Emerging Technologies and Related Resources

This is a sample presentation blog - a Web 2.0 substitute for PowerPoint(less). Each header is linked to a resource on the topic. Members of the Institute are encouraged to comment. Feel free to suggest postings to Ray - or request an author logon for the blog.

Online Learning Update

This is a resource that is useful to track some of the news, trends and research in online learning. Three items are posted each night. RSS and email subscriptions are available. More than 2,000 RSS subscribers and 600 email subscribers read regularly on top of the thousand or so who read daily.

Use these postings. Send to others in your institution when/where relevant.

Ning

Created by Mark Andreesen (originator of Mosaic and founder of Netscape) - ning is a "free" (Google text ad supported) technology. It is a social networking site - like you owning your own Facebook! It is a presentation site. It is a resource site. It has groups, forums, wikis, etc. - all embedded.

Tiny Chat

A great new - and less known - free video meeting site is Tiny Chat. It supports up to a dozen live video/audio participants. It is as Wired says "dead simple" to set up and operate. It allows for spontaneous live chats online.

This is a great application for electronic office hours and for seminars/guest speakers.

DimDim

Not the newest of the technologies, but one of the best free technologies out there. DimDim is a robust web conferencing system. It afford you 20 simultaneous users, video/audio, white board, chat, and - most valuable - recording.

Kodak Zi8

The flip video camera is a wonderful tool - as demonstrated by Larry Ragan! Built in editing software, instant upload to computer, upload to YouTube, etc.

September first Kodak releases the Zi8 - with two great additional features.

1. SD card storage - up to 32gig (10 hours)
2. External microphone jack

This is a great tool for many online learning applications: speech classes, group presentations, and more.

Ubiquity

Mozilla Labs is developing a new generation of intuitive tools for browsing. This gives a glimpse of where the browser soon will become. An intelligent way to integrate all of the web into the task at hand. Check out the video at the link to the title.

Hoot Suite

Imagine being able to get inside your students' minds at 11:00 pm on Saturday night... ok, perhaps a little mean, but Twitter rings their phones whenever a tweet is sent to them. Reminders, updates, latest news item, a new journal article - all can be sent most directly to you students as text messages.

Hoot suite allows you to maintain your Twitter identities and to pre-program tweets.

Google Wave

We are promised that email will never be the same.

In many ways this technology, to be released this year, is almost a learning management system in itself. Each email creates a discussion board, opens chat possibilities, and web conferencing.

We need to be ready to hit the road running (or surfing) with the wave!

Google Docs and More

And, if you haven't been to Google Docs recently, much more has been added. This is an incredibly useful collaborative tool for word, ppt, xls, type files.

And, now, forms!!

Cool Technology - wireless charging - Witricity

Ok... not closely related to online learning, but this technology certainly caught my eye. Witricity allows you charge mobile phones, laptops, etc. without plugging in.