edgeek

Second Life: I CANNOT have a Second Life

Posted on 27. Feb, 2007 by nando

I've been trying to get on Second Life for over a week now. I'm really curious about it. Something is wrong with my computer and Second Life. If I manage to run the program without it crashing, it lasts for about 1 minute and then crashes.

I just figured out what is going on. I used to have a ATI Radeon 9000 video card. My mother board died, and now I have a ATI Radeon 7500. It is not supported. It is not supported by Guild Wars either. My new mother board sucks.

Now, why so intrigued by Second Life. For starters and for those who wonder what it is, Second Life is "Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 4,087,868 people from around the globe." Steve Hargadon did two episodes of EdTechLive about it, and Saturday I found out MIT and Harvard Law School were hosting a conference on convergence and media, Beyond Broadcast, and you could attend through Second Life. A 3-D virtual reality world in which you can go attend a conference and maybe learn something sound amazingly interesting. I wanted to attend. Second Life doesn't work on my laptop. I want to try for myself what it is like to attend a "learning" or academic event through virtual reality... to have "another me" attend. What interesting distinctions and ideas come by: my avatar, my other me, attends the conference and I interact through him, and we both learn, me acting as him, and him acting as a virtual character himself on his own right... in a way. I'm starting to ramble...

Innovación Educativa: el libro

Posted on 17. Feb, 2007 by nando

Mobile Learning, otro de los blogs que leo a menudo, pone sobre la mesa este divertido video sobre una vieja innovación.
Yo, al igual que algunos de los imagino existentes (por pereza de buscar algo que me diga quienes han entrado a este URI) lectores de este blog) nos hemos enfrentado a situaciones donde tenemos que mostrarle a algún amigo o familiar cómo hacer algo con el computador o solucionar un problema con él.
El video es mitad serio mitad no tanto, pero invita a la reflexión sobre la vieja nueva innovación con la trabajamos más a menudo en tecnología eductiva: el computador personal.

Este es el video:

[youtube eRjVeRbhtRU]

A second life

Posted on 15. Feb, 2007 by nando

I've been intrigued with Second Life for a while now. I first heard about in some podcast (not sure which now) and then again on Steve Hargadon's EdTechLive. I'm close to finishing the download of the client.
I'm not sure how much I'll actually get hooked and get a "second life" but I'll try it and report back :D.

I guess this, with the educational spaces that have sprung up inside (as I heard in Hargadon's interview), is close to the Alice in Wonderland interface Chris Dede talks about. I'll try to look at it with the hats of a teacher, a learner and a policy-maker.

What is Second Life? Check out this article by the British Council.

I confess: delicious

Posted on 14. Feb, 2007 by nando

I have to confess I'd never got a delicious account. Or rather, I did get one, but never used it. I finally decided to upload my bookmarks (which I've zealously kept for about 8 years) and let it tag them for me. It used my folders as tags and added some. However, I didn't find a way to make them automatically public. I had to go over them one by one, and it's taking a while. I admit I have deleted a few and decided not to share some others, but I still wish there were some sort of mass edit mode. Did I miss it?

I'll explore some of delicious and report back on what I think. I am also trying a Firefox extension that replaces my usual bookmarks with my delicious ones.

Escribir la red (Web 2.0)

Posted on 08. Feb, 2007 by nando

Por lo menos dos de los blogs que leo han tenido entradas acerca este video, CoolCatTeacherBlog y Remote Access. No dicen mucho, en buena medida porque el video en sí mismo dice bastante. El texto ya no es lo mismo. Exageraríamos si digéramos que el texto lineal del libro, el cuaderno, el tablero, van a desaparecer en un futuro cercano. Sí podemos pensar que en el mundo de la "convergencia" ese texto no es el único que conocemos, el único que leemos, ni el único que escribimos (con los procesadores de palabra y editores de presentaciones) creo que es el texto que menos escribimos: escribimos mucho más texto digital. No hipertextos, simplemente textos que aprovechan algunas de las posibilidades que muestra este video: cambiar, mover, reescribir... Nuestros estudiantes se enfrentan cada vez a textos más ricos en conexiones, tienen la opción de crearlos y nosotros tenemos la obligación de estar a su lado, guiarlos, acompañarlos mientras construyen sus formas de crear y leer con medios convergentes, no como todos en un mismo lugar, aunque también, sino como diversos medios que están a nuestra disposición para crear y para leer.

El video es este:

[youtube 6gmP4nk0EOE]

Si no lo pueden ver, hagan clic aquí: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Innovación Educativa

Posted on 05. Feb, 2007 by nando

Una de las tareas más grandes y difíciles (y por lo mismo interesantes) de este año es trabajar en la construcción de una línea de acción en innovación educativa con uso de medios y tecnologías de información en la escuela. Creo que la política es monolítica y retrógrada por naturaleza, y es casi un oxímoron hablar de política de innovación, especialmente para la escuela, que es posiblemente la institución más cercana al siglo XVI que sobrevive en el mundo moderno, junto con algunas monarquías, dictaduras y democracias bolivarianas de países en desarrollo.

