Tracking your #mobile data journey with #Singly

Keeping track of all the good content I come across while I am surfing the internet has never been my forté. Although I bookmark, make annotations ... after a short time the only thing I remember is that I did see something about something somewhere. So any solution that can provide me with some automated logbook is just the thing I am looking for.
While I am following Tin Can which is unraveling the personal learning path chaos as mentioned in a previous blogpost, I recently came across the Locker Project, which was the runner up for the commercial data idea of Singly.

The starting point of the locker project, and as such Singly is simple: a locker is a container for personal data, which gives the owner the ability to control how it's protected and shared. It retrieves and consolidates data from multiple sources, to create a single collection of the things you see and do online: the photos you take, the places you visit, the links you share, contact details for the people you communicate with, and much more. From this idea Singly became a reality. Singly takes all the applications and tools that are based in the cloud and offers an API to get meaningful interactions, data, connections from it.

If you are a mobile developer, you can take the Singly app and transform it into a data driven, socially connected, cloud, mobile app that fits your content or interaction needs. Sounds cool!

And if you embed this type of app in a MOOC learning environment, you would be able to filter out the MOOC related data easily (and automated) via hashtags or tags in general, allowing all your MOOC content to be open to the public, yet filtered for the MOOC audience at the same time. That sounds great!

What this brings to mind is more semantic learning. Because if the data I collect is collected, and meaningfully classified for further processing (e.g. keywords in relation to my personal keywords, appreciations of people I am connected with, discussions of peers ....) ... it will enable me to get more tailored, personally relevant information my way. For let's face it, I am never going to be able to keep up with all the content which is created on the web, nor will I be able to critically analyse everything myself. So in some way an automated critical screener needs to be put into place for me to be able to keep on top of what I am interested in, while also enabling me to feel comfortable data wise (nothing simple about that).
The privacy is something I am not sure about. Because what Singly does is take care of all your profiles (which also means it knows all my profiles if I let it... not sure how this makes me feel yet). Currently they enable data gathering and filtering from a number of online tools you can see the list here.

If you are a mobile developer, have a look at the iOS SDK, Android SDK, and open source. And if you built a learning app using singly, let me know!

To get an idea of all the challenges behind Singly, a presentation by Simon Murtha-Smith (one of the co-founders of Singly) below, looking at how Singly works (some coding, some references to OAuth...):

A one access point for all books and music? YEAH

Hans De Zwart got me onto this site and ... what a great resource for avid readers and listeners! I admit I need to finalize my thesis, but I just could not resist taking a break to peruse through the content shared by the Internet Archive. I learn every day and ... will do for ever no doubt.

The Internet Archive gathers all types of content, and allows people to add it as well. They have wonderful initiatives (admittedly most of them are US oriented, but the idea is universal):
A bundle of Open Educational Resources with lectures on several subjects. 
TV archive with search option, for any media editor this is a dream. You just search for your favorite politician or fact, and start editing an overview of what they said versus what they do, or how certain facts get a different perspective as time goes by. Wonderfully educational stuff. 
Something called the waybackmachine that allows you to filter content that you think should be archived for future generations.
Open software location, with a list of freely downloadable software's (always fun, looking at a list of open source software)
A free music download page (where I searched for live recordings of Sage Francis and they had it! So went on to Hive Mind and yes, they also had a link to an album!)
After which I started to look at the open library and saw a list of books that are in part freely available, but some also simply linked to make up a complete digital overview of all books.

The great thing about this is that everyone can add to it. So a nice example of crowdsourcing, or maybe the term crowdcontentaddition fits more appropriately. Such fun! And now... back to thesis typing (some additional coding of messages; some additional references...)

Yes, mobile moodle for iPhone is imminent, we will release open source code soon

For those who have been following my mobile blogs, you knew our great Peru/Belgian team (i.e. the Institute of Tropical Medicine Alexander von Humboldt (IMTAvH) in Lima and the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp) was working on something special: a mobile moodle for iPhone.

In 2008, our Peruvian/Belgian team won the Tibotec Reach Initiatives grant, which allowed us to start looking at solutions to get two types of smartphones (iPhone and NokiaN95) linked up with the mobile moodle learning platform.

