Homecoming 2009
Oh dear. Welcome to Trump Manor. (Trumpton?)
I suspect that we'll have to revert to an ALT-Homecoming Scotland presence. Watch this space.
Rabbie, wadst thou wert - the warld hath need,
And Scotland mair sae, o the likes o thee!
The whisky that aince moved your lyre's become
The laxative for aa loquacity."
Hugh Macdiarmid - A Drunk Man Looks At The Thistle (l.61-64)
Full reading (mp3) here - http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/MacDiarmid.html
But ye'll ken this a'ready, Wee Ake the Furst?
Davy Graham, 1940-2008
No apologies for not posting a version of Anji.
Folk, Blues & Beyond.
Indeed.
http://www.daveygraham.moonfruit.com/
Support this!
From today's Guardian:The list of bands whose music is used to torture prisoners in Guantanamo Bay reads like a grim roll call of American pop culture. Metallica, Britney Spears and even the Sesame Street theme tune have all been blasted into cells at Camp X-Ray, with the intention of traumatising and destabalising its inhabitants. But a new anti-torture initiative called Zero dB is hoping to bring an end to the technique by gathering the support of musicians whose songs are used in controversial interrogation techniques by US forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
Derek MacLennan - Shuas mun Chnoc-fhaire
Sorry if this (supposed) e-learning, sorry, learning technologies blog has drifted further into the realms of self-indulgence. Blame it on the Boogie Man. Anyway this was picked up from a BBC Alba programme, Croit, and found on YouTube. Enjoy. And if you don't know the song, well, I really don't know where you've been!
Seeing the light?
For whatever reason - CreditCrunch anyone? - Amazon UK announced yesterday that henceforth all orders totalling more than £5.00 would be delivered free (albeit slowly). A good thing. Certainly there was something suspicious about a lot of items coming in at £14.98 when the minimum spend for free delivery was £15.00. Kind of encouraging you to stick that £4.99 CD on at the end. Or is that the mean teuchter or gotta-buy-a-CD reverse psychology. So now the first port of call might not be Play.com.A not such a good thing. I've probably been guilty in the past of not acknowledging sources. Sometimes the same information comes from so many different blogs, RSS that it's difficult to tell where the info originated. Shame, then, on LearnTech News for not crediting Open Culture for the New Yale Open Courses story which they (he) has posted nearly 8 hours earlier.
Amazon UK
Open Culture
Yale Open Courses
Tech Therapy
Tech Therapy is a regular podcast which features in the Chronicle of Higher Education in the US of A.Episode 33 is entitled: Libraries vs. IT Departments and precis the podcast so:
Librarians and IT staff might share more similarities than they would like to admit. Scott Carlson and Warren Arbogast, Tech Therapy's hosts, talk about the rift between the two groups.
Some caveats. Higher Education. American. One of these guys is a techie (consultant).
Some issues. The gender bit? The young IT guy? Different tasks, different missions?
Some agreement. Neither are faculty (academic) and are therefore (perceived as)second-class citizens.
Have a listen. http://chronicle.com/media/audio/v55/i07/techtherapy/
Holiday in Cambodia?
Not quite! But Jello Biafra had (and has) a point.Apart from your carbon foot-print, would you really want to holiday here?
Yes? Oh well. No hope.
Image: En construcción by uno cierta mirada (Creative Commons)
Poverty: You Too?
"We were poor but happy"; "'The poor are always with us', Jesus said". "We dare be poor for a' that".
Not much to hang a post on there. Cliche, Christ & Burns.
Anyway, having marched shoulder-to-shoulder with Bono et al in 2005 as we Made Poverty History it was refreshing to see him on the front page of a magazine that wasn't Mojo or Q. The magazine was New Internationalist. Not your usual Bono habitat I would have thought, unless to be seen carrying a copy whilst haranguing G8 (G1) leaders re their hypocrisy. See the Tax Justice issue here. Better still, subscribe.
Anyway, we information professionals (sic) are only the messengers; it's for yous academics to use the information we supply. And if you think that poverty is having to make do with a two-year old iPod or PS2, then there's some stuff here that you should read. Especially you Mr Daily Mail Man.
