Juggling Vine to Learn, Show & Tell!

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LN 05 - Personalized Learning Video Speed Matters! Tom Kuhlmann Responds Quickly!

Baby Salma's Awesome Chat!

Insightful Videos Exploring Why the Finnish Education System Rocks!

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
- Nelson Mandela

Professor Thomas Baker wrote an insightful blog post recently about why the Finnish education system rocks, and included 5 YouTube videos sharing more insights and secrets behind their success.

I did share some secrets about the Finnish education system way back in 2009, and although I have discovered more interesting things about this awesome learning ecosystem, I am going to refrain from spilling it out here, and have decided to dedicate this post to harvest a juicy collection of videos providing more authentic insights.

This collection will hopefully be useful for you (and me), as the craze around the world to discover the Finnish education system is increasingly becoming a (wrestle) mania.

Finally, I will be adding new insightful videos about the Finnish education system as I discover them, and please share insightful videos that I might have missed out. In other words, don't hesitate to revisit this post :)



THE FINNISH EDUCATION SYSTEM (VIDEO COLLECTION)
Here we go:

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

More insightful videos?

• Ingredients of the World's Best Education System, Pasi Sahlberg (22 min)
• The Politics of Finnish Education (Jukka Sarjala, chairman Finnish National Board of Education)
  
• Finland's Ambassador Lintu - Why Finland Schools Succeed (35 sec)
• Teachers Key to Finland Education Success (32 sec)
• Who's No.1 in Education? (11 min)
• Schools in Finland (8 min)
  

If you have any other videos about why the Finnish education system rocks, please don't hesitate to share them (in the comments section)...will add them above. Thanks!

All (Finnish education insights)-in-one post :)

Top 10 Learning Sites for ________? Yours? #T10LS :)

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."

- Albert Einstein

"See, here's the thing, though. I don't want 99 mind mapping resources, tools, and tips. I want one. That works. Really well. "
- Stephen Downes

CLUELESS?

To cut the crap short, and get to the point... It is amazing how many educators (that I have crossed path with) until today (Yes, already 2010!), who are clueless or know little about the amazing world of Open Educational Resources (OER)/Open Courseware (OCW) and learning tools. There are probably many reasons for that, so I am not going to go into that.

But, what I find even more shocking and troubling is educators who are also clueless about the amazing learning possibilities (tools and resources) within their own field/area/specialization/learning domain. I just hope you are not one of them.

No doubt we can't know and do everything, and there will always be new tools and resources blazing through in an ever growing global learning sharing stream. But, we should have some idea, or be open to explore new and innovative learning possibilities within our learning domain(s), because our students deserve it (or they will eventually desert us...).



WHAT TO DO?
So, how can we motivate or inspire educators to find and explore these new learning possibilities?

Peer pressure? Peer recommendation? Now, we are getting closer (I think!). Of course mambo jumbo lists are useful (e.g. OER), but for a busy educator it might be.... No time for that! Stephen Downes's quote above makes sense!

But, what if we filtered out the juiciest learning resources and tools, and stamped our validation for use (or recommendation). Now, that would be interesting, wouldn't it? Instead of 1000, 100, it is narrowed down to digestible portions (unless you are Takeru Kobayashi!).

To set a digestible portion criteria, we could use the magical number of seven, but I am going to suggest no more than 10 for whatever... Anyway, we don't have to be too rigid on such things, but just be reminded that Less is often more (especially for learning). Look who's talking :)

For example, I am looking for excellent resources or tools to explore critical thinking, where to start? I know Stephen Downes is facilitating a Critical Literacies Online Course, and has published a widely used 'Guide to the Logical Fallacies'. So, wouldn't it be great to have a juicy Top 10 (or anything less, or perhaps a bit more!) list of excellent critical thinking resources recommended by Stephen Downes as a starting point.

Of course, there are many more sites to explore, but having a great starting point validated or recommended by an expert won't harm anyone (would it?).

So, let's think bigger! What if more experts shared their filtered and recommended learning resource lists for their particular specializations or areas. Imagine great contextualized learning start points for Psychology, Medicine, Biology, Law, English, Creative thinking, critical thinking...(perhaps a bit more micro) you name it. Now, wouldn't that be useful?



MY TOP 10 LEARNING SITES FOR PERSONAL LEARNING
Here are 10 amazing learning resources to explore for personal learning, especially if you are into e-learning and learning (Not ranking, just numbering):

1. Einztein
   
   A wonderful starting point to find free online courses with a bit of spice from top Universities. Also, the Academic Porthole is a great starting point, as it also includes OER guides to several learning domains.
   
   
   
2. iTunes U
   
   Here you can find more than 250,000 free lectures, videos, films, and other resources from many of the top Universities around the world. Since I am using an IPhone (and IPod), it is such a wonderful resource to feed me with recorded lectures for my long traffic jams every working day.
   
   
   
3. YouTube EDU and Academic Earth
   YouTube has aggregated all of the videos from its college and university partners - including luminaries like Stanford, Harvard, and Dartmouth - in one place. Academic Earth is an educational video website with the goal of enhancing the usability and expanding the awareness of OER, focusing first on video lectures. Since most of its resources are aggregated from YouTube, I have mashed both into one. Also, you can even grade the lectures (A to F) on Academic Earth. Cool!
   