We started out rather basic, you can read about the first steps in this previous post. And now we are at the brink of releasing the code. Yes, I am not kidding, look at Mobile moodle's monthly newsletter here to see the excitement rising.

Just last week the great Peruvian/Belgian team (Luis Fucay, Beto Castillo Llaque and Carlos Kiyan, with Maria Zolfo and myself cheering on) released the amazing Mobile Moodle for iPhone development, which is currently being bug-tested to ensure we can deliver a (as good as) bug-free open source code for you all to use.
How did they do it? They got hold (after politely being given the permission) of the WPtouch for iPhone code by Dale Mugford of Bravenewcode. They started exchanging notes on the mobile moodle forum and only in an amazing 1 (one!) month of developing, they managed to get this amazing code going.

So keep in touch, tweet it, say it, media it.... and we will soon be releasing the complete codes for you to transform to your own needs.

Oh, this feels so exciting!

This is the more formal part:

The Institute of Tropical Medicine Alexander von Humboldt (IMTAvH) in Lima and the Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM) in Antwerp developed an educational mobile application allowing access to the latest medical information for continuing medical education (CME) of physicians working in HIV/AIDS care in remote locations in Peru.

The didactic material consists of 3D animations simulating interactive clinical cases which are adapted to mobile devices. In this pilot phase ten Nokia N95 and ten iPhone equipped with a portable solar charger are used by physicians located in 20 urban and peripheral Peruvian HIV clinics.

Critical reading, module revision and suggested reading are distributed along with the clinical modules’ discussion, through mobile phones. The mobile educational platform, MLE Moodle is offered to support the learning events and tracking students’ progresses over time. The platform also functions as a forum for participants for peer-to-peer learning within a network of experts to assure content quality…

If you are interested to see the complete medical logic behind the application, feel free to look at this slideshare of the project:

mLearning Tibotec project presented at eLearning Africa in Dakar Senegal

View more presentations from ignatia.

Join the CCK09 course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge

Straight from George Siemens and Stephen Downes' CCK09 post (sorry for copy paste, but on vacation so a bit relaxed and lazy :-)


George Siemens and Stephen Downes will co-facilitate the course. The support wiki for the course provides additional information in the coming weeks.

"Connectivism and Connective Knowledge 2009

Given the interest in the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course Stephen and I delivered in 2008, ’re pleased to announce an open version of the same course for fall of this year.

You can register to receive course information here. The course will be delivered in the same method as last year: content and conversations will be open. Learners that would like formal credit as part of the Certificate in Emerging Technologies for Learning can enroll through University of Manitoba’s Extended Education Faculty.

The course will begin on September 14, 2009.

If you were registered for The Daily last year, you will need to register again (the archives from last year are still available, but we are starting with a new subscriber base).

What will we be doing differently this year?

We will again open up the course so participants can take the course in any direction/space/mode that they find useful. Our goal is to provide a starting point for participants to build a distributed infrastructure for innovative conversations.

The content of the course will change somewhat, and we’ll bring in a new group of guest speakers.

Two areas of interest personally:

I would also like to see a greater focus on research. If you are interested in conducting research on the course, please contact us.

Given advancements in “messing with data”, I would love to see the the creative genius of people like Tony Hirst applied to producing innovative constellations of patterns of conversations.

Over the next few weeks, we will update the course site/wiki, schedule, and speakers list. Suggestions, as always, are welcome…"

Blogphilosophy: Ten reasons why sharing what you learn/research will add to your life's quality

A lot has been written on the ups and downs of open source software and movements and building on that philosophy, the topic of open source content in education (not umbiased I linked to 'old' - read March 2003 - comprehensive article on the topic by George Siemens and building on a discussion with Stephen Downes. I believe in open content sharing) . But fear for sharing keeps existing in the hearts of a lot of people.

This topic of sharing content rekindled because I attended a 'writers day' (basically a day in which you could choose to augment your writing skills). During the day many people raised the question "What if I send my manuscript/column/text to a publisher and that publisher gives the idea to another writer?" Many beginning writers seemed to be afraid that their work would be kidnapped. My friend replied to them: “as long as people think their idea is brilliant and they do not want to share it, they are no thread to me”, I can only agree.

