Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

The broadcasting fest of the weekend was a little stressful but lots of fun. And whilst podcasting is now pretty simple – and video is not a big problem – live radio is something else. Firstly presenting a live show is a completely different experience to podcasting. There is no chance to remix – it is going out live. You have to think on your feet. And it has a buzz to it which isn’t there in the podcast.

The tech mix is still a little tricky. Saturday went pretty well. A few glitches but on the whole not a bad programme. Sunday was a disaster. Twenty minutes before we were due to broadcast something went wrong with our settings. I have a few ideas but am still not quite sure what it was. We reset our machine to overcome problems with the skype feed. And in so doing we totally messed up the feeds. Something was looping in one of the two machines we use to broadcast the programme. The result – dreadful sound quality. And whilst Pekka and John gallantly talked on through an near impossible echo, Dirk and me scrambled round trying to work out where the fault lay. Sadly it was to no avail. We ended the show disconecting the Mac Pro from he feed and with me taking into a Powerbook in built Microphone. After the show we tore apart the whole system and worked out a new set up. And yesterday it all worked.

Thanks to everyone for their feedback. And thanks to all our guests. You can listen to the recording of the show here. I need to add a lot of links. No time now. However do check out the live Earthcast 24 horu show which is presently underway. Matt Montagne explains what it is all about in the first guest spot in this edition of Sounds of the Bazaar. You can access the Earthday web cast on http://edtechtalk.com/earthcast08. And check out Cristina’s blog on her work in the project.
Many thanks are also due to Dirk Stieglitz who has bravely struggled with the technology. We are working on a how-to publication for those wanting to learn more about live webcasting.

Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE [ 57:36 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1086)

Monday 21 is the third of our LIVE Sounds of the Bazaar broadcasts. Todays show goes out at 1900 CEST, 1800 UK summer Time. We hope we have eradicated the bug which badly reduced the quality of yesterdays broadcast.

Don’t forget todays LIVE edition of the Sounds of the Bazaar show. We will be broadcasting at 2000 Central European Summer Time, 1900 UK summer time. For other time zones just check the tiny urls in the news item below. Todays show features interviews with John Pallister form Wolsingham School on e-Portfolios and with Annika Matilda Bergstroem from Sweden. Our special guest is Matt Montgane who is going to be telling us about the forthcoming 24 hour Earthcast.
And for todays show we will also have a chatroom running in parallel. Just click on this link to enter the chat.
Don’t forget – you can listen to the programme by clicking here. This should open as a stream in your default MP3 player.
And if you missed yesterdays broadcast, an archive version is now on line..

What do you do when have a techy question and your friends aren’t online?

A year or two a go I would tell you that my first reaction would be to try to find a discussion forum where I could post my queries and get answers from different individuals within a short period of time. These days this has however become my second option.

First I check youtube to see if there are some good video tutorials out there which may help me solve my problem. And the truth is that many times I succeed to find exactly what I am looking for. It’s just happened today when I was trying to figure out why on earth the podpress plugin of my other blog wasn’t working. [ and yes, it was because of the earth day event ] I youtube-d and found this awesome video, which helped me solve the problem. Well, it was actually thanks to “Blogtatics“, who bothered to create and share the tutorial. I am delighted with all the generosity of these people who enable others to learn because they share what they create… just like that!
So, in short, what I do when I need to solve a techy problem and my friends aren’t online is very simple! I just “youtube”.  If that doesn’t work, then I google to link to other sites where I can find some answers. If that doesn’t work either, I will probably wait till my friends come online or I come across them somewhere. I hardly ever used a hand-book when it comes to solve techy problems. Actually, I don’t use technical handbooks at all.

Well it worked! I was pretty nervous about the first LIVE broadcast of Sounds of the Bazaar. And for the first two minutes I talked too fast until Dirk, the producer held up a sheet of paper saying ‘slow down’. But it all went pretty well. Many thanks to Jan Lai who talked to us form a beach in Italy over a skype phone and also to Sigi Jakob from Germany who didn’t complain too much when I said she was from Austria!

The software tells us we had about 50 listeners from around the world. If you missed the programme – or enjoyed it so much you want to hear it again – here is a recording.

And don’t forget tomorrows broadcast at 2000 hours with John Pallister and Annika Matilda Bergstroem. And we will also have Pekka Kamareinen as a studio guest and hope to be talking to Matt Montagne about the forthcoming Earthcast. Just put the following link in your browser and it should strat streaming through your default MP3 application:

http://icecast.commedia.org.uk:8000/emerge.mp3.m3u

Cristina is trying to set up a chat board to accompany the show. More details tomorrow.

Standard Podcast [ 46:35 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (997)

As promised more on this weekends Sounds of the Bazaar LIVE internet radio fest. Don’t miss it!

The programme times are as follows:

Saturday 19 April – 1300 UK summer time, 1400 Central European Summer Time (CEST)

Sunady 20 April – 1900 UK summer time, 2000 CEST

MondaY 21 April – 1800 UK summer time, 1900 CEST

Each of the programmes, which will last about 45 minutes, has a theme.

Saturday’s programme will focus on e-Portfolios and Personal Learning Environments. And I will be talking live with Cristina Costa about how we can use social software and web 2.0 tools to support learning.

Sunday will look at creativity and reflection in learning. Programme guests include John Pallister form Wolsingham School in County Durham and Annika Matilda Bergstroem from Sweden.

