learning

More than cool!

An excellent video about using games for learning, indeed the author of this video really spells it out in a very obvious way.

So it was time for another one of those "how do I learn summaries", seems I'm heavily slanted towards musical and Bodily-Kinesthetic, well no surprises there then. Interestingly I'm not into nature much at all.

These are your results. Remember that these results reflect an aptitude for a particular intelligence, not an actual measure of that intelligence:

Linguistic: 66
The ability to read, write and communicate with words. Authors, journalists, poets, orators and comedians are obvious examples of people with linguistic intelligence.

Logical-Mathematical: 84
The ability to reason and calculate, to think things through in a logical, systematic manner. These are the kinds of skills highly developed in engineers, scientists, economists, accountants, detectives and members of the legal profession.

Visual-Spatial: 70
The ability to think in pictures, visualise a future result. To imagine things in your mind's eye. Architects, sculptors, sailors, photographers and strategic planners. You use it when you have a sense of direction, when you navigate or draw.

Musical: 100
The ability to make or compose music, to sing well, or understand and appreciate music. To keep rhythm. It's a talent obviously enjoyed by musicians, composers, and recording engineers. But most of us have a musical intelligence which can be developed.

Bodily-Kinesthetic: 91
The ability to use your body skillfully to solve problems, create products or present ideas and emotions. An ability obviously displayed for athletic pursuits, dancing, acting, artistically, or in building and construction. You can include surgeons in this category but many people who are physically talented–"good with their hands"–don't recognize that this form of intelligence is of equal value to the other intelligences.

Interpersonal: 68
The ability to work effectively with others, to relate to other people, and display empathy and understanding, to notice their motivations and goals. This is a vital human intelligence displayed by good teachers, facilitators, therapists, politicians, religious leaders and sales people.

Intrapersonal: 59
The ability for self-analysis and reflection – to be able to quietly contemplate and assess one's accomplishments, to review one's behavior and innermost feelings, to make plans and set goals, the capacity to know oneself. Philosophers, counselors, and many peak performers in all fields of endeavor have this form of intelligence.

Naturalist: 0
The ability to recognize flora and fauna, to make other consequential distinctions in the natural world and to use this ability productively – for example in hunting, farming, or biological science. Farmers, botanists, conservationists, biologists, environmentalists would all display aspects of this intelligence.

I took the intelligence test here, why not give it ago and come back and tell me what you are?

I'm of to the Social Media Mafia MCL2 on Saturday, you coming?

If you are, please do make sure you introduce yourself to me, this is how I look (I'm in the middle):

Yes, I'll probably be surrounded by nurses just like this too.

The "learning-workshop" (mediacamp) is at 297 Kingsland Rd, Hackney, London E8, UK (full-disclosure: my clients).

More MCL2 text here.

Oh and grab my moby number from the top there and SMS me, might be handy on the day/eve, if you get lost in a bar somewhere.

It’s been a while since I reflected on my education, but the conversation came up recently over lunch with friends.

I have a friend who is considering a career change (let’s call him Charlie). Charlie is an instructor, and an instructor in every sense of the word. He works in an environment where training or instruction takes place in a way one manner. It’s the classic “sage on the stage” approach, the “font of all knowledge” where the primary task is to transfer a package of knowledge to the audience. “I have this knowledge and I am an expert, and I will now transfer it to you”.

Excuse me while I stop smirking, due to understanding various other far more empowering methods.

Now Charlie is not necessarily an advocate of the instructor led approach, it just so happens that is the environment he works in, and in fact he would make a diamond educationalist in a more liberal, or open environment.

But what does “open” mean here?

Many years ago I used to “train” or “instruct” just like Charlie, that’s the system we grew up with, that’s what we thought “education” was suppose to equate to. When we go to a conference, that’s the experience many of us still expect, we expect to be talked to by an “expert”. Well guess what? That approach is so old school and educationally limiting it’s time we changed our values, or our beliefs on how education can be delivered, and general information.

I’m speaking as a convert mind, if you read my blog a bit you’ll know that I am primarily an educational technologist, ok so one who has had to learn online marketing, branding and SEO through running a successful online business, but at the heart my core is one of an educational technologist.

Sometimes we reach milestones in our lives, or crossroads where significant experiences change our direction forever, and one of those crossroads for me was completing my Masters of Open and Distance Education way back in 2000, abbreviated to MA ODE (Open).

