Weligama

Houses
Originally uploaded by mikecogh.

Alex is at this moment on a bus traveling to inland NSW. My son is somewhere in the ACT camping out while building a structure somewhere that will replace something that went west in the ACT bushfires. My brother is somewhere in the red centre in the Uluru region. And I’m at my desk at home. Happily. Partly because I’m about to join the travelers. In a couple of days I’m going here - Weligama - a place I visited several times 25 years ago.

25 years ago I traveled with nothing that needed plugging in. Now I have to check here to make sure I’m prepared. Make sure that I’m able to connect and share. I will read what you have to say when I’m half a world away. I will share pictures and words from where I am. 25 years ago I’d happily be out of contact with everyone I knew for weeks. But times have changed. My phone will beep on arrival in Sri Lanka telling me I’m connected. Hotel rooms in Colombo will have Internet. There’ll be Internet cafes in the villages. I can post images, movies, and audio to the Net from my phone.

I will post content to a collection of sites that may not be compliant, probably break laws of copyright, and I will engage in debate and discussion about learning in between swims and seeking out old friends. I won’t be enrolled in any course but I’ll be learning because I’m networked. Happily. I’ll be engaged. It will just seem natural to continue the conversations from a place far removed from the desk I sit at now. And I know I’m not alone doing this. The world has changed…….

Inaugural Supper Club

Above: the host for the evening, Outrageous Jones, keeps things flowing.

Where I could have been....Nagoya

I wasn't able to make the one day Wireless Ready conference in Nagoya, but Aaron Campbell's done a great job describing what happened over in his blog. I was interested to read that "the salient point for me was that Web 2.0 technologies do not necessarily imply 2.0 mindsets, and the institutional “fit” here in Japan isn’t all that great."

Daf and Tere

Daf and Tere
Originally uploaded by beewebhead.

Two long time Webhead colleagues together in TESOL Seattle.

Goodbye Dad

My dear Dad, Leonard Ambrose Coghlan, passed away peacefully yesterday afternoon aged 86. St Patrick's Day, March 17th, 2007.

Womadelaide Wrap

Wu Man (playing the Pipi)

Huun-Huur-Tu (Throat Singers from Siberia - amazing!)

Etran Finatawa (Niger)

Celenod (New Caledonia)

The Garden Cafe

Rembetiki (Greek)

Swan Reach

Swan Reach
Originally uploaded by mikecogh.

As I say in the audio - it's nice to know there are still places where life is still slow enough to accommodate this kind of transport across rivers.

The New Tools Keep on Coming - Splashcast

So here's another one. As Robin Good wrote on Jan 30th:

"Every week it seems to become a little bit easier to get involved in multimedia content delivery and syndication - whether through sharing videos using Youtube, photos through Flickr, or your thoughts using popular blogging platforms. The ability to upload, embed and easily share media content is now something we take for granted, but until now there hasn't been an easy way to gather all of this content together into a personalized online channel. That is all about to change starting today."

And as usual, the following example is light in content, but should be enough to give you an idea of what Splashcast can do. You can mix and match audio, video, images, and text.

Adding Spoken Thoughts 2

UPDATE OCT 16, 2007: MYCHINGO NO LONGER FREE :(

Ok. Here's another option using MyChingo. The advantage of this tool seems to be that all messages are kept here for others to hear, and unlike Gcast, the messages don't autoplay. (Messages have 60 second limit.)

Add Your Spoken Thoughts

It seems it may finally be possible to enable visitors to make spoken comments in blogs using this little plug-in from Evoca. I'll believe it when I see it. Still, here goes....
.....it's not quite as neat as it seems. You can indeed record a spoken message using the recorder below, but of course the audio is sent off to Evoca so people who come in later can't hear the spoken posts unless I go over to Evoca and copy the code and paste it here. Which I might do. I don't seem to be able to enter my email or any written text in the applet below so you might not be able to either, but if you drop by record a spoken message and I'll see if I can get the code and insert it here. Capiche? :)

Welcome to BAW 2007

I was sitting here as I posted this message. (Photo also taken using the same phone and posted to Moblog.)

My Tagroll

Well I've finally weaning myself off Powermarks (which was the greatest bookmark manager until Delicious et al arrived) and am now routinely dumping things into my Delicious account. And because I'm fascinated by the number of things you can do with a blog I'm adding my tagroll here!

GCast v Hipcast

To see GCast working on its own in a separate blog go over here.While GCast is free, Hipcast costs US$4.95/month.

Audio Post via Hipcast

This post has arrived by phone using Hipcast. (I'll edit this later.)

Life's a Beach

In this short vid I'm referring to Greg Whitby's presentation (podcast) here. And boy it's weird to see yourself up this close. Still...here ya go:

Students' Thermoses

Students' Thermoses
Originally uploaded by mikecogh.

Chinese students like to take a thermos of hot water with them to Uni. They use it to make tea or just to drink hot water. I found out in my last day in Nanjing that Chinese people regularly drink plain hot water with meals. You live and learn!

