Links for 2010-05-25 [del.icio.us]

• - The Obvious? - A blast from my past
  I find it increasingly paradoxical that the "grown up" world of suits and offices and job titles is the one that encourages you to remain childish. You are not really encouraged to say what you think, you pass responsibility up to the grown ups above you and you are rarely able to be held accountable for your decisions.
  
  On the other hand in the supposedly childish online world of forums, blogs and wikis you have to be prepared to say what you think, be prepared to stand by it and jusfity it in a debate and if you have fucked up your written thinking is there for all to see forever.
  
  I wonder when the grown ups will get this?

#tmfuture: TeachMeet hits its fourth birthday: Coming of Age

TeachMeet is entering its fifth year and the unconference for teachers, by teachers has helped hundreds - maybe thousands, in fact - to try out something new, alter the way they already teach and learn, join a community of innovative educators or completely transform their way of working.

The hope was that the model would spread. It has, but as those who have created and helped pull TeachMeet together over the past four years, we want to see it spread further, deeper and with increasing quality of input from practitioners. This post outlines how we think we might manage this. This is the beginnings of a conversation with those who care about TeachMeet. Add your views in the form of any blog post or comment or tweet - tag it #tmfuture

What are the goals of TeachMeet?
TeachMeet was originally designed to:

• Take thinking away from the formal, often commercialised conference floor, and provide a safe place for anyone to pitch their practice
• Provide a forum for more teachers to talk about real learning happening in real places, than one-hour conference seminar slots allow
• Showcase emerging practice that we could all aim to undertake; sales pitches not allowed
• Be all about the Teach, with only a nod towards tech that paved the way for new practice.
• Provoke new ways of sharing our stories: PowerPoint was banned. We wanted people to tell stories in ways that challenged them, and the audience
• Empower the audience to critique, ask questions and probe, all online, through SMS or, later, Twitter.

Over the years, these 'rules' have altered, leading to some great innovations, others less so. The answer to "What is a TeachMeet?" has become a myriad of meanings, some pretty far off the original goals. We need to help and support people to organise, run and contribute to events that build on previous ones. We need to make TeachMeet as accessible to newbies as it was in 2005. We need TeachMeet to once more find its focus.

Supporting the "infectiousness" of TeachMeets

Organising TeachMeets should not be easy. Taking part in them should be. But more support is needed for organisers:

• Sponsorship is hard if there's no bank account into which funds can be sent
• Without sponsorship, any event over 30 people becomes tricky to organise while also giving people a special night of learning, the time, space and mood that gets people over their self-conscious selves
• Paying for refreshments and venues is impossible if there's no organisation to pay them the precise sum.
• The best TeachMeets provide social space, social activity, entertaining MCs, good refreshments, good online coverage and some form of online 'conclusion' - this needs coordinating by the organiser(s), but it's not a skill everyone will have the first time around.
• We've got a superb opportunity to curate the best bits from all these TeachMeets that are happening weekly - this needs a degree of oversight.

A means to make TeachMeet more sustainable, easier to use for sponsors and organisers, and have the ability to do something spectacular
TeachMeet is owned by the community that shape it - but there needs to be a body to manage sponsorship and sponsors, and provide support for new organisers so that they maintain the TeachMeet goals. We assume that if someone is organising a 'TeachMeet' they would like to emulate the success of those popular early TeachMeets, and better-supported national conference ones (e.g. SLF and BETT).

What would support look like? (is this for new organisers of events? support from the TeachMeet body?)

