WHAT? "Founded in April 1996, Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users. Along the way Alexa has developed an installed based of millions of toolbars, one of the largest Web crawls and an infrastructure to process and serve massive amounts of data. For users of Alexa's Toolbar and web site this has resulted in products that have revolutionized Web navigation and intelligence. For developers this has resulted in a set of tools unprecedented in scope allowing whole new services to be created on the Alexa data and platform" ...more
HOW? "Alexa is continually crawling all publicly available web sites to create a series of snapshots of the Web. They use the data they collect to create features and services:
Site Information: Traffic rankings, pictures of sites, links pointing to sites and more
Related Links: Sites that are similar to the one you are currently viewing
Currently, Alexa gathers approximately 1.6 Terabytes(1600 gigabytes)of Web content per day. After each snapshot of the Web, which takes approximately two months to complete, Alexa has gathered 4.5 Billion pagesfrom over16 million sites"...more
JUICE? Whether the results are 100% accurate or not (methodology!), Alexa has a wonderful set of learning tools (Search, Traffic Rankings, Director, Alexa Toolbar and Developer's Corner) to search, discover, rank and compare different sites around the world. For example, the most visited sites in all 'Education' categories are:
Surprisingly, NUS is ranked ahead of (6) University of California, Berkeley , (7) Stanford University, and (8) Harvard University. How is that possible? Well, this should give us some incentive to research 'Why' this is the case. Let the students figure this one out! Also, perhaps Wikipedia should be placed in the education category. Yes, it will probably be ranked No. 1.
What about Malaysia? Currently, Yahoo is ranked No.1, but interestingly Friendster is No. 2, and Facebook is way down in 11th. I suppose in two months time, Facebook will probably overtake Friendster.
The beauty of Alexa is that you can actually use this tool to compare different sites of your own liking. In this example I have compared 5 Mambo Jumbo sites (Don't need to clarify!):
If you haven't tried or used Alexa, it might be time to have some fun learning with your friends, colleagues or students exploring different rankings and comparing your favourite sites :)
MindMapSearch.org is an offshoot of mind-mapping.org, the master list of mind mapping software. This Google Co-op search engine was built to give you a place to go for razor sharp results in your search for all things mind mapping.
To ensure razor sharp search quality and relevant results, Vic Gee and other contributors have assembled a list of all the best mind mapping sites on the web (179 sites!).
"There are two types of sites included in this list: Sites that are mainly about mind mapping; and sites that have some valuable items on mind mapping, but are not primarily about this topic.
The bold-lettered heading of each entry is a hyperlink to the main page of the site it refers to. That's followed by a brief description of the site. Then there is another link - or sometimes several links - in light green. If the site is all about mind mapping, both the heading and the subsidiary links will point to the front page. If the site covers other topics, the second link will point to the pages about mind mapping.
The sites are divided into categories, like productivity, education, information management and mindmappers' blogs. You can see all entries under a category by clicking it in the right hand column. Sites may appear in more than one category (Source)."
Currently, 179 juicy mind mapping sites are included in the search, which I predict will of course continue to grow. So, if you are looking for anything regarding or related to mind mapping, I suppose you have found agreat starting point. Stephen Downes what do you think?:)
WHAT? "If you're looking for a comprehensive list ofmind mapping-related links, then look no farther than Eric Hebert's new article, 99 Mind Mapping Resources, Tools and Tips, which does a great job of summarizing the relevant software programs, news pages, resource sites, mind map examples, articles, blogs, books, e-books and more. Wow!" (Source)
WOW! If you feel overwhelmed by all these 99 juicy links! Here is an extracted mashup of a few free gems from Eric Hebert's collection perhaps worth exploring first:"
Free Software Free Mind - the premier java-based mind mapping software known for its quick, one-click "fold/unfold" and "follow link" operations.
Resources Mindmapping.org - the most complete resource for mind mapping software on the internet, covering most freeware, open-source, and proprietary software. Mindtools - lots of articles and resources to develop excellent skills for an excellent career.
