EduSpaces Explored

Eduspaces has been very interesting. When you go to the website, the opening page contains thumbnails or some graphic and names or usernames of about 20 members that have been brought up randomly. You can click on any of them to go to their page. You can then see their interests. If you click upon one of their interest tags, you are taken to another subset of members with the same tag listed under their interests. Theses are mostly education-related interests.

One can also browse the members by user or communities. When you join you can join EduSpace communities that are focused upon your particular interests. I've provided the EduSpaces link to enable you to explore a bit. I think you'll find some interesting discussions.

http://eduspaces.net/

Brooke

Webinars and Cybersecurity

This week we talked about Webinars in our class. Access to Webinars is very exciting to me, because I am an info-maniac (careful how you say that!)! I do love to learn things, and these are generally free for the taking! When I have time (in the year 2038!), I will have a lot of fun with them. Actually, when I become a librarian, I envision having time to utilize information more than ever, since that's supposed to be the main focus of the job.

So, Cybersecurity...

This week I received a phishing email from people that were pretending to be with FedEx. It said that I needed to contact them about a package delivery. The thing that almost sucked me in was that I was expecting a package handled by them. The things that were phishy, however, were: It was from a Mrs. somebody, it had a contact phone number that included a country code, and the email address had Nigeria in the address. Why are these scams so aften from Nigeria, when there are so many other countries in the world? Anyhow, it got forwarded to the company, and the two reporting addresses that we were provided in our class last week. End of story.

Brooke

Eduspaces

This week I joined Eduspaces, powered by Elgg. It was simple, unlike the horror stories I've heard. Now I'v e got to figure out what I rfeally want to do with it!

I happened upon this video in Eduspaces of an instructor that wants to start a discussion about "Blended Learning". Besides the exploration of the format of this Elgg, that question interested me. I'd never heard of blended learning, and he wants to define it, or assign parameters to it in order to identify it as such.

http://app.sightspeed.com/vm/5shegifpfqpgq2iv1u4wkknenq8yy9eg/240w/en_US/1/

Brooke

Teaching Children Cyber Security and Ethics

The above titled article, written by White, and published by the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (July, 2005) points out that there are a number of organizations that are working on educating the public in Cyber Awareness. The term "Cyber Awareness" includes Cyber Security, Ethics and Safety. A number of problems need to be dealt with, however, for these efforts to be useful. There is no centralized organization providing standardized information, or standards for teaching this information, most notably to K-12 school children. The funding that these organizations receive is spent in parallel projects, working toward the same goals. The funding needs to be centralized, and the efforts of these groups brought together to more effectively and efficiently achieve the common goal. It is suggested that a national Cyber Awareness Program (CAP) be developed, that a few branded websites be used to provide the CAP information, that high grade multimedia be made to teach Cyber Awareness, that both private and public funding be combined to achieve the CAP goals, and that the National Cyber Security Alliance be the organization to perform these tasks.

I was relieved to read this article, as I can see the need for simplifying access to important Cyber Security/Safety/Ethics information. The schools that I have been recently associated with have no Cyber Awareness education going on at all. The development of CAP standards and curriculum is desperately needed, and will, I beliece, be greatfully received by K-12 schools.

University using Elgg

Hello all,

I have come across another helpful description of Elgg, in the form of a checklist, which adds to and clarifies the information that we already have about it.

Features:

Blogging Social networking
File repositories for individuals and communities Podcast support
Full access controls Supports tagging
User profiles Full RSS support
RSS aggregator Create communities
Collaborative community blogs Create 'friends' networks
Import content Publish to blog
Multilingual Branding/customisation
OpenID support

Along with this checklist, this link contains a statement written by a university that is using Elgg in a big way. Within two weeks of the university's implementation of Elgg they had a very active and interesting blogging community. There are currently 36,000 students and staff registered for Elgg. The format of Elgg has made it simple to intigrate with the colleg's existing programs for registration and courses. As well as its informal use as a social networking tool, it is being used more formally within courses at the university.

http://elgg.org/features.php

I'm thinking more and more about how to use it in a k-12 setting. It has a reputation of being very difficult to get set up and register, so that appears to be a significant hurtle to get over. Once set up, however, it is a highly thought-of program. This week I'm going to try to get through the registration hurtle, and see if I can get something going.

Brooke

First book on Elgg is published

The first book about Elgg is now on the market. It is called Elgg Social Networking, by Mayank Sharma. The description of Elgg that is given in the description of this book has provided me with the first real understanding of what is different about Elgg. He describes how to
"Create and manage your own social network site using this free open-source tool.
Create your own customized community site; Manage users, invite friends, start groups and blogs; Host content: photos, videos, MP3s, podcasts ; Manage your Elgg site, protect it from spam )."http://www.packtpub.com/elgg-social-networking/book

"If you are looking to create your social networking site by tomorrow, then this book is for you. Elgg is an open-source social web application. It offers a networking platform combining elements of blogging, e-portfolios, news feed aggregation, file sharing, and social networking. Elgg has its own plug-in architecture, and can use plug-ins to provide a calendar and a wiki” It can be integrated with most third-party blogging clients. It can be integrated with our own WebCT".

"While anybody can use Elgg to create their social network, it is especially useful in education as it has many features making it suitable for e-learning, including groups, communities, and blogs that can be used for online classes where students can communicate in a new way with each other and with students around the world—in a managed, protected environment, creating what its authors term a "personal learning landscape". This book also covers using Elgg in teaching/learning.” © Packt Publishing Ltd 2008(http://www.packtpub.com/elgg-social-networking/book

Hope that helps you guys as much as it did me!

International Children's Digital Library

I find the idea wonderful. I remember when I visited France for 3 weeks in 11th grade. I was all alone with a family that didn't speak English, and I spoke very little French. It was lonely, and when , half way through my stay, my host family arranged to have my sister's host family meet us halfway between our places, I was estatic to be able to express myself in my own language again. She and I talked and talked. It must be so much harder for a child to have to move permanently away from their country. The ICDL fills a void for these children, offering books for them to read in their own language. There may be no other place in the whole country that offers books in their particular language. Computers can bring these books right into their new homes, or into their local library. Happiness IS!