Archive for June, 2011

Keeping busy

June 12th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

A quick update. I have been slow posting lately due to travelling around and a series of project meetings.

We are moving forward on a series of ideas and developments.

Firstly we are working with The Univeristy of East London, the Hackeny Education – Business Partnership and a Yoiuth Organisation called Go! to launch Radiocative, an internet radion station run by young people for young people.

Secondly we are developing a new application for online story telling.

Thirdly I have been doing demos of our new open and linked data application for supporting young people in planning careers and providing information for careers advisors. Early feedback has been very positive and I am hopeful we will be able to roll this out for an extended trial after the summer. Before that though, I want to develop a social layer, allowing data outputs to be discussed  and incorporated in wider social discourses.

University education – just for the rich?

June 7th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
I have often been accused of being alarmist in claiming that the UK government is attempting to priovatise the education system.

The latest move to set up a private humanities univeristy in London charging £18000 a year shows quite clearly the path policy makers are pursuing. The present policy caps fees at £9000 a year and even with loans this will be an insuperable barrier to many potentail students from pooer families. But I suspect the annoucnement of the private university was with the full knowledge of the governement who see it as another step to saying the univeristies can charge what they like and apply for a subsidy from public expenditure.
Not only will this result in a two tier system but will ultimaltely result in a university system only open to the rich.
It does seem somewhat of a cheek that the curriculum has been plagiarised from a publicly funded body.

clipped from www.guardian.co.uk

A new private university college founded by the philosopher AC Grayling and staffed by celebrity professors will teach exactly the same syllabuses as the University of London, which charges half the price, it has emerged.

Students of the New College of the Humanities will pay £18,000 a year to take courses in history, English literature and philosophy that are already on offer at Birkbeck, Goldsmiths and Royal Holloway for £9,000 or less.

Academics complained that syllabuses listed on the New College website appeared to have been copied from the University of London’s own web pages in a move some said amounted to plagiarism.

  blog it

Technology and Careers Education

June 7th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

I am ever more interested in how we can use technology for supporting young people (and not just young people) in making future careers choices. Talking to a focus group of young people last year, they  make use of the internet, particuarly using Google to search for details about possible future education choices, jobs and careers. I also asked them how far they explored the results of a Google search and not surpisingly they told me that they usually looked at the first three or four results. Try doing this yourself – type in your job of choice and see what comes up. All too often the results can be highly misleading.

Anyway we are working on new tools to asisst young people in choosing their future careers (more details to follow quite soon, I hope). And here is a conference paper, prepared by my colleague Sally Anne Barnes from the University of Warwick and describing the emprirical research we undertook on the use of technology in careers education in the UK (requires html5 compliant browser to view). Comments welcome – I would especially like to know what is happening in other countries than the UK.

The Potential Role of Technology in Careers Education in the UK

TEDxKids – making and doing with technology

June 4th, 2011 by Graham Attwell

On Wednesday I had the pleasure of being part of a team of guest bloggers on the TEDxKids event in Brussels. Sadly I was not there in person, but followed the video stream. Here are a few quick reflections on the event.

Firstly this was not really one event, but two events running in parallel. Firstly was the grown ups conference, following the by now familiar TED format of ‘inspirational’ guest speakers making short presentations. And second was the kids event, which followed a workshop format. There were periodic report backs on the progress of the kids workshop and a final round up session presenting their work.

Despite many interesting talks, I can’t help thinking the kids event would have been the one I would have liked to be at!

Be that as it may, the grown ups event was certainly interesting. Taken overall, the theme was about learning by doing, enabled by technology. And this involves giving young people more space to play, to experiment, to make things and to fail (“mistaking your way to success”) : all things the present educational system is not very good at. And of course allowing young people access to play with and shape the tools needed for this. There was a big emphasis on making things – from 3D printing to toothbrush robots. The kids seemed to particularly enjoy playing with soldering irons (to the extent where I am tempted to go out and buy one). And the event confirmed the positive connotations now being attributed to the word “hacking”.

My favourite speaker was Mark Frauenfeder from MAKE magazine – if you have no time for anything else I would recommend watching the video of his presentation when it comes out.  I also liked the discussion around the Sugar software (can’t remember who the speaker was) with an emphasis on kids being able to reprogramme and repurpose applications as part of the learning process.

I must say though, I am not so convinced by the TED format. It works well for video. But I am not sure of the learning and creativity in passively watching an event – be it live or streamed. OK – the Twitter feed was lively. But there is no ability to ask questions or interact with the speakers. there seems little advantage to me in attending a TED event (apart from meeting friends) over watching on YouTube in the comfort of your home.

Deconstructing a tweet

June 4th, 2011 by Graham Attwell
I am fascinated by this blog post by Ismael Perfia Lopez. Isamel deconstructs Brian Lamb’s tweet saying “Decoding it definitely requires much more than what the usual definition of digital literacy implies, but a complex set of skills or competences as the one described above:”
He includes in these skills and competences technological literacy, Informational literacy, media literacy, digital presence and e-awareness concluding: “Now, those are 126 characters charged with meaning. If a single simple tweet requires so much digital competence, what is needed for living your daily live at full throttle? What for the exercise of democracy and citizen participation? What for health? What for education? What for love and friendship?”.
Ismael puts forward a seductive argument though I wonder if it is just that the original tweet is clever but too obscure.
clipped from ictlogy.net

Two years ago, in Towards a comprehensive definition of digital skills, I depicted digital literacy according to five different categories, being those categories technological literacy, informational literacy, media literacy, digital presence and e-awareness (please see the paper From laptops to competences: bridging the digital divide in higher education for a thorough explanation about those concepts):

Explaining these concepts with a single example (that is, all the concepts using the very same example for all of them) is not always easy, so you end up using different examples with each category or concept. Today I just found that single example that can be used to explain all of them.

Tweet: Hanging with @grantpotter and @cogdog at Kootenay Co-Op Radio, ready to simulcast to #ds016radio for #etug http://t.co/1LAoLU6

On 3 june 2011, Brian Lamb, strategist and coordinator with UBC’s Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, tweeted what follows:

  blog it
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