Remembering sharing the past and uncovering the future by serendipity !!

As regular readers know I live in Ipswich in the UK.

I was following up on this story from Mates at radiowaves ironically forwarded from Mike Short ( I fogot to blog it first time round oops) .

Their Past Your Future is a project run by the Imperial War Museum, funded by The Big Lottery. More information about the project can be seen here: tpyf.uk

The last trip to France and Canada was a huge success. 24 young people from a Secondary School in Guernsey reported live during the trip and pulled in an online audience of 3000 people in just 2 weeks. They posted over 600 mobile blogs, videos and podcasts online which anyone in the world could view and comment on. Over 300 comments were left, not only from friends and family but also from previously unconnected young people, teachers and veterans.

The MoBlogs can be seen here: http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/Network/blogs.aspx?lngNetworkID=755

Some examples of the comments left:

“Ladies I am sure that it was very emotional for you all. last year at the age of 65 I managed to visit my Fathers grave in Brussels cemetery in Belgium, he was killed in 1944,he was an Irish Guardsman, just after my second birthday so I do not remember him at all. I do know that when I stood at the foot of his grave I cried, I was remembering him, and some of my old service comrades. So well done girls, you will have experienced feelings and emotions that a lot of people think do not exist.” Veteran

“I've just read about your commemoration service and I had tears running down my face - the way you explained what you all did and how you felt was so moving.” Student

The Next Trip….

The next trip to Australia and Thailand commences in April and we will be developing Video mobile blogging to give the students more immediacy to their reports and enable us to pull in a wider audience, logging in for each instalment. We are hoping to generate a campaign around this trip, encouraging teachers to use the site as a resource, encouraging students to learn from the first hand experiences of their peers and interact by asking questions and leaving comments.

There will also be a trip in August to Japan to visit Hiroshima and interview Japanese veterans.

Listen to the stories www.radiowaves.co.uk/tpyf

I did some follow up googling and this is what I found !!

When I discovered this http://northgatemfl.blogspot.com

great stuff and guess what Northgate school is less than a mile away and my sons primary is one of its feeder Schools . Great stuff Northgate really really cool to see your blog . keep up the great work. Nice site .

Hi to some readers

Well its lovely to hear about new readers of the blog and give some old one a plug ! First of all my old mate Niel Mayne of Northern College ( e tutor of the year a couple of years ago) has mentioned some of the students on MSc in Multimedia and Education at Huddersfield read my blog !!! A little fact for them I am an ex Huddersfield poly Geography Graduate and the course with its pioneering computer mapping now called GIS set me up on my current path. The fact I also borrowed a BBC micro to write my dissertation on was a revelation to me as a dyslexic students so a huge heads up to Huddersfield !!!
Publish Post
Now to plug someone elese excellent work Susan Waters of Tafe who I think works out of Perth Australia I know is a reader. I had a weird text from Steve's mobile at mlearn from Melbourne in which Susan introduced herself. Susan has just had high praise from James farmer of edublogs in his newsletter about here blog on things blog and web2.0 in general . I quote from James email newsletter


The Edublogger: http://theedublogger.edublogs.org

Possibly the most useful blog you'll ever visit, and written by multi-Edublog Award nominee Sue Waters, The Edublogger covers everything from giving your blog a makeover to adding photos to your site, playing with widgets and much much more. It's an education!


A seriously useful resource so good on those of you in the Southern and Northern hemisphere or is it just the blogosphere . sadly not even google could yield susans email address so if one of you know it get in touch.

In the wild blogging on speed Ewan Mc Intosh snacking on media !!

Ewan Mcintosh

session on snacking on media as always good value with some old favourites but with the usual creativity . The world has changed and suggesting whats wrong with snacking.

The cup stacking video as always excellent value and he figures of 300,000 views for the video , cup stacking will never catch on !!!!

the vision of kids trying failing and retrying the task to get better is there a metaphor for motivation . Failure being a driver to try harder rather than giving up . Can digital media user generated content and user generated comments 8000 comments to a you tube video how many learners get that degree of comment on there academic work.
Ewans example from colleagues who took a school trip to the battlefields of France and the learners didnt use the specially set up blog but used there existing space on Bebo and my space .
With really deep comments on the enormity that is the battlefield experience from some learners .