   
4. TED Talks
   
   Hundreds of inspiring talks by the some of the most innovative and amazing thinkers and doers the world has to offer. And 95.5% of these talks are 20 minutes or shorter, meaning they are perfect for mobile learning. How on earth can we ignore such a resource (after discovering it)?
   
   
   
5. OLDaily (Stephen Downes)
   
   If you are looking for the latest news, trends, reflections, etc. in the (online) learning world, Stephen Downes is the ultimate synthesizer (that I have come across) of what is going on. I love the way he reflects and extracts the essence (or what he finds interesting) of all the articles, sites, tools, resources, etc. he discovers in his daily online newsletter (excluding weekends!). You might also want to also check out his homepage to discover all the other stuff he is doing, including his other excellent reflective blog (Half an Hour) and video recordings of all his presentations. While talking about Stephen Downes, we cannot ignore George Siemens and his elearnspace. He is the mastermind (together with Stephen Downes) behind Connectivism, the only learning theory that makes sense in the online learning world. His reflections and ramblings will keep you updated with e-learning, knowledge management, networks, technology, community development, and corporate learning.
   
   
6. Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (Jane Hart)
   
   If you want to find or know more about learning tools and how to use them to facilitate online learning that sizzles, then this site will serve you amazingly well. Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day is awesomely useful, and you won't be disappointed with her Tools Directory and Top Tools for Learning 2010. In addition, I love the fact that she provides us with a weekly round-up of the new learning tools added to the tools directory. Besides that you just have to check out her social media guides:
   
   

   • Introduction to social media for learning
     
   • Social Media for Workplace Learning
   • How to use Twitter for Social Learning
   • How to use Facebook for Social Learning
     
     

   These social media guides are simply a goldmine for anyone who is clueless, or wants to learn how to implement social learning in their teaching and learning environments. Also, don't miss her 100 Featured Learning Professionals, which will provide you with information, inspiration and/or interaction on a range of educational and workplace learning topics from around the world - via their blog, on Twitter or on other social networks. A life time worth of learning!
   
   
7. The Rapid eLearning Blog (Tom Kuhlmann)
   When you think about improving your rapid e-Learning, instructional design, PowerPoint or graphic creation skills, Tom Kuhlmann's Rapid eLearning blog provides you with a lot of great advice, tips, examples and short-cuts. Also, don't forget to get his free elearning ebook while you’re there. In short, this blog is easily my favorite 'Rapid e-Learning' learning blog! No doubt about that!
   
   
8. ELearningLearning (Tony Karrer)
   
   It is not really a list, but an amazing aggregator of excellent workplace or corporate learning blogs and posts filtered out by Tony Karrer. Just subscribe to this one, and you are basically subscribing to tons of great corporate or workplace learning blogs out there. Actually, it is a blog post repository in itself, and you will find the indexing, Monthly top featured posts, best from.., etc. very exciting (Well at least I did!). It uses the Browse My Stuff technology to create this topic hub. Topic Hubs are sites that aggregates content from a variety of sources, organizes that content around keywords in the topic domain, and supports both manual and social curation of that content.
   
   
9. Kapp Notes (Karl Kapp)
   
   If you want a blog that explores 3D learning, Second Life and learning games in general, this blog is certainly one of the best that I have come across.
   
   
   
10. iLearn technology (Kelly Tenkely)
    
    This blog is dedicated to giving teachers practical tips for integrating technology into the classroom. The learning stories are short, sweet and digestible. Perfect for the busy educator. Kelly you rock!
    

Besides these awesome learning sites, there are tons of other outstanding bloggers, sites, tutorials, learning games and tools to explore, but having a good starting, or knowing what sites that consume most of my online learning time should not be any harm.

YOUR TOP 10 LEARNING SITES FOR _________?

Alright, that was my top 10 learning sites for personal learning. What about you? Do you have any amazing sites to share from your learning domain? If you are interested to participate, simply share your Top 10 list through your blog, or using any learning tool convenient for you. Then, either blast me a comment with a URL to your list, or perhaps tweet the URL to the list using the following Twitter hashtag:

#T10LS

If many of you want to participate, I will setup a wiki (using Google Sites), whereby we all can collaborate to build. Actually, it would have been cool if someone like Jane Hart could use her magic to create something similar to the Top Tools for Learning 2010 for learning sites. Now, that would be awesome!

If no one is interested, too bad! At least you can enjoy my top 10 (personal) learning sites list above. Perhaps, whatever I have said, already exists. What do you think? :)

The Vanishing Art of Lecturing (Prof. K. Ramnarayan)

PURPOSE OF A LECTURE?

1. Inspire
2. Influence
3. Inform

On the 24th May 2010, Prof. K. Ramnarayan (Vice Chancellor of Manipal University) conducted an inspiring lecture entitled 'The Vanishing Art of Lecturing' at the International Medical University (IMU), Bukit Jalil (Main Campus).

