Room With A View

I’m back to Beijing which means Edublogs is blocked again! grr… I don’t know what they did at Learning 2.008 but it was nice to be able to get to my blog again.

I attended Ewan McIntosh’s session first thing this morning. It’s filled my mind with a million things. I’m not sure there’s room for anything else today.

He spoke about people–students and teachers–finding small passionate communities. So often people think they need to have a huge readership on their blogs or hundreds of friends on Facebook. Instead McIntosh suggests it’s about having a “small compassionate community.” I think he’s right.

This morning a colleague and I discussed teacher blogging. I don’t think every teacher needs a blog to reflect on personal practice. I think reflection is important but there are many ways to reflect. A blog is just one way. (Remember conversation?)

Having said this, I do think there’s room for most teachers to use blogging tools/technology. Blogs are a quick easy way for a teacher to post to his/her “small compassionate community”–students and parents.

Attending Learning 2.0 08 in Shanghai. More posts to come but you can check it out at the conference Ning site.

Does anyone know if Podcast Producer can work with the .swf files that are made with Jing?

This list from Dave Pollard is worth a quick read. His list includes, hard drives, email, and cell phones.

The SIM card worked!! I bought it on a Friday. It was here and I was using it by Monday afternoon. What would have cost me $40 at a cellphone store cost me $7.49 on eBay.

Out of curiosity I had a look on eBay for more SIM cards. There are lots of people selling them and far below retail costs. I wonder where people are getting them?

I did a little poking around on eBay and found a Rogers SIM card for $7.49 which includes shipping. I’ve never bought anything on eBay before and I have no idea if the card will work but I thought for $7.49 what the heck. I’ll give it a try. I’ve made the purchase. It’s wait and see time now.

I’m in Canada for a couple of months and checked into getting a SIM card for my cellphone. I was surprised to find that only two companies–Rogers and Fido–offer SIM cards. (To use other providers I’d have to buy a phone.) After asking a few questions at a local shop I learned that I really only have one provider that offers support where I’ll be living–Rogers.

I was shocked when I learned that a Rogers SIM card will run me $40 and doesn’t come with any airtime! When traveling in Thailand last December I bought a SIM card for $4 and half the money was airtime!!

For more on Canada’s wireless situation give Michael Geist’s post a read.

The Globe and Mail has an interesting article about the way news from Myanmar is getting out via its citizen’s using cellphones and blogs. It goes on to talk about the way the media is controlled there. Interestingly, I’m posting this via an anonymous proxy because my blog is blocked where I live.

Other stories state that the government has now cut internet access. We’ll see how successful the government is at stopping the flow of information. John Lennon’s song Power to the People springs to mind. I’ll think I’ll put it on.

Here’s the link to the article.

EMI and Apple announced today that all of EMI’s music sold through Apple’s iTunes store will no longer have DRM or Digital Rights management built in. (DRM is the copy protection that sites like Apple’s put into songs so they can’t easily be copied.) It comes at a price. Songs with DRM are still $0.99 and songs without DRM are $1.29. I’ve not found Apple’s DRM restrictive in the past (they allow songs purchased on iTunes to be used on five devices) but more significant to me is that the $1.29 will be of higher sound quality than their $0.99 counterparts.

What does this have to do with education? Well, a lot actually because it has implications for copyright. As we grapple with copyright issues with our students, the music industry has been in a state of rapid change for a number of years. Will this help? I doubt it. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.