Thursday, July 28, 2005

What's the use of weblogs in education?

Recently I reread the news on Edusite that one of our oldest universities in The Netherlands (The University of Leiden) has started to use weblogs for educational purposes. I will try to give a very short description in English of what is developing there (all text etc is in Dutch).
There is directory available of the weblogs in use there. At the moment there are 8 staff and 5 students actively maintaining a weblog. There is one so-called 'onderwijsweblog' and 8 groupweblogs.
The 'onderwijsblog' is the most interesting, by far. At least for me. You wanna know why? Because it is actually a weblog by a teacher, where he actually tells his students that what he is doing there is an emulation what otherwise he would have done in Blackboard. But he makes one clear distinction: i want to get rid of the rigid way in which Blackboard puts the teacher(s) in the driver's seat, and therefor i use this weblog is a perfect alternative! Read his explanation in Dutch if you like:Rino's Blog.
So, is this the beginning of the end of Blackboard at the University of Leiden?

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

del.icio.us direc.tor:

del.icio.us direc.tor: Delivering A High-Performance AJAX Web Service Broker :: Johnvey: a tool to navigate through your tags in a slightly different way. Just try it out.

Monday, July 25, 2005

extisp.icio.us - scattering del.icio.us tags - now with images

I just stumbled on this neat little app, that makes a tagcloud of your del.icio.us tags.
It is called extisp.icio.us - scattering del.icio.us tags. Cool!

Feeds available

Hi readers,
If you want an Atom feed, go to http://folksonomy.blogspot.com/atom.xml.
If you really want an RSS feed, then you won't be disappointed. It can be found on http://feeds.feedburner.com/SocialSoftwareInEducation.
Feedburner rocks!

elgg.net :: the learning landscape

I've been coming back to this interesting project, called elgg.net :: the learning landscape.
What is happening there is very promising, in my honest opinion. Just take the online tour and find out what elgg can offer. The authors themselves call it an open source learning landscape platform.

Friday, July 22, 2005

Shirky: Ontology is Overrated

This article is a must-read for anyone who thinks that we can categorize the world as we used to do. We cannot anymore!
Please read: Shirky: Ontology is Overrated -- Categories, Links, and Tags

Technorati Tags

Technorati Tags: "Tags: The real-time web, organized by you". Need is say more.
Just check it out.

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Folksonomy Encyclopedia of Terms

A sort of human-generated TagCloud: Folksonomy Encyclopedia of Terms

Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Wanna know what the world is consuming?

This is a very neat service, I think. Here you can let the world know what you are reading right now (or listening to, or watching, whatever gets consumed).
Right now Harry Potter is on top of the list of All Consuming. But what will it be in three weeks? Just get back to this service, and consume it :-)

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Weblog policy: won't work

On Auricle I found a nice article on the use (or lack of use) of weblogs in Higher Education in the UK.
A little excerpt:
"Ok, all over the UK I now hear HEI's Directors of Marketing and Communications cry, (..) ... let's do it ... let's build a blog into our Web site ... but we've got to have a really tight policy about what people can and cannot write about".
Sorryeeeee ... :) ... Won't work. "

Monday, July 18, 2005

Cluster your del.icio.us bookmarks

Cluster your del.icio.us bookmarks is an experiment by tho PhD students of the University of Bremen.
As they say themselves: "This tiny application lets you cluster your del.icio.us bookmarks into tag clouds." Just provide your username of password and there you go!

Wired News: RSS Service Eases Bloggers' Pain

Wired recently featured a nice article on TagCloud. Just go to Wired News: RSS Service Eases Bloggers' Pain.
Wanna see my TagCloud in action?
Go to Elearning TagCloud to see the words that my collegues Wilfred, Pierre and Wijnand use. Beware: this is in the Dutch language.

Friday, July 15, 2005

The next hype: folksonomy?

I surely hope not.
Check my fresh URL's onthis subject on http://del.icio.us/wytze/folksonomy