To cut the story short, let's enjoy and reflect this amazing and inspiring lecture below, chunked into three (3) parts:

PART I




PART II



PART III



To summarize in his own words, lectures should be:

Lively
Educative
Creative
Thought (provoking)
Understandable
Relevant
Enjoyable

Let's scrutinize and reflect his lecture a couple of times (or more), and then ask ourselves, "How can I be more inspiring uncovering what I am covering in a more exciting manner..."

Click here, to discover and enjoy IMU's inspiring e-Learning stream on Facebook :)

Using e-Learning To Facilitate 21st Century Learning

• Slideshare version
• Thinking Back to The Future
  

MY TALK

I was invited by the Ministry of Health (Training Division) to give a two hour lecture during a 2-day Tutor Seminar at the Hotel City Bayview, Penang. There were 165 participants (17 males only!). This seminar's theme was 'TRAINING EXCELLENCE', and it explored e-learning, student assessment, self-assessment, self-motivation, lateral thinking and emotional intelligence over two (2) days.

My 2-hour talk explored learning and how we can use web 2.0 learning tools and Open Educational Resources (OER) to transform the way we learn. Finally, it reflected some of the challenges that we will probably face as we embark on this 21st century learning adventure.

Here are the slides:

Using e-Learning To Facilitate 21st Century Learning

View more documents from zaid.

SELF-ASSESSMENT
The moment of truth had arrived after my lecturing nightmares in 2008. This was my first lecture of the year to more than a 100 participants. Was I ready? Or would I crash, and procrastinate into total self-destruction?

Interestingly, I was invited again by the Ministry of Health (Training Division), after putting so many tutors to sleep during my previous lecture. I suppose they might have found something valuable from it. Otherwise, why would they have invited me back again? Maybe my negative imagination during that sad period had misled me to believe that it was much worse than it really was. Sometimes setting too high expectations can kill our joy to enjoy the process of learning and mastering. Nothing can be mastered over night! Ask Tiger Woods, and he will tell you?

So, let's start with the presentation slides? 108 slides (54 slides per hour), including four inspiring short videos (adding up to around 25 minutes) over a two-hour period. There are several more excellent short videos in the slides, which I ignored during the talk due to time constraints, but still worthwhile sharing for participants to explore after the talk.

Since, I was going to talk about e-learning, I was of course reluctant to give them print-outs to prove a point. So, I uploaded the slides to Slideshare the night before my talk for them to access during and after the seminar. Interestingly, I believe this is the first time in my life that I have actually been really satisfied with my presentation slides. Although, I missed out on a few resources and tools I wanted to share, and a few messy slides, I felt good about them. That was at least a good start.

My positive feelings were probably picked up by the Slideshare team, which within 24 hours featured the presentation slides on Slideshare's front page. Within 48 hours it had been viewed more than a 1000 times, and retweeted 20+ times. So, this indirect feedback from a global audience has surely helped me regain my confidence :)

But then again, it was not my slides that were a problem last time. Instead it was my actual delivery (lecture) that literally nearly procrastinated me into total self-destruction. So, how would it go this time around?

Strangely over the last few months in my recovery to rediscover myself, I have lowered my expectations, and started to enjoy life. Yes, I have even started swimming 2-3 times a week, built some muscle, and should be ready to challenge Michael Phelps in the next Olympics. London here I come!

After months of frustration, reflections and rejecting several offers to conduct talks and workshops in Malaysia and abroad, God (Allah to me! For Atheists, I have no idea!) sparked a small light that has literally changed my life (at least until now!). My little four year old son looked me in the eyes and said a few words of magic (Please, get better soon!), and from that day on, slowly and steadily an inner strength has increasingly touched every cell in my body.

So, how did the lecture go? No fear, no pressure, no high expectations, more muscle, more experience, more fun, and more 'Yes, I can'! Al-Hamdulilla, I believe it went very well. Actually, I believe I nailed it (Simon are you reading!). At the moment I feel like an e-Learning Gladiator that can battle through all the destructive forces of negativity to inspire people to explore all the wonderful opportunities to learn beyond face-to-face learning (please explore the slides!).

Looking back, I should have video recorded it! But then again, I am not ready to become a Stephen Downes yet (recording and sharing to the world!). Give me a couple of years of messing up first, then perhaps! But at least you all can enjoy my presentation slides as I learn to master the art of lecturing.




MY WIFE, MY LOVE!
However, as I have been so obsessed during the last few months trying to rediscover myself and become an e-learning gladiator, I have neglected and not given the kind of love and time a marriage and family deserves. At the moment I am paying the price for it, and should stop writing right now, and instead win back the only woman that I have ever loved.

I LOVE YOU! PLEASE FORGIVE ME! I CAN'T IMAGINE LIVING WITHOUT YOU! PLEASE COME BACK!...


Update (15/7):
Al-Hamdulilla, 'My Love' mission has been completed successfully. Now, I can focus on being an e-Learning Gladiator again :)

Your Top 10 Videos (That Inspire Us To Rethink The Way We Learn)?

• Starting point - 80+ Videos for Tech. & Media Literacy
• My Top 10 List (Vote or rearrange according to...)
  

