edublogs

Scotland teaching agency LTS launches iTunes U

I'm pleased to see that former colleagues in Learning and Teaching Scotland have managed to get their LTS iTunes U site opened, following our friends at the Open University. Scotland heads out as the first iTunes U provider of professional development material podcasts for those working with 3-18 year olds.

It's not been an easy journey. In 2005, on joining LTS to head up their Modern Languages work, I challenged the organisation to get podcasting (audio) the entire Scottish Learning Festival contents, and video as much as possible. Four years on we're still not able to access good quality recordings of everything, despite the costs of doing so being derisory and the long-tail interest being high - just take a look at the figures viewing what might be conceived as obscure education topics on the Slideshare site I created for the event.

We also had a challenge getting more audio and video material out in subsequent years through the now-defunkt Connected Live site, intended to be an evolution of the print magazine with media-rich addition to the limits of the atom presented by the magazine. Arguably, as with all social media projects in the large, it took two years for the culture to change sufficiently for blogging one's experiences to be seen as part and parcel of one's work, not a geeky pass-time. Mike Coulter along with Saint Andrew of Brown and others have continued to develop that culture slowly and successfully over the past year. We now have an education agency with elements that have moved the organisation from its glossy corporate sheen, to a more 'honest', approachable voice.

LTS's involvement with iTunes U is part of that evolution, and signifies a small victory for those of us who had been pushing for some more budget and effort to be spent on bite-sized professional development designed for small mobile screens, at a time when there was no YouTube or video podcast device.

The organisation's biggest challenge is to make sure it does not become the voice of the marketer or a self-referential poster-child for the politics of education, but a place where grassroots honesty and constructive reflection on our teaching and learning practice can be amplified.

Magnetism explained beautifully

Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

If you're a science teacher trying to explain magnetism, you could do a lot worse than showing this beautiful animated film produced for Channel 4 with Arts Council England. As the blurb says:

"Are we observing a series of scientific experiments, the universe in flux, or a documentary of a fictional world?"

Plenty of other vids for scientists, geographers, writers over on the Vimeo site.

Update: Worth reading the comments underneath, reiiterating why finding knowledge on, say, magnetism is increasingly easy but gaining a foot in the door of learning about this might still require a talented teacher with an inspiring vid to kick things off.

Sonny Magaña live, after BLC08

One of the things I really do miss about traveling around the world and staying over in kind strangers' houses is the craic that you can have as you talk about the off-conference off-consultancy stuff: music, books, films...

Last summer in Boston, having presented the keynote at Building Learning Communities 08 (this year it's Mssrs Heppell, Weinberger and Benjamin Zander of TED fame), the conference host Alan November had my whole family around at his lovely house in Marblehead, MA, for a weekend of food, drink, fishing and music, along with the Davitts, Torres and Promethean's very own Sonny Magaña. A man of hidden talents, Sonny woo-ed us all with his tunes and charm. Take a peek at the above composition, in HD on YouTube. One memorable moment amongst many.

Sir Ken Robison's The Element - on RSA Vision

Having blogged some of the key points I picked up from Ken Robinson's The Element, you can hear some of them from the horse's mouth from the film quickly chucked up from last week's lecture at the RSA in London.

The Alternative School: a mainstream model

"Why should I learn Algebra...? I have no intention of ever going there." Billy Connolly had a point.

Schooling, despite the concentration on curriculum and assessment reform in recent years, largely still hasn't tackled the main issue: meaningless (to young people) pedagogy. It's not the fault of teachers, of course, but of those who "manage change" not managing to give enough time for teachers to think about what they would do differently from the last 400 years. One day extra a year for "the biggest innovation in curriculum in a generation" is to ridicule the enormity of the task in hand.

Cue The Alternative School (TAS), a non-profit initiative for those kids who don't 'get' regular schooling, and is arguably doing already what most schools strive for and don't quite attain across the board. Their new blog gives a flavour of some of the activity they have been up to, and their latest post features a superb film starring some of the young people involved in the programme. One to keep an eye on and learn from as things develop more in the open with their new blog.
Bunking Off - The Alternative School from Kirsty Anne Pugh on Vimeo.

Wordia - reinventing the dictionary

One word at a time, Michael Birch, former co-founder of Bebo, has been working on a new project to change the way we look at defining words. Wordia allows you and a host of rather entertaining and famous people to take the HarperCollins definition of the word and attach its meaning to you in the form of a quick YouTube-powered video.

Delightfully simple, potentially powerful, Birch and his co-producers understand the importance of a good story to find and remember the meaning of something new. Amongst my faves has to be Quentin Blake's deeper understanding than most of illustration. Top class.

Subverting democratic process for democracy: video republic

One of the challenges of 4iP is to create some projects that help us all get more direct democracy than current 'democratic' systems afford. Apparently we needn't try too hard: YouTube's doing it already.

