Spent some time rationalising all of the workshop documents and assorted presentations. I have a habit of modifying presentations and workshop guides each time they occur. Then I simply upload them up to the server with a different version number of name. It was time to clean out the directories and reduce some of the clutter.

I linked all of the resources to a single page for the sake of convenience as well. Feel free to download and  trawl through any of the resources. There are resources relating to blogging, wikis, photoshop, flickr, video processing, podcasting, vodcasting, web domains, the Blackboard LMS and lots more.

How many of you started surfing the web with Netscape Navigator? I remember conducting Internet workshops for teachers back in 1997 and they were all based on Netscape Navigator. How to use the back and forward buttons, downloading files, contextual menus, bookmarking, urls, exploring directories, configuration, and so on. It was an evolution on from NCSA’s Mosaic browser which you can still download via ftp.
As Tom Drapeau sets out on the Netscape blog Netscape Navigator is set to bow out on February 1st, 2008. It will no longer be supported after that date. This is certainly the end of an era.

Recently many of us have witnessed some exciting developments in human computer interface design. Jeff Han’s Ted Talk on a multi-touch screen interface design as well as the brilliant demo on the web site for his company, Perceptive Pixel, are inspiring. There is also Anand Agarawala’s demo of the BumpTop interface also on Ted Talks. And today, Gwen, pointed me towards Microsoft’s Surface project. This looks quite exciting. I now wonder what does Apple have up its sleeve? Could it be this?

Perceptive Pixel

Perceptive Pixel

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface

BumpTop

The near future of computing… it is not longer computing in the strict sense of the term. They are interfaces, tools, places and things to do. Not just computers.

Leigh Blackall, an educational technologist that ‘specialises in the use of socially networked media and communication and its relationship to socially constructed learning’ at Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand has written a telling post on connectivity. His post looks at the premise that content is king and he argues that it is connectivity that is important in education.  Well worth your time to read. I could not agree more with Lee’s sentiments.

iGoogle has proven to be a handy tool this year. I mainly use it to keep tabs on the blogs that I read via its Google Reader widget.

I have some news services piped in and I embedded a Wikipedia widget as well. I have always had an interest in astronomy so the Astronomy Picture of the Day and the Moon phases get a look in as well. Google maps are there too.

I added the Christmas theme to iGoogle last week and I do feel it is quite nice. Australia does not often have a white Christmas but it has been known to happen when a blast of cold air from Antarctica reaches the southern states such as Tasmania and Victoria.

Would be nice to embed a similar banner or theme that dynamically alters during the course of the day within a blog or web site . Would not alter the functionality of the blog but would certainly add a touch of lighthearted fun to the process.

Do you have a favourite iGoogle theme? Do you think that they reveal something about our personality?