If you going to the Pedagoo Muckle I would like to invite to contribute to EDUtalk.
EDUtalk is, among other things, an open to any contributions podcast. EDUtalk started at the Scottish learning Festival in 2009 when David Noble and myself invited any of the attendees to submit audio to a podcast SLFtalk. We were trying to provide alternate sources of information and reflections about the festival and make it as easy as possible for people to both contribute and listen to the contributions of others.
Now is even easier to contribute to EDUtalk. This only need to be a minute or two long.
Here are a couple of ways ways:
Audioboom an application for both iPhone and android, Audioboo allows you to record short segments of audio and upload then to the Audioboo site. If you tag the ‘boo’ #EDUtalk they will be brought in automatically to the EDUtalk site.
Just record some audio on anything a computer on smartphone whatever you got. Then you can email it to audio@edutalk.cc and we’ll take it from there.
You can have conversations with anyone about anything educational, at the coffee bar , in a quiet corner. it can be about whatever, educational, topic you like. Your thoughts we want them.
If you can’t make it to Pedagoo Muckle this could be one way to join in the fun.
Unfortunately I’ve got no more shows lined up at the moment. I’m waiting for a few replied, but the Wednesday schedule is empty. Some of this is down to my lack of organisation some to other things on the go and some my change in circumstances.
If you are interested in talking about any aspect of Education on a Wednesday evening (8pm UK time)please let me know.
Last week I took the edutalk mic to #OER16: Open Culture The 7th Open Educational Resources Conference.
The idea was to broadcast & podcast the keynote and also get some conversations between various participants.
Broadcasting the keynotes worked well. Getting folk lined up for a chat proved more of a challenge. It seems that most of the attendees wanted to be in sessions! I think this was the most engaged conference I’ve ever been at.
Lucky for me folk were happier to give up their lunch than skip a workshop and I managed to record some fascinating conversations.
I’ve cleaned up some of the recordings and posting them to oer16 | EDUtalk.
It is amazing the privilege that having a microphone gives you. You get to listen to a lot of clever stuff.
In higher education the idea of open education is now well enough established that the discussions have become quite nuanced. There are a wide range of definitions and directions on the open road. Some look at practical issues around, licensing and searching of resources others social or technical ideas.
I’ve not seen much evidence that these ideas are penetrating primary or secondary education in Scotland. I do think that open ideas are equally valid here. A good place for school based colleagues to start might be the Scottish Open Education Declaration.
Me in the Booth, photo Martin Hawksey, lifted from twitter.
Meetings and greetings
It was a privilege to met and chat to folk who I had met before and those I knew only online. Even though I spent a fair bit of time in the booth I managed to catch up with far to many folk to mention.
With Jim & Josie
Meeting David & Viv
OER Messages
I’ve not got a wide ranging knowledge of the OER world, but it was pretty obvious there are different interpretations of open, many speakers alluded to that. The First Keynote Catherine Cronin spoke about the social justice aspects.
Melissa Highton @honeybhighton talked about these different kinds of open, saying it doesn’t matter which one you choose as much as that you know the affordances and limitations of each (my interpretation).
There was a general feeling that the more open a resource the more sustainable it is. The more clauses in a license the more likely it is that it could be unusable if the owner could not be connected.
Personal learning
For the keynotes I had a very good feed from the microphones in the room. There was a little hiss from the rack. Recoding conversations in the booth was a bit more problematic as the rack were giving off a fair rumble. Usually with hiss I’d move out of audacity and go to GarageBand, this time I stayed in Audacity and used the equaliser. For the rumble I did manage to improve the audio a little with a combination of the equaliser and noise reduction effects.
The audio is not great but I’ve been happily listening to the results while commuting. It is surprising what you miss when you are broadcasting a second listen has been valuable to me. I do hope that the content of the presentations and conversations are widely listened to they messages are worth thinking about.. You can find the audio at #OER16 AUDIO
It was delightful to spend time with people who are gathered, not because they want to sell something, but with a shared idea that is aimed at doing good in the world. It was a privilege to do so, I owe thanks to the conference for giving me the opportunity. I am particularly aware that my position over the last few years has allowed me to take holidays to be able to attend events like this during term time, an opportunity not many class teachers have and one I’ll miss next session.
Image credits: Featured image, Jim Groom Keynote where he mentioned Edutalk, my own from the booth at the back.. Me with folk, lifted from twitter.
It was a great meeting, I did broadcast and posted some comments on EDUtalk along with some links after the event..
