Dimdim is a service that lets everyone everywhere to communicate using rich media in real time. For free. Though if you want to customize or brand your own meeting you can pruchase Dimdim Pro for $99 per year.

A major draw card is it’s open source so you can add to it or extend it to meet your needs, what’s more is that participants don’t need to install software on their machines to participate, they just sign up for free…

Dimdim’s mission is “to enable web collaboration for everyone. We believe that we can improve the world by providing easy, open and affordable collaboration software that anyone can use.” A noble cause indeed.

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When dealing with the internet he says we have to think about reproduction from a dandelions perspective. Produce seed (content) and disperse it to the world. It will float out and reach a wide variety of areas, often areas we had not thought of. Sometimes the seeds will fail, sometimes the seeds will reach fertile soil and the ideas will spread, we shouldn’t really worry too much.

Being mammals, he says, we naturally worry about everything we produce, be it offspring or artistic work. If someone distributes our work or uses it we shouldn’t jump up and down, (If they give the author credit that is) there is a lot of good that can come from our work being seen by a wider audience…

So if you are thinking of becoming more dandelion-like here are Mr Doctorow’s points to take into consideration.

1. “Your work needs to be easily copied, to anywhere whence it might find its way into the right hands. That means that the nimble text-file, HTML file, and PDF (the preferred triumvirate of formats) should be distributed without formality”
2. “Once your work gets into the right hands, there needs to be an easy way to consummate the relationship”

Personally I love this way of thinking and I shall try to be more like a dandelion when it comes to my work…

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Check out a demo of it in action on Blip.tv

My only concern at this point is whether the teachers will be rated - I am keen to sign-up for classes, but the idea that anyone can step into the teacher’s seat makes me worry that I might waste an hour with a bad teacher.

I am impressed with what the Supercool School Principal, Steli Efti, and his team they’ve put together so far, and I have no doubt that it will get even better as more people start attending classes.

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This is a teaser video, the full version can be viewed at www.storyofstuff.com . It’s a great video, and really enhanced my understanding, and hopefully habits, about behaviour.

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On our networking site Huddlemind.net we have been having an ongoing discussion about collaborative learning technology and it’s implications. Many of the respondents have come back saying that the tools aren’t being used correctly or are not being used at all.

So in this hunt for the most effective tool what is it that makes a one system more effective or better than another? The amount of plug-ins you can use? The amount of uses? The ease of connectivity or just the simplicity of design?

The tools are there for us to use and as we have seen there will ALWAYS be updates available for everything! We need to adapt to the tools as much as they need to adapt to us. Many of us aren’t willing to change our processes to the tools available. Imagine you arrive for a talk and you ask for a projector for your laptop and you get brought an old over-head projector that works with transparencies (as happened to me the other day). How would you adapt?

So in your never-ending search for that killer-app, maybe think of the most easy-to-use system, the one that integrates better than the rest, rather than the one with the most features…

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Gever Tully founder of the Tinkering School runs his school on the same lines…

So why does this stop when we get old? Why don’t we try harder to make ‘higher’ learning fun? We don’t lose the desire to have fun as we get older… Just as many of us don’t lose the desire to learn.

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If you have a few spare minutes in your hectic schedules you should check out http://wikieducator.org Just be warned it might take up more of your time than you might expect…

What is Wikieducator? It is a collaborative space for the planning of education projects linked with the development of free content. A space to develop free content on Wikieducator for e-learning and to work on building open education resources (OERs) and a space to network funding proposals developed as free content.

It was voted by Stephen Downes as the best educational wiki last year and if the developments that have happened are anything to go by, watch this space.

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One of the major benefits of CasePlace is that almost all of the content on the site is free. Some of the content providers charge for their information but the rest of it is for free and available to the public.

The site is designed specifically for business schools and their faculties, “To facilitate new curriculum development and new connections among faculty with aligned interests.” But it is really open to anyone interested in social and environmental concerns in business.

The website has loads of tools and resources from Audio and Video files, books, background reports, links and more all available after you complete your free registration. There is also a really great section on Teaching Modules which are all structures around specific themes.

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