The systems have been unable to change quickly enough (or at all) beyond the 'safe' model that encourages elites to represent us (as Billy Connolly has said: anyone who wants to be a politician should, as a consequence, never be allowed to become one). Social media means we don't have to continue down the path of this elite choosing which issues are important enough to take on; we can use the wisdom of the crowd to filter and prioritise issues, and even get around to sorting some of those out amongst themselves.

The new fascinating read from Demos on the "Video Republic" shows just how far YouTube and other video sites have gone in opening up alternative democratic routes for youngsters. And, true to form, there's a YouTube video explaining this, too.

John Connell picked the item up from this parish's online bookmarks and has speedily summarised the main issues, all of which touch on areas that still require development, though, or just cogniscence by those in positions of power to do something about it. Basically: there's more to be gained from us all, foot soldiers and political or decision-making elites, harnessing the power that online video has unleashed:

• Preparing young people for ‘digital citizenship’
• Liberating the audiovisual creative commons
• Broadcasters, both public and private, should release the audio-visual material gathering dust in their archives rather than ensnaring it in complex and expensive digital rights disputes.
• A digital copyright amnesty:
  There are some categories of older public service broadcast material that could be afforded Creative Commons status. This process could be encouraged by a digital rights amnesty where copyright holders relinquish ownership to the public.
• Tackling unsuitable content:
  Rather than looking to censor online content – which has been shown to be ineffective - regulation should be based on developing peer or community led censorship and age ratings. Video-hosting platforms should enable involve users in what content to include and exclude on their sites.
• Internet social responsibility
• ISPs, video-hosting services and social networking sites should pool a small portion of their profits into a foundation to support video making, widen internet access.
• A ‘virtual video-making academy’ funded by the private sector would improve the quality of videos on and offline.
• Setting the statistics free:
  Most important information about online activity still remains out of reach of the public. Video-sharing platforms should collaborate with bodies such as national statistics agencies and academic institutions to release statistics.
• Connecting the ‘republic’ with mainstream politics:
  Political figures need to avoid using online video to communicate in the same way that they would use television. Instead they should find innovative ways of harnessing the enthusiasm of their supporters.
• Official bodies like the Central Office of Information should initiate the creation of short videos that detail the processes of democracy, decision making and public service in the UK.

All of these could be met with "it's easier said than done"; it would be rather cool for 4iP to just do it rather than talking about it.

Are you part of this, or just a reflection of it?

The thing about social media is that you have to be, ahem, social. That means you have to be in it, not anti-social by ignoring people or trashing others' work. It's a shame that one of the largest ad agencies out there, McCann Erickson, feels the need to rip-off others' work, without even a casual link out to the people they're attempting to copy.

Common Craft have for years now provided the web with superb, short, witty videos explaining the most complex areas of the live web. They have been viewed millions of times, blogged by thousands. They're part of the currency of the web, appearing on Governmental and company intranets and external sites. Why, then, have McCann repackaged/stolen the idea and produced something that's mediocre at best, plain boring rather than plain English? Their version of Web 2.0 in Plain English is presented by someone with a clean corporate accent, the images used tarnished by the polish of corporate graphic artists.

Any company or organisation stands to gain a heck of a lot more linking out to the talent that's there already, employing it if it needs something more specific than is currently provided. Fair enough, McCann's corporate customers may not be connected (yet) into the world of Common Craft, but McCann are in a position to create some real change by introducing them to the real literature, rather than the York Notes version of it.

Update: Having met a nice chap from McCann the other day, the video's inspiration has since been added. Good job, guys! :-)

Everything you ever wanted to know about YouTube

The video-sharing website has been perhaps the easiest one in the new media family for institutions and workplaces to ban, filter and decry. This superb hour from Michael Wesch explains, from beginning to end, the anthropology of YouTube, and will perhaps begin to show to those who make the decisions how much more there is to sharing the moving image than they could ever imagine. Watch it on YouTube, and pump it up to the high quality version. Watch it to the end, and share it with someone in your institution. And yes, I did learn how to Soulja Boy after watching it.

I met the Walrus: John Lennon on participative culture

I'm making some Beatles references in this morning's keynote at the Alberta 1-2-1 Summer Institute in Calgary. In my morning aggregator rummage I found this gem, an animation produced in the space of nearly 40 years, by a child who became a man. For me, many of the messages about achieving peace through the equipment and space of the Establishment could be translated into the kind of daily struggles some of us have in our domains.

For me, it's trying to inspire people to make a little extra push in the name of innovation, learning something new or make a little trouble to see where it goes. Take five minutes out to watch this and let me know if you see any parallels with your way of thinking, working, living. From YouTube:

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatles fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon's every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon's boundless wit, and timeless message.