Examples Mind map template - a blank map to help get you started on your first ever mind map Tony Buzan mind map - a great map discussing the ins and outs of a specific book from the man himself, Tony Buzan.
Blogs The Mind mapping software weblog - designed to provide businesspeople with a focused collection of resources related to visual mapping.
People Tony Buzan - Wikipedia bio of one of the biggest names and promoters of mind mapping and mental literacy. Dr. Allan Collins - the history and sometimes controversy surrounding the man who created mind mapping.
This resource alone got me really excited, but then I dug further into the College Degree Library (Only articles by Eric Hebert?) and discovered a bunch of other interesting articles including:
WOW! Eric Hebert has published some really juicy articles, which I suppose I need to mindmap into my memory (Favorites!). Hmm, I think I will start the mindmapping adventure exploring the hottest, smartest, most talked about College Professors. I wonder why 55? What is the selection criteria used? Whatever! Have fun learning more about mindmapping and hot Professors :)
WHAT? 'Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations' is a FREE online conference, running fromNovember 15-20, 2007. World renowned speakers will present live. It will provide a great opportunity for attendees (Corporate leaders, directors, CLOs, trainers, etc) to engage in dialog and discuss the directions and innovations in corporate learning through online forums - forming connections and exchanging ideas and visions on corporate learning. In addition, it will provide many opportunities for active participation for attendees who wish. All sessions will be recorded and available within a few minutes after the session for people who cannot attend at that time ...more
MASTERMIND? George Siemens (hosted by Complexive Systems Inc., and supported by Duke Corporate Education, TechEmpower, Q2 Learning, and Elluminate)
JUICE? World renowned speakers participating in this conference (Speakers' List!), include Tony Karrer, Jay Cross, Gaurav Rastogi and Jai Ganesh and George Siemens. Also, it wouldn't surprise me if Stephen Downes drops by to participate or speak. In short, this free online conference provides us a wonderful free opportunity to learn, discuss and engage with great learning minds. So, hopefully we will not only register, but also actively participate to stimulate and inspire our own evolving learning minds. Even if you should discover this online conference after November 20th, it still has tremendous value, as you will be able to access and view all the recorded sessions.
Have fun learning and engaging with great learning minds, during and after the 'Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations' online conference :)
The Creative Commons (CC)licenses enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information ...more
JUICE? Until today, many are still confused with what CC is really about. If you are one of them (including me!) I suppose this video below would be an excellent starters to visualize in our minds what Creative Commons is really about.
Ramadan is over (Eid Mubarak to all Muslims reading this blog!), and I should be engrossed in writing my PhD proposal. But, Informal Learning is ADDICTIVE, Sharing Knowledge/Resources is ADDICTIVE (it started of as a habit change exercise in 2004!), Blogging is ADDICTIVE! Since the end of Ramadan, I have been discovering and posting so much juice (Well to my taste!), and the future prospects do not seem good (dealing with this addiction)!
Enough is enough! Anyway, after reflecting my first weekly discovery wrap episode, I believe I will need to change a few things. First, Iwill post a Weekly Discovery Wrap, every two weeks (which makes perfectly sense!). Each weekly discovery wrap (every two weeks!) will basically rank the posts (e.g. Top 10) that I have posted since the last episode, using a formula that is based on my own limited Practical Intelligence (PI), which might not make any sense to others. Maybe one day when my blog is widely read (2008 perhaps?), I will use something more scientific (e.g. Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati Link Count and Compete People Count). However, for now I will stick to my limited PI formula (Easy to locate my favourite juice!).
Finally, since I have never done this ranking stuff in this blog, I believe the Top 15 list below (next episode only Top 10 or less!) might be quite juicy. Since August, I have posted 79 discoveries, and the Top 15 list below is based on them. The 118 July 2007 discoveries are excluded from this Top 15 list (Collection from my ELC days: 2004 - 2006).
