Category Archives: IDEL11

Winter in Sony Home

Its chilly in Sony Home …

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I-Room in Unity3D with Multi-User Chat, VoIP and Collaboration Tools

A number of people are investigating Unity3D as a 3D graphics engine for virtual worlds. It can be delivered through a web browser on a range of platforms including mobile devices. It might offer a light weight alternative to Second … Continue reading

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Moodle/SLoodle Experiments Issue 13 – External Tools as Course Activities

Moodle 2.2 released today (6-Dec-2011) includes a facility which allows for the embedding of tools that are provided externally as activities on courses. Close integration is possible using the IMS Global Learning Tool Interoperability (IMS LTI) standard. See http://www.somerandomthoughts.com/blog/2011/11/28/moodle-2-supports-connecting-to-ims-lti-tools/ But … Continue reading

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Finally, We Meet

An amusing aspect of the IDEL11 course is that we have worked rogether for nearly three months and never really seen anything other than tiny icons of one another. So it was nice to finish up by finally “meeting” all … Continue reading

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Reflections at the End of the IDEL11 Course

At the very start of the course I did a blog post to set down some of my objectives for engaging on the MSc in e-Learning. These can be summarised as: I wish to learn more about and make use of … Continue reading

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Reflections on Week 11 – Work Style and Why Silence is (could be) Golden

Work Style and Tool Wrangling My work style means I make a lot of notes on deliverables, sometimes far ahead of due dates. Sometimes, even on even multi-year projects, I have an outline of every deliverable on day 1 of … Continue reading

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OpenVCE Virtual Worlds Assets moved from OpenSim to Unity3D via Tipodean Collada Converter – Part 1

On my research project related to supporting the OpenVCE communities at http://openvce.net/ I was engaged in setting up a new group portal on the APAN (All Partners Access Network) hosted by the US Government for non-classified work between government agencies, … Continue reading

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Reflections on Week 10 – Presence and Voice

Indications of Presence in Virtual Worlds The theme of the readings and Second Life sessions this week was to explore the notion of presence, and mechanism for achieve a sense of community and proper interchange leading to menaingful learning in … Continue reading

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Moodle/SLoodle Experiments Issue 12 – Customised Inworld Object

With kind support from Edmund Edgar I have been experimenting with the “Demo Object” in SLoodle, which is a stub or template for developing customised objects in Second Life or OpenSim which can connect with a corresponding module in the … Continue reading

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IDEL11 Second Life Voice Meeting on Presence

Also see http://atate.org/mscel/img/2011-11-24-IDEL11-SL-Voice-2.jpg http://atate.org/mscel/img/2011-11-24-IDEL11-SL-Voice-3.jpg Space Navigator device I mentioned: http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/spacenavigator.html

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MSc in e-Learning Virtual Graduation 24-Nov-2011

For some reason, the inline thumbnail images don’t show up in WordPress for this blog post. Click on the image areas to get the source image. All images for the MSc in e-Learning graduates, and some overview shots are at … Continue reading

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John McCarthy – The Robot and the Baby

Professor John McCarthy died on 24th October 2011 at the age of 84. He was an early pioneer of computer technology, computer time-sharing, and inventor of LISP, one of the very first computer programming languages. LISP was, radically, based on … Continue reading

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PLE Examples – iGoogle

iGoogle is sometimes used as a framework for an individual’s PLE, since it provides a convenient and readily accessible “container” for a range of widgets and content items which can easily be added and removed. It is also relatively open … Continue reading

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Are You on Another Planet? – Well sort of… on a Moon Really

I have always been fascinated by fast cars, advanced planes and spacecraft and there is a thread running through my interests which I have been able to explore while creating my “Life Wall” – http://atate.org/ as part of the MSc … Continue reading

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Reflections on Week 9 – The Need for a BIG Table

I have been organising my resources for three final course assignments for the MSc. I have outgrown the ring binders I was using to organise things, and finding I want to lay things out more. A large work surface is … Continue reading

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Link Ahead – Synchronous and Asynchronous Elements for Collaboration – Landow and Heywood