THINKING

I was last night exploring Dr. Alec Couros amazing list of videos for Tech. & Media Literacy, and then an idea popped in my wondering mind.

Ironically and sadly, many of us are still trying to persuade our dear fellow educators to rethink the way we educate and learn (even until today! Believe it or not!), but often fall short for one reason or the other. Let's face it, not all of us can inspire like Obama.

However, if we can't personally inspire mindset change, others perhaps can. Personally, I always use videos (usually short ones. 3-10 minutes) in my presentations to spark or inspire participants to think about, or rethink the way we learn and teach in the 21st century (It is already 2009!). Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But, overall participants get excited and appreciate whenever I have infused a relevant video or two in my presentations.

However, the real challenge is to choose the appropriate video(s) for the learning event, while taking into consideration all the racial, cultural or religious challenges it might cause. But before even getting there, we need to discover excellent videos. Dr. Alec Couros has done the world a great favor by sharing with us his amazing list. Thank you!

OBJECTIVE

Wouldn't it be nice if other learning professionals (or anyone for that sake!) shared their list of favorite learning videos with the rest of us. Let's virally share our favorite videos, enabling those that struggle to find such videos, find them more conveniently.

To be a bit more instructionally sound, let's create an objective for this video discovering event:

• To list and share our top 10 favorite videos that inspire us to rethink the way we learn and educate in the 21st century.

Besides the title, author and link (URL) to the video, please add a short description and why you selected that particular one (if possible).


MY TOP 10 LIST
Here is my current top 10 list of videos that inspire us to rethink the way we learn and educate:

1. A Vision of Students Today (Michael Wesch)
   Created to inspire teachers to use technology in engaging ways to help students develop higher level thinking skills. Equally important, it serves to motivate district level leaders to provide teachers with the tools and training to do so.
   
   
2. Do Schools Kill Creativity? (Ken Robinson)
   Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.
   
   
3. Did You Know? 3.0 (Created by Karl Fisch, and modified by Scott McLeod)
   "Widely viewed video by Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod that gives light to the changes imminent in our emerging knowledge-based society. This is an excellent video for framing and introducing the new reality to students, teachers, faculty, and administrators." - Dr. Alec Couros
   
   
4. The Machine is Us/ing Us (Michael Wesch)
   "Web 2.0" in just under 5 minutes.
   
   
5. Five Minute University (Father Guido Sarducci)
   Father Guido Sarducci teaches what an average college graduate knows after five years from graduation in five minutes. The video gives humorous critique to learning in higher education.
   
   
6. Pay Attention (Darren Draper)
   This presentation, simply entitled Pay Attention, was created by Darren Draper in an effort to motivate teachers to more effectively use technology in their teaching.
   
   
7. Teaching Teaching & Understanding Understanding (Claus Brabrand and Jacob Andersen)
   
   A 19-minute award-winning short-film about teaching at the University. It shows examples of good and bad teaching, and promotes constructive alignment learning approach using Solo Taxonomy to test students' level of understanding (deep understanding?).
   
   
8. Brain Rules (Dr. John Medina)
   How do we learn? What exactly do sleep and stress do to our brains? Why is multi-tasking a myth? Why is it so easy to forget--and so important to repeat new information? Is it true that men and women have different brains? In Brain Rules, molecular biologist Dr. John Medina shares his lifelong interest in how the brain sciences might influence the way we teach our children and the way we work. In each chapter, he describes a brain rule - what scientists know for sure about how our brains work - and then offers transformative ideas for our daily lives.
   
   
9. Debunks Myths about the so-called "Developing World" (Hans Rosling)
   
   You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world." Yes, we could learn a few tricks from him on how to inspire students to learn our topic for the day.
   
   
10. PowerPoint Extreme Makeover (Dean Shareski)
    How do you use PowerPoint effectively? Using Camtasia studio, Dean Shareski shows you what you can do to make your PowerPoint presentation more attractive, engaging and effective.
    
    
11. A Brave New World-Wide Web (David Truss)
    
    I know it is a top 10 list, but I just discovered this excellent learning video, and want to include it here (so I don't ever forget it!). It makes you reflect about how technology is changing the way we learn and teach, and is a great video to kick-start a discussion on using technology to facilitate learning.

YOUR TOP 10 LIST?

Wouldn't it be cool if we could do something similar to Jane Hart's Top 10 Tools Lists of Learning Professionals 2009 for inspiring learning videos, and then do the top 100 and hoopla, hoopla, hoopla...! Jane, if you are reading this post, I would recommend that you take charge (seriously!) of this project (no money involved, just 1000s of more hits!). We could replicate, or reuse your template for learning tools, and do one for videos, too.

If not, we could use a wiki. If anyone has already posted their 10 top videos (or whatever list), please feel free to share it with us (in the comments section).

In short, I believe this inspiring project 'in the making' could be really helpful to many enlightened and inspired educators (but perhaps not inspiring to others) out there that are looking for sparks (e.g. learning videos) that could inspire their fellow educators to rethink the way they educate and learn.