So, here are the Top 15 discoveries since August 2007 (according to my limited PI):
WHAT? TechCrunch40 conference was hosted by TechCrunch and Jason Calacanis on the September 17th-18th, 2007 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, California. The format was simple: Forty of the hottest new startups from around the world demoed their products over a two day period. 40 companies had been selected from a pool of over 700+ applicants from 26 different countries.
Yes, why not check out some these learning tools now, because you will probably be using some of them in the near future anyway (head start!). Also, check out the 17 Expert Panelists (MC Hammer? Why weren't real learning tools experts such as Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Jane Knight or Joseph Hart included in the panel, too?), and Keynote Speakers (including a video chat with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg). These links will introduce you to some of the big success stories and major venture capitalists around today. So, if you have a good tool or idea waiting to be discovered and need capital investments, perhaps you should contact some of these people for guidance and help (including MC Hammer!). Hmm, perhaps not a good idea! Why not?
Finally, I a wonder which of these 40 hottest new learning tools will be bought by Google, MSN, Yahoo, Apple or Nokia in the coming year(s)? Got any tips? :)
WHO? Eric Emerson Schmidt, Ph.D (born 1955 in Washington, D.C.) is Chairman and CEO of Google Inc and a member of the Board of Directors of Apple Inc. In contrast to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, he has a strong (formal) educational background, including a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS) from the University of California, Berkeley (1982). Schmidt started of his working career as research staff for Xerox. In 1983, Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems as software manager. At Sun he led the development of Java, Sun's platform-independent programming technology (Microsoft or Dot NET's arch-rival?), and defined Sun's Internet software strategy. He later became chief technology officer and corporate executive officer. From 1997 to 2001, Schmidt was CEO of Novell. In 2001, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin (with the assistance of executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, Inc.) recruited Eric Schmidt to run their company under the influence of venture capitalists John Doerr and Michael Moritz (Source).
Interestingly, Schmidt beat out 50 other contenders (It would be thrilling to know their selection and evaluation methods!) to become chairman and eventually CEO of Google. Importantly, he pioneered the company’s70-20-10 model: Google employees are expected to spend 70 percent of their time on the core search and advertising businesses, 20 percent on related activities, and 10 percent on new projects (Source).
Also, Schmidt is one of the few people who have become a billionaire (estimated wealth of US$ 6.2 Billion) based on stock options received as an employee in a corporation of which neither he nor a relative was the founder (Source). Yeah, Steve Ballmer is another one of those few!
PUBLIC SPEAKING CLASS? While searching for something else yesterday evening (Great discoveries often happen by accident!), I discovered this interesting YouTube video entitled: Eric Schmidt Public Speaking Class. Based on watching the video and reading the comments, I assume Schmidt is about 33 years old (1988) here, and is the general manager at Sun Microsystems. He basically wants to improve his public speaking skills, and be able to communicate better to larger audiences (Yes, as he goes up in rank, he is facing larger audiences. So better prepare!). Based on some of the given clues (video, search tags, comments and buzzer!) this seems to be a Toastmasters session. Yes, Eric Schmidt was/is a Toastmaster (I assume). Also, you will have fun watching him being grilled (by his own staff?) and evaluated by the small audience (I assume based on the noise. The camera is mostly focused on him, obviously!). Here we go:
JUICE? Actually, the main reason for sharing with you this video is not really to show you an example of excellent public speaking. If that was the case, I would rather show you a Martin Luther King ("I have a dream..."), or Ed Tate (2000 World Champion of Public Speaking) speech. Actually, if you want to improve your public speaking skills, these two public speaking champions (in their own way!) would certainly give you some ideas and inspiration.
Hmm, let's get back on track! The real juice of this video to me, is not how he speaks, but what he says about management, leadership, innovation and organizational growth. Let's recap some of the juice.
Here is a summarized version of what Eric Schmidt said with a bit of creative flavor.
Where there is no conflict, there is no life. -Niccolo Machiavelli
"The most important quality of a manager is his ability to lead people. Leadership comes from within, and is not something one can easily teach. It is about getting your staff excited, motivated and inspired to action. I have discovered that it is much more important to be a good leader, than actually understand what you are doing. If you are a good leader you can hire people that can teach you things.
