Erick SchonfeldofTechCrunch suggests a new possible scenario for your online identity. Google and Facebook may soon be the only companies controlling the way most of you are going to identify yourself on the Web.
Facebook ConnectandGoogle Friend Connect are two new and competing services which provide you with the ability to login into your favorite social network, as well as to access an increasing number of your preferred content publication and distribution services: from YouTube to Delicious and more.
The key new thing here, is that by adopting one of these online identification systems you can log into all of these web-based services by using always the same credentials.
For example: popular site TechCrunch has already started using both Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect to allow its readers to login into the site social community by using their own Facebook and Google credentials. Similarly, the commenting system Disqus has also been thinking about integrating these two same services by the end of the year.
But is this really a cool thing, from all standpoints?
As George Siemenspoints out in this Media Literacy digest issue, Facebook and Google already own the majority of the digital content you share on the Web. Your e-mail, photos, music, contacts, are all mostly stored on their servers. Given this situation, how smart is it to allow these two companies to be able to also start monitoring all of your moves and actions online? Should they be the ones to control your access to your social network, blog comments, and to everything else you do online?
This, along with other hot technology issues and new interesting media and education-related resources, makes up for another rich media literacy digest, showcasing the deep and disruptive changes new media technologies are bringing into your lives, and the good questions you should ask yourself before fully embracing them.
Here all the details:
Intro by Robin Good
eLearning Resources and News
learning, networks, knowledge, technology, trends
by George Siemens
Facebook vs. Google
Earlier this year, the short term future of the internet included a four company race:
Since that time, Yahoo has managed to successfully exclude itself. They are now best seen as an acquisition opportunity.
Microsoft is still trying to figure out how it can apply a similar lock to the internet that it has (had?) on the desktop. They’re current philosophy is “innovation through blatant duplication” – revealed by the Zune and a rumoured Zune phone.
Microsoft’s internet strategy is confused at best, retaining too much of the desktop model. They are trying to innovate, and given their financial resources and market presence, they shouldn’t be ruled out. Which leaves Google and Facebook as the two prominent companies fighting to define the future of the internet.
Google is stable and consistent, reporting continued growth in their share of the search market and regular innovations (with odd, slightly embarrassing missteps such as Lively).
It appears that Facebook has all the momentum right now.
Facebook is where Google was five years ago – innovative, redefining the game, and operating on a different set of premises from its competitors. Most companies launching widely disliked platforms such as Beacon would be punished by loss of users. Not Facebook. They keep growing – Facebook is challenging Google for the amount of time visitors spend with the service.
Balance Between Individual and Group-genius
Science and art have been historically defined by individual genius. In the 50’s, individual invention gave way to group / institutional invention (i.e. Bell Labs).
Now it appears that loosely connected networks of specialized expertise (such as pharmaceutical networks or the network that was formed to research SARS at the height of the crisis in 2003) are providing answers to the most challenging questions of our era.
At the heart of the transition from individual to institution to network innovation is obviously the role of the individual.
“”Successful research groups are those that grow and evolve on their own over time,” he says. “For example, an individual comes up with a good idea, gets funding, and new group begins to form around that good idea. This creates a framework where many smaller groups contribute to the whole.”“
Grades: Evaluation Without Context
Malcolm Gladwell is busy promoting his new book about the systemic (sometimes circumstantial) causes for success – Outliers.
“There are certain jobs where almost nothing you can learn about candidates before they start predicts how they’ll do once they’re hired. So how do we know whom to choose in cases like that? In recent years, a number of fields have begun to wrestle with this problem, but none with such profound social consequences as the profession of teaching.”
There are many angles to consider in the article as Gladwell runs a parallel discussion of teacher success and quarterback success. I found the discussion of the limitations of tradition metrics most valuable (p. 5). We simply do not know who will be a good teacher by the ways we currently measure. Grades are essentially evaluation without context. The process of ‘becoming’ a teacher (or carpenter, plumber, or doctor) requires activities – and evaluation – to be situated in a real context.
Let’s Talk Systemic Change
In recent presentations / discussions, I’ve been making the point that grassroots level approaches to reform in education are being hampered by systemic barriers.
The structure of systems of education impedes future innovation. What is required, of course, is a reformulation of educational institutions. As is often the case, we are not entirely without examples.