And on Monday we will be looking at Web 2.0, innovation and learning development. Guests include Raymond Elferink from the Netherlands and Andreas Auwarter from the University of Koblenz in Germany. Ray will be talking about a new lightweight learning repository and Andreas about podcasting in education.

And on course we want you to take part too. You can email your questions or comments on the show to me, Graham Attwell, on graham10 [at] mac [dot] com. Or you can text me on 00491797650986. All comments that are fit to be heard will be read out LIVE. But better still come on the show. How can you do that? Just skype me – my skype name is GrahamAttwell. Make sure you have a headset ready. Or email me in advance and tell me you would like to come on the show giving me your skype address.

And on Thursday we will be launching a new project – the Emerge Bazaar (an Emerge benefits Realisation Project) as part of a JISC Emerge three day on-line event.

The launch will take the form of a one hour LIVe internet radio programme. We’ve got lots of great content lined up for you: interviews, phone ins (or, more properly, ‘skype ins’), jingles, competitions and more. Anyway, more details on that next week. Of course we will also be explaining to you what the Emerge Bazaar is about. You are all invited. This programme will be at 1600 UK Summer Time, 1700 Central European Summer Time.

Last – but not least – how do you access the show. Sound of the Bazaar will be streamed from the following address:

http://icecast.commedia.org.uk:8000/emerge.mp3.m3u

Just put this address in your browser and the stream should open in your favourite MP3 player on your computer – e.g. iTunes or Windows Media Player.

If you have any technical queries or any other questions please get in touch. Meanwhile sit back and enjoy the show.

Just a quick early morning moan.

Can anyone tell me what is the point of these aggregator blogs which have appeared in the last three months. Most of them seem to be set up in WordPress and are using some kind of search software – probably Google or Technorati – to automatically aggregate based on key words / categories. In a few cases there does seem to be some human intervention but most of them are just preprogrammed to write soemthing like “xxx wrote an interesting post yesterday”. And of course being reasonably legitimate – apart from the ‘Flash Gordon’ factor – they get past my sp[am filter and appear as trackbacks on the blog. A lot are targeting ‘tech posts’ and a not inconsiderable number are after things like e-Portfolios.

I fail to see the point – what added value do these sites provide. Or do their owners think they will get rich from Google ads? In their dreams.  This is just another layer of spam.

Have you ever been asked the odd question about “your VLE”: What VLE you use, or what VLE your institution has. Odder than that might be my expression of amazement every time someone asks me that.

Don’t take me wrong, but I have a feeling what people imply with VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) is what I understand as being a piece of software/application, a platform as we call it back home, or merely a CMS, as the techies have named it.
That is what Blackboard is; that is what I call Moodle too, and obviously I wouldn’t define DOKEOS in any other way.

But the software, no matter which one you choose to use is never the environment you might be able to create, develop and maintain. It doesn’t come in the package!
It is almost like buying a house. Just because you bought four walls and a roof, it doesn’t mean they are automatically converted into a home. It’s just a house! That is what you get when you sign the contract and pay that big bill. How you develop it into a home is up to you and to those who share that space with you.
A home is more than a building. It is the result of an ongoing effort which one puts in to construct a comfortable zone with the right atmosphere. A home, just like a learning environment, conveys a deeper meaning than that of a house. Those walls, which are mechanically put together, can simply provide you with a physical shelter, but will never be able to replace the human and the personal touch. Attached to the meaning of ‘home’ is a feeling of warmth and cosiness, a roll of interactions and shared memories which are constructed overtime. It’s those shared moments, and, of course, the people involved in it, that help transform a house into a home.

The same happens to a CMS or any other application which might be adopted to “host education”. The learning environment doesn’t come with the software, that much I can assure you. The learning environment is the world the moderator creates together with the learners, while engaging (with) them in a relevant way. The environment is thus affected by the human activity, and depends on the way educators connect to learners and learners feel touched by their guides and peers as part of multiple interactions and ways of Communicating, Collaborating and Caring (as Prof. Carneiro stated in an OEB 2007 interview)
It is how one sets the atmosphere and maintains it that makes a CMS into a effective VLE. In the end, it is how we – educators – make the difference and enable the learning relationship to work. Like in any other relationship, it is hard work, but it can be a lot of FUN too.

Key for me about understanding the changing ways in which we are teaching and learning is the deep seated changes going on in our societies. I talked about this in a presentation in Pesaro in Italy. And Jens Vermeersch captured my ramblings on a digital camera. Thanks Jens for this short video clip.

We have been threatening this for a long time. But now, thanks to generous sponsorship from the JISC Emerge Bazaar project, Sounds of the Bazaar is going LIVE.

We are going to host a broadcasting fest this weekend with three live half hour programmes on all the best in educational technology, learning and (hopefully) culture. I will give you a little more detail on the line up for the programmes later this week.

But make sure you put these dates in your diary now:

Saturday 19 – 1400 hours Central European Time (1300 UK)
Sunday 20- 2000 hours Central European Time (19.00 UK)
Monday 21 – 1900 hours Central European Time (1800 UK)

How do you access the programme – just go to this address in your browser – the stream should open in your MP3 player of choice. And don’t worry if you forget the address – we will put a big button on this site for you to press!

Update – thanks to Cristina here are links for times in other time zones:

First show – http://tinyurl.com/5gme7w

2nd show – http://tinyurl.com/5qx5k8

3rd show – http://tinyurl.com/635no3