Blake: Work Priorities

At our 2006 Oregon Rep Assembly, the member-delegates passed a new business item to create a video explaining the purpose and procedures of Oregon's Rep Assembly. After the November election, I recruited the creator of the new business item, the member who seconded it, and our President and Vice President to appear in the project.

Hi Don,

I've been messing around with creating a blog for our student program. Ellen Holmes got me started. . . Just wanted to show you what I created so far. Will most likely launch after the NEA-SP SLC in June so we have a good "first post" event to kick off our blog.

As I said, it's not 'finished' but most of the links are up and I still need to do my profile.

S.E.A.M.

Hello Members of District 8,
I encourage you to visit http://district-8-news.blogspot.com/ for the latest news on the state budget and school regionalization issue.

I am also looking to hear if any of you have begun working on contract language or other issues with your prospective future regional partners. WE would appreciate hearing your questions, comments and concerns about the next steps in this process. The best way for you to do this is to click on the following link http://district-8-news.blogspot.com/ and then after the article “State Budget and School Regionalization” click on the word “comments.” This will allow you to view what others have left as well as to leave your own thoughts and responses.

MEA

Bob Rattivarakorn, Trends Research Analyst; RarePlay

The new “social Web” or Web 2.0 is gradually having an impact in schools as teachers and students begin to explore the potential of social networking, blogs, shared online features and wikis. These technologies are giving rise to new educational opportunities - social collaborative learning. As time goes on, teachers are increasingly becoming familiarized with these new technologies and are using blogs and wikis more and more. They are beginning to catch up with their students who are already accustomed to socializing online, instant messaging, podcasting etc. Earlier forms of online education, such as e-learning, have traditionally focused on publishing content online, but the social Web today has empowered individuals to actively share knowledge and learning experiences. Sites like Schoopy, Groupvine, mynoteIT, Carmun and Haiku are built upon community communications among students and teachers; each revolves around online collaboration on projects via social networking/blogs and wikis as well as tools like online grade tracker, shared files/calendar, managing class schedules and assignments.

Learning is most effective when students actively connect and share knowledge during group social interactions and collaboration periods. Time and location constraints often put limits on social learning in classroom teaching. Moreover, students are sometimes reluctant to share or express their thoughts on topics publicly. Thanks to the rise of the social Web, today teachers and students can now create and publish their own content, and this enables the shared construction of knowledge. In other words, education is gradually moving towards the so called buzz word "social constructivism". The technology now allows students to contribute to the learning process anywhere, anytime; whether it’s engaging in live conversations with teachers, downloading lessons via podcasts, editing a shared document on wiki or blogging on school news/events/activities.

The growing population of the virtual world is being targeted by one of the North East’s universities, which hopes to turn the online game Second Life to its advantage. The ebusiness research team at Newcastle University Business School are focusing on the seven million residents who use the massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG).

In the Second Life world, it is possible to speculate in virtual land, sell virtual designer clothes, pets or cars and when it is time for a break, even take a virtual holiday on a virtual beach. All this is accomplished with Linden Dollars, the virtual currency operated by Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life.

The team plans to use their Second Life ‘island’ to promote its MSc course in Ebusiness and Information Systems. One aspect of this has been its Ebusiness Island Second Life Competition which has two themes – Ebusiness and the North East of England. The three competition winners will each receive 7,500, 15,000 or 25,000 Linden Dollars for their entries, and will be judged on originality, relevance to the themes, design, scripting and complexity as well as the execution of the concept presented. Apart from familiarising entrants with the technology involved in Second Life, the competition will also provide a platform for e-commerce opportunities.

Savvas Papagiannidis, a lecturer in Management, said: “Our involvement began when we were working on an electronic marketing paper about nine months ago and since then Second Life and virtual worlds in general have become one of our main research areas. We have also used Second Life for teaching purposes in our MSc in Ebusiness and Information Systems this year and we are considering potential ways in which we could utilise it further from next year. "Our ebusiness students are undertaking consultancy assignments using the Second Life concept which throws up different scenarios in the real world versus the ideal world. They really enjoy it and one of them even started his own business selling virtual furniture!”

To visit the ebusiness island go to: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ebusiness/125/125 after downloading and installing the Second Life software, available at: www.secondlife.com.

I wanted to share with you that two more of my colleagues have begun to build a blog for their districts. I showed them the basics but thought you might want to give them some guidance as well.

Their site is:

http://district-5and6-news.blogspot.com/

Thanks one more time for showing us how to do this at the Academy.

David Ramel

June 20, 2007 (Computerworld) You know all about YouTube: More than 100 million videos viewed each day, tens of millions of unique visitors, one of the top sites on the Internet and so on.

So, you've probably watched YouTube videos. But have you ever uploaded your own creation? Probably not.

According to the Web-audience measuring service Hitwise Pty., only 0.16% of U.S. visitors to YouTube uploaded videos in a recent week. The rest are just watching.

What's holding you back? It's easier than you think to post video, and there are even some good business reasons for doing it. I'll explain the steps for producing corporate video and throw in some home video tips for off-hours fun.