New Internationalist - http://www.newint.org/
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation - http://www.jrf.org.uk/
Oxfam - http://www.oxfam.org.uk/
...and meanwhile at United Nations, Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development, & sundry business & government leaders pledge $16bn to help eradicate world poverty. That would barely buy you a decent stake in a failed & failing GreedMcBank!
The Deaf Issue | The Guardian
Deafness probably isn't an issue, unless you're deaf or have to deal with deaf students, etc. To be fair, education has not exactly ignored deafness - we are inclusive after all. Evidence? Try the uniformly excellent BRITE site & its associated support guides, especially the Guide To Support For Deaf Students.From The Guardian G2 today:
A new mood is taking hold of Britain's deaf people. This growing confidence is summed up by deaf comedian John Smith, who bounds across the stage in a superhero's cape and shouts, "Deaf power!" More than 8 million Britons have impaired hearing, ranging from the 6 million older people who are mildly or moderately deaf, to the 700,000 whose deafness is more profound. In this special issue, we explore how it feels to be part of deaf culture today.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/deaf
BBC RAW relaunches in 2009
From the BBC:
Skills for everyday life - Literacy, Numeracy, ICT Skills and Financial Capability
Put January 2009 in your diary for the launch of raw!
Using video content, BBC presenters and interactive activities, the raw website will be the destination of choice for adult basic skills.
Building on the success of its earlier adult literacy campaign, raw is broadening out to include a wide range of skills – numeracy, ICT, workplace skills, literacy and financial capability.
Partners will be able to user-test new upcoming content, share their experience with each other and download FREE marketing and workshop resources, ideal for integrating into existing courses and informal learning.
The site will launch with raw money and raw computers. In the future numeracy, literacy and workplace skills will be added.
Everyday life examples as routes into content for your learners such as setting up home, starting a family or planning for retirement
Easy to use tools for pension planning, budgeting and more.
Jargon buster to understand financial words and phrases.
Top tips from BBC’s Dominic Littlewood and Jasmine Birtles.
Every six to twelve months new activities will be added to areas of the raw website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/raw/
Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival
Mental health is an issue that almost all of us encounter at some point in our lives.The Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival runs from the 1st - 19th October (yeah, I know) and seeks to promote positive attitudes towards mental health, mental illness, support and recovery, and to effect significant cultural change amongst opinion-formers and the public through the insights and influences of the creative arts.
Remembered because today is World Mental Health Day. And the various events (cross-Scotland not just Weegieland) look "interesting", especially Music Like A Vitamin this weekend. Music Like A Vitamin? It works, believe me, it works...
http://www.mhfestival.com/
http://www.wellscotland.info/
http://www.samh.org.uk/
http://www.seemescotland.org.uk/
http://www.breathingspacescotland.co.uk/
The Video Republic
Demos has launched a new report, Video Republic, exploring the contours of a new public space enabled by cheap digital technology and broadband access. Production companies and broadcasters no longer hold a monopoly over moving-images - instead, a new theatre of public information has emerged. Spread across the internet, television, festivals and campaigns this emerging Video Republic is a messy, alternative realm of video creation and exchange, dominated by young people. Who inhabits, shapes and regulates the Video Republic and what is its future?
And most pertinently for FE, why are the powers wot be & their gestalt polizei blocking the likes of YouTube when other slightly "higher" institutions (want a list?) have openly embraced the medium & the technologies? Read this please...
Download the report here (pdf).
Demos via The Guardian.
And most pertinently for FE, why are the powers wot be & their gestalt polizei blocking the likes of YouTube when other slightly "higher" institutions (want a list?) have openly embraced the medium & the technologies? Read this please...
Download the report here (pdf).
Demos via The Guardian.
vi.sualize.us - del.icio.us for images
"vi.sualize.us is a social bookmarking website for visual contents — vi.sualize.us (read visualize us) allows you to remember your favorite images around the web, and share them with everyone."If delicious is for tagging & sharing web-pages, vi.sualize.us is delicious for images. Easiest way to use is with the Firefox extension which installs on the toolbar. Just activate - add image to vi.sualize.us - click on the image you want to "save" & a thumb-nail is saved in your vi.sualize.us account. (Yeah, I forgot, you need to register). Tag the image when you're adding it. And you'll get this:
Why use it? Well, if you're working in education / e-learning & use a lot of Creative Commons images in your materials, it's desirable to acknowledge the source. Necessary even. (If you're using copyrighted images, well, stop reading now, this will be of no interest or concern to you).