His thought is we shouldn't invade there space:
using there medium to communicate with people that matter there peers
Using tools to collaborate and produce product there proud of . Often with extreme effort and getting on with people they dont get on with .
also stressed the fact that blogging and gaming is spreading across all phases of education .

great to see Ewan show the work of Andy Pulman working with HE students link here improving numeracy using packages on nintendo DS contrasting with Derek Robertson similar work with primary schools ( two outfits connected by Andy).

Ewans parting shot of learning from their space their space being widgetised not webtised .

organised chaos
Life is a list
Stretching time spending longer online than at school

you can snack on media and still get a wholesome diet

Man discovered things by revealing a pattern in nature .

poor blogging on my part going to edit this out later .

Future Lab event Why Don’t You…? Supporting innovative approaches in education

30th 31st October Immrasat in London

http://www.futurelab.org.uk/events/listing/why_dont_you

If we are to move towards a more personalised education system, then we need to support a wide range of innovators in education. This event will explore the conditions, tools and strategies that support innovation, focusing on teacher practice and the design and development of digital learning resources that support new approaches to learning and teaching.

Through a mix of inspirational presentations and hands-on activities, it has been designed to more specifically address issues such as:

• What tools are available to enable teachers to move towards more personalised approaches to teaching and learning?
• How can we innovate to respond to the changing needs of learners in a digital society?
• What examples of innovative practice are there in the UK?
• How can we encourage teachers to apply more innovative and creative uses of digital learning resources in UK schools that are suitable to learners' needs?
• How can we foster a culture of innovation in education?
• At policy level, how can we facilitate and encourage these innovative practices in order to create a climate which actively fosters this shift?

I am running a session called

BLOG OFF: these Web 2.0 tools will never make it into the learner experience
This workshop involves a tour of some Web 2.0 tools that are used by learners, and issues such as barriers to teaching staff deploying these tools to support learning will be examined. The workshop will be themed between rapid delivery sessions and a chance for participants to create artefacts.

see my bio at
http://www.futurelab.org.uk/events/listing/why_dont_you/speakers

but whats more scary are the other speakers:

Donald Clark
Shaa Wasmund
Lizbeth Goodman, SMARTLab
Andy Black, Becta
Trevor Baylis OBE
Eric Rosenbaum, MIT
Mark Pearce
Natalie Jeremijenko

really grown up stuff .

Does blogging help your creatvity or articulation of your thoughts.

Thanks to paul Shoesmith a colleague of mine at Becta for invoking this thought. I used ananlogy of exocets refering to 25 anniversary of the Falklands war in a staff meeting this morning . Paul afterwards why is it you bloggers think of such good analogy's is he right does blogging improve your articulation of thoughts I think he is.

I have always thought of myself as non writing person and my spelling grammar is dreadful but blogging has made me think more !!

what do you think.

Missed me blogs second birthday

Well this was my first post on the 18th may 2005

http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com/2005/05/professor-david-morrison-at-bath.html

This is my latest
http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com/2007/05/mesh-technology-to-geeky-for-some-but.html

Theres been 338 posts in total when I've got some more time I will do a more fitting analysis of my blogging behaviour

SMS to RSS a tool for disaster recovery

Shocked as we all were by Virginia Tech shooting read this interesting post from Creative Development Team at Sheffield Hallam

http://extra.shu.ac.uk/wordpress/?p=355

I also have an interest in SMS in disaster recovery linked to personal experience around 7/7 bombings in London . 160 characters in txt message isn't a lot of words but they can count for a lot when you need to get through to people and conventional phone network is down .