“Today, a network of councils and boards empowered to launch new businesses, plus an evolving set of Web 2.0 gizmos — not to mention a new financial incentive system — encourage executives to work together like never before.
Pull back the tent flaps and Cisco citizens are blogging, vlogging, and virtualizing, using social-networking tools that they’ve made themselves and that, in many cases, far exceed the capabilities of the commercially available wikis, YouTubes, and Facebooks created by the kids up the road in Palo Alto… ”Without changing the structure of your organization,” Chambers told the analysts in September, “I would argue that [innovation] will not work.”
“
Who Owns My Thoughts?
It’s been a year or so (I think) sincemybloglog introduced the concept of having our identity (and network) trail behind us as we visited different websites. A site that set up mybloglog would allow visitors to connect with each other beyond simply comments. Not much happened with the concept after the launch. A few blogs added the widget, but I haven’t seen significant adoption.
Of course, as Google has learned from Facebook, relationships are more important than content in determining loyalty and commitment to a site or service. While I can happily post on my site, the real value for readers is in the connections they form with other people.
Google has to date monetized content with services like adwords. But what do you do to monetize relationships?
How do you get people to use your service as a source for forming relationships?
Facebook answers with Facebook Connect and Google responds with Friend Connect (their marketing department wasn’t involved in the “let’s give this thing a creative name” discussion).
What does this mean?
Doall of our comments belong to Facebook? or Google? I’m personally less concerned with these companies owning my content than I am with their knowledge of my relationships / connections. Facebook in particular is very good at mining data based on relatedness (oh, look, many of George’s friends list these topics of interest…or this political orientation…or religion).
Both Facebook and Google desire to know us, not just our content. That’s what doesn’t sit well with me. Oops, gotta go login to Google mail…then off to check my Facebook account.
CRS’ are used for faculty to poll students – asking questions related to course content and, based on responses, re-teach key points or clarify misconceptions. While it sounds simple, writing questions that reveal misconceptions students have about curriculum is difficult. CRS are usually fairly affordable for students (except when they lose their clickers).
I always wondered why we were building separate systems for response when many students already have mobile phones. Why not just use phones and texting for feedback?
The title of his presentation was “Love Entrepreneurship: Your Own Way” and his focus was specifically on what key points you MUST follow if you want to start your own online business. Many startuppers fail because they do not pay attention to some very fundamental strategic rules of good entreprenurship and dive into their projects without thinking of the consequences of their initial, time-pressed decisions.
Being an entrepreneur it’s not all fun and games. If you want to become your own boss, you have to make sure first that you do make the right choices.
So which are the successful steps to self-employment?
Becoming independent and self-employed is like a chess game. It’s cool to start playing the game and have other people under you doing what you ask, but if you don’t play smart and make the correct moves, things may not exactly go the way you may have expected.
If you, like me, didn’t have the chance to see John Buckman live at LeWeb, this is something you don’t want to miss. Here for you his great talk recorded on stage at LeWeb, and a full English transcription:
Intro by Daniele Bazzano
Love Entrepreneurship Your Own Way
Duration: 9′
Full English Text Transcription
John Buckman: Here are the quick steps that I see for self-employment.
1) Think of Lots of Ideas
The very first thing is: just start thinking of lots of ideas. Starts reading a science fiction, futurism, start watching TED… just start writing ideas down.
2) Do Nothing
And then, this is the crucial step: do nothing. Don’t do anything with those ideas.
Just keep thinking of ideas and writing them down, and the reason is that in three months most of those ideas are going to be shit. And it’s going to take you at least three months, if not six to nine months to get those ideas together.
Too many people jump on the first ideas they have and start doing them, and they shut their brain down and they stop thinking of other clever things.
This is my own personal test, I called it the pub-test. I spent half the year in England and Brits are well-educated, which means they’re a very tough audience for new ideas.
I go to a pub with a friend, it’s noisy, we’re having a beer, and then about 15 seconds I explain my idea. If they don’t stop drinking their beer and pay attention, my idea is not good enough.
It’s very simple. It’s because a noisy pub, with beer, lots of queue other people around… it’s what the Internet is like: there are tons of distractions, there are tons of things pulling people away.
