Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Education

Slugger O'Toole was drunk as a rule but sober enough to keep typing: my latest investment in local political news

 

This week I announced my latest 4iP investment in the Northern Ireland-based political blog Slugger O’Toole, in the fund’s first co-investment with Northern Ireland Screen. The investment adds to a range of web products running along the theme of “keeping an eye on money and power”, providing a means of exploring localised political debate at scale.

Working with Belfast-based developer and instigator of beautiful things Andy McMillan (@GoodOnPaper), we're helping to revamp the Slugger site for existing readers, with a relaunch of the site planned for the New Year. The goal is to make what is currently a crowded, busy and perhaps intimidatingly quick-posting blog more accessible for newbies and more enjoyable for current readers and commenters.

The next step is to take the most influential political blog in Northern Ireland and turn it into a sustainable collaborative public service media platform, moving the means of pluralistic political debate forward elsewhere in the UK. We're also keen to explore how we amplify the voices of those commenting: the debates under each post are just as vital as the posts themselves.

Slugger is unique among political blogs for its combination of public service levels of trust with the blogosphere’s forensic and adversarial demands. According to a recent poll, 96% of the Northern Irish Assembly’s politicians read it regularly, and it's demonstrably reaching deep into local political issues. With many major political news stories being broken by its readers before the mainstream media gets hold of them, it is also Northern Ireland’s journalistic watering-hole of choice.

The Obama social media effect: in Northern Ireland for nearly a decade.

For politicians and the public, the value of good political blogs has never been clearer. The last twelve months have shown what the power of social media can do to inspire and engage the public in the decision-making processes that affect them, from digging though expenses claims to helping claim electoral victory for the Obama administration.

But proximity to what 'real' people think and the provision of a forum to amplify those voices is what Slugger O'Toole has been doing for the best part of seven years.

Why did I want to pursue an investment in Slugger O'Toole, though, and not any one of the other political blogs out there? Slugger's readership is large, and arguably more varied than any other political blog, especially given its geographic focus: to have both your national Assembly and a critical mass of your local councillors coming to you for genuine breaking stories on a regular basis is something that any national newspaper would be content with.

Their support was particularly demonstrable on Tuesday night, as nearly 300 politicians, journalists and readers from across Northern Ireland packed into Belfast's Black Box for the Slugger Awards. For goodness sake: even Bob Geldof joined us.

I'm particularly fond of Slugger’s ethic of “play the ball not the man”. 'People want to debate the issues, not the politicians', believes its founder Mick Fealty. Many of his political blogger compadres would and do disagree. But when we've excluded the political hacks and scandal junkies, the vast majority of us want change on specific issues and we want a place to debate them where our politicians see our view. Slugger provides that. In spades.

At a time when politicians and citizens are subject to more noise than signal in a growing web of unmoderated “citizen-produced democracy”, and national news repeatedly fails to account for local political issues, 4iP’s investment is a timely one.

In the next four weeks we will finalise a refreshed design for the site, with new functionality in the New Year which should help spread Slugger's ethic further into the mainstream, further into its already highly localised audiences. We will uncover yet more voices that need amplified for the eyes and ears of the political classes in Stormont, Westminster, Brussels and Strasbourg; we will see Slugger pushing these representatives to get more done for their people, rather than just talking about it.

Towards Spring we will see Slugger trying to replicate the same, honest "play the ball" political coverage in Scotland, and perhaps further afield. We're building some business cases around the work Slugger's authors are arguably the most capable people in the world at carrying out, having lived through Western Europe's worst civil war and come out the other side with an online forum for genuine political discussion between all sides. Slugger will help fill a significant media gap of coverage and comment on politics at local levels while having a growing impact nationally in Westminster.

This is not a 4iP 'investment' on the same level as some of our six figure sums, but with the impact Slugger-the-blog is already having, Slugger-the-platform is a win for "amplifying voices" from the word go. It is exactly where Channel 4 at its most cantankerous should be.

Picture Credit: John Baucher, with permission. Blogger Alan In Belfast picks up his Martin Rowson portrait after winning Slugger Awards Blogger Of The Year for his "election monitoring" of the darker side of the EU election processes.

Can you help shape the future of informal learning? Apply within.

