It’s quite an enjoyable keynote from Dr Michelle Selinger Education Strategist, Cisco Systems.
It is a typical keynote in the sense that nothing innovative, nothing new (for me anyway), but a nice start to the conference and some enjoyable clips (I quite enjoyed the Southpark bit).
So here we are on the first full day of ALT-C. Over morning coffee I had another look at the programme to see where I shall be going this morning and this afternoon.
I will need some time to prepare for my workshop so will be “missing” some of the day to setup and ensure I have everything ready.
I have decided to go with a mobile learning theme today. I will be going to the Tensions between personal space and social space in mobile learning symposium and then a series of short papers, projectBluetooth – delivering large-scale content and support to the mobile generation and Which side of the wall are you on? then I will go to Web 2.0 and informal learning which all look interesting.
Hopefully (wireless access permitting) will be blogging and adding photos to my Flickr account over the day.
Check out my Jaiku for intermittent thoughts over the day.
Famous people from Norwich
At 5.38pm I blogged about arriving in Nottingham for the ALT-C conference.
I was just checking the stats when I noticed that one of the search terms used was james clay nottingham as I was using Firefox I right clicked and did a Google search.
Wow my blog entry was already ranked number one!
I doubt it will stay that way, but it does demonstrate how Google is becoming better at searching for current things and things which are happening now as well as everything else.
Next question who was searching for me in Nottingham?
So I have arrived in Nottingham ahead of ALT-C a huge learning technology and e-learning conference for HE and FE in the UK.
Okay so not the easiest week for FE (usually the start of term for most) but I see that there are quite a few FE delegates on the list (and I have already bumped into a few).
I am running a workshop on mobile learning which takes place at 5pm on Tuesday, this will be very hands on, so if you are at ALT and want an active session, please come along.
I am staying in student accommodation which is, well okay, well to be honest not very nice, and I am on the second floor as well, too many stairs! One advantage free internet access (which isn’t working now, but hopefully soon).
I have had a quick look round the exhibition which seems smaller than last year, but that may be because the room is larger!
More soon…
Just under four years ago (November 2003) someone on the ILT Champion mailing list asked about getting a “cheap” high end digital camera for printing images at A2 size.
I posted the following reply.
To be honest in order to get anything decent to scale up to A2 then you are going to need a minimum of 3000×2000 pixels (preferably higher than that) which means a 6MP digicam which will be at a minimum £1000, probably nearer £3000 to get something decent..
There is an easier way and you will get a much better quality image as well. As the need is for marketing purposes, the instantability (sp?) of a digital camera is not needed. I would use a normal SLR film camera (£300) and when it’s developed get it scanned onto CD. My local camera shop will put a whole 35mm film onto a CD scanning in at 3000×2000 pixels for just £10.00.
You don’t even need a SLR, as even those 35mm throwaway cameras can give you a better quality image than a 6MP camera. You could do what is needed for less than £20!
You could get an even larger number of megapixels by using a dedicated flatbed scanner.
Digital cameras are great and have their place, however for your needs I think that you will be better off with a film camera and get it scanned onto cd when you have it developed.
It’s incredible how much has changed in the last four years…
I now have a 7.2MP camera, a Sony W35
It also has a decent Carl Zeiss lense and a lithium ion battery (so a charge will last all week).
The price of digital cameras has really come down in price. Look at all these 7MP cameras
Today you need to be less concerned about mega-pixels and be more concerned about the quality of the lense, the life of the battery, how quickly the camera starts up and how quick it is to take photographs.
So how do you get images from your mobile phone to wherever quickly and easily.
I have a Nokia N73 I use to…
Take a photograph.
Send it via Bluetooth to my computer.
Upload it to Flickr.
Of course this meant I needed both a computer and internet access.
The Nokia N73 does come with an application to upload images to Flickr, however this never worked for me, and I suspect it is because Vodafone (my phone provider) blocks access to Flickr as part of their content control!
So I was interested to see how ShoZu would work out.
Shozu is an application that works on a range of phones and allows you with just one click take an image (or a video) and upload it straight to a Web 2.0 site of your choice.
You give ShoZu your mobile phone number, they send you an SMS text message, you download and install the application on your phone.
Rather than use the phone to configure the destinations (though you can) you can configure your account via a web browser. Which is great if like me you don’t really like to input data and information via a mobile phone number pad.
Configured it all.
So in London for a meeting took a photo at Paddington station and after I had taken the photograph, up popped a dialogue asking me if I wanted to send it to Flickr, so I click okay.
The image is automatically uploaded to Flickr and then into my other online sites which Flickr feeds into such as Jaiku and the VLE.
You can also add the images to your blogs (as seen here).
Works really easily and simply.
Update August 11th 2012: One of the issues with Shozu that I have found, and why I stopped using them, is that they don’t keep the images online…
Here is the image I did upload to Shozu (glad I kept a backup).
According to recent figures as reported by the BBC, a million more UK homes have now gone online.
The number of UK homes with internet access has gone up by nearly a million over the last year, figures suggest.
Some 15.2m UK households – 61% of homes – now have an internet connection, compared with 54% in 2006, research from National Statistics found.
In total, 84% of web-enabled households said they had a broadband connection, up from 69% in May 2006.
61% of homes now have an internet connection and those 84% have a broadband connection.
For those learners coming from homes without internet, what can they do? Well yes it would be nice if every learner had a broadband internet connection, but it would also be nice if every learner had free transport to college, it would be nice if every learner had all the core texts they needed, it would be nice if every learner didn’t need a part-time job to support their studies, etc…
Colleges don’t provide libraries or teachers at home, so even though a learner may not have access to the internet, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use the internet and web based services (like a VLE) to support and enhance learning.
For those learners who don’t have access to broadband internet, they do have options in terms of access to the internet. Some have mobile phones or other mobiles devices which could be used. Some will be able to access free internet from their local library. Some will be able to access the internet at a relative or a friend. Virtually all will be able to access the internet at college.