Teaching in the digital age.

Digital Age Learning Matrix

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 05:36:00 +0000

As part of a doctoral thesis I have been thinking about how to measure learning activities in a way that is appropriate for the digital era. I wanted to find a model that included the ideas of connectivism, creating knowledge and included critique and evaluation. I didn't find an existing model that fitted my purpose so developed one that I have now tested and used with different groups- it has proved to be a useful tool to use when discussing lesson, unit and year plans with teachers. I have found it can lead to interesting professional conversations about personal beliefs about knowledge and learning in the digital age.

The matrix includes 6 levels of activites given to students:
Doing
Thinking about connections
Thinking about concepts
Critiquing and evaluating.
Creating knowledge.
Sharing knowledge.
A learning activity will commonly be at more than one level.

The matrix explores different ways that digital technologies are used in learning and how each use has different levels. the different uses in the matrix includes:
Accessing information
Presenting
Processing information
Gaming and interactive programmes
Communicating

I am interested in any feedback about the matrix; either email me or add to comments below.
Link to paper to download: acec2008 (apologies I couldn't figure out a way of including the matrix clearly in the blog!)

Starkey, L. (2008). Evaluating Learning in Classroom Activities using Digital Technologies. Paper presented at the ACEC 2008, Canberra.

Scratch- web 2.0 for children

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:55:00 +0000

I recently attended the Australian Computers in Education Conference in Canberra. Mitch Resnick was a key note and talked about Scratch. This is a simple to use programme that allows students to create their own animations and games. The feature that I particular like is that they can post their creations onto a social networking place, get feedback on what they have done and note their favourites. They can download other creations and remix them (original author is acknowledged). It was established in May 2007 and over 200,000 projects have been posted.

Here is an example of peer feedback:
37 minutes ago
I think you should add more bad guys
4 hours, 45 minutes ago
Great game but one problem you can go through walls
1 day ago
you should make more enemies
1 day, 11 hours ago
you should make it so the enimies don't just disappear.

This is what learning in the digital age is about- creating, getting feedback, building on ideas... a great example of connectivism in action!

Cyclopedia online

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:36:00 +0000

Historical books are being digitised to allow access to their contents.

The New Zealand Electronic Text Centre has made a digital version of New Zealand’s first encyclopaedia. The Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Volume One: Wellington Provincial District—which was produced in 1897 was the sort of thing you had to pay to get yourself into unless you were a particularly prominent person. The volumes were a money making venture.

The first volume reminds readers that Wellington was once known as the ‘Empire City’ of the Colony of New Zealand. It takes readers on a tour which includes:
• a curate whose efforts to keep teenage boys out of mischief included providing them with smoking rooms
• a state-of-the-art electric belt which guaranteed its wearer a steady galvanic current of life-giving force
• a poultry, pigeon and canary association which refused to tolerate foul play
• the Welch Football Club, a team made up entirely of members of the Welch family of the Wairarapa
• a vision of Friday night in Eketahuna at Carter’s Temperance Hotel
• a glimpse into prison life at The Terrace Goal, Woolcombe Street, Wellington, where good conduct was rewarded by baked, rather than boiled meat – but never milk in your tea. And where bad conduct might still result in flogging – or the gallows

This is a text heavy resource which I did not find easy to navigate.

Sugata Mitra

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:25:00 +0000

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html

(try the above link if the video won't load for you)

I enjoy the TED talks and like to keep a look out for interesting presentations. One that I recently came across was by Sugata Mitra who was responsible for the 'hole in the wall' experiments in India. He proposes that children will teach themselves in groups of about 4 students, they mainly learn by observation (this could be culturally linked) and they don't need to go to school to learn, they just need the motivation and the means.

I was interested in his finding that teachers who teach in rural and poorer areas of India would rather be teaching in other (wealthier) schools, and therefore the quality of education at those schools is less than adequate. Teacher attitude or disposition has been found to be important for the educational outcomes of students in other studies and has important implications for leadership in schools (making sure teachers feel valued and empowered).

