With Macworld beginning it was interesting to hear that itunes is finally going free DRM. Not that this will affect me at all but it is finally good to see that end users will be able to control the music they have bought. It is probably one of the biggest and important strangle holds on music by the big record companies that has finally been released. It is interesting to see that for you to unlock a song you bought on itunes you will have to pay a further 30 cents, for a song you have already bought!!!!….mmmmmm…..how many people will be doing this?
So as music begins to be freed up, to see in the news that China is cracking down on the big search engines and what is appropriate for us to see, takes us a step backwards…..or sideways if you live in China and used to it already. Students and staff have become quite adept at working their way around the Great firewall, but why should this have to be the norm? Living and working in China allows me the opportunity to understand censorship. Yes it is bad, and I know I am not as nearly affected by it as some citizens around the world but being aware of it and understanding how to deal with it is the most important step if you are living with it already. Australians……….let’s hope internet censorship doesn’t head down that slippery slope. And lastly…. facebook? Breastfeeding pics banned? Come on guys…..I had to check my reader to make sure I didn’t read this on The Onion!

Artist I am listening to this week…

“Down on the assembly line, they keep puttin’ the same thing out. But the people today, they just aint buying’. Nobody can figure it out. Well they try like hell to build a quality end, they’re working hard without a doubt. They’re ordinary people. And the dollar’s what it’s all about. Hard workin’ people. But the customers are walkin’ out.”

As I listen to this epic 18 minute song from Chrome dreams 2, I can’t help but think of the state of the world and the problems financially and more recently Gaza. Once again Neil delivers with a thought provoking and timely reminder (for me anyway….Chrome dreams 2 came out last year!) about who we are…….ordinary people.

Neil Young - Ordinary People (Part 1)

I have been grappling for weeks now as to my use of online space, and how and what I want it to be. And now I am quite comfortable with changing what it’s going to be used for……ramblings, tech tips, social media etc.

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

No problem! An easy fix that just requires you install a little program called 3ivx. You can find the program once you have the flip camera plugged into the computer. Watch the 40 second clip below and voila…..you are now the next Steven Spielberg!

Over the past few weeks the 5th grade team and have been working towards firing up their class wikis for a major project, called Global Natives. The students as always are more than happy to try out new features and to start to understand the usefulness of such a tool. Having set up 6 wikispaces, one for each class, the students (and staff) have been let loose on them. All with positive results! When speaking to the students about their space it has been great being able to use the language they are so familiar with, such as embedding, linking, editing, etc. The student blogs have helped tremendously. The only downside I saw in the initial stages is the one page, one person editing, rule. As we introduced the Wikis and all students were online, saving wasn’t working, wikispaces was stalling etc. We got over this hurdle pretty quickly once students were assigned to a page within their space. Which meant that the maximum amount of editors per page was two. This way the students soon learnt that one or the other had to edit, not both at the same time. Very cool!

Checkout our Wikis below

5ch, 5jt, 5vy, 5kp, 5sh, 5jc
Now as word has spread, we have students all over the world looking at them and making connections. Mr Toa has now forged Indigenous Australian links and Maori links, both eager to help our students explore and fill their wikispace.

I don’t know about you, but Netvibes has been driving me crazy! And it was time to say a big farewell to this relationship and find a more stable reader within the Great Firewall that would allow me to be as productive as possible. We have encouraged staff regularly to use a reader and I would like to start by saying…..Hello, my name is Simon Power and I no longer use Netvibes…….Google Reader is for me!

For so long, I had argued the benefits of Netvibes and its easy to use structure. But I felt never completely organized. I always felt as if my tabs looked like my bedroom floor as a teenager, just covered in stuff!!!! Somethings I had looked at, others I would get to at sometime in my life.

Well Google Reader works well for me as I can view by subject or by the time it was posted. This way, I am always up to date and don’t have to search over my whole entire bedroom floor to find something I haven’t read!!!

If Netvibes loaded fast and every time I went to it I was able to be connected yes I may have just stayed with it. But with some amazing features offered by Google Reader I am hooked.

Feature that impress me………The offline feature is fantastic for my morning bus ride, I am able to fly through the 200 or so posts in a 30 minute ride thanks to offline mode.

Emailing exceptional posts to friends. Very quick and easy.

Sharing your most noteworthy posts….this is a lot like a delicious bookmark, but I do like my everchanging blogroll widget google can provide for your blog.

Pre-packaged bundles….Google offers some great sites to watch, however I have had to tweak this considerably for my liking, but this is a great way to get started if you have never used a reader.

Google has a 99.9% efficiency rate meaning that 45mins a month you may not be able to connect…..This amazes me…..and I hope this is true even within China.

So there we have it….If you’re looking for a change give it a go. Keep Netvibes and Google Reader going……By going to add feed in Netvibes it is as simple as exporting all your feeds as an opml file and impoting into Google Reader.