Swivel is an online tool to upload, share and explore data sets. After setting up a free login, you can browse existing data sets or upload your own to share with a group or with the Swivel membership at large. A set of data analysis tools allows you to manipulate the display of data using different types of templates and formats. In many cases, data sets can be downloaded for further use in Excel or statistical programs. Users can also create their own tags to categorize data or use community tags, making Swivel another addition to the Web 2.0 toolkit.

Swivel’s Official Source program allows researchers and research organizations to make selected data sets available for use by members; current participants include the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Health Organization, and UNESCO.

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Publisher Jossey-Bass is offering a conference about online teaching and learning, to be held completely online on October 17 and 18th, 2007. Facilitators will lead live interactive workshops (which will be recorded to accommodate all participant time zones and schedules), engage in threaded discussion forums, and lead collaborative networking activities. The conference will include keynote sessions, chats, and hands-on tool workshops. The conference program lists topics and speaker biographies.

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A special program called Arctic Transect 2004 allowed students in remote classrooms to follow the progress of an arctic expedition in real time while they consulted with expedition members via satellite video feeds, had online chats with academic experts and used customized course materials. The project summary lists benefits of this technology-enhanced teaching strategy as:

• increased motivation and deeper engagement with learning through use of multiple types of media

• online dialogue and collaboration with content experts

• inquiry-based learning with authentic real-time content

The full article, Adventure Learning: Situating Learning in an Authentic Context, by Aaron Doering is available on line in the August/September 2007 issue of Innovate, an open access, refereed, e-journal, focusing on using information technology tools to enhance education published as a public service by the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University.

Although this article focuses on K-12 education, it seems that many of the strategies might be adapted to university education. What do you think?

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SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, invites faculty to help students showcase their views on the value of openly sharing information. Make a two-minute video, post it on the Internet with a Creative Commons license and enter the contest to win $1,000. The Internet gives us ways to discover, collaborate and create in unprecedented ways, the SPARC invitation states, and the free exchange of information is a tool for addressing world problems. Applications for the contest are due Dec. 2, 2007.

SPARC is an alliance supported and funded by hundreds of academic libraries and research institutions.

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Date: September 6, 2007
Time: 2:00pm Eastern
To register: http://www.1105info.com/igdkfde_xzebraw.html

From a Campus Technology email: “Social networking expert Howard Rheingold and Boston College’s Jerry Kane share strategies for using wikis and other Web2.0 technologies to stimulate discussion, capture and share knowledge, and better support students and improve their academic performance. In this free, one-hour webinar moderated by Campus Technology’s Matt Villano and sponsored by Socialtext, you will learn from your peers in education how to:

* Create online communities that extend learning beyond the traditional classroom
* Generate rich, interactive and up-to-date course curriculum
* Reduce email traffic, while better capturing and sharing knowledge
* Provide flexible, collaboration tools for student, faculty and staff”

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Google has added an extension to Google Earth that allows you to use many of the features of the software on maps of the night sky. Google Sky is available in the latest version of Google Earth and includes layers that outline constellations, common objects visible to backyard astronomers, tours of the galaxy and star maps that explain the life cycle of stars.

article at The Register

introductory movie on Google Sky at Google

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Adobe has announced that they are adding support for high definition video to the Flash plug-in.  Flash is used to deliver video on many websites including YouTube.  The standard that Adobe is supporting, H.264, is also used in Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players and with hi-def cable and satellite systems.  H.264 is an open standard that was developed as part of an industry consortium.  Apple is also adding support for H.264 in Quicktime and other products this year.

Over the next few months, you will start to see improved quality on many video sites on the web and new opportunities for sharing video with higher quality.

blog post at the New York Times

samples of H.264-encoded QuickTime movies (requires QuickTime 7)

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SciVee is a web site promoting the “free and widespread dissemination and comprehension of science.” To that end, it has features which allow scientists to communicate their work as a multimedia presentation integrated with the content of their published article. The uploaded videos help readers understand the content of the articles. Other scientists can view uploaded presentations and engage in virtual discussions with the author and other viewers. SciVee also facilitates the creation of communities around specific articles and keywords, and a tag cloud on the home page shows the current hot topics.

SciVee is operated in partnership with the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC).

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Kaneva, a new virtual 3D world, is featured in the Wired Campus blog. The article points to a review and includes a video that demonstrates Kaneva features.

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Developed by researchers at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, the home grown software uses multiple MRI images to create a sophisticated 3D interactive model of the brain.

For full article click here.

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