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Is Amazon becoming the educator of the Internet Age?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 25 Feb 2014, 10:36

Fig.1. The debate on this book in Amazon comments is turning this into a self-directed, open module on the outbreak of the First World War

Amazon is going way beyond selling and reselling books to aggregate conversations. The sophisticated way that discussions are offered might be a lesson to educators - reviews aren't simply stacked, but are offered in a variety of ways: contrasting arguments, newest first, based on rating for the publication or likes from other readers. While simultaneously, playing upon serendipity multiple alternative reviews are offered in a 'side bar'. You can begin to pick out types of voice, from the academic to the belligerent, to those who have yet to read or complete the book, to those that have read it more than once. Innovations here are seeing Amazon becoming a social platform in its own right with recently launched platforms inviting discussion and group forming. i.e. Amazon gains in stickiness and frequent visits and revisits. 

(First posted in OpenStudio as part of H818: The networked practitioner).

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Design Museum

Filemaker Pro

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 18:00

In an effort to bring myself into the 21st century technologically I am revisiting Filemaker Pro as a piece of software I have used since it was developed in 1994, though not upgraded in eight years.

Whilst it is a relief to find current versions are familiar in terms of the way fields are created and popualted with 'assets' it is a pain that to transfer material I am going to have to retrofit an earlier version of Filemaker and use this as a electronic stepping stone.

The reward will be to have data that I am familiar with that I can then manipulate and share in a Web 2.0 way. The intention is then to populate this with a substantial number of documents to familiarise myself with how it operates with text. It used to be the case that files could not contain much more than 150 words.

Then I will use Filemaker Pro to build by OU e-portfolio for H808.

The problem no doubt remains of 'interoperability.' Does my using Filemaker Pro necessitate others to have the same software? To use its extensive functionality, probably so ... however, on a 31 day free trial I  think much could covered and from this user's point of view, the investment in a light version of Filemaker Pro may be more beneficial that going down to the route of a customised PLE of various recommended software tools, or going for Google Docs.

Meanwhile my OU Blog and MyStuff get the lot! (Just to be safe)

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