A group of folk who I believe are spearheading informal learning in the most unlikely of ways are looking for some help, and edu.blogs.com readers are almost certainly likely to be able to help.

Do you undertake some informal learning already?
Do you want to do more informal learning but find you can't: lack of time, motivation or space?

If you answer yes to either question and want to help out a gang of really tuned-in people, please leave a comment on this post, making sure to include an email address, and someone will be in touch shortly. And thanks - you'll be participating in one of the most exciting informal learning opportunities going.

Picture credit: What is the mass of a question mark?

Remember that there are ways and means to change behaviour

Via Euan I saw this lovely example of how we might think about changing behaviour, not always in the way we'd associate with those in positions of authority. Mind you, I wonder if only the Dutch Danish Police could get away with doing this...

Technology can help parents connect better with school

Becta, the UK education technology agency, has been looking into how schools communicate with parents and vice versa. Their initial research has discovered some home truths that, unfortunately, are all too recognisable:

• ‘Invisible’ parents: Of the parents who admitted they rarely made contact with their child’s teacher, nearly a quarter (22%) said they did not see the benefit for their child. The majority (67%) of school staff said that these parents simply do not realise how important their support is in their child’s development. And 60% said that these parents often feel their job stops at the school gates.

• Confidence issues: 42% of teachers said the reason so-called ‘invisible’ parents have so little contact with the school is that they lack the confidence to discuss their child with teachers - 43% of school staff admit parents might find them ’difficult to approach sometimes.’ One in five (19%) parents are worried about bothering teachers and more than a fifth (22%) say they don’t want to add to the teacher’s workload, resulting in many taking a back seat in their child’s education.

• Lack of information: More than one in ten (11%) of the parents who do initiate communication said they felt dismissed by teachers as an ‘overly demanding’ parent and a further 11% commented they often feel they are imposing on the teacher’s time. More than a third (36%) of school staff encounter parents who want ‘constant reassurance’ and others (19%) who try to ‘influence everything that goes on in the classroom.’

• Lack of effective communication channels: 89% of parents say technology could help them become better informed about their child’s education so that they can then have more focused face-to-face discussions with teachers. However, despite all schools having electronic communication tools, 46% of parents say their schools don’t communicate with them in this way.

Read the full research report on the Becta site.

So in the red corner we have some parents who can't get enough information and conversation about their children's learning, with teachers who resent having parents crossing some imaginary line of learning and teaching competence. In the blue corner we have other parents who the schools want to see more of and teachers who think that, actually, coming in to see a teacher must be too threatening for at least a quarter of parents.

If only more schools took a leaf out of the book that we know works. When Dave Gilmour and I set up eduBuzz.org over three years ago we had one simple aim: get people sharing what goes on inside classrooms and the learning will improve. We set up a simple-to-use blogging platform on the nascent WPMU and worked with clusters of enthusiastic teachers to get them sharing regularly - twice a week at least - on what was going on in their classrooms. We got them to get their students to take over that role. Parents loved it, with web traffic peaking just before parents left their offices to come home and then late at night when the kids were in bed (the red wine surfers, as I imagined them). I described how we did it in more detail back in 2007.

We ended up with 3m page views a month as the nodes of conversation between parents, teachers, students and managers lit up. Above all, I heard first hand how parents enjoyed being able to see in a light touch manner what their children were up to and, indeed, when they did meet the teacher face-to-face the interactions were deeper and more friendly.

In 2006, what we had achieved is effectively what users of Twitter enjoy so much - ambient intimacy. Stephen Heppell has often referred to the "nearly now" of our technologies, and I think it's the same thing.

By allowing parents to take out of their school what they want, on their own terms, at their own pace, we are almost certain to encourage more interaction from our least engaged parents. Those whom the research calls "overly demanding" will find a new quality to their face-to-face interactions; gone are the questions about what their son is having for lunch, what the next classroom project will be, and what the plans are for Red Nose Day. Instead, those "overly demanding" parents will start to engage in the whys and hows of learning, being demanding in a much more positive sense.

Is this utopic? I'd say not, because we did it. But we did it with some degree of top-down support that is not always visible in other organisations, and I'm not convinced bottom-up initiatives alone can achieve the impact required quickly enough to gain acceptance in the long-term.

