WikiKids

Just a quick note here. There is a great example of the use of a wiki in K12 education here in The Netherlands. It is called WikiKids (only in Dutch). They have taken the Mediawiki software and adapted it for use by kids. And now they are starting to create a online encyclopedia by and for kids. It is a great example of kids that work together with other kids, as well as with teachers.

Weblogs at Leiden University: are they succesfull?

After a few weeks of inactivity on this weblog (but not on my other weblogs! check Dutch Sakai, or Twente Open Source Standaarden), I thought I should revitalize it. And since this is the end of the year 2006, I sounded good to me to start with a little reflecting.

So I started with reading what I wrote about when I started this weblog (is that sentence correct?).

1. I wrote about TagCloud, back in July 2005. Well, TagCloud is sleeping right now. Very sad to see actually, that the initiators of a trend, cannot keep up. I hope they will be back.
2. I also wrote about clustering del.icio.us bookmarks. This service has also died.
3. Back then I also wrote about Elgg. They are still alive and kicking! Which is good. I really like Elgg.
4. And then something really interesting. I wrote about weblogs at Leiden University. At that time there were "(..) 8 staff and 5 students actively maintaining a weblog. There is one so-called 'onderwijsweblog' and 8 groupweblogs". And now, in December 2006, 17 months later? Well, check for yourself. I am counting 10 staff weblogs, (only) 8 students that maintain a weblog. And there are now 14 group weblogs. I would not call this a success! Do you? It might be that people use other platforms. Like Hyves, or MSN Spaces, or Blogger, or Wordpress. Well, actually I think that we would be finding lots more weblogs than on the 'official' platform.

For all my readers, I am wishing you Happy Holidays! See you in 2007!

Going to Atlanta!

atlantaoverview,
originally uploaded by wytze.

Next week I will be attending the 6th Sakai conference, which is being held in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). All details are on http://www.sakaiproject.org/conference. It will remain quiet on this weblog for a while, due to this visit (please expect me to be back around December 12, 2006)
For 'live' coverage of t he conference you should go to http://sakai-nl.blogspot.com

My blogprofile

blogprofile,
originally uploaded by wytze.

Lilia Efimova has a great weblog. She is working in The Netherlands, but she is "(..) Russian. So far I work in the Netherlands, but one day will go back. I like this "between two countries" dimension of my life: it gives richer perspective on everything I’m doing." Just take some time to fill in your own blogprofile at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2006/11/17.html. I found it rather straightforward. It is a great way to sort of evaluate your weblog and to give Lilia some input for her research.
Thankyou for Scott Wilson, for pointing to this.

Are there open educational resources (OER) at your institution?

David Wiley (from the US) has a very comprehensive website, including a weblog (ofcourse!) on open educational resources (or OER in short). His blog is called iterating toward openness. David compares the current situation of OER with a university website: "Can you imagine being asked to calculate the ROI of a university website? Can you imagine what your perception of a university that didn’t have a website would be? OER projects like OCWs have to rise to the status of “website” - they have to become absolutely core, I-can’t-imagine-a-university-without-one." So, in a few *10?* years time, we will not ask ourselves anymore why we need OER. We just offer them to the outside world! I really hope so.

Derek's Blog: Should all learning professionals be blogging?

Derek Wenmoth from New Zealand has pointed me (through Bloglines) to a very interesting post on blogging as a professional. The question is Should all learning professionals be blogging?: "The Learning Circuits Blog has posted a Big Question for October which is 'Should all learning professionals be blogging?'. "
I can only agree with the reasons he sums up. For example "it's helped me establish a discipline of recording some of the ideas, thoughts, references and tips that I come across in my daily work."
Just go to his weblog, and ask yourself why you don't have a weblog yet!

10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Website

I am certainly not the first to higlight this excellent weblog by a company called auinteractive, which is run by guy called Markus (that's all I get from his website/log). He sums up 10 Things That Will Make Or Break Your Website. Really some excellent stuff we all should be much more aware of! Most of the this top 10 is like reading the things that make up Web 2.0. For example: EASY is the most important feature of any website, web app, or program. (Make the website easy to use. Then make it easier.) or Open up your data as much possible.