I attended sms in education conference a few weeks ago. Look at link to conference on sms texting in education http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com/2007/04/talking-about-text-their-raving-about.html

plus the neat video. Also ability to create rss feeds from a website blog posting increase chance of getting your message out. www.txttools.co.uk one of there customers Yorkshire coast college has done a really good podcast about it http://podcast.ycoastco.ac.uk/weblog/admin/2007/04/26/PodcastingandSMSmp3.html

Ewan Mcintosh speaking in London

Having Derek Robertson of learning and teaching Scotland speak at the Becta serious games event last Tuesday in Birmingham I have by sheer chance got an opportunity to see his partner in crime fellow crusader for education Ewan Mcintosh speak at this first Tuesday event organised by Redhouse Media . Link to redhouse and therefirst Tuesday events here



The little abstract is interesting enough see below:

EMPLOYEES OF THE FUTURE

Ewan McIntosh


Educational Technologist


Learning and Teaching Scotland Futures

This
year, 16-year-olds who know little about life before the Internet and
email will enter the workforce. Ewan McIntosh is an experienced teacher
and a recognised authority on new media and technology in the
classroom. He’ll lead a session on how understanding the interests of
IT-savvy teenagers will be critical if businesses and the government
are to get the best out of the next generation of worker.

state of the blogosphere

Blogs tags the whole web2.0 phenomena heres a report compiled from Technorati that will make you think.



http://www.masternewmedia.org/news/2007/04/06/blog_usage_statistics_and_trends.htmn summary:



here's a few headlines that are worth reflecting on:-

• The blogosphere is now 70 million weblogs wide



• About 120,000 new weblogs are created each day, or...



• 1.5 million posts per day



• 1.4 new blogs are created every second



• 17 posts are made every second

Cumulative number of weblogs - Technorati

Spam

• 3000-7000 new splogs (fake, or spam blogs) created every day



• Peak of 11,000 splogs per day last December

Growth

• Growing from 35 to 75 million blogs took 320 days

Blogs vs. MSM

• From 11 to 22 blogs among the top sources linked to in Q4 2006

The multi-lingual web

• Japanese the #1 blogging language at 37%



• English second at 33%



• Chinese third at 8%



• Italian fourth at 3%



• Farsi a newcomer in the top 10 at 1%

Tags Stats

• Tracking 230 million posts with tags or categories



• 35% of all February 2007 posts used tags



• 2.5 million blogs posted at least one tagged post in February

Web 2.0 for content sharing for learning and teaching

I have got to give a huge heads up to my fellow technology evangelist Tom Franklin of Franklin consulting for organising on behalf of JISC this webinar on Web 2.0 for content sharing for learning and teaching.

The Webinar runs from Monday 30th April to Friday 4 May, and will continue to be open
for comment after that.

Each day will run from lunchtime to lunchtime, starting with live presentations at 12.30 from two speakers.

The subjects are:

Monday - Institutional practice in implementing Web 2.0

Tuesday - Creating content using Web 2.0

Wednesday - Web 2.0 for taching and learning

Thursday - Strategy and Policy

Friday - Conclusions and recommendations

Short briefing papers have been prepared, to help focus the discussion.
These highlight some of the issues and raise a number of questions, and we hope that you will find it useful to read them before the conference.

details can be found at http://www.franklin-consulting.co.uk/Web2_Webinar.html

Innovating e-Learning 2007 - Institutional Transformation and Supporting Lifelong Learning, 11 - 14 June 2007

This is likely to be a great event.

Supported by my friends at DirectLearn who are rapidly becoming the online conference organisers in the UK.

This is to let you know about the Jisc 2007 online conference, following last year's successful conference. This year, the topic is Innovating e-Learning 2007 - Institutional Transformation and Supporting Lifelong Learning, 11 - 14 June 2007

The conference focuses on the potential of e-learning in transforming practice within institutions and in supporting lifelong learning. The keynote presenters will offer a rich variety of perspectives on these themes:

Theme 1: Institutional transformation Day 1: Terry Mayes, Emeritus Professor, Glasgow Caledonian University, and Day 2: Dr John Guy, Principal, and Dr Mike Docker, Director, ICLT, the Sixth Form College, Farnborough

Theme 2: Supporting Lifelong Learning, introduced by Robin Mason, Professor of Educational Technology at The Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University

The concluding presentation will be given by Oleg Liber, Professor of e-Learning and Director of the Research Centre for Educational Technology and Interoperability Standards (CETIS), University of Bolton.

As well as these keynote presenters, there is a very large number of other sessions and presentations, making up what we hope is an exciting and useful programme. The full programme (and booking
information) can be seen at:

www.jisc.ac.uk/elp_conference07

As last year, the conference will be open for a week for pre-conference reading, from the 4th June. The conference itself will run from 11-14 June and will then remain open for viewing for a full month, until 15 July.