If you’re not interesting enough to get someone to look up from their beer, it’s not gonna happen. Try again.
3) The Elevator Pitch
Now, think about your product: what this really comes down to, it’s some sort of elevator pitch, some sort of very simple explanation.
It’s called an elevator pitch because if you’re stuck in an elevator with someone famous, let’s say Chris Anderson of TED, and you want to speak at TED.
What would you say in those fifteen seconds that would excite him, that would make him take your card, and call you back?
4) Write The First Line of Your Press Release
I can’t stress this enough: before you do any work, write the first line of your press release.
So many companies leave this still later.
They make the product, they get it to ship and then they write the press release, and they realize that the first line of their press release is boring.
The product is already made, there’s nothing you can do: you have a boring product.
You need to work the other way around. How is that first line of that press release going to get people interested?
5) Write The First Paragraph of Your Homepage
Next, write the first paragraph of your homepage. This is the follow one.
Someone says, “Uh, that sounds interesting, tell me more“. You have three or four sentences to get them excited.
Make the homepage finally hunt for unique names.
This is actually not nearly as important as you would think. A lot of companies like my own Magnatune, or even ones like Seesmic, are not the best names in the world, but if they’re really good ideas and they’re memorable, that’s fine. It’s not a problem.
6) Don’t Borrow Money
This is really crucial. Don’t borrow money. Figure out how to do the idea extremely cheaply.
7) Make a Mock-up
Next finally, make a mock-up. Show it to people. Again, see if they’re are really excited.
Launch Before You Are Ready
And this is crucial. Lunch way before you’re ready.
Get it out there. start getting feedback. See if the idea is any good, because you might be really wrong.
After you pitch at the bloggers, if no-one cared, if you didn’t borrow money, you don’t have anything invested in it, other than a few months’ work. Kill it, start over.
You just learned something, you just learned why the idea was bad. Start again.
9) Don’t Quit Your Day Job
This is also crucial: don’t quit your day job.
A lot of people think they need to get funding, quit their day jobs, start with a bunch of partners, and go off.
What you really need to do, is get that salary and find time on the weekends, on the evenings, to work on your project, and gradually lower your time commitment to your job. But only quit it once you have enough money.
10) Salespeople Are a Bad Idea
You also discover that salespeople are an extremely bad idea.
The reason is that salespeople require capital and they also generally mean that your idea isn’t that good. Your idea isn’t that good because it requires salespeople to convince people it’s good. If it’s good it should convince people on their own.
Great products build word of mouth.
11) Pitch The Bloggers
Another fallacy is that if we just had a big PR and marketing campaign, that everyone would know about our product that would be great.
That’s not true either. Because if you can convince just a few bloggers that it’s interesting, and a few early users, that is something really unusual, then it will happen on its own.
John’s Secrets
I got a few case studies here. This is my secret, it’s really really simple.
The secret to getting massive press, and I have got massive press for my project, so the first one is the hardest:
a) Be Interesting
Be really damned interesting.
Guy Kawasaki in his famous books says: “If you’re not getting press, get better reality“.
That’s a more clever way of saying what I’m saying, but find something really interesting.
b) Convince Influential Bloggers
And then you just need to convince two influential bloggers that it’s really interesting. That will get you the stage.
If it’s not that interesting it won’t go anywhere.
c) Focus on Freelancers
Another secret, this is for traditional print media, is focus on freelancers, not on staff writers.
Freelancers will write about small people, generally staff writers won’t. And the reason is that staff writers get stories from editors, whereas freelancers have to find stories and pitch to the editor.
Become a cause that freelancer would personally like they have personally invested in.
It’s just a cascade. Each media watches the next media and it happens automatically.
Here some of the story angles. You had to download this to read us more, but think of as many edgy stories as you can. Especially when what’s happened has been written about. So, when a journalist contacts you can give them something really juicy to think about.
Click above to enlarge image
This is the Magnatune homepage, this is my elevator pitch, “we are not evil“, It’s very cute, it makes people laugh, and then there is this massive paragraph.
What people see is “we are not evil“, bla bla bla bla bla.
Final Tips
Okay, some final tips.
Dedibox
Those of you who are French, you need to look at Dedibox.