Mashing up the OU UK

For several months I've been following a really really great weblog, which is called
OUseful Info. The author is Tony Hirst. As with my previous post in this weblog, Tony is very much into the newest social software stuff that is out there. I like this!
The last thing that Tony has tried out and documented on his weblog is Dapper. This seems like a very very powerful service to screenscrape almost every website in the world and let this transform into almost anything you would like: RSS, iCal, Google map, XML...
I am just blogging this, so that this is a sort of reminder that I should look into this further. And you? Are you gonna try it?

Google as Personal Learning Environment? Yes, why not!

I have sort of gotten into the habit of starting up Bloglines before anything else (well, sometimes i forget and start with my email client), when I arrive at my desk. Today was no exception. And I came across CogDogBlog » Barking » Google Home Tabs: "I’ve had the personalized Google home page set on all my browsers for a while, but just recently noticed that you can now add tabs to organize and spread out the different tools and feeds you can use".
So, Alan Levine was the first to remind me that Google is taking on the competition. Since Netvibes already has tabs for some time now, and Pageflakes also I believe, Google couldn't stay behind for a long time.
Anyway, what strikes me more and more is that these kind of tools very well can serve as a very decent Personal Learning Environment, combining all sorts and types of (web)services from around your campus and beyond.
I also spoke a little bit about this at my workshop "Dancing with services" during the seminar last Tuesday of the Dutch Digital University. See the slide.
References: PLE Blog at CETIS (UK), Wikipedia entry on PLE

Great name: LeMill

The last two weeks have been quite busy for me. Last week i was present at the very succesfull first European Sakai Days, that were organized at the Lubeck University of Applied Sciences in Germany. I delivered a workshop about issues that we should work on within Europe, regarding Sakai. Therefore this weblog was a bit neglected. But here we are again!
I've been following some Finnish developments lately. One very interesting concept has gone live a few weeks a go. It is called LeMill (which is neat name, I think).
From the FAQ on LeMill: "LeMill is a web community for finding, authoring and sharing learning resources. First at all, you can find learning resources. The stuff you find you can use in your own teaching or learning. You may also add your own learning content to LeMill. You may edit your content and combine out of the pieces some larger junks of learning materials. If you wish you might also join one of the groups producing or editing some learning content. In LeMill the content is always easily found where and when ever you need them."
This sounds to me like an interesting concept. You can export SCORM packages from LeMill, BTW. So far, the content is a little scarce, but let's see what happens in the near future.

Vacation

Will be back on August 29, 2006.

Two announcements

There are two upcoming events that I would like to promote here. They are both free of charge (except for your own time, but I really think this is worth your time!).
First of all I would like to point you to the first-ever European Sakai Days that will be held in Lübeck, Germany. This conference will feature a rich list of topics for those who already know what Sakai is. But you will also be catered for if you are not so much into Sakai, yet. Main language at this conference will be English.
The second conference that I would like to point you to is "Over de grenzen van de ELO "(featured speakers will do their stuff in English, but the rest of the conference will be mainly in Dutch), which will be held in Utrecht. There we are expecting some very interesting presentations by Scott Wilson on Personal Learning Environments and from Misja Hoebe on Elgg (or maybe OpenAcademic?). Oh, that is not all. We also will have Charles Severance, Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation.

Derek' Wenmoth: People Aggregator

Derek's Blog: People Aggregator: "New forms of social networking services are coming thick and fast at the moment - and here's another, PeopleAggregator . PeopleAggregator is the product of 3 years of self funded work by developer Mark Canter."
So, because i read a weblog by someone in New Zealand (yeah, the world is flat!) i was pointed to a new social software tool. It sounds very promising indeed: "The PeopleAggregator is a feature rich, personal publishing oriented system. This is the hub social network you’ve been waiting for. Find out what its all about, what standards we support and how we can help you mesh yourself into the distributed Live Web."(from their website)
To be honest, I had seen it appear before in the blogosphere, and have tried to understand the purpose of it. I am stil not sure what it is, can be or should be. Might be because i find the user interface a bit overwhelming and daunting. See for yourself!