• Seeking of sponsorship all year round - including ways and means to get your message to as many teachers as possible
• Brokerage of sponsorship - i.e. one place sponsors and those seeking sponsorship can come together, in a transparent manner
• Recommendation of onsite support (good venues at discounted rates/free, A/V, event organisation [for bigger venues], catering etc)
• Suggestions for various formats that have worked in the past
• Mentoring from previous TeachMeet leaders including on-the-night help
• Featuring of content and promotion of the event in a timely manner on an aggregated, higher profile TeachMeet site
• A group calendar so that events can be seen by geography and date
• Promotion of TeachMeet through international and national events, using contacts of existing TeachMeeters
• In-event publicity (e.g. if you plan an event at a regional ICT day or national event, then we can help broker paper materials for insertion into packs etc)

But, above all, TeachMeet is reaching a point of saturation in the UK - things are going really well in terms of enthusing teachers about their own learning. We have a great opportunity to carry over a small proportion of the sponsorship and contributions towards creating a TeachMeet culture in countries where teacher professional development in this way is still blocked by barriers physical, financial or cultural. This is just one idea, harboured for a long time but unable to realise in the current setup.

This body can take the form of

• A Limited company (with a Director and shareholders)
• A Charitable Limited Company, with a board of directors and voting rights for fellow 'shareholders' (we could work out some way of people being 'awarded' shares based on [non-financial] involvement?)
• A Social Enterprise, perhaps formed as a Limited Company (see more information on what this means and how it might work (pdf))
• A Charity (this feels like a lot more red tape to pull through and perhaps not entirely necessary)

As we take things forward we invite you to contribute your ideas and thoughts to make things work smoothly. We want you to comment, probe and make your own suggestions before the end of June, using the tag #tmfuture

Pic from Ian Usher

Related articles by Zemanta

• GETinsight - Open Professional Development (edu.blogs.com)
• TeachMeet Student Editions - round 2 (stuartmeldrum.co.uk)

Links for 2010-05-24 [del.icio.us]

• Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) to New Zealand
  The Electronic Travel Authority (ETA) is equivalent to a visa, but there is no stamp or label in your passport and there is no need for you to visit an New Zealand diplomatic office to submit an application.
• Internet Visa Services Australia
  If you are planning a holiday visit or a short business trip to Australia, you will need to apply for either a visa or an ETA (Electronic Travel Authority). An ETA will let you spend up to three months in Australia.
• The Little Books - Little Books written by litttle people!
  Little Books allows young people to become published authors whilst having fun writing.
• An Internet Where Everyone Knows You’re a Dog — Crooked Timber
  Facebook appears to be deliberately and systematically making it harder and harder for people to vary their self-presentations according to audience. I think that this broad tendency (if it continues and spreads) impoverishes public life.
• How Social Media is Changing Government Agencies
  A good recent example of this is how the team of energy companies and government agencies responding to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are putting these strategies to use.
  ---
  On April 3rd, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Payne of the West Midlands Police in the United Kingdom used Tweetdeck (TweetDeck) to keep an eye on demonstrations involving two controversial and politically opposed groups; the English Defence League and Unite Against Fascism. He checked out Facebook (Facebook) rumors of stabbings and vandalism, and posted on Twitter when the information was found to be false — potentially quelling violent backlash. “This is groundbreaking stuff for policing in the UK. We have used social media as a broadcast platform during protests in the past, but we have not had immediate updates from officers on the ground, enabling two-way conversations,” Payne wrote after the event.
• Mango Marketing - Education PR and Marketing

#tmfuture: Wednesday night live web chat

I'm using my regular monthly webchat on GETinsight to talk about how teachers and school leaders can create more informal, more worthwhile forms of professional development along the TeachMeet model. It starts on Wednesday, May 26 - 12:00 p.m PST, 3:00 p.m. EST, 8:00 p.m. British Summer Time.

Given the post yesterday from many of those who have hosted them in the past, discussing how we meet some of the challenges in getting things off the ground for a TeachMeet (including the pain of teachers having to invent headed notepaper to pay for venues or refreshments), the platform will be an ideal one to take some of the discussion off Twitter and into some live chat and discussion, talking about how formal things need to get in terms of pulling an event together, the tricky elements and the parts that work best left to local groups.

If you want to learn more about the background of TeachMeet there's a great article written by Iain from the GTCS magazine.

