CC Image - Karen Cropper - Attribution

Martin Weller’s blog, The Ed Techie, was the first technology blog that I followed and he’s a constant stream of intrestingness. His latest post is really valuable for anyone interested in ed-tech generally, but also open educational models specifically. He has done interviews with a number of OU luminaries (Martin Bean, Grainne Conole, Andrew Law and Simon Buckinham-Shum) and basically asked them 4 questions:

• What are the benefits of technology for learning?
• What are the interesting areas around openness at the moment?
• Are there any interesting trends we should watch over the next few years?
• What do you think about the open, online approach of the conference?

The interviews are between 8 and 15 minutes long each.

I was particularly interested in Grainne Conole’s point about moving towards more open models of research and blogging ideas in progress to get the communities input rather than waiting to publish them in closed  journals.

The conference is running next week on the 22nd and 23rd June and he’s posted the agenda here. Follow Martin’s blog and his Tweets for more info.

PS: Trying to embed this playlist was an unexpected hassle. Ended up having to go into the source code of Martin’s blog and copying the embed code from there. Thanks to Steve for his help. Do you know an easier way?

What really struck me was the point he makes about the point of education being to prepare people for university entrance. I used to work in a training and development team in a telecoms company. We did a wide range of courses of varying levels of effectiveness but I now think back on the course called “Creativity Skills”. It was 1 day long and it was pointless.

If Ken Robinson is right then having this course in our catalogue was ludicrous – like trying to demolish Edinburgh Castle with a bent toothpick. We employee people having put them through an education system that values non-creative activity, given them a degree and then told them that they can only work effectively if they use their “innate creativity”. Well, that particular part of their brain hasn’t been properly encouraged since primary school and now  we think that a 1 day course will redress that particular imbalance.

Bonkers!

Again, I’m writing a post that has only tenuous links to ICT in education but it is still one small planet  that orbits that particular sun. Look at the post on Thru You I did recently. A fabulous example of creativity and ICT coming together.

There are fantastic tools  out on the web to encourage creativity and they’re either underused in education or actively banned.

Right, I’m off for a jam session with my best mate. Cheers!

Credit - Niv on Flickr

I can’t really justify putting this in an ed-tech blog but it’s my blog and I’ll do what I want. Apologies if you can’t get YouTube where you are but it’s worth a look if you are interested in what happens when social networking meets creativity.

Kutiman, Ophir Kutiel, an Israeli musician has scoured YouTube for music/video samples of all those amateur videos of people playing instruments or singing and mashed them up into a heavenly mix of…well go and listen.

My fave is track 05. Someday for it’s wierd mix of vintage synths and baby-sitting.

The educational lesson? There isn’t one really other than what is possible with Web 2.0 and imagination.

And we beheld it and lo, it did exactly what it was supposed to in a drag and drop-type way.

I really wanted to take it forward and provide a nice easy way for the students to give comments and rate the videos but that would have taken up hours of developer time. 

Now, along comes Fliggo! Yay!

In short, Fliggo allows you to set up your own video sharing site for free. You can then control who has access, who can upload and comment etc.

I’ve had a go so I can formally announce the arrival of “CHALK TUBE” our very own TV channel! Mostly as an experiment to test the software but if any of my faithful readership (both of you) want to post any videos to do with teaching using digital video please feel free – it’s moderated, mind so no filth!

It took about 5 minutes to set up and I’ve just uploaded videos I have elsewhere on YouTube. The picture quality is not great but will do for now. Nice and easy for us sub-genuis techies.

It would be a great free resource in schools and reasonably secure. Great for primaries who have been working on video or animation projects, excellent for media teachers who want to encourage their students to experiment and collaborate.

It’s free for the basic account but you can pay $15 a month for higher video quality, the ability to host on your won domain etc.

Into the Electric Chalk Resource page it goes…

Go here to see their website and Youtube channel…if you can!

But of course, Youtube is probably banned in your school. Certainly our broadband supplier, Yorkshire and Humber Grid for Learning helpfully “protects” children by banning it.

Careful now! Students might learn something!

Couldn’t Youtube be a learning resource, rather than a classroom liability? Teachers could be posting all sorts of stuff on their to help with learning and revision and it’s on students’ home ground as it were.

What would we actually be risking by allowing Youtube into the classroom that isn’t outweighed by the pedagogical benefits?