Another comment he makes is that most research into digital technologies in schools has been done in the high achieving successful schools where it is less likely to make a difference. I am not so sure about this conclusion as it seems to be in conflict with the previous point- it is the teacher that is likely to make a difference rather than the technology.

Even more confusing is the idea that maybe we don't need a teacher at all... but no, that is not what is being said... we need teachers who can (and are allowed to) teach a flexible curriculum to help students learn together.

Further articles by Sugata Mitra:

Mitra, Sugata, Ritu Dangwal, Shiffon Chatterjee, Swati Jha, Ravinder S. Bisht and Preeti Kapur. Acquisition of computer literacy on shared public computers: Children and the “Hole in the wall”. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 2005, 21(3), 407-426.
Mitra, Sugata. The Hole in the Wall: Self-Organising Systems in Education. New Delhi: Tata-McGraw-Hill Pub. Co. Ltd, 2006.
Mitra, S, Tooley, J, Inamdar, P, and Dixon, P. Improving English Pronunciation: An Automated Instructional Approach. Information Technologies and International Development 2003, 1(1), 75-84.
Mitra, Sugata. Minimally Invasive Education: A progress report on the “Hole-in-the-wall” experiments. The British Journal of Educational Technology 2003, 34(3), 367-371.
Mitra, Sugata. Self organizing systems for mass computer literacy: Findings from the “hole in the wall” experiments. International Journal of Development Issues 2005, Vol. 4(1), 71-81.
Karuna Batra, Sugata Mitra, D. Subbarao and R. Uma. Computer simulation of cylindrical laser beam self-focusing in a plasma. Computer Physics Communications 2004, 1.

And a more recent think piece which stirs up thinking about Indians from a politically correct India in the global digital economy:

Hiring Indians

Thirst

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 00:04:00 +0000

This slideshow by jbrenman won the recent Slideshare competition. It could be a useful resource as a starter or exemplar for students to think about the future of water resources or how to put together a powerpoint.

THIRST

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design crisis)

Is Google making our kids stupid- I don't think so!

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:43:00 +0000

Tommy Honey on Nine to Noon today was talking about two books and an article in the Atlantic monthly which each focuses on the negative side of the widespread use of the internet.
The article in the Atlantic Monthly by Nicholas Carr “Is google making us stupid?” compares the rise of information with the invention of writing or the printing press. The article focuses on changes to the way that adults access information- rapid skims. I am not sure that this is so different for children. They need to be taught to think about authenticity of information as they are not critical of the information that they read and stop looking as soon as they have found information. I would suggest that pre- internet children were less likely to look for the information, it took a lot more effort to go to a library or find another source of information (Mum/Dad!! Or Teacher!!) and then the source of information was rarely encouraged to be critiqued.

Mark Bauerlein (the dumbest generation)- notes that while the current generation has a lot of leisure time, money and technology, they are not engaging in deep learning through the internet.- again how does this really compare with previous generations as far as learning goes?

Maggie Jackson- distracted- the erosion of attention. This book looks at multitasking- always a subject of him vs her banter. Maggie points out that you can multitask with things that use different parts of the brain, otherwise it is not efficient (and can be dangerous) to multitask. Maybe it is more about filtering information and metacognitive processes- learners being aware of when they are trying to do multiple tasks which require the same part of the brain to operate (eg. Responding to a text message while answering a question in class).

Citizen journalism

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 08:12:00 +0000

I was listening to an interesting item on mediawatch this morning. South Korea has an online news site called Oh my news which prints items by citizen journalists- the difference with this site is that stories are verified (fact checkers) and Koreans trust the online news more than they trust televised news. The news is sent in by a global and local audience. The content varies from an interview with former Iranian President Bani-Sadr who says Iran rather than Libya was responsible for the Lockerbie plane crash to Gordon Brown responding to questions posed on YouTube.

