My first impressions of OmmWriter in video. You should watch the HD version in order to see the text.
Here is the text that I typed in the video with a few added links:
Via a Twitter message by D’Arcy Norman, my attention was drawn to OmmWriter.
Having installed it, I must say that I like this slick software because it just offers you to type text. No thrills, no bells and whistles. Simply text.
As keystrokes and background music are not my thing, I can turn them off. I can also change the frosty winter landscape to a simple white to see even less on the screen.
OmmWriter forces me to separate content from layout because there are no layout options. Usually, I play with headings, bullet point and pictures. It will be interesting to see if I get jumpy from not being able to do all that or if there are also instances when I don’t need to layout.
You can actually also use OmmWriter to create audio text art when you use the music and / or the pitches of the keystrokes to convey meaning.
Posted in: technology.
Tagged: awesome · video · writing
Clayton M. Christensen brings product improvement down to a simple statement in his presentation at the ECS National Forum on Education Policy: “Understanding the job rather than understanding the customer is the critical insight” (at about 8:30 min in the video).
His example is the buying of milk shakes. Collecting data on who buys milk shakes is not enough. A company also needs to understand why the people buy milk shakes at that particular time. In his example, people buy milk shakes before starting their long commute to have something to do while driving. Thus, the company would do good to bring the shake dispenser to the counter and equip it with a pre-paid swipe card system so that customers – who are in a hurry in the morning – can get their milk shake without having to wait in line. Customers who buy milk shakes in the afternoon will most likely have very different needs and thus the company needs to think about a different strategy to get them to buy more milk shakes.
via @ctscho
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Blip.tv video.
Posted in: technology.
Tagged: education · innovation
George Siemens presented today at LearnTrends 2009 on “Finding New Points of Balance”. In his presentation, which was attended by 120 participants on average, he employed a very nice online presenter technique. He offered (almost) empty slides encouraging participants to drop their ideas on them and thus engaging in the presentation more than just through the backchannel.
I had already seen that others had done this before. Recently, Dave Cormier wrote a good post on this method that he also tried for one of his presentations with great success entitled “Presenting with live slides“.
This technique is great to interact more with participants and to bring in their voice. Of course, one could use the backchannel or the audio chat. However, by putting everything on a slide, the contributions become part of the presentation visuals, and the presenter can use the ideas more easily than if he had to sift through the chat log which can move rather quickly with a large group.
The slides that George provided were filled quickly because he had approx. 120 other minds chiming in and bringing ideas forth.
In a way, this session showed that online conference sessions can be more engaging than f2f conference sessions because everybody can participate at any time by using the backchannel without interrupting the speaker. By offering a white slide for putting down ideas, people will do so actively and I had the feeling more willingly than in an auditorium where we would have had to raise our hands and shout our ideas to the podium where the speaker may not even have heard them. It was also suggested that the nature of the writing on the whiteboard assisted the involvement as it was anonymous.
One slide from George's slide deck on which we participants put down our ideas on the continuum of using online tools for learning.
Posted in: CCK09, conference.
Tagged: learntrends · presentation
Konami code in action on Facebook
The instructions are: “THE FACEBOOK TRICK: press up,up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Enter key, then right click then press up and down and magic circles will appear when you make a mouse click. the only way to get rid of them are to log off or refresh the page…IT WILL WORK! put this as your status if it works.”
It does work. I didn’t get it to work immediately because it gets a bit blurry after the right mouse click, but it works. I tried it in Firefox on a MBP.
One of my Facebook friends found the explanation in the Konami Code.
Posted in: fun.
Tagged: facebook · fun
The 3rd eLearning Charter Conference was held at the University of Luxembourg on 30 October 2009. We had decided to videotape the four presentations to allow the other members of the Charter Universities who could not be present to see them and also other interested parties. A result of this meeting was also that we set up a site to gather further discussions and resources.
I delivered the contribution of the University of Luxembourg with Charles Max and Bob Reuter as co-authors. Our presentation was entitled “Integrating Mahara as e-portfolio system and social network in the BScE”. The BScE is the Bachelor en Sciences de l’Education (Bachelor in Educational Sciences), a 4-year study program at the University of Luxembourg. A recording is available (may not show up in feed readers).
http://www.vimeo.com/7643698
Posted in: university.
Tagged: e-portfolio · presentation
