During the Crete field trip (June 16-23, 2009) our students made use of various Web 2.0 technologies in order to produce group blogs and videos of their experiences. These were all completed in the field using the ubiquitous wireless internet access available in the village of Chora Sfakion. The students did an excellent job and the whole process enabled them to reflect upon the educational experiences they encountered and to gain a deeper knowledge and insight. Videos and blogs are available at:
http://www.cretefieldtrip.com/sfakia/index.php/category/field-trip-videos/
If you would like to find out about how and why weblogs (‘blogs’) might be used to enhance learning watch this interesting video: http://lindsayjordan.edublogs.org/2009/05/29/blogging-with-students-how-and-why/ or read Lindsay’s full paper at:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddj42whm_48g4n924f6
I will soon be undertaking a field trip to Crete during which students will maintain a blog to enable individual and collaborative reflection on events and issues they experience.
Exploration is fundamental to Geography and Geographers have a long history of sharing their travel observations with the public through publication in books and journals. Blogging provides a new outlet for this oldest geographical tradition and the blogs written in Crete will feature other Web 2.0 technologies including photo sharing, video and twitter.
Results to follow…
No surprise that Norway were run away winners on Saturday night and I would have liked Azerbaijan and the UK to have been 2nd and 3rd. The model correctly predicted the winning entry but, overall, there was a less strong correlation (r2 value 0.46 compared to 0.75 - 0.85) than in previous years between predicted placing and actual ranking. As usual, the winning entry was judged by most people, irrespective of geographical or political affinity, to be the best in terms of song and performance and it is unlikely that the modified voting system made any difference.
Our website songcontestvoting.com crashed during the contest due to unprecedented visitor numbers. We will be moving to a dedicated server for next year’s contest and accepting advertising!
The outcome of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest taking place in Moscow tonight, May 16th, will be (according to our computer model):
1. Norway 0.7
2. Greece 1.7
3. Turkey 4.5
4. Ukraine 5.8
5. Azerbaijan 6.4
6. Bosnia Herzegovina 7.0
7. United Kingdom 9.6
8. Iceland 16.2
9. Finland 17.3
10. Armenia 19.6
With the number indicating the country’s “odds” of actually winning the contest.
Norway is a widely tipped favourite, but they have sometimes done less well on the evening than anticipated in the run-up. Out of the projected top-10 Norway has benefited least from “bloc” or friendly voting patterns in the past five contests. Iceland, Bosnia, and Turkey top the list in this regard. Also, in terms of doing well in recent contests, Norway is well below average with only Iceland and the UK with worse records.
Combining track record and friendly voting, indicates a top-4 of Greece, Ukraine, Armenia, and Turkey.
The British bookmakers have a projected top-3 of Norway, Greece and the UK. The UK tends to achieve a top-3 finish when they enter a deserving song. Anything less than a top-10 finish would be a disappointment (and evidence that Europe, rightly or wrongly, really do hate us right now).
Interestingly our word analysis (see below) of recent posts to the 20 top Eurovision sites has the UK and our entry, Jade, as one of the most talked about entrants. This is a feature of “Eurovision week” and had not been the case in previous weeks and combined with the relative surge in bookmaker support, maybe there will be a big surprise tonight… However also keep an eye out for Azerbaijan, Turkey and Ukraine challenging Norway and Greece to the top-2 spots.
The Ordnance Survey has featured my “Sky Cam” implementation of their OpenSpace API.
On my webpage you can click on a map marker to view the latest skycam image. The map is created using the Ordnance Survey OpenSpace API including the loadurl AJAX method. Zoom in on the map and you’ll see it’s a real Ordnance Survey map.
There is also a Google map version.
The first run of our “Eurovisionomics” model for 2009 indicates that Norway are clear favourites to win the Eurovision Song Contest next month in Moscow. The model predicts another disappointment for the UK with a finish in the bottom half of the results table suggested. The model takes into account various factors including performance in the last five contests and the extent to which countries benefit from “bloc” or friendly voting patterns.
A tag cloud or word cloud is a visual representation of the relative word content of a website or feed. The word cloud displayed in this post is computer-generated every 6 hours to display the most frequently appearing words in headlines concerned with the ‘environment’ from 12 international news organisations. Each organisation is likely to have some bias in its reporting of environment-related news but word cloud analysis helps reveal the predominantly important issues or stories of the day. Another simple word cloud is implemented at Eurovision Song Contest Voting, where over 100 sites are polled every 30 minutes. These are simple implementations of a much larger project we are currently involved with.
2009 Action Budget car carbon change Climate Day Economy emissions energy Environment Environmental first future Global Government green greener growth Heathrow industry jobs low Management may Mobile must need needed offshore power Report research solar study Summit tackle talks targets time UK UN UNEP Warns wind world year
cloud @ 7/2/2009 7:22:35 PM
To mark the 50th anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death, CNN has published a commentary that quotes extensively from my book “The Don McLean Story: Killing Us Softly With His Songs“.
I have just finished transcribing an interview with Don McLean that I recorded last week and which is mainly based on questions his fans submitted to his official website. The interview is available here and contains something of interest for most fans and casual readers including insights into Don’s favourite food and a surprising interpretation of an American Pie lyric. The interview extends to 13,000 words.