So here are ten reasons why I think sharing is winning

Keeping your idea to yourself will kill it
Say you have a world changing idea, you do not know how to mold it into something useful, so you keep it to yourself hoping you will get the means to develop it one time or another. That idea will either be picked-up by someone else (ideas float through space, anyone can pick them up and develop them) or it will die. Nevertheless, it is a sad result.

Going for an idea will make you smarter
No matter if the new idea will work out, you will have learned a lot anyway. Ideas can look fantastic, but trying to develop them can be a painstaking process that has some result at best (ideas are not always useful – unfortunately). How do you know an idea has potential? By either relentlessly going for it because you belief in it (think Edison) or by discussing it to an amazing extend with people who’s views you value (think Plato). Afraid your partners in the discussion will run away with your ideas? Stay cool, just say to yourself “Who is mad enough to belief in it as much as I do?”

No one is brilliant
No one person is brilliant. No one has ever been brilliant, not even the greatest minds (Newton, Marie Currie…). They all build on the knowledge of others. Of course they were great minds, but it was not the idea that was going to make them cross into a new scientific frontier, it was their analytical thinking, there vision. And a vision never just floats in space, it is built on past ideas, simple things your mind is superimposing on.

Great ideas arise all over the world
If an idea comes into your head, you can bet you are not alone with the idea. Both Steven Jobs and Bill Gates saw a niche, but the one with the best (diverse) network won the (economic) race.

Informal learning is on the rise, for this you need to share
Locking content behind doors prevents people from informal learning or increasing their personal learning space. If your network is deprived of knowledge, your network and yourself will loose out.

Let go of your ego for the better good: give your too difficult idea a chance to live
You might have a great idea, but no means to go for it. You either post your idea, send it out into the world or you try and find like-minded people that might be able to help you. Nevertheless sharing will give extra energy to the idea and its development. As Blanche Dubois said in ‘A streetcar named Desire’ “You can always rely on the kindness of strangers” and I like that thought.

Sharing ideas is like sharing peace and energy
Looking at ways to fuel positive brain functions seems to me much more interesting than promoting the idea of improving. Sharing ideas is like building good karma, giving is good.
Even if some of your ideas get taken: let go of that frustration. If you are indeed a creative mind, more ideas will come. No matter what age, where you live, … your time will come.

Sharing knowledge is what brought humanity to where it is today
Networking, discussing, sharing and non-sharing build our history and made scientific evolution possible (or not depending on the era). I wrote on some of the ethical issues of sharing a couple of months ago during the CCK08.

A brain likes to play, so do not stop it
If you keep an idea and protect if from others, your brain will most probably not be that thrilled. A brain likes to think, likes to share. So if you keep your knowledge closed up, why should your brain search for a new thrilling idea? It's like kids, if you stop creativity, they just stop all together and become passive. For me I need to feel the playfullness of my brain, it keeps me happy.

So I share my ideas gladly with anyone and I like to pick-up other ideas as I go along. Feel free to add additional benefits of sharing ideas and knowledge.

And to top it off... the tenth reason: it even gives you an advantage over your competitors says Jason Fried of 37 signals.

Blogphilosophy: does the international eLearning we provide make the world a poorer place?

Jonathan Gosier who currently lives in Kampala, Uganda has just published a post on singularities of globalization and convergeance.

In his post he says that "Increasingly, people the world over share the same cultural moments. The Presidential Inauguration of U.S.A. President Barrack Obama on Tuesday was among the top events witnessed by more eyes on this planet than ANYTHING ever…in all of human history. This is not only due to the increasing number of methods available to consume media (the Web, Satellite TV, Digital TV, Mobiles etc.) but due to increasingly global nature of everything about us."

I agree with him that the USA is taking over once again. Although I am in favor of the president shift towards Obama, I do feel it is strange - and at the same time very meaningful - that a formality as an inauguration is headline news across the world. I cannot help but think that with Obama the US supremacy in the new world order has become clearer. In my opinion the supremacy of one nation (whatever nation it is or however it is called) is a loss for human diversity, human creativity and human knowledge creation. Do not get me wrong I love the creativity of Americans and their culture, but I also love other cultures and their creativity. This dichotomy in my thinking sometimes gets the better of me when I am asked to be involved in setting up eLearning projects in South countries.

