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Via Kottke: Thursday happenings @ Etech

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Looking ahead to what's on tap for today at Etech, there's Alan Kay -- inventor of the Smalltalk programming language -- talking about why the computer revolution hasn't happened yet, Macromedia's Kevin Lynch on personal interfaces, the all-powerful Clay Shirky (all hail Clay, for he is our God!) talks about the group getting in its own way in social software, Coates on UpMyStreet, Gillmor on Jour... [kottke.org]

Jason Kottke is providing the best coverage of the O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference. He is posting specifically about ETech here.

Internet Bookmobile at Etech

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Brewster Kahle is currently speaking about the Internet Bookmobile. It'll be downstairs after the session and you can get your own book printed. Donations for the continued operation of the Bookmobile are appreciated.Update: My photos of the Bookmobile. (Journalists and others: feel free to use the photos with attribution. Thanks!)... [kottke.org]

Yesterday, Jason Kottke posted about the Internet Book Mobile.An effort by Brewster Kahle and the Internet Archive. A very interesting project from the Brewster Kahle and the folks at the Internet Archive. If you haven't seen the Archive, take a look. Is fun to look back at various generations of a web site. For example, the Buckman School in the fall of 1996. I forgot about a lot of that stuff... :-)

6 Articles From The Feature highlighting Mobile Computing and Education

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TheFeature :: It's Education Week
The feature has six articles dealing with mobile technology and education. Two are highlighted below...

Learning with the Simputer details the development and use of a small handheld computer that is being developed in India. The Simputer is XML based and running Linux. Will sell for about $190.

The Simputer project was founded four years ago with the purpose of providing low-cost, portable computing and connectivity to poor and illiterate people who are currently untouched by personal computing, cell phones and other existing mechanisms.

 

Teaching in the Wireless Cloud, discusses the changes/disruptions that are taking place in higher education with the advent of wireless technology.

The most controversial instance of m-learning occurs in the traditional classroom, when students gain access to wireless connectivity. Some professors report frustration at students' wandering attention, as Minesweeper or instant messages become more attractive than a lecture.

[by way of...[alterego]]

Presstime Article on RSS Feeds...

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Presstime If it hasn't happened already, the person who runs your Internet operation will walk into your office and share a concept that sounds like a complete fantasy. Really Simple Syndication, better known as RSS, is legitimate and living up to its name for those who've launched their own news feeds. The online manager will say there's an easy-to-create, low-cost method for increasing the distribution of your editorial content through the Internet. RSS can build loyalty among current visitors to your site and help attract new ones.

Nice article that explains some business reasons for the use off RSS. Every benefit they relate to business use, can also be related to schools, their audiences and "customers."

Educational uses of trackback

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Some thoughts from Ryan Eby on educational uses of trackback. When students have assignments they have to do on their weblog, it'd probably be helpful to have a page that describes the assignment which they can ping when they post... [Brooklyn BloggEd]

Joe Luft points to a post by Ryan Eby (Ryan's site is great) regarding the possible uses of Trackback in educational settings. Joe mentions that he utilizes an RSS aggregator to read his students' work. I do this too, but one of the things about Trackback that is interesting is that with assignments, the instructor can leave it to the students to make the connection to the assignment, instead of having to subscribe to each students RSS feed in a newsreader. Also I'm thinking of some of the teachers out there who may not be familiar with a news aggregator.

I've been spending some time learning more about Movable Type and some of the plug-ins that others have written to expand its capibilities. For example MT-RSS feed is a Movable Type plug-in that allows for the import of RSS feeds into pages. On the Buckman home page are two examples of this. The school media specialist is using Movable Type to create a list of recommended books. This feed is incorporated into the school home page. In addition, Helen Nolen, the school principal, has been keeping a Movable Type page and this too is noted and fed to the school index page.

Learned of another MT plug-ing called Otherblog. Otherblog allows you to incorporate posts/info from other blogs on the same Movable Type installation. I hope to find some time today to incorporate this one to bring the latest book recommendation into the school home page.