Heard of The Long Tail? Chris Anderson's Wired article, now a expanded into a book, explores:

The theory... that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail.

About Me, The Long Tail blog

The popularity and power of blogging, as well as other social online media, fits squarely into this. The clip above, from FORA.tv, is a presentation by Chris Anderson explaining The Long Tail.

FORA.tv itself is a demonstration of efficacy of The Long Tail. It is something like YouTube for the thinking person (although that is slightly demeaning because FORA.tv's features trump YouTube's). Not exactly mainstream stuff, but it definitely has its niche. Would we have seen this in the pre-social media internet?

Fleck and Mojiti are two online annotation tools that I've been exploring. They help web surfers to refer others to precise points in a web page or video respectively, as well as to add descriptive notes.

Fleck can be deployed in several ways. You can start annotating other websites by putting the desired URL into Fleck's input field. There are other ways of integrating Fleck with your browser, from bookmarklets to browser extensions (the latter method requires registration, but the service is free).

You can see an example of a Fleck-ed page here. (Wait a while for the annotations to load.)

As you can see, once you annotate a page, Fleck provides a unique URL so that other users can see the annotations. The annotations exist on a separate layer from the website. It does not cache the website. That is, if the website changes, your annotation might not point to the right content.

Nevertheless, it's a nifty tool.

If you haven't clicked the Fleck example above, please do so. I've annotated Mojiti's front page to tell you more about what Mojiti does. In case you don't have time: it allows you to annotate online videos.

UPDATE 22 Feb | Just came across this via LifeHack. zpeech allows you to run a discussion/comments thread about any website on the website itself.

UPDATE 11 Mar | TechCrunch points to four other annotation services besides Fleck.

The Biomedical Multimedia Unit at the University of Melbourne has come up with a preliminary report which details first-year students' use of  and engagement with technology (kudos to collegewebeditor once again).

The report has this to say about blogs:

It may be surprising to some in the University community that more than one-third of first year students have kept their own blog in the last year and well over half (57%) read others' blogs. The educational possibilities of blogs are beginning to be explored... and it is important for academics and faculties to be aware of this public form of self-publishing and online interaction.

In NUS, we have already set out to explore academic blogging with the establishment of NUS Module Blogs. However, more will need to be done to help students discover how to push the boundaries of learning with the latest tech tools. The report further points out that:

In a recent US study of undergraduate students' uses and perceptions of technology in their learning, Katz [in Caruso & Kvavik] (2005) concludes that:

'freshman students arrive at our institutions with a set of electronic core skills. Such skills include communications (telephone, email, text-messaging, and IM), Web surfing (not to be confused with research skills), word processing and video gaming... these young people can make technology work but cannot place these technologies in the service of (academic) work.' (p. 7)

It is not that first year students are incapable of using technology for specialised, context-appropriate purposes... The critical point is that while first year students might use technology in a range of ways and may, apparently, be digitally literate, we cannot assume that being a member of the 'Net Generation' is synonymous with knowing how to employ technology-based tools strategically to optimise learning experiences and outcomes in university settings.

Do Singaporean students' attitudes, skills and experiences with technology mirror their Australian and American counterparts? There is some anecdotal evidence that they will likely be similar. The challenge for educational technology departments and progressive educators is to open their eyes to the possibilities.

Original photo by Wesley Fryer from here, reproduced under a cc by-sa 2.0 license.

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The University of Warwick, one of the most innovative universities in terms of social software usage and social networking prowess, has been producing short video news items and putting them on YouTube. The video above, discussing the phenomenon of Chinese support for the England football team, is one of the many which focus on research outcomes, current affairs analysis and campus events.

It is not a mere marketing tool, points out Alice Lau, from the University of Glamorgan's Learning Zone:

The aim of the project despite what everyone might think, is more than just advertising. To them, it is about communicating the research work in the university to the wider community in a very different way. It also provided a new channel for researchers to reach new people.

Warwick's iCast has high quality production values, suggesting a concerted and deliberate effort to put these bulletins out. While NUS may not choose to go this way to promote its research (although, in my personal capacity, I don't see why not), I think it trailblazes a way for individual lecturers to innovate in their teaching and personal branding.

Now, where is that camcorder...?

The video about Web 2.0 I posted a couple of days ago keeps on popping up on the blogs that I read.

NUS student, November Tan, highlighted it too, reflecting on how she uses the read/write web to help build environmental awareness and interest in Singapore's rich biodiversity:

Indeed, the way the environmental "movement", ideas of conservation, of environmental awareness, outreach, sharing, inspiration, motivations, passing on of information in Singapore has changed tremendously and in fact expanded by leaps and bounds thanks to the wonders and beauty of Web 2.0.

For example, I can upload my photos of my beachflea trip to Hantu and tomorrow somebody searching for "hantu" tags might be introduced to the beauty of our southern shores and from there he might then see my blog and then linked on to the many issues by looking at tags, through del.icio.us or other such aggregators. Somebody can then submit it to tomorrow.sg or any other blog aggregators and then the word is spread. Likewise, photos and videos can be linked and shared with ease on a user-created wikipedia entry on Pulau Hantu and then contribute the information they have on the great biodiversity on Hantu and then linking other bloggers like the Hantu Blog, they find out about reclamation projects. That is the beauty of Web 2.0 connectivity.

Inside Higher Ed examines this viral video hit (cheers to collegewebeditor), interviewing Michael Wesch about it. He makes an interesting point regarding how the video came about:

As part of an article on Web 2.0 that is intended to appear in a journal of anthropology, Wesch created the video to appear on the publication’s Web site.

“I was trying to explain this stuff in the traditional paper format, and I thought, ‘This is ironic,’” he said. “I can illustrate this much better in a video.”

In trying to find a more effective way to explain Web 2.0, Michael came up with what is now a seminal video. This does not detract from his future journal article but adds to it.

Likewise, if you're passionate about what you teach, blog about it. Use all the technological tools you have at your disposal to find new and more effective ways to make a point. Michael Wesch did and the results are there for all the web to see.