out more here: Google Buzz

Of course, there has been lots of commentary about Buzz in the media, so here are just a few snippets from articles I've read:

• "Google on Tuesday released Buzz (news), its Twitter competitor. Or is it a swipe at FriendFeed? The new platform has elements of both."
  Rafe and Josh debate Google's buzz, Webware, 9 February 2010

• "Google has been known to launch products (hello Wave) that get a lot of initial hype but end up being curiosities at best in the hands of users. This is not to diminish the areas in which Google still holds strong - search and e-mail. So the unveiling of their new Buzz tool for Gmail users is being met with skepticism in some quarters even as it seems to hold out several promising features."
  Is google Buzz more than just hype? Noah Mallin, The Huffington Post, 9 February 2010

• "Mobile could be one of the biggest keys to the success of this product ... Buzz may benefit businesses as an organizational tool. The first thing that comes to mind is the expansion of communication with existing contacts."
  Will Google Buzz change the social media Game? Chris Crum, Web Pro News, 9 February 2010

• "Google and Facebook are on a collision course"
  With Buzz, Google plunges into social networking, Miguel Heft and Brad Stone, New York Times, 9 February 2010

• "AWESOME idea."
  Google Buzz re-invents e-mail, Tim O'Reilly, O'Reilly Radar, 9 February 2010

What are your thoughts?

UPDATE: Google Buzz Reading List

Secure websites in plain English

Commoncraft has released a new video: "Secure websites in plain English", which teaches the basics of website security and how to recognize a secure site.

• An overview of the most common security threats
• How SSL encryption works
• How to recognize a secure connection
• In which situations security is most important

Secure websites in plain English

25 places to find instructional videos

Recently I have received a number of emails asking about places that offer free instructional videos (on all subjects), so I thought I would put together a posting of the main ones that I know about:

1. 5min Life Videopedia - instructional and how-to videos
2. Academic Earth - Thousands of video lectures from the world's top scholars
3. blip.tv - next generation TV network
4. Google Video - videos on all topics
5. Graspr - The instructional video network
6. Howcast - How-to videos
7. iCue - A fun, innovative, learning environment built around video from the NBC News Archives
8. Instructables - Make, HowTo and DIY 
9. iTunes U - Faculty are using iTunes U to distribute digital lessons to their students, e.g Stangord, Trinity College Dublin, etc.
10. John Locker - Documentaries and educational videos
11. MindBites - Video instructional marketplace and publishing platform (Some free)
12. MonkeySee - HowTo videos
13. neoK12 - free educational videos and lessons for K-12 school kids
14. Research Channel - 3,500 video titles available
15. SchoolTube - provides students and educators with a safe, world class, video sharing webiste
16. Sparkeo - a flexible video platform
17. SuTree - learn virtually everything by watching how to videos from all over the web.
18. TeacherTube - educational videos
19. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) - a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other.
20. TV Lesson - How to videos
21. Ustream - watch live broadcasts, explore networks ranging from music, talk shows, sports and politics and/or review our past broadcasts.
22. Video Jug - Life explained. On film.
23. Vimeo - a thriving community of people who love to make and share videos
24. YouTube - videos on everything under the sun
25. YouTube EDU - aggregates all the videos from more than 100 institutions of higher education around the US.

Note: This video list has been extracted from my page 101+ Free Websites to find out about Anything and Everything

Shmoop - Study Guides & Teacher Resources

Shmoop offers free Learning Guides in seven subjects: literature, poetry, bestsellers, U.S. history, civics, biography, and music. Shmoop uses a conversational tone in combination with pop culture, trivia and humor to help make topics approachable and relevant to high school students. Examples include comparing The Odyssey with the Iraq war, and connecting The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with President Obama.

Shmoop has just introduced Teacher's Editions for 18 of its most popular Learning Guides, including Hamlet and Twilight. Teacher's Editions are available in the new Teacher Resources Center, where educators can take a video tour of Shmoop, learn more about the new teacher resources, and view examples of educators using Shmoop in the classroom.

Watch the video here ...

Shmoop

E-Learning Myths - #lrnchat

Following on from my posting about a conversation I had at the LT 2010 Exhibtion, and after reading commentaries from other bloggers (notably Mark Berthelemy and Patrick Dunn), I started to gather together some e-learning myths for a follow-up blog posting. 

However, yesterday I found out that the subject of this week's lrnchat was online learning myths. Janet Clarey @jclarey reminded us of her 2008 posting where she presented some online learning myths - many of which, remarkably, are still in existence.

For those of you don't know about lrnchat it is online chat that happens every Thursday night between 8:30-10pm EST / 5:30-7pm PST on Twitter.  This is rather late for me in the UK (1.30-3.00 am), but when I looked at the real-time stream earlier in the evening, there were already some myth-busting tweets being posted using the #lrnchat hashtag, so I added some more!

• Myth "You need an LMS to do e-learning"
• Myth "You only think about social learning after you've done everything else"
• Myth "Open source learning systems are dangerous"
• Myth "e-learning is (only) about online courses"
• Myth "Tracking learning course competions means people can perform"
• Myth "An LMS provides an 'enabling' learning environment"
• Myth "'Social' learning distracts from real learning"
• Myth "You only (e-)learn when someone tells you what to do and how to do it"
• Myth by L&D "Employees can't direct their own learning; they don't know what to learn"
• Myth "E-learning means spending lots of money and lots of time on creating the perfect course"
• Myth "Social learning is only for Gen Y/Millenials"
  

These and many other similar tweets created some early conversation before the formal lrnchat session began. 

Although the lrnchat blog holds a transcript of the main session,  unfortunatelely the real-time feed for the #lrnchat tag doesn't go back as far as our pre-discussion.  Luckily though Guy Wallace @guywwallace captured some of it in a cartoon strip.  I've embedded it below but if the right hand side has been cut off (ie you should be able to see 4 columns) then just click on the image to view it full size.

Social Learning in the Enterprise - in 4 minutes

My colleague in the Internet Time Alliance, Harold Jarche, has produced (and shared on YouTube) this powerful 4-minute video of what social learning in the enterprise is all about ...

Find out more about the Internet Time Alliance here.