I always find it amazing, and sometimes shocking, to see what people are searching for on the web. With the help of MetaSpy, I can see the most recent keyword searches in MetaCrawler.

I could watch this for hours … but ahhh, better get back to work.

It’s amazing to me of our dependency on the big search engines such as Google (still waiting for them to go public), Yahoo, MSN Search, etc. The undergraduate students I teach often don’t seem to know how to research any topic without resorting to one of these tools. Yet, what individuals often find amazing (and totally surprising) is that our keywords (in many cases) carry a price … and it’s a price you can verify online.
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Here’s a short, simple and straight-forward article on the concept of blogging, and blogs in regard to education. While it doesn’t go very deep, this will be perfect to point someone to the next time I am asked “isn’t a blog just a webpage?”.

See full article here.

A few years back, school divisions in North Battleford and Moose Jaw underwent a full-scale implementation of thin-client Sun Systems (Sun Rays). At the time, I was one of the researchers who worked with SIDRU (Saskatchewan Instructional Development and Research Unit) to perform an evaluative research study of the complex processes involved in this large undertaking. Ever since this project, I have been particularly interested in alternative systems such as thin-client or Linux-based systems.
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The development in modern robotics is impressive. NewScientist reports that a 58 centimetre tall humanoid robot led a unique rendition of Beethoven’s 5th symphony. You can see the full article here.

Seeing it in action is pretty neat, and there are several videos at this link that show the robot in action, including martial arts and Japanese traditional dance.
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This article by Oliver Wrede is a bit older (May 2003 – why does something less than a year old seem ancient when posted in a blog?) but I think it’s certainly worth a read when considering blogs as tools for discourse. I find section 1.4 particularly interesting as I consider the ‘style’ of THIS blog … as I think, while I had an original purpose in mind, what is this actually developing into? It’s interesting to consider the many forms and purposes out there.
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While doing a little late night reading, I was just reminded (thanks Rick) of Lessig’s new book. The new book, titled Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity will be certainly worth the read. I very much enjoyed Lessig’s earlier works, Code and The Future of Ideas. And hey … its’ online for free, under a Creative Commons license.
Check it out:
http://www.free-culture.cc

I noticed this link mentioned a while back at a Rick’s Café Canadien (from good friend Dr. Richard Schwier). This is a huge digital archive from the CBC. I just love this resource. Be sure to check out:
http://archives.cbc.ca/

Also, right on this site, you will notice that there is a link that’s especially useful ‘for teachers’. There’s some really great stuff here … here’s the shortcut:
http://archives.cbc.ca/for_teachers

A team of students at Western have become involved in both the development and distribution of Ignalium – an Enterprise level Linux system. I really like the idea of having more undergraduate students and Faculty members exposed to Open Source solutions. In this case, students can also contribute to the development, distribution and dissemination of a Linux distro. Interesting and powerful stuff.
See the full story here.

Finally … a thesaurus that works the way my brain works. Some of you may have seen this already, but I think this is really neat.
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/online/index.html
I am quite sure this is based on the original ThinkMap technology that’s been around for a while, but this is a neat demonstration of how it can be utilized. The online version is limited use (unfortunately), but it kept me busy for a few hours.

If you are like me, I love to good educational sites, but like I said in an earlier post (i.e., theteacherlist.ca), I don’t have the time to look a lot of the time. Here is a great site that lists an interesting educational website on a daily basis. There are a lot of other goodies here as well.
http://techlearning.com/webpicks/index.jhtml

This blog is a bit of an experiment for me to see how blogging and the concept of e-portfolios can be merged. I have always been a big proponent of electronic-portfolios in assessment, but I think now that the blogging ‘ethos’ could help to take this concept even further.

Recently, David Tosh, from the University of Edinburgh, has released the draft paper, “ePortfolios and weblogs: one vision for ePortfolio development” (pdf). It’s certainly an interesting read. To see more information re: e-portfolios from David Tosh, you can explore the ERADC site at: http://eradc.org/blog .