Ewan McIntosh | Design Thinking, Education & Learning

More creative writing - three words at a time

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  Originally uploaded by skihardkore

An additional new tech creative writing tool, to complement your Tweetories or student-created joined-up writing on Twitter, emerged last month on Facebook and I've been enjoying writing with friends, creating some weird stories. The "Just Three Words" application invites you and your friends to create whole stories, but each person can only contribute three words at any one time.

Just to give a flavour, here's one rated a 'ribtickler' by Facebookers in which I have had a dubious hand:

...supercharged bowel gurgled ominously and he was forced to ask Sarah for an alka-seltzer. Sarah knew the mistake was her's not to give, but to command! " My Lord, you must ratify Kyoto II (This Time without Fart-Clause-33b-A67) for the alka-seltzer to be established as a cure-all". Methane gas and undiluted CO2 emissions, plus excessive sulphate leaked from under Lord Underpant's kilt scorching the purple tarmac. The crowd could barely contain their chicken vindaloos, some didn't, the stench mingling with the foetid air, forming a cocktail of nausea inducing gas, which brought more chicken korma...

How would you continue it?

Both Twittories and the Just Three Words application could be used 'offline' in any language classroom. I wonder how many, though, would prefer to use their mobile or social network than a postit note in the 21st century classroom?

Twittories - 140 people write 140 characters for 1 story

  iEye 
  Originally uploaded by h.andras_xms

In Japan, some of the biggest selling novels this year have been created and then read on... mobile phones. Cameron at The Podcast Network has begun a wonderfully creative way of getting many people to write collaboratively on one story: get them to send their part of the story in a pre-defined sequence through their mobile phone.

First, 140 people have registered themselves by adding their name to the project wiki website. Then, using Twitter, which takes your mobile phone message and sends it out to the world, Cameron is able to add each person's 140 character-limit section of the story to those which precede it. As your turn comes up you receive a Twitter message on your mobile. You text your addition (having read your fellow writers' submissions to date) and so it goes on, until a 140 person, 140 characters each story is complete.

The first story is well underway, but there is plenty of room for people to register their interest for a bit of creative writing on the as yet untitled second story:

Twittory #1, "The Darkness Inside", will commence as soon as we have
140 people signed up below and will conclude, no matter where the story is up to, when we have the full 140 entries. 140 x 140 is... a story
with a maximum of 19600 characters.

If schools can get over themselves a bit in relation to the use of mobile phones for learning, this would be a great way to get some creative writing underway during the Christmas holidays, or simply as an ongoing 'starter-for-ten' exercise to get students tuned into their writing. You could do it for Modern Foreign Languages, too, especially as a 'fun' alternative to some of the drier work in advanced language courses.

Using the Wiimote to create a £40 multi-touch interactive whiteboard

Will must have finally ended up with some spare time hunting around YouTube this morning to find this. University researcher Johnny Chung Lee has taken a £34.25 Wiimote, some old ballpoint pens and some infrared buttons you could find in your Physics department to create a system that can turn any surface into a multi-touch interactive surface, much like that shown off my Jeff Han earlier this year.

Give the amount of effort Learning and Teaching Scotland has put into promoting gaming for learning, and the approval from our regulatory body that has been illustrated in the awarding of the George Gray Research prize to a project about Rollercoaster Tycoon for enterprise education, it's really great to see yet more uses for the technology that go beyond simply playing the games. In this case, it's just the remote control to the popular Wii gaming console.

And, as Will points out, it's a great example of the importance of sharing, the importance of openness in the research, teaching and learning processes. Johnny could have done what other academics do: present it at a big conference and get the plaudits years after having worked this out, meaning us mere mortals in the classroom would have had to either work it out the hard way or miss a great opportunity. He didn't. He presented on YouTube, and then took the process apart so that we can do it ourselves.

If only more teachers and academics shared their nuggets of brilliance in this way. Take a look yourself and be in awe.

TeachMeet08: spread the word and register for BETT

  TeachMeet08 
  Originally uploaded by Edublogger

TeachMeet08 at BETT, the top professional development unconference of its kind, is effectively ten days away, when you take school holidays into account. There are a few things you may need to do...

There are a few press articles coming out during the week at BETT which will mention TeachMeet08 so, if you want to make sure that you get a spot before the numbers are capped, please leave your name on the TeachMeet website and register for BETT as soon as possible.

Spread the word
Please also spread the word about what is an amazing professional development event, one of the best out there in the world. It's not just about technology, it's about the teaching behind it. If you know teachers in the south-east in particular, or if you know an international visitor to the BETT Show, then get them to come along on January 11th for that 'alternative' Friday night out.

Register for TeachMeet08 and BETT
Finally, even if you've already signed up to TeachMeet08 on the wiki webpage, you also need to register for BETT, in order to gain entry to Olympia on the Friday afternoon/early evening.

Sponsor the event
As ever, we're really grateful to sponsors for helping with the event. So far, though, we have the generous support of Emap, who are donating the venue, their staff's time in setting up and cleaning down, and, importantly the wifi. We also have had an offer of support from TxtTools, whose mobile phone text service will be used to allow the masses to communicate with the speakers all night long - good for those who haven't quite converted to Twitter yet.

If you would like to sponsor the event, no matter how little the amount, then please contact Emap, via me or your BETT Emap contact, who will handle your request.

Do it first. Make trouble. Inspire change.

Jim in The Highlands was quick to note Channel 4's move from £6m per year on educational television programming to a large part of £6m per year on online educational programming. Is educational TV dead on C4? Not quite, but it's certainly undergone some serious surgery to make it recognisable to a 2008 teen. Channel 4 is certainly living up to its mantra: Do it first. Make trouble. Inspire change. And I'm glad to have been part of it.