SamenvattingenWIKI

Social software at work, could have been the title of this post. I think that I pointed you to our campuswiki (that is entirely maintained by students on a voluntary basis) a few months ago.
But now I found an even greater example of the power of social software for educational purposes. This is called the SamenvattingenWIKI, where students can upload exams for all courses that we have on our campus. A small Dutch quote from the wiki: "Op deze WIKI kun je handige vakinformatie vinden van vakken die op Universiteit Twente worden gegeven. Hier worden o.a. tentamens met uitwerkingen, samenvattingen, oefenopdrachten en nog veel meer opgeslagen. Heb je nieuwe informatie, voeg deze toe. "

Why Personal Learning Environments?

There already has been quite an extensive online discussion (debate?) on a great post by Graham Attwell that really is worth a read. At least you should read the article on Personal Learning Environments (PLE) that he published a few weeks ago: "This paper will not answer all (..) questions. Instead it seeks to explain why the idea of the PLE is so appealing and what are the social and educational ideas which underpin the concept of the PLE. Secondly it will look at some of the issues that need to be resolved in a little more detail. Thirdly it will suggest some of the principles which should underpin PLE development and implementation and finally suggest what further developmental activities might be undertaken."
I personally see a strong connection between this PLE-debate and the kids of the net generation that will be flocking our campuses shortly. On this new generation of students enough has been said and published. Prof. dr. Wim Veen recently has taken this one step further by translating this to needed changes in education: "In het onderwijs hebben we de laatste twee decennia gedacht dat ICT een handig hulpmiddel was. Nu gaan we ontdekken dat we de invloed van ICT hebben onderschat. De gevolgen reiken verder dan we dachten." Read the complete story (in Dutch).

Stephen Downes on Flickr

Stephen Downes is back from hiatus for some time already. Always great to read his weblog (or even better: his RSS feed in my Bloglines account).
Stephen writes about what is happening with Flickr. The fact is that they are getting more and more into the Yahoo way of doing things: "So typical. A small company (Flickr) is bought by a large company (Yahoo!) and becomes coarse, unreasonable and insensitive (...) This sort of problem is the big question mark I see in hosted services - and hence, a lot of the approaches that typify what people think of as Web 2.0." Again, Stephen is exactly right on an important issue. Time will tell....
Actually, I must say that I am still a happy user of Flickr, as well as del.icio.us and Bloglines (all 3 of them are not indepedent anymore, right?). Oh yeah, and some more 'free' Web 2.0 services that I am quite happy using are Google Calender, Netvibes, Pageflakes, Feedburner, Suprglu and 30boxes, to name a few.

Croquet on the move

On the excellent eHub site by Emily Chang I just found out that they recently have added Croquet in their listings, which is cool: "Croquet - A new open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative multi-user online applications. It features a network architecture that supports communication, collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation among multiple users. "
I saw Croquet in action at the last annual Educause conference and I was impressed. There is a Dutch article available on Croquet, in case you are interested.

Netgen en E-merge Consortium

Here we are again! I had a great time in Vancouver, where I met a lot of interesting people. Reports of the presentations that I visited can be found on the other weblog, http://sakai-nl.blogspot.com. One thing that really inspired me was a talk by Charles "Chuck" Severance, who was appointed Executive Director at the conference. Together with Andreas Wittke we made quite some progress in the programme of the 1st European Sakai Day which be held in Lubeck next September. Chuck will deliver a talk there!
Getting back to the business of this weblog: I just found a very readable report (in Dutch) by the E-merge Consortium in which they connect two trends that are visible in todays society, which are
(1) the new student, the netgen, makes integrated use of digital sources and devices and expects that education also works that way; and
(2) employers expect from their employees that they have an entrepeunerial attitude)
The authors, Wim Veen and Fieke Roozen, argue that the HE should act on those two developments. They describe examples of use of ICT that are in line with these developments.
The full report.