With introducing eLearning in regions that are increasingly investing in technology I tend to feel a bit awkward. Promoting education for all is of course without doubt a good thing. But when that education is not constructed locally or with locally build technology, it makes learners and/or learner providers dependant on outside manufacturers, non-local educational methods and knowledge. For instance, if I am building a course I use software's, although I try to use the open source softwares as much as possible, I am sometimes seduced to working with commercial software for some reason I find valid at that time. So by delivering that type of eLearning courses, I am promoting indirectly the softwares (and supposed necessary connectivity) it needs to be viewed. The methodology used in these courses is also pushed, although other regions might benefit from their long lasting educational methods. By offering courses, regions might be seduced in getting the equipment necessary to follow these courses, so they buy technology that is in most cases sold from other - more dominant - regions. The same with the content. If content or one type of knowledge is pushed, don't we risk losing other valuable knowledge? In certain areas they use medicines from local plants, but if knowledge is pushed that disregards those local medicine techniques, they risk to be lost (just because the pushy knowledge people did not pick that specific knowledge up).
So although I want to promote knowledge, critical thinking, ... I indirectly help big companies from the north to sell their products to the south. So in a way I help to promote a monoculture. And monocultures are bound to fail in the longrun, because it is diversity that keeps all of us fresh and evolving rapidly.

If enabling learning is not a participatory process in which a diversity of methodologies, knowledge, personal insights can be exchanged and build upon, we risk losing the knowledge that is out there, yet not (fully) accounted for. That is one of the reasons why I am a promotor of participatory learning techniques. Nevertheless this doubt of whether or not I am doing the right thing keeps on popping up.

Thankfully I learn a lot from my colleagues in other regions. They come up with great solutions, find new hardware and software solutions that ease my mind, but still. Do we all need to learn the same things in the same world and consume the same things and as such disregard diversity? Is one culture a good solution for us all?

(Cartoon by Nick D Kim, nearingzero.net.)

Open and Free Seminar: Open Educational Resources: January 19 - February 8, 2009

This seminar is part of the free educational seminars that are organized by ScoPE, a Canadian resource with seminars on all kinds of distance education topics.

This seminar interests me because it will focus on open educational resources which is a topic that is both supporting education for all, as well as dubious if you consider that the most techy regions can publish much more material, hence push (inadvertadly) their regions agenda.

It is my believe (well, along with a lot of others out there :-) that online learning is opening up the traditional educational system and creates new spaces in which different cultural groups can explore their own educational methodologies and especially build their own content. This will in its turn deliver insights in different topics with a variety in content delivery methods that can be used by all at suitable moments in their life or professional sphere.

From the scope website:
Title of the seminar: Open Educational Resources: January 19 - February 8, 2009
Facilitator: Scott Leslie
The availability of Open Educational Resources is increasing almost daily. High quality learning materials from reputable institutions are available in many disciplines for both instructors to reuse or student self-study.

This seminar will explore ways to find resources, issues with creating and licensing them, and techniques for starting to share, both institutional projects and personally.

The seminar will be led by Scott Leslie. Scott manages the BCcampus Shareable Online Learning Resources service, the Freelearning.ca site, and is deeply involved with open content and personal learning.

Live Session
This seminar will kick off January 19 with a live session via Elluminate at 19:00 GMT, 11:00 a.m. PST (see world clock)

We are gathering our resources into a Wiki.

(Cartoon by Nick D Kim, nearingzero.net.)

CCK08 Free and reliable open source software for YOU and all of us

Connecting to others, is enabled by open source software. So this is not a blogpost on theory, but on practicalities of connectivism reality. The open source community celebrated Software Freedom Day on 20 September.

"Transparency is key in enabling people to participate in the creation of wealth and well-being in society. In the past decade, free and open source software (FOSS) has become one of the major catalysts in increasing transparency by lowering the barrier to access the best software technologies. Software Freedom Day (SFD) celebrates this important role of FOSS in making this change happen globally."