The future is one step closer thanks to Koreans embracing web 2.0 and citizen journalism

link to the podcast

Technology approach to teaching and learning

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:23:00 +0000

The techlink website has recently uploaded examples of students work from some of their case study schools. These are good examples of personalising learning- students design and develop products according to client needs- it is up to the students what they design. There are some fantastic teachers who are able to guide the students to complete and evaluate their projects. The students learn not just goal setting, project management and development skills, but also about issues around intellectual property and working with 'clients'.

Convert tube

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 20:45:00 +0000

This is a tool that you can use for downloading videos off Youtube- so if you have trouble accessing youtube at school, this is one way of still showing a clip. Remember to check out copyright agreements though!

vixy.net is open source code easy to use.

Hoodie day.

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:40:00 +0000

World Youth Day is a youth oriented promotional event aimed at young people. This year the event has become mainstream in New Zealand, a week long awareness raising with a focus on people's attitudes and reactions to youth and youth stereotypes. There has been a call for everyone to wear hoodies today. An interesting topic to bring to a staffroom and the classroom- how people react to groups and individual youths who wear hoodies. Both in school and out of school.

Hoodie Day and Youth Week are run by New Zealand Aotearoa Adolescent Health and Development, with support from other youth-related organisations and about $35,000 in Government grants.

Photo: From NZ herald: MPs Sue Bradford, Metiria Turei and Nandor Tanczos donned hoodies to support Youth Week. Photo by Mark Mitchell

Expertise and intelligence

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 08:22:00 +0000

While Gardner's ideas about multiple intelligence have led some educators (and others) to think more widely about the nature of intelligence, there is little firm research to confirm that intelligence can be divided into nine different intelligences.

I have just been looking at intelligence from the perspective of expertise. Carroll (1993) defined 40 primary abilities, which all depend on eight second order factors. The second order factors are interesting and include:

Acculturation knowledge (knowledge of the dominant culture)

Fluid reasoning

Short term apprehension and retrieval

Fluency of retrieval from long-term storage

Visual processing

Auditory processing

Processing speed

Quantitative knowledge (like acculturation knowledge of numbers/maths)

These factors are positively correlated but independent. Horn and Masunaga (2006) argue that short term apprehension decreases over time, processing speed slows and fluid reasoning decreases with age, however abilities and intelligence increase with time with intense deliberate practice (phew!). Weisberg (2006) notes that experts like Mozart, Picasso, Beatles, Edison, Watson and Crick (and others) reached their level of expertise after 10 years of deliberate practice (total of about 10,000 hours or 3 hours a day), having zeal and effective teachers to help them on their way.

These ideas are explained further (and better) in:

Ericsson, K.A., Charness, N., Feltovich P.J. and Hoffman R.R. (2006) The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. New York:Cambridge University Press.

References:

Carroll J.B. (1993). Human Cognitive abilities. A survey of factor-analytic studies. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Horn and Masunaga (2006) A merging theory of expertise and intelligence. In Ericsson, et al (Eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Weisberg, R.W. (2006) Expertise in creative thinking. In Ericsson, et al (Eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. New York:Cambridge University Press.

Teaching profession.

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 01:24:00 +0000

I am not sure that I understand about how employment law and teacher unions work in the USA. I suspect they are different to the two NZ teacher unions- the PPTA and NZEI. This advertisement was in Times Square- check out the size of it! and my (naive?) thoughts on seeing it included:

Why someone feels that they need to advertise in this way in Times Square (it cannot be cheap).

The negative message that will be connected to all teachers. (How does this make the pool of people considering going teaching feel? What does this do to the confidence of the public in the teaching profession?)

The advertisers

Howard Gardner- 25 years of multiple intelligences

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:09:00 +0000

I recently attended the AERA annual meeting in New York. It was the biggest meeting I have ever been to, with so many presentations on educational research I found it hard to choose what to go to. Howard Gardner presented his reflections of Multiple Intelligences, 25 years on. He is an engaging presenter, which is good as I was feeling a bit jetlagged during his session. He acknowledged that one of the reasons that his ideas have become popular is because he used "intelligences" rather than talents or abilities at a time that standard IQ testing was being questioned. The idea continues to be popular as teachers move to personalising learning, focussing on student learning rather than focussing on imparting information and testing to see if it has been learnt. He said that "test scores in Britain increased when teachers believed in MI theory".

