Learn 4 Life

Derek Robertson’s Canvas Virtual World Presentation at the Scottish Learning Festival 2009

September 23, 2009 on 2:30 pm | In Digital Media, Educational Change, Innovation, MUVE, Mediated Reality, Peer to Peer, Personalised Learning, SLF, Scottish Learning Festival, Second Life, Virtual Worlds, advisory, art, distributed networking, mediascapes, metaverse, open source, pedagogy | 0 Comments

This is the Twitcam archive film of Derek Robertson’s Canvas Virtual World presentation at Scottish Learning Festival 2009.

Educators in Virtual Worlds on Open Sim - the pioneers…

September 10, 2009 on 2:18 pm | In Adult Learning, BSF, Continual Professional Development, Curriculum, Digital Literacy, Digital Media, Educational Change, Innovation, Learning Content, Learning Tools, MUVE, Mediated Reality, Moodle, Peer to Peer, Personalised Learning, Scottish Learning Festival, Second Life, Uncategorized, Virtual Worlds, Web 2.0, advisory, distributed networking, informal learning, mediascapes, open source, pedagogy, sloodle, video, video streaming | 0 Comments

WHY VIRTUAL WORLDS - WHY NOW?

Image attribution Chealion on Flickr under this CC licence

This series of posts is intended to be a comprehensive look at the use and development of Virtual Worlds on Open Source technologies in Schools. It is to be the basis for a book I am writing to be released early next year on Lulu about Virtual Worlds, Open Source and Education.

Over the last six months, through a series of interviews with people from around the globe, I have been mapping out some of the major developments in this field. The trouble is that presently, technological advances are happening so fast, some days, in this area, that 12 hours can make all the difference between one exponential breakthrough and another - the field of virtual worlds is moving so fast!

By next year the technology for Virtual Worlds will be in the browser and at that point they will become mainstream - already firms such as 3DI are going down that route and others such as RealXtend are working on making it possible to interconnect several different types of Immersive Environment to enable the eventual building of what is termed, a hypergrid, and even more recently there is talk of a Universal World Web Client WebHud. There are exact parallels, here, to the construction of the early World Wide Web.

So let me take you on a journey with the help of a few of the main players in the United States, Canada and the UK and see and listen to their stories and reflect on why so many people are putting so much effort into building this vision…

This first blog post is the start of many that will be a testament to the perseverance and drive of those individuals involved in constructing these whole new immersive landscapes. I would like to thank everyone involved, (especially Vicki Davis, her students and their parents) for giving me time and access on this project which seems to have grown with every passing day.

WHY THE TIME IS RIPE FOR MAINSTREAMING VIRTUAL WORLDS - AND WHY OPEN SIM AND OTHER OPEN SOURCE IMMERSIVE WORLDS?

Image attribution Torley under this CC licence

My involvement with Open Source and Virtual Worlds goes back quite a few years - during this time I have watched quietly, as the technology has gone from very geeky, obscure wikis, where enthusiasts are compiling and sharing code, to a more mature commercial enterprise with sophisticated clients and browser interfaces being rolled out and developed on a weekly basis.

For the past few months I have been interviewing the main players in the field of Virtual Worlds in Open Sim, Cobalt, Wonderland et al in education around the globe and taking footage and interviews with people in avatar form both inside the worlds themselves and in real life using Gmail video and Skype.

I have taken literally hundreds of hours of video of interviews with people to try and get a grasp on what is happening at the present time. This is the sum of all that work - I hope you feel it is useful and can guide your own choices of using virtual worlds/immersive environments in your school district or class…

Remember, these are interviews with serious educational professionals working in this field; they are the pioneers risking professional and academic reputation and the businesses promoting  innovative, “edge” technologies in a highly commercial world. Why should they do that - what is the appeal?

THE ‘V’ GENERATION

Image attribution hawken.dadako on Flickr under this CC licence

The future is here and it will serve the V Generation - the 5 year olds and upwards who currently use sites like Club Penguin and Disney Fairies and any number of the 200+ Virtual Worlds out there at home who will have much higher and more pronounced expectations of any future education system that they will enter and pass through in the next 10 - 15 years.

Global research firms such as Gartner have a very good understanding of how this use is beginning to work -

“Generation V is the recognition that general behavior, attitudes and interests are starting to blend together in an online environment.”

• Up to 3 percent of individuals will be creators
• Between 3 percent and 10 percent of individuals will be contributors
• Between 10 percent and 20 percent of individuals will be opportunists
• Approximately 80 percent of individuals will be lurkers

(source Gartner June 2008 - my chart)

and, regardless of age, they will be using a variety of different Virtual Worlds or Immersive platforms for work and play.

