The interim report on our HEAT2 project has now been submitted to JISC TechDis and will hopefully be appearing on their website soon. There have been some interesting comments from the three participants on their use so far of the Nintendo DS, Brain Training, Big Brain Academy and Opera Browser packages since they received the kit at the end of October.

The full report will follow in February 2008.

Round 2 Interim report will hopefully appear here soon….

Having attended my first virtual workshop in SL this pm I think it’s a great concept and one that you probably think won’t work until you try it out – but which does when you experience it. Only a grumpy old avatar would not be excited by this concept – ok the technology isn’t 100 percent reliable as yet but this has huge potential for distance learning compared to some of the other methods of video conferencing I’ve experienced or heard horror stories about….

Pros –
1. Audio Feed for pm session worked ok but took a while to come up
2. Screen lovely and clear to view the slides
3. No need to travel to and from birmingham

Cons –
1. If you have a slow pc like mine it’s no good for doing anything else whilst you’re in SL (trying to access the video feed would probably have crashed my machine)
2. You can’t attend the breakout session
3. You can’t access the links through the viewer so need to look at slideshare version at the same time as listening to the audio and running SL.

A five part series of posts by Henry Jenkins about the evolution of The Comparative Media Studies Program’s thinking about Serious Games.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Source : OL Weekly
NB. Stephen Downes considers “these principles are problematic, a set of principles that will please existing educators and educational institutions, but which do not point the way forward”.

Andy Black posts about the use of Google Docs in education…….

Source : Andy Black

Memex provides a link to the Newsweek article on the Amazon Kindle eBook reader. A name change and shipping in Jonathan Ive for a makeover would help to make this more attractive but the idea has got to be a winner in the long term and would be a great use for e-Learning in the future….

Source : John Naughton

Aleks Krotoski ponders the lack of research about virtual worlds – maybe it’s all still being written but does link to her Social Simulation Research Lab Library which is worth bookmarking if you haven’t seen it.

Source : Social Sim

The HSC Gallery exhibits teleport links to interesting Health & Social Care areas within Second Life – if you wish to visit a location just click on the exhibit to teleport to it. Suggestions for exhibits are welcome. Please contact Andy Ginsberg (in world) or email me.

Current Exhibits In The Gallery (Last Updated 14/11/07)

#1 – Virtual Hallucinations, Sedig
#2 – University of Plymouth Sexual Health Sim
#3 – MD Kiosk
#4 – Drexel Island
#5 – Health Information Island
#6 – Heart Murmur Sim
#7 – Remember Me
#8 – Second Health, NHS London
#9 – NMC Research Park
#10 – Genomic Island

A system used to record patients’ views about their care yielded rich information and staff made a commitment to act on the results – a winner at the E-Health Insider Awards.

More on the Homerton University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust story

Source : Technology Guardian

Interesting article by Thomas Goetz concerning “open notebook” science….

What happens to all the research that doesn’t yield a dramatic outcome — or, worse, the opposite of what researchers had hoped? It ends up stuffed in some lab drawer. The result is a vast body of squandered knowledge that represents a waste of resources and a drag on scientific progress. This information — call it dark data — must be set free.

Source : Wired 15.10

Instead of using powerpoint this session utilises a wikispace:

RE: Innovative Learning and Teaching – Wikis

Visit The Presentation and supporting material

Date & Time Of Presentation : Wednesday 7th November 2007 at 1pm – 1.50pm