He noted that if you want to know about students' MI then you need to watch them learn in a rich environment, something he is doing in Reggio Emilio in Northen Italy. He also noted that some schools are embracing the idea of MI, but worryingly it seems that in some cases they are seen as a 'learning style'. According to Gardner, MI theory is popular in China where it is seen as just 8 things to get my child to be good at.

What a great city New York is- the people are so nice, polite and friendly. The photo is the M&M shop in Times Square.

Stephen Downes on Home Schooling vs Community schooling.

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:25:00 +0000

Stephen Downes responded to the debate on homeschooling that resulted from a California appellate ruling that bans homeschooling by uncredentialed parents by supporting the ruling in a blogpost: "Homeschoolers Vs the State". In this post he noted that "it is a form of child abuse to subject children to an education at the hands of a person who is manifestly unable to provide it" which sparked debate, the comments flowed thick and fast as he was criticised for being prejudiced against homeschoolers. He responded with a 15 minute video that explains why he doesn't support the idea of homeschooling, but does support the idea of community based schooling. I suspect that part of the debate centres around the definition of homeschooling- whether it involves one or two parents 'teaching' their children in isolation from the community and other influences and resources, or whether there is more of a community focus with a range of skills and perspectives available. In NZ distance education those who are entitled to free enrolment in state funded distance ed. programmes are not considered home schoolers. The equity of opportunity is a really good point worth considering in the debate, particularly thinking about equity in terms of cultural capital rather than economic terms. Thank you Stephen- this debate has got me thinking....

Using Bebo to engage learners

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:30:00 +0000

I work with preservice secondary school teachers as they explore how they might use digital technologies to engage students in learning. The students explore wiki's, blogs, podcasts, interactive sites, developing videos etc, building on what groups have learnt before them. A group recently developed the idea of using Bebo as a place to explore ideas and themes within a subject, using the posting of videos they make, quiz function and photos to get a sense of community. The site is by invite only and controlled (sorry, can't link to their developments). I will keep you posted on how this goes with the students using it, if the teachers can negotiate access through the school systems for their students. Bebo is the site where many secondary school students have an online profile and social network.

Photo: Sign at Whanganui National Park- showing 3 pathways, 3 different destinations. A bit like teaching, different ways to get to places and different places to go.

Waitangi day...

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 20:03:00 +0000

6 Feb. is a holiday to mark the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. This is a national day for NZ, a time when (some) NZers think about the place and relationship of Maori and non-Maori in NZ. Others go to the beach, a festival or celebrate in other ways. The contemporary events that occur on this day seem to evolve.

This year the mainstream media focussed on conflict and politics at Waitangi- with One News paying for an activist to get to and stay and Waitangi. It is election year, so politicians tend to be watched and listened to a little more perhaps. There was a lack of controversy.

What took my interest were the discussions and debates . For example, the Te Papa debates that looked at biculturalism/ multiculturism in the future of NZ- It was pleasing to hear the newly released school curriculum being included in this debate.

I was looking for was a way for students to interact and contribute their ideas to the debate... maybe this will be something for the future. Resources on the Treaty of Waitangi tend to be web1.0 based.
Image: Canoeing on the Whanganui river 3/2/08- A great place to contemplate NZs past and the future (between rapids!).

Film Archives

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:17:00 +0000

The New Zealand Film archives is a fantastic resource for social studies (and media studies) teachers. They have digitised many films and made compilations available to schools. Great for examining how society was in the past, or how key events were recorded (or not). The website itself is worth a visit- 'the vault' is a flashback for people of my age. Alex Burton is an experienced teacher who has made these resources accessible and useful to schools- if you can get to Wellington archives it is well worth a visit- if not, their website is worth a flick through.