Educators who have shared their top 10 lists, or favorite learning videos (until now):

1. DigiZen
2. Alfredo Calderón
3. Tracey Mollins
   

(Click their names to discover more juicy learning videos.)

Let's get busy sharing our favorite learning videos with the rest of the learning world :)

YouTube EDU At Last!

• YouTube EDU
• Via Jeff Cobb

"YouTube has aggregated all of the videos from its college and university partners - including luminaries like Stanford, Harvard, and Dartmouth - in one place: YouTube EDU. Good news for lifelong learners." - Jeff Cobb

SOME THOUGHTS
Alright, in the Edublogs sphere this is old news (3 weeks old!), but I do hope that readers of this blog who don't know, know now. I am still trying to catch up with all the new learning juice flowing through the online Universe (Need another 3-4 weeks!).

I suppose after watching other sites aggregate or organize University/College lectures or videos (e.g. Academic Earth ), Google came to their (ad) sense, and created their own dashboard or web page where we can access all the educational channels from one space. From this dashboard one can find video lectures from the directory, 'YouTube Edu' specific search, most viewed and most subscribed options. Though, I didn't see a Latest 'YouTube Edu' videos option. Also, it would be cool if it totaled up all and provided one figure (e.g. 150 000) specifying how many EDU videos there are. Actually, it would be even cooler if it was an animated counter, counting up instead of down.

In general, I just hope that more educators and students discover this amazing collection of lectures, and find ways to use them for their learning enrichment. Have fun discovering YouTube EDU :)

Personal Learning = YouTube Lectures + No Courses + Free Rice

• Link to ZaidLearn's YouTube (Channel) Collection
• Personal Learning (Stephen Downes) + Slides (SlideShare)
• A World Without Courses (George Siemens)
• FreeRice (Word Game)

FREE RICE?
Did you know that you can give free rice to hungry people by simply playing a cool word game? FreeRice has two goals:

• Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
• Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free (Made possible by the sponsors who advertise on the site).

While learning and stimulating your own brain, you are also helping hungry people! What a brilliant idea! Hopefully, it works!

A WORLD WITHOUT COURSES?
George Siemens provides us a glimpse into a potential future world without courses, in a mind stimulating Articulate presentation.

"The function of education - in serving its stakeholders and in how it creates value - can be duplicated in a distributed manner. We're still missing the final piece of accreditation (though we're making progress on that) and we're missing the piece on how we will tie these pieces together. But, I imagine that will be on the horizon shortly. (with tying together, I don't mean tying content together - we can do that with RSS, PageFlakes, etc. I mean a conceptual tying together so we can say, "yes, Susan has achieved those learning targets"). Treat it as a conversation starter, not a declaration of belief ..." (Source)

It wasn't long ago when some learning experts were talking about a world without lectures (or even lecturers! Courseware + Artificial Intelligence = Learning). Today I watch more lectures than ever online (if I had more opportunities offline I would, too)! Whether online or offline, I simply love lectures, if they are interesting, engaging, useful, and relevant to my learning (E.g. George Siemens Articulate presentation). If you ask me to choose between a typical page-clicking courseware (eBook?) over watching a lecture, I would 99 out of 100 times choose a lecture (especially if it allows me to easily navigate and skip the boring/knowing parts). I suppose I prefer watching and listening to subject matter experts (if so!) reflecting-it-out-loud if possible (learning beyond the content)! But then again, everyone has their own preferences, which we should try to cater to one way or the other. If you can blend reading, listening, watching, presenting, sharing, playing, reflecting, individual/group activities, and creating new stuff into a course effectively, I will be inspired!

Although, I like learning whatever I want, anytime I want in an informal way, I do also like learning through courses. So, I hope and envision a world where both can co-exist effectively and that we can increasingly recognize and find ways to measure the value of informal learning (or no-course learning!) before making our judgments about a person's expertise (or competence level) in terms of knowledge, skills, experience and wisdom.

Coming to think of it, the problem might not lie with the 'course model', but how we define, deliver, assess and rigidly package courses (according to credit hours). With a bit of creativity, innovation and flexibility, we might be able to revive to true value of learning through courses! Also, wouldn't it be nice if we could have more flexibility in how we package our degrees (self-directed). We are free to choose courses according to our needs and interests (with prerequisite or warning signs if any!). In such a course learning world, I suppose Steve Jobs would have completed his degree!

UNIVERSITY YOUTUBE COLLECTIONS
Dan Coleman shares on his super smart media blog 50+ Smart Video Collections on YouTube (and growing!), which is simply an amazing collection. Although, YouTube unfortunately makes these collections difficult to find, Dan Coleman comes to the rescue!

Here are a few University YouTube Channels to keep you busy for life:

1. University of California (Berkeley)
2. MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
3. University of Southern California (USC)
4. Indian Institute of Technology/Indian Institute of Science (India)
5. BerkmanCenter's Channel (Harvard Law School)
6. University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill
7. Vanderbilt University
8. University of Chicago Press
9. University of California Television (UCTV)
10. University of Arizona
11. UChannel (Princeton)
12. Tulane University
13. Purdue University
14. Old Dominion (US)
15. Duke University News
16. European Graduate School (EGS)
17. AuburnUniversity's Videos
18. Oxford University Saïd Business School
19. BokTube - BokCenter's YouTube Channel (Harvard)

PERSONAL LEARNING
Stephen Downes is working on a new personal learning tool (soon to be launched, if I am not mistaken), and has some great ideas about what personal learning is all about.