If you are interested, this is the list of open software that has proven to be strong and useful (with a short description as offered by the developers themselves):

Categories:

• Graphical software
• Multimedia
• Supporting software
• Internet
• Office
• Relaxation

Graphical software
Blender: Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU General Public License. They even have conferences and trainings for all interested.

Gimp: GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package (to manipulate your picture quality etcetera)

Inkscape: An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

KompoZer: KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing.
KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding.

Paint.Net: Paint.NET is free image and photo editing software for computers that run Windows. It features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools. An active and growing online community provides friendly help, tutorials, and plugins.

Scribus: Open Source Desktop publishing. Scribus is an open-source program that brings award-winning professional page layout to Linux/Unix, MacOS X, OS/2 and Windows desktops with a combination of "press-ready" output and new approaches to page layout. Underneath the modern and user friendly interface, Scribus supports professional publishing features, such as CMYK color, separations, ICC color management and versatile PDF creation.














Multimedia
Audacity: Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. Learn more about Audacity... Also check our Wiki and Forum for more information.

Avidemux: Avidemux is a free video editor designed for simple cutting, filtering and encoding tasks. It supports many file types, including AVI, DVD compatible MPEG files, MP4 and ASF, using a variety of codecs. Tasks can be automated using projects, job queue and powerful scripting capabilities.

BonkEnc: BonkEnc is a CD ripper, audio encoder and converter for various formats. It can produce MP3, MP4/M4A, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, Bonk and FLAC files. BonkEnc makes it easy to convert your audio CDs to MP3 or Ogg Vorbis files which you can use in your hardware player or with your favorite audio software. The program supports the CDDB/freedb online CD database and CDText and automatically writes song information to ID3V2 or Vorbis comment tags.

MediaCoder: MediaCoder is a free universal batch media transcoder, which nicely integrates most popular audio/video codecs and tools into an all-in-one solution. With a flexible and extendable architecture, new codecs and tools are added in constantly as well as supports for new devices. MediaCoder intends to be the swiss army knife for media transcoding in all time and at this moment, it already has millions of users from 170+ countries all over the planet.

MediaPortal: MediaPortal is an Open Source application ideal for turning your PC / TV into a very advanced Media Center. MediaPortal allows you to listen to your favorite music & radio, watch and store your videos and DVDs, view, schedule and record live TV as a digital video recorder and much much more. You get MediaPortal as Open Source software. This means you can help in developing MediaPortal or tweak it for your own needs with lots of innovating plugins from our great community.

Miro: Miro is a free application for channels of internet video (also known as 'video podcasts and video rss). Miro is designed to be easy to use and to give you an elegant fullscreen viewing experience.

MusikCube: musikCube is an mp3 player for themodern generation. It helps you just listen to what you want to hear, while offering innovative features not seen elsewhere. For the technical user, musikCube is based on an embedded SQL database engine known as sqlite. For the non technical user, that means its fast.

VLC: VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.













Supporting software
7zip: 7-Zip is a file archiver with a high compression ratio.

Abakt: Free backup software, providing advanced filtering and command line options.

ClamWin: ClamWin is a Free Antivirus program for Microsoft Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/2003 and Vista. ClamWin Free Antivirus comes with an easy installer and open source code. You may download and use it absolutely free of charge.

GTK+: GTK+ is a highly usable, feature rich toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces which boasts cross platform compatibility and an easy to use API.

InfraRecorder: InfraRecorder is a free CD/DVD burning solution for Microsoft Windows. It offers a wide range of powerful features; all through an easy to use application interface and Windows Explorer integration.

Launchy: Launchy is a free windows and linux utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. Launchy indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes.

Peazip: PeaZip is a free, open source file and archive manager. PeaZip is cross platform, available as portable and installable software for 32 and 64 bit Windows (9x, 2000, XP, Vista) and Linux (PeaZip is a desktop neutral application).

PuTTY Tray: PuTTY is a free implementation of Telnet and SSH for Win32 and Unix platforms, along with an xterm terminal emulator.

