Get your daily dose of literature

The book nerd in me was doing cartwheels when I got a hold of this service. DailyLit provides bite-sized chunks of public-domain, classic literature sent straight to your inbox or RSS reader.

From the site:

So How Does it Work?
It’s really simple.

1. Find a book you want to read
2. Enter your email address
3. Click subscribe

What more could you ask for? What a grand service!

Link – Take a flit to DailyLit 

(Found in the treasure trove that is 43 Folders)

7 Things You Should Know

This a great series of resources produced by EDUCAUSE entitled 7 Things You Should Know. It provides a solid, concise summary for a truckload of Web 2.0 technologies and principles, as well as downloadable pdfs with contextual examples, uses of the technologies and origins. A great resource for all those needing to get their head around Twitter, wikis, virtual worlds and all manner of e-fodder.

Link – 7 Things You Should Know…and this is the 8th

(Thanks to Damon W for the heads-up!)

Portable Apps

I loved the idea of being self-sufficient and being able to carry around all my key applications on a single thumb drive. Particularly when you have to move around from place to place running PD and not knowing whether you’ll have access to the stuff you really need.

Thanks to PortableApps.com, you can do that very thing. With a variety of titles spanning browsers (Firefox etc.) through image manipulation (Gimp Portable), audio recording/editing (Audacity Portable) and Office apps (Open Office Portable), you can stock up on pretty much all the essentials for your portable workplace.

From the site:

“Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.

PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It’s open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use.”

Best of all, it’s free and open source. So it’s constantly evolving. Well worth a sneak peek.

Link – Prêt-à-Portablé

ccLearn – Creative Commons for Education

Creative Commons, the non-profit organisation who helped us all break the shackles of oppressive copright restrictions, has branched further into the field of education through their new ccLearn initiative.

From the site:

ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons which is dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources (OER). Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

I’ve seen a number of ventures into OER via a number of educational and tertiary institutions, but they tend to be small and scattered around the Interweb, with only the larger institutions able to build a large-ish collection .

Through a unified front such as ccLearn, we can hopefully see the rise of a grand scale OER movement that will bash down doors, smash windows and destroy any other kind of metaphorical restrictive opening in order to give people greater control of their own work and spread quality learning resources.

Link – Can you cc what I cc?

Welcome to Sloodle

With a greater uptake of open-source Moodle happening here in the WA VET sector, it may interest some people to know that some bright sparks have decided to look at combining Moodle with the 3D online environment of Second Life.

From the site:

Sloodle is Open Source. We develop learning tools and structures for educators exploring 3D Multi-User Virtual Environments. Our first objective is to connect Second Life with Moodle.

I’ll be interested to see if they pull it off. Of course, I’m still waiting to see them combine Second Life with Amazon. I like the idea of wandering down the aisles of a giant bookstore.

Onward to Sloodle!

To each their own

I must say, Zits is one of my guilty faves in the comic world. And this week’s entry certainly made me chuckle.

© 2007 Zits Partnership.

Join the army

White Bud Army Noun

Spawned by the ubiquity of Apple iPod earphones, members of the White Bud Army are given to jumping on current social and technological trends based on popularity rather than genuine need.

“Heard that Sally has jumped on MySpace? She’s a hardcore member of the White Bud Army.”

Thoof

Another social bookmarking platform on the Intermanet, but this one is a little different to Digg and Reddit in that, wiki-style, it allows users to edit (and hopefully improve) posts and descriptions.

From the site:

Thoof is a website that offers interesting news articles, websites, videos, photographs, and other links from around the web. Everything on the site is posted by Thoof readers, and can also be improved and edited by those same readers. What makes Thoof unique is a sophisticated algorithm which discovers a reader’s interests and tailors the stories to each reader’s individual tastes. Every Thoof reader will see a personalized page with stories he or she will find interesting. All that you, as a reader, have to do is simply read what you like, and Thoof takes care of the rest!

Link – Thoof

Just as an aside…

…am I allowed to slap someone who uses the terms “best practice” and “continuous improvement” in the same sentence?

Surely “best” practice implies that, well, it’s the best? Wouldn’t this significantly reduce the chances of “improvement”?

How do you improve the best?

“Professional” Development

I’ve always been uncomfortable with the phrase, “Professional Development”. The very wording seems corporate and cold, lacking any kind of appeal or engagement.

For me, the implications of the term “professional development” seem to lean towards the organisation benefiting more than the person themselves. Which isn’t a bad thing – goodness knows that organisations need an ongoing focus on continuous improvement. But the key players in making these improvements happen need to be the focus of PD.

I have to say, I prefer the term “personal development” over professional. I’d much prefer to conduct a session where the participant becomes enthusiastic about the content, not only because of the professional implications, but because of the personal connection.

For example, if a participant is in a Web 2.0 technologies session, rather than have them think, “Yeah, I can see how this would work in the workplace”, I’d much rather them think, “Hey, I can see how this would work for me!”.

By encouraging that personal connection with the technology, the participant is far more likely to embrace it – and not just in a professional, ‘benefit to the workplace’ kind of way.

By nurturing the interest and familiarity with the technology, greater benefits to all – the individual, the organisation – will come through a flow-on effect. By having that personal connection, the participant will be more likely to use their imagination in regards to how the technology can be used. Which means that when the time comes to use that technology in the organisation, they already have a person fully-versed, enthusiastic and open-minded about effective ways to use it.

Individual first, organisation second. Then everybody wins.