I studied that programme with the IET over three years part time, and in an online mode. So back in 97 we were a buzzing virtual community located globally and sensing something big was coming, and of course it did. We studied concepts years ago concerning social networks and knowledge nodes, we read material which challenged the very notion of what education should be, we debated social interaction in cyberspace (as it was known then), we enthused about the transparency that technology can yield, and the changing dynamic of teacher and student, the power shifts in a learning relationship.

We did so much brain buzzing that it had a fundamental impact on me which changed my outlook forever, and more importantly enabled me to “give-up” the notion that I had to be an “expert” delivering knowledge. We invested brain energy and practise into words such as “constructivism”, and “heutogogy”, all beautiful words which place the learner at the centre of discovery and the teacher as a “guide on the side” a person who creates scaffolding for the learner, but never “spoon feeds”, never has a notion of having to transfer HER opinion, NO the learner must construct their own learning and assumptions.

It is with background that I enthused to Charlie, in the hope Charlie will also find great richness in “giving-up” the teacher power struggle. It is with this background I tell you that study is a good thing, providing you find an “open” approach.

Have you experienced the open approach, maybe you do it every day of your life but just never assumed it was open education?

I've had some interest from some of you around the area of audio content in educational settings, so I felt compelled to right some words in a few blog posts. I may draw this "series" out over a few weeks or so depending on interest.

Educasting is a system, or method, of digital content distribution such as audio and/or video/pdfs etc.

The most common audio format used is the mp3, I’m sure you’ve heard of that, and this blog post is mainly focused on that format. The term educast implies that the content produced for distribution is able to be automatically downloaded and updated onto mobile devices such as mp3 players, PCs and other similar consumer electronic devices such as mobile phones. In many cases the updating of content occurs simply by plugging the playing device in to a computer.

Without a doubt the main vehicle used for transporting an educast is the internet, though as you are probably interested in your own teaching space the protocol is equally suited to be distributed over intranets and other internal networks found in educational settings which are not necessarily open to public access.

How does it work?

In order to understand the whole process of educasting from creator to listener/viewer I'll break down the system into 6 basic steps or stages:

1. content created – the content can be recorded in a variety of ways and in a variety of locations, of which I’ll blog about in a future post.

2. content uploaded – this is a reasonably simple stage where you upload the digital file, typically an mp3, to a webserver often using the file transfer protocol (FTP). Recently we can see more and more online recorders available where you simply press record on the site itself. (no uploading needed).

3. rss feed created – a really simple syndication (rss) feed is created which has a snippet of code that indicates the uploaded content is in fact an educast.

4. rss aggregators scan subscribed feeds for new content – various software hosted on a users PC enables us to subscribe to rss feeds, the software then scans those feeds for new content.

5. new content found and downloaded to users computer – once the rss aggregator understands a new episode is present the software will download this content to the users machine.

6. content transferred to mobile playback device – often the rss aggregator will automatically load the fresh content onto the mobile player, or this is manually achieved by the user. Of course playing back right on the computer is MASSIVELY common also.

Sounds fairly simple and straightforward right? Well it is!

Certainly all of the both stages can be met within educational environments both in terms of human resources and physical resources. However, perhaps one of the issues which can be daunting when considering utilising educasts in education is the extra effort or time required to continually provide content in this exciting format and in fact make it accessible. That said, the educational benefits an educast can yield are numerous, and you as an educator must have the full support of those who manage educational policy and activities in your institution. This is a BIG deal and one I am passionate about.

Turn on tune in, and they won’t drop out

Everybody working within academia understands that students are becoming more and more technologically savvy, growing up with a mouse almost permanently attached to their right hand, game console in the other, mobile telephone scanning for Wi-Fi hot spots and sending more SMS messages per min than humanly possible.

Aside from my slight rhetoric students are now often very adept and comfortable with interactive technology and able to find what they want when they want, very much used to using technology for organising their social world and certainly their entertainment options.

Students also want, and expect in many cases, their learning environment choices to be just as dynamic and state-of-the-art, and are certainly motivated when presented with dynamic learning tools that have relatedness to their personal worlds, their social life.

Educasting is a tool which fits into this state-of-the-art category and is something which educators can embrace within their learning community to bring about serious “coolness” and “street cred”, not to mention a powerful educational delivery platform both in the hands of the educator and also the learner’s. So we have to be "cool" now as academics? Umm, well yes I think we do to an extent.

Educasting has many unique qualities

Two “biggies” I want to focus on here are:

1. time-shifted delivery (tune-in when you want)
2. use of the voice, which can convey strong emotional content.

If you follow this thought through you as an academic have the ability for your voice, your emotion, your passion to reach the students in their own surroundings at a time they choose, this is a very powerful combination indeed!

