edinburghmsc: via @hamacleod: Online distance learning in the US; Online education's great unknowns. http://tinyurl.com/yjgvju4
Where many education authorities continue to routinely block, filter and ban social networks not just for youngsters but for teaching and management staff, new research from Gartner (via Euan Semple) reveals yet more logic behind opening up networks and encouraging teachers, learners and managers to network online as well as at their twice-a-year in-service get-togethers:
"While a job may be regarded as an economic transaction, the human brain thinks of the workplace as a social system," she said. Social networking can make employees "feel valued, a part of a community, and earn the respect of peers."
Read more here. I therefore continue to be disheartened by the backward policies of regions such as Argyll and Bute, who admit that "social networking sites are blocked in all schools as policy... Staff are not able to maintain or access personal sites such as their own blogs or Twitter pages through the council's network." They want teachers to share practice through "all available means", but one can only assume they mean the telephone, one-to-one email or pigeon carrier. A shame really, since when I was a student at school there in the late eighties we were using Macs for desktop publishing and the authority area was a world leader in video conferencing for isolated community learning aeons before the rest of the world got the Skype collaboration bug. But, as they say, you're only as good as your last gig...
Three years ago the national education agency in Scotland and Don Ledingham, the then education chief in East Lothian, took the lead and paid me public cash to help amplify the groundbreaking, award-winning work with colleagues in East Lothian, who continue to reap the educational and managerial benefits of a more-or-less open network and promotion of sharing practice through blogging and Twitter amongst many platforms.
It is therefore becoming increasingly embarrassing to me that, three years on, most education authorities in Scotland continue to be ignorant of the possibilities, fearful of the occasional [human] mistake (and at a loss, it would seem, about what to do when someone does make such a human error).
Adding to the embarrassment is the apparent own-goal scored by me and my colleagues whose learnings are often adopted more enthusiastically in countries elsewhere around the globe while those leading education on our own doorstep put caution ahead of innovation. Our £35m national intranet has just added functionality of blogs and wikis, three years after I recommended they be the keystone 'learning diaries' of a personal profile. This is good, but it is slow.
What do I reckon could be done (only my tuppence worth, I add...) In a recent interview for Merlin John's new Innovators series I outline how I believe things could change:
Pic of phone [what you can use to collaborate in the meantime]
Thanks to Doug Belshaw's post for making me go back and fill in more detail on the above bullets.
edinburghmsc: via @hamacleod: Registration for Online EDUCA in Berlin December 2nd - 4th. http://tinyurl.com/yvdry5
edinburghmsc: via @hamacleod: "Imagine training to become a Certified Professional Midwife online." http://tinyurl.com/ylnc6be
edinburghmsc: via @hamacleod: elearning links between North Africa & Europe http://tinyurl.com/yk6rjd2
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: 'Blended learning' coordinator and advisor posts at Glasgow Caledonian. http://bit.ly/2Zm7Ze and http://bit.ly/2DHDhH
YouTube and Channel 4 (who pay my mortgage) have signed a pioneering content deal which will make the broadcaster’s original programmes available on demand, in full and free-of-charge via YouTube in the UK. By early 2010 all of our current programming and about 3000 hours of archive will be available to search and view at your leisure.
This is big news, as it marks the first time that a broadcaster anywhere in the world has made a comprehensive catch-up schedule available on YouTube, providing Channel 4 with additional advertising inventory and reach: YouTube last week announced it was serving over 1 billion video streams every day.
Under the terms of the deal, Channel 4 will make its 4oD video-on-demand ‘catch-up’ service of new programmes available via YouTube shortly after television transmission, including series that have already proved particularly popular with online audiences such as Skins, Hollyoaks, The Inbetweeners and Peep Show. YouTube users will also be able to access around 3,000 hours of full length programming from the Channel 4 archive at any given time, including shows like Brass Eye, Derren Brown, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Teachers and many others.
The partnership runs for an initial term of at least three years and the two parties will share advertising revenues on an agreed formula. The deal will create significant value for Channel 4 and its independent production partners, generating additional revenue to invest in creating high quality, original content.
Channel 4's will have a branded presence on YouTube and will be able to sell advertising around its content on the site. The agreement also allows Channel 4 to sell advertising around some non-Channel 4 content on YouTube for the first time, expanding the amount of inventory available to its sales team and bringing its considerable expertise in advertising around full length TV content to the YouTube platform. It will help Channel 4 develop its advertising sales proposition in digital, including the use of YouTube’s demographic targeting tools to target advertising against Channel 4 content on YouTube.The deal builds significantly on Channel 4 and YouTube’s existing partnership; Channel 4 was the first broadcaster to sell pre-roll advertisements on YouTube clips, and the first UK broadcaster (before iPlayer) to put all its programmes online for viewing on demand with 4oD.
In an age where celebrity is held higher esteem by tweens and teens than ever before, Simon Cowell has emerged as an unlikely superstar: old enough to be most teens' dad, appearing to have the Midas touch where everything he touches turns to gold, the evil-turned-soft record label mogul.
In the last week, he's written a letter to his younger self which every admiring fame- and money-obssessed youngster should read to gain a worthwhile reality check.
On the eve of his 50th birthday last week wrote a letter to his younger self (A letter to my shallow, reckless, cocky younger self). It charts the rise and fall and rise and another fall of the boy who thought he had it all when, in fact, his bank account read zero:
"Look at you. You look like a complete idiot. Could you be any worse? You are about as bad an example of Eighties' excess as you could possibly be.
"You are overconfident, far too cocky and dressed from head to toe in expensive designer gear. Armani and Versace. Oh, nothing but the best for you Simon! It hasn't dawned on you yet, you idiot, that you can't afford any of this stuff.
"You believe that everything is just going to get bigger and bigger and that you are an intrinsic part of it all. You are up there, riding so high, that you cannot see what is really happening.
"What the hell is that outside your interior designed, four-bedroom house in Fulham? Please don't tell me it is a Porsche? Doh! Of course it is, what else could it be? You are driving a Porsche because everyone did in those days."
Read more of it over on the Daily Mail, and, if you recognise the cocky youngster about to lose it all (for the first time) sitting in your classroom, maybe send them the link.
edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: Literacy in the Digital University is about to start at Edinburgh University, School of Education #lidu
edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: Looking forward to ESRC seminar series launch today at School of Education, Edinburgh University.
edinburghmsc: via @flittleton: alot of colleagues and students from MSc at "make learning mobile" talk at Edinburgh Uni.
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Social Media Seminar Series: Trends and Implications for Learning (online, Friday October 30) http://bit.ly/9EYmX
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Educational Technology, University of Cape Town http://bit.ly/3YQAA5
edinburghmsc: via @sbayne: Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication 2010: Diffusion 2.0. Canada, June 2010 http://www.catacconference.org