Personal learning (in a nut shell!):

• To teach is to MODEL and to DEMONSTRATE
• To Learn is to PRACTICE and REFLECT

CLICK HERE to enjoy and reflect his slides :)

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN?
Besides learning, I don't have a clue! However, if you want to enjoy my learning as I discover new learning resources and tools, please take advantage and use my growing juicy del.icio.us collection. Currently, I am still trying to index my old super learning discoveries (No time!), and hopefully by early April, I will increasingly focus more on exploring new galaxies of resources and tools.

In the meantime, have fun feeding poor people while playing games, and please dream about a world without courses (and share your reflections with George Siemens). Also, have fun exploring 1000s of YouTube lectures! Hopefully, we can soon use Stephen Downes new personal learning tool to manage our learning more efficiently. We certainly need it now!

I suppose I will be back in a week or two with some more juicy updates from my learning adventures :)

SciVee and The Origin of 'Yes, We Can!'

• Link to SciVee & Overview of SciVee (Video)
• Via Tom Hanson through e-mail (Editor - Openeducation.Net)

SciVee?
SciVee is an online science research sharing portal that invites scientists to make their research known by combining their published scientific article with a corresponding video into an online presentation called a “SciVee pubcast.”

FEATURES & BENEFITS?

"Pubcasts enable scientists who view them a deeper comprehension of a publications teaching points than would be possible from reading an abstract alone. Scientists can gain a quicker comprehension of more publications in substantially less time with the aid of a video presentation provided directly from the author. Once a large database of pubcasts are made available on SciVee, viewing multiple pubcasts on the same topic will enable scientists to gain access to a broader sampling of relevant research thereby possibly expanding their breadth and depth of their scientific understanding (Source)."

According to SciVee, a pubcast of your research paper (peer reviewed scientific journal publication?) can increase the breadth of your audience, readership of your paper, feedback from peers, and possibly the likelihood of citation(s).

EXAMPLE?
Here is the cream example of success at SciVee: Structural Evolution of the Protein-kinase Like Superfamily was one of their first posts on July 19, 2007, and since then it has been viewed (or clicked on) more than 100,000 times.

REFLECTION!
According to YouTube viewing standards the cream example would probably be considered a disaster, but then again if say 5-10 of these viewers would actually cite the paper in theirs, it can be considered a great success from an academic research point-of-view.

Anyway, researchers should not be too concerned about the viewing numbers, popularity, ratings, and other ego-boosting activities. If the research can benefit mankind or nature in any way, we should have enough motivation to do our thing, and with tools like SciVee we can share, promote, discuss and reflect our research with the SciVee world. If we are lucky it will spark more interest here and there. You never know, someone like Bill Gates might be willing to sponsor millions of dollars if he believes in your work.

On the other side, I really found SciVee to be a really slow learning adventure! I am not sure if it has something to do with my PC and network, or with their server capacity and user traffic, or perhaps they are using some form of poor video compression technology. Whatever it is, it would probably be a good reason for why I will probably not access this site again (unless I discover a great SciVee research project searching in Google!). Perhaps, all the videos could be hosted on YouTube, and embedded in SciVee, so that SciVee could be lighter and easier to access for other important research activities such as discussion and reflection. Imagine exploring SciVee with a Google speed factor. Now that is something that gets me excited. In other words, SciVee has interesting content and discussions, but it needs to speed up the access factor to have my vote of approval (Who cares about your vote!)! Just making a point!

ORIGIN OF 'YES, WE CAN' ?
I am not sure if Bill Gates will invest millions of dollars in my important non-scientific "Origin of 'Yes, We Can!'" weekend project. I am in the midst of researching the origin of Obama's (or his team) inspirational and successful 'Yes, We can!' slogan and campaign (Example: 'Yes, We Can' song). Ever since I heard Obama say those three famous words, I felt that I had heard it before somewhere. And this weekend I got the AHA-moment while listening (actually singing along! Great song!) to my 2 1/2 year old son singing the famous Bob the Builder song (or chorus), ' Bob the builder, Can we fix it? Bob the builder, Yes we can!

Could it be that Obama was inspired by Bob the Builder? If this is the case, he should give due credit to Bob the Builder for his contribution. If not, shame on Obama! Hmm, lets' give Obama the benefit of doubt for now. Perhaps, also 'Bob the Builder' is guilty of plagiarism. Therefore, I believe that this project is of great significance. Why? Because we need to know the truth and origin of this motivational and inspirational 'Yes, We Can!' phrase. It could be worth millions!

