http://blogs.ibo.org/opls Online professional learning services Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:19:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I've collected books ever since I was 9 years old and love them. We have more than we can accommodate in the house and yet still we keep acquiring more. There's a copy of Prideaux's Histories on the shelves, dating back to 1664, as well as, for some strange reason, ... http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/11/18/sonys-new-ebook-reader/ Although it pains me to say it, I think there is something better than Delicious out there. I first came across Diigo in the summer and have been playing with it on and off ever since.  Social bookmarking has been an absolute godsend to education and Delicious was at the ... http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/11/17/diigo-delicious-killer/ Although it's been out for a while, we haven't seen any this side of the Atlantic until quite recently, so it was quite a privilege to be able to play with a Microsoft Surface at the Future of Web Apps conference held in London a couple of weeks ago. I took ... http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/10/22/microsoft-surface-we-finally-got-our-hands-on-one/ I promised a review of Imagine Teacher for the Nintendo DS, in the vain hope that it would help teachers in some way with their own professional development. Well, the short answer is, it won't! I looked for insights into classroom strategies, help with identifying student learning styles, curriculum planning and ... http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/10/21/imagine-teacher-for-nintendo-ds-update/ Many of you will probably know the great global issues comparison site, WorldMapper. Well now, many of the maps included on the site have been reproduced in a book entitled: The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live by Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman and Anna Barford. (Clicking on ... http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/09/29/worldmapper-in-book-form/ YouTube have just announced the release of a new video uploader which, they claim, enables users to: add a video's metadata (title, description, tags, etc.) while the upload is processing. upload multiple files at once, without downloading a plugin. take advantage of increased file-size limits for uploads - raised from 100MB ... http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/09/28/youtube-release-new-video-uploader/ In case you don't know, wikispaces are giving away an additional 250,000 wikis to teachers and schools (no ads, greater administrative rights etc). Grab yours from here now. http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/09/19/free-wikispaces-for-educators-k-12/ ...And if that wasn't enough, Google have just launched an audio indexing engine for YouTube. Now you can search a video according to what is said within it and not just on the tags, keywords or title describing it. It's in beta at the moment, but will graduate into a fully ... http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/09/18/youtube-indexing-of-audio/ As an update to the previous post, Chad Hurley (the CEO and co-founder of YouTube) has just blogged on the future of online video. Some key comments: "Today, 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and we believe the volume will continue to grow exponentially." "Our goal is to allow ... http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/09/17/youtube-from-the-horses-mouth/ A typical response to presentations I have given to IB leadership on social media and education technology is, "That's all very well, but my school district or education authority bans this technology." Well, for all those who are faced with this problem, this video by Michael Wesch is for you. It's ... http://blogs.ibo.org/opls/2008/09/16/youtube-do-you-get-it/