TightVNC: TightVNC is a free remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software. With TightVNC, you can see the desktop of a remote machine and control it with your local mouse and keyboard, just like you would do it sitting in the front of that computer.

TrueCrypt: Free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP, Mac OS X, and Linux.











Internet
aMSN: aMSN is a free open source MSN Messenger clone, with features such as:

• Offline Messaging
• Voice Clips
• Display pictures
• Custom emoticons
• Multi-language support (around 40 languages currently supported)
• Webcam support
• Sign in to more than one account at once
• Full-speed File transfers
• Group support
• Normal, and animated emoticons with sounds
• Chat logs
• Timestamping
• Event alarms
• Conferencing support
• Tabbed chat windows

Azureus/Vuze: Peer-to-peer sharing content. Publish and monetize your high-quality content on Vuze. Reach our global community of viewers.

FileZilla: the free FTP solution. Both a client and a server are available. FileZilla is open source software distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License

Juice: Want to listen to internet audio programs but can't when they are scheduled? This program lets you create your own custom online audio anytime, anywhere. Really.

Mozilla Firefox: great web browser.

Mozilla Thunderbird: fluent e-mail client.

Pidgin: Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.

RSSOwl: a newreader for everyone. Applications that collect data from RSS-compliant sites are called RSS readers or "aggregators." RSSOwl is such an application. RSSOwl lets you gather, organize, update, and store information from any compliant source in a convenient, easy to use interface, save selected information in various formats for offline viewing and sharing, and much more. It's easy to configure, available in many many languages and the best of all: It's platform-independent.

WengoPhone: OpenWengo is a community of enthusiasts and developers, creating free software products related to communication over IP. The flagship product of the OpenWengo project is a softphone which allows you to make free PC to PC video and voice calls, and to integrate all your IM contacts in one place.
















Office

GnuCash:GnuCash is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Designed to be easy to use, yet powerful and flexible, GnuCash allows you to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. As quick and intuitive to use as a checkbook register, it is based on professional accounting principles to ensure balanced books and accurate reports.

MoinMoin: MoinMoin is an advanced, easy to use and extensible WikiEngine with a large community of users. Said in a few words, it is about collaboration on easily editable web pages. MoinMoin is Free Software licensed under the GPL.

Mozilla Sunbird: Mozilla Sunbird® is a cross-platform calendar application, built upon Mozilla Toolkit. Our goal is to provide you with full-featured and easy to use calendar application that you can use around the world.

Notepad2: a fast and light-weight Notepad-like text editor with syntax highlighting. This program can be run out of the box without installation, and does not touch your system's registry.

OpenOffice.org: is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It is available in many languages and works on all common computers. It stores all your data in an international open standard format and can also read and write files from other common office software packages. It can be downloaded and used completely free of charge for any purpose.

PDFcreator: PDFCreator easily creates PDFs from any Windows program. Use it like a printer in Word, StarCalc or any other Windows application.

PortableApps.com: Convenient:Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.
Open:PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It's open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use.
Free:The PortableApps.com Suite and Platform is free. It contains no spyware. There are no advertisements. It isn't a limited or trial version. There is no additional hardware or software to buy. You don't even have to give out your email address. It's 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share.












Relaxation
Celestia: The free space simulation that lets you explore our universe in three dimensions. Celestia runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. (Really COOL!)

NasaWorldWind: World Wind lets you zoom from satellite altitude into any place on Earth. Leveraging Landsat satellite imagery and Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data, World Wind lets you experience Earth terrain in visually rich 3D, just as if you were really there.

Stellarium: Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

Workrave: keeping you healthy by decreasing Repititive Strain Injury.


I do not use all of them (yet), but I already use some and the one's I use I feel very comfortable with. Feel free to add free open source software that you work with!

Join Stephen Downes and George Siemens in a MASSIVE online course

"Connectivism and Connective knowledge: The Furture of Education and Training" is starting on 7 September 2008 and will be running for approx. 3 months. So spread the word and if you have the time (of course you have), join!

This course will be a MOOG (Massive Open Online Course) and it will look at:
- What will education and training look like in thefuture?
- How must we equip ourselves to serve learners in the next decade?...
The formal course description also mentions a variety of new learning tools that will be used in this course. The course will be delivered fully online in a combination of synchronous and asynchronous formats. For a more extensive idea on the concept of the course, you can visit the course blog.

