How To Build A Mobile Website

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/03/how-to-build-a-mobile-website/

A practical post focusing mainly on use of mobile stylesheets to modify the presentation and layout for mobile devices. As pointed out in the comments, there are alternative approaches, including progressive enhancement (starting with simple semantic data suitable for mobile, then enhancing for more other devices/displays) and design for mobile (recognising that a mobile experience is more than just what it looks like and might require a more fundamentally different approach to design).

I’m sure this is something many sites are considering, including the Guardian who have just redesigned their mobile site and iPhone app, which will soon move to a paid subscription model.

It’s a small smart world

http://www.economist.com/node/17388368

A special issue from the Economist looking at the potential of data sensors, processors and displays to augment systems so they can become smarter. Much of it is speculation on future development, with systems including everything from RFID tags in groceries, to utilities and entire cities. While we wait for automated sensors to be added to everything, it seems people are already doing a pretty good job…”Most important, however, humans themselves have turned out to be excellent sensors. Many provide information without any extra effort, just by carrying around a mobile phone” and using it to check-in, tweet, post…

I’ve been working on a web2practice animation around the ideas of location + data + mobile + social and how that can give an augmented sense of place through things like AR. The animation is done, but I’m still working on the accompanying practical guide, so if you have any suggestions for this, please do comment.

Lanyrd makes conferences social

Lanyrd is a relatively new, but increasingly popular service that offers some useful features for those how present at and attend conferences. This started as being mainly about ‘what’s on & who’s going?’ but now allows for event ‘coverage’ in the form of embedded slides, photos, audio and video. As I’m only just getting started with this, I’ll simply point you at the thoughts of Matt Jukes, Graham Attwell and Brian Kelly.

CETIS conference

Never Waste a Good Crisis – Innovation & Technology in Institutions

I booked for the 2010 CETIS conference – as you’d know already if you use Lanyrd . I’ll be be in the session ‘Next Generation Content’, which is tackling mobile, HTML5 and associated technologies and AR. In other sessions, there are discussions on OERs, Linked Data (or linked data) and the future of education and institutions, so its likely to be a pretty lively event!

Netskills seminars

I’ve started planning for a Netskills seminar series, in which invited speakers presenting from here or remotely (more likely) to an audience that is also here and/or remote (also more likely). A blended form of seminar. What we as service intend to offer to add value to these seminars is to build on the presentations with some remote activities/support. So, provide guidance materials to facilitate follow-up activities for remote participants, with support online from us and their peers. The aim being for us to be a bridge between the research/experts doing the presentations and the education community. I’m also looking into the possibility of ‘regional hubs’ for these events, where people could attend a local event to watch the stream and participate in facilitated activities – and of course have lunch and network!

UK copyright laws to be reviewed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11695416

To “make them fit for the internet age“, which may mean greater use of copyright material without need to seek the owner’s permission and possibly introducing the concept of ‘fair use’ as in the US. The report is due to be published in April 2011. It will be interesting to see how this addresses/redresses the issues introduced by the Digital Economy Bill and what resistance it meets with from certain industries and the support it gets from others.

Digital Storytelling

My colleague Chris Thomson has developed a new Netskills workshop on digital storytelling. I must admit, that’s not something I immediately thought I’d be interested in, but since participating in an internal pilot, I’m seeing lots of opportunities to which this approach would be effective. From the presentations I do, to screencasts I create and blog posts I write – as well as the stories I tell my kids (now soon to be available on YouTube )

web2practice guide to QR codes

I did a quick and dirty video on QR codes as part of a new web2practice guide we’re producing. The video is a introduction to what they are and why you should care, with a more detailed printed guide to come on the how. I’d been keen to hear what you think of this before we polish it for release. On the topic, if you know of an interesting uses of QR codes in HE or elsewhere, please let me know in the comments.

Supporting the JISC Greening ICT programme

I’m leading on a Netskills project to provide support for the JISC greening ICT programme. This includes setting up a community site and encouraging conversations in and around it, facilitating events, online programme meetings (in elluminate) and helping to synthesize and amplify project findings and outputs.

The first priority is the community site, which aims to support projects in providing a single source of programme-related information and the ongoing work of other projects, as well as being a showcase for the work and a space where they can engage with each other and the wider community. In terms of features to help that happen we’re looking at providing access to news, information, documents & tools, user profiles (networking/connecting projects/matching people), asynchronous discussions (private/public), chat, user upload of documents/media, user blogs (in system and/or syndicated from elsewhere), wiki, feeds/syndication…

I’ve looked at a range of options like wetpaint, Ning, PBwiki, Elgg, but so far my favourite is a hosted WordPress installation with BuddyPress. I’ve heard good things about this from users and providers. I outlined out plans to the project teams in our first online programme meeting yesterday and am asking them for input, but if you know of or have experience of any other systems or approaches, please let me know.

JIF

Not sure if it’s cheating to include something from 2 weeks ago in a weeknote, but this is the first time I’ve mentioned the JISC innovation forum. This is a biannual event for people working on JISC innovation projects to get together to consider ways to do that more effectively. I ran a workshop on how projects can engage with their communities through social media/networking, which despite my feeling that I might not be telling them anything new, seemed to spark a pretty lively debate on the practicalities of this. I tried to blog this in more depth, but it quickly got out of hand for a Friday afternoon, so will have to revisit it next week.

As to the rest of the event, it was excellent. Some great speakers talking about some of the big issues affecting the web and education. It’s great to hear these people talk, but also to feel part of that community and conversation.