Tourism in developing countries.

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:00:00 +0000

I have had my thinking about tourism challenged in the last week by a reflective social studies teacher who is travelling in India. These are some of Ester's reflections:
"Tourism is destructive. It makes a commodity out of culture, it makes communities divisive and capitalistic and competitive. What am I doing here? I contribute nothing. I go home with my exotic myth of India intact, with some beads and silk scarves and a smug faith in the superiority of my own culture.
How can I blithely go about paying 30 rupees for coffees when there is a whole population of people here who are referred to as untouchable, and who are forced to live on the small handouts of those they consider their superiors? And then how can I tell them how a country ought to be run? We are like the British Raj, only postmodern and guilty and pretending to want to learn something."

Ester had been to Varanasi, and observed fellow(?) tourists.
This would make a great social studies topic for year 12/13 students- The next stage of colonisation? Should 'cultural' tourism be encouraged? What are the positive and negative effects? As a tourist how could you behave to minimise the negative effects you might have? If you were a tourist operator or local administrator/policy maker what would you do?

Vicky Buck- Engaging people to save our planet

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:54:00 +0000

The guardian recently posted a list of 50 people who could save the planet. In this list was Vicky Buck- maybe better known previously in NZ for being a city councellor at age 19, being Mayor of Christchurch for 10 years and being a driving force behind the establishment of two inner city state schools that have a philosophy that includes the community as an important resource, digital technologies are embraced, inquiry approach to learning and students as active participants in their learning.

Vicky appears to currently be focussed on helping to reduce the impact of global warming. She is doing this through involvement in windfarms, developing biofuels that do not use more energy to generate than they give out and a website that encourages people to take action. The website could be a useful resource- a great example of action in social studies. There is an interesting interview on national radio this morning that explains what she is currently doing more clearly than I have.

Photo: Wellington harbour from the west.

Libraries- young people do use them and older people surf!

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:28:00 +0000

Two pieces of research have been published in the last month about the use of search engines and research, both found that assumptions made about young people's research habits were found to be not entirely true.

Research commissioned by JISC and the British Library and carried out by University College London finds that the “Google Generation” is a myth:

They found that libraries have spent a lot of money on digital resources and databases, but the library users either don't know about these or don't use them due to barriers such as log ons, payments or needing to access hard copies- and this wasn't just the "google generation", but included academics, who tend to "squirrel" information away when they found it.

this appears to align with recent research from the Pew internet group that examined how people found information when problem solving.

"The survey results challenge the assumption that libraries are losing relevance in the internet age. Libraries drew visits by more than half of Americans (53%) in the past year for all kinds of purposes, not just the problems mentioned in this survey. And it was the young adults in tech-loving Generation Y (age 18-30) who led the pack. Compared to their elders, Gen Y members were the most likely to use libraries for problem-solving information and in general patronage for any purpose. "

An interesting recommendation from UCL was that libraries try to emulate personal/social searching guidance offered so successfully by Amazon for many years. Roll on the day when I get notified when research has been published that aligns with my interests or when I am searching, other suggestions are given like on Amazon or social networks.

photo: museums are a place to browse and learn, similar to the way many people use search engines- whatever catches your eye!- this photo is from a LOTR exhibition in 2006.

Complexity and change.

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 18:07:00 +0000

In Seb Schmoller's blog "fortnightly mailing", is a post about a recent newspaper article that blames "teacher technophobes" for 80% of schools failing to make full use of the 1bill pounds spent on digital technologies in British schools in 2007. The 80% figure appears to come from BECTA though I haven't found how this was measured. I am interested in how 'full use' is measured.

Schooling and education is complex. Larry Cuban (2001) pointed out that pouring money into technologies in schools does not mean pedagogical change, change in education has always taken longer. Applying complexity theory to schools can help to explain what happens when digital technologies are introduced, an idea that was used by BECTA in their 2006 report.