Yes, it's a bold experiment, but no, it's not to 'cash in' on anything. It's just using the web because that's what teens and tweens use most, and using the web that they use (adults tend to call it Web 2.0, for them it's just the web). As Channel 4 remains one of the few television channels in the UK to engage the tricky 14-19 age group (the only one?) this is just one more set of innovations in 25 years of innovation.

I was lucky enough earlier this year to have been appointed member of the fivesome that make up the Education Advisory Board of Channel 4 Television, and I'm very grateful to Learning and Teaching Scotland for supporting my time. I don't know how much we've helped shape the online programming other than saying 'yes' a lot, 'no' a few times and reassuring Matt Locke, Alice Taylor and Janey Walker that what they are doing is spot on. As Janey put it:

"In all conscience, Channel 4 could not continue to spend £6m on programming that is not engaging people."

Socially networked, playful, participative content is the only way we can create successful media to engage, motivate and inspire young people "on the box". The box these days is more likely to be a Nintendo DS screen or PC.

Matt and Alice, the commissioners, are both avid gamers, keen on everything from the world of alternate reality games to playing Zelda on the Nintendo DS. Working through some ideas with them on the Board has been a pleasure, and expanding on some of the ways we can engage young people on this 'slate' of programming as been incredibly challenging.

Jemima Kiss at the Guardian has the full write-up from the launch of the slate this week, and Kevin Anderson has speed-typed some good Matt Lockisms, but the thrust of development has been along these lines, which might also be interesting to consider for our classrooms and schools:

• The new 'programming' online is playful. That doesn't mean that it's trivial, but rather it's about getting young people to participate in the project, create the programme/site/knowledge/learning together. Teens will be encouraged to do this not on some mothership Channel 4 site, but rather on their own Bebos, blogs and Photobucket sites.
• It has a strong social element, so that teens are constantly part of a feedback loop on what it's like to grow up in 21st Century Britain.
• It's about 'playful exploration'. "The BBC tells you what you need to know. Channel 4 helps you ask the right questions."

I know that Matt and Alice have had to do a heck of a lot of work to convince production companies to change the way they pitch, propose and structure these much more playful, explorative, social 'programmes', where the TV programme might come as the end result of a year's online learning.

The things the indies have come with are great, and I'm so happy we can all start playing/viewing/talking about them:

Gaming projects include City of Vice by Littleloud, which invites the user to solve historical crimes from Georgian London, and Six to Start's project The Ministry, which explores privacy and identity online.

Phantasmagoria by EC1 encourages web users to explore their identity by tying together profiles across different social networking sites. An online project by Maverick Television will encourage teenagers to use web-based tools that can help them to set up online businesses.

The broadcaster says it wants to encourage a more collaborative, supportive environment for young entrepreneurs, moving away from the cliched and aggressive view of business seen on programmes such as Dragon's Den.

One thing is sure: the audience isn't on the television. So maybe it's not that "high risk" a strategy after all...

OECD's pat on the back for Scotland's education

I feel proud of what we get away with have in Scottish education, the relative ease with which we can do certain things on the net, design alternatives in our curricula, escape, if we wish, from what 'has always happened in our school'. In our work at LTS we continue to try to give more autonomy to teachers to get their job done in ever more effective ways. The OECD agrees:

Scotland consistently performs at a very high standard in OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and has one of the most equitable school systems in the OECD. These achievements reflect Scotland’s strong commitment to improvement in education.

Via Don.

Final day of LeWeb3, wherever you are

I'm up ridiculously early this morning to get some productive stuff going before it's dark again outside, having felt that most of yesterday slipped away from under me. I hadn't spoken to a real person until nearly 6pm when Dean in Moose Jaw, Canada, was kind enough to have a video Skype for a half-hour. Who says technology stops us communicating with 'real' people?

However, I'll be tuned in soon to the live webcast of LeWeb3 and referring back regularly to The Guardian's thankfully brief coverage of the main points (when the panelists get going I find it a bit tricky to keep my attention span up; Kevin somehow manages).

Ironically, there have been arguably more useful blog posts about the LeWeb3 talks this year coming from outside the venue, outside the country even, as the flaky wifi in the venue, along with 2000 people trying to use video Twitter tool Seesmic on it, keeps cutting bloggers short in Paris. Yet another reason not to have made my carbon footprint even bigger this year.

The Guitar Hero Robot - incredible!

This afternoon, while watching the LeWeb3 live feed I was able to rush to capture this amazing robot, created for the sole purpose of playing the Playstation game, Guitar Hero. Watch and enjoy. If you want to see how Guitar Hero has been used in the classroom to help students discover the skills of entrepreneurship and develop their creative writing, take a look at Derek Robertson's case study at LTS.

Update: More information on who's behind this and some closeups.

Open Yale: unlocking learning

I don't know if the marketing guys at one of the States' top university's picked up on the rather unfortunate play on words of their new initiative, 'Open Yale', but the oxymoron leads to a wonderful discovery, launched today. Yale University is making some of its most popular undergraduate courses freely available to anyone in the world with access to the net.

There's downloadable and streaming video, audio only and searchable transcripts of each lecture. Syllabi, reading assignments, problem sets and other materials accompany the courses are also provided. It's still pretty old-skool pedagogy, but a valiant attempt to bring us the likes of Professor Paul Bloom at no cost, to our living rooms and studies.

Why are we 'addicted', and not just enthusiastic?

Joi Ito at LeWeb3 talks about gaming in interesting terms. Isn't it funny how we never say that someone is 'addicted to church' or 'addicted to books' but we seem quite happy to say that it's 'awful that young people are addicted to gaming'?

See some of the cool work we are doing to raise attainment and student perception of self using games in the classroom, or share in some of the ideas I've been sharing this past few months.