From my experience the most successful companies are the ones where there is enormous conflict. Conflict does not mean killing one another, but instead means there is a process by which there is a disagreement. It is okay to have different points of views and disagree, because tolerance for multiple opinions and people often leads to the right decision through some kind of process.
It is really the only way to deal with the high rate of change (and continuous and disruptive innovation!) we find in the technology industry. Nothing in school prepares you for this... that was the thing that really annoyed me the most... In fact if you look in the computer industry, every one of the successful companies is run by a real tough guy, somewhere high up in the management chain, who has established a tone of conflict. A professional constructive conflict tone!
The benefits that you get from conflict from the standpoint of the company, is the ability to compete, innovate, grow and make lot of money."
"...With decades of corporate experience, Schmidt brings a grown-up approach to the Page-and-Brin show. When the two know-it-alls' are locked in heated argument, it’s up to Schmidt to lead them to agreement so that the company can present a united front to employees and Wall Street. (Source) "
So you see, his early understanding, experience and ability to facilitate 'CreativeDisagreements' (A term he used during the video) has certainly helped him to succeed at Google and spark more innovation and success. Schmidt plays today a critical role in "building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google's rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum. (Source)"
Overall, I am pretty sure I missed out on some of the juice from the video (and perhaps added a bit!), so you better watch the video to catch the rest (and correct me where I went wrong!). Also, I am reasonably sure that Eric Schmidt's ideas about management, leadership, innovation and organizational growth has evolved since this video (19 years ago!), so you might want to 'Google' some of his latest videos or articles to keep yourself updated.
Finally, I hope by watching this video you realize that having weaknesses or knowing about your weaknesses is actually a strength, if you deal with them. Eric Schmidt knew that he was not a good public speaker or communicator, but he also knew that if he worked on these weaknesses he would improve... (and the rest is history, still in the making!). So, there is still hope (and stay away from dope!) for people like us to succeed (in whatever we aspire to be!). We just got to keep on trying, and never give up. Hmm, I beginning to sound like a motivation speaker, so I better stop here.
Anyway, have fun learning something from this video. This video could also be an excellent trigger for class/online discussions :)
WHAT? eBooks from The eLearning Guild are guaranteed to put a wealth of information at your fingertips! The Guild has two formats for eBooks. While each eBook is focused on one theme, some are collections of tips we gather from Guild members from around the world, and some are collections of articles from key industry leaders. In either case, you'll find valuable information that you can use in your organization! Guild eBooks are FREE for everyone and Guild membership is not required to access them.
JUICE? The eLearning Guild's currently available free eBooks:
The eLearning Guild's Handbook of e-Learning Strategy Will help you make a broad, fundamental connection between learning, e-Learning, and your organization's mission, business objectives, and the bottom line. Chapters address everything from crafting a focused strategy, to keeping your strategy focused, to change management.
382 Tips on the SELECTION of an LMS or LCMS Is an awesome collection of tips from hundreds of your professional colleagues. These tips will help you navigate the LMS minefield, streamline your selection process, and help you save money! Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive set of tips that you can use to improve your LMS and LCMS selection efforts.
The eLearning Guild's Handbook on Synchronous e-Learning Is intended for anyone and everyone who wants to produce, lead, or promote live, interactive learning events on the Web. It's packed with job aids, references, examples, and information to significantly reduce the amount of time required to produce online learning events.
339 Tips on the IMPLEMENTATION of an LMS or LCMS Is an amazing collection of tips from hundreds of your professional colleagues. Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive set of tips that you can use to improve your LMS and LCMS implementation efforts.
311 Tips on the MANAGEMENT of an LMS or LCMS Is an incredible collection of tips from hundreds of your professional colleagues. Why reinvent the wheel when you can learn from these tips on the management of your LMS or LCMS system! Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive set of tips that you can use to improve your LMS and LCMS management efforts.