And one year on, since that report, commercial entertainment firms such as Sony Playstation…

… XBox 360… :

are beginning to dabble in the realms of carefully scripted interactive augmented reality avatars. This technology has been around for some time in fact I interviewed Dr Adrian Woolard at the BBC a few years ago about an augmented reality  project he was involved in then:

Click on picture for Archived video at archive.org

But only recently has it become as sophisticated and fully mature for commercial release. This is the latest iteration of that technology in the commercial world:

Now my point is that the current generation of children will expect this level of sophistication in the future. It would seem quite feasible as Moore’s Law progresses that projection systems and more photo-realistic landscapes will be dreamed up and sold in commercial outlets to the home market.

We, as educators, need to start to map out these terrains before us and learn to use some of these platforms effectively in truly transformational ways as they will become the mainstream in time.

WHERE CORPORATE AND EDUCATION WORLDS MEET - BERNARD HORAN - SUN MICROSYSTEMS

Already large corporate companies are involved in projects geared towards working in distributed environments and they are evolving technology to provide solutions for their workforce. Working virtually is a reality in many cases. Listen here to Bernard Horan, senior staff engineer for Sun Microsystems Laboratory talking about how Sun Systems are developing project Wonderland for the corporate and educational worlds - here he talks about the reasons behind the development of Wonderland and the MIRTLE education project - they are very practical:

An adaptation of Wonderland is being adapted for use in Boston by the Immersive Education Initiative there to work with young people for distance learning at the Roxbury Institute of Technology, again, in extremely practical ways:

and yet where are the other equivalent R&D activity in the schools system - where are the models - very few in the main? But they are slowly evolving. Certainly in Second Life there have been a number of educational exemplars over the years, mostly tied to work done by academics.

But what I think marks out people working in Virtual Worlds based on Open Sim or Open Source technologies, is that they are usually teachers who are trialling the system for themselves, independently of academic bodies and those contstraints, and often some very rapid prototyping of models of education are going on in there and, again, often with the help of fully blown commercial partners in ad hoc relationships that benefit all parties. The individuals concerned are often capable of working across silos to bring those different talents together and build exciting new engaging environments. This will be something I highlight in this blog as happening again and again. Often academia follows but does not drive the innovation and that is the main difference…

It is my contention that it is not always in the world of academia that the most rapid innovation happens but only when cross silo partnerships begin to coalesce around a highly focused project to create new and more effective adaptations of the technologies involved. Sometimes the realism and practicalities of markets and audience often determine how innovative technologies move forwards and we need to be aware of this pattern of development if we are going to understand how these platforms are used in the rest of this century.

WHAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW

Which one is real?

As Martin Bean, Vice Chancellor Designate of the Open University, pointed out at the recent Alt-C conference, there is a massification of Higher Education going on globally, there is a need for innovation and multi-channel ways of educating the present generation using multiple platforms if we are to keep up in terms of world-wide competition. Virtual Worlds/ Immersive Environments will be one of those channels without a doubt in HE, FE, Secondary and Junior school systems within the next few years.

In this blog I outline some of the major developments that are taking place right now, in this and allied fields and what I think are the major elements needed to introduce these technologies into schools. This year marks the point where I will begin to train teachers in mainstream education in the UK on the use and best practice of Virtual Worlds and to that effect this blog is setting down some of the landscape and exemplars of what is possible in those areas, some of the shared vision of the pioneers and many of the possibilities surrounding the whole arena.

I outline some of the most innovative exemplars at present and a tentative roadmap of how these technologies can be used to augment genuine learning in real life education communities across the board. I will be mentioning several parallel educational initiatives and binding them into the overall picture where possible. This blog post is the summation of that activity at this time and it is intended to be a strong pointer to the future. The time, I feel is ripe to show and tell what is happening…

As you read through this blog and watch the video interviews I would urge you to dismiss any previous preconceptions you might have had about Virtual Worlds. This is frontier territory - sit back and enjoy (or otherwise) the ride - if it challenges your expectations of what education is or can be, then good - I welcome any and all comments and counters to that vision in the comments box at the end of this post - I merely lay it out before you as the current landscape of what could be in the best of all possible worlds…

OPEN SIM, OPEN SOURCE, DON’T SPILL YOUR BEER ON THE COMPUTER

Part of my journey started in the noisy Greyhound pub in Knightsbridge in London in the UK earlier this year and a meeting with Giannina Rossini - one of the pivotal figures behind the introduction and dissemination of Sloodle technology in Second Life.