The keynote by Josie Fraser was filmed and I hope that it will be put up somewhere as it was great.
The attendees were mostly from Higher Education, but I think the ideas behind openness are more than relevant to schools and other learning spaces. Josie’s work is in the school sector and would be a great model to follow: Open Education for Schools – Policy & Practice.
I am really excited about this one. Radio #EDUtalk will be at #oer16
OER16: Open Culture
19th & 20th April 2016, University of Edinburgh, UK
The 7th Open Educational Resources Conference, OER16: Open Culture, will be held on the 19th-20th April 2016 at the University of Edinburgh.
OER16 will focus on:
The strategic advantage of open and creating a culture of openness.
Converging and competing cultures of open knowledge, open source, open content, open practice, open data and open access.
Hacking, making and sharing.
The reputational challenges of openwashing.
Openness and public engagement.
Innovative approaches to opening up cultural heritage collections for education.
I’ve had a lot interesting audio interactions this week.
A couple of weeks ago I mention Anchor and I’ve continued to play with that. Simon Thomson (@digisim) invited me to participate in a storytelling idea, folk just take turns to record the next short segment. It is only Simon and me at the moment but I am sure he would be happy to hear from others:
Back on the anchor beat I tried a few times to record a trafficjam anchor, I’ve not quite managed to make them loud enough yet or avoid running over but I did post this weeks review after I parked.
There are a lot of nice things about Anchor and it will be interesting to see where it goes. I think it is going to be one of those apps where you need pals on the same platform, at the moment the twitter search brings back very few folk for me. Hopefully this will grow, the anchor folk are intending to add an android app into the mix.
I don’t think I did a very good job of interviewing the participants, I did not really manage to bring out the scope and depth and particularly the organisation of the project but I don’t think that mattered. What was important were their statements about the impacts on the students in all sorts of areas.
The contacts via synchronous and asynchronous learning environments will of course be valuable in terms of language practice for both groups of students, but team-working, project participation, communication, problem-solving, digital literacies are all transferable skills that will also be enhanced.
Sums up some of the benefits of the project, but you need to hear it from those involved to get a feel for the level of engagement from the learners in the project. Have a listen on #EDUtalk.
We are now starting to organise shows for the new year, if you are interested in being a guest on Radio #EDUtalk please get in touch.
A while back I bookmarked How to Revive The Levelator in El Capitan on TidBITS and followed the instructions to get this essential piece of podcasting software to work again after updating my mac to El Capitan.
On Saturday I went along to this event in University of Stracthclyde Innovation Centre. Orgainserd by Rob Smith and Bill Boyd in association with Scottish Film Education.
The problem at events such as this is to decide which talks to go to and the regret on missing others. This can be exacerbated by watching the tweets from other sessions. I tried to guess which ones would be suitable for broadcasting and podcasting. This is tricky at a conference based around film.
During the day I broadcast from 8 sessions and David Gilmour (@dgilmour) kindly recorded more. This will be published on Edutalk over the next week or so. ScotFLF15 | EDUtalk, the links here should update as they are added1
Some of the recording start slightly late, due to my getting to the room late and a few will feature a samba band from the street as a background. What they lack in audio quality the make up for in content.
Although I’ve worked with creating video with and without pupils a fair bit I am not very knowledgable about film so I found interesting things in all of the sessions I attended. It would be hard to pick out a favourite. I certainly learnt a lot of new stuff from Rob Smith about Using Film in the Classroom and David Griffith talking about grammar in both text and film in From Shots to Sentences. I am more familiar with the work of Jennifer Jones on the Digital Commonwealth Project, but really enjoyed her talk and was delighted to get a hard copy of the Handbook of Digital Storytelling as I’ve pointed folk to the pdf many times. I suspect I missed a lot of details from the talks as I was recording I hope to gain from listening to and editing the recordings.
I do not know the official count of participants but it seemed pretty busy to me, as usual the number of Scottish teachers willing to go to cpd events in their own time is commendable. Some had travelled a fair distance and must of got up early. (Great to see Neil Winton). At a cost of £25 with plenty of coffee, pastries and a tasty lunch this was amazing value. There was a great buzz throughout the day. I’d recommend going along next year (I believe it will be run again).
Feature Image credit David Gilmour.
1. I am using the WordPress › RSS Via Shortcode for Page & Post WordPress Plugins to embed the RSS. That plugin is showing its age anf throughs some errors. so I’ve concverted the post to use the new (sic) block editor and am using the Display Remote Posts block. ↩