Scenario. Find a "nice" image on Flickr, save it locally, upload to website / blog / whatever. Of course, you saved it as 2pussycats_playing.jpg & you can't remember the where, when or from whom. Tag in vi.sualize.us & you don't have that problem. And you can share your bookmarked images with your colleagues. (It's called collaboration).
And it's free. Highly recommended.
On the subject of Creative Commons images in Flickr, the advanced search option does allow searching for images available under the various flavours of the CC licence. Neater option is FlickrCC which again comes highly recommended. Use both & you won't have to bother about the copyright police ever again.
vi.sualize.us - http://vi.sualize.us/
FlickCC - http://flickrcc.bluemountains.net/
Doublet barman done good...
Good to see that my erstwhile colleague (a long, long time ago in what seems a different galaxy) and MP for East Renfrewshire has been "elevated" to Secretary of State for Scotland in Gordon Brown's Cabinet reshuffle.
Just don't go forgetting former comrades when we start building the new college in Barrhead...
Jim Murphy's blog
The Doublet on MySpace (what?)
The final remake...?
I certainly hope so. Hollywood has always recycled - if I recall correctly The "Bogart" Maltese Falcon was the third attempt at filming Hammett's novel.Now we have a remake of the classic "The Day The Earth Stood Still". With Keanu Reeves. OK, so the original looks dated & somewhat hackneyed 56 years on but will CGI save the planet from the ravages of Keanu? Somehow I doubt it.
And whilst we're on the subject of film, RIP Paul Newman.
This is water...
I was only vaguely aware of David Foster Wallace before his death last week. Sorta bundled him in with Jonathan Franzen & Richard Powers & never quite got round to reading them, well, apart from Powers (File under "Difficult but (probably) worth the slog").The McSweeney's Blog & Open Culture kinda explode & you wonder, well, maybe I should have been reading the guy instead of ambulance-chasing after the fact.
And reading yesterday's Guardian Review at 3.00 a.m. this morning, well, it struck me that here was a guy with whom I could totally empathise. I know that it's easy to romanticise the (recently) dead but on re-reading these articles this p.m. Shit, it strikes a chord. (Em7).
Speech by David Foster Wallace.
Christopher Tayler's appreciation.
Thinking Worlds
Having been ridden out of Second Life on a rail for asocial networking (convicted introversion) and having failed miserably to furnish my Google Lively world either with avatar (straight from the Next dummy line) or paraphenalia (ersatz-IKEA), I have tended to avoid virtual worlds. Unless of course they have decent draught beer & a sociable clientele.Then suddenly a double whammy. The JISC RSCs in Scotland are hosting a Virtual Worlds 2008 conference / seminar at the University of Stirling on October 29th & the September / October 2008 issue of Educause Review is virtually (sorry) awash with the (real) uses of virtual worlds in (US) Higher Education.
And then I discovered Thinking Worlds. Thinking Worlds is a learning educational game authoring engine which is effectively Open Source or at least is free for non-commercial use. Which I suppose (and this is stretching a point in this fiscally-driven FE world) means us. And very good it looks too.
The package consists of the Thinking Worlds player & an authoring program. There are also a lot of existing add-ons (learning modules) & assets (basically some off-the-shelf worlds that can be used to build your own add-ons). There's certainly enough documentation in terms of pages but then we don't read manuals, do we? Can be installed on a server (aye, right; we canna have that) or locally if you have local admin privileges.
There is probably a lot of work involved in developing any learning package although I suppose that the Medieval add-on, say, might be customised (and they can be) to resemble the mental if not the physical aspects of FE librarianship. A jest...
Certainly worth a deal of further investigation. Persuade an HN Games Programming student that this represents a worthwhile college project.
One gripe. Both the documentation and the online help suggest that there is a Thinking Worlds community. This would obviously be very useful but I sure can't find it.
Dammit, they've probably set one up in Second Life...
http://www.thinkingworlds.com/
OpenSim? Methinks not!
