Using NUS Module Blogs : Blogging Possibilities

Biological Sciences students' blogs

Kenneth Gerard PINTO — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 06:13:00 GMT

Siva at Habitatnews, highlights three blogs by students from the Department of Biological Sciences.

Arthroplog is a blog about Arthropods. These consist of insects, arachnids (such as spiders), crustaceans and the like. Just one post at this point in time but the has great potential to grow.

The Chek Jawa Mortality and Recruitment Project, by Loh Kok Sheng, is a blog which reports on "the mass mortality and recruitment of macrofauna" at Chek Jawa. Kok Sheng intends to carry on this blog beyond the time-frame of his assignment.

Johora singaporensis is Daniel's honours year thesis project blog. He thinks out loud, shares observations and posts photos of this local crab species on his blog.

Some benefits of student blogs:

easy way to keep track of students' progress, particularly with project work
sharing information with and educating the world at large
possibility of coming across people in similar areas of study/research

Technorati Tags: student blogs, research blogs, education, science, biodiversity, biology

Blogs and Wikis in Teaching and Learning Presentation

Kenneth Gerard PINTO — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 08:30:00 GMT

Presentation at the 2007 CIO & Digital Library Forum, National University of Singapore.

Blogger | Free blogs
Wordpress | Free blogs
EduBlogs | Free blogs for educators & students
Flickr | Photo hosting
YouTube | Video hosting
TeacherTube | Video hosting for educators (unlimited)
SlideShare | YouTube for PowerPoints
Reason & Persuasion | John Holbo's module blog
NUS Module Blogs powered by Community Server
A Blogger's Blog: Exploring the Definition of a Medium by danah boyd
Matrix of some uses of blogs in education | Scott Leslie
The street finds its own use for things | Henry Farrell's five uses
PC1432 | Physics IIe module blog
LSM1303 | Animal Behaviour module blog
CL2280 | Basic Translation module blog
NM3216 | Game Culture (Design) 1 module blog
NM4210 | User Experience Design
A view from Singapore | Christopher Fahey on the NM4210 student blogs
s/pores - New Directions in Singapore Studies | E-journal
Urban Transport Issues Asia | Paul Barter's professional interest blog
QBlog | Office of Quality Management blog
Raffles Museum News | RMBR news blog
Using NUS Module Blogs | If you're reading this, you're reading the blog!
Blogs as Personal Learning Environments | James Farmer
Wikipedia | Most famous wiki
Wikispaces | Free wikis
PBwiki | Free wikis
Wikimatrix | Compare wiki engines
Using Wiki in Education | Suggested uses from The Science of Spectroscopy wiki
NM4209 | Game Design II wiki

Photo credits

Winston Avich http://www.flickr.com/photos/winstonavich/189032152/
Matthew Chastain Wright http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattwright/264740907/
Christoph Gommel http://www.flickr.com/photos/cgommel/43850223/
Alan Levine http://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/19490596/

Technorati Tags: blog, wiki, educational technology, edtech, social software

BlogWatch: s/pores - New Directions in Singapore Studies

Kenneth Gerard PINTO — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 02:01:00 GMT

s/pores is a new e-journal run by a group Singaporean academics, mostly based in NUS:

This e-journal aims to provide a much-needed multi-disciplinary platform for the dissemination of works investigating different aspects of historical and contemporary Singapore society. Moving beyond statist perspectives, the journal encourages research that opens up space for recalibrating the status quo in Singapore....
s/pores is an interplay of the short form, the lower case, the plural, the backslash-the informal, the non-elite, the multiple, the oblique. Pronounced ‘spores’, our title also denotes the dispersal of seeds of ideas, some of which should fall on fertile ground. s/pores is therefore simultaneously a declaration of authorial positioning as it is a statement of our hopes for a more variegated Singapore.

The first issue touches on pre-1965 Singapore as a starting point to explore alternative narratives to the Singapore Story.

A Tomorrow.sg post highlighted Hong Lysa's The Continuing Saga of Singapore's Story, which uses S. Rajaratnam's passing as a focal point to examine the lack of diversity in our foundation stories. This article is heavy going for a blog format, as are the others, but they are worth the time to read.