She had something I wanted to see - a virtual world running on a small Asus laptop - indeed from a memory stick attached to an Asus. So we arranged to meet at the Greyhound  where she showed me Open Sim running off that tiny machine - in that noisy environment in a busy London pub, I began to get an inkling of what could be, given the constraints of Open Source software, and the interconnectedness of personalised worlds - little did I know where it was to lead…

Bear in mind this was a very early iteration of the Open Sim software - there was a fair bit of compiling of code and launching of viewers to make the thing work. But it was a start and so I was off on my hunt for others to show me the way.

Giannina is one of the leading lights behind Sloodle, a technology that binds in Second Life and Open Sim to the Moodle VLE. Basically it allows for a registration system of your Virtual World Avatar on Moodle and the interoperability between the two and various objects in the Virtual World and the learning platform. Giannina was responsible for the main build on Sloodle Island in Second Life and there are regular free workshops there every Tuesday.

VICKI DAVIS - TEACHERPRENEUR

‘…it’s been such a powerful year that I don’t want to go back…’

My next port of call was with Vicki A Davis - award winning teacher from Georgia - and her students who talked to me over Skype about the Open Sim world they had built in four weeks on DigitTeen Island on Reaction Grid.

Vicki is the person who first used the phrase ‘V Generation‘ to me. She beams confidence and authority and is one of the new breed of teachers, globally, who is trialling these technologies with her students in highly successful ways.

She has an amazing ‘can do’ authority about her - no equivocation, nay-saying  or dithering, she just gets right on down and does it as she has done with Web 2.0 tools for the last four years. Like all the individuals I have met along the way - she’s a self starter with a whole raft of awards around the internet projects she’s been involved in.

There’s no doubt who is in charge in her classroom but all her projects are highly collaborative and emergent with time built in for reflection on the part of the students. Vicki is one of those new breed of global teachers who just simply changes the system by sheer force of work and dedication.

DYNAMIC CURRICULUM

Suddenly I was confronted with an educational community that was involved with genuine dynamic curricular activity using a Virtual World. Their World, DigiTeen, part of the Learning on the Edge complex on Reaction Grid run by Trevor Meister - (of whom more later), is a perfect exemplar of how to get it right. The wiki is a practical dynamic documented case study in effective use of virtual worlds and stands as good record for anyone wanting to attempt a similar project. This isn’t an academic study but an extremely practical ‘action research’ guideline to development and scaffolding of new standards and opportunities for day to day working teachers.

Watch the interview with students below in Real Life and Avatar form and then the next one with Vicki see how eloquently she comments on these new learning landscapes. I would hold that interview up as a seminal exemplar of someone who knows exactly what they are doing in this field and if I had my way it would be required viewing for anyone who has doubts about the efficacy of using Web 2.0 tools in education and the systems and infrastructure that can be built around them. I would also point people to the award winning wiki on the global Flat Classroom Project for further reference - the Digiteen project is just one small subset of that whole activity.

In order to build these new systems you need to be a risk taker. At this point in time Reaction Grid was in early alpha but that didn’t stop Vicki and her students from forging a whole new way of working. Using the lessons learned when they used Google’s (now defunct) Lively they have evolved a very effective way of working in virtual worlds in education.

In the interview below with Vicki - she shares how she implements new technologies in the classroom and how she makes it work, practically. She is literally laying out a whole new curricular model and embedding lessons learned by using such a dynamic curriculum - it is an inspiration to hear the ethos underlying what she does and the vision behind it. Her students are a credit to her - notice how they talk of ‘teaching’ using the phrases ‘When I was teaching’ - a lot of co-collaboration and co-teaching goes on all the time. This is truly a 21st Century classroom. I was absolutely inspired by this interview.

Note how practical her models are and how focused she is on the teaching and learning aspects - she’s not shy to address any problems that might occur in using these new environments. Her opinions are borne from years of experience; not “what if” something happens but “when it does we do this”.

I have to say that is breath of fresh air to my ears as so many people will voice opinions and doubts based on hypothetical circumstance that so often prevents people from trialling technology like this - it’s good to hear from a practitioner out there doing it for “real” and doing it so well. Vicki is being given excellent support by the commercial owners of ReactionGrid to help fast prototype her and her students’ ideas.

RICH WHITE INNOVATOR

Rich White at GreenBush Labs in Kansas is another amazing innovator/developer/educator working in the field of Open Source virtual worlds. He is one of those mutli-talented individuals who understands both the technical and pedagogical aspects of using these platforms. In the interview below we only just touched on the surface of the many, many innovation projects he is involved with. Again, we met on ReactionGrid which is something of a touchstone for innovative educators on Open Sim.