The 45 minute format will be:

• short introduction from me on where TeachMeets came from and why;
• what the point of them is (as opposed to traditional conference type events);
• discussion around some of the challenges faced: starting off a local event, dealing with sponsors, venues and AV techs, understanding and translating the vision into local circumstances.
• more discussion around what people thinks works particularly well in their own local areas and why.

If you can join us it would be great. Sign up a little bit in advance and make sure you're near a phone and computer at the time of the event. Wednesday, May 26 - 12:00 p.m PST, 3:00 p.m. EST, 8:00 p.m.

edinburghmsc: via @speedysnail: BECTA, UK body promoting technology in learning, to be closed as part of govt cuts: http://bit.ly/c4Y29L

edinburghmsc: via @speedysnail: BECTA, UK body promoting technology in learning, to be closed as part of govt cuts: http://bit.ly/c4Y29L

edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: CFP for special journal issue on 'Social Computing for Learning' for http://bit.ly/dAsYuY

edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: CFP for special journal issue on 'Social Computing for Learning' for http://bit.ly/dAsYuY

Links for 2010-05-22 [del.icio.us]

• The Difference Engine aims to bring the YCombinator or TechStars mentality to European startups
  The Difference Engine is shaping up to be the kind of raw, Web 2.0 incubator the UK has lacked for some time.

Links for 2010-05-20 [del.icio.us]

• Lovely Charts | Free online diagram software - Flowchart & process diagram, Network diagram, BPMN diagrams, Sitemap, Organisation chart, Wireframe, business drawing software

#BeCuriousTour : US Tour 2010

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.

A call to action

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.

Who we are

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).

Follow our preps and the trip

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.

Links for 2010-05-19 [del.icio.us]

• What Ever Happened to the Book? | the human network
  The emergence of the ‘tl;dr’ phenomenon – which all of us practice without naming it – has led public intellectuals to decry the ever-shortening attention span. Attention spans are not shortening: ten year-olds will still drop everything to read a nine-hundred page fantasy novel for eight days. Instead, attention has entered an era of hypercompetitive development. Twenty years ago only a few media clamored for our attention. Now, everything from video games to chatroulette to real-time Twitter feeds to text messages demand our attention. Absence from any one of them comes with a cost, and that burden weighs upon us, subtly but continuously, all figuring into the calculation we make when we decide to go all in or hold back.
• Weblogg-ed » tl;dr
  The lure of the link has a two-fold effect on our behavior. With its centrifugal force, it is constantly pulling us away from wherever we are. It also presents us with an opportunity cost. When we load that 10,000-word essay from the New York Times Magazine into our browser window, we’re making a conscious decision to dedicate time and effort to digesting that article. That’s a big commitment. If we’re lucky – if there are no emergencies or calls on the mobile or other interruptions – we’ll finish it. Otherwise, it might stay open in a browser tab for days, silently pleading for completion or closure. Every time we come across something substantial, something lengthy and dense, we run an internal calculation: Do I have time for this? Does my need and interest outweigh all of the other demands upon my attention? Can I focus?

Links for 2010-05-18 [del.icio.us]

• Are these Melbourne's 20 Finest Cafes?
• Social Media for Audience Development & Community Building : Our Man Inside
  Great outlines and notes on how to enhance the connection with your audience if you're an arts or cultural organisation (or anyone else, for that matter):
  
  In the modern world of millions of people vying for your attention, it’s not your presentation; it’s your connection to your community that’s important
• TED2007: Face Morphing
  To support the theme for TED2007, I was invited as a guest artist to visualize human icons. Working in collaboration with Corbis, I produced a 15 minute animation that morphs famous iconic faces in an eerie progression. One of the interesting effects is to notice the moment-to-moment sense of recognition as we see faces liquify from one to another. Many people will, for an instant 'see' or recognize a person in mid morph when the blended features - an eyebrow or chin shape - resembles a person other than the two morph subjects.