Are you seriously Mobile ???

Mobile learning and mobile Internet explored at Seriously Mobile Summit 20 April

SERIOUSLY EVENT AT A COST BUT SPEAKERS AND PROGRAMME LOOKS INTERESTING


"Mobile internet, working in real time and supporting mobile workforce capability is the theme for this year's summit. We have assembled several of the world's top mobile learning experts to lead the event, including speakers from Ericsson, Giunti Labs and Reuters, three organizations that are leading the way in mobile learning and mobile Internet technology" said Ron Edwards, organizer of the Seriously Mobile Summit and one of its keynote presenters.

2007 Theme: The Mobile Internet: Working in Real Time

Supporting Mobile Workforce Capability
“Creativity is no longer about which companies have the most visionary executives, but which have the most compelling architecture of participation. That is, which companies make it easy, interesting and rewarding for a wide range of contributors to offer ideas, solve problems and improve products” - Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media

We will explore:

• Trends - business, cultural, technologies and how people are increasingly mobile
  • Physically - Travelling to work, clients, suppliers, between offices, Hot Desking, and 'Smart Working' - blending home and office based work
  • Mentally - Between teams, colleagues, their networks, volunteer work, personal/family, education
• Individual needs
  • Instant access to context-based information and each other.
  • People want to stay informed, connected, capable and productive
• Organisational needs
  • Agility; the ability to sense what is happening or needs to happen and react effectively.
    • Technology helps organisations tap in to what their “front line” is hearing and experiencing. It enables instant communication and collaboration to build context and meaning from developments.
    • Technology based products are evolving so fast there is a need to keep people up-to-speed on the changes while providing the right amount of training and support that doesn’t inhibit employee productivity.
  • Building a culture of innovation
    • It is often the most experienced and best networked/connected that are the most mobile. How do you continuously engage them to contribute to innovation? • How do you engage people at all levels in an organisation to tap in to creativity and ideas for growth? • The term Architecture of Participation describes the combination of enabling tools (often referred to as social media or web 2.0), culture and practices of organisation
• Leading Edge Mobile Technologies and Implementation Strategies

link to event here

odd post but worth it

Threshers the shop are doing an amazing promotion via the blogosphere a 40% off voucher(shhhhh dont tell every one) you just print off and take into a shop. see the effect on hows threshers appears in blogs and download the voucher .
link here

web2.0 viral marketing it will never catch on. Drink sensibly of course

Hughs blogs worth a look to http://www.gapingvoid.com/

Educause update 7things great great stuff

I first blogged these excellent publications in September 2005

http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com/2005/09/magnificent-series-of-7-things-you.html



Well they've updated them and there are loads more than seven topics goggle earth, digital story telling, facebook , youtube just great if your new or want to update your knowledge of web2.0

http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?page_id=7495&bhcp=1

Talking about TXTing there raving about !!

First Txt messaging in education conference in Europe
ome of my regular readers will know I quite like SMS as a reliable simple technology. Well got to admit I better not use the word simple any more. I am currently at the lets talk about txt event at Leeds school of music. Put together by https://www.txttools.co.uk/ without a salesman in sight
seen some brilliant stuff by Mick Mullane of Yorkshire Coast college who is doing great stuff using a combination of RSS, moodle ,sms in a compelling mix see what the college are doing using moodle http://moodle.ycoastco.ac.uk/
great video in the session
http://podcast.ycoastco.ac.uk//blojsom_resources/meta/edutxt/rivet2.mp4

Ray Lawrence from how to moodle gave a great over view of moodle.

gave brisk talk through of what moodle is and also outlined a good description of open source. He made me aware of some great stats of registered moodle sites. total number registered sites world wide number 23244


Dr Kevin Lynch school of history at Leeds Uni gave a compelling reasoning how he is uses sms with other technologies to engage with learners. talked with great thought from a teaching and learning perspective and institutional view point.

Jim Busher of City college Brighton and Hove students service Management gave a really pragmatic up to date view of how they use sms to support students.





Judith Hennessey and Deborah Pinder of Norton College Sheffield
Gave a great of how they are deploying SMS to support activity in college.
A great example of doing simple things to benefit learners and for the college. classic general FE

• varied group of learners
• wide range of programmes
• Learners unable to meet as a larger group to develop community
• seen as one way of promoting virtual
  

Started with A/S foundation students who were both new to college and a pick and mix varied timetable.