Rich is involved in so many projects that sometimes it is hard to keep up - he seems to innovate on a daily basis and I would mark him out as one of the leaders in this field globally. When he’s not writing about, developing and demonstrating Augmented Reality and Shape Shifting technologies he’s busily devising and trialling cave video, interactive whiteboard environments and projects like the excellent CSI Virtual World and Edusim in the videos below.

Rich’s background is, again, in a variety of fields including commercial and academic - he’s more likely to issue a White Paper on his work rather than an academic thesis and is typical of the crossover of individuals between silos of activities - a recurring theme in this blog. These multi-faceted individuals are a completely new breed and synthesize their expertise in different fields, business, academia, education to evolve whole new ways of working in this area.

Just the sort of skillset we would want our children to have in the 21st Century surely and if not why not? If we are to pull ourselves out of the increasingly anachronistic 20th Century education system we need more teachers like Vicki and Rich in the workforce.

Overwhelming, unrealstic? - I doubt it - I would argue that they are boilerplating new ways of working and laying down the foundation for excellent Continuing Professional Development in this area in education. I will continue to back up that claim in subsequent blogs and videos/ case studies with innovative teachers in the coming months.

DEREK ROBERTSON - SCOTLAND - THE WORLD’S BIGGEST EDUCATIONAL VIRTUAL WORLD - MAINSTREAMING IMMERSIVE ENVIRONMENTS

Back over to the UK again for this Skype interview with Derek Robertson, National Adviser for Emerging Technologies and Learning in Scotland, who has managed to help mainstream Virtual Worlds in the Scottish Education system. As with so much that happens in Virtual Worlds, events have moved on since this video interview a few months back.

Scotland now has the biggest mainstream Open Sim Virtual World platform in the world called CANVAS.

Once again, Derek has a background firmly rooted in teaching and academia and other cross-discipline areas. CANVAS is part of the Scottish GLOW (the world’s biggest educational intranet) connected by Shibboleth. He is already well known for his seminal work on using commercial computer games in mainstream education and, together with Ollie Bray, has devised a number of practical ways of using these with local communites - all their work is underpinned by serious academic research.

CANVAS has to be the biggest mainstreaming of Virtual Worlds globally and is no mean feat. As I stated at the start of this blog - this is happening now - it’s not an idea or academic trial - it is live and working already.

Last year I did an interview with Mark Duffy of Second Places about his involvement with Open Sim. Many of the elements I questioned him about then are now in place.

Click to play

DAVID BURDEN - VIRTUAL WORLD PIONEER - CHATBOTS - VISUALISATION - MULTI-PLATFORM DELIVERY OF TRAINING FOR REAL WORLD COMPETENCIES

In this Skype discussion with David Burden of Daden some months back we discussed, amongst many other things, the rollout of Pivote an open-source authoring system for learning in virtual worlds. This is an Open Source multi-platform authoring system which can be used on anything from a mobile phone to a web browser. It has been put to use in the training of paramedics and all academic research and money underwrote the development. It was then released as an Open Source application and can be freely downloaded.

Again another example of “real world” use of Immersive Environments to train and orient professionals…

AARON WALSH - IMMERSIVE EDUCATION - WORLD STANDARDS FOR EDUCATION - OPEN SOURCE - OPEN STANDARDS - OPEN DEPLOYMENT

My video interview with Aaron Walsh, director of the Immersive Education initiative at their summit in London back in April, again earlier this year highlighted a much wider scope when considering the future rollout of Virtual Worlds globally.

Aaron’s connection with Immersive Environments goes way back to the very beginning of international standards for 3D on the web in the 90’s - what was then the VRML consortium subsequently named the Web 3D consortium.

His main vision is to help collectively forge Open Source, Open Standards, Open Deployment of Immersive Educational Environments so that assets, tech and platforms can all work seamlessly together. This will be future proofing of technologies to some extent and will guarantee that all systems will work interoperably and be extensible and scalable.

The Media Grid Immersive Education Initiative has set up a number of working parties to investigate not only the technical but also the social aspects of use of Immersive Environments including the possible deleterious effects on mental health of addictive behaviour and engagement in-world.

Two of their recent projects are the development of an Immersive iED table and the announcement of the STEM (Science , Technology, Engineering, Math) Rocket World initiative.

Listen to Aaron’s thoughtful answers and reflect on them in the light of all I have revealed about the current state of the technology in this blog posting.

