NMC New Media Blogs

The Sunday Times this weekend will announce that it has selected NUI Galway as the Irish University of the Year. For staff and students this is welcome recognition for the institution and all the efforts that have been put in in recent years with new degree programmes, investment in the campus (including a vast range of new technologies), and a rapidly growing research and technology development record, with Ireland's best record for patents and 'spin outs'.  Nice to get some good news amidst the more usual economic gloom!

As the social networking scene continues to explode, developers are increasingly finding novel ways to use services such as Facebook and Twitter. Through the Facebook Connect technology, the developers of a web app called Aardvark seem to be onto something. Their service basically crowd sources your contacts and contacts of contacts in Facebook to help answer any question you may have. Any question. So how good would this be for students? Probably pretty good unless you are taking a test, in which case asking the Vark might not be a good idea.

Late yesterday and this morning, the blogosphere and twittersphere have been abuzz at Twitter's announcement that it will incorporate geospatial capabilities into the next iteration of the Twitter API to be released soon. This will give developers an opportunity to incorporate lat-log data into user's tweets to see specific locations of where the tweets are being posted. While this will be an optional feature for privacy reasons, having this capability will open up the doors for some very interesting use of Twitter for real time events such as natural disasters, breaking news, and whole host of other uses. Students and teachers in the field can use this to their advantage as well for fieldwork and data gathering adding an entirely new context to real time microblogging. Remember, its all about location, location, location...

I had no idea how much time I was going to be investing into trying to build a campus in SL. I have built, and now torn down, four full campuses;  each with a completely different spin on how to attempt to set up an educational environment within a virtual world.

I feel honored to be representing my country - Portugal - in the Pestalozzi program on media literacy with other representatives of the EU member States. Pestalozzi is probably best known in the US thanks to his influence in the 'Oswego movement', which helped shape the American normal school system.

My Pestalozzi group is focused on social media and human rights. The group has of course applied what we 'preach' :) and maintained the conversation during the period between on-site meetings (Austria in 2008, and France in 2009) through the use of several social platforms. My post with a reference to the Horizon Report 2008 was received with enthusiasm by the community. Participants were unaware of the report but extremely interested in it. Needless to say that the 2009 report was received with the same level of enthusiasm.

Mention David Lynch and anything but normal comes to mind. Yes, he is quite the individual. He recently lauched a new project simply called Interview Project which documents pieces of 121 people's lives across the country. The project recently got underway and there are some interesting interviews now up on the website. Some of the stories are heartbreaking and moving, but all capture a little of each person's humanity and background. Its worth watching a few and being inspired for your own storytelling efforts. The clips are short, about 5 mins each or so...

As Second Life continues to be a rich environment to virtually extend the classroom, it is helpful for educators to be able to create custom content. Ball State University is now offering a class entitled, "Building 101: The Building Blocks of Second Life."

Building 101 is an 8-hour intense crash course that will cover all aspects of Beginner and Intermediate building in Second Life, from prim creation and movement to basic use of scripts, sculpties and animations.

This course will be an asset to educators as they not only design their curriculum, but also as they build their classrooms.

Building 101 will be beginning July 11 and continue through August 1, 2009. Class will be held Saturdays, 9 to 11 am Second Life Time (PST). The cost for this course is $149.