Sunday, June 18, 2006

Bite-sized on the web

Ellyssa Kroski (InfoTangle blog) highlights the trend towards microcontent and empowerment of the user, as "co-creator of their own online experiences ... (able to) dictate exactly how they prefer to consume their content" in a Web2.0 world.
Microcontent refers to structured, bite-sized chunks better suited to creative re-mixing and aggregation and personalisation which meets the needs of time-poor users in an information rich society where "attention is scarce and choices are immense."
Personal start pages, blogs, aggregators, mashups and widgets are all part of this world.
Ellysa's Sayonaro Super-Size - It's Bite-Sized on The Web" documents this bite-size trend, and its potential for transition to the Mobile Web as its "tightly targeted ... microchunked format is perfect for display on the small screen."
Some educators are beginning to explore the potential of Web2.0 in supporting personalised learning experiences and also experimenting with opportunities in the field of mobile learning.
Sayonara to Super-Size has extensive supporting links and follows another excellent earlier post by Ellysa about Community2.0.

Friday, June 16, 2006

Social software for learning (Futurelab)

The "Social software for learning" report (Martin Owen, Lyndsay Grant, Steve Sayers and Keri Facer) is now available for download from Futurelab.
"This report explores the relationship between the emergence of social software and the personalisation of education."
Excellent timing to support educators engaging in debate around social software, organisational barriers, teacher pedagogy, personalised learning etc.