Pic: Creative Commons from Sean Dreilinger

"People act different behind cameras": strangely disturbing cartoon

Via Graham Linehan's blog and Techcrunch is This American Life examining our attitudes to censorship, citizen journalism and how people change when they're behind a camera.

Shocker! | Cable TV News and Public Sector Leaders: They're The Same!

I love watching Jon Stewart's continued picking apart of the bias in cable TV news, notably in Fox (the YouTube clips should suffice as explanation). Now, Seth talks about how Cable TV News' attitudes can be seen in any board room around the world:

1. Focus on the urgent instead of the important.
2. Vivid emotions and the visuals that go with them as a selector for what's important.
3. Emphasis on noise over thoughtful analysis.
4. Unwillingness to reverse course and change one's mind.
5. Xenophobic and jingoistic reactions (fear of outsiders).
6. Defense of the status quo encouraged by an audience self-selected to be uniform.
7. Things become important merely because others have decided they are important.
8. Top down messaging encourages an echo chamber (agree with this edict or change the channel).
9. Ill-informed about history and this particular issue.
10. Confusing opinion with the truth.
11. Revising facts to fit a point of view.
12. Unwillingness to review past mistakes in light of history and use those to do better next time.

From Seth Godin's Blog

I'd say there are a good few educational and Governmental establishments where at least 11 of these hold true in day-to-day practice. Shouldn't every organisation, public or private, check itself on a regular basis against these statements? If you did it on your own one right now, how many statements can be seen in your work?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Fox News Fear Imbalance
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

[Video not available outside US]

Pic: Bush takes responsibility. Jon looks shocked.

Why backward social-network-banning education authorities are wrong

Where many education authorities continue to routinely block, filter and ban social networks not just for youngsters but for teaching and management staff, new research from Gartner (via Euan Semple) reveals yet more logic behind opening up networks and encouraging teachers, learners and managers to network online as well as at their twice-a-year in-service get-togethers:

"While a job may be regarded as an economic transaction, the human brain thinks of the workplace as a social system," she said. Social networking can make employees "feel valued, a part of a community, and earn the respect of peers."

Read more here. I therefore continue to be disheartened by the backward policies of regions such as Argyll and Bute, who admit that "social networking sites are blocked in all schools as policy... Staff are not able to maintain or access personal sites such as their own blogs or Twitter pages through the council's network." They want teachers to share practice through "all available means", but one can only assume they mean the telephone, one-to-one email or pigeon carrier. A shame really, since when I was a student at school there in the late eighties we were using Macs for desktop publishing and the authority area was a world leader in video conferencing for isolated community learning aeons before the rest of the world got the Skype collaboration bug. But, as they say, you're only as good as your last gig...

Three years ago the national education agency in Scotland and Don Ledingham, the then education chief in East Lothian, took the lead and paid me public cash to help amplify the groundbreaking, award-winning work with colleagues in East Lothian, who continue to reap the educational and managerial benefits of a more-or-less open network and promotion of sharing practice through blogging and Twitter amongst many platforms.

It is therefore becoming increasingly embarrassing to me that, three years on, most education authorities in Scotland continue to be ignorant of the possibilities, fearful of the occasional [human] mistake (and at a loss, it would seem, about what to do when someone does make such a human error).

Adding to the embarrassment is the apparent own-goal scored by me and my colleagues whose learnings are often adopted more enthusiastically in countries elsewhere around the globe while those leading education on our own doorstep put caution ahead of innovation. Our £35m national intranet has just added functionality of blogs and wikis, three years after I recommended they be the keystone 'learning diaries' of a personal profile. This is good, but it is slow.

What do I reckon could be done (only my tuppence worth, I add...) In a recent interview for Merlin John's new Innovators series I outline how I believe things could change:

• design new and use existing tools and learning spaces that entice and delight young people, rather than tools contrived "for schools" which we have to mandate them to use - if the kid had a choice, would they use that or the competition?;
• plan less up front, 'for the sake of planning', creating time and room for movement as innovations come up;
• stand still and do nothing: carve out time to look at what is working in the world around you and steal, steal, steal (and give credit where it's due);
  
• if there's a bandwagon, jump on it and see if it goes anyhere (a Coulterism, but not that kind of Coulterism);
• don't do pilots, just do the real deal from the start (you can still start small and fail quietly, but the word 'pilot' tends to preempt an assumption of failure).
  