...and I feel fine
Well, we same to have made it safely through the first 3 hours since the CERN Large Hadron Collider was switched on. Which, I suppose, is something of a relief. (There may be, for some, a certain prurient satisfaction in watching other people's disasters - hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, etc. but the potential mass-production of black holes a mere 1299km away is too close to home for this physicist. (Higher, 1970))Geneva, 10 September 2008. The first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was successfully steered around the full 27 kilometres of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at 10h28 this morning. This historic event marks a key moment in the transition from over two decades of preparation to a new era of scientific discovery.
CERN (Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire)
http://public.web.cern.ch/
CERN TV (YouTube Channel)
http://www.youtube.com/user/CERNTV
What was supposed to happen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXzugu39pKM
Guardian Science Interactive Big Bang Machine
http://bit.ly/4tmUiq
...and just remember who Tim Berners-Lee (& friends) were working for when they invented this WWW thing...
Google Chrome
Oh God, not another web browser! Ah but it's a Google web browser. Only been using this for about 20 minutes so no comments other than to say it has a nice clean interface - just exactly what's beneath the bonnet I don't know. Is it a Firefox killer? An IE killer? Or as some in the blogosphere are suggesting, a Windows / Microsoft killer.
Win student essentials at The Guardian
The Guardian has five packs of student essentials to give away, courtesy of all-unied.com. For your chance to win a pack of 67 items, from dinner plates to bath towels, correctly answer a question - answer can be found in the Guardian's 2009 University Guide.
One proviso: The competition (the "Competition") is open to residents of the UK aged 17 and over who have a place (or who are applying for a place through UCAS Clearing 2008) to attend higher education for the first time in September 2008. We reserve the right to ask you for proof of your eligibility to enter the Competition.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/competition/2008/aug/08/clearing.highereducation
At last, the new Delicious
Nota bene: delicious not del.icio.us.From the Delicious blog:
Oh happy day — the new Delicious is here
Over the past few days we’ve been transitioning Delicious over to our new platform, quietly starting with RSS feeds and APIs. Today we’re taking the final step and flipping the switch on the new web site: delicious.com.
The new Delicious is just like the old del.icio.us, only faster, easier to learn, and hopefully more delightful to use and to look at. Here are the main changes:
Speed: We’ve moved to a new infrastructure that makes every page faster. This new platform will enable us to keep up with traffic growth while ensuring Delicious is responsive and reliable. You may not have noticed, but the old back-end was getting creaky under the load of five million users.
Search: We’ve completely overhauled our search engine to make it faster and more powerful. Searches used to take ages to return results; now they’re very quick. The new search engine is also smarter, and more social: you can search within one of your tags, another user’s public bookmarks, or your social network. Now it’s easier to take advantage of the expertise and interests of your friends, not to mention the Delicious community at large.
Design: Finally, we’ve updated the user interface to improve usability and add a few often-requested features (such as selectable detail levels and alphabetical sorting of bookmarks). Our goal has been to keep the new design similar in spirit to the old one, so all of you veterans should be able to jump in without any confusion. At the same time, we’re hoping that newcomers to Delicious will find it easier to learn.
http://blog.delicious.com/
The Evolution of Dance
The most viewed (55 million+) video on YouTube.
Check it out. 'Sgood, awesome even, nay clever...
Source: ReadWriteWeb
Check it out. 'Sgood, awesome even, nay clever...
Source: ReadWriteWeb
Google gets its own Second Life
So much to blog, so little time...I dare say we'll add a little more later in the summer once we get all of the techie (hi guys!) stuff out of the way, but I thought that this was at least worthy of a special mention.
This doesn't seem to be based on a virtual world like Second Life (where I'm still standing naked trying to get clothed) but it is rather based on rooms. You'll need to download the plug-in software for IE / Firefox (the whole thing runs in a browser window).
Could be worth a look if only as a "libraries ain't that uncool" gesture. Truth is, we aren't. Naturally they'll be some techie problems (hi guys!) with software & firewalls & stuff. Check back later, but for further info check the Frederic Lardinois' post at ReadWriteWeb.
Lively website
21st Century Library / Learning Space Design
...being a brief (what?) aide-memoire to an excellent seminar held at Blackpool & The Fylde College yesterday.The Loop Learning Resource Centre takes the Saltire Centre at Glasgow Caley as a starting point (this is important, financial people) and adopts and adapts that centre's principles into what appears to be a very workable solution for us lesser mortals in the FE industry.