Next stop: Vancouver

This week I will be one of the many people visiting the 5th Sakai Conference. So keep your eyes on the other weblog, where short reviews will appear (if all goes well).

Google jockey

Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~: "This is a neat idea I hadn't run across before. 'A Google jockey is a participant in a presentation or class who surfs the Internet for terms, ideas, Web sites, or resources mentioned by the presenter or related to the topic."
Stephen points to a great resource on the Educause website (they have more!). I would like to call this Web 2.0 in the classroom or something.

Web 2.1 is here ?!?!

If you want to have a laugh (sort of) on what Web 2.0 could become, some sort of overhyped phenomenon, then read This is not your older brother's Interweb!: "What the hell is Web 2.1 RC 1 ?" Very funny post, great to read when you are doing your Friday afternoon boring stuff to close the week...

Web 2.0 Awards: again!

I guess that Web 2.0 awards are awarded as much as there are pragmatists that are jumping on the bandwagon of "Web 2.0". Anyway, i just found another roundup of awards for the newest and the coolest services to be found on the web.
There are some surprises (at least for me): e.g. Hipcal for the "Personal Organization" (and 30Boxes not even in the top3) category or Stumbleupon for "Social tagging" (and del.icio.us only rated 3rd). Check it all out at SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards.

Wanna take notes online?

I found this great list of notetaking services on the weblog of Solution Watch aka Brian Benzinger. Fifty Ways to Take Notes » Solution Watch: "So I started thinking about all the services I’ve used for taking notes and thought it would be a good idea to share them with you and while I’m at it, to make a list of any others that I find."
Great resource! Thanks for sharing, Brian.

Willem Karssenberg: A Really Simple Service Bus

Just a quick reference to TrendMatcher tussen ICT en Onderwijs: A Really Simple Service Bus: "Verder klikken brengt je bij een formulier waarop je je e-mail adres kunt achterlaten. Dat schiet dus niet op! Even Googlen (ja, dat doe ik met een hoofdletter!) brengt je gelukkig wel verder, namelijk gewoon naar de rest van de site die achter dezelfde URL zit: http://www.rssbus.com/prebeta.aspx
Daar wordt toch wel een zeer veelbelovend concept uitgelegd! Wie noemt zich developer, heeft het weekend wat tijd over en wil eens wat stoeien met het programma dat ter download wordt aangeboden?"
A service bus is what we need, at least in the world where we talk Service Oriented Architecture. This is what the site itself says: "RSSBus is a Service Bus - but a Really Simple one, with RSS as the main interchange mechanism. No one can deny the tremendous success and popularity of RSS as a tool for information exchange. ESB is also about information exchange and if you carefully read the definition above and are familiar with RSS and World Wide Web concepts in general, you will see connection points between the concepts: RSS and ESB."

30 Boxes or Google Calender?

Well, I dunno if this is really social software.... But Google Calender is software that makes use of all sorts of innovative software technologies, so for me that sort of qualifies. Really nice! I have just started to explore. Importing an *.ics file is a breeze. Adding public holidays is easy, they can be added with one (or two?) clicks. Adding an event is so easy. This works really good. I have made my calender public, so it should be searchable for everyone also. Let's see how that works... I have only put some public appearances and conferences in my Google Calender yet.
I haven't found the feature where i can publish my Google Calender to a specific URL, which can be done at 30 Boxes. Here's my calender on 30 Boxes. 30 Boxes also features a RSS feed, that is quite handy. Oh, talking about that: that's exactly what RSSCalender does, which was featured here before.
So, in conclusion: I haven't decided yet which one is the winner for me. I will let you know which online calender I prefer, when I am ready exploring.