For a thirty euros a month you can have a machine of a 100 megabits. It’s only available to French people, and it’s a wonderful thing.
Use PHP
I recommend you usePHP, because it’s a simple technology. You can hire people cheaply.
Make Your Homepage Pretty
Don’t skimp on graphics.
Do Everything Yourself
Do everything yourself. And if you’re not technical, sorry, you’re going to to have to be technical.
You’re going have to learn technology at some level. Otherwise it’s not going to happen.
You’re going have to read a lot of books. You got to to learn everything out running a company, but it’s going to be a lot of fun. And if it is successful, you get all the percents.
You can’t lead people if you don’t know how to do their job.
Don’t Borrow Money
Don’t borrow money, because if you fail, you can just start again next week.
That is all I wanted to say, thank you very much for listening. Bye-bye!
I’m still going back and forth with some programmer friends on just how reckless I should be in my approach to “simplifying” FLVs in iWeb, so I’m afraid I’ll have to string you on for a bit longer on that article. But rest assured — I’ve not forgotten, and the Frame Controls article is coming up relatively soon as well.
In the meantime, here’s a piece that’s hopefully more useful than most “filler” — the technical story behind Portable Network Graphics, or PNGs. Read on for what they are, where they came from, and (most importantly) when they’re a good idea in the video production workflow.
One of the main concerns of every online publisher is money. If you start publishing your stuff online and you get some traffic, you’d probably want to earn something from your blog as soon as possible.
Immediately plastering your site with ads, just won’t do. Your first concern should be questioning again the content niche you have selected and see whether you can improve and define better its specific traits and characteristics. The more you define it and identify your niche profile the easier it becomes to serve your audience with content and advertising offers that can match your readers expectations.
Next step up is traffic. Once you have clearly identified your niche it’s time to focus on getting qualified traffic to your site. The more relevant and interested in your topics, the more your web readers are likely to enjoy your content, click on some ads and bookmark your site to come back for more.
According to Robin though, if you cannot make at least 500 or more visitors per day, you should not start planning to send your present boss a resignation letter any time soon. Yes, even with a small, but highly targeted traffic stream, you could start seeing an interesting revenue stream coming your way, but you need to make sure that your ads and sponsor are highly relevant to your readers interests and that they do not alienate or distract them from what they are really interested into.
Here his short video and tips on how you too, can start looking at your site as a potential source of additional income:
How Much Money Can You Earn With Your Blog
Duration: 5′
Full English Text Transcription
Hi guys this is Robin Good for MasterNewMedia, and I have more and more questions coming in from you at my email inbox at Robin.Good(at)masternewmedia.org
Let’s see what I’ve selected today to answer. You write: “Let’s talk about money! How much am I supposed to earn with my own blog, and how much will it cost me to keep it fully functional?”
That’s a good question, and not an easy one to answer!
“How much are you supposed to earn with your blog?” As much possible I would say!
There isn’t really an official figure for how much you’re supposed to earn, but let me give you some indications of what may be useful for you.
What To Do Before Thinking of Money
You should considermonetizing your blog only after you’ve established your blog in some way.
If you’ve just opened your blog and your plastering it with ads from Google or from affiliate products, or other things, I think you’re just wasting your time. I think you shouldn’t do that.
I think you should first, find out for yourself:
if you like what you’re doing,
if you can do it well if you get few comments from people, or from your friends after they read what you got out there,
That is: “if you write the topic of your latest article, can you find yourself in Google in one of the first few pages?“, and so on.
Once that happens, and once therefore you start having real traffic, you can then think about advertising.
And then, if you have, at least, I would say a 500 to 1000 visitors per day, and you talk about a very specific topic, for which there is a number of products and services, and companies that want to advertise out there and you can find out these much earlier before you even start publishing your blog site, you should see some revenue coming in the amount of…
…if you are on a specific niche that has a good value you could be making a few tens of dollars per day. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 dollars per day, or more.
Some topics are worth much more than others because the products and the services that are sold after the people click on your ads are worth much more money and revenue to those companies than other products.
A Coca-Cola bottle has only little revenue margin. A mortgage on a house has a huge margin for a very long time for whoever sells it, just to give you a general idea.
Money = Effort
The reason, the specific amount.