TREVOR MEISTER - CANADIAN API WIZARD - REACTIONGRID

Trevor Meister’s Pachube helmet…

But probably one of the most inspiring individuals I have met on my journey has to be Trevor Meister. When I first encountered him I should imagine he was working virtually 20 hours a day on various educational projects on ReactionGrid.

The first thing he showed me was the use of Scratch for Open Sim. He had adapted Eric Rosenbaum’s code to work entirely in the immersive environment of Open Sim on ReactionGrid. Watch the video below - to see what it can do…

Trevor was also in the early stages of bringing in data into Open Sim and plotting it on Dynamic textures on primitive building blocks. I returned a couple of weeks later and it was obvious he had made enormous strides with development and adaptation of APIs from external spreadsheets to plot data more fluently.

But if that wasn’t enough he was experimenting with innovative Pachube sensor technology via a home made space helmet.

Trevor has over 20 years as a Maths and Physics teacher in Canada and with that track record he thinks this platfom a viable way to teach students and I entirely agree with him. What is so amazing is that he is now able to use the Immersive platform itself to flesh out his ideas about how it can be used.

I am personally astounded at how quickly he has developed several educational technologies in- world in such a short time. I think his expertise would be a boon for any government or educational institution wanting to use Virtual/ Immersive environments effectively in education.

He is currently seeking academic or governmental sponsorship and I am amazed he hasn’t been offered immediate funding for his work but I am sure it will not be long coming.

REACTION GRID -  CHRIS HART, KYLE & ROBIN GOMBOY

This interview is with Chris, Kyle and Robin of ReactionGrid without whom much of the access to educators and business people I have met on Open Sim would not have been possible.

Out of all the Open Sims I have visited in the last few months theirs has been the most approachable and welcoming towards education and their policy of a PG Island with appropriate protocols has been a model of use for the way access is going with virtual communities in Open Sim.

They have given amazing amounts of time and advice about their particular education and business sim and at no point have they refused to answer my copious questions about the process of getting schools onto Open Sim and their Gridizen policy.

In the interview above they introduce themselves and outline the ReactionGrid ethos. Of all the emerging Sims at the moment I would point educators, in particular to their grid. They are sure to get a very warm welcome and lots of advice about using the technology.

SUPAREAL

In the light of all this research into Open Sim and Immersive environments in education I am launching a new Virtual World consultancy business next week with my business partner, Julia Blagbrough, called SupaReal.

I feel the technology has now got to a point where Virtual Worlds are indeed a viable option for education at all levels - not just Secondary but also Primary schools and eventually a whole global network - a backbone of Open Source servers, will break open entirely the way we do things in education at the moment - a whole series of interconnected 3D learning environments that will almost certainly, in time, lead to a Hypergrid of interconnected learning spaces that will act as an intellectual crucible for innovation, creativity and new practices for 21st Century learning. It will be the 3D web…

It’s an exciting time and one I’m happy to be alive in to see how the road opens out before us as we continue into 21st Century learning. The seeds are there - it is up to us to make them grow and flower into new ways and pedagogies for our children and all our futures.

Sept 2009

Outside the wire - ethical use of tech and community involvement - what drives us to learn?

November 3, 2008 on 5:51 am | In BECTA, Digital Literacy, Educational Change, Handheld Learning, Innovation, Mediated Reality, Peer to Peer, Personalised Learning, Scottish Learning Festival, advisory, distributed networking, informal learning, mediascapes, mobile, mobile learning, open source, pedagogy, twitter | 0 Comments

How to do it and do it right

Serendipity is a wonderful thing - I am curious - sometimes too curious for my own good but today I had a few things happen that gave me an insight into the future of education and I’d like to share them with you. The first is an interview I did with an old friend, Alfie Dennan of Moblog.

He runs through how Moblog is used in Education in the film and we did talk further later about how effective Moblog is in schools. He even talked about the genesis of the business where he got together with his co-founder to solve a problem of getting data to a phone wirelessly but what intrigued me even more was his use of Moblog and other new API technologies to bind together community involvement to tell stories to change the way people do things. A culture shift in other words towards using social media and digital tech to effect change and build learning and awareness and all done within an ethical framework. Sound familiar - yes some core curriculum for the new digital literacies there I think and Alfie is a fine example of how to do it. I thoroughly endorse Moblog - I’ve been using it to put photos on the web for almost five years now from my phone.

