Half baked but crispy

Earlier today, I re-posted a Digital Inspiration posting about the release of Windows Live Movie maker. Straight afterwards, I proceeded to download and install a copy and created an "auto-movie" from some photos I took in York on my recent holidays. And it really is fast! The result is very cheesy, but there's a lot of potential for people wishing to share their photos with friends and family as well as some interesting options for educational uses.

The movie you see here was literally 5 minutes work. With more time you could do a lot more, including mixed photo and video, or a slidecast. It was 5 minutes to make the movie, then about an hour to upload it to YouTube! But the whole lot was done inside Windows Live Movie maker and i was able to play with Spotify while the upload was happening.

As I said in the previous post, Microsoft's undoubted skill in making compelling desktop apps could be about to shake up the on-line world ... if they play it right, and keep the entry level free!

It pains me to admit it, but Microsoft may be on to something with it's new foray into on-line tools. I've been using and been very impressed by Windows Live Writer (the blogging tool) and now there's a linked-in version of Windows Movie Maker (a tool that comes with Vista) called Windows Live Movie Maker (see video attached). If Windows Live Office, to be released soon, is anything near as good as this, it'll be good enough for most people ... I wonder what'll happen to Google Docs, and indeed Windows Office for the Desktop then?

"As 'house full' signs go up at universities across the country, Ucas figures show 140,000 applicants do not have a place" reports Jessica Shepherd of The Guardian. "Cardiff University closed its doors to applicants at 10am today" but I can report that Swansea University is still open for business!

Digital planet pundit Bill Thompson on why he loves Unix!

Happy birthday to UNIX ... 40 years old this month! Article and BBC technology News Feed discovered via OSDIR.com.

"Universities could be forced to turn away disproportionate numbers of state school pupils in the squeeze on university places after private schools cemented their domination of the top A-level grades." writes Polly Curtis in The Guardian.

This blog posting with audio clip on the worsening outcome of this year's University admission run. Now it seems that success in A-levels is significantly up in public (US private) schools, meaning that pupils from state (US public) schools will be squeezed even harder by the cap on home and EU places this year.

Blackboard 9 is too flaky to be deployed in the coming year and at least on educator is questioning the license fee. I haven't seen BB9 yet (I get my first exposure next week) but aside from the institutional benefit of keeping student data and course materials inside the institutional firewall, doesn't a mash-up of loosely linked services and the glue of a social network begin to look more attractive. Ins't Blackboard's hold on the VLE market doomed in the long term?

A must-read critique of the "way we are now" that all educators in the University system should read.

The old-style lecture, with the professor standing at the podium in front of a large group of students, is still a fixture of university life on many campuses. It's a model that is teacher-focused, one-way, one-size-fits-all and the student is isolated in the learning process. Yet the students, who have grown up in an interactive digital world, learn differently. Schooled on Google and Wikipedia, they want to inquire, not rely on the professor for a detailed roadmap. They want an animated conversation, not a lecture. They want an interactive education, not a broadcast one that might have been perfectly fine for the Industrial Age, or even for boomers. These students are making new demands of universities, and if the universities try to ignore them, they will do so at their peril.

I don't care if it's Sharepoint, Zoho docs, groove or Google, providing I could use something!