¿Qué podemos llamar una escuela innovadora, una clase innovadora, un maestro innovador, cuando las pedagogías progresistas siguen siendo las de psicólogos ya muertos como Piaget, Vigotsky, Dewey? Ramboll managemente hizo un estudio de innovaciones educativas en Europa que nos da algunas pistas sobre cómo ver esto. La más importante del planteamiento de Ramboll en este sentido, creo yo, es que la innovación es dependiente del contexto. Aquello que es innovador en una escuela y región, puede no serlo en otra, y aquello que es innovación en la capital, puede no ser siquiera posible en otras regiones y zonas.

¿Cómo promover la innovación sin inyectar gran cantidad de fondos? ¿Cómo hacer una política de innovación educativa? Estos son retos para 2007, las que pueblan mi mente, junto con otra cantidad de trabajo de oficinista que trato de balancear con lo que sí requiere "pienso".

on blogging

Posted on 31. Jan, 2007 by nando

A few weeks back, last year, actually, I tried to improvised a quick workshop on blogging for some friends at work. I started by showing them an aggregator (Google Reader) and how it works not only for blogs but for newspapers and other sites that have rss feeds. Then we logged on to wordpress and blogger, created a couple blogs and played around a little bit. There were only a 2 pcs in the room so there wasn't much "mucking about" with the blogs. After the workshop I felt I had very unsuccessful.
Yesterday I listended to Steve Hargadon's  interview with Will Richardson and a few things made me think:

  • Joining the blogosphere may start by just reading blogs. When people want to start looking at the blogging world and how it works, their best shot is probably to start by reading blogs and using an aggregator. Thus, they will start to understand how blogging works.
  • Blogging is a networking social issue. You read blogs, comment on them, link to yours, and write in your blog about what others have written. (I love trackbacks). Blogs allow for easy connections with others through their blogs.
  • Bloggers, educational bloggers in particular, connect to others through their blogs, creating a professional development community. Blogging can be professional development in the informal setting.
  • When you start blogging, you might think you don't have much to say. You do read blogs, and you have ideas about what others say. Give your opinion on others' ideas in your blog.

I'll keep something very in mind next time people ask me to teach them about blogging: start by being a blog reader... or be a blog reader as well as a writer.

Mr. Belsaw

Posted on 18. Dec, 2006 by nando

Hace un tiempo, paseando por el blogroll de alguno de los blogs que leo, me encontré con Mr. Belshaw, un profesor de historia que vive y enseña en Gran Bretaña. Su blog me ha parecido excelente. Hoy escribe sobre una noticia que encontró en The Guardian:

Google y Orange unirán sus fuerzas para crear un nuevo teléfono celular que hará de buscar en Internet una acción casi automática. Mr. Belshaw se pregunta cómo responderán los colegios y el sistema educativo a esto, y hace preguntas muy interesantes: ¿lo prohibirán? ¿son algunos tipos de memoria (supongo que se refiere a recordar fechas, por ejemplo) innecesarios en el siglo XXI? ¿qué pasará con el infame quiz sorpresa (pop quiz)?

Gracias por la noticia y las buenas preguntas, Mr. Belsaw.

Usable Knowlege

Posted on 14. Dec, 2006 by nando

Buscando conectar la teoría y la investigación educativas con la práctica de las escuelas, los docentes, los administradores, etc. HGSE (la escuela de postgrados en educación de Harvard) lanzó el sitio Usable Knowledge. Se ve interesante y mirándolo muy por encima parece tener información interesante: http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/

Seeking to connect research, theory and practice, HGSE, the Harvard Graduate School of Education has launched the Usable Knowledge Website, where educators and administrators at all levels can find information about the research done by Harvard professors and other HGSE initiatives. A quick glance... it looks interesting. I'll have to find some time to look at it more in depth.

Enjoy at http://www.uknow.gse.harvard.edu/.

Light a candle, say prayer, whatever makes sense to you

Posted on 08. Dec, 2006 by nando

Seymour Papert, one of the fathers of education technology, disciple of Jean Piaget, one of the leaders behind MIT's Media Lab, the one laptop per child initiative, constructionism, Logo, Mindstorms... was hit by a motorcycle outside his hotel in Hanoi, suffered a head injury, got emergency neurosurgery and is in a comma in Vietnam. Papert's inspirational writing and thinking has moved many of us. Papert, 78, is still a leader in the educational technology world and we all wish for his recovery.
Say your prayers, light a candle... whatever makes sense to you... join us in wishing the best to him, his family and friends. It's sad, very sad.

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