Thanks to Chris and her team.
Cast in order of appearance:
Blackpool & The Fylde College
The Loop (MySpace)
Les Watson
Les @ YouTube (JISC InfoNet)
Embervision
Fiona Emberton's blog
Intellident Library Solutions
Curious (what happened to the Oranj?)
Supporting documents:
Desingning spaces for effective learning (JISC, 2006)
Planning & designing technology-rich learning spaces (JISC infoNet Toolkit)
Spaces for learning (Scottish Funding Council)
Postscript:
How long before this newly re-found optimism is dashed on the rocks of managerial indifference and internecine (internetcine?) wars. Watch this space...
After the silence
Don't forget. Firefox 3 available for download tomorrow. Should be here.We seem to have reached the low-tide mark of this venture. We are not time rich. Google (Blogger) pisses me off with its endless captcha hysterics which eventually screw the formatting: there must be another way - IP address recognition? Wordpress? Joomla! And colleagues, the co in collaboration means with. Remember that.
Word verification?
Move over MIT, here comes IIT
For someone whose wages are paid by an institution delivering courses in a more traditional fashion, maybe this interest in open courseware is distinctly unhealthy. But this is classy stuff...From Open Culture:
In India, there are seven institutes dedicated to training some of the world’s top scientists and engineers and making the country an up and coming world power. They are collectively known as the IITs, or the Indian Institutes of Technology. And now some of the IIT courses are being made available in English on YouTube for free.
Topics covered at present are:
- Civil Engineering
- Computer Science and Engineering
- Electrical Engineering
- Electronics and Communication Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering
The National Programme of Technology Enhanced Learning
http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/
The YouTube Channel
http://youtube.com/iit
Source: Open Culture
One who hopes
From Bill Chapman:
I hope you'll allow me to add that the Esperanto Association of Britain offers a free Esperanto postal course. Suitable for those who would like a quick taster, this course gives an overview of the language in twelve bite-sized portions.
Once you have received the first lesson, simply return your answers with an SAE. Your tutor will reply with guidance and the next lesson. All learners pay is postage!
Further details @ http://www.esperantoeducation.com/
Tel: 0845 230 1887 or write to:
Esperanto Education
Esperanto House
Station Road
Barlaston
Stoke-on-Trent
ST12 9DE
Give me your answer do...
The long awaited DAISY plug-in for Microsoft Word is now available to download from the DAISY website . DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) is a universal standard format for reading and publishing digital talking books. With the ‘Save As’ DAISY plug-in Word documents, versions XP to 2007, can now be saved as DAISY compatible XML format.http://www.daisy.org/projects/save-as-daisy-microsoft/
Source: JISC RSC Scotland S&W
Of course the download is at SourceForge and it's zipped so we can't download it here so we have to go and get our technical chums to "release" the site which may take some time and anyway SourceForge is run by dangerous cyber-terrorists so we're not sure if we can do that without compromising the integrity of our network which we've seriously compromised anyway by having this obsession with "network integrity" and tweaking it so that it barely creaks along now...
Thanks. I'll download it at home.
Adult Learners' Week #1
As promised a selection (ragbag) of sites which may (or may not be) of some interest to adult learners. All free and all come with the Phantom Engineer's seal of approval.OpenLearn
The Open University's OpenLearn offers a number of free online study units related to the themes of Adult Learners' Week.
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=1217
BBC Adult Learning
OK, so it's a bit obvious but the BBC still produces the goods, from basic skills to IT and much more.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/subjects/adult_learning.shtml
Mi Vida Loca
BBC again, but this is new. Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life) is a Spanish course for beginners. There will be 22 episodes, themed according to language topics such as directions, shopping, etc. Each episode is a combination of real-action video with language teaching and practice, focused on developing communicative skills. First 5 episodes are avalable now.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/mividaloca/
Annenberg Media
Very, very American. Very, very good. A series of series of educational broadcasts on the arts, history, literature, economics, etc. etc. For example, The Western Tradition is a series of 52 half-hour programmes on the rise of western civilisation or, rather, civilization. You have to register to stream the videos but worth the effort. Like having the Discovery Channel on tap.
http://www.learner.org/
Interesting though that in this Web 2.0 age of collaboration (wikis, blogs, CMS, social bookmarking, etc.) collaboration still means, for some, allowing others to do their collaborating for them. I was (probably) much too far out all my life, And not waving but drowning.
eMail problems? Try this!
