Some good news for the start of 2009. The Our World 2.0 web magazine is a finalist in the annual weblog awards in the category of Best Blog Design.

We are really delighted about this as it reflects the great design work from Sean and David, and the programme to make it all happen from Oleg.

Voting begins this Monday, and we hope you will take the time to cast your vote online in the Best Blog Design section of the awards.

Richard Watson over at What’s Next has just published this Trend Blend 2009 graphic. It is really impressive and very interesting. He does remind us not to take it too seriously….but nevertheless…

There is a lot in this graphic of relevance to the Our World 2.0 webmagazine and also to the work of the UNU Media Studio.

As 2008 comes to a close and as we enter 2009, we can expect to see lots of predictions. We wont be making any here but suffice to say that it does look like we will face a very challenging year.

Yesterday, a message arrived in my mail box announcing that new UN e-Learning initiative, launched in Berlin, will offer developing countries opportunities to draw upon a rich array of training and capacity-building resources. This is a really interesitng development.

Sixteeen UN agencies came together at the Online-Educa conference, and the UNU was represented by Dr. Virginie Aimard from the European Vice Rectorate.

Here is the cool part. “By agreeing to pool and share their collective training resources and shift towards technology supported learning, the initiative will help UN agencies eliminate duplicative activities, reduce costs, and reach a wider client base.”

But one thing to remember please, UNESCO have a brilliant platform for sharing course materiials that is really worth looking at. It is called the Open Training Platform and it would provide an excellent vehicle for UN agencies to stock-take on the courses that are currently available in the UN system - simply by inputing the information into OTP.

Anyway, sounds like UN elearn is off to a good start. You can download all the presentations from the UNEP supported website. The photo is courtesy of the UNEP organizing team.

By the way, this blog post marks the 100th posting by the UNU Media Studio!

We have started selling the DVDs of our documentaries with UNU Press. So far you can purchase both the Voices of the Chichinautzin (in English and Spanish) and the Wisdom Years (in English and Japanese). Later this month, we will add Saving the Ayuquila River (again in English and Spanish).

We anticipate that these DVDs will mainly be of interest to educators and to members of the general public who follow social and environmental trends.

To buy the DVDs visit UNU Press.

If you do buy one, we would be very interested to hear from you about your impressions of the documentaries. So please do hesitate to contact us.

Just got back from a two day workshop on e-learning organized by the UNU in Bonn. It was a wonderful opportunity to brainstorm on the future direction for e-learning within and beyond the UNU system.

The workshop was facilitated by Nancy White from Full Circle Associates. She did a brilliant job of breaking the ice and getting people to work closely together over the two days.

We worked on a definition of e-learning and came to the conclusion that we were really talking about “e-stuff” - online ways of communicating, collaborating and learning. One recommendation was that we create an e-stuff manifesto for the UNU.

This was followed by the World Cafe, where we split into groups and each presenter was given five minutes to introduce their e-learning project.

At the end of day one, we highlighted the strengths and gaps facing the UNU in this area. We came to the conclusion that the UNU currently lacks both focus and the resources needed to effectively pursue e-learning.

Day two began with a recap, followed by a chat show style discussion about how to use e-learning in Africa.

Finally, we reviewed the new UNU strategic plan and voted (using dotmocracy) on the ways in which e-learning could support the UNU’s strategic goals. A full report will be accessible online soon!

Here’s an interesting and easy to follow community service announcement addressing food security from the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries.  One blogger Waxy, suggests nations like America could easily reversion the video for their own audiences.

A round of applause to the Tokyo-based producers of this great little piece Groovevisions

Source: Global Dashboard

On 16 November 2008, the Society for New Communications Research awarded the United Natons University and the WHO Centre for Health Development with the award for Wisdom Years documentary and e-case study.

The award for collaboration and co-creation was announced at a special gala dinner held in Cambridge Mass, on 14 November. This is the second year in a row that the UNU has recieved an award from the SNCR.

For more information, see the official annoucement.

We have recently gone online with the first on a new series of video documentaries from the United Nations University Media Studio. The video is titled ¨The Electric Sunflower¨, and it is part of Our World 2.0 initiative.

We will be calling this series VideoBriefs, as they are short high-definition documentaries which examine key issues relating to climate change, energy, and food security, the subjects at the heart of the Our World 2.0 webmagazine.

On addition to the webmagazine, this first videobrief is being shown daily on the big Akihabara screen of Yodobashi camera. As the project evolves we intend to find new and diverse distribution channels for the videobriefs.

Take a look at the video here:

http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/2008/10/29/electric-cars-hitting-roads-around-the-globe/

Here it is at last.

It has taken longer than we had planned, but we are delighted to announce the launch of the Japanese version of the Our World 2.0 web magazine.

You may recall that this web magazine deals with the interaction between climate change, peak oil and food security, and that we launched the English version in July 2008.

We have spent the past few months writing new articles and translating the entire web magazine. As we moved forward from now on, we hope to publish every article in English and Japanese at the same time.

We are also looking for people to help us run the web magazine and for sponsors to support its future development.

Michael Wesch and his class of digital ethnographers from Kansas State University have some interesting observations to share about the nature of Youtube. This hour long video gives an entertaining overview of the social developments of youtube and its vlogging community. If you want to skip to the good bits, there is a fairly comprehensive contents menu under the “more info” link on the actual youtube page. Thanks to Gary Hayes (Personalize Media and AFTRS) for passing on this lecture.