Wetpaint released a new technology called "Injected" earlier this summer.  For those unfamiliar with Wetpaint, they're a free hosting service for wikis.  We use them for several class websites because they remove ads for educational sites and the version comparison is very good for collaborative writing.

Two releases on the same day for competing products in the virtual space arena has brought the topic to the forefront again.  Both Lively and Vivaty allow the user to insert a 3D room into a webpage.  Both are much simpler than SecondLife with limited creation capabilities.  Mostly users decorate their rooms, import media from the web, and text chat with other visitors.  Vivaty is tied to either AIM or Facebook with each account tied to your own "scene". 

Roger C. Schonfeld, Manager of Research for Ithaka, has published on NITLE's recently-transformed Transformations a potentially-useful report called The Visual Resources Environment at Liberal Arts Colleges, which details a set of visits that he made to seven liberal arts colleges. He studied how visual resources in general and ArtSTOR in particular are used across the curriculum, with an emphasis on the role organizational and support structures play in wide-spread adoption. While the analysis is clear and concise, I found myself a bit worried about what useful generalizations can be made based on the small number of campuses visited. Schonfeld suggests that there are valuable lessons to be learned from how our campuses are managing the transition to digital images that can be applied to how we should approach the broader area of all digital assets (audio, video, multimedia). I would have welcomed a bit more fleshing out of that provocative statement. Perhaps a second report?

Andy Carvin has a nice article about social bookmarking in general, and del.icio.us in particular, with promises of further articles about how social bookmarking can be used in education. Let's hope he branches out beyond del.icio.us to places like Penn Tags and H20. The geek set has for years now been praising the virtues of social bookmarking. Now it's time to start documenting the actual uses, and looking more closely at just how this practice might make a difference. Anyone have a story to tell? 

The prolific Stephen Downes writes up this learning object authoring and sharing facility, giving it a luke-warm review. His main criticism: it doesn't play well in the world of RSS and OAI, and its authoring tools are too complex. Ideally, making learning objects, says Downes, ought to be as easy as creating a blog post. Would that that were so!

http://www.duke.edu/ipod/
The Chronicle has a brief article today (6/16) about Duke's program to hand out iPods to all 1650 of their first-year students. Writer Brock Read's lead isn't really surprising: "In a new report, administrators at Duke University have found that the institution's much-publicized iPod giveaway had educational merit, but not in every course." But it's worth reading the full report (a 16-page pdf document) from the Duke iPod site linked here. Only 15 fall courses (enrolling 628 students) used the iPod but 33 spring courses (enrolling 600 students) used it.  The report lists four "significant institutional impacts" from the program, including "significant and unanticipated publicity" that yielded contacts,  increased visibility for Duke's technology collaborations and commitments, and a means of revealing strengths and gaps in the Duke infrastructure. Most interesting, I think, is the claim that "the project catalyzed conversations among faculty, administrators, staff, and students about the best role for technology in teaching and clarified needs and interests of faculty in this regard."