I would say that a properly prepared blog that works on a specific niche, and builds some authority before plastering ads in the correct and best positions out there, should be making at least 500 to a 1000 dollars per month to justify spending on it the three-four hours per day that it may require.
Maybe a lot less in some cases, maybe a bit more in some others. But that’s the type of number that would indicate me if it’s worth spending more time on it or not.
If you don’t make that 500-1000 either you’re doing something wrong in the way you’re publishing your site, or your niche is not worth enough, or you need to understand better how to work your content, then titles, and the general look of the site so that your Google search bots will come and index you better, and you can be found by people who search that topic.
That’s what can I say. There isn’t a specific set of rules and figures, but I would say that the threshold to make some money is above 500 visitors on a specific niche. There you should start making some (money), and you should be making a few hundred to a thousand or more if you’re doing your things well.
Hope that helps.
Ciao from Robin, talk to you soon!
Do you have more questions you want Robin Good to answer? Post them here below inside the comments area.
Do you want to learn more about other key strategies in professional web publishing? Check out POP, a new video blog site where Robin Good shares his expertise with “in-depth” video tutorials to help professional online publishers to monetize their sites.
Are you looking for an effective way tocollaborate and organize ideas with other people? If you’re still into voice and text chat, you might want to give mind mapping a try. Mind mapping is a cool way to share your ideas in total freedom, without the need to follow a structured approach, but just shooting your best thoughts as they come out of your head. And the good news is that there are many tools online that let you draw your own mindmaps. Today, I scouted the Web to suggest you the best ones.
SinceRobin Good introduced me to mindmaps a few months ago, I don’t grab a piece of paper or open a text document anymore to plan what I need to do. I just open my favorite mindmap tool and start scattering ideas around.
What I like best about mindmaps are the ease and freedom with which you can visualize your ideas, and clearly understand the relationships between them. You set a core idea, which could be expressed by a sentence, a word, or an image, and then you start adding other ideas around this core concept. You can then see all your ideas at once and re-arrange them visually creating links between ideas and concepts that may be / appear initially unrelated.
Curious? Do you want to know more about mindmaps and how to organize your ideas more effectively?
In this new Sharewood Guide I have collected the best services out there on the Web to draw a mindmap.
Here below the set of key basic characteristics that I have utilized to compare these selection tools to draw your own mindmaps, so that you can easily find the best fit for your needs:
Price: Evaluate if you prefer a free service or a more complete solution with additional features.
Software / Web-based: Specifies if you can use the tool inside your browser or you have to download and install a software on your hard-disk.
Platform: Check if you can run the service on your operating system.
Free trial: Indicates if the service allows you to evaluate it for free during a limited period.
Collaborative working: Not all mind mapping services allows you to collaborate in real-time with your teammates. Find the ones that does.
*Please refer to individual vendors sites for additional pricing solutions.
Draw Your Own MindMaps
MindMeister
MindMeister is a free web-based tool to draw mindmpas and share them with your team. Instead of taking advantage of fancy animations, MeindMeister provides a clean working environment: the interface is very simple, and it’s easy to add nodes to your core idea. Mindmeister is Ajax-based, so the service doesn’t require any third-party player to run inside your browser, resulting to be very light and fast to utilize. Interesting feature is the possibility to export your mindmpas in a number of file formats, including .rtf, .pdf, and .jpg. Free to use up to six mindmaps, MindMeister offers different pricing solutions. http://www.mindmeister.com
Mindomo
Mindomo is perhaps one of the best free web-based mind mapping applications. Mindomo comes with a very elegant interface which mimics Microsoft Office. Flash-based, the service offers many different export options and formats, alongside a rich choice of layouts to arrange your ideas. Mindomo supports multimedia files and image uploading, as well as organic style maps. The free version is ad-supported but you can switch to one of the available pricing solutions. http://www.mindomo.com
MindManager
MindManager is one of the best mind mapping software on the market. Easy to use and fully-featured, this tool is a must-have for enterprise and personal use of mindmaps. Mindmanager allows you and your team to collaborate on the same mindmap making it easy and fast to have a brainstorming session over the Web. MindManager works on both Pc and Mac platforms, and it is priced at $299 for Pc users and $129 for Mac users. You can try and evaluate the service for 30 days (Pc version) or 21 days (Mac solution). http://www.mindjet.com/
