CWA New Media: Our Blog

For me, Twitter seemed to appear on the web 2.0 horizon about 18 months ago when the simplicity of its ‘what are you doing now’ invitation began to catch on worldwide.    TwitterVision arrived and  watching and reading the mesmorising array of tweets, presented in real time on a moving map, was a very easy way to  lose a few hours.

Fast forward  and suddenly there’s a crescendo of twittering and related services, including things like TwitPic, Twitchboard, Twilert, iTweet, Twitterholic, TwitterSnooze etc.  Thankfully there’s also  Twittonary to help translate the vocab.

With all this activity we’ll look at finding a way to integrate Twitter into the  learning landscape of 2009.

PS: If you want to follow me, look for twitter name = jillatcwa.

Web 2.0 activity became frenetic in 2008 and while many web services came and went in the flurry of choices, others weathered the snowstorm to emerge as popular and  influential connectors.

Technorati is one these.

The site explains its purpose – founded to help bloggers to succeed by collecting, highlighting, and distributing the online global conversation. As the leading blog search engine and most comprehensive source of information on the blogosphere, we index more than 1.5 million new blog posts in real time and introduce millions of readers to blog and social media content.

From a learning perspective, its amazing to know that people around the world are sharing their knowledge and unique insights through their blogs, but finding the good stuff that serves a learning purpose out there is the challenge.  Technorati helps to bring a little bit of order to the wonderful chaos.

A few years ago CWA folks were invited to attend a conference in NZ which had a focus on education in the next decade.     We were asked to consider four  OECD developed scenarios (PDF) which were  presented in an easy to understand  “what if” way.    It was a simple and effective approach, and required us to actively engage our imaginations as we explored and immersed ourselves in what seemed to be very feasible possible futures.

In this coming year, CWA will be exploring the roles that scenario-building and story-telling can play in imagineering the future.   Could be fun!

As usual, this year’s Animfx in Wellington was a fascinating mix of topics and people, reminding us that this city is packed full of creative talent.

Some of the sessions I attended had a big focus on 3D.  For example, guest speakers signalled likely growth in 3D movie releases as production and post-production technologies become more flexible and multiplexes begin to upgrade their projectors.     An intriguing bi-product of the upgrades is that some cinemas overseas are beginning to offer beamed-in, live presentations of 3D-enhanced events  – such as major sporting events and powerhouse opera performances.

So hang onto those 3D glasses!

Software Freedom Day has been and gone and left a wake of open source excitement behind it!

The Unlimited Potential team (with of course help from us, Catalyst and many others) hosted the most excellent Software Freedom Day. There was a pretty amazing turnout, as Brenda’s photos show and I think just about everyone who attended enjoyed the conversations that resulted.

There were many highlights for me  – seeing the OpenSolaris Student Packs , a zsh(1) demo, and an excellent discussion about on NZOSS.  CWA New Media has been connected with the NZOSS for a while.

The Wellington Convention Centre was a pretty great place to host the event and the Havana coffee was wonderful.  The 150+ attendees from all round the country proved that Wellington really is the ICT capital and the fact that many stayed into the night, and kept going over curry afterwards was testament to the connections and collaborations going on all around me.

Thanks to Unlimited Potential, especially Jayne Wallis, and everyone who took part, for putting Open Source on the map and securing this event as an annual extravaganza on the ICT calendar.

CWA New Media is proud to be a key sponsor of New Zealand’s events around Software Freedom Day.  Check out the website for the programme of open source fun and geeky get togethers on September 20th.

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Our goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere!

This year we got together with

• Unlimited Potential,
• New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS),
• SuperHappyDevHouse,
• WellyLUG,
• Cafenet,
• Catalyst IT
• and Sun Microsystems

to organise a local event to be held at the Wellington Convention Centre – Civic Suites 1 & 2 in Wellington from 12pm – 6pm.

There are two main parts to the schedule- an opensource barcamp and a hackfest.

Register here and come along and celebrate Software Freedom Day by taking part. There will be free wifi, coffee all day at the venue, and pizza and beer as things wrap up at 6pm.

It’s no secret that CWA is a company that loves connecting the dots between people, knowledge, information  and resources.   What may not be so well known is our ongoing commitment and work in ensuring that those who are making contributions to an open and connected learning world are acknowledged and have their rights communicated.

CWA’s long-standing relationship with New Zealand’s Council for The Humanities - and its associated initiative The Humanities Research Network - has recently enabled us to collaborate on bringing the Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand project (CCANZ) to life.   We worked with the team to communicate the arrival of New Zealand’s Creative Commons licences on the scene – participating in sector workshops earlier in the year, and building the newly launched CCANZ website

The international Creative Commons movement is about an internet-friendly, open copyright model and it is embraced in more than 40 countries.  Its generic licences are available to everyone, and New Zealand now has a set which reflects our legal jurisdiction.  New Zealand is among the first countries in the world to be using the new generation version 3 licence.

The Creative Commons Aotearoa site has been designed to enable our designers, artists, authors – in fact anyone who has something to share – to choose how they protect their work.  The site is the first stop for finding New Zealand’s Creative Commons contributions and includes case studies, information about the licences, and even a google map to help locate the contributions in cyberspace.

We like what Brian Opie, the Executive Director of The Council for The Humanities has to say about Creative Commons:

“Innovation societies depend upon open access to knowledge. Creative Commons is an important initiative, providing New Zealanders with a means of gaining recognition for their work while encouraging its use by others.”

I grew up with television as my window on the world. Now its the web. An example of the marvellous world of convergence is TED Talks – mini tv programmes, interesting topics, fascinating people – on the web, on tap and viewable when and where I want them.

I recently dropped into TED Talks to catch up on the status of the big and bold One Laptop Per Child project – two years on – with Nicholas Negroponte giving the update – you can view the video here.

I’m a convert to the iPhone having acquired one from eBay 6 months ago.   It’s the aesthetics of the device that won me over – good design is just so compelling and “must have”.   So I – along with the rest of the global fraternity of iPhone followers – now await with enthusiasm the distribution of the new 3G version, as discussed in this CNET  report.  Yum.

It is ironic, perhaps, that it is  the ‘happening right now’ sites that can lead to some of my most serious lost in time experiences when online.  Mysterious gaps can appear in my day if I drop in on Twittervision and watch the world fly back and forth to reveal the latest ‘what I had for breakfast’ type comments from people in faraway places.   And time seems to stand still as I await the  latest contribution to the modern day version of ‘photos from my holiday’ – as shared by the cyber-fuelled tourists of Flickrvision.

It definitely isn’t the content that holds my attention – it is the fascination of seeing the power of a web-enabled and connected world demonstrated in real time by these sites.

It is a little ironic, maybe, that it’s the “what’s happening right now’ services of the web are the ones that