Two years ago David Noble and myself started a open to all podcasting project: SLFtalk, “a project to gather the voices of educators attending the Scottish Learning Festival 2009“.

The idea was to hear from a range of folk attending SLF 2009, gathering their experiences and opinions. It was, in my opinion a success.

Shortly after SLF09 we took the idea forward with EDUtalk – Audio publishing by educators, using mobile devices 1 and over the last two years and we have had 332 audio files posted on edutalk.info.

This year it looks like LTS Education Scotlandare joining in the fun. They have a AudioBoo channel, Glow Radio and it looks like they are going to be tagging their boos so that they will be picked up by EDUtalk. AudioBoo is only one of the ways you can add your voice to EDUtalk.

There is an ongoing open invitation to anyone interested in Education to add their voice to EDUtalk.

Obviously it would be great to get some reports and thoughts about the Scottish Learning Festival or #EduScotICT from a wide a range of voices as possible.

Instructions for adding your audio to EDUtalk are on the site: How to EDUtalk and both David (@parslad) and I (@johnjohnston) are happy to help or try and answer any questions.

If you are going to SLF11 please pick up your phone and EDUtalk.

1. I’ve blogged about this a fair bit

Edutalk fist

Last night I went along to Teachmeet Strathclyde at Jordanhill college, I had signed up a couple of days before and stuck my name down to talk about edutalk.info.

I noticed there were nearly 70 folk signed up and quite a crowd was gathered eating cupcakes when I arrived. This was the first TeachMeet I’d attended when I had not really though much about it or had any involvement with before hand. The participants were mostly students which gave the meet a slightly different energy, slightly more formal and organised than some TeachMeets, the crowd was quietly energetic and motivated.

A couple of the usual suspects were in attendance but I didn’t know the vast majority of attendees.

As usual for teachmeets the presentations were all interesting, with lots of things I either nodded to or was completely surprised by. The compare Paul Campbell kept everything running smoothly.

I was nice to have a round table break in the middle, I went to a Games Based learning table organised by Morven Skinnder, Jen Deyenberg was in the group and has extensive experience in gbl. I suspect learning in Jen’s infant class would be wonderful with or without the high tech additions as I can’t imagine an object or situation she could not animate with learning.

I’ll not go into details of the different presentations or the round table as I am currently chopping up the audio recording I took and posting to Edutalk I had my two minutes talking about Edutalk, should have done 7 as I expect that most folk went huh; without the chance to listen, or see a demo. I am quite pleased with the slide though.

Edutalk is fairly pushing out the episodes at the moment, with the purpos/ed crew adding one a day for their #purposedfutured campaign and the audio from TMLothians11 – TeachMeet Lothians & Borders 2011 which I am (with permission) reposting on Edutalk.

There is still plenty of room for move voices on Edutalk, see the How to EDUtalk to find out how easy it is to join in.

My photos from Teachmeet Strathclyde on my John’s posterous site and there is a Teachmeet strathclyde Edition – Stuff from the strathclyde Teachmeet posterous waiting to be filled up.

On Thursday evening I was lucky enough to be in conversation with Gillian Penny, Dan Bowen, John Johnston and Fraser Speirs as part of the Edutalkr series. Iain Hallahan kept the conversation organised as chairperson and David Noble did the background tech.

You can hear the discussion on Edutalk:

EDUtalkr online panel discussions about Scottish education #7: The practicalities of using iPods and iPads in the classroom – EDUtalk

The practicalities of using iPods and iPads in classrooms. 


Chairperson:

  •   Iain Hallahan (@don_iain) 

Panelists:

     1. Fraser Speirs @fraserspeirs

     2. John Johnston @johnjohnston

     3. Gillian Penny @gillpenny

     4. Dan Bowen @dan_bowen  –  tbc

Areas for discussion:

  1. Network connectivity & IT support   
  2. iTunes account management & licensing issues 
  3. Authority/Department/Cluster/School policies on usage
  4. Is there a way to suggest changes to Apple? What might these suggestions be?  

This week I’ll be taking part in this online audio panel. Thanks to Iain Hallahan (@don_iain) for putting me forward. I am looking forward to hearing what the other panellists will be saying.

I am an edutalkr

it is now well over a year since EDUtalk kicked off.

EDUtalk is a project to gather the voices of educators using mobile technology.The idea is that anyone can join in and post audio snippets to the site. This can be done in several ways.

Looking over the last week shows a strong and varied collection of voices:

That was a pretty interesting mix of content. I’ve got into the habit of listening to the podcast in my car and every episode has given me something to think about. There is an open invitation to anybody interested in education to post content to EduTalk in a variety of ways: How to EDUtalk fell free to join in any time. You can also contat myself @johnjohnston or @parslad for more information or help.