I was thrilled to hear that colleagues in Channel 4's Film4 (well, it's a table with two or three people at Horseferry Road) have had a significant hand in winning twelve Oscar nominations. All year they've been winning prizes for Hunger, and now Slumdog Millionnaire, In Bruges and Happy-Go-Lucky add to that.
Working in an organisation where every week its Chief Executive is able to send emails telling the whole staff of the latest world-class awards being nominated or won by colleagues is, I think, quite rare. But it also has the effect of raising everyone's game. How many jobs have you been in where every week, at least once, you're asking if the project you are thinking of doing or stuck in the middle of has the potential to be world class? Even the lead of Slumdog, Dev Patel, was discovered and had his first acting role on another award-winning production shown first on and made for Channel 4's teen channel E4, Skins.
If only more schools set their ambition levels at that level, not at the vagaries of "excellence" and "21st century", but at "world class". If only more teachers saw their role as contributing to the potential of their students to win the imaginary plaudit of educational Oscars or Webbys in the same way as a Commissioner at Channel 4 looks to make their independent companies' productions become the best in the world at what they do.
It's not that every idea gets there, but one thing is certainly true: We all get closer to world class by consistently working towards that level and being around others who do, too.
The film buffs amongst you might want to read more on the fine heritage of Film4. Meanwhile, I wonder whether anyone would have the guts to proclaim their Curriculum is not one for Excellence, but The Best Curriculum In The World. At least at that point, the goal is clearer for everyone involved.
Through Techcrunch, Arrington geeking out on websites while the rest of us were watching and twittering the inauguration of new President Obama, we discover that the White House website changed drastically, too. The home page's main feature is a blog, with feeds galore, a weekly video update and photo slideshows. In the same way that technology helped win the election for Obama, we can only hope that it will enable greater democracy during his next four years as President.
So David's school is a rather expensive one in a nice bit of the South East, but that doesn't negate the fact that his teaching of technology and the issues around it this past term has been astounding.
Students are not just using games for learning but they're thinking about it, too, everyone - including the students - reading Johnson's theories for starters. And they've had talks from half of Web 2.0's glitterati: the founding director of carbon footprint company AMEE, the creator of Pepys' Diary, the company behind Channel 4's latest games project about your genes (Routes), author and hyperlocal website founder Steven Berlin Johnson, coder and writer suprème Tom Armitage, and sci-fi writer, gamer and husband-of-dear-colleague Cory Doctorow.
If schools are worried (and they are) about how to teach technology in an age where students and their teachers think young people know it all, then engaging young people and their teachers in higher order thinking and real-life entrepreneurialism like this is a damned good way of taking the lead in creativity through technology. Congrats, David, on a superb term. Can't wait to see what's in store this Spring!
Pic of David Smith
It's as if I owned one-and-a-half hummers, apparently, my travel for one year. This poster chart for a year of travel highlights is lovely touch from the lads at Dopplr. Click the image to view the full version.
My big boss at Channel 4 (spot the new website), Chief Executive Andy Duncan, gave a speech last week in anticipation of the Digital Britain report, the first part of which is released next week. In it he makes some key points about the importance of the public service intervention we are making on the web, mobile and gaming with 4iP, but also stresses why Government needs to act rather than talk about broadband access for all.
I still hear about the digital divide as a legitimate excuse for not embracing technologies and equally a reason for blocking and banning sites with which the Establishment of our education institutions don't agree or don't understand. It's the main reason for a propagation of 'safe' social networking sites and school intranets destined for tweens and teens who spend up to six hours a night unleashed in the 'real' online world, reaping the benefits this untempered activity has to offer. Making sure all citizens have access is a key "must-change" in 2009:
"Why should I learn Algebra...? I have no intention of ever going there." Billy Connolly had a point.
Schooling, despite the concentration on curriculum and assessment reform in recent years, largely still hasn't tackled the main issue: meaningless (to young people) pedagogy. It's not the fault of teachers, of course, but of those who "manage change" not managing to give enough time for teachers to think about what they would do differently from the last 400 years. One day extra a year for "the biggest innovation in curriculum in a generation" is to ridicule the enormity of the task in hand.
Cue The Alternative School (TAS), a non-profit initiative for those kids who don't 'get' regular schooling, and is arguably doing already what most schools strive for and don't quite attain across the board. Their new blog gives a flavour of some of the activity they have been up to, and their latest post features a superb film starring some of the young people involved in the programme. One to keep an eye on and learn from as things develop more in the open with their new blog.
