• Edinburgh Spotlight - Edinburgh news, reviews and information
  A fabulous new Edinburgh website written by locals on things to do, where to eat and what's on in Edinburgh

From my 2008 trip down the Yangtze river in China

• The Daily Start-Up: The Year Of Social Gaming - Venture Capital Dispatch - WSJ
  RockYou Like A Hurricane - If 2007 is considered the year of social networking, 2009 might be the year of social gaming. Companies that make games for social networking sites are already proving their worth - Playfish was just acquired by Electronic Arts for at least $300 million, Zynga is making tens of millions of dollars in revenue and Playdom raised a hefty round of financing. Now there’s news that RockYou, one of the earliest developers of so-called widgets on social networks, has raised a giant-sized $50 million round as it also moves deeper into social-gaming. SoftBank was apparently the only investor in this round, meaning previous investors DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and Sequoia Capital curiously did not re-up.

• Clicker - What's On Online
  More social TV
• Germany gets personalised print newspaper made up of blog posts and newspaper articles
  Today I should have received my first edition of Niuu, a personalised print newspaper comprised of articles taken from various blogs and newspapers. Delivery time should be between 4 AM and 6 AM so that people can read it over breakfast. Niiu has contracts with mostly German newspapers like Bild, Frankfurter Rundschau and Handelsblatt but also with the Washington Times and The International Herald Tribune. Readers can use the Niiu website to customise which page of a newspaper they want to read in the morning. Local news from Berliner Morgenpost can easily be combined with Sports from Bild and the New York Times’ frontpage with just a few clicks. Content can always be reshuffled for the next day’s edition. Even Russia’s Komsomolskaja Prawda is a partner as well as blogs like Cult of Mac, Slashdot and Netzpolitik.

• Left vs Right (World) | David McCandless & Stefanie Posavec | Information Is Beautiful
  Lovely visualisation of what it means to be "on the left" or "on the right"
• Cell Size and Scale
  Beautiful visualisation showing relative scale
• Research: Readers Favour News Micropayments—But They’ll Only Pay Pennies | paidContent:UK
  Sure, some readers will pay for online news content via single-article micropayments, but only if the price tag is very low. That’s according to a report from analysts at Continental Research, which found that 63 percent of a 500-person survey ruled out paying for online news content. Of those that would consider getting their wallets out to pay for Times Online and the rest, three quarters agreed their upper price limit was a measly 10p.
• Technology Review: Blogs: Jason Pontin's blog: How to Save Media
  If media companies can't earn money, and everyone is a journalist, it follows that "amateurs" (Shirky) and "sources" (Winer) will be part of a "decentralized" media (Winer), whose stories will be distributed by "excitable 14-year-olds" (Shirky). This is all folly and ignorance. Shirky, Winer, and other evangelists know nothing about the business of media.
• Reconstruction of US Airways 1549: "We're going to be in the Hudson" - Holy Kaw!

• How to Ship Anything - Joel on Software
• National Gallery of Art NGAkids STILL LIFE interactive
  NGAkids Still Life (Shockwave, 8 MB) helps you create interactive compositions that mirror the paintings of the old masters. This Art Zone activity is suitable for all ages. Young children can explore spatial arrangement, perspective, proportion, and balance while creating engaging, interactive still life compositions that mix everyday objects with elements borrowed from famous works of art. More advanced artists will enjoy creating complex arrangements, and then switchng to the painting mode to add and manipulate textured 'brushstrokes" that give their art a more abstract, painterly quality.
• Media Education Project
  Media Education Project investigates the role of media, information and communication technologies (ICTs) within (and for) Canadian education systems. Our assessment begins with an inquiry into current discourse that considers education theory, cultural diversity, economic inequity, and other related digital divides and the potential impacts on media education.
• Typekit
  Allows you to show real fonts on your websites, beyond the compliant half dozen.
• How To Spam Facebook Like A Pro: An Insider’s Confession
  Did you know how Mark Zuckerberg supported Facebook in the early days, before he got venture funding? Casino ads. And how about those advertisers who were making over $100,000 a day selling Acai Berry and other weight loss products – they are friends of mine, pioneers of new advertising channels. You see those ads saying “Inbox (5). Nick, someone in San Francisco has a crush on you!” (with your name, profile picture, and city in the ad). I generated millions of dollars from these offers on Facebook – I am not proud of it, but it was very lucrative. I will walk you through how these online scams work on Facebook and other social networks – the mechanics of how the money is made, some of the people involved, and who is actually clicking on ads. If you’re reading this article, there is a good chance that you are not the type of person actually clicking on these spam ads, but are you curious as to who actually is?