iMindMap
iMindMap is the “official mindmap software“, created under the guidance of Tony Buzan, mindmap evangelist. Available for both Windows and Mac machines, iMindMap lets you draw rich and full-featured mindmaps, adding nodes and arranging them in a very natural way. Collaboration with other users is not allowed. Starting price is set at $99. iMindMap offers a seven-day trial period to test out the service before buying it. http://www.imindmap.com/
bubbl.us
Bubbl.us offers a simple, efficient way to draw a mindmap. Still at an early stage of its development, bubbl.us is a free flash-based online tool that works directly in your browser, so you don’t need to install any additional software to your computer. Enhanced with animated effects, unlike other solutions bubbl.us does support collaborative working for sharing a brainstorming session with your team. http://www.bubbl.us/
FreeMind
FreeMind is an open source, free mind-mapping software written in Java. The service offers a minimalist interface and covers the basics of mindmaps drawing like hyperlinking and retractable branches. Perhaps the most popular solution on the Web, FreeMind takes advantage from being a cross-platform solution that works seamlessly on your machine independently of which operating system it runs. FreeMind does not support collaborative creation of mindmaps. http://freemind.sourceforge.net/
Topicscape
Topicscape is an information organizer complementing Mindmanager by taking mindmaps to a 3D landscape. The application uses a three-dimensional interface to help you draw 3D mindmaps for better organization and planning procedures. Topicscape requires a bit of practice to use, but is definitely worth taking the effort because of its stunning mind mapping approach. Topiscape offers different pricing solutions starting at $69, and you can test the software with no charge for 30 days. http://www.topicscape.com/
PersonalBrain
PersonalBrain is a cross-platform solution to draw mindmaps. PersonalBrain goes beyond the traditional concept of organizing ideas by adding a built-in calendar feature for events you add to your mindmap. Enriched by other features like zoomable image icons, transparencies, and integration with Microsoft Outlook, PersonalBrain is tailored to professionals who wants to get the best out of mind mapping possibilities. Free to use in its light edition, the tool provides different commercial solutions. Collaborative working on mindmaps is not supported. http://www.thebrain.com
Mind42
Mind42 is a free web-based mind mapping application that runs inside your browser. Very user-friendly, the tool lets you share your mindmaps with your teammates or publish your mindmaps on the Web. The interface is very simple and you can add images to your nodes, as well as hyperlinking them. Export to .rtf files is allowed. Mind42 offers also different commercial solutions to access more possibilities to create your projects. http://www.mind42.com
Mapul
Mapul is a simple, web-based solution that lets you draw your own mindmaps. Based on Microsoft Silverlight technology, Mapul offers many different features like image-adding, and an efficient arrangement of branches, tailored to a better mindmap handling. Unlike other similar tools, Mapul has support for Russian and Arabic languages. The service is offered at $7 / month, and offers the possibility for a free trial before buying it. http://www.mapul.com
Kidspiration
Kidspiration is a mind mapping software tailored for Educators and students. Tailored for K-5 learners, Kidspiration enhances thinking, literacy and numeracy skills using visual learning principles. In reading and writing, Kidspiration strengthens word recognition, vocabulary, comprehension and written expression. Not suitable for real-time collaboration with other users, Kidspiration is available for Windows and Mac platforms,with a starting price of $69. You can try the software for 30 days before buying it. http://www.inspiration.com/Kidspiration
Gliffy
Gliffy is a free web-based solution to draw diagrams and flowcharts. It is not specifically designed to create mindmaps but the style of arranging ideas and organizing branches is just the same. Gliffy does not allow real-time collaboration, but the service keeps tracks of all the changing made by collaborators, just like a wiki. The free version has limited features, but iyou can upgrade to the Premium account for a monthly fee of $5 which is intended to last at least three months. http://www.gliffy.com/
Here below you can see two videos. One is the original recording from my LeWeb presentation and the other one extends and completes what I did not say on stage.
I contend that we are about to see a deep change in how we look at education and learning in the coming years.
The deep changes we have been witnessing in the worlds of mass media, advertising, marketing and communication in general, and much of what we have been labeling under the 2.0 title needs to be harmonized with our educational approach to schooling inside society.