Without going into great detail - after all we do not live in a blame culture here at aRKive - sometimes it is necessary to kinda think outside the techie box and preempt any, well, potentially disastrous loss of data.
So when your Exchange Server goes toes up about every few days, don't worry, be happy!
Or rather download a copy of the Personal Folders Backup plugin for Microsoft Outlook. (Why isn't this a standard feature?). Works in Outlook 2002 / 2003 / 2007. Choose which of your folders you want to back up; choose how often you backup.
Does it work? We'll see when they get the server back up (sic) on its feet again.
Download here.
So when your Exchange Server goes toes up about every few days, don't worry, be happy!
Or rather download a copy of the Personal Folders Backup plugin for Microsoft Outlook. (Why isn't this a standard feature?). Works in Outlook 2002 / 2003 / 2007. Choose which of your folders you want to back up; choose how often you backup.
Does it work? We'll see when they get the server back up (sic) on its feet again.
Download here.
Adult Learners' Week 2008
It's Adult Learners' week in the UK next week so this will be the start of aRKive's (rolling) contribution. Why support Adult Learners' Week? Well, NIACE figures published today show that there has been a 3% drop in the numbers of adults participating in learning in the last year. And since we're in the lifelong learning business, and I suppose that business is the appropriate term these days, we'll try to do our bit here, on the interweb, since it's a wee bit late to provide anything in the physical world. Failure in communication systems, I'm afraid.So over the next week there should be a selection of online sites which may interest the adult learner (and hopefully others), all free and, I suppose, available if you have internet access...and that's another story and another problem for another day.
NIACE (National Institute of Adult Continuing Education)
Adult Learners' Week 2008
Gi'e us ten guitars...
Not ten guitars exactly and, to be honest, I'm not sure where this flurry of guitar-related internet activity came from, but here we go.It's Guitar Week in The Guardian / Observer. If you didn't get the two-part guide in the weekend's papers they are online in their entirety (I think). With an added video ingredient. Very useful stuff even to these gnarled and rheumatic fingers. Every day this week (from Monday 12) they're publishing "songbooks" - tab, notation, chords - from, well, the usual suspects. You'll have to buy the paper for those though.
http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/guides/playingguitar/
Some free software - information courtesy of the ever-excellent MakeUseOf.com.
Power Tab - A tab editor for bass & guitar.
Ultimate Guitar - Free tabs
911 Tabs - More free tabs
Power Tab Librarian Organise your tab collection
Guitar Scales 2.0 Learn your scales (requires Adobe Air)
Just a thought
Did Wendy Alexander read (& subsequently act upon) Ian Jack's article in The Guardian of April 26? Entitled If Boris Johnson wins next week....it might be time to leave England and move north, he ruminates upon a future Britain with probably the most powerful politicians in the UK being two old Etonians (& Bullingdonians - seriously scary stuff), Messrs Cameron [2] & the aforesaid Johnson [8].Just asking...
Give Nine Inch Nails The Slip...
...or rather, they do, to you.The new Nine Inch Nails album, The Slip, is available for free download (MP3, FLAC, M4A Lossless) at http://dl.nin.com/theslip/signup . Just register to be emailed the download link, then buy the CD / vinyl in July.
Marketing ploy? Sure. Any good? Download and listen!
Source: ReadWriteWeb
MayDay, M'aidez!
A day late perhaps, but, still it's the MayDaze weekend, so no apologies. And no apologies for the Billy Bragg version either. Don't want this blog to be seen as having a political axe to grind. This one's for Boris Johnson!
Look At Me
5th - 11th May 2008 is Deaf Awareness Week and organisations working with deaf people across the country are inviting everyone to 'Look At Me'. The theme aims to improve understanding of the different types of deafness by highlighting the many different methods of communication used by deaf, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing people, such as sign language and lipreading.