Registration is free (if you do not follow this course for creditation), but you must register which you can do here.

Maybe you want to know a little more before diving in? Just listen to Edtechtalk 81 and Edtechtalk 82 in which four of the facilitators (Alec Couros, George Siemens, Stephen Downes and Leigh Blackall) on how the connectivism course will be taught.

So prepare to get twelve weeks of intens learning spread out to you and build by you. If you publish anything about it, this is the tag CCK08.

Weekly Topics & Schedule (copied from the Connectivism - LTCWiki):

• Week 1: (September 7-13) What is Connectivism?
• Week 2: (September 14-20) Rethinking epistemology: Connective knowledge
• Week 3: (September 21-27) Properties of Networks
• Week 4: (September 28-October 4) History of networked learning
• Week 5: (October 5-11) Connectives and Collectives: Distinctions between networks and groups
• Week 6: (October 12-18) Complexity, Chaos and Research
• Week 7: (October 18-25) Instructional design and connectivism
• Week 8: (October 26-November 1) Power, control, validity, and authority in distributed environments
• Week 9: (November 2-8) What becomes of the teacher? New roles for educators
• Week 10: (November 9-15) Openness: social change and future directions
• Week 11: (November 16-22) Systemic change: How do institutions respond?
• Week 12: (November 23-29) The Future of Connectivism

25 free eLearning tools + person in the picture: Jane Hart

In my quest to realize a Star Trek-ian society within my lifetime I wish to promote free tools, eLearning tools at that. One of the great recent repositories is Jane Hart’s Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies. Everyone could build a repository with free eLearning tools, but she did it by distilling the top 100 tools that were provided to her by expert eLearning colleagues from all around the world. While surfing to her list, you get a nice bonus: each tool has a small tutorial linked to it. Nice.

The top 10 free tools lists Firefox, delicious, Google reader, Gmail, skype, Google calendar, Google docs, slideshare, flickr and voicethread.

Just take a look at her complete list and see which ones you use or ask a couple of your colleagues if they are using any. For me I use 17 of those tools actively for my own use. I never counted the tools up until now and I am quite surprised that I use that many and a lot of them on a daily basis and I wonder how many tools I use all together.

Jane Hart does more then just deliver lists; she has a blog which serves knowledge in small pieces: Jane’s eLearning pick of the day, a very interesting set of posts that regularly give the reader an AHA feeling.

The list for free tools is great, the need for it is clear. However this got me thinking. Why is it that the most useful things most of the time stare us in the face, yet are not taken for granted to the point they could be? Jane Hart is a great eLearning professional because she pins down what is important and distributes it to anyone who is interested. Anyone could come up with a similar list, but she did it. To be honest I was a bit jealous because I thought I could have come up with such a list, certainly if I would ask around, but then … I did not. So I wonder if really great teachers are characterized by their power to see simple useful things, put them into context and distribute them in an easy understandable way.

Celtx a free and open source software for developing eLearning storyboards

If an eLearning course will be build with audiovisual aids, in most cases you will draw up or write a storyboard. The storyboard is useful to:

• make sure you cover all the learning objectives,
• test the continuity of the story/narrative you use to enlighten your learners
• keep the team of developers informed of their expected input and when their input is due.

Celtx is a great storyboard software. It just upgraded to their 1.0 version (cross platform and delivered in a lot of languages). This software is also useful if you want to construct a podcast which is in high need of a good narrative structure.

Writing or drawing up a storyboard can be difficult by itself, but by using software which enables you to break up the script into useful bits for the entire team, you will safe time for all. With Celtx you can add tags to different parts of the script or the use the break-up feature to allow you to do a ‘search’ later in the project. If you have finished the storyboard and you have added the different parts of the storyboard to their appropriate team members, you can set up a schedule that will allow all of your members to work on the project with a clear deadline.

Celtx is impressive software and free at that, under a CC license an amended version of the Mozilla Public License (the Celtx Public License) (Thanks Johnnie for pointing this out!). It was originally build as a screenwriters aid and I must say if you are a screenwriter or willing to become one this is definitely the software to use in your first (or Xth) script. The software uses basic computer skills and allows you to work with preformatted script definitions and aids.

