Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Learning

Modern jazz derived from mathematical codes and sequences

One for my dad (a musician) and for Darren (a maths teacher), from BoingBoing comes the new release from jazz saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa:

"Codebook blends improvisational jazz with rhythms and melodies derived from beautiful mathematical concepts and equations -- while the drummer beats out hidden Morse Code messages (.mp3 - I'll be practicising this tonight!). ...Returning to the realm of number theory, the tune "Further and In Between" is based on the cyclical number 142857. Like all cyclical numbers, this one has some very strange properties; for example, if you multiply it by 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6, you get the same digits in a different configuration (for example, 2 x 142857 = 285714)."

As everyone who's seen me try to buy a round in the pub knows, I gave up maths early at school,
but had someone thought of linking jazz to numbers I might have paid more attention ;-)

More mp3s and the full article in Wired.

Sims for digital storytelling

Pinging through the stratosphere from Raleigh, USA to Glasgow, Scotland is this story about an innovative use of the Sims. Mechelle De Craene has her students with additional support needs telling their stories through the life simulation game. I've seen the use for the Sims in foreign language classes to 'live' in the language, but had never considered this different way of digital storytelling.

What happens if I slip up on my blog?

All I can hope is that they don't sack me like this.

Why would anyone want to geotag a photo?

I can't count the number of educators and family members who have asked this very question since I piped up about geotagging. I normally get some other flippant aside, about how geographically locating your published photos is something only geeks and people with too much time would do.

Well, I've blogged about educational uses for geotagging photos before, just scratching the surface, too. But I also think there is something primordial about geotagging, since nearly 1.3 million pics were geotagged in Flickr in the first 24 hours from the launch of their geotagging capability. What is it, then that makes people want to geotag?

Kids as teachers as marketers

  Film At Work 
  Originally uploaded by timsamoff.

I have taken a real passion for marketing in recent years since working with some of France's top marketers in Paris, way back in 2000. Teaching the Directors of Bulgari, Take2Games, Setec (who built most of La Défense) and Clark (who make green forklift trucks) how to market their products in English got me an insight into an industry that for which I have now got the bug.

I'm really glad to have found at least eight youngsters from East Lothian who, apparently, might want to share this passion. Yesterday I finally met the S6 students from Musselburgh Grammar School and Knox Academy who are going to form the official film crew for SETT The Learning Festival 2006. Much respect to Learning and Teaching Scotland, who could quite easily just have paid for a professional firm to come in and do the job in a clean sweep. Instead of the easy option, LTS have opted to support eight new film-makers and marketers in their filming of one of Europe's biggest educational conferences.

We'll be learning about the different shots, building a story, doing a good recce, making a storyboard, making pre-planned workflows, working out what opportunities might come on the fly, editing... The BBC's film resources on my del.icio.us account have been priceless, and have helped unearth a lot of the things I have only observed or been in front of during my outings on the box. Above all, they will learn how to present something to the world, something they themselves don't understand yet but will have to help thousands of people 'get' between now and next year's event.

Student turned teacher turned marketer.

The big question...
The real ambition, of course, is that this extra-curricular activity becomes part of day-to-day teaching where it would help kids make more sense of the subject or the world around them. The process involved in explaining things through film is the equivalent of making the kids 'teach' their viewers. We all know what happens when we have to teach something - we become better at it ourselves.

What's stopping this? Well, I'd like to ask you. Partners in Excellence and our own staff in East Lothian have, for years, done extra curricular film-making far more than curricular film-making. Why is that? What are the barriers that need moving in order to make this more realistic as part of the learning process?

Wes takes blog visit maps to another level

Wesley Friar has created a sample KML file that will load up Google Maps with indications of educational bloggers. This allows kids to see in a global context how connections can be made. I think it's a great concept for helping people realise the net is not some abstract thing but a series of real, connected people in real, connected places. Better still, he's hopefully going to add some more Scottish bloggers on it.

Getting Dynamic

  Our Dynamic Earth 
  Originally uploaded by beck_cox.

The past two days have been really energising (read: busy) working on the beginnings of two very different and very large projects. One of them kicked off with a meeting at East Lothian HQ with Dr Krista McKinzey, who is coordinating a new Scottish Executive partnership between the outreach services of the superb Our Dynamic Earth (pictured) and the Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick. Also offering an interesting insight, and confirming that new technologies and marketing are insatiable bed-buddies, was Lynda Dalgleish from the Seabird Centre.

Both places have been school visit fodder for many years now, have pretty and well-visited (and one-way) websites. Their education services are second-to-none for those who choose to visit the centres. However, Krista and Lynda have both seen the power of new technologies from what is going on in East Lothian and want to make that educational opportunity spread beyond their doors and into classrooms wherever they are.

The best route I felt was to couple their existing web presences with something more sociable. If I want to know what the Seabird Centre is really like I don't want to speak to a tourist guide half as much as I want to speak to one of the wardens who looks after the birds on a daily basis. I want to see the photos from his mobile phone camera the minute a basking shark passes by. Better still, if I'm taking a group of kids there I want them to be able to contribute to a corpus of 'expert' work with their photos and audio recordings. It's Sonic Postcards, blogging and podcasting stirred and set to bake...

The possiblities then became apparent as I Flickrd the simple basking shark example live onto the web for Krista and Lynda: they have existing partnerships with nature reserves and science museums all over the world. This would not only provide a means of sharing information but would allow them to become the brokers in inter-school linkups on themes.

"Wouldn't it be great to chart basking sharks as they move from the north of Scotland down to the warmer waters?" Well, with a Technorati watchlist that's exactly what we did, from Shetland to Cornwall via the Isle of Skye, over a period of a couple of months of blog posts (just flick back three or four pages). For the Seabird Centre, which links up with other organisations to track nature and environmental issues, this is a simple way of tracking information as it, quite literally, moves around the planet.

We're going to help Our Dynamic Earth and the Seabird Centre to try these things out with real live kids before coming to a conclusion on just how much more beneficial this is, but I, for one, am really looking forward to learning lots myself.

Update 1: Wes reports on a nature deficit disorder mentioned in Edutopia - are nature and technology imcompatible?

Update 2: TES article on a great use of mobile phones in an art gallery setting.

Help create a new poem

John blogs about a poetry blog post which, 15 comments later, had led to a wonderful brand new poem, the work a collaboration between a drama teacher in Georgia, USA, a primary school pupil in Glasgow's East End and her gran. He's now looking for more poetry collaborators on the Sandaig Poet's page.

Andy's Apartment Layout Meme for Technical Drawing

Andy's Apartment Layout Meme
Originally uploaded by andycarvin.

I don't know if they call it technical drawing still, but Andy Carvin's requests to readers to download, alter and upload their version of his apartment layout provides the inspiration for any class where students could adapt a basic design.

When I was at school I distinctly remember having to make things in Techie (Design Technology). Every time there was improvement as I copied from those who knew how to do this kind of thing better. Had we all put our designs up on Flickr we could have made a better job of picking out the good points in others' design and work out a way of integrating it to our own work.

Anyway, maybe Andy himself would appreciate the thoughts of a few hundred children on how a new apartment should be laid out. Hmmm, first of all, let's give the Master Bedroom to the baby...

Via Dave Weinberger.

Talking sharks

basking shark
Originally uploaded by Ásta Sif.

I'm with Krista and Lynda from the Scottish Seabird Centre looknig at possibilities for kids to moblog their photos of coastal walks. Have you seen any basking sharks recently in East Lothian?