834 Tips for Sucesssful Online Instruction Is a wonderful collection of tips from 336 of your professional colleagues. Nowhere will you find a more comprehensive set of tips that you can use to improve your knowledge and skills in online instruction.
162 Tips and Tricks forWorking with e-Learning Tools In October and November 2007, The eLearning Guild conducted a survey of its members, asking for their favorite tips for using software to create e-Learning. Members could submit tips in any or all of these five categories: Courseware authoring and e-Learning development tools, rapid e-Learning tools, simulation tools, media tools, and combining and deploying authoring tools.
Ouch, it really hurts when you discover such juice (Hmm, some of these eBooks have already been discovered somewhere in this blog!). I wish I had seven (7) brains (or reading/thinking processors) that could process (or decipher) all these eBooks at the same time. However, since I don't, I suppose sharing this discovery with all of you helps. Perhaps we can process these 7 eBooks together :)
WHAT? Scirus is the most comprehensivescience-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search engine technology, Scirus searches over 450 million science-specific Web pages, enabling you to quickly:
Pinpoint scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data on the Web.
Find the latest reports, peer-reviewed articles, patents, pre prints and journals that other search engines miss.
Offer unique functionalities designed for scientists and researchers.
JUICE? So, what is so juicy about this search engine compared to for example Google Search? Or why should we use it (or explore it)? Because Scirus...
Filtersout non-scientific sites. For example, if you search on REM, Google finds the rock group - Scirus finds information on sleep, among other things
Findspeer-reviewed articles such as PDF and PostScript files, which are often invisible to other search engines.
Searches the most comprehensive combination of web information, preprint servers, digital archives, repositories and patent and journal databases. Scirus goes deeper than the first two levels of a Web site, thereby revealing much more relevant information.
In addition, Scirus has a wide range of special features to help us pinpoint the scientific information we need ...more
After playing (or searching) around with Scirus for a few minutes, I simply fell in love with this search engine's speed, simplicity, interface design, features and search results (Though, this might change after exploring it a bit more!). But for now, it looks good!
In other words, if you are frustrated with not finding relevant scientific, scholarly, technical and medical related stuff on Google (including Google Scholar), MSN, Yahoo or from your University/Organization's digital library (subscribing to Emerald, ProQuest, etc.), perhaps you should give Scirus a minute :)
INFORMATION R/EVOLUTION? There is no shelf. Links alone are more than enough. Together we create more information than the Experts. We no longer just find information... Together, we can make it find us (Digg This!). There is a blog born every half second (Hmm, this one is from Wesch's other mind tickling video - Web 2.0... The Machine is Us/ing Us.)... "Influenced by the recent book, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, Wesch’s new clip offers a creative look at how the digital age fundamentally changes our relationship to information and how information gets organized. Have a look." (Source: Openculture)
MASTERMIND? Michael Wesch, an Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.
This is another great video to tickle our minds and facilitate discussions with our students (or fellow educators) about how the evolving digital age is changing the way we access, manage and share data, information, knowledge and wisdom. The real question we need to ask ourselves is: Are we ready? :)
MAPS-OF-WAR? Maps-of-War is a multimedia site dedicated to producing diverse, creative visuals that enhance our understanding of war and its history.
HISTORY-OF-RELIGION? How has the geography of religion evolved over the centuries, and where has it sparked wars? This animated map gives you a brief history of the world's most well-known religions: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism. Selected periods of inter-religious bloodshed are also highlighted. Here is 5,000 years of religion in 90 animated seconds:
OTHER MAPS?
Leadership-and-War Which Presidents have led the United States into its deadliest wars?
Imperial-History Who has controlled the Middle East over the course of history?
Iraqi-Pressure-Vault From a geographic standpoint, Iraq is caught between a rock and a hard place...
Signs-of-Occupation Before / after satellite photos of Saddam's palace in Baghdad, Iraq...
Shiite-vs-Sunni The pieces of the puzzle are slowly aligning themselves as Iraq's sectarian divide widens...