There are many reasons why pedagogical practices don't change immediately when digital technologies are introduced (and thinking logically- why would anyone expect them to?). One that I have found interesting is the resistance to change by learners themselves who want to know the facts and information they need to learn for the exams or for a named tangible future life. The perception by students and the wider community of what is learning and what is the purpose of schooling is another aspect in the complex web of change in the digital era.

Cuban, L. (2001). Oversold and underused : computers in the classroom. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Twining, P., Broadie, R., Cook, D., Ford, K., Morris, D., Twiner, A. and Underwood, J. (2006) Educational change and ICT: an exploration of Priorities 2 and 3 of the
DfES e-strategy in schools and colleges.The current landscape and implementation issues
Retrieved from http://partners.becta.org.uk/page_documents/research/educational_change_and_ict.pdf

Photo: showing my photography skills of child jumping into water- missed again- but maybe illustrating the idea of complexity?

A view of students today

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:28:00 +0000

Mark Wesch from Kansas State University has posted another video that makes a good point about the reality for tertiary students. In this video he uses his students to make key points. It is worth watching- not a new message but put across clearly, and interesting to see the perspectives shown in the video- as some of the comments state, this doesn't reflect the reality for all students.

An alternative view- "a view of lecturers today".

What happens when the earth moves?

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 04:08:00 +0000

New Zealand straddles two plates, as we were recently reminded. A bit of a glitch for the Xmas shoppers, retailers and hospital workers in Gisborne.
What to do in the classroom after the children/young adults have emerged from under their desks?
Social studies teachers generally grab the concept of citizenship and support and head for the classroom and the internet! (Though not in the school holidays). Students can record their experiences on both the NZ based geonet and the USGS website. Explore how the quake effected people financially, emotionally and physically, and how the community and nation are responding (and what can they personally do). Therefore think about what citizenship means in times of a natural disaster.
I hope that you all have a great safe holiday and if you are based in Gisborne, arohanui.
Sorry that the posts are a bit eratic, but like seems that like Chris Sessums, I am currently focussing on a PhD.
Photo: Ally Dykes, manager of Liquor King Gisborne, amongst some of the thousands of dollars worth of destroyed stock he is left with after the earthquake in Gisborne. Photo / Alan Gibson
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10483873

Who should do the watching?

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:54:00 +0000

Artichoke points to the TEDtalk by Wade Davis (National Geographic explorer)- well worth a watch! He is concerned about the loss of ethnodiversity in the world. Artichoke makes an interesting point-
"What do we make of members of indigenous cultures who also aspire to a day job that involves travelling the world doing ethnographic research as Explorer in Residence for National Geographic.
Being trapped as “one of the observed cultures” - “being an exotic object of fascination and condescension” that enables the poetic imaginings of ethnographers of another culture is not always universally sought after. Perhaps cultural equity will exist when everyone has equal opportunity to access the doing bit of ethnographic research. "

The talk doesn't look at inequalities, and how the indigenous people studied might gain an equal share of resources in the world- though it does note that aspirations of children and parents are not different to those in western cultures.- interesting dilemma.

This talk would be an useful social studies resource for looking at diversity and attitudes. It could be followed with a movie like "The gods must be crazy" and the students making their own ethnostudy of a group in their society as an alien might see them (sports fans, their own family....) and presenting it either like the movie or like Wade Davis.

photo: what we do on summer holidays... - how would aliens interpret the playing of Twister?

Technology to change lectures...

noreply@blogger.com (Louise Starkey) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:23:00 +0000

Dave Warlick linked to livescribe smart paper and smartpen.- A pen that records sound, links the sound to your notes or doodles made on the e-paper and all uploadable. If this works like the video clip and explanations say, then this would be a really useful tool for lectures and interviews and for those of us who love to doodle in meetings... This could be one very exciting tool that I will add to my must have list (wonder if it writes in a wide range of colours?)

As Dave notes, it is likely to also create a bigger divide between those who have (technology and peer support) and those who have not...