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<title><![CDATA[JISC Emerge: Latest blog posts]]></title>
<link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/</link>
<description><![CDATA[Latest public blog posts from JISC Emerge]]></description>
<generator><![CDATA[JISC Emerge]]></generator>
<language>en_GB</language>    
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        <title><![CDATA[Does the e-framework work?]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/johnh/weblog/1539.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/johnh/weblog/1539.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:21:49 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[I have just been re-reading parts of the e-framework (well, it was a 'slow news day') so that I could offer colleagues on the Streamline project advice on creating Service Usage Models (SUMS).&nbsp; Everytime I look at the framework documentation, I find it 'worthy but dull' ... and I suspect the framework itself is worthy but doomed. When I look at how many people (such as the Emerge community) are using, linking, connecting, modifying technology ... I see no evidence of any underlying framework .. though of course I am conscious of the standards and protocols lurking in the depths.I don't see SUMs for using Twitter .... I see enticing and exciting case examples... not written to conform to a template .. but written to express the user's excitement (or sometimes disappointment) with the technology or service.These rich and involving stories convey the message and 'spread the word' more effectively to me ... or am I just some kind of gadget-phile but technophobe who should know better?]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Emerging Mondays - LIVE - 7th July]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stevenw/weblog/1538.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stevenw/weblog/1538.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2008 18:20:57 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[Full details are here with information on how to participate:'See' you there. ]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Emerging Mondays - Edupunk - Sounds of Bazaar LIVE]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/graham/weblog/1536.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/graham/weblog/1536.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2008 8:06:11 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[ What is Edupunk? Stephen Downes offers a definition: &quot;edupunk is student-centered, resourceful, teacher- or community-created rather than corporate-sourced, and underwritten by a progressive political stance.&quot;  And an anonymous commentator on his post says: &quot;I can't think of anything more punk than education.  For the student, learning gives power to the individual. A society full of mindless drones trained to each do a single task doesn't really have the mental ability to rebel in meaningful ways.  For the teacher, every day is an exercise in punk. You're almost completely under the control of your coordinator, your principals, your superintendents, your school board, the media. Often, &quot;the man&quot; passes down restrictive rules and decisions that don't seem to align with what's best for you or your students. Often, you're only equipped with sparse resources you're able to scrap together here and there.&quot;  Are you into edupuank. Or is this just a ludicrous social construction by white males the wrong side of 40.  The next Emerging Monday Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE radio programme on Monday 7 July will explore the edupunk phenomonon. With interviews,music opinion, poetry and more. LIVE. Guests include Kathryn Greenhill, Michael Caulfield and Martin Weller.And hopefully we will be welcoming resident edupunk granny Leila back to the programme. Make sure the show is in your diary. We will be broadcasting LIVE from 1900 - 2000 UK Summer Time, 2000 - 2100 Central European Summer Time. To access the programme just click on this link or go to  and it shoudl open in your favourite MP3 player. And please tell your friends.]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Waiting for myself]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stevenw/weblog/1534.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stevenw/weblog/1534.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2008 3:16:43 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[ An interesting moment in transgressing my own boundaries between self and avatar. Rarely have we appeared together and here only in the name of science. 





This video came about from a little research that was carried out in advance of an upcoming, 7th July, symposium that we will be presenting to a remote audience in Kuala Lumpar. We cannot be there physically so my question was, if we decide to use Second Life in what ways can we create maximum social presence?

I am an immersionist, that is I let StevenW build his own space inside SL, yet I am interested in ways to move information in and out of Second Life, punching holes through the membrane and linking in-world and out-of-world experiences. The porosity of SL has changed over time with channels opening for blogging; twitter, web-browsing, SL to Flickr, audio, facebook links, and streaming video. Taking the scenario of a face-2-face conference blended with SL participants I took a peek at the different ways to stream live video into SL. Inspired by posts from both AndyPowell and Rob Smart's blogs I set up a quick trial with Veodia, knowing their live video webstreaming service is now available for free and is offered in a format compatible with Second Life.

So how was it? Well simple, so simple I was left wondering what the catch was, bandwidth issues aside. Here is a quick run through of the steps I followed:

Opened an account with Veodia, a straightforward exercise;

Clicked through the screens to start my first broadcast;

Pressed the appropriate button and let my Apple MacPro do the audio-video and capture;

Previewed the stream to check I was on air and then copied the rtsp URL provided by Veodia from the live broadcast page; 

Launched Second Life;

Made a coffee while I waited to get in-world ;)

Knocked up a quick media screen, set the textures and then pasted the rtsp stream URL into the land parcel settings;

Pressed the media player button in SL;

Bingo, there I was alive and kicking in the virtual universe.