Celtx has some web services as well. You can upload your project to their server and share your project with other (Celtx) members. The membership is free and it is the classic ‘registration’ process similar to other software’s (sign-up). Another useful web service is the snapshot; this allows you to keep several versions of your project. In order to access the web services you will have to download celtx first, after which you can sign up through the web services window in Celtx.

This software has a support community, a Celtx wiki with a lot of indepth information, a part which is called Project Central which showcases the media projects of Celtx users.

Nice, I like it. So if you like to grow above hierarchal, segmented, linear eLearning production, just look at this promo.

Open Educational Resources Declaration and info

Mark Surman got me focussed on Open Educational Resources (OER) again with his great post on the Cape Town Declaration. The Cape Town Open Education Declaration is document that will be posted on the WWW in the beginning of 2008 and which builds upon other Open Education evolutions such as Free & Open Source Software Portal from Unesco who put their ideas into open education from as early as 1984 onwards.

There are a lot of OER out there, just to list a few:
OER commons;
the European initiative SELF
the olcos project;
The MIT open courseware which I like a lot :-)
a great open source resource for software engineeering: AVOIR;

A great and more international initiative is RAFT, a Swiss initiative that provides distance continual medical education courses from French speaking developing countries to whoever wants to follow them. It is a really huge initiative that has been growing since 2003. The English paper on their research mention the great lessons learned. They also have a blog that keeps everyone updated on coming courses. I like this initiative because it is low resource, supported by a lot of developing countries and there specialists. It feels more grass roots because it comes straight out of the belly of the specialists, so ... I like this approach a lot!

To come back to the Cape Town declaration: I signed it although I have some remarks. I signed it because any idea that strengthens open courses appeals to me and will benefit all.

Nevertheless I hope that a lot of people will respond to the initiative and ask to open it up to more diversity and that they will act upon what the declaration preaches.

Remarks I had while reading the declaration (what I send to them as well with a few alterations):
Where is the diversity? I was surprised that the initiative did not include more diversity in the platform of people? Change only happens by the people, through the people. Why not use diversity as your trust in developing countries and as trust in the outcomes of true integrated exchange of knowledge. In my opinion you should have over 31% (threshold percentage) of people in the Cape Town Declaration committee from educators from different developing countries to ensure their demands and remarks and needs on Open Educational Courses get heard. For in my opinion especially developing countries will be able to benefit from this kind of approach, so their voice should at least be heard on a scale that has impact (more than 30%).

A second remark: why not open up the declaration to learners around the world to add their remarks to make it stronger? The fact that feedback is possible is already great, it would be nice if this feedback would be open as a public discussion forum.
This way the cape town declaration will act upon the very words they are writing down. Actions not words make a difference and offer trust to the people that are willing to stand behind those very principles.
Of course it will be difficult to sift through all the responses, but as the Swarm theory shows, the group is right so it is worth giving this a try.

And there is one thing that always makes me a bit uncomfortable: if there is a good idea that would benefit a lot of people, than why are names linked to that initiative in the same page as the initiative? You could add names, but not in the declaration itself, this just looks kind of ego-loving. Why not add knowledge to initiatives that are already addressing this issue.

Well, these are my reservations, but if you want more reservations you can read them here. After which one of the people who worked on the declaration replied on his blog. In both statements I found things I agreed and disagreed with. The fact that the discussion is going on emphasizes the strong need to make open educational resources a fact.

I hope more people will react upon this declaration and if you do, please let me know I love to think, discuss and learn.

reading up

after a great vacation, I start with reading up on things. First thing to scroll through: the open source convention of O'Reilly.

Next getting an agenda sketched out to look at all the things that need to be handled, reading all my e-mails (I really managed to leave my VL at home during my holiday).

10 Open Source Apps

This post says it all: 10 open source applications you can't live without. BTW: I really love audicity.

6C Learning Blog: The new RELOAD has arrived

6C Learning Blog: The new RELOAD has arrived

I am going to try this new open source software. Thanx Bert!