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I’ve spent most of the day listening to the Earthday 24 hour webcast, Earthcast. The webcast was hosted by the World Bridges Edtechtalk. And it was so cool. I think this account from John Pallister on the e-Portfolios and PLTs list serve summarises perfectly the event.

“A strange thing happened today, ordinary people from around our world collaborated to do the extraordinary. They adopted a philosophy that if they were not breaking the tools and technology, they were not
trying hard enough – they tried pretty hard, for 24 hours! A few things hung up on them, and a few things did not like working with each other, but what an amazing achievement. I listened to children,
of all ages, and teachers from around the world talking to one another and broadcasting to anyone in the world that had an internet connection……….

I found myself listening to eartcast08 this morning, I was rapidly drawn in to what was happening, the enthusiasm of the students from around the world was addictive and energising. I soon had a Year 12
student contributing, asking some of the presenters why they were flying around the world to attend so many conferences, he was answering questions from people somewhere the USA and was being listened to by people all over the world. He went on to initiate a quite a heated discussion about national energy policies. He was a
student who 5 minutes earlier was simply having a conversation with friends in the common room – then he found himself talking to the world! From an ordinary class room in County Durham, at no cost.

What is in this type of activity for our learners – well, just about everything that you would need to develop learners as ‘Effective participators ‘ — “Young people actively engage with issues that affect them and those around them. They play a full part in the life of their school, college, workplace or wider community by taking
responsible action to bring improvements for others as well as themselves.” AND a bucket-full of communication and citizenship skills.

Life long learning, I learnt from a 6 Year old that by using www.Blackle.com rather that using Google I would save energy because the screen is black!

Eartfcast08 involved students from around the world talking about the Health of our planet and what they were doing to make a difference - I will make sure that we integrate earthcast09 in to our curriculum.”

I agree with John. It was a truly remarkable event. If you missed it the archives can be found here.

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 [57:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (354)

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..

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 [46:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (423)

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@mac.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.

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

Its been a tiring last six days. First to Karlsruhe for the launch of the Mature research project and then on to Pesaro to teach on the last day of the five day course on materials production for open and distance learning. There were some 15 students from all over Europe. It was hard work but great fun. I did an initial session on Personal Learning Environments (more on that on this blog later) and then a session on podcasting. I got four groups to each storyboard a session and then each group recorded their session live on stage in front of the whole class.

The technology was a bit dubious - it was what I could set up from my bag in five minutes - but the participants were enthusiastic - despite it being a sunny Saturday afternoon, creative and very funny.

I have promised to publish their work. This is a very rough cut - I did it last night when I got home. The sound levels are all over the place and the editing is minimal but I think it shows the potential of using podcasting for creating and creativity. You are all invited to listen - however some of the humour is very much in-group. Sadly there was no time to run a session on editing but we are adding that to the wiki that Critsina and I have created for supporting our teaching and learning sessions.

Thanks to Elmo for organising the Pesaro course and to all the students for their willingness to play.

 

 Open and Distance Learning course - the podcast [15:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (585)

A quick post from the Online Educa conference in Berlin.

The experiment working with students from Koblenz producing podcasts from the conference is great fun - will report more on it later.

And yesterday I did a stand in key note presentation - Web 2.0, Social Software and Personal Learning Environments. A copy of that will also appear here soon.

And of course we are getting those podcasts out. Here is Sounds of the Bazaar 17 - a special edition on podcasting in education. This is a link to the full edition - if you want to access the individual items in the programme head over to the Bazaar site and listen there.

 

 Sounds of the Bazaar 17 ) - podcasting special: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (195)

It is already time for another edition of Sounds of the Bazaar.

This issue features a round table discussion with Jaan Netzow, from IBM Germany, Gareth Greenwood, IBM UK, and Bert de Coutere, IBM Belgium. All are involved in one way or another with the development, sales and support of software for collaboration - particularly in the workplace. Can IBM applications replace Facebook as a ‘managed social network?’ Should managers have the right to change employees’ personal profiles. All this and more in this round table.

The Sound of the Bazaar interview is with Rebecca Stromeyer. Rebecca has been involved with organising Online Educa Berlin since the start - in 1994. In the interview she tells of the origins of the conference and talks about what she enjoys about it all.

Website of the Month features the European Collaboration for Innovation project. And - this is a little embarassing - just at the moment we don’t have the url for the project to hand. But if you do want the url please visit us again when we have updated this page.

As ever thanks to Dirk Stieglitz - from stray hints in emails I gather that I made a mess of recording this issue and he had a bit of a technical struggle. And thanks to Beate Kleessen from ICWE for help in planning SoB this autumn and to Agnes Breitkopf from IBM for setting up the round table

 

 Listen to the full edition [43:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (624)

 

 Introduction to the show - Graham Attwell [1:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (188)

 

 e-Collaboration - an IBM Round Table [16:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (265)

 

 Web Site of the Month [7:13m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (188)

 

 Online Educa - the past and the future with Rebecca Stromeyer [12:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (189)

 

 Extro to the programme - Graham Attwell [2:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (318)

Not quite sure if it is 16 or 17 - and no time to post it here now. But if you can’t wait for the next edition of Sounds of the Bazaar head over to the Bazaar web site - and listen to the latest edition of our podcasting goodness.