Whether we will use this for the symposium I am still unsure, my preference I think would be to have the audience streamed into SL so that we have some sense of those who are watching and listening in the conference room. Testing the set-up with fellow panelists uncovered three issues that are driving me away from using SL as a conferencing tool:

 First and most obvious is the heavy bandwidth requirements for this configuration and the related issue of delay, around 3-5 seconds, between the capture and delivery of the video stream; 

Second is the lack of status or feedback indicators, the kind of thing you find when using a tool like Elluminate where you can ask the audience questions and get feedback through a series of emoticons that includes useful items like the 'hands-up' attention grabber;

Third follows a similar line and concerns the difficulty in providing a mechanism for live audience participation. Setting up a back channel would be an ideal solution and making use of the main SL chat window would be the natural place for this. Yet to my knowledge it is still impossible to remotely work with SL chat so delegates would need to log into SL if they wanted to use the chat window. The option of using a lightweight client such as AjaxLife might be a solution, if the audience all have SL accounts or deploying a non-integrated chat client bought in through the in-world media browser. Both options are still not ideal.

There is perhaps a fourth reason, intimated at the start of this post, the separation of avatar and typist. My avatar and me do not appear in public together, or least not very often and somehow that feels right. The quandry of where to post snapshots of us both together, Flickr seemed at first the obvious place, confirmed to me that despite the fuzzy boundary between real and virtual identities they remain in many aspects decoupled. SL is a different space and there exists a differentiated person which goes someway to explain my discomfort in completely collapsing our two identities.]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Waiting for myself]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/habitat/weblog/1535.html</link>
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        <pubDate>Fri, 04 Jul 2008 3:16:43 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[ An interesting moment in transgressing my own boundaries between self and avatar. Rarely have we appeared together and here only in the name of science. 