Boss: What nonsense! Get back to work! We don't pay you for researching such rubbish!
Me: Just trying to be creative and funny!
Boss: CREATIVE AND FUNNY!!!! Pay me your salary, and then you can be creative and funny!
Me: Ooops, this post is getting me into trouble, so I better stop here :)

The World Is Flat 3.0 (Thomas Friedman)

• Link to Friedman's Keynote Address (MIT Milestone Celebration)
• More MIT Milestone Celebration Videos (2007)
• MIT World - 'The World is Flat' Video (2005)
• Thomas Friedman's Homepage

THE WORLD IS FLAT 3.0?
"The World Is Flat 3.0 is Thomas L. Friedman's account of the great changes taking place in our time, as lightning-swift advances in technology and communications put people all over the globe in touch as never before-creating an explosion of wealth in India and China, and challenging the rest of us to run even faster just to stay in place.

The World Is Flat 3.0 is an essential update on globalization, its opportunities for individual empowerment, its achievements at lifting millions out of poverty, and its drawbacks--environmental, social, and political, powerfully illuminated by the Pulitzer Prize--winning author of The Lexus and the Olive Tree (Source)."

I have a Dream (King)! Go Green (Friedman)! Yes, We Can (Obama)!

FRIEDMAN TALK?

Thomas Friedman gave a great talk at MIT Milestone Celebration on November 28, 2007, which is available (below) for FREE to explore, learn from, and reflect.

In this great talk, he shares with us how he by accident discovered that the 'World is Flat', the four flatteners, the evolution of Globalization (1.0 - Countries, 2.0 - Companies, 3.0 - Individuals) , the importance of nurturing and promoting individual imagination and mash-ups to gain a competitive edge, the importance of mastering more than one discipline, his upcoming book, "Green is the new Red, White, and Blue" (YouTube - Tom Friedman on Clean Energy), and much more.

Yeah, we know that the 19th Century belongs to Great Britain, and the 20th Century belongs to the United States, but which country will the 21st Century belong to? China, India or United States? Nope! It will probably go to Google, a dynamic region somewhere, or perhaps an individual that has not been born yet.

"Washington is brain-dead" (Dumb as they want to be!), but the United States is alive and kicking much thanks to their creative and innovative culture, and this is an area we need to learn more about, reflect, adapt and customize to our needs and way of life to compete in a global economy that is increasingly driven by creativity, innovation and ideas.

Finally, the great challenge for the 21 century will be dealing with global warming, pollution and the increasing global toxic consumption of nature. The only way out of this is to Go Green (which makes business sense, too!); innovate disruptive, cheap, and scalable energy-efficient consumption technologies, and discover new forms of energy (In addition, we need to consume with Green sense and caution!). The new disruptive secret Green energy innovation might not be water, hydrogen, air, solar energy, or Superman (Sorry, Dwight Howard!).

Imagine driving a car, or flying a plane using only human energy (Flintstones!). I like to call it 'Human Touch'! Now that is disruptive and Green, but is it possible? :)

ELI Podcast: Connectivism (George Siemens)

• Link to ELI Podcast: Connectivism & Video
• More ELI Podcasts
• Knowing Knowledge (His book)
• Via Stephen Downes

In this 58 minute podcast, George Siemens, Associate Director for the Learning Technologies Centre at the University of Manitoba, discusses "Connectivism" (recorded at the ELI 2008 Meeting in San Antonio, Texas).

"The waves of technological and social change have eroded the effectiveness of traditional views regarding what, how, and why to educate. To effectively educate learners, fundamental assertions need to be rethought: the design of schools and curriculum, the nature of knowledge in a connected world, the relationship between educator and learner, the means and methods of authenticating information and knowledge, and, perhaps most significantly, what it means “to know” in complex, rapidly developing, and chaotic environments. This session will present connectivism as a theory of learning that can bridge the rift between traditional and new educational approaches to prepare learners for the tomorrow they will inherit."

OTHER PODCASTS?

Here are a few other ELI Podcasts (conversations) you might want to explore:

• The 2008 Horizon Report (in Second Life!)
• George Siemens and Michael Wesch Talk About Future Learning.
• Web 2.0 Learning Tools- What are they? What is their role in higher education?
• Accountability in Higher Education
• Technology and the Conative Learning Domain in Undergraduate Education
• Human Futures for Technology and Education
• Teaching Metacognition
• What Wikipedia Can Teach Us About the New Media Literacies
• ...More

WOW! So, if you want to know more about the present and future learning tools and where learning (or education) might be heading in the future, these podcasts might just give you some good ideas on how to move forward. I am certainly looking forward to an increasingly more connected open global learning network where I can communicate directly and often with experts like George Siemens (in addition to reflecting their presentations and writings). I am not sure if experts will have time for (or want to engage with) all the hungry learning minds connected to this growing open global learning network, but they will probably also have less opportunities to escape :)

MIT Lecture Browser (Speechless!)

• Link to MIT Lecture Browser

WHAT?
"The Lecture Browser is a web interface to video recordings of lectures and seminars that have been indexed using automatic speech recognition technology. You can search for topics, much like a regular web search engine. If any results look relevant, you can play the video starting at the relevant point and see the synchronized transcript. "

GOAL?
"The Lecture Browser is part of a research project on spoken lecture processing that is being undertaken by researchers in the Spoken Language Systems Group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Their goal is to enable natural speech-based interaction between humans and machines."