Choose your feed reader!

I use Bloglines as my tool to keep uptodate on the news, but there are other webbased feedreaders. A complete overview and review can be found at TechCrunch » The State of Online Feed Readers: "A feed reader, the most common solution to consuming synidcated content, saves the user time by monitoring countless sites and sources and providing near real-time updates to one location."
Go read for yourself!

A day at the office

08.39: Arrival at the University of Twente. Bad news travels fast: we have no internet connection!
08.48: I am quite happy: all my documents are still available to me, since I have them synchronized to my local hard disk every time I log off.
09.02: I have cleaned all my temporary files and documents on my hard disk. That really feels good. Let’s do some more cleaning up!
09.04: The coffeemachine is still working...
09.18: Time to do some more thorough cleaning: AdAware and CCleaner do their job mostly unattended
09.31: I do some work on the agenda for an upcoming seminar that we will organize on the subject of Service Oriented Architecture and what this will mean for education. This will be on June 7, 2006….
09.39: I have wiped even more stuff from my local hard disk
09.43: Ok, no my desk needs some cleaning (well actually the drawers in my desk). I speak to some other colleagues who also finally find the time to clean up.
09.50. A colleague ask me to provide him with a Word-document that I had sent him via email yesterday. A USB stick is our means of transport for this.
09.58: Yes, it is working again (you are reading this, aren’t you)

del.icio.us/wytze/elearning20

I am a huge fan of del.icio.us! I just am.
So far I have collected quite a few links over there. It is just so easy to bookmark now, especially with the Firefox extension. The things that for me have to do with what elearning 2.0 is or should be, are also (ofcourse!) on my del.icio.us account. Just go to del.icio.us/wytze/elearning20 to find out what i have collected so far.
And start using del.icio.us.... It is really very handy.

Things that we need in an LMS

Elliott Masie has a great piece on things that a LMS should be able to do: Making Your LMS Dance. One nice sentence in this piece: "LMS, I want you to integrate into our social networking systems. Sometimes, the source of knowledge is not a class but a conversation with a colleague down the hall."
Thanking http://www.elearnspace.org/blog for the pointer.

Public Libraries could promote Open Source

I just found a very nice article that shares some great ideas on how a (public) library could promote open source, and by doing that could stay ahead of budget cuts. It was published in the blog OpenOffice.org Training, Tips, and Ideas: Public Libraries, Open Source, and World Domination: "So needless to say, it's a good idea to think about how libraries can adapt and grow and become the kind of thing you'd never cut the budget for. (..) As mentioned, libraries aren't just books but a place to go and use the computer. (..) Libraries already are associated with free computer use. So let's take that and go nuts with it."

Kom naar het grote ELO spel

Kom naar het grote ELO spel,
originally uploaded by wytze.

Nog een paar dagen. De repetities zijn in volle gang. De koelkasten worden gevuld. De kostuums worden doorgepast. Het geluid en het licht worden nog eens gecheckt. De stoelen worden ontdaan van kauwgum onder de zittingen.

Margreet van den Berg: Great weblog!

I am a regular reader of some very interesting weblogs on elearning and such. Some of them are in Dutch (check http:/www.bloglines.com/public/wytze for all that I try to read, in Dutch and English). To name a few webloggers that I like: Melle de Vries (recently discovered, very nice), Patrick Klaassen, Michiel Duyvestein and Wilfred Rubens. But today I want to point especially to Margreet van den Berg: "Veel leerlingen (en ook docenten) hebben er moeite mee om een goede bronnenlijst te maken. En het is ook niet makkelijk: voor elk medium zijn er andere regels: wat noteer je van een bron, en hoe schrijf je dat op? Er is nu een heel makkelijk instrument daarvoor te vinden op het web: EasyBib."
And EasyBib is very Web 2.0! I know what a timeconsuming task the creation of references can be. So this is a very nice a tool for all those educators and students. Go ahead, and try it!