read more]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Philosophers Philosophise in Second Life]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/habitat/weblog/1533.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/habitat/weblog/1533.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2008 17:47:58 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[ What happens when you take 6 online philosophy students with and average age of about 50* and attempt to run a discussion session on ‘identity’ in Second Life after only two short orientation sessions that not everyone could attend?
read more]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[How and why are people using Twitter: A small group study]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/andyramsden/weblog/1532.html</link>
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        <pubDate>Thu, 03 Jul 2008 2:30:12 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[ I&#39;ve finally written up some observations from the survey I undertook of Twitter uses a few months ago. The article abstract is ...&quot;This paper reports the findings from a survey of people who are using Twitter. Twitter feels like the new tec]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Time flies ...]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/chrisk/weblog/1531.html</link>
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        <pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:43:19 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[Waaah!&nbsp; Time goes by so quickly.&nbsp; The last thing I posted here was in January, since the book has been published (Feb 2008), I have got a new job (in Marseille, starting in October) and the book is featuring in a book club (starting next month).    What book? - &quot;Communities of Practice: Creating Learning Environments for Educators&quot; edited by myself, Paul Hildreth and Isabelle Bourdon.        What book club? - the CPsquare book club (I know some of you are already members of CPsquare, but this is for those who are not) will be reading selected chapters from the book.        So, if you want to have the opportunity to discuss what you have been doing with others who share a common interest - from around the world - this is your chance.&nbsp; There will be some synchronous activities (e.g. teleconferences), but most of the discussion should be asynchronous (so you should not need to get up in the middle of the night to chat to somebody on the other side of the planet).    The selection of the chapters will begin in late July and the discussions will start a week later - all you need is a copy of the book and the will to participate ... oh yes, and 50 USD if you are not a member of CPsquare (it is free to members but they will charge anybody else, don't blame me, I am not a member and I didn't make the rule).    I hope to meet some of you there on-line.]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[MSc Dissertation: questionnaire]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/nicksheppard/weblog/1530.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/nicksheppard/weblog/1530.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:16:21 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[ As part of her MSc Information Studies course, Leeds Met student Beth Hall is undertaking a dissertation investigating disciplinary differences in opinion of and use of open access repositories by  research-active academic staff and postgraduate students.
Beth&#8217;s work will also provide useful information for the development of the Leeds Met repository and we would be very grateful if you could spend a few minutes  completing her questionnaire (Leeds Met staff/postgrads only)
       ]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Second Life AR Video]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/mcleang/weblog/1529.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/mcleang/weblog/1529.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:40:11 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[Further to my previous post, here is the link to the video of a Second Life /Real Life impro performance. I'm the avatar in red! &nbsp;]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Reflecting on user2.0 conference]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/isobelf/weblog/1528.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/isobelf/weblog/1528.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Sat, 28 Jun 2008 16:38:57 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[I was thrilled by the enthusiasm and support for the Exploring User2.0 conference earlier this week, and in particular by the variety of ways of participating that different projects came up with and promoted.&nbsp; What I'm wondering now, is what we all got out of the conference, and how we can capture that and make it useful to others.&nbsp; I'd be particularly interested to hear from the projects that ran sessions, whether the sessions were useful to their projects - how and why - as well as to the rest of us; and also from any community members if they have thoughts about useful forms of output]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Word clouds]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/roddym/weblog/1527.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/roddym/weblog/1527.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:53:22 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[Just been playing with Wordle, to create a word cloud from the text of the article about ticTOCs mentioned previously:]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Developing Innovation Networks and Communities of Practice – and the Future of Emerge]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/jhensman/weblog/1526.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/jhensman/weblog/1526.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:37:08 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[The report from the Emerge small project &ndash; Developing Innovation Networks and Communities of Practice &ndash; is now available at:  &nbsp;The underlying aim of project was to look at how the Emerge Community could develop in the future in a sustainable way. To do this, it created a number of case studies covering a very wide area to look at common themes and issues around developing innovation communities generally, as well as gathering requirements for a university innovation community and looking how this could link with a wider community like Emerge. Conclusions are drawn from the evidence examined, as well as from theoretical work covering this area. A new model for understanding Web 2.0 functionality is suggested, and recommendations made - particularly regarding how communities of communities could be developed, and how this could be something that Emerge in the future could play a major part in.&nbsp;Anyone who participated in the Planet patterns workshop this week may also be interested on how learning and innovation communities compare, and how the pattern language approach links in with all this. Comments and discussion about the report are very welcome.]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA['Making stuff together' - a pattern language network workshop July 7th]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stevenw/weblog/1525.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stevenw/weblog/1525.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:11:05 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[The Pattern Language Network project (Planet) is running a one day workshop at the London Knowledge Lab, 7th July, around the theme of:&quot;Making Stuff Together&quot; this workshop we will focus on two environments: Multi-user virtual worlds (MUVEs) and collaborative web documents. At a firstglance, these appear to be as different and unrelated as two on-line environments can be. Yet both are loci for activities of sharedconstruction. It is this quality, and this tension, which we wish to explore as a driver of learning.The workshop will be driven by user contributed case studies. These cases will be discussed in cross disciplinary groups, through which design patterns will be extracted and elaborated and scenarios developed. If you have case study that you would like to share then please see our case study repository here: welcome. We have limited places so to register, or for any inquiries, please contact:Steven Warburton-&nbsp; steven.warburton@kcl.ac.ukYsihay Mor- yishaym@gmail.comPlease pass on to others who may be interested in attending.Best wishes, Steve and Yishay]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[How tall is tall in Second Life?]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stevenw/weblog/1523.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stevenw/weblog/1523.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2008 4:13:37 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[ Well about 202m if you are given 15 minutes to build a tower and you have the physics switched on. That was the challenge I presented to all the avatars who came along to the SL social event organized during the Emerge online conference (23rd to 25th June). On paper (or notecard) a simple task and one that was reused from a teaching activity designed for the OpenHabitat project by Cubist Scarborough. In virtuality it was a more challenging competition than I envisaged. 




 



Building in SL requires a number of skills: knowledge of the client interface, the ability to interpret the ‘build’ dialog boxes, good camera controls and a design based visual grammar that can adjust to a 3D working space. Complicate this mix by making it a cooperative task and the constraints of SL as a tool for collaboration start to become uncovered. The permissions structure in SL means that object sharing is problematic and needs to be solved if team building is going to be effective. To progress, clear communication channels between avatars needs to be established, not a straightforward matter when the main chat window is clogged with the noise from competing parties busy issuing each other instructions and encouragement.