Links for 2010-05-17 [del.icio.us]

• Cellphones Now Used More for Data Than for Calls - NYTimes.com
  Instead of talking on their cellphones, people are making use of all the extras that iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smartphones were also designed to do — browse the Web, listen to music, watch television, play games and send e-mail and text messages.
  
  The number of text messages sent per user increased by nearly 50 percent nationwide last year, according to the CTIA, the wireless industry association. And for the first time in the United States, the amount of data in text, e-mail messages, streaming video, music and other services on mobile devices in 2009 surpassed the amount of voice data in cellphone calls, industry executives and analysts say.
• The Obliquity of Policy « The Heutagogic Archives
  Interesting comparisons, although perhaps differently understood from my perception of tech push and market pull, about how education pushes while good learning takes the pull from learners:
  
  We have the wrong policy system based on the “push” of education.
  
  The Pull of Education
  
  A hot new topic in the web world right now is Pull which is about how the Semantic Web might transform businesses and two new books, Pull and The Power of Pull discuss this. Pull starts with the dramatic statement. “In a time of drastic change it is LEARNERS who inherit the future.”
• Why Boulder Is America's Best Town for Startups - BusinessWeek
  When I ask longtime players about local government, they shrug. When I ask them about state government, the common refrain is that the best thing it can do is invest in education and otherwise stay out of the way. The lesson here is that it doesn't take billions in government spending to create a thriving industry cluster. Instead, with a little luck and lots of hard work by residents, local economies can be shaped from the bottom up.
• David Cohen: TechStars: It's About Community
  I'm often asked what my motivations were for starting TechStars, the mentorship-driven pre-seed stage summer program for web entrepreneurs in Boulder...
  
  Why do the mentors get so involved and do what they do? Why does the whole town rally around the startups that go through the program, helping them shape their products and promoting them broadly? Why does everyone in Colorado seem to ask "How can I help?" It's because in a larger sense, TechStars is really all about community. In Boulder entrepreneurship circles, there is a genuine desire to see others succeed and a general belief that karma matters. There's a sense that together we're building something here, and that we're all a meaningful part of it.
• Inga’s Blog » Moving
  Lovely blog post on the emotions of moving. A great raison d'être for a blog, a public one we can all share in

Links for 2010-05-16 [del.icio.us]

• 15-Year-Old Cell Phone Novelist in Japan Hits the Big Time - Tonic
  Last year, a 15-year-old girl, with the pen name "Bunny," became one of the top authors of "keitai" novels (novels written for cell phones) in Japan. She wrote a three-volume novel called Wolf Boy x Natural Girl that got its start on cell phones, but since going on the market as a paperback this past May, it's sold more than 110,000 copies, grossing over $611,000.

Links for 2010-05-14 [del.icio.us]

• KR Connect: Rock Control
  Great project I've been working with to get to market, launching June 1 2010
• Business Models v Learning Process « The Heutagogic Archives
• The Obliquity of Policy « The Heutagogic Archives
  On the blog Christopher Francis flatly states that Education is a Push activity and on p37 of The Power of Pull, Push is described as being based on the following assumptions; “There’s not enough to go around, Elites do the deciding, Organisations must be hierarchical, People must be molded, Bigger is better, Demand can be forecast, Resources can be allocated centrally, Demand can be met” More precisely Push is about predictability. Which pretty much describes the assumptions in the policy landscape we have been discussing here. Three Head Boys each offer predictability as a solution, and the other two rubbish the thought and offer their version of predictability. In a world of economic and ecological turmoil Education looks like it can be cosily packaged as predictable, with an added dash of discipline.
  
  What is fascinating with Learning is that it is a Pull activity, which is about relationships and the socially-embedded practices of co-creation

Links for 2010-05-13 [del.icio.us]

• Twapper Keeper - "We save tweets" - #hashtag - Bectax - bectax Conference
  Some of our 3500 tweets from the BectaX Conference
• Twapper Keeper - "We save tweets" - Archive Tweets
  Do you want to archive tweets from your conference?
  
  Maybe archive trending hashtags or keywords for historical or analysis purposes?
  
