Introduction

Video

October 26th, 2007

This section of the web site contains the different videos we have been making. All the videos are covered by a Creative Commons license.

Video

We are not Robots

November 12th, 2019 by Graham Attwell

We’re constantly asked to make decisions about personal data about us, and we are only just starting to grasp the impact these decisions have on us, and others.

Here, Renate Samson, Anna Scott and Peter Wells share findings from research published today, on how ‘the people’ understand data, and a tool we’ve created to help us all have more nuanced, constructive discussions about data about us. More information from the Open Data Institute.

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A Young Person has to Know Everything

October 18th, 2016 by Graham Attwell

Sadly Dario Fo died earlier this week. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the San Marino International Arts Festival (SMIAF) where he kept an audience of about 60 young people spellbound in a 45 minute question and answer session. And I think this short video was made by SMIAF during the festival.

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The History of Money (in 10 minutes)

February 10th, 2016 by Graham Attwell

Love this video by Deek Jackson from the UK Open University. It shows imagination is more important than big production budgets. And this is just the kind of video I think we should be making for MOOCs – imagination and time permitting.

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Kurt Vonnegut’s lost lecture

November 11th, 2015 by Graham Attwell

Courtesy of the brainpickings web site: “On November 8, 1970 — three days before his forty-eight birthday and shortly after his play Happy Birthday, Wanda June opened in New York — Vonnegut showed up at an NYU classroom as a guest lecturer with a handful of handwritten talking points. In the fifty meandering minutes that followed, the beloved author opened up about his life and his writing with unparalleled candor, discussing his mother’s mental illness, being raised by his African American nanny Ida, what it takes to be a writer, and the ultimate task of the artist.

The talk was recorded and broadcast on New York’s WBAI public radio station, and has been preserved by the Pacifica Radio Archives. Forty-five years later, the wonderful folks of Blank on Blank have brought an excerpt of it to life in one of their signature animations — please enjoy.”

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A video tutorial: Getting started with the LMI for All API

November 11th, 2015 by Graham Attwell

Regular readers will know that together with Philipp Rustemeier, I have been working on  the UK Commission for Employment and Skills’ LMI for All project. Through the project we are developing a database providing access to open data around the Labour `market. This includes data about occupations, pay, present and projected employment, qualifications and much more. So far, UKCES has focused on the use of the data for careers guidance but I suspect it may have far wider potential uses, including for education and local government planning. When mashed with other data I see LMI for All as pointing to the future is of open data as part of smart cities or rather as providing data about cities for smart citizens.

The LMI for All project does not itself produce applications.Instead we provide access to a open APi, which developers can query to build their own desktop or mobile apps.

One thing we are working on is providing more help for developers wanting to use the API. As part of that we are developing a series of ‘how to’ videos, the first of which is featured above.The video was originally recorded in real time using Google Hangouts and  YouTube.  The 31 minute original was cut to about 15 minutes and a new introduction added.

Any advice about how to make this sort of video will be gratefully received. And the code which Philip developed live in the video can be accessed on GitHub

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Exciting and inspiring students

December 2nd, 2014 by Graham Attwell


Loving this video. Veritasium points out the history of hype around successive technologies and media. One common factor is that in each phase the end of the need for teachers is predicted, Teachers have a vital role to play, say Veritasium, in guiding social processes of learning and exciting and inspiring students. The use of technology for learning is not a revolution but an evolution and teachers have a vital role to play in using technology for learning.

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Supporting Public Employment Services

November 12th, 2014 by Graham Attwell

It is becoming expected that projects produce a promotional video these days. I am not quite sure how best to do these. Anyway this is the new video from the Employ-ID project in which Pontydysgu are partners.  I will be writing more about this project over the next couple of weeks.

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Intelligent machines or intelligent humans? Herebe monsters!

September 16th, 2014 by Graham Attwell

I’m not normally a big fan of keynote speeches. But I greatly enjoyed Audrey Waters presentation at Alt C 2014. According to the video blurb: “What does it mean to create intelligent machines? What does it mean to create intelligent teaching machines? What does this mean in turn when we talk about using these technologies to create intelligent humans? A romp through literature and the cultural history of ed-tech to talk about teaching machines and monsters.” And I love a good romp.

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Popular science

June 21st, 2014 by Graham Attwell

I think I understand this though in the discussion on YouTube the jury is out on how clear the explanation is. What is amazing is the popularity of short science videos. This one has 932,446 views!

NB you can find all the videos featured on the Pontydysgu web site using the video category.

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Changes in Learning and Development

May 21st, 2014 by Graham Attwell

This is an interesting video. Donald H Taylor explains how Learning and Development Departments need to change their attitude to risk in order to keep pace with the rest of the business in today’s modern world. He describes 4 quadrants in which L&D departments fit: Learning Leadership, Unacknowledged Prophet, Comfortable Extinction and The Training Ghetto and explains how and why all L&D departments should join the quadrant of Learning Leadership. However I am not convinced that the major problem is that Learning and Development departments are failing to keep up with changing organisations. In my experience all too often it is the organisations themselves who are holding back change. And don’t forget that most Small and Medium Enterprises, who it could be argued are the prime drivers of change do not have a Learning and Development Department (interesting in that regard that Donald cites Pinterest with 12 employees as an example of a fast changing organisation).

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    This week, Twitter apologised for racial bias within its image-cropping algorithm. The feature is designed to automatically crop images to highlight focal points – including faces. But, Twitter users discovered that, in practice, white faces were focused on, and black faces were cropped out. And, Twitter isn’t the only platform struggling with its algorithm – YouTube has also announced plans to bring back higher levels of human moderation for removing content, after its AI-centred approach resulted in over-censorship, with videos being removed at far higher rates than with human moderators.


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    The gap between poor students and their more affluent peers attending university has widened to its largest point for 12 years, according to data published by the Department for Education (DfE).

    Better-off pupils are significantly more likely to go to university than their more disadvantaged peers. And the gap between the two groups – 18.8 percentage points – is the widest it’s been since 2006/07.

    The latest statistics show that 26.3% of pupils eligible for FSMs went on to university in 2018/19, compared with 45.1% of those who did not receive free meals. Only 12.7% of white British males who were eligible for FSMs went to university by the age of 19. The progression rate has fallen slightly for the first time since 2011/12, according to the DfE analysis.


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    From Raconteur. A recent report by global learning consultancy Kineo examined the learning intentions of 8,000 employees across 13 different industries. It found a huge gap between the quality of training offered and the needs of employees. Of those surveyed, 85 per cent said they , with only 16 per cent of employees finding the learning programmes offered by their employers effective.


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