From my perspective as judge and referee it felt like 15 minutes of mayhem. Thankfully, towers did appear out of the chaos and the most productive builders were those who in the end chose to go it alone. It was also a great insight into how to design a creative activity for a virtual environment such as SL. The issues that needed to be addressed (and were forgotten by me) were around scaffolding the activity – ensuring there were a set of baseline competencies in place from which creativity could emerge. Next time I will make sure:

•&nbsp; &nbsp; the instructions (and supporting resources) are given well in advance to allow the less experienced participants time to brush up on the skills that will be needed. A few Torley Linden tutorials would have been handy here;•&nbsp; &nbsp; time is allowed for thinking and communicating strategy and possible approaches to the problem;•&nbsp; &nbsp; that I do not shift everyone from one venue to another and breakup the natural conversational flows that are developing, in this case moving people from the social area to the building area;•&nbsp; &nbsp; that if possible everyone is assigned to groups in advance and are not distracted by what can be a tortuous process of forming teams.

Second Life can be deceptive. On the surface it presents itself as an environment that can be interpreted by understandings from the real world. It can seduce one into believing that ‘teaching’ practices that work on the outside can be readily transposed inside. It is a sobering experience when the particular constraints of SL kick back and even the best-laid plans begin to unravel.

Thankfully here the entire session did not go completely awry and towers were wrought from SL’s basic prim set.&nbsp; Congratulations to Art Fossett who was awarded the winners prize – a ‘Ruth’. Of course we will be expecting him back next year, or perhaps at the next social, to defend his title.








See the full photostream here: ]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[How tall is tall in Second Life?]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/habitat/weblog/1524.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/habitat/weblog/1524.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Thu, 26 Jun 2008 4:13:37 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[ Well about 202m if you are given 15 minutes to build a tower and you have the physics switched on. That was the challenge I presented to all the avatars who came along to the SL social event organized during the Emerge online conference (23rd to 25th June). On paper (or notecard) a simple task and one that was reused from a teaching activity designed for the OpenHabitat project by Cubist Scarborough.
read more]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/graham/weblog/1521.html</link>
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        <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:22:36 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[The podcast version of Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE summer special. This edition was produced for the Jisc Emerge conference on Exploring User 2.0: the shape of future users. The conference day theme was digital storytelling so we thought we would talk to users - old and young and from across Europe.  First up in the show is an all too short talk with kids from the computer club at Cwmglas primary school, Swansea. Sadly we ran out of bandwidth and had to curtail the talk but I have arranged to go back to make a podcast shwo at the school in a couple of weeks. And make sure you visit their brilliant website. (NB we are trebling our bandwidth next week).  Next up is John Pallister, who teaches IT in a secondary school  talking about his discovery of Web 2.0 tools and his increasing fascination with the on-line world.  John is followed by Guenter Behan from Graz in Austria exoplaining the ideas behind the European funded Aposdle project.  Asley Healey from Glasgow in Scotland tells us about her research into communities of practice.  And Leila Gray - an 83 year old computer fan from Blackwood in Wales explains how she uses Web 2.0 applications. Leila was so good we have invited her to become our resident Sounds of the Bazaar Techno-granny (more about that soon).  And to wrap up taodays programme Margarita Perez Garcia reads us a poem in Spanish.  What a show. And between each item we have great music form an album called Cien Anos Despues by Magnolia Chile available free under a Creative Commons license from the Jamendo web site.  Enjoy. You are listening to Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar - the Sounds of the Summer. You can listen or download Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar from this web page.&nbsp; ]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[Augmented Reality Second Life]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/mcleang/weblog/1520.html</link>
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        <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:41:25 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[I am going along to a performance this week organised by a Coventry University lecturer called Joff Chafer. The performance will mix real dancers with Second Life avatars using augmented reality. From what i've seen so far it looks incredibly impressive. Watch this space for video footage of the event.]]></description>
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        <title><![CDATA[skillclouds jisc emerge 0608 activity tag cloud screen shot]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stuartlamour/weblog/1519.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/stuartlamour/weblog/1519.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:56:07 +0100</pubDate>
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        <title><![CDATA[Trans-institutional education.]]></title>
        <link>http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/habitat/weblog/1522.html</link>
        <guid isPermaLink="true">http://elgg.jiscemerge.org.uk/habitat/weblog/1522.html</guid>
        <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:44:00 +0100</pubDate>
        <description><![CDATA[ Yesterday's Emerge conference social event was more than just jolly tower building fun for me. A number of vague ideas that have been bouncing around my head since we finished the first art &amp; design pilot were suddenly brought into focus. Earlier yesterday, whilst giving StevenW a hand preparing for the event, I got the chance to chat very briefly to Margarita about the initial evaluation of the pilot. One issue that has emerged is the restrictive nature of dealing with noobs. Another is the limitations of restricting learning to a three week block.
read more]]></description>
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