  Maybe save your own personal tweets?
  Twapper Keeper is here to help!
  
  How does it work?
  1. Create a new Twapper Keeper archive based upon hashtag, keyword, or person
  
  2. Tell your friends about the archive
  
  3. Read, track, export, and analyze as much as you want!
• A Coincidence of Motivations leading to Agile Configurations « The Heutagogic Archives
  A great summary of BectaX

GETinsight - Open Professional Development

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• All education is DIY (downes.ca)
• My interview on Productivity for educators (dougbelshaw.com)

edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: E-learning project officer post going with the NHS http://bit.ly/boez7U

edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: E-learning project officer post going with the NHS http://bit.ly/boez7U

Links for 2010-05-12 [del.icio.us]

• Julia Roberts (thisisjulia) on Twitter

[Book Review]: Yes We Did, Rahaf Harfoush

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

• how simple thoughts on branding, and providing branding elements for fans to use, was a solid grounding from which to build online services;
• how social networking elements went to existing groups and networks rather than trying to recreate everything from scratch;
• the power of email, potentially the central tool in the campaign;
• the emerging potential of text messaging to influence and cajole;
• how blogs were used to give a voice to many people in the campaign, not just to broadcast about me, me, me...
• some of the techniques to make the most of video (i.e. produce lots of it, regularly);
• how analytics proved a vital element in understanding how to communicate with the audience.

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Rahaf Harfoush on the Lessons Learned From The Social Obama Campaign (engagedlearning.net)
• Obama's social media campaign: Proof by the millions (marsdd.com)
• Lift10 Politics: The Technological and Social Trends Impacting Politics (Rahaf Harfoush) (climbtothestars.org)

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: Big Issues in Immersive Virtual Worlds workshop, Nov 4th 2010, Coventry. http://bit.ly/djy1fu

edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: Big Issues in Immersive Virtual Worlds workshop, Nov 4th 2010, Coventry. http://bit.ly/djy1fu

Links for 2010-05-10 [del.icio.us]

• AND Young Reporters (ANDreporters) on Twitter
• AND Vancouver - Home -
  Superb school-based project tracking Olympic trip to Vancouver

The Kids Competition with Little Big Planet and Spore

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.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Little Big Planet 2 Also Coming To PSP? (1up.com)
• Create your own games in LittleBigPlanet 2 (news.cnet.com)
• LittleBigPlanet 2: create your own games, sagas next winter (arstechnica.com)

Links for 2010-05-09 [del.icio.us]

• CPD Scotland - Working with pupils - Humbie Primary School
  A key learning point for Mhairi has been not to underestimate what the children can achieve. She has realised that planning too rigorously can in fact stifle the pupils learning. She suggests that if we give the power over to the children we will get the best out of them. She also suggests, with a note of caution, that if we are doing this that we do this within the structure of the GROW model. Let it go and let them go!
• The GROW Model - Coaching your team members to improve performance - Leadership training from MindTools.com
  One proven approach that helps with this it the GROW model. GROW is an acronym standing for Goal - Current Reality - Options - Will. The model is a simple yet powerful framework for structuring a coaching session.
• Business Model Canvas Poster V.1.0
  Excellent template for working out the basis of your product
• IDEO | A Design and Innovation Consulting Firm
• The safe use of new technologies / Thematic reports / Documents by type / Browse all by / Publications and research / Ofsted home / Ofsted - Ofsted
  This report is based on evidence from a small-scale survey carried out between April and July 2009 in 35 maintained schools in England. It evaluates the extent to which the schools taught pupils to adopt safe and responsible practices in using new technologies, and how they achieved this. It also assesses the extent and quality of the training the schools provided for their staff. It responds to the report of the Byron Review, Safer children in a digital world.

Links for 2010-05-07 [del.icio.us]

• Amazing Panorama of NYC from 1876-2013

Links for 2010-05-06 [del.icio.us]

• The Red Room Company | Home