Landow (2006, pp 284-285) gives a very nice example of the effect of using Hypermedia alongside Peter Heywood’s usual weekly topic based course on cell plant biology. He observed that students could follow links ahead into later materials, versus being … Continue reading

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ROLE Model – Responsive Open Learning Environments

Responsive Open Learning Environments (ROLE – http://www.role-project.eu/) is an EU project which provides an interesting example of a learning environment being created with an open widget based approach which might allow for a personal learning environment to be created by … Continue reading

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Reflectons on Week 8 – PLEs and Preparing for Final Assignments

The week has been characterised by some preparatory work for assignments on the three MSc in e-Learning courses I am on. There is a lot to pull together, many interesting areas to explore, and readings to go back over. But … Continue reading

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Moodle/SLoodle Experiments Issue 11 – Walled Garden or Castle Battlements and Labyrinths

Our experience of setting up Moodle as an administrator, for a couple of sample courses of different kinds (weekly, topic based and social format) and by adding in the SLoodle module both in the web end of Moodle and in … Continue reading

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PLEs and the Technicalities

My earlier blog postings have described my own preferred approach to the creation of a PLE which at its outer level is simply an easily customised web page. I chose a freely available well constructed CSS1 stylesheet that maximised the … Continue reading

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Reflections on Week 7 – PLEs Please Me

The discussion and readings on institution centric VLEs and personally owned and controlled PLEs, and all things in between, has been useful to draw out some of the argumentation behind the gut feeling I have for personal curation of one’s … Continue reading

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Typographical Visual Neo-Grammar

I am experimenting with a style of non-linear essay employing a customised Typographical Visual “Neo-Grammar”. It involves experimentation with expressing the core message carrying semantically tagged “connectors” in a type and layout style and with interactive linking capabilities well suited … Continue reading

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Moodle/SLoodle Experiments Issue 10 – Cron and the Zombies

Its Halloween, and the Zombies have attacked! There has been a bit of a struggle to get the “cron” job running on the Moodle setup. cron.php is an admin routine that is run every few minutes to do a number … Continue reading

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Reflections on Week 6.3 – Personal Learning Space

This topic resonates with me, and I think its important that students take on the curation of their own resources and assets long term, but that institutions should have a duty to help individuals in that process, so I will … Continue reading

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Moodle/SLoodle Experiments – Issue 9 – Mobile Apps

There is an iPhone/iPod/iPad app called “My Moodle” which provides mobile device access to Moodle 2.1+. See http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-moodle/id461289000 The experimental Moodle 2.1.2 site at AIAI now has mobile web services enabled as required to support this app – they are … Continue reading

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Moodle/SLoodle Experiments – Issue 8

I have been testing elements of the SLoodle Second Life toolkit version 2.0.10 alpha alongside Moodle 2.1.2 and the SLoodle module 2.0.10 alpha with a few revisions being made by Edmund Elgar, a SLoodle developer and one of the owners … Continue reading

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John McCarthy – Pioneer of AI

You may have heard that John McCarthy died this week. See http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/october/john-mccarthy-obit-102511.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/25/john-mccarthy John was an early pioneer of AI, inventor of Lisp, and indeed originator of the term “AI” in 1956. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist). It is good to see how … Continue reading

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Reflections on Week 6.2 – The Excitement of New Challenges and Boring Texts

I know that tackling specific projects, especially if they involve collaboration with others, is my preferred style of work and gives me the most motivation. Since my school days projects in my subjects were always the things I enjoyed and … Continue reading

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Moodle/SLoodle Experiments – Issue 7

After a small change in a login method made by Edmund Edgar, one of the SLoodle developers, to one file at mod/set-1.0/shared_media/index.php the 2.0.10-alpha release of SLoodle works in the SLoodle classroom on the VCE region in Second Life connected … Continue reading

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Moodle/SLoodle Experiments – Issue 6

I have been in contact with the SLoodle development and test community in the last few week, as they are preparing a release that can work with the latest Moodle 2.1+. The time now seems right to try the alpha … Continue reading

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