Ethical use of Social Media

But now we come to the interesting part. We then talked about his campaign that used Moblog and its community and outside observers and interested parties to spread the word about XDRTB - an insidious disease but a mouthful to remember. He talks about the creative process that went into the campaign and I recommend you read about the genesis of the whole thing here. What is fascinating about this interview from an educational viewpoint is it is a case study in innovation. How ideas coalesce in someone’s mind to bind together a learning community for the common good. Watch the film and see how the idea evolved - it is a rare case study of how someone uses personal insight and creativity to work up a really engaging idea that binds together people in a common cause. It says more about the uses of Moblog than any dry demonstration of functionality could do - ever. And it’s inspirational.

What is fascinating about it is the way Alfie worked out how to mashup Google Maps aggregated map pin feature, Moblog and an entire community of very technically savvy people to tell a story through the medium of a low level ARG. It’s also for an ethical cause and I think it is one of many digital narratives that are going to be emerging soon. As you watch the film remember it was the back end community that made this story possible. Some people used highly creative ways to find the objects hidden in London and the ways they gave out and found the clues using GPS phones, photos, Second Life and even a fake number station is quite incredible. Here are a group of people who are highly technically literate contributing and collaborating in something more than just a game. At the end of the interview he also talked about the process of unboxing but more about that later.

Ramifications for Education

Now anyone who reads this blog will know I have been saying for some time that teachers should be embracing these social tech tools to bring together communities and where I find excellent exemplars I always highlight them. So just as I was finishing this blog - I noticed a post by Tom Barrett - Woices and Google Earth for Digital Fiction.

Mashups with maps and other apps

I had been aware Tom was up to something by his posts on Twitter so I popped over to have a shufti.

Basically a lot of the same elements as those used by Alfie above are there. Tom took as his inspiration Ewan McIntosh’s talk at the Scottish Learning Festival about Charles Cummings’ The 21 Steps. Which is essentially a Google Earth mashup with a very pretty skin and scripting from Penguin books.

His idea for mapping parts of James and the Giant Peach onto the landscape in the form of digital narratives is excellent. I first blogged about the uses of this process back in 2006 and it’s good to see some predictions coming true. And, of course things are getting easier and easier in the interim.

I would recommend people read Henry Jenkins’ Transmedia Storytelling 101 and stuff about non-linear narratives for a bit of background on this process.

This is where it gets techie - look away now

Now the third piece of the puzzle came with joining Howard Rheingold’s new initiative - Socialmedia Classroom - well worth doing! If you like tinkering with Open Source stuff on the web this is also an excellent site to visit.

In the developers forum Sam Rose posted a video on the Future of Drupal (and many other open source web applications) from the Drupalcon Boston 2008 conference.

Don’t worry if you know nothing about RDF files and triples  - it basically shows how information is becoming more contextutalised and how we can put it together and pull out information in a much smarter way. It’s part of the semantic web - Curriculum Online was meant to be based on a RDF standard but it never went down that route but then APIs weren’t in that much abundance then. But ignore all that tech talk and just look at the film.

Open Source the future

All of this has definite ramifications for education and Digital Literacy in this country. More and more people are finding it easier to install and run VLEs with help from Consultants and 3rd Party Services to put together the resources they want that reflect the community rather than a commercial product or solution that is generic.

It may not be the case now but I predict this will become more and more common in schools. Especially once they realise that they can be locked into unresponsive and non-extensible services that cost an arm and a leg in yearly licences.

No I can’t see a whole teaching force having these advanced skills but what I can see is the ability to clip online Web 2.0 apps together as easily as Lego in the future. It’s there in applications like Ning already. With the iPhone and now the G1 Android phone - these things are getting more and more ubiquitous in the teaching world and applications like Twitter are providing the glue for easier, speedier communications between distributed teaching and learning communities.

It is all about community based linkups not the tech remember but the ease with which the tech is helping the distributed links to glue together is driving community change as is obvious by the two examples above.

The Becta initiative on Open Source Schools is a small start. But what people have to understand is  that educational software, in the main, will wither on the vine in time unless it can do a job so simply and pertinently - otherwise the social aspects of teaching will just bind in, co-opt and collaborate with mashups outside of the system creating distributed networks of learning that more truly reflect the communities that use them.

Unboxing

Alfie Dennan talked briefly about “unboxing” and I’d like to include a link to a video of Ian Usher demonstrating in his usual inimitable way the whole process on Seesmic below.

And yes, he did give me permission - enjoy your week.

Channel 4 Digital Media Literacy Conference

November 16, 2007 on 12:33 pm | In Continual Professional Development, DRM, Digital Divide, Digital Media, Innovation, Personalised Learning, Scottish Learning Festival, Web 2.0, conferences, open source, podcasting | 0 Comments

L4L were recently at the Digital Media Literacy conference at Channel 4 organised by Policy Unplugged today covering events. Here are some brief notes…

Heather Rabatts chair of Media Literacy Taskforce (informal think tank) introducing the day talking about to engage in the debate.

