InsideOut

Just found this, perfectly timed to follow my post on my thoughts about Osmosis and Diffusion.

Did everyone else already know about this?! Applications for teaching and learning present themselves readily - in world group assignments, communication skills, team management, even the old telephone skills take a new twist!

Vodafone calls into Second Life with InsideOut from the Brand Strategy blog:

It works like this: your Second Life avatar gets a little handset called a Heads Up Display (HUD). From this, you can ring or text other avatars in the virtual world. If you are offline when your avatar receives a text, it will be sent as an SMS to your real-life mobile. You can also have your Second Life calls redirected to your real mobile if you so choose. If you need to track down a Second Life avatar, you can also call into the world direct from your real phone. Essentially, you need not separate the communications within and without the virtual world.

http://secondlife.vodafone.com/what.aspx Watch the video, wish I could embed it here!

Osmosis and Diffusion

I was once a home economics teacher and osmosis and diffusion related to cooking berries (osmosis) and spraying non-stick substances (diffusion). Now the apples are the real world and mobile phones are the spray cans!
Image: 'recipe: rhubarb-blueberry pie with papaya-apple glaze' www.flickr.com/photos/43927576@N00/134643760

Osmosis
"Osmosis is the flow of a solvent in a system in which two solutions of different concentration are separated by a semipermeable membrane which cannot pass solute molecules.

We can now breach the semipermeable membrane between real and virtual worlds e.g secondlife to real world mobile via twitterhud, real-life location based communities in real life on mobile via twittervision!
http://bloghud.com/id/14239/

More blurring of worlds:
http://twittervision.com/
It's kinda like Frappr but much more accurate and in real-time! The maps can be displayed in other social web applications too such as Facebook to update all your social web "presences" at once - from Leonard Low.

Another idea in blending virtual and real worlds comes from Alex Hayes - upload a photo from Second Life to your phone and MMS friends telling them to join you at the location.

Diffusion
Content creation as "positive inflow" -
Post to AFLF networks from Leonard Low - really wanted to put this here where I could find it more easily:

Fellow blogger Jonathan Greene hits the nail on the head in this post, where he sums up my(Leonards) thoughts succinctly:
"The iPhone is for consuming content, while the N95 is for creating it."
The iPhone is a fantastic device for browsing (much) web content, viewing photos, listening to music or watching video. But it's crippled when it comes to aspects of mobile creation, collaboration, and sharing, which, from a social constructivist pedagogical viewpoint makes it rather less enticing as a m-learning platform.Because it's so good at displaying content, the iPhone could make a terrific tool for instructivist learning approaches... but there's so much more to learning (and online and mobile life in general) than consuming content, particularly in the age of the social web, and the year when Time Magazine's Person of the Year is You. You the creator.

Young People Learning

This story “Digital literacy in a knowledge economy”By John Hartley ABC News 13 Dec reminded me that my passions in teaching and learning are still the same as they ever were, young people, technology, philosophy, power, equality,negotiation, collaboration, creativity, content generation, literacy, ENGAGEMENT

Here is a quote from the story that brought it all back for me

“Teens evidently don't see computers as technology. It's as if they're born with an innate ability for text-messaging and gaming. And while they may not be able to spell they can tell you their life story on MySpace, entertain you on YouTube, muse philosophically in the blogosphere, contribute to knowledge on Wikipedia, create cutting-edge art on Flickr. If they're anything like my daughter they can do most of these things at once, and then submit their efforts to an online ethic of collective intelligence (via msn, SMS) and iterative improvability that is surely scientific in mode.”

Bill Wade who is running Mobilize This gets it and is working with other educators and young people to share it. Why don't you join in, I will be via the online Adobe Connect virtual room, details below:

This Symposium is for
• young people who wish to become more adept at accessing this technology or want
to share what they already know
• youth who like to communicate and socially network using a variety of technology
• educators across all disciplines
• people already engaged in this field who would like to extend their capabilities
(share your knowledge and experience and gain a broader perspective of hands-on
issues)
• anyone interested in gaining anunderstanding of recent technological
developments and implications for flexible delivery of training and education.

Don’t miss this opportunity
To participate in this exciting and valuable
gathering please register through
http://mobilizethis.wikispaces.com and add
your name to the registrants’ list.
Where
Charles Darwin University’s Mal Nairn
Auditorium and Foyer

Online via: Adobe Connect, Wimba, Vet
Virtual, Elluminate and Second Life Rooms
(connectivity details will be listed under each
session on the agenda page).
When
October 19 8:30-4:00 CST Darwin, NT
9:00-4:30 AEST

Web 2.0 and social networking technologies
are rapidly becoming standard and essential
tools used by students and educators for their
teaching & learning.
mobilizethis.wikispaces.com
Updates and Details
For updated details visit us online at:
http://mobilizethis