e-wot?

Low-income students are in many ways just as technologically savvy as their counterparts
In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered the educational benefits of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. click for article

“What we found was that students using social networking sites are actually practising the kinds of 21st century skills we want them to develop to be successful today,” said Christine Greenhow, a learning technologies researcher in the university’s College of Education and Human Development and principal investigator of the study. Read More…

This is a great collection of ‘Laws’. For example:

Conway’s Law: Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it.

Hofstadter’s Law:  A task always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law. (lol)

The Click for Immutable Laws of Web Design and Development | Blue Flavor

click for Education | Pisa international rankings

Finland’s done well.

More pearls of wisdom from Jakob Nielsen about intranet Info Architecture:

Only three topics attained top-level navigation status on the majority of the intranets:

• human resources (HR) information (66%)
• company information, (63%)
• news (59%)

Read More…

Here are my notes from Keith Kruger’s excellent and thought provoking workshop.

Keith is the CEO of CoSN, the US’s premier voice in education tech leadership. click for CoSN site

Outline of the workshop:

1. what has been the impact of technology on education around the world?
2. What are the skills that ict leaders need?
3. Self assessment

Three major conclusions:

• Competitiveness is a global concern/Developing 21st century skills is necessary
• Leadership & vision matters
• Rethinking pedagogy is essential

Read More…

Newsmaker is a video editing tool that Yu Neng Primary school have been using with their learners.

The normal process they follow with a class is

1. P5 & P6 students form a group.
2. Brainstorm a topic.
3. Research. Collate information.
4. Write a news script.
5. Rehearse the script working on reading, text tone and facial expression.
6. Then they decide on the format.
7. Then they make a newsmaker clip.

Benefits? Through newsmaker students have integrated writing, reading and listening skills. It has helped improve their confidence too. Read More…

CET chair Prof Phillip Wong kicked off the conference with a nice analogy, comparing technology with antibiotics. Cavemen are given antibiotics and told the little pills will save their lives. Some of these cavemen will put the pills on a pedestal and worship them, others will try one pill and leave the rest, others will mix the pills with water and rub the mixture all over their bodies, and others will take the whole lot in one go. If the pills don’t work they’ll dismiss the claim that they’ll save their lives. If the pills make them sick they’ll say they’re dangerous. The challenge is to help them understand how and when to use the pills. The same is true for technology. Prof Wong said he’d borrowed that analogy from Chris Dede (see below).

RAdm Ronnie Tay the new CEO of IDA gave us some interesting figures about IT use in Singapore, focusing on IT use among the digitally literate and those in education. Up-to-date stuff with a clear vision. Read More…

The new Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are no good according to A List Apart:

“WCAG 2 is not enough of an improvement and was not worth the wait.”

A List Apart: Articles: To Hell with WCAG 2

Got this via the boagworld podcast:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/boagworldpodcast

Some interesting articles and presentations base on research carried out globally on mobile phone use.

click for Jan Chipchase – Future Perfect Archives

click for more articles from Nokia

click for BBC article on Jan Chipchase’s research 

Maish Nichani interviewed me a while ago about the wiki I set up. Here’s the article he wrote about it.

click for Using Wikis on the Intranet: The British Council Case Study