As an example, I relish getting into my car each morning with my Zune player loaded with the latest episodes of my favourite casts. The fact I might get caught in morning traffic can actually be a bonus, giving me more listening time before having to engage with the socially demanding world, it’s “my-time”.

This time slot, and of course others, is time for you as a potential content producer, an educaster, where you can directly compete with mainstream broadcasting prime time, in advertising circles this time is highly costly which companies pay handsome fees for.

I hope that helps you think about the possibilities a little? Do let me know where we should head with this, maybe you need some tools, maybe you are already educasting, maybe it’s just too much time needed?

In any case do let me know, I really do want to hear your thoughts.

UPDATE: After writing this text I thought it might be a good idea to actually use an online service to record my voice reading the words, so you can see just how easy it all comes together. So I used Utterz and then grabbed an embed code for my blog which included the player below.

Well it has been well over a week and I’ve decided that now some time has passed I’d unload some of my thoughts into my blog, after all remember my blog is the same as you’d get from me in the pub, so join me in a drink while I mention my personal highlights.

The ACHUB MediaCampBucks07 was the first if its kind for Bucks, in fact the first of its kind for many areas in UK, the slant of this event was enabling an interface of sorts between people working in the commercial sector and academia, and you know what, we all certainly achieved that.

On the day we had three broad themes running:

• Education/Web2.0
• Audio & Music
• HR/Policy/Community

Therefore three sessions were running simultaneously in order that a variety of choice was constantly present for all the participants, it was a cracking atmosphere with everyone checking out the schedules posted-up on the session room doors, and deciding if the current topic was for them, or not.

The event started for me on Friday morning by collecting Kris Eliasson from Heathrow who was representing Sony Ericsson. This guy is an ex-student of mine who studied with Audiocourses.com the distance learning school I am CEO of. Kris started as a student and then became a Production Advisor for the school and then since those days we have become good friends, and this was the first time I got to shake his hand in real-life and move onto serious discussion about the future of mobile content distribution, was awesome.

The event also saw another ex-student of Audiocourses.com in Mike O’Hara who has gone on to make audio his main income stream having set up a thriving business around podcasting, again what a buzz to see these connections firing.

On the Friday evening many of us met up in a local venue for a couple of drinks and a chat, this was the first time most of us had met and it was a real buzz seeing the next character walk in and introduce themselves, finally putting a real face to names was amazing. Observing different groups of people with wide ranging backgrounds and jobs getting social together was a thrill.

I met some amazing people on the day too numerous to mention, you know who you are and how we interacted, and let me just say thanks so much for giving and sharing, YOU made the day a success, and I’m excited to see you again soon.

I want to personally thank a few people for making the day happen, firstly Asha Treacy for driving me to the venue first thing Saturday morning, (I had abandoned my car the evening before following 4 pints of beer). CJ for being very organised and “calling time” with 10 mins to go in the sessions, this was awesome and not planned, she just took control of that and I need to thank her for it, we needed that structure. Eaon Pritchard the talented Scott who put together the logo for MediaCampBucks07 and also came up trumps with some direction boards and banners (sponsored by Weapon7) which we placed around the campus, smart man is Eaon, though he did have me worried as he had been out on the pop the night before and was missing in action for a while. Mike for getting a serious Jam scene going on in the Glasshouse on Saturday evening, sadly I missed most of it but checked out the repeat on Ustream.tv.

ACHUB MediaCampBucks07 was a success without a doubt, we had about 60 participants throughout the day all told. I’m humbled by all of this and I feel a sense of something great, we have created a brand which has a sense of expectation attached to it, all the participants now know what to expect from an ACHUB event.

Looking to the future of the ACHUB we plan to have a virtual event take place in SecondLife before xmas, probably music heavy, and also plan to host another real-life event for some time in the new year which may be similar to MediaCamp, or may be something different completely, in fact if YOU have some ideas about that I want to hear from you, I’m keen on using the momentum we have with ACHUB to continue hosting has we have done since 06.

Just to conclude ACHUB exists in two places:

ACHUB Facebook
Wiki

Recently we have secured the domain ACHUB.ORG which will likely become the main portal before too long, and yes, with user accounts so you can participate with the content, after all it is YOURS, this is YOUR group, your brand, your dynamic to embrace and share.

As a closing statement I’d like you to continue the growth of the group by bringing someone in, a stranger someone “outside” of this web2.0, someone who needs it most.

I’m keeping this short but let me know your highlight of the weekend with a cheeky comment.