Supported by over one hundred deaf charities and organisations under the umbrella of the UK Council on Deafness, Deaf Awareness Week involves a UK wide series of national and local events. "The UK Council on Deafness are delighted to coordinate the all-inclusive Deaf Awareness Week campaign, promoting the positive aspects of deafness, social inclusion and raising awareness of the huge range of local and national organisations that support deaf people and their family and friends."
If you're in FE, you'll certainly know about the excellent Brite resources, won't you? If not, resources to support deaf students can be found at http://www.brite.ac.uk/resources_interactive.html
http://www.deafcouncil.org.uk/daw/index.htm
Learning Technology News
Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my...remote.How about a TV remote that's shaped like a 9mm semi-automatic handgun? This device "slides snugly beneath elastic waistbands for quick-draw access and features a detachable lithium-ion magazine, posi-lock channel changer and safety mode to prevent dropped pistols from accidentally going off (or switching to The Apprentice)."
Ideal for BBC Four, huh, gangstas? Librarians? We got this techie stuff sussed!
Meanwhile in a distant galaxy 30 years later...
Have you ever wondered what happened to Han, Luke & Leia after the events of Return of the Jedi? [Not really]Now, in BETRAYAL, the legacy that began with Anakin Skywalker has finally come full circle. Join Han, Luke, Leia, & the other heroes of the New Jedi Order in their epic struggle to maintain peace in the galaxy, as a new threat rises from the most unexpected of places.
Available from today from 9.00a.m. (which probably translates as early this afternoon (or later if you're further east)) for a fortnight from the publisher, Del Rey.
http://www.randomhouse.com/delrey/starwars/sw_legacy.html
Librarians like free. Librarians like books. Ergo, to like not what?
A marketing ploy? Surely not! Philanthropy? Exactly!
Source: ReadWriteWeb
Trying to make your e-life a little easier
First of a series (we'll see) of tips harvested from...everywhere.Sources acknowledged when we can remember them.
Google Search
Google can reorder search and news results from the last day, week, a few months, or entire year by adding a small string to the end of the search URL. After you've done your search, just add &as_qdr=d to the address bar (at the end!) & press Enter. You'll get a custom drop-down box that lets you re-order results based on date. It's great for getting past the same top results you've already looked through, as well as grabbing only the newest links related to gadgets, software, or whatever else you're searching.
Source: Tech-Recipes
Windows XP Service Pack 3
This has been downloadable from various sites for the last week or so but is available from Microsoft as of today. Windows® XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) includes all previously released updates for the operating system. This update also includes a small number of new functionalities, which do not significantly change customers’ experience with the operating system.
Source: Microsoft
11 Tips for Better Tech Support
Not so much a tip, more of a timeous dose of sage advice.
Former tech support guy Brett Kelly says there are a few things you can do to get the computer help you need most efficiently over the phone. Whilst this is aimed at users of the tech support that comes as part, say, of a service or hard/software package, all the advice is eminently pertinent when dealing with in-house ICT support. Example:
Don’t be an Ass - One of the quickest ways you can get to the land of the banished is to treat the tech like some peon who’s just “beneath you” or something. Trust me, if you want help, humility is like gold. And if you think that certain tech support people won’t give you the runaround if your attitude is sour, you’re very, very wrong. Very.
Source: Lifehacker / Cranking Widgets blog
Alternatives to Acrobat Reader
I don't know exactly how widespread the problems with Acrobat Reader are but on the evidence of browser crashes / freeze-ups experienced within these hallowed walls, I suspect that there is a problem, Houston. (Nice brewery though).
Two tips:
1) Foxit Reader is a completely free, useful utility for viewing .PDF files. It has a very small footprint, taking up only 2MB of disk space–about one-tenth what Adobe Reader takes. Best of all, you can perform many functions that you would typically turn to the expensive verson of Adobe Acrobat for, including editing text in .PDFs, annotating files, and saving completed .PDF forms.
2) If you're using Firefox (and you should be), PDF Download relieves the pain experienced when encountering PDF files on the Web. Whenever you click on a PDF file, PDF Download lets you know before trying to open it, and then offers you choices such as downloading, opening, or converting it straight to HTML.
Source: Robert Waugh / The Phantom Engineer
A small point tool used for making holes? That's awl folks!