Recapture - of - Fallujah In November of 2004, American forces launched Operation Phantom Fury to recapture Fallujah...
In addition, I would not be surprised if more animated maps will be added in the near future.
DOWNLOAD? Every Maps-of-War animation is available for download so that you can play it on your own computer, even without an internet connection. Maps are provided in Flash SWF Format (.swf).
These Maps-of-War animations are also excellent tools to engage (or motivate) students into thinking and kick-start discussions in your face-to-face or online sessions (as long as they are related in one way or the other to the subject or topic you are teaching/facilitating). Finally, these visual maps should also facilitate great discussions on whether they are really accurate or not :)
WHAT? The World Digital Library (WDL) will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials.
Promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness;
Provide resources to educators;
Expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet; and
Contribute to scholarly research.
MASTERMIND? Librarian of Congress James H. Billington proposed the establishment of a World Digital Library (WDL) in a speech to the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO in June 2005. The Library of Congress is currently engaged in a planning process to determine how this vision can be realized. Participants in the planning process include national libraries and other libraries and cultural institutions from around the world that have expressed interest in joining the project, as well as UNESCO and IFLA. The planning process is being underwritten by a gift from Google, Inc.
Since they are inviting other libraries, archives, museums, etc. around the world to participate, I suppose we will be seeing many more juicy partners joining in the near future.
Although, we only have the visionary video to enjoy for now, I certainly hope and believe this will be a successful project. Having Google onboard the team certainly increases the possibility of success, though it would also be great to see MSN and Yahoo getting involved. Yes, it would be great to see these three Search Giants (or Three Musketeers) working together on such a massive and noble project :)
OEDb? OEDb, the Online Education Database offers comprehensive reviews of online colleges and degree programs. Unlike other online education directories, their database only lists accredited online colleges so one can be sure that these degrees will be respected by potential employers. They also have a library of articles that covers the basic topics of attending an online university.
In this post, I am not going to focus on OEDb's online college, degree or master degree programs, but instead I am going to zoom in on their amazing collection of articles discussing hundreds of excellent online resources to facilitate our learning, starting with the...
TOP 25 REFERENCE SITES?
In ranking the top reference Web sites, their goal was to show — using objective data from reliable sources — which sites are the most popular, according to visitor traffic and site backlinks. To this end, they used data from these four metrics to calculate the rankings: Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati Link Count and Compete People Count.
JUICE GALORE!
Yes, this article alone got me really excited, but then I discovered more amazing articles from OEDb's yummy library. Here are is a juicy list of some of those articles that will keep me busy (and perhaps you) in the coming days and weeks:
Ouch! If you love education and learning (and willing to explore!), these wonderful articles (whether accurate or not!) are going to link you to an amazing bunch of quality online learning resources. In short, a gold mine waiting for us (more time to discover, less time to search!)! Have fun learning during the weekend and beyond :)
WHO? A self-taught dancer combining freestyle hip-hop with mime and contemporary dance, Kenichi Ebina incorporates visual illusion into his performances, making the impossible seem real. His agile, athletic and razor-sharp moves push the limits of human capability. Each of his performances is a mini-drama that draws from kinetic and thematic inspiration to tell a story that is laugh-out-loud funny ...more
JUICE? In this video, Kenichi Ebina appears to defy the limits imposed by the human skeleton. He combines breakdancing and hip-hop with mime using movements that are simultaneously precise and fluid. Just watch it to believe it:
It hurts even watching this guy perform! Hmm, then I watched his Robocop525 performance (video), and I got to admit this guy is not only extremely gifted, he is amazingly funny, too. Yeah, if he could also sing, I am pretty sure he could become the Asian version of Michael Jackson. Then again with the assistance of today's technologies anyone can sing (Don't need to mention names! ) :)
ALISON? ALISON claims to be the world's leading free online learning resource for basic and essential workplace skills.