Online collaboration with the bloke next door

I’ve been doing a fair bit of real-time collaboration in gDocs with my colleague Chris (aka Electricchalk). He posted on his thoughts on it in his last chalknote (although he failed to mention his cunning approach to collaboration of him writing the headings and leaving me to fill in the rest!). For me, I think a paired programming style approach of one person writing while the other reviews and thinks can be really effective, far more so than working asynchronously in bursts then getting back together to review. We also reflected on this in a post on the web2practice blog.

Photo: AMagill on Flickr (CC BY)

On Thursday, I ran a remote training session on screencasting. The session introduced screencasting (broadcasting your screen), its educational uses (narrated slides/lectures, on-screen demos, worked problems, feedback, digital storytelling…), screencasting tools (screenr, screenjelly, Jing, Camtasia Studio, slideshare – not screentoaster as it’s on it’s last legs) and how to use them. Over the next few  weeks, we’ll be supporting participants in creating  their own screencasts, so it will be interesting to see what they produce and what problems they have to overcome.

If you want to know more about the session  my slidedeck is below, or if you’re really looking for a way to avoid doing any work, you can relive the session through the magic of elluminate. On that, despite seeming to go pretty well when done live, it isn’t the most enjoyable of viewing experiences (even controlling for the cringe factor of having to watch myself). Ideally, I’d produce a slicker, shorter narrated presentation and demo, but somehow I don’t think that will happen, which is a possible downside of recording more live stuff and simply reusing it for playback. It’s also remains a slightly odd experience to present remotely from an empty room.

Moving home is easy – a new blog

If you’re reading this in situ, then you might notice things look a little different around here. That’s because here is somewhere new as I finally took the plunge and setup a self-hosted WordPress install. I’ve happily used hosted blogs on WordPress.com and JISCinvolve for a few years. While these make blogging simple, I like to be able to customise the design, choose my own plugins, hack around with a bit of code – all of which are easier and more fun with your own setup. If you’re thinking about it too, the process was very straightforward. Once I had a domain, installation of WordPress really did only take 5 minutes. Adding and activating new plugins and themes is simple and quick too. Importing all my old posts from a backup took under a minute. Talking of which, I removed all those posts from my old blog and left a note that I’d moved over here, so as not to incur the wrath of google.

What did take far longer than all of this sorting out all my social media/network profiles that list my blog address, as well as a few places using manual <rel=”me”> links. A bit like moving home in the real world and remembering to update all your contact details. The changes haven’t been picked up by Google social graph yet, so I guess this real-time semantic web thing isn’t quite here yet?

JIF 2010

I’ve started preparing my session for the JISC Innovation Forum on how JISC projects can engage with their communities though social media and networking. I’m interpreting communities as including project team, other projects in the programme and the broader community, with that having implications for different approaches that are likely to work. I’m going to try my usual mix of evangelism and pragmatism, as while I think there are benefits for some projects, having done some programme support I’m also aware of the challenges projects face and the dangers of extrapolating from success for one project to make guidelines for all of them. I’m hoping to facilitate an open session where people can raise these issues, even if I don’t have all the answers. If you have any advice or experiences that I can share from your projects, I’d love to hear from you.

Boom and bust – cognitive surplus or deficit

Clay Shirky is doing rounds promoting his new book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. He is certainly an engaging speaker who tells a good story about the social meaning of technological developments. In this case, that the things many of us willingly do, create and share online, even the seemingly trivial, are helping to build a better, more cooperative world. It’s a powerful idea, but not everyone thinks it’s one that’s based on sound data or observation. So is there a place for this kind of storytelling based on what I’ve seen called ‘anecdata’? Watch the video and decide for yourself…

Hat tips: The idea is shamelessly derived from the much more considered approach of weeknotes, the implementation of that by Matt Jukes mixed in with a bit of the  ’what I learned this week’ posts of Doug Belshaw.

Top notch portable microphone for £30

£30 gets you an excellent Samson OK Go portable USB condensor microphone small enough to  clip onto your laptop. Thanks to Gavin from JISC digital media for letting me try it out and for blogging their thoughts on it. Hear all about it from the man himself…

gomic.mp4

Mapping the UK Soundscape

The British library have a project mapping UK soundscapes through audioboo, starting with my old home town of Sheffield. Looking forward to contributing to making Sheffield sound good next time I’m back there.

HTML Audio Player

HTML5 has got a lot of press for video, so it’s nice to see – or rather hear – about an HTML5 audio player. It’s a jQuery plugin that gives you an embedded HTML audio player that you can style with CSS.

Project Canvas approved by the BBC trust

Project Canvas aims to bring video-on-demand to Freeview and Freesat using open standards, as well as access to a range of  internet services like facebook and gmail (at least that’s what the design mockups show).

YouTube renders text transcripts as interactive captions

Unlike the closed captions that are simply overlaid on the video, these are interactive in the sense that you can use the text as links to navigate through videos. I did a Screenr video showing interactive captions in action. YouTube also has an vuvuzela button – feel free to blow it while watching!

FUKOER!

JISC are hosting an Open Education Resources showcase which boasts an impressive programme, but in terms of hashtags has perhaps been upstaged by the fringe event #FUKOER

When things only just work

In upgrading to iOS4 I found a bit of small print that said iTunes (on Windows Vista) was forged by Lucifer himself and produces error messages written in blood. I wrote an email to Steve Jobs about it, but he just told me not to use my left hand. Jobs’ a good ‘un!

Innovation in Education

To finish on a more positive note, here’s a TED talk from Charles Leadbeater talking about innovation in education outside of traditional contexts and institutions.