Group chat: Campfire

From the 37signals team, that has some great web 2.0 products on the "shelf" (you can't really say that, can you, of web 2.0?), there's is some great news for lovers of free, but still-very-useful-even-in-business-environments, software. It is called Campfire. I haven't tried it yet... but this seems very promising. The totally-free-for-life version, allows up to 5 persons simultaneously.
In their own words: "Campfire lets you set up secure, password-protected web-based chat rooms in just seconds. Invite a client, a colleague, or a vendor to a chat. Set up a room on your intranet for internal communications. Conduct meetings with people around the world. The uses are plentiful. Up to 60 people can chat at once. You can even browse previous chats by person, room, or date. No special software required — a web browser is all you need."
Can we tie it in in Sakai maybe?

Software wordt sociaal

For those Dutchies out there, who want a very readable and understandable introduction tot Web 2.0, I highly recommend the online Magazine B R I G H T. They have a feature on this subject, which was published way back (!?) in December 2005.
So, check B R I G H T :: 06 :: Web 2.0: Software wordt sociaal: "‘The network is the computer’, luidt een oude slogan van servermaker Sun. Wat toen een voorspelling was, lijkt inmiddels een feit. We zijn er nog niet, maar de revolutie is volop aan de gang. Webdiensten vervangen computersoftware, mensen organiseren en delen hun hele leven op vernieuwende sites en er hoeft straks geen programma meer aan te pas te komen. Behalve je browser dan."

WikiVille: tell them about your campus.

WikiVille: 21st Century students building a world-story of life in our home towns. It's time to unpack and move in to WikiVille!
Great idea by Will Richardson!
Sort of reminds me of what we have here on the University of Twente, the campuswiki (only in Dutch so far). This only gives you information on our campus and surroundings. But what a great idea to expand this worldwide. Hopefully it doesn't die soon...

Writely acquired by Google

I've been fiddling around a little bit with Writely, a real Web 2.0 app. It is basically an online wordprocessor with a lot of nice features, such as public documents, and more authors for one document. The Writely Blog writes: Some of you have been worried about our future here at Writely. (..) Thankfully, your donations won't be necessary, for one very exciting reason: Writely is now part of Google!"

I am back!

CIMG0302,
originally uploaded by wytze.

I am back from a beautiful vacation in Sri Lanka! These were days well spent. I enjoyed beautiful weather, lots of fish for dinner, and some sunbathing. And the famous Lion Lager.
This picture was taken on the Galle Fort, in Sri Lanka. This couple is not hiding for the rain, they are hiding for the sun (and maybe for pricking photographers like me).

Vacation

I almost on my way to Sri Lanka. See you again in March....

Why interoperability is important

Interoperability: "Why Interoperability Matters to everyone involved"
I just came across this website by the Open group. It has some great content. Just read this piece on interoperability: it should matter to everyone. Not just the consumer (or buyer) of software and information, but also to the supplier!

Library 2.0

I just came across the weblog by David King, who writes:
"Has anyone seen this job ad? The job title is NextGen Librarian - wow. It could also be titled the "Library 2.0 Librarian," I think."
Just read it, and you will also see that the institution that posted this job, already responded publicly in the weblog by thanking for the free publicity. That's the way to go, Wayne State University!!!!
Anyone from the libraries here in the Netherlands even vaguely thinking of posting job ads like this?

On the internet as a gas filling station

I am regular reader of the weblog by Derek Morrison. Which is called Auricle: "For, at least the part of the world which is 'wired', we are fast reaching a point where we no longer need to visit physical spaces to acquire much of what we want or need. That, in turn, will change the nature of the physical spaces that are required and the roles/location of people who are required to support and service them. "
This last post I am quoting here is very interesting. It is not really on social software, but more on the way our wired world is changing. One more quote: "The internet as 'filling station' model is a world away from a total focus on the 'must be connected' Blackboard, WebCT et al view of e-learning". Please the entire post, highly recommended!

Underground learning: is it bad?