My First Slideshare Presentation

Wonderin' Aloud

Well I haven't posted any movies on BlipTV yet but dear Steven has done one for me here. Ian Anderson's Wonderin' Aloud - just about my all time favourite song. Filmed in the lounge of a hotel in Christchurch. My bit starts about half way through.

The End of Audioblogger!

What a bummer! Got this in my inbox a couple of days ago. Interesting to see that it comes from the folks at Odeo! I'll now have to look at the other options. Stay tuned.
====================================================================================
As of November 1, 2006, Audioblogger will no longer accept phone
calls. MP3s made with the service will continue to be hosted and
served but you will no longer be able to use Audioblogger to post
new audio.


Audioblogger is an independent product, run by Odeo, Inc., a small
startup company in San Francisco, CA. We are not affiliated with
Google or Blogger except that we operate and provide the
Audioblogger service.


Given our limited resources, we have to make tough decisions
about what projects to focus on. And we've come to the difficult
decision that Audioblogger demands too many resources, time, and
money for us to continue its operation.


However, there are several other services that offer similar
functionality. Odeo is not affiliated with any of these services,
we only suggest them only in hopes that one or the other will be
a good alternative for you.


Gabcast.com is a free service for recording by phone
Hipcast.com has a seven day free trial and lots of features
Gcast.com is another free service for phone recording


All of the phone posting services listed above are compatible
with Odeo in that they produce podcast feeds, which can be
imported to Odeo. Any audio file at Odeo can be posted on a blog
by copying and pasting some embed code.


Odeo would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has
tried Audioblogger. If you are interested in keeping up with our
other blog-friendly projects, please have a look at Twitter.com
and our customizable audio players.


Thanks,
The Odeo Team


Links:
Gabcast - http://gabcast.com
Hipcast - http://hipcast.com
Gcast - http://gcast.com
Odeo Importing - http://www.odeo.com/create/addfeed
Twitter - http://twitter.com
Players - http://odeo.com/channel/102054/embedded_player

Future of Learning in a Networked World - Reflections

OK. It’s time to get this down before the thoughts float away in time. People who experienced the whole 2 weeks of the roadshow may even forgotten I was there! But I was there for the first five days in Dunedin and Christchurch. I wonder if what I think and feel now might be different if I’d been part of the whole event….

As Konrad hinted, this was one of the more significant experiences of my life. Not something that I could or would want to forget. A pressure cooker of learning, thinking and relating. I find my thoughts about it all are more about process than content. I can’t tell you what extra knowledge I gained in the sense of hard facts or artefacts or new skills. That’s something of a disappointment actually as I had hoped to sit down quietly in a corner and grill Sean, or Leigh, or Stephen et al. But it just wasn’t like that. I think about how it was, what it was, what we did, what was said, who I spoke to……

It was exhilarating and exhausting (as I think everyone found) – even for those 5 days. So much information was relentlessly taken in, shared, and recycled or created as audio, text, photos, video. Others have written about it taking ages before it all finds its place in the overall – I know it will be like that. But I’ve already had the chance to run a kind of debrief session with some interested colleagues in a workshop back home. After outlining what it was and how it worked I asked the 12 or so present whether they would like to take part in that kind of professional development event and most were extremely amenable to the idea so I think the idea has legs. Not only for larger groups geographically dispersed, but small groups from the same location or workteam.

One of the more challenging aspects for me was to have to surrender myself to the group totally for all my waking hours, and in the case of the Marae, sleeping hours as well! Stephen’s initial comments about groups v networks, and subsequent discussion from others, are all the more interesting in this context. I came prepared to do that – surrender to the group – and consequently found myself feeling much closer to people within days. So for me it was not just an intellectual exercise of processing ideas and discussion, but about managing personal relationships. None of this was hard per se. It’s just that there was so much of it! Relentless as I said. And as a group travelling together in real as opposed to virtual space, I don’t just function as a head or a brain as I might be able to do online. Online there is also personal stuff of course, but it takes longer, and you have a choice about to whether to explore that side of a relationship with someone.

Though I was there for only 5 days I frequently heard, and have since read, how people needed more time and space to process what was happening. We were in a totally networked environment, even when we were ‘decapitated’ with no Net connection. No break for personal grounding. And I hear everyday how people are busy. Too busy. So networking of any kind 24/7 is too much. OK. This was an experiment and we were learning as we went, but next time round I’d be suggesting allotted times for

• Working with specific others in the group (though many made this happen anyway)


• Thinking time for processing, creating, and uploading

I guess this is stating the obvious really, but it’s now down on record. I think what I’m trying to say is that we need to be able to model how living the life of a networked knowledge worker/educator can be managed in such a way that there is equilibrium with other parts of your life. That it’s not just constant cognition and personal media bombardment.

Leigh -  for all the driving you did before we all arrived in Dunedin – a huge thank you. You have proved that such things are possible. To everyone else who was in Dunedin and ChCh physically or virtually, thank you for a smorgasbord of media, stimulation, and good vibes.

And is this still the best one stop shop to go to get as much of what was produced as possible? (It’s still pretty daunting for the uninitiated BTW. Will there be a book/CD/DVD?

If you’re interested a few other thoughts HERE