Hon James Purnell MP Secretary for State for Culture Media and Sport.

Topic he is covering.

How media literate are we - Ofcom’s audit tracks progress over time. Charter for Media Literacy. Media Literacy at heart of the Curriculum. Framed within the literacy context and other subjects, art and design and media art courses. 50 specialist art colleges with media as there specialist courses. Digital switchover is important. Importance of access to internet. Digital switch over in some areas is happening now.

Some Ofcom stats
Over 21 percent over 65’s have takeup.

87 per cent ethnic communities have mobiles compared to 82 per cent of the population as a whole.

Information - millions of sources - look at consumption side - user generated content.

Regulation of broadcasting - look more widely and ambitiously to get the info they want. Media is no longer passive - access to harmful content - influence. Wrong reaction is to curtail freedom of speech.

Need to protect free speech - first principle to protect this. Right way to approach is to support the dissemination. Audiences needed to understand how this happens. No watershed on the internet. Adequate tools for protection - Ofcom, Home Office Kite mark for blocking access - KiteMark March 2008. Broadband stakeholder group - help to people to make informed choices. Risk of access to inappropriate content - help navigation.

Over 70 per cent of parent worried about inappropriate content. Theoretical understanding to practical matters.

Yemisi Blake, student, performance artist and writer. Talking about his media day - finds it hard to understand that email was never around. Allows him to say what he wants to say when he wants to say it - someone in the world can link to his blog. Talks about wordpress.com - his first blogpost was about a christmas party.

Showed his moleskin and apple laptop. Looking online for up to date academic sources found a website called Racialis about racism in everyday life, current up to date information. Searching for other people’s experiences. Networking with involvement with anti-racist issues. Blogher mentioned - group of people writing were not asking for authority Art & Design, Astrology. Doing things and getting on with it.

His history of listening to podcasts - not something school, family can give - web 2.0 and internet allowed him to tune into. Made him reflect on his life as a writer. Growth of confidence. Wordpress changed his life - allowed him to have a public profile he has created and people can see what he is about. Everyone should have a blog even if they don’t write in it.

Jon Gisby, former Managing Director of Yahoo! UK andIreland, MD and Vice President of Media – Europe

Setting up contexts that will inform the afternoon. Media industry changing more fundamentally more than anyone have had experience of. Keynote speeches will be pretty dead. Making it interactive by asking some questions.

Who are you?

Primarily work in the media industry,

Education,

Policy,

Other

Media Consumption

Newspaper

Online

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Friends online

Updating profile

Series of questions

1350 - media industry - means of production controlled - could burn dissenters.

William Caxton Quote “If this is wrong then it is a good and noble wrong.”

Marconi, John L Baird, Lord Reith - Mass media. Slaves and advocates. A more effective printing press.

Tim Berners Lee, Alexander Grahame Bell, Vince ? Html protocols

Fundamental change - don’t know where it will end up.

TV in analogue homes. Share of TV time

Give people choice things change quickly

Green line time spent by UK web users.
Tail pink line people watching telly.

Green line out to a hundred sites 30 - 40 per cent opf online time. Rest 35 45 55 thousands.

Doing, publishing, creating may or may not involve big media brands.

Top activity Search

Shopping , ebay , communities come up in the last couple of years.

News, finance, sprot movies, health, information, video, games. Substitutional effect of games. Challenges to the media business. Bottlenecks before control and squeeze markets consumers less choice, limited about consumption not about participation.

No limit on distribution anymore - anyone can be a distributor. Participation networks.

Policy regulation everyone is trying to catch up. Net benefit wonderful getting media organisations to change their game.

Fundamental shift - democratises business.

Consequences…?

1) Participation - technology kit bandwidth - about skills access to understanding, mentors, evangelists - participation gap as big as not having the kit

2) Transparency - ID fraud - offline - validation. What is the content, motivation, commercial criminal. Frameworks for consumer choice web is more hybrid. Marketing is not yet mature?

3) Ethics - Henry Jenkins - sharing info. Tools are there but the training isn’t…How does that change. Appropriate online behaviour - communicate educate when and where appropriate - Intellectual Copyright. Cyber-Bullying

4) Atomisation

Suddenly become part of communities you couldn’t become part of before. Don’t know what the catalysts are the knock on effect - national identity.

Needs new skills

Assess validate compare contrast resources to get to the truth. Whole range of content harness collective intelligence. New skills not the immediate media literacy skills.

Media Literacy Debate has never been mopre important.