If we have come to appreciate the value of collaboration, sharing, co-creation, mashing up, bottom-up contributions and grassroots media creation, as well as those of listening to customers, of starting true conversations, of opening to critical feedback, and to suggestions from all your clients, we must also be able to see that these same principles and approaches can be transposed and utilized effectively in delivering a more valuable educational experience to our kids.
a) Teaching is not learning, b) What are the things we really need to learn, c) What is the context and resources in which a new educational paradigm can emerge, are the key issues that I bring forward in this video presentation.
I must thank once more LeWeb organizers Loic and Geraldine LeMeur for having provided me with this great opportunity.
Here the video:
Love of Education – A Shifting Paradigm
and here is the continuation of the first part I presented at LeWeb:
In the coming days I will publish an article that further explains and corroborates, via the use of several other video interviews I had recorded for this event, my full view on the future of education and what it is going to take to get to it.
I must acknowledge also, which I had no time to do on stage, that my ideas were strongly influenced and inspired by the extensive work done by Ivan Illich in the 70’s, and by Seymour Papert in the ’80s. I also utilized ideas developed by Stephen Downes to whom I owe great respect for the extensive research work on the future of education he has already done.
Further thanks go to Howard Rheingold, Nancy White, Gerd Leonhard, Jay Cross, Teemu Arina and George Siemens who have provided me with invaluable feedback and video material on this very topic and which I will shortly publish here on MasterNewMedia.
You can be plenty good at video work if you only know that bigger bitrates are usually better — but if you’re going to be a guru when it comes to the quality of your video output, it’s worth taking a closer look at the concept from the ground up.
Luckily, it’s a fairly simple concept. Let’s take NTSC video as our example: 30 frames per second, each 720 pixels wide and about 480 high. Each broadcast-safe pixel, in RGB space, could take up 235 values for each color (red green and blue), so it needs 24 bits of information to describe it. If we were to try to store a second of NTSC-type video completely uncompressed using this bitmap scheme, we would need
30 * 720 * 480 * 24 = 248,832,000 bits, or about 30MB — per second!
Try slapping THAT on YouTube — or a DVD, for that matter.
Indian filmmaker Suman Mukhopadhyay recently visited Blacksburg to screen his two features and speak with filmmaking students at Virginia Tech. Talking with Mukhopadhyay about Herbert and Chaturanga was a real highlight of the semester, and a great way to end to the year.
Today, Mukhopadhyay shares Herbert, his debut feature, with New Yorkers as part of the Museum of Modern Art’s ContemporAsian film series.
Nathan Lee, writing in today’s New York Times, calls Herbert “mad, messy, and frequently amazing.” It is.
Showtimes are as follows:
Thursday, December 11, 2008, 8:00 p.m. (Introduced by Mukhopadhyay)
Friday, December 12, 2008, 6:30 p.m. (Introduced by Mukhopadhyay)
Saturday, December 13, 2008, 1:00 p.m., Theater 2, T2
Sunday, December 14, 2008, 5:00 p.m.
Monday, December 15, 2008, 4:30 p.m.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008, 8:45 p.m.
Mukhopadhyay’s newest film, Chaturanga, which is still playing cinemas in India, is even more impressive. It trades Herbert’s surrealism and self-reflexivity for a more contemplative approach, as befits its story of spiritual searching. Chaturanga is currently screening in theaters in India. Catch it on the festival circuit if you’re lucky right now — and let’s hope that a smart American distributor picks it up.
SRF reader Jeremy Parker recently alerted me to a website he’s been building called Join My Crew.
Just as it sounds, it’s a completely free website that hopes to help independent filmmakers find cast and crew for their next productions. The site Beta launched last week and will only get better as more and more filmmakers start to use the site.
In the old days of digital video, choosing text for titles and other
supers was easy: Arial, Times, or Comic Sans – will “size 48″ work?
But as the lines have blurred between all types of creative software,
we video types are constantly getting more control over our text. And
that’s a good thing: a professional approach to typography improves
most video, and in some cases, makes or breaks the deal.
So here’s a quick glossary of font-related terms, along with a handful of best practices.
Launch Before You Are Ready
go to the table!
.gif)
SECURE & CONFIDENTIAL