Alan Southwell Salisbury colleges e-learning manager
gave a simple no nonsense approach of how they are using the technology . They are using moodle and are looking at installing the moodletxt in moodle they're chosen learning platform.
Interesting attendance monitoring . great virtual interview with the colleges students attendance officer


A added plus point was also meeting Leon Cynch who was covering the event with his video camera. Look forward to the result Leon.

initial reflections

• Great workshop pragmatic and delightful mix HE & FE
  
• The diversity of approaches
  
• Honesty of what worked and what did not
  
• SMS is being used in many ways I hadnt even thought of
  

Epic 2014 now 2015 is out compare the difference.

I first posted the original in December last year it outlined a possible future for the web in 2014 I posted the link and blogged some simple remarks .

http://andysblackhole.blogspot.com/2006/12/2020-vision-excellent-video.html

Now the year on version 20015 is out what is interesting is not the extra year but how previous years content/ context has changed . It does give weight to the what is important is technology you miss rather than predict model I hawk around. last version no mention or little of Ipods podcasting etc .

watch it your self.
http://epic.makingithappen.co.uk/new-master1.html

Enjoy which one is right or are they both way of the mark (only time will tell )??

M-learning or not M-learning?

At the AOC Nilta conference .Earlier this week I was lucky enough to see Geoff Elliot of Pembrokeshire College present on there beacon award winning m-learning project http://www.pembrokeshire.ac.uk/mlearning
A college that has won 7 AOC beacon awards in 6 years http://www.pembrokeshire.ac.uk/news/SevenBeaconAwards

Great presentation outlining the project the people they were trying to reach and the challenges. If you don't know Pembroke is an objectuive one area due its pockets of deprivation

I found out later in the week a nice article in FE focus on his work

http://www.m-learning.net/downloads/TES_Pembroke_march07.png

Interestingly next page was a editorial article that wasn't quite so positive

http://www.m-learning.net/downloads/TES_Editorial_march07.png

dont know what you think but to very different views I will leave you to make your own mind up.


Interesting Ewan MCintosh has a poll on his blog about mobile use in schools you might like to go the page and contribute http://edu.blogs.com/edublogs/2007/03/should_kids_use.html

Top Ten Blogging Tools from EPIC Newsletter

From Epic newsletter not sure I agree they sure are big fans of wordpress

• Wordpress
• User polls
• Email
• Clipmarks
• Weblog clients
• RSS Aggregator
• Google Analytics
• Technorati
• De.licio.us
• Spell-checker

Further detail here

Emerging technologies for learning publication

Colleagues at Becta haver done it again with another cracking publication on Emerging technologies for learning has

http://www.becta.org.uk/research/reports/emergingtechnologies

They also have have a discussion forum set up at

http://communities.becta.org.uk/technology/emergingtechnologies

The discussion forum aims to provide a space to:

Respond to and discuss the articles inEmerging technologies for learning

• Suggest ideas and themes for any future editions of Emerging technologies for learning
• Propose writers for any future editions of Emerging technologies for learning
• Inform other readers of developments in technology and encourage debate around them

so go one download and join the discussion

Digital Future of the U. S. -- The Future of the World Wide Web

Another view of Tims work from a stateside perspective.


The 'World Wide Web Inventor', Tim Berners-Lee appeared before Congress on March 1, 2007 to discuss with the federal legislators the digital future of the World Wide Web for the United States.

During a session of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Sir Berners-Lee reviewed the first decade of the Internet, its use, and commented on how "...we have only scratched the surface of what can be realized with deeper scientific investigation into its design, operation and impact on society."; concluding with the continental relationships that are working with public, private, and academic areas to protect the systems that are in place and consider future systems.

The founder of the World Wide Web Consortuim - W3.org, Sir Berners-Lee hoped that his comments, ideas, etc. of the big World Wide Web system that he presented to Congress would be used to build the next "thing" about the web.

He discussed that the original vision included the universality of the web so that the consideration of culture, language, disability, etc. of the 'user' would not matter - a universality system where everything would be linked to everything else and for everyone.