Tearfund's partners in the Ugandan village of Kigaze are working hard to bring extraordinary changes to the lives of people like 13-year-old Stidia. Every day, Stidia walks down a steep and dangerous mountain path to collect water from a spring. Often intimidated and beaten by older boys, her daily trek is overshadowed by fear and takes so long that she's often late for school. Without proper water and sanitation, all areas of life start to suffer.

Most inspiring thing I’ve seen/heard in the last year or so.  Saw him a few weeks ago thanks to Gerard.  Bless ya son xx

I am starting to look at Design with the S1’s.

This is always a difficult time as they are so enthusiastic to get into the workshop and ‘make stuff’. I think its vitally important that they spend time to reflect on the world around them and understand how those human made things came into being.

I have designed a couple of introductions to design that I will be reflecting on here.

This one is an exercise in not only working to a brief but also using the technology.

I have recorded a screen cast of the process they have gone through.

To see this in a lager size please have a look here S1_Keyfob

In John Connell’s Post for a workshop at the BBC, he has asked ……..

A couple of years ago I got a very positive feedback on an animation that the the S1’s (12 year olds) at the time had produced using Google Sketchup. On a blog post by Ewan McIntosh, I made contact with Keith Hamon.

Keith is a wonderfully positive and enthusiastic leader. We talked via email about how we could work with some of the teachers in his part of the world. He identified Bob Meacham from the Banks Stephens Middle School in Forsyth, Georgia, USA.

Between us we developed a wiki based around pupils sharing information about local buildings.

The pupils would collect as much information about one local landmark and place it on the wiki for the other pupils to recreate in Sketchup. We would then have some video conferences. I even ‘taught’ the Banks Stephens class how to use Sketchup via VC.

I think its time to revisit this project.

I am looking for some classes/teachers from around the world who would be interested in developing a new project.

Leave a comment or add your name too the wiki http://international-sketchup.wikispaces.com/

In July myself and Caroline (Commonly known as C in twitter) went through to Edinburgh. One reason to the visit was to attend the LeadMeet organised by Con Morris. leadMeet is a very interesting variation on the TeachMeet scenario.

The event was very well attended. With a good range of people who are passionate about education and professional development.

I managed to maintain an incredible record. Attended 6, put myself forward to speak at 5 and been selected by the random selector Zero. I have spoken twice at a TeachMeet. Once was virtually from my back bedroom and once was setup in Perth because I had travelled, with Andy Wallis, so far to attend.

Con suggested (awhile ago now) that I record my talk………… So its Con’s fault

More images from the event can be found here

Its been a long time since I got out of the habit of blogging. Twitter, the micro blogging service, as dominated my online activities recently.

Its not that things haven’t been going on. In fact its been extremely busy. I hope to do a catch up with some of the things over the next few weeks.

This past week has been the first full week in school. (after an extra day due to water supply problems) and therefore the issue of the UMPC’s to the incoming pupils. These are UMPC’s that are new to them.

On a Friday afternoon we are running How to session’s for all the incoming pupils. In our case that's 43.

The First session was issuing the UMPC’s, giving out login’s, and logging on……. and of course dealing with associated problems.

Last Friday was connecting to the internet and accessing email using Outlook 2007.

I have been using Community Clips to record instructional video’s. Basic ‘How to’s’ for the pupils to refer back too.

So why have I used Community Clips instead of Jing?

The main reason was that I wanted to add the video’s directly into OneNote.

OneNote embeds and plays WMV files directly within the application and Community Clips produces WMV files which I can edit in Movie Maker and place in the OneNote to create a NoteBook.

Jing produces FLV (and MPEG’s if you pay the subscription and I paid the subscription 2 days before discovering Community Clips) files which are much smaller. These can be hyperlinked and will play when clicked in a notebook and they open in the devices default player. I wanted to keep everything within OneNote and keep the work flow as simple as possible.