We have produced a series of videos and audio interviews from the European Conference on Educational Research. We will be posting these on the Pontydysgu site over the next few days. Here is a taster: Impressions of the Conference. many thanks to the production team: Dirk, Maria, Jo and Emma.
Continuing with our Vygotsky theme…….Great video by Lyndsay Jordan on how and why to use blogs to engage students in the curriculum. There’s also an accompanying paper which presents further explanation of how she has interpreted Garrison, Anderson & Archer’s work about social and teaching presence (and also the work of James Farmer, founder of Edublogs). Here’s a link to the paper…
Very cool video from a blog post by Leon Cych
Here are my slides form the AltC2009 conference Emerge session.
Short but neat presentation on cultivating Communities of Practice.
A great song from Billy Bragg to kick off the conference season. If you have any ideas for videos or presentations we should feature in this space, just drop us a note.
Any of you into Math learning. Watch this great video with a song from Tom Lehrer to find out about the new math. And if you are a teacher this gives a new perspective on how to present new learning.
I’ve been following Lilia’s work on her dissertation on her blog over the last three years. So congratulations to her on finishing it. And for providing a free download copy.
This presentation picks up on a number of my interests. I have always related the forms of our educational systems and institutions to different phases in economic and social development. Furthermore, I am fascinated by the potential of mobile devices to support context based learning.
John Cook presents a project providing a contextualised, social and historical account of urban education, focusing on systems and beliefs that contribute to the construction of the surrounding discourses.
Another aim of this project is to scaffold the trainee teachers’ understanding of what is possible with mobile learning in terms of field trips.
Another great video by Michael Wesch “summarizing some of the most important characteristics of students today – how they learn, what they need to learn, their goals, hopes, dreams, what their lives will be like, and what kinds of changes they will experience in their lifetime.” Created in collaboration with 200 students at Kansas State University.
Cyborg patented?
Forbes reports that Microsoft has obtained a patent for a “conversational chatbot of a specific person” created from images, recordings, participation in social networks, emails, letters, etc., coupled with the possible generation of a 2D or 3D model of the person.
Racial bias in algorithms
From the UK Open Data Institute’s Week in Data newsletter
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.
Gap between rich and poor university students widest for 12 years
Via The Canary.
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.
Quality Training
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.
Our Wikispace for teaching and learning
Join our Sounds of the Bazaar Facebook goup. Just click on the logo above.
We will be at Online Educa Berlin 2015. See the info above. The stream URL to play in your application is Stream URL or go to our new stream webpage here SoB Stream Page.