Day: June 25, 2007

### Serendipity: or the fundamental interconnectedness of all things

> [The World Wide Web is] the only thing I know of whose shortened form — www — takes three times longer to say than what it’s short for. – Douglas Adams

When reading [my river of news](http://crispyj2.blogspot.com/2007/06/day-in-20-life-part-2.html), I often come across interesting cross-links and related ideas. (I guess because I am reading lots of sources there are *bound *to be some that are related.) Nevertheless, I am often struck by how mysteriously [serendipitous](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/serendipity) these discovered links often are! Take for example my experience today. Early in my feed reading I came across this [blog entry](http://swansea-learninglab.blogspot.com/2007/06/how-to-use-powerpoint.html) in the [Learning lab](http://learninglab.swan.ac.uk) about how *not *to make PowerPoint presentations. Later on, I found Tony Hirst’s [article](http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/010445.html) about Digital Media which included that video, as well as [this example of a good PowerPoint presentation]() that I’d seen and [bookmarked](http://del.icio.us/cpjobling/identity+presentation) some time ago, and much else beside. As [Dirk Gently](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Gently) would probably say “be open to the *fundadamental interconnectedness of all things*.”

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A couple of interesting articles were posted on [Read/WriteWeb](http://www.readwriteweb.com) on Friday. In the first, Richard MacManus [discusses ](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/e-learning_20_all_you_need_to_know.php)the support platforms (including [Elgg](http://elgg.org/) which we use at my [institution](http://oremi.swan.ac.uk)). In the second Josh Catone [discusses](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/web_20_backpack_web_apps_for_students.php) the range of Web2.0 tools that are available to students as a sort of portable, always connected “backpack”. Although the first article provides a useful overview of some of the key ideas and platforms being used in “e-learning 2.0″, in many ways the second is more interesting; it provides links to web2.0 applications that may be useful to colleagues at the chalk face as well as students. In an impressive survey, Josh covers office replacements, note taking, mind mapping, bookmarking, collaboration, calendars, calculators, and bibliography tools. All free, and all on the web. I’ll be checking out some of these for sure.

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