The s/pores team also invites contributions:

Contributions should be the result of scholarly research, but need not be presented with the full formal conventions of an academic product. In fact, the injunction is that intimidating academic-speak is out. We want to provide room as well for reflective essays, proposals and tentative findings for new areas of research.

This is one blog that I will definitely continue reading.

UPDATE s/pores now offers PDFs for printing. PDFs for Vol 1 Issue 1.

Technorati Tags: singapore, singapore studies, history, politics, society, journal, blog

Snippets

Kenneth Gerard PINTO — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 07:51:00 GMT

Blog2Learn Wiki by Anne Davis

I'm glad that it's Blog2Learn instead of Blog2Teach. We're all learners! Anne's blog is a wide-ranging collection of links to edublogging resources and projects (K-12 through to tertiary level). Click on the SideBar link to see the navigation menu. Anne teaches writing, and she says this about blogs:

[They] give us an avenue to teach writing (blogging) as a cluster of complex thinking and writing behaviors that provide ownership to the student and the possibility of getting a multitude of responses from others. We have to orchestrate that. Yes, it takes time but we can truly model this process through our own blogs and provide the type of environment to support young writers and give them the challenges necessary to foster writing development. What a joy!

Mobile Learning, Vol 8, No 2 (2007), The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning via elearnspace

Mobile learning is an area in educational technology which is fraught with issues. The emphasis tends to be on how content can be delivered via mobile devices. This brings with the the problem of compatibility: operating systems, file formats, screen sizes, battery life, storage capacity... you get the drift. On the other hand, those that want to exploit the use of mobile devices in classroom projects need to overcome issues with sufficient and equitable access to the necessary tools. Regardless of what you conceive m-learning and how it will affect education, this issue of IRRODL has a number of peer-reviewed journal articles which explore mobile learning.

Reflections from EduBloggerCon07: Crafting a Compelling, Cogent Message for Change by Chris Sessums

Chris Sessums summarises a session he participated in at EduBloggerCon07, bringing together the thoughts of the participants:

For many educators who are actively engaged in the blogging process, weblogs have reportedly transformed the way they learn; it has challenged them about the ways they think about themselves individually, as well as the way they think about teaching and learning.

For many educators at this meet-up, blogging extends their ability to connect to other people and ideas, enhancing both personal and professional relationships. Weblogging has reportedly challenged them to learn more about themselves as well as challenging the way we think about a variety of subjects.

Two Zs: Zotero and Zentation

Zotero is a browser extension which "helps you collect, manage, and cite your research sources" from within the Firefox. I've not installed it yet, but it might be a handy tool. No harm trying - it's free!

I've mentioned Slideshare a few times previously. It's been called the YouTube of PowerPoint, and it works as advertised. But a presentation slides are just that: presentation slides. Where's the actual presentation?

Zentation promises to change that. You can upload your slides to Zentation and upload the video recording to Google Video (chosen for its ability to jump to any point of the video during streaming). Zentation puts them together. You get an shareable online webcast. Very nice if you're not on campus.

Technorati Tags: blog, wiki, learning, mobile learning, professional development, citation, research tool, presentation

Student blogs get article writer's attention

Kenneth Gerard PINTO — Thu, 03 May 2007 01:31:00 GMT

Christopher Fahey, "an artist, designer, teacher, and captain of industry", noticed that one of his online articles was required reading in Raghavendra Reddy's NM4210 User Experience Design module. Fahey notes:

In browsing the official site for the course, I was struck by the comprehensiveness of the reading lists and the depth of the course itself. Reddy’s students are required to create their own blogs, and all class assignments are to be submitted as blog posts. It is in the student blogs where I found these students to be remarkably thoughtful and insightful about interaction design and the power of good user research.
I know almost nothing about Singapore, but if this course and these students are representative of their education system, I’m duly impressed.

Fahey joins the conversation too, commenting on at least one of the students' blogs. I browsed through that blog and found it to be highly readable. I just wish the students would comment more on each others' work though!

Cheers to Kevin for highlighting Fahey's post.

Technorati Tags: student blogs, education, classroom, nus, national university of singapore, nus, user experience design, user experience