<![CDATA[I am now working on my Wikipedia user page user:Salvor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Salvor

I am trying to grasp the complex rules that seems to be for posting in Wikipedia, to learn how to use MediaWiki is easy but as I see it as a novice there seem to be many rules for posting and refering to other articles. I guess these has evolved over the time Wikipedia has been around.

My reason for this is that I want to encourage my students to start working on the Icelandic version of Wikipedia, there are only about 7000 articles there now. I have been trying to get them to post articles there for years but without much luck even if many of my students are working on projects which are very much suitable for Wikipedia. There are several reasons for this.

One is that this is a new medium that students are not comfortable with and dont believe are relevant, second is that they want to feel like sole authors, they dont want to give up ownership of their creations - in Wikipedia the author disolves in the text - but there are other ways evolving of how to recognize contributions. In many cases students have high expectations of continuation of their work, they are starting on projects that they think they will continue to update for years after they graduate. And indeed some projects are regularly updated, very much like my Icelandic Christmas web site that I have been constantly updating since 1996, I use that as an example of work that is never finished.
http://jol.ismennt.is]]>

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Peter Schilling:
"Epistemology, of course, has a long history arching from superstition toward the "social frameworks of knowledge" (Gurvitch). And technology has always been present as an essential component of how we think and what we teach. When the technology changes, as it is now, its role becomes all the more evident. For today's thinkers, a.k.a. students, knowledge includes del.icio.us and other forms of immediate and readily available folkonomy. Colleges continue to push writing as the skill students must have to be articulate thinkers. Yet they risk stagnation in an epistemological eddy if they don't also appreciate digital video production, database programming, or even the underlying functionality of MediaWiki, as necessary for developing the cognitive abilities to create and share knowledge. "
http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/technology-as-epistemolog via Downes

Also rembember the day, see adbusters.org
http://www.adbusters.org

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<![CDATA[17th Biennial Conference of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, 9-11 November 2005
Some papers:
http://www.unisa.edu.au/odlaaconference/referred-papers.htm

Terry Andersson: Distance Learning - Social Software's killer
Here is article by Terry Andersson
http://www.unisa.edu.au/odlaaconference/PPDF2s/13%20odlaa%20-%2

This paper is discussed in edtechpost
ELGG vs. Moodle - defusing a false dichotomy
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/archive/000725.html

Now there is blackboard - WebCT merger discussion in the ScOPE:
http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/view.php?id=147]]>

<![CDATA[

I always need some pictures of myself, many sites such as Moodle will allow you to have a picture as one part of your profile. I decided I needed new identity so yesterday I took several pictures of myself to uses on websites or whenever I need identity picture.

I like these pictures and think I look nice. The theme is Christmas, therefore the november blooming cactus and the candle, yes I know Christmas is usually red but since I am in the middle of the pink period in my live I decided upon a pink theme.

Unfortunately elgg has some problems displaying pictures from flickr so I will not put them here...

Trying to put javascript in post:

Second try at flickr photos, seem to work fine.

Me and some other moodlers:
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I always need some pictures of myself, many sites such as Moodle will allow you to have a picture as one part of your profile. I decided I needed new identity so yesterday I took several pictures of myself to uses on websites or whenever I need identity pictures. 

I quit like this pictures and think I look nice. The theme is Christmas, therefore the november blooming cactus and the candle, yes I know Christmas is usually red but as I am in the middle of the pink period in my live I decided upon a pink theme.

Here is another testing of edublogs. I really like this system, I wish we had system like that in Icelandic. The sad thing about blogging in Iceland is that children are kept in blogging in adverticement system www.folk.is or www.blogcentral.is 

 I will try now to create new category, category called blogging and file this under that category. I think wordpress hase many advantages over blogger, one is categories, other is password protection of blog posts, third is it is open source, fourth is the many plugins, templates etc. ,

<![CDATA[Tagclouds is good way of describing folksonomies. Many webtools make tagclouds. But I found this webtool tagcloud.com were everyone can make tagcloud out of several feeds. I like this idea, you can upload a OPML file with the feeds you want linked together. I tried to make tagcloud out of this elgg blog and my flickr photos and three wordpress blogs none of whom has much data. My cloud should appear on this page if this is working:
http://www.tagcloud.com/cloud/html/salvor/default/50
Here is my del.icio.us tagcloud
http://del.icio.us/salvorice?settagview=cloud
Here is my flickr tags
http://www.flickr.com/photos/salvor/tags/

As I am a great fan of Georg Siemens and his Connectivism ideas, I think people dont grasp ideas if they are not visual or linked to some known and comfortable metaphor. Or a story. Tagclouds are easy to understand.
http://www.itdl.org/Journal/Jan_05/article01.htm
I will try google for tagclouds + connectivism]]>

<![CDATA[Netconference November 18th to November 20th:
http://users.prof2000.pt/wia/oc/schedule.asp
Very interesting conference
This night I participated in a on-line session in the Webheads in Action conference. I was very sleepy but I very much liked to try on-line conferences in Illuminate. I also listened to Dr. Bonk's presentation "OOPS, Did I mean to share that: Opensource, Opencourseware, and the learning objects of tomorrow"
Here are two screendumps from the session:

I had lof of fun decorating the whitebord with small pictures, we all played around but it was not until the end of the session that I discovered how I could use my microphone. Am I stupid or is this bad design? It turned out that in the left corner at the bottom use should press talk. It did not look like a button to me, it looked like describtive text. I was all the time trying to click on the icon with the microphone.

But I very much like Illuminate as webcast tool, it appears to be better than Horizon Wimba. I guess more expensive also.

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<![CDATA[I was listening to Stephen Downes speech On Being Radical
PowerPoint slides
http://www.downes.ca/files/radical.ppt
MP3 audio:
http://www.downes.ca/files/audio/radical.mp3
(Opening keynote at the Saskatchewan Association for Computers in Education conference in Regina November 17th, 2005)

This is excellent, I think Stephen Downes is a great visionary in education and he also practices what he preach.

I am today giving a presentation at a education conference in Iceland, my presentation is about new tools in education, blogs and wikis.]]>

I am not able to paste in code, the html editor functions seems not to be working. I have no trouble doing this in wordpress normally, see my blog at www.samkoma.net/spanish

Here is the code I was trying to paste. I will try later. Maybe this feature is not working yet or maybe it is on purpose not allowing scripts.

http://www.youtube.com/v/m3LaVwBnBa8″> src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/m3LaVwBnBa8” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”425″ height=”350″>

 I have however no problems uploading and using photos in IE even if it says IE currently not supported. All I have to do is upload the picture and then instead of dragging it then right click on it and choose copy. Then paste it in right place. and click on picture on the toolbar if I want to left justify it.