Through Niels Maes of Citowoz (thanks Niels!) I was reminded to pick up on George Siemens and his theory of connectivism. Siemens has started the Connectivism Blog. Just a quote to get you interested: "When educators fail to provide for the needs of learners (i.e. design learning in an LMS only), learners are able to 'go underground' to have their learning needs met."
What he means is that if Blackboard [fill in your own LMS or CMS here if you like] doesn't provide what the learners need, these learners will find their own solution to their problem. This is very very much recognizable! We should not wonder why they all use MSN, they have just gone underground. And we shouldn't be sorry per sé.

SurveyMonkey.com: Online survey software made easy!

SurveyMonkey.com : "SurveyMonkey is both a powerful solution and a tremendous value. Compare our prices to any of our competitors...you'll find that SurveyMonkey is tough to match!"
Ok, agree, this is not exactly social software, is it? But is, at least to me, a great example of where we are heading: software as a service for a monthly fee. And here, you can get a free basic subscription, where you are limited to a total of 10 questions and 100 responses per survey. For most needs, that seems to be enough.

Concept SURF-Meerjarenplan 2007/10 Doorpakken!

One more thing in Dutch, is that OK with you? The SURF Foundation has published her proposed plan for the coming years 2007 until 2010. SURF :: Concept SURF-Meerjarenplan 2007/10: "Het werkterrein van SURF is in de loop der jaren sterk verbreed. Dit komt ten dele door de nog steeds groeiende impact van ICT in het dagelijks leven. Maar het gevestigde en gegroeide vertrouwen van de samenwerkingspartners en de overheid in SURF als organisatie speelt eveneens een grote rol. Dit gegeven noopt niet tot een tevreden achteroverleunen, maar tot kritische beschouwing van de implicaties van die verbreding voor de komende planperiode."
SURF strongly recommends that we should think about service oriented architectures and really should work towards realising this vision. In the coming months the member institutions of Surf are invited to give feedback on the proposed plans. We will see what happens.
Update: strange thing is, not a word in these plans on social software or Web 2.0 or whatever. Therefore, I will put my review of the plan on my other weblog.

Web 2.0 in the making

For today, I just wanna point you to two shiny new services, in the real Web 2.0 spirit, that I recently joined for testing purposes. They both can be joined for free. Ofcourse always read their privacy policies if you also want to join:
1. Rojo: "Rojo means 'RSS with mojo' and in this spirit our company is dedicated to providing the best feed reader around so that busy people can discover and read content as efficiently as possible." This seems like Bloglines on steroids... maybe it is too fancy for me, although I like tags a lot, that is on del.icio.us en Flickr.com. There a lot of features!
2. Spongecell: "The new Spongecell online calendar (Innovation Partners' patent pending) features revolutionary ease of use for social networks - individual and groups - to plan an online calendar."This is a very nice and clean online calender, that you can share with friends. It also publishes to RSS if you want. I've been using RSScalender.com for some time now; dunno yet which one will eventually will be my winner. There are more competitors here, by the way. Just check them out at eHub.

Marijk van der Wende: Onderwijsinstellingen moeten zelf eigenaar worden van elo

Marijk van der Wende: Onderwijsinstellingen moeten zelf eigenaar worden van elo: "Een ho-instelling heeft allerlei systemen. Naast de elo bijvoorbeeld voor administratie van verschillende zaken zoals cijfers. Eigenlijk zijn dat allemaal kant-en-klare pakketten, waarvan de interoperabiliteit laag is."
Yes, this reference is not in English. But this is an interview on our current state of affairs regarding our VLE's (of CMS for those Americans): low interoperability and duplicate features in different systems! Prof van der Wende advises the institutions to get in control again and to let go of those commercial vendors that are trying to rule (y)our business.
Prof van der Wende was the chairwoman that advised our Executive Board on the way to go forward. See http://www.utwente.nl/elo for the advisory report (only in Dutch, we might do a translation in English, if needed).

