Final presentation in this block covers Immersive Staff Development via WebCT Vista. Alex is next to me, doing most of the work, I am sitting here blogging.
I may be missing the point completely… But it just appears to be that they’re using staff development via a VLE.
Elder project. Based upon HEFCE Benchmarking, part of the Pathfinder e.Change project.
Aim: to capture case-based information about change:
Cases > Knowledgebase > ReferenceModel/Strategy
People store HE innovations in the knowledgebase, and allows others to search it.
Anyway, I don’t know if it was the extra bacon for breakfast, but I’m really not following this talk. Go to http://www.academicamour.com/ for more info.
So, listening to a talk on Web 2.0 from the University of Salford. The presenter is talking about hacking the Wiimote. Although he’s warning us that we’re sitting in a TableTennis room in a sports hall, with a hastily constructed lab, it’s likely to go wrong at some point.
Wiimote uses bluetooth. It also has infrared recognition, so it should be aware of its position in 3D space (although there are 3rd party add-ons which give the wiimote full 3D relational positioning via gyroscopes). This relies upon the handset determining its position in relation to a fixed light source.
However, you can do the reverse. You can fix the handset and move the ligthsource. The wiimote can track four lightsources by default, but can be modified to track more. You can fix the wiimote to a tripod, and move a lightsource which can be tracked (in this case the UoS guy has modified a Dr Who Sonic Screwdriver to use an infrared LED).
Using Wii mouse drivers you can treat an LED light source as a mouse. The lightsource is calibrated against the screen, then used as a traditional mouse. Although I’ve no idea how he’s hacked his Sonic Screwdriver to represent mouseclicks. Even a laserpointer can be used.
Interwrite Office Mode (?), a whiteboard application traditionally used with their handheld virtual whiteboard hardware, can be used with the wiimote setup to draw on the slides and save their contents. It even has basic text recognition.
Essentially any surface can emulate a interactive whiteboard.
Don’t work with childen, animals, whiteboard, or gaffa tape.
[Just did a quick Google, and mouse-clicks are emulated by the LED momentarily being turned off.]
Qik.com does live broadcasting via mobile phones to the internet. People can even ‘respond’ via the website (webcam, etc), and it feeds back to the broadcasting phone. Plus broadcasts are archived on Qik’s website.
Now that is cool. Nokia only though :(
Data is becoming cheaper. £100/Gb 5 years ago, to £5/Gb now. In non-3G areas, the phone will cache uploaded video and upload it once you are in a 3G location. Competitors include stickam (although this is webcam only).
Major question raised, what are the legal implication of doing this? Then again, people taking photos on Flickr can also be a breach of privacy. Students using Web2.0 technologies, may have their information exported to other countries, how does that fit in with the Data Protection Act? Do you have to have Terms and Conditions for taking a course, and do you have to allow students the option to ‘opt out’ of using Web2.0 technologies, is this discriminatory? My partner in this exercise has just shown me a very legal-ese looking document, which basically says “It’s up to the user to read the T&C’s for external sites”.
Anyway, on to potential benefits, uses, and legal pitfalls…
Note to self: Don’t video myself driving down the M5.
Twitter is mobile blogging (and web), but limited to 140 characters.
Jaiku is an alternative…
Anyway, uses for e-learning?
Whoops, we just broke Jaiku!
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