Pic of phone [what you can use to collaborate in the meantime]
Thanks to Doug Belshaw's post for making me go back and fill in more detail on the above bullets.

Channel 4 signs worldwide-first YouTube deal: watch our telly on your interweb box

YouTube and Channel 4 (who pay my mortgage) have signed a pioneering content deal which will make the broadcaster’s original programmes available on demand, in full and free-of-charge via YouTube in the UK. By early 2010 all of our current programming and about 3000 hours of archive will be available to search and view at your leisure.

This is big news, as it marks the first time that a broadcaster anywhere in the world has made a comprehensive catch-up schedule available on YouTube, providing Channel 4 with additional advertising inventory and reach: YouTube last week announced it was serving over 1 billion video streams every day.

Under the terms of the deal, Channel 4 will make its 4oD video-on-demand ‘catch-up’ service of new programmes available via YouTube shortly after television transmission, including series that have already proved particularly popular with online audiences such as Skins, Hollyoaks, The Inbetweeners and Peep Show. YouTube users will also be able to access around 3,000 hours of full length programming from the Channel 4 archive at any given time, including shows like Brass Eye, Derren Brown, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Teachers and many others.

The partnership runs for an initial term of at least three years and the two parties will share advertising revenues on an agreed formula. The deal will create significant value for Channel 4 and its independent production partners, generating additional revenue to invest in creating high quality, original content.

Channel 4's will have a branded presence on YouTube and will be able to sell advertising around its content on the site. The agreement also allows Channel 4 to sell advertising around some non-Channel 4 content on YouTube for the first time, expanding the amount of inventory available to its sales team and bringing its considerable expertise in advertising around full length TV content to the YouTube platform. It will help Channel 4 develop its advertising sales proposition in digital, including the use of YouTube’s demographic targeting tools to target advertising against Channel 4 content on YouTube.

The deal builds significantly on Channel 4 and YouTube’s existing partnership; Channel 4 was the first broadcaster to sell pre-roll advertisements on YouTube clips, and the first UK broadcaster (before iPlayer) to put all its programmes online for viewing on demand with 4oD.

Simon Cowell's letter to his younger, cocky self

In an age where celebrity is held higher esteem by tweens and teens than ever before, Simon Cowell has emerged as an unlikely superstar: old enough to be most teens' dad, appearing to have the Midas touch where everything he touches turns to gold, the evil-turned-soft record label mogul.

In the last week, he's written a letter to his younger self which every admiring fame- and money-obssessed youngster should read to gain a worthwhile reality check.

On the eve of his 50th birthday last week wrote a letter to his younger self (A letter to my shallow, reckless, cocky younger self). It charts the rise and fall and rise and another fall of the boy who thought he had it all when, in fact, his bank account read zero:

"Look at you. You look like a complete idiot. Could you be any worse? You are about as bad an example of Eighties' excess as you could possibly be.

"You are overconfident, far too cocky and dressed from head to toe in expensive designer gear. Armani and Versace. Oh, nothing but the best for you Simon! It hasn't dawned on you yet, you idiot, that you can't afford any of this stuff.

"You believe that everything is just going to get bigger and bigger and that you are an intrinsic part of it all. You are up there, riding so high, that you cannot see what is really happening.

"What the hell is that outside your interior designed, four-bedroom house in Fulham? Please don't tell me it is a Porsche? Doh! Of course it is, what else could it be? You are driving a Porsche because everyone did in those days."

Read more of it over on the Daily Mail, and, if you recognise the cocky youngster about to lose it all (for the first time) sitting in your classroom, maybe send them the link.

When "related items" goes wrong

After a tip from Twitter buddy @dav_hamill at Edinburgh Coffee Morning today I discovered some of the pitfalls of "related items" type searches on, say Amazon. On the German Amazon site a search for "aluminium baseball bat" turns up some unexpected results, show that even muggers, bandits and thugs seek out good deals on their kit: