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e-Learning Stuff Podcast #023: To blog, or not to blog, that is the question

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Do you blog, do you read blogs, do you use blogging to support learning, are blogs dead?

This is the twenty-third e-Learning Stuff Podcast, To blog, or not to blog, that is the question.

Download the podcast in mp3 format: To blog, or not to blog, that is the question

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

James is joined by Kev Hickey and David Sugden.

Shownotes

learning

Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning

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New technologies emerge all the time, feeling confused by it all then this is the handbook for you.

Over the last decade, in seminars, conferences, and workshops, Peter Tittenberger and I have had the opportunity to explore the role of technology in transforming learning.

From conversations during these engagements, a set of concerns has emerged:

Educators express interest in improving their teaching and learning practices, particularly emphasizing the need to improve engagement of learners (online or in-class).

While concerned about improving teaching and learning, educators generally resist:

  • Advanced pedagogical discussions that are not readily transferable to the online or face-to-face classroom
  • Technology-heavy hype and suggestions that the social element of learning can somehow be replaced.

This Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning (HETL) has been designed as a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities.

It is written by the well respected George Siemens and Peter Tittenberger.

Via Andy Black’s blog.

apple

What do you use your computer for?

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Last week Apple released a new version of their Mac Pro with the eight core model available from £2,499 which if you add a few options as I did can be as expensive as £8,259!!! This would be one fast machine, with 16GB of RAM, 4TB of raw storage and two 30″ screens!

So if you were going to buy one what would you use it for? Such a beasty would be perfect for graphic manipulation, video editing, video encoding.

Hold on.

How often do you do that?

Not that often?

Wouldn’t an iMac be a better choice? You can get a 20″ iMac for £949.

Wait.

Do you do any video or audio editing? Do you manipulate images much on your computer?

What do you use your computer for?

A bit of word processing, checking e-mail, Twitter, Facebook and Jaiku…

A simple netbook would probably be the answer, spending £199 rather than £8000!

Of course I am not alone thinking like this, Wired has a wonderful article on the rise of the netbook.

The Wired article reminds us:

When Asustek launched the Eee PC in fall 2007, it sold out the entire 350,000-unit inventory in a few months. Eee PCs weren’t bought by people in poor countries but by middle-class consumers in western Europe and the US, people who wanted a second laptop to carry in a handbag for peeking at YouTube or Facebook wherever they were. Soon the major PC brands—Dell, HP, Lenovo—were scrambling to catch up.

The article goes on…

Most of the time, we do almost nothing. Our most common tasks—email, Web surfing, watching streamed videos—require very little processing power. Only a few people, like graphic designers and hardcore gamers, actually need heavy-duty hardware.

At the end of the day most of us, most of our learners do not need a powerful computer, we need something that allows us to do word processing (or blogging), e-mail, social networking, watching a web video, and general web surfing.

Though I suspect most e-learning people have a netbook as their second (or third) computer.

What do you use your computer for?

Thanks to Andy Black for blogging about the Wired article.

Last November we recorded a podcast on the impact of the Asus EeePC and other netbooks and you might want to listen to that.

Photo source.