Pretty crazy and scary video recommended by Cristina Costa. Director Micheal Wesch says “My videos explore mediated culture, seeking to merge the ideas of Media Ecology and Cultural Anthropology.” This video, Tiwtter and teh World Simulation “demonstrates the use of Twitter and Jott in the World Simulation, a radical experiment in education coordinated by Michael Wesch, Kansas State University.”
I am greatly intrigued by Martin Weller’s presentation on SocialLearn yesterday. One of the advantages of Elluminate is it allows you to watch a recording of the presentation afterwards, although it is very frustrating not being able ot take part in the rolling chat channel. SocialLearn is a UK Open University project. According to the SocialLearn blog: “Some learners will be happy running 20 web apps [for their Personal Laerning Environment], while others will want to access this ecosystem via a coherent web interface. Currently one would do this via iGoogle, Netvibes, Facebook etc, if the apps have widgets in these different walled gardens.
In SocialLearn, we aim to move beyond web-feed based interoperability and visual clustering of apps on the webtop, with SL-aware apps communicating via the API, so that the learner’s profile can track and intelligently manage the flow of information and events to support their activity.”
This seems a great approach and I particularly liked Martin’s demo of their alpha software. two things stood out for me – the focus on people as a recommender for resources, thus allowing Open Educational Resouces to be accessed in context. Secondly the idea of supporting micro and episodic learning.
I do have concerns. The OU appears to be positioning the project as an experiment in exploring new business models in a world of competition by multiple learning providers. I am not sure that this is the ideal starting point but I suppose innovation is driven by many concerns and motivations!
When I watched the presentation last night I was also not happy with another of the core assumations behind the project – namely that “there is a major shift in society and education driven by the possibilities new technology create for creating and sharing content and social networking.” This seemed to me too technology centerd. But looking at it again in the cold light of a Friday morning the emphasis on the possibilities of new technology seems right. What then becomes interesting is that if such possibilities exist and if we assume that technology can be socially shaped, how do we use such possibilities in facilitating learning.
And in that respect, the SocialLearn project looks to be a very important initiative.
ECER 2010, “Education and Cultural Change”, takes place in Helsinki, 23 – 27 August.
Cultural change has emerged as an important issue in most European countries due to increased migration. With regard to education in Europe, culture is often perceived as referring mostly to ethnicity, religion and language, though cultural diversity also refers to race, gender, class, age, ability and sexual orientation.
RT @marett: Tecnology will not save education http://bit.ly/aDHEUr The report of our session in #ECER2010 by @grahamattwell
Tecnology will not save education http://bit.ly/aDHEUr The report of our session in #ECER2010 by @grahamattwell
RT @lindacq: Tecnology will not safe education http://bit.ly/aDHEUr the report of our session in #ECER2010 by @grahamattwell
Videos, interviews, podcasts and reports from the ECER 2009 Conference in Vienna end of September.
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Our next programmes will LIVE from the ECER conference in Helsinki.The shows will be broadcast frem 1200 – 1230 Central European Time on Wednesday 25 August and Thursday 26 August and from 1100 – 1130 Central European Time on Friday 27 August (Don’t forget, if you are listening from the UK it is one hour earlier). To listen just go to
http://radio.jiscemerge.org.uk:80/Emerge.m3u
This will open the LIVE radio stream in your MP3 player of choice.