Nature of medium is so fundamentally different.

It’s never been harder to execute.

Personal experience different to ours. Gamers, young children, small children, collaborative networks.
If you are not doing it don’t take the attitude I have to have people doing it for me.

Joan Barker, Silver Surfer of the Year 2007: My Media Day

Heather interviews Joan - she signed up for a scheme. As soon as I could control the mouse I got hooked on it I was away. Used Solitaire to control the mouse. Having a go in the lounge every afternoon - I wasn’t scared of it all. Have a go. Emailing family - felt really proud and could shopw grandchildren she could do it. Sent photos to her grandchildren in Italy. Hopes to do a lot with Skype. Shopping, flowers, books, booked theatre tickets. Helped own sheltered housing scheme - helped an 80 yr to contact her niece. Into Google Earth

Never lose sight of who we are …

Session 5. Perspectives and Panel

Ten minute presentations followed by Q&A (Chair: Julia Hobsbawn, Chief Executive of Editorial Intelligence)

Here to explore degree of online media literacy from perspective of social networks in context of Tanya Byron’s view.

Reference - to Finnish killer. Children use internet to consume media more than TV.

Participation for protest mobilised for propaganda, new media and creativity.

Reason for flocking to facebook - application programme came in but makes people creative.

Commentariat - bellweather / shaper of public opinion . Put in search references - what preoccupies the commentators

Admiring observations of how consumption is changing. Mange my Kebab - run on Northern Rock website jammed.

Virginia blackburn - middle England columinst writing for masses about facebook.

“In the future if you are not online you will not exist.”

• Ewan McIntosh – National Advisor on Learning Technologies at Learning
• and Teaching Scotland :

Bottom up behaviour.

Social media type work. The first criticism only a small number of people create stuff. 1.6 per cent create. Wiki edits wasn’t even 5 per cent. Easy put down for digital literacy.

Half of todays kids create content. 1/3rd share it - 95 per cent penetration in Ireland. In Scotland it has been a wildfire effect - class by class - from about 7 or 8 years old. What do you do with wildfire - firefight but it doesn’t work. Only a 1/4 turned up to technology in classroom. Fiefdom for media teacher - schools banning vehicles to do that - creating VLE national internet have as many corners as a 70’s school building. 21 st century illiterates running the system. Immigrants native good excuse for not running. Digital holiday makers turn up to digital land and don’t move there permanently.

Lack of will - fear factor. Fear factor in education. YouTube massacre in Finland. YouTube killer in Times. Media Literacy get blank expressions - talk to teachers - they don’t know - a handful do. Denmark 3/4 have social media and use it effectively. In New Zealand effective exemplars. Exemplar of a student playing World of Warcraft to find out about winning battles in history project.

Daily Telegraph web page offer - spurious because it’s free anyway

Social Media used in education - teacher - think about what they are doing - 20 out of 1000 sharing at beginning - end of year 360 sharing.

Uses Henry Jenkins classification:

Play

Learned most important thing learned through play - reference to Consolarium - impressive creative writing.

Performance - Gaming - Blogging

Increasing research shows virtual selves get towards projected self.

Simulation

Play get it wrong
Appropriation

Cognition

Judgement

Networking

Who why speaking

Negotiation

Negotiate what media literacy means.

Dick Penny, Director of the Watershed

Passionate about using all the tools.

Quote Anthony Lilley. Jokes about web 26

The ceaseless riptide of innovation - it will keep changing.

Throwing together difference and seeing what comes out

Celebrating diversity of cultures of experience - identity. Lots of media examples of identity. Key is place… Distributed but linked nature of place. Examples of video commentaries - skills ands shared output.

Jeremy Olivier, Head of Convergent Media, Ofcom
Realtionship between media literacy and role of content regulator. How to avoid exposure to harmful content. Consumers take responsibility for their own production. Industry through innovation allow audiences to have a broader range of services which won’t harm or offend. Unlimited supply of potentially harmful and invasive content new roles to come into play that work for consumers. Content information, responsibilities of industries. Greater choice works. Labelling functionality, flagging, takedown procedures.

Vicky Read, Head of Government and Regulatory Affairs, Safety,

What is a media literate person - social networks great place to practice these skills. How social networking sites can promote these skills on ly 2 or 3 years old challenges that lie ahead.

• Dick Penny, Director of the Watershed
• Jeremy Olivier, Head of Convergent Media, Ofcom
• Vicky Read, Head of Government and Regulatory Affairs, Safety,
• Bebo,
• Matt Locke – Channel 4 Commissioning Editor:

Jelly Ellie talks about her digital day!