LEARNING?
"This project explores ways to enable educators and students to more effectively disseminate audio and video recordings of academic lecture material...The results of our research are being showcased in two different ways. In addition to the lecture browser shown here, we are also developing a a web-based spoken lecture processing server that allows users to upload audio files for automatic transcription and indexing. To help the speech recognizer, users can provide their own supplemental text files, such as journal articles, book chapters, etc., which can be used to adapt the language model and vocabulary of the system"

Are you kidding me! This I like! Alright, it needs a face lift and perhaps it should use Flash-based videos (if possible) instead (in the future!). It will be interesting to follow the progress of this much needed innovation. Can you imagine being empowered with such features in YouTube, iTunes, Google Video, etc.? Can't wait! :)

Educational YouTube Collections You Simply Do Not Want to Miss!

• Dan Colman - 10 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube (Smart Video Collections)
• OCulture's Favorite YouTube Videos

WHAT?
Where can I find great educational videos on YouTube that can stimulate my brain beyond the entertainment and fun level? Simple answer! On YouTube's Education section!

Not sure about that one, but strangely enough you can easily find educational videos about babes, butts and sex education there! Some might find this educational, but I suppose some might not!

Since we discussed YouTube Catcher in the last post, I suppose the next obvious task would be to find some excellent YouTube collections/channels to extract the juiciest stuff for our learning. Thanks to Dan Colman's recent excellent post on educational video collections, I believe we have a great starting point. Yeah, sometimes a bit of human intervention using Google tools (including YouTube) in extracting juice is needed :)

JUICE?
The following excellent educational YouTube collections were highlighted in Dan Colman's post:

• UC Berkeley
• @GoogleTalks
• The Nobel Prize
• TED Talks
• FORA.tv
• Philosophers and Theorists
• Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
• BBC Worldwide
• UChannel
• National Geographic
• CASTTV (Computer how-to videos)
• Other University Channels: MIT, Vanderbilt and USC

If you want a quick overview and some tips on using these YouTube collections, I strongly recommend that you explore Dan Colman's video, podcast and resource collections (Growing Fast!). Just Click Here!

Hopefully, we manage to catch a few juicy videos or resources there to tickle our learning minds :)

Download 'Did You Know 2.0' With 'YouTube Catcher' (For Your Class)!

• YouTube Catcher
• Free FLV Player
• YouTube Video - Did You Know 2.0
• Via Jane Knight

YOUTUBE CATCHER?
YouTube Catcher is another tool that allows you to download YouTube videos easy and fast!

I am still wondering why YouTube does not allow users to download videos directly. It would probably take their software engineers approximately 5-10 minutes to add this feature, but something seems to stop them from doing it. Whatever it is, they are creating new business opportunities for innovative and entrepreneurial minds behind tools like YouTube Catcher. There are actually several such tools already available, including VideoDownloadx.com, which I have discussed earlier. In that sense (and AdSense) it is great for them. However, the moment YouTube enables us to download directly from their site; I suppose we will eventually have to say adios amigo to these tools. But, in the meantime we can enjoy them to do our stuff, although it is a bit more inconvenient.

HOW?
How do I do it?

1. Alright, first find a YouTube Video you want to download, and then Copy and paste its' URL into the form below (this is just a screenshot, so please click here to try it out for real! Do you think I am that stupid!).
   
   
2. Then click the DOWNLOAD button to start. Please, REMEMBER to rename the file with a .flv extension (Why can't it do it for us! Oh man!).
3. To watch the FLV Videos on your computer device, you need a FLV Player. Click here to download a free FLV player . In addition, you can also convert these FLV videos to other formats like avi, mpeg, mp4. And you can transfer these videos to cellphones or Ipods!

Interestingly, this cool and easy-to-use tool allows you also to convert your YouTube videos to MP3 files directly from the site, in the same fashion as downloading them. If you don't have time to watch your videos, you can at least listen do them on your Ipod (or MP3 player) while driving, or doing repetition work that requires no deep thinking!

DID YOU KNOW 2.0?
That was cool! Do you know of any videos that can engage my students (and educators!) to really think about their education and future careers before they graduate?

Alright, here is one video that I strongly recommend to download (URL: http://youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U) using YouTube Catcher, or whatever tool/way you can.

This video is an official update to the original "Shift Happens" video from Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod. This June 2007 update includes new and updated statistics, thought-provoking questions and a fresh design. My mind is already reflecting about my future job possibilities!

So, if you don't have a good Internet connection in your classroom (or none at all!), it should not stop you from showing short (preferable below 10 minutes, unless super interesting!), engaging and relevant videos to spice up the students' learning minds and facilitate discussions. Some students might be sleepy when they come to class, but a juicy YouTube video (You know what I mean!) might just be enough to warm-up their learning minds to actually participate. You probably just need to mention YouTube and Facebook in class, and students are already getting excited.

There are many things we can do to engage and inspire our students to participate and learn. Sometimes a relevant and exciting YouTube video can do the trick. Trust me :)