MISSION? The mission of ALISON is to enable anyone, anywhere, to educate themselves for free via interactive self-paced multimedia. It is their belief that through ALISON, the cost of access to high quality education can be removed... They also believe that article 26 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states "Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free ..." (read in full) will through ALISON become a reality.
JUICE?
ALISON provides high-quality, engaging, interactive multimedia courseware for certification and standards-based learning. All courses on ALISON are accessible for free to individual learners.
The following free courses are currently available:
Touch Typing Skills A professional typing tutor that helps you to increase your typing speed and accuracy.
European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) Is the world's largest end-user computer skills certification programme, with more than 6 million candidates in 146 countries (Known as the ICDL outside Europe).
British Computer Society (BCS) Unit E Is designed to give a more in-depth knowledge and understanding of computer use for candidates wishing to gain a qualification.
Financial Literacy It contains seven modules of interactive multimedia learning regarding personal financial management.
e-Citizen Is a new programme for everyone who wants to use the Internet for work, social participation and life.
Great! Though, to enjoy these interactive courseware you would need to register and will be asked to answer questions about your background and interests, so that they can provide you with targeted advertising links alongside your courseware.
If you don't mind registering to learn, and having targeted advertising probably distracting you (a bit!) from the learning process, then this is a valuable resource worth exploring further :)
MANGO? It claims to be the first FREE enterprise language learning course available on the Internet. Eleven of their courses are now available in their beta release (I suppose you will experience some bugs): Spanish, Russian, French, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, German, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Greek, English for Spanish Speakers and English for Polish Spearkers.
Each course has 100 lessons available.
CHIEF MANGO? Jason Teshuba
Have fun learning a new language exploring Mango's dynamic Flash-based audio tutorials :)
GLOBE? The Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) is an international consortium that strives to make shared online learning resources available to educators and students around the world. The consortium provides a distributed network of learning objects that meet quality standards. GLOBE aims to connect the world and unlock the ‘deep web’ of quality online educational resourcesthrough brokering relationships with content providers...more
MASTERMINDS? The Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) alliance has been established between the following founding members: the ARIADNE Foundation in Europe, Education Network Australia (EdNA Online) in Australia, LORNET in Canada, Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) in the US, and National Institute of Multimedia Education (NIME) in Japan. These organizations have committed to work collaboratively on a shared vision of ubiquitous access to quality educational content ...more
FUTURE PLANS? The first steps of the alliance are to develop use cases, specifications, business rules and technologies which will enable searches across the repositories that the partners involved have developed over the last 5 years. In this way, more resources will become more easily available to the communities involved. Moreover, other organizations in the world will be able to join and contribute to the global network. The GLOBE website will provide updates on GLOBE’s progress. The alliance aims to create a critical mass of learning resources readily discoverable by leveraging the investment that governments around the world have made in publicly accessible content ...more JUICE? Joseph Hart's Review : "The Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) contains links to many federated search sites that contain search engines covering online instructional resources. As such, it's an efficient starting point for searchers because they can utilize searches that extend across content repositories rather than searching individually by visiting every site. The GLOBE is also a good reference site for professionals in the field who want to keep up with news about standards, collaborations, and research. _____JH"
Currently the 'Globe' integrates the following content repositories (or federated search sites) in its search engine:
When looking for educational resources, you can select which content repositories (above 5) to include in your search (Checkbox style!). Also, I like the fact that you can sort your results by Priority (Interleaved), Source, Relevance and Title. Interestingly, you can easily jump from one repository to another during your exploration, thanks to the tabs function (or direct links!). Though, I would like to see how it works when they integrate more content repositories into this GLOBE project (perhaps a dynamic drop-down menu would do or simply 1, 2, 3 or 4 additional rows of links/checkboxes/tabs).