Bunking Off - The Alternative School from Kirsty Anne Pugh on Vimeo.
Colleagues at C4 have surpassed themselves with The Channel 4 Pig application, a beautifully executed (fnar) flash app helping people in these credit crunch times to exploit all the best and cheapest bits of the beast with some fine recipes from Britain's top chefs. It all supports the forthcoming food season on the Channel and has been managed by my rather wonderfully suitably-named colleague, 4Food Editor, Jane Honey.
When I was at school, learning about food was such an 'un-fun' thing where we produced crap food with crap ingredients cooked crapply. I find this entertaining and, while not designed for schools, there's nothing expensive and lots of deliciousness about making the Ham Hock, Split Pea and Mint Stew. The kids might not want to be stretched with the faggots, though I'm guessing it's the first recipe they'll navigate towards as they work out how to use a pig head constructively and not on the Head Master's desk on the last day of term.
Not so much a wonderful new service that's gone live as a pig that's gone rather dead...
In today's Sunday Herald comes a 'reveal' on my first first major project with 4iP in Scotland, being produced by independent interactive designers ISO. Central Station is a place to share your art and find new talent, be mentored by some of the art world's best names and be entertained by and engaged in the making of a web fiction. The action starts this April.
In August last year I left Learning and Teaching Scotland (still not had my card and chocs :-( and a slew of speaking and consultancy work, to take up some creative and business challenges with Channel 4's new digital online-only non-telly arm, 4iP. It might seem ironic, therefore, that Edd McCracken's piece concentrates mostly on the web fiction element of the arts platform. It is to be filmed in and around Glasgow School of Art, one of many partners in the project (it wasn't, as the caption on the printed piece suggests, chosen by me as a backdrop but was one of many partners already in place thanks to the prep work of ISO and Mr C on the project).
But far from being "telly on the web", something 4iP's not interested in, the web fiction elements will in themselves reflect the art, artists and techniques being talked about by communities of artists aggregated in and around Central Station; as Damien Smith of ISO put it in our planning meeting last November, they will be "of the medium".
Amateur artists aspiring and those already making moves in art schools around the country will also find a place where they can share their artwork, with the chance to win regular prizes that, really, money cannot buy. The final award after nearly a year of frenzied publishing will be a major cash art prize, we think, the world's biggest for social media creativity. As well as finding the next Banksy, the hope is that online creativity among young people, something long romanticised but in reality little realised, is spun into orbit. Watch this space.
Dive in a take a peek at the article, and also at our new featured group this fortnight, covering the company with whom we have the pleasure of developing this artistic beast: ISO.
Cross-posted at 38minutes
This year is Homecoming 09, celebrating 250 years since we started reciting poetry we rarely understand on January 25th, the birthday of our national bard, Robert Burns. It is not, the Government are at pains to tell us, a poorly camouflaged cynical plan to get more tourists to come "back home" to Scotland.
My pal Craig McGill at Dada let me know about a new project that brings together all the letters Burns ever wrote to his many mistresses and followers, published on a blog on the day they were written. It's as simple as they come, but charming and insightful to the bard's many passions.
Robert Burns' Letters, being on a blog and RSS feed, would make the ideal daily posting on a student's personal learning page on a VLE, like Glow. It wouldn't take a designer or enthusiastic teacher more than twenty minutes to put together some nice artwork and the feed, and get some kind-hearted soul who thought it worthwhile to promote it and amplify it through the main LTS site for more to enjoy. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge... we shall see what happens over the next couple of weeks in the run-up to Burns' night festivities. For the rest of us living on the interweb, you can just head over to the site throughout this year.
The world in 2009 is set to be gloomy be you poor or well-off, a C2 or A1, employed or self-employed. Except if you're a teacher in the stat system or working as a startup in the online creative sector.
The former will see growth as rich kids from the private schools transfer to the comp as mummy and daddy-the-former-investment-banker can't afford to pay the fees any more, the latter enjoying a good part of a £1 billion (or $1b or €1b) innovation fund from the UK Government, and 4iP in Scotland continuing to attract proportionally more investment and potential spend than any other area in the UK.
For the rest of you, many of whose place in a web-driven world will only become more fudged unless significant change occurs soon, the Rev IM Jolly sums it up. Happy New Year indeed.
For the hard of understanding, this is meant to be wry, as in 'Scotch and'.