Testing Writely

Ok, testing with Writely seems to work OK.
Have you tried it yet? Check Writely !

Ajax Office suites compared

Innerphaze » Blog Archive » Ajax Office Chart: "I thought it might be helpful to have a simple chart to summarize my Ajax Office review. " That's how Dan McCrea introduces a breed of Web 2.0 apps that sure might scare Microsoft... Well, maybe not.
But then again: if you don't want to spend your money on a license fee for Microsoft Office, then turn to these apps. Some of them are real competitors regarding features, and some of them have a very sleak interface (they should, they pretend to be Web 2.0!). But maybe more importantly: you can easily share documents, revisions, whatever through your webbrowser. All of the apps are basically free to use. Some might turn into services that will charge. Anyway: just try them out!
My next post I will try to do through Writely.

All things RSS (the complete story)

Alright, you sort of know what RSS is and maybe you use a feedreader to keep up with all those blogs, that spit out RSS feeds at ya.
But do you know what else you can do with RSS? Well, I just found out that there is a service that can convert your email into RSS. Isn't that cool?
A very nice list of what else you can do with RSS, can be found on a weblog by Rich Ziade. The title of his article is Basement.org: Taking RSS Beyond Headlines : Part One. He says: "I figured I'd list out all sorts of creative ways RSS can be used beyond news headlines and blogs."

Ning: create your own webapp

Ning | Home: Front Page: "Ning is the easiest way to create your own social web apps on the Internet today. And it's free!"
Is it really? I didn't try it out, yet... But maybe later.

BlinkList | Your personal start page and social bookmarking engine

Have I already mentioned here that i like Netvibes a lot? I mean a lot!!!
I just found one other, sort of competitor. It is called BlinkList: "'BlinkList is Social Bookmarking merged with People Powered Search and Expert Recommendations... all wrapped in an elegant interface'"

On blocking blogs... in Australia

Through the weblogs of some collegues on the other side of the world I keep current on issues regarding the fact that a lot of schools in Australasia are blocking all sorts of websites and weblogs. And we are not talking about China here, but about Australia!
I especially recommend Leigh Blackall and James Farmer if you are also interested in these issues. James recently started nonscholae.org: "nonscholae.org is a site devoted to the responsible use of blogs, instant messaging and other social software in schools.
We believe that these tools and resources should not be blocked or banned from schools."
A big round of applause for James for starting this initiative!!

Parkin's Lot: E-learning grows up

No, this is not one more nice piece on what e-learning 2.0 is. This is a very nice roundup by Godfrey Parkin about what really should make us change drastically the way we work. I just added his fine blog to my blogs on my Bloglines subscriptions. Check it out at http://www.bloglines.com/public/wytze

Parkin's Lot: E-learning grows up: "the life expectancy of any training course is rapidly shrinking at the same time as the costs of creating it may be growing. Informal social learning relies on rapidly crystallizing out of the distributed knowledge network just that which is needed by an individual to get the job done. Since the knowledge in the network is constantly updating itself, it is always relevant, always current, and always available."

Wanabo is a Free Tagging Service

Great stuff, that came to me through the famous eHub by Emily Chang. It is called Wanabo. I didn't try it out yet, though. Something for the weekend.... :-)
A quote:Wanabo "Wanabo helps you build an effective and alternative window into your site using tagging ». Its the easiest way to bring the power of folksonomies and the 2.0 Web to your online presence."

RSSCalendar.com - almost perfect

Happy New Year to everyone that reads this (I don't know who is reading this....)
I just stumbled on a very neat webapp. It is RSSCalendar.com : "Sharing your calendar with family, friends, and co-workers has never been easier. When you create a calendar event, an RSS Calendar Channel (or Feed) is automatically generated."
Yeah right, i thought.... but it really works very nicely. Just see the sidebar on this blog. There is a possibility to export to Outlook, which is nice. But I want it the other way around: to import my Outlook calender items to this calender.... Or I am wanting something that no one else wants?