VADS relaunch
The Visual Arts Data Service relaunched (rebranded?) earlier this month and offers students & staff access to 100,000+ images.VADS has been providing services to the academic community for some 11 years and has built up an impressive portfolio of visual art collections. The image resources are free and copyright cleared for use in UK Higher and Further Education, providing a valuable resource to students and academics which can be incorporated into lectures, seminar presentations and essays.
Collections available online through the site include 'Spanish Civil War Posters', 'Concise Art', and 'Posters of Conflict' all from the Imperial War Museum, and the Design Council Archives and Slide Collection from University of Brighton and Manchester Metropolitan University respectively. There's an awful lot more.
http://www.vads.ac.uk/index.php
Collections available online through the site include 'Spanish Civil War Posters', 'Concise Art', and 'Posters of Conflict' all from the Imperial War Museum, and the Design Council Archives and Slide Collection from University of Brighton and Manchester Metropolitan University respectively. There's an awful lot more.
http://www.vads.ac.uk/index.php
Songs of Praise
Caveat emptor. The Man invented holidays to confound the blogger. We say "less holidays now".A few essential apps & websites for your (re)consideration.
Google Reader
After flirting with Pageflakes, Netvibes, etc., we've returned to the Google Reader fold because, basically, it does all this librarian needs without the FlashJava frippery. Example: new additions to Intute's resources accessed & tagged in a couple of minutes. Example: your del.icio.us network's tags added in seconds. Essential.
WAMP
WAMP installs Apache, MySQL & PHP on a desktop PC. Why would you want to do this? Well, if you don't want to hang around for months waiting for your tech people to install Moodle so you can experiment before they let you loose on the full monty, or you want to try Joomla! 1.5 before upgrading & migrating your original website, WAMP is for you. Simple install turns your PC into a web-server. Installing apps reasonably simple. No registry changes means that you can circumvent techie paranoia. Come play in the sandbox.
G24
G24 brings you the latest stories from the Guardian, guardian.co.uk and the Observer - updated throughout the day. There are five pdfs to choose from: Top stories, World, Media, Business and Sport. Simply click on the Open pdf link and print.
Britannica Webshare
If you’re a Web publisher—a blogger, webmaster, or writer—you can get complimentary access to the complete Encyclopædia Britannica online. It’s a rich trove of reliable and high-quality information that you can use to check quick facts, etc. [The facts, ma'am, just the facts. Which would be nice.] Register here.
Inanimate Alice
Definitely a work in (pretty slow) progress but one worth watching. Why? Because.
'Inanimate Alice' tells the story of Alice, growing up in the early years of the 21st century. Written and directed by writer Kate Pullinger and digital artist Chris Joseph, this series of multimedia, interactive episodes uses a combination of text, sound, images, and games as Alice takes us on a journey through her life from the age of eight through to her twenties.
YouTube
Worthless, worthless, worthless. Pussy cats, drunk kids, duff video, Duff beer and porn. Worthless.
Well, perhaps not. Notwithstanding the presence of a number of Ivy League (Tossing & Turning) universities with YouTube channels, Southwest Tech in Wisconsin have IMO an exemplary channel which offers 1 minute videos of students describing the courses that they're following. Marketing propaganda perhaps but not the dead (& expensive) propaganda of the printed prospectus.
SouthWest Tech channel on YouTube.
...and the graphic. Roll your own at http://www.fodey.com.
PostScript: so Blogger doesn't handle animated gifs? Shame! 'Twas brilliant too, believe me!
Tho' I Be Aul'
YE needa think tho' I be aul',An' a' my bonnet haps is grey,
My heart is grizzen, crined or caul'
An' never kens a dirl the day.
A bonny lass can stirr me still,
As deep her mither did when young,
An' aul' Scots sang my saul can fill
As fu's when first I heard it sung.
...
There's some hae looks, there's mair hae claes,
That's but the brods, the beulk's the thing,
The heart that keeps for dreary days
Some weel-remembered merry spring.
The ca' me fey or ca' me feel,
Clean draft or dotit, deil may care,
Aye faur there's fun, at Pase or Yeel,
Gin I be livin' I'll be there.
Charles Murray - Tho' I Be Aul'
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