Podagogy

While wandering through blog sites I came across an article on Google Wave at Joho the Blog. My curiosity was piqued, so I watched the lengthy demo of Wave given at the Google IO 2009 developers conference. The Rassmuson brothers (software geniuses who gave us Google Maps) have developed a potentially transformative product called Wave.

Wave represents (IMHO) a paradigmatic change in thinking about online communication. Google plans to release Wave later this year. The fact that the engine will be released as open source may result in tsunami of fascinating web-based, in-browser apps that begin to redefine how we think about email, IM, Twitter, blogging, Wikis, etc.

Rather than trying to describe Wave, check out some of the features demonstrated in the Google presentation. Given the length of the video, you may want to scrub through some of the “talking” parts to quickly get to various feature demos.

I stumbled across a link to xtranormal.com in an Alan Levine presentation, and was intrigued with the concept of creating presentations with animated characters. Even more intriguing was the claim that all I needed to do is type the script. I couldn’t resist, so I took my previous post on “Post-LMS Era” and used it (with very minor modifications as the script for my xtranormal “movie”.

The movie took about 45-60 minutes to complete, including adding camera angles, actor gestures, etc. While my blog script does not make for riveting dialog, it may be a useful way to demonstrate the potential of xtranormal’s online tools. I can see the potential of this tool for creating fun, engaging learning objects.

Check out the xtranormal site, or view my movie below.