Archive for March, 2009

UK governement wants to fast track failed bankers to teaching

March 10th, 2009 by Graham Attwell

I get more angry everyday over the UK government’s total mishandling of the economic crisis and its associated social impact. This is the latest ridiculous announcement as reported in the Guardian newspaper.

“High-fliers who lose their jobs in the recession will be able to retrain as teachers in just six months …..And those who are particularly gifted could become headteachers within four years …..The initiative, which is part of Labour’s public service reforms, will from September halve the minimum time it takes to train as a qualified teacher in England from a year to six months.

Ministers hope it will attract credit crunch victims from the City and the country’s brightest university graduates, many of whom are now looking for jobs in the public sector.

At least 200 people will be fast-tracked into headteacher roles from next year. Some will qualify for “golden hellos” of £10,000 for choosing schools in deprived areas.”

I totally fail to see what skills and competences former high fliers in the banking and finance sector have that makes them so suited for being a teacher. And besides anything else, they would need an extra six monthes course in ethics if they were seriously to enter a classroom.

Sounds of the Bazaar live – tomorrow tuesday 10th March

March 9th, 2009 by Graham Attwell

The March edition of Emerging Sounds of the Bazaar will be broadcast live tomorrow, Tuesday 10 March, at 18.00 UK time, 1900 Central European Time.

This is a Sounds Special – being broadcast live from the Jisc Next Generation Technologies in Practice conference in Loughbrough, UK. The programme will be co-presented by Graham Attwell and Josie Fraser and will feature live interviews with George Roberts on Open Space Technology, Mark van Harmelen on Personal Learning Environments, Nicola Whitton and Rosie Jones on the potential of Alternate Reality Games for enhancing teaching and Bob Rotheram on Supporting learning using audio feedback.

You can listen to Sounds of the Bazaar live by going to http://tinyurl.com/6df6ar in your browser. The url should open your MP3 player of choice. And if you would like to join in the fun, Steven Warburton will be in our chatroom at http://tinyurl.com/sounds08.

Just add your name – no password required

We hope you can join us tomorrow

Crooks, Criminals and Members of Parliament

March 4th, 2009 by Graham Attwell

I generally don’t like the endless chain emails of jokes that do the rounds. But this one did cause me to smile – and I thought it was worth sharing here. Warning – I have no idea if this is true but if so it is a little alarming!

“This is unbelievable, but true!

Can you imagine working for a company that has a little more than  600 employees and has the following employee statistics .

29 have been accused of spouse abuse

7 have been arrested for fraud

9 have been accused of writing bad cheque’s

17 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses

3 have done time for assault

71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit

14 have been arrested on drug-related charges

8 have been arrested for shoplifting

21 are currently defendants in lawsuits

84 have been arrested for drink driving in the last year

Which organisation is this ?

It’s the 635 members of the House of Commons, the same group that cranks out hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep the rest of us inline. “

Open football

March 2nd, 2009 by Graham Attwell

It is a busy period for me and hence little time for posting. Off again tomorrow to Pontypridd, then to Manchester for ThoughtFest08, a quick trip to Swindon to see my parents and then to Warwick University and on to Loughborough for the Jisc Users and Innovations programme Benefits Realisation project.

I do have the odd hour off! Last Thursday was the UEFA cup game between Werder Bremen and Milan (in Milan) and I managed to get myself to Bremen for the game. Problem was having made it to Germany, I found the game was not being seen on German TV. Conspiracy theories for this range between anti Werder bias on part of German broadcasters, ridiculous prices being charged by Milan for media rights and a desire not to show referees bias outside Italy!