In addition, it is great that we do not see all sorts of metadata for each resource item found after a search, and instead are provided only with information about its' Relevance (%. Yes, I would love to know the algorithm(s) for this one), URL, Category, and a chunked Description. If you ask me that is good enough for starters (Less is more!). Perhaps in the future, it could have an advanced search option (if needed), where we can be bombarded with all sorts of metadata about each learning resource (if any). Hmmm, I suppose by showing less metadata about each resource item also speeds up the search results (A non-scientific guess!) . Coming to think of it, I suppose the search speed could be improved a bit, as I found it sometimes a bit slow (compared to other major content repositories such as Google, Yahoo and MSN) :)
Finally, I suppose if the 'GLOBE' could add a bit more social spice to its search services, such as ratings, comments, peer-reviews, links to authors and/or experts in the field, and communities this engine might engage and connect even more educators and learners. Hmm, maybe by doing so it will also loose focus on its main goal!
As Joseph Hart says, it's an efficient starting point... :)
First, I would like to congratulate you all for playing a revolutionary role in literally transforming the way mankind search, find, access and create knowledge in the 21st Century. Yes, without Google Blogger I would probably not be writing this online letter (Instead I would have probably used Wordpress!).
However, I am not writing this letter to praise Google, because that is already done by millions of supporters around the world. Actually, I am writing because I have been eagerly predicting (but still waiting!) for a specific Google tool (for more than 2 years! Yeah, if I had been proactive and had an entrepreneurial mindset I would be laughing financially today!) that I believe is critical for transforming the way we do research (or learn about others!), or more specifically create and conduct surveys, capture respondent data, and analyze the results/reports on-the-fly (read/write/research = Web 3.0?).
There are still millions of students and educators in the Schools, Colleges and Universities around the world who are doing research, conducting surveys and spending a lot of time collecting data, providing them often with little time to analyze and reflect the findings (critical/creative thinking aspect!). However, by providing them with a free easy-to-use online survey tool (alternative or complimentary option to their research) with basic features to create and conduct online surveys, collect the data, and display the results/reports in text and visual format (with exporting options to Excel, SPSS, etc.), could do miracles from an educational point-of-view.
From a business (or advertising) point-of-view it could also mean big bucks, because every survey respondent (and survey creator) would view their share of AdSense (text-based Google AdWords ads that are relevant to site content pages). For example, if one million people are conducting online surveys, and getting an average of 100 survey respondents (we are talking about 100 million respondents!). It wouldn't surprise me if we are talking about more than a billion respondents within a few months after launching such a tool.
Alright, I got to admit that there are plenty of excellent commercial and some reasonably good open source/free survey tools available today (e.g. we are using VTSurvey - an open source solution). Interestingly, there are some excellent partially free online survey tools such as SurveyMonkey and SurveyGizmo. However, to enjoy the really juicy features, one would need to fork out the dollars. The pricing today on some of the commercial tools (e.g. SurveyMonkey) is reasonable, but then again why not make it free to all and generate more revenue through creative advertising approaches. I suppose if Google does not provide a free online survey tool in the near future, Yahoo or MSN would do it. If none of them, I am pretty sure a dynamic entrepreneur out there would facilitate the next frontier of the web, providing everyone with tools to do online research(A good example would be polldaddy, but they are currently only providing polling, which most existing widely used learning tools/portals/LMS already provide including Blogger).
Overall, I am a big fan of Google Labs and they have graduated some amazing tools including Google Reader, Google Notebook, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Google Video, Google Scholar and Google Groups 2. Also, Google Labs have many more amazing tools in the pipeline (e.g. Google Page Creator), but I don't see any online survey tool coming through yet (Hopefully wrong!). However, should Google want to do it fast, they can for example simply invest or buy SurveyMonkey and make all their wonderful features available for free. A good example to reflect would be JotSpot, which evolved into Google Docs (if I am not mistaken).
Thank you for reading and hopefully both students and educators in the near future can enjoy conducting their own surveys online easily and freely. Now, that would be a wonderful disruptive and innovative way to facilitate more research around the world :)
Warm Regards,
Zaid Ali Alsagoff
P.S. I don't know how (thinking about the millions of e-mails they receive!), but this online letter will eventually reach Larry, Sergey and Eric!
WHAT?
OTHER MAPS?
