This September, I'll be hitting the road with Christian Long and Mediasnackers' DK to discover more of the Big Country, offering up masterclasses, talks and meetups. The Be
Curious Tour 2010 boys today completed a very
productive pre-launch meeting thanks to a pulling a late night (US) +
early
morning (UK) Skype chat across the Pond.
Why? We're all friends, we're all working at building our own young businesses, and we all share a vision of learning where startups, schools and business have more in common than they think to learn about how to harness digital media such as video games and all the various social media at our disposal.
We're interested in hearing from anyone or any organisation who might be on our (rough) route, and who wants to have some professional development masterclasses on social media, digital literacies, digital media creation from tweets to movie-making, how school spaces and technology could be better harnessed, or how school leadership could benefit from thinking more like a startup.
Christian (@christianlong) brings a deep understanding of physical learning environments, technology and how the two intersect on learning. DK (@mediasnackers) has developed a superb reputation in the nonprofit and business sector for his understanding of how we can build and harness our digital footprints to benefit ourselves and those around us. I bring ten years of education practice, action research and policy work, blended with the past three years of building and guiding startups through from ideation to execution to nearly $5m of investment, and leading the building of communities in education (TeachMeet, MFLE) and the creative industries (38minutes, Digital Dockyard).
There's a Be Curious Tour Facebook page if you want to get our updates there, the hashtag on Twitter (#becurioustour) will allow you to track our movements, our thoughts and, vitally, share your own.
Basically, we want to open up this tour from East to West, by giving lots of ways to follow, share ideas and let interested folk connect with us to set up specific events, coast to coast.
Please stay tuned. Lots of content + daydreaming, + strategic business to be added week-by-week.
Thanks to my compatriots for the lovely start! If the tour's as exciting as it's been pulling it together, then we're all going to have rather a lot of stretching, productive fun.
It's that time of the month again where I try to lead some education leaders onto their next actionable task on the GETinsight forum. This time around: how to motivate your staff to take on the organisation, implementation and undertaking of continuing professional development (CPD) themselves.
DIY CPD is the most successful breed of development I've seen. My blog post explains how you might want to go about doing it.
There will be a live phone/web chat on this topic, a chance to share stories of DIY CPD and ask for advice from those of us who've (un)organised (un)conferences before on May 26th. If you are an (un)organiser and want to share your stories, or a newbie to all this who wants to give a TeachMeet or edu-unconference a bash, then reserve your place now for May 26th's session.
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: E-learning project officer post going with the NHS http://bit.ly/boez7U
Rahaf Harfoush's "front row seat" on the Obama campaign's social media tactics and strategy, along with skills honed in the researching of Tapscott's Wikinomics, make her timeline of digital prowess and must-read for anyone in the marketing, comms, community-building or campaigning line of work. For the rest, it's a fascinating look into the actual role of technology in the famous election campaign, and how "tech toys" were really about inspiring offline community-building and fundraising.
Some would say the book is too simplistic, but I think it's just simple: describing social media tactics for what they are, as simple, reflective and responsive actions rather than a grand strategy only gurus can prepare. If the book reads itself quickly, it's thanks to a clear, consistent design (from Scott Thomas, Obama's design lead, talking here about that experience at Behance's 99%) and a writing style that breaks everything down to its simplest components. This makes it great for those not running large marketing, comms or media budgets, but for those of us who seek to make small iterative steps in the longer term.
She takes us through
Harfoush spoke last week at Lift in Geneva on the power of social networking in the campaign (I spoke there two years ago on the power of social networking for learning communities) but, as Kevin Anderson points out in the first comment on Stephanie Booth's liveblog of the talk, it wasn't the newer, more social technologies that wielded the greatest impact on the political journey - it was email. Once again, it is the lowest common denominator technology that makes the biggest impact, something both Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody and Esther Dyson have picked up on, the latter putting it as:
sometimes we call intuitive what is really just familiar.
You can follow Rahaf on Twitter, see her speak at Alan November's BLC2010 conference this summer, or buy her book at the Store.
edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: Big Issues in Immersive Virtual Worlds workshop, Nov 4th 2010, Coventry. http://bit.ly/djy1fu
Little Big Planet 2 has just been announced by Sony, setting its fans into a spiral of oozing admiration and excitement. They've made two million levels already on the crowd-sourced game/gaming engine. Now kids are being encouraged to make more, with the Hastac/MacArthur Foundation competition.
While you wait for the release of LBP2, and given some of the impressive and ambitious work that has already taken place in primary and secondary schools with Little Big Planet and Spore, the latest call to action from the Hastac/MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media Competition is worth looking into, for a chance to win PSPs or even a visit to Electronic Arts' studios. Teams of two or three students can create a level on LBP or on Spore, submitting their entries before May 21st.
I thought I'd share some of my love for the great books I've been reading lately (and further back), in a semi-occasional book review.
The first one up comes from someone who, over the years, has become a strong online friend, despite the fact that we've only ever met a half dozen times at various random cities across Europe. He was one of a merry gang who helped change my life, too, back in Copenhagen in 2007 when he and Mrrs Moore and Semple suggested that I should set up my own company.
Antony's premise then was that the things we were doing online as an added extra created enough value, eventually, to employ them in the centre of everything we do.
His new book, Me and My Web Shadow: How to Manage Your Reputation Online
Antony set about writing Me And My Web Shadow to help inform the kind of person "who doesn't quite get Twitter yet", or who thinks privacy issues on Facebook are a good enough reason to avoid it. It was for his wife, amongst many others. It's pitched in the kind of way that wouldn't patronise a proficient user of social media but which is also accessible to newbies. If there were a French translation I might even purchase a copy for my mother-in-law, to help her understand the grey areas between private and public, friends and Friends.
Despite having risen through the ranks of PR to a Senior Vice President position at iCrossing, the world's biggest SEO company, he talks his reader through privacy and openness in a blog-like, non-corporate, friendly way. This book reads for itself, combining practical tips and examples of people getting it right (and wrong), along with some Thinking Man's theory of why all this is so.
And his tone of voice means that Me And My Web Shadow is the ideal starter book and reference tool for people both in education and in the corporate world. It's a tough balance to strike, and Antony's nailed it.
If you want to provide some quick, light, intelligent reading to parents or colleagues who don't quite get all this malarky yet, then Me and My Web Shadow (UK)
Follow the book on Twitter or, if you prefer humans, Antony himself.
Me And My Web Shadow: How To Manage Your Online Reputation is launched May 15th in the US Store: reserve your copy now in my book store.
edinburghmsc: via @jar: 19 May, UK seminar on Improving Assessment and Feedback Practices in Tech-Enhanced L&T Environments http://bit.ly/9ph97i
edinburghmsc: via @suchprettyeyes: RT @doggyb: Details of 3rd Digital Cultures Workshop here: http://bit.ly/9KSdJH Deadline for submissions 31 May 2010