So what to do? Innovation was running high. There were French, Chinese and Romanian broadcasters covering the game wide. satellite dishes were being moved, news cards plugged into computers and receivers. sadly, the only venue that my friend Lars knew was showing the match was on the wrong side of the river, it was pouring with rain and the ferry had stopped for the night. So, in the end, we decided to take our computers ot my local pub, where there is access to an open network from a nearby student house. The landlord had already positioned himself next to a radio with locals gathered around it. Lars and me got busy on our MacBooks, surfing for open feeds. And there were a lot of feeds – both on open streams and on peer to peer networks. The problem was there were also a lot of people seeking to watch those feeds. We ended up with two jerky rebuffering feeds running some 25 seconds behind the radio commentary. But nevertheless, the computers became a central focus on attention, perched on a high bar table and angled so everyone could watch.

The result, as I am sure you will guess since i am blogging this, was 2-2, so Werder progressed on the away goals rule.

But seriously, how long can this farce of closed media rights go on. As bandwidth continues to improve, I guess by next year the feeds will be reasonably good. And with so many people in China, in Romania and all over the world prepapred to generously share their satellite streams, it is only a matter of time before the football authorities  and the broadcasters have to reconsider their strategies for trying to screw as much money as possible from ordinary football fans for trying to follow their teams. Lets campaign for Open Football!

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    News Bites

    From a Jisc press release:

    Over 14,000 items of archived TV footage from 17 European countries are now available via the EUscreen online portal for teaching, research and general interest.

    EUscreen – the result of a collaboration between 36 partners across Europe – provides a rich insight into Europe’s television heritage with content dating from the 1920s to the present day.

    The portal includes rare footage and commentary on key events in history, including a 1962 interview with Martin Luther King about racial discrimination in the US.

    John Ellis, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway and principal investigator on the EUscreen project, said: “This is a valuable resource for anyone interested in social history or indeed TV history, as it brings together tens of thousands of clips from across Europe. The portal is available to anyone (not only academics) and it is very easy to get absorbed and spend hours browsing all of the footage.”

    The expansive footage has also proved popular as a learning aid for foreign language students, with clips available in 14 languages.

    By the end of September 2012, there will be around 30,000 items of digital content freely available on the portal as the European providers continue to add carefully selected material.

    Explore the EUscreen footage


    Open online seminar

    Jisc are hosting an open, online seminar on ‘Making Assessment Count (MAC)’ on Friday 3rd Feb – 1-2pm. The presenters are Professor Peter Chatterton (Daedalus e-World Ltd) and Professor Gunter Saunders (University of Westminster).

    The mailing for the seminar says” “The objective of Making Assessment Count is primarily to help students engage more closely with the assessment process, either at the stage where they are addressing an assignment or at the stage when they receive feedback on a completed assignment. In addition an underlying theme of MAC is to use technology to help connect student reflections on their assessment with their tutors. To facilitate the reflection aspect of MAC a web based tool called e-Reflect is often used. This tool enables the authoring of self-review questionnaires by tutors for students. On completion of an e-Reflect questionnaire a report is generated for the student containing responses that are linked to the options the student selected on the questionnaire.”

    You can find out more ans sign up for the seminar at  http://jiscmac.eventbrite.co.uk/


    EC-TEL 2012

    The EC-TEL 2012: Seventh European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning 21st Century Learning for 21st Century Skills takes place on 18-21 September 2012 at Saarbrücken in Germany.

    The focus for the conference includes:

    - How can schools prepare young people for the technology-rich workplace of the future?
    - How can we use technology to promote informal and independent learning outside traditional educational settings?
    - How can we use next generation social and mobile technologies to promote informal and responsive learning?

    The deadline for proposals is April 2.


    Visitors and Residents

    David White (University of Oxford) and Dr. Lynn Silipigni Connaway (OCLC) have been attracting quite a stir with their JISC-funded work on Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?, being undertaken as part of the Developing Digital Literacies programme webinar series.

    Slides, audio and a recording of the Blackboard Collaborate session where they presented some of the findings of their work can be found at http://bit.ly/jiscdiglitvr.


    ECER 2010

    The keynotes, videos, radio shows and interviews from the ECER 2010 Conference in Helsinki:

    On the ECER 2010 website.

    Taccle handbook for teachers order form

    Here you find the Taccle handbook for teachers order form.

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