Call for Chapters: New Book on Free and Open Source Software

“Free and Open Source Software for E-Learning: Issues, Challenges and Successes” is due this year by IGI Publishing. More information about how to submit proposals for this upcoming book can be found at:

http://www.igi-global.com/requests/details.asp?ID=563

A few new applications

All free and open source applications by way of Andrzej:

–Animoto (web application that combines images, videos and music to create digital narratives)

http://animoto.com

–PicPick (digital imaging software with screen capture and image editor features)

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/PicPick-Download-69160.html

–Adeona (tracking software for laptops)

http://adeona.cs.washington.edu

Faculty Views on Social Networking and Web 2.0

Today, Thomson Publishing, an academic publishing company, released the results of a survey they conducted using more than 600 college professors. The findings showed that majority of professors don’t use social networking sites and Web 2.0 tools for instructional purposes, although they are familiar with some of these sites. More results are at the following website but unfortunately they didn’t publish complete results.

http://www.thomson.com/content/pr/tl/tl_high_ed/New_Media_Tools_Faculty_Survey

One thing I found interesting was number of faculty members who have their own blogs (10 percent) are not that different from general population (US) who have blogs (8 percent).

Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning?

This is the title of an article by Bryan Alexander:

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0621.pdf

He does a good job in explaining the relationship between social software and web 2.0 but of course neither directly refers to the open source.

Here is another good read on the same topic:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/e-learning_20.php

Web 2.0 Blog

Over the weekend, I discovered an educational blog on Web 2.0.

http://web2booklet.blogspot.com

It was nice to see that this is a group blog with more than 10 contributors.

And following blog is dedicated to the videos that will help with the teaching and learning of web 2.0 tools:

http://web2videos.blogspot.com

Elgg on EduSpaces

Elgg is definitely one of best open social software designed for educators in mind.

http://eduspaces.net

First Master’s Program in Social Computing

The University of Michigan will be starting first master’s program in ’social computing’ focusing on open software. Hopefully more will follow.

http://www.si.umich.edu/msi/sc.htm

Distance Education and Social Software

Anderson discusses social software in relation to distance education (pdf):

www.unisa.edu.au/odlaaconference/PPDF2s/13%20odlaa%20-%20Anderson.pdf

Go2Web20.net

A list of web 2.0 tools:

http://www.go2web20.net

Google Documents: An alternative to Writely

Documents (and spreadsheets) can be uploaded, edited and shared online. Nothing to download, easy interface, and free.

http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/