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Games & education – a contrarian view
These are not scripts or courses in waiting… <image http://www.flickr.com/photos/durka/4879338779/ by Thomas Durka> It is almost a truism to say that games represent a bold new future for education. The Chancellor of the OU, and one of the wisest people around, Lord Puttnam, has often said as much: "The video game is probably the most powerful learning tool that's ever been created, and if we can only get the software right, as it were 'connect up the pieces', we could create something utterly remarkable." And the linkages seem irresistible – games create a structured environment where the player has to learn certain procedures to progress. They are given tips, have the opportunity…
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Digital resilience
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/revdancatt/449142212/ by Rev Dan Catt> Reading some of the posts and papers from Joss Winn and Richard Hall brought the concept of resilience to my attention. I'm probably deviating from their intended use of the concept, but it has been a useful way of thinking about how academia responds to the impact of digital, networked and open technologies and approaches. I was also struck by Joss' comment at Open Ed: "Resilience does not mean withstanding" (Scott Leslie also liked this). This is a useful way of thinking about how new technologies (and more importantly the approaches they facilitate) can influence scholarship, as often the reaction is to think about what we will…
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Running review
Because absolutely no-one requested it, here is my annual running-review-with-tenuous-link-to-learning post. The year started badly as I'd had a month lay-off with hip bursitis. I lost some of my running mojo this year, and for long periods struggled to get out the door. I also tried mixing in other forms of exercise, including spin classes, but I always default back to running. I'm a one sport kinda guy I guess. Overall this year I have done about 830 miles, so over 100 down on last year. But on the plus side I got a personal best in a 10K (48.22) and in the half-marathon (1hr 49). The last one probably…
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Digital storytelling – don’t forget the text
There are some great ideas for digital storytelling activities over on the DS106 blog (I love Tom Woodward's suggestions for restrictions eg telling stories using only photos from a specific category). They are very video and image – centric though so thought I'd speak up for text also amongst all the mashup mayhem. Obviously people have been doing storytelling online for ages, so we need to find new ways of doing it. One possibility would be tell a story through twitter. People have tried this before, some good examples in this post. What I have in mind is not to actually use Twitter, but to create a story from a…
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The scholar, their content & the cloud
by LeeLeFever After the wikileaks controversy which highlighted the dangers of placing political discourse in the cloud, we have had the news of Delicious apparently being abandoned by Yahoo. Not a good week for cloud computing. As John Naughton puts it "For years people have extolled cloud computing as the way of the future. The lesson of the last week is simple: be careful what you wish for." Does this signal the death knell for cloud computing? Should academics abandon it altogether (before most of them have even made the shift)? I think it's a more measured response than that. I would suggest a number of responses: i) Use the cloud…
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Crowdsourcing a conspiracy of sentiment
In my conspiracy of sentiment post I suggested that established media and power resented, even hated, the use of social media because they didn't understand it and couldn't control it. As with all conspiracies (I'm not suggesting it's an explicit conspiracy) one begins to see its reach everywhere once you believe it. But I could be alone in this, so I have decided to open it up, and also I know that I won't be able to track all instances. So I have set up an open blog at http://conspiracyofsentiment.posterous.com/. The aim of this is to gather examples where the use of social media is a contributing factor to some negative…
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A Man/Me/Then Jim – digital storytelling
Like Alan Levine I have signed up for open courses but never completed them (I too am an OCDU (Open Course Drop Out)). This raises some issues for open education in itself – motivation to complete is not just about interest but also about pressure. If you have paid for a course then your commitment to it is higher, or if you've told everyone you're doing something it's harder to drop out. But I'm willing to try again, particularly for something as innovative as Jim Groom's Digital Storytelling course ds106. I have a meta interest in this beyond the content (which I think will be great fun), and that is to…
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Living in interesting times
As someone whose professional life sits at the intersection of the internet and higher education, the past week has been interesting to say the least, and not a little depressing. I'm not sure I have much to add to what's been said about the two big stories of wikileaks and student fees, but I have woken up on an almost daily basis thinking 'are we really witnessing this?'. So, lest I allow it to slide into normality, I thought I'd record some of my reactions to it all. Wikileaks As Clay Shirky has put it, I'm conflicted about Wikileaks – even as an advocate of openness, I know there are…
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More brains! The perpetuation of the zombie scholar
With Jim Groom I'm writing a chapter for the Zombies in the Academy book. It's at an early draft stage, but thought I would share it in this wiki. My argument is that the context we have set up in education for all aspects of scholarship is like a contagion that works against innovation. This was an idea I explored in my researchers and new technology post and which forms a theme of my upcoming book (but with no zombies). There is an analogy here with the manner in which zombies turn all-comers into one of their own, which is exemplified by this clip from Dan O'Bannon's Return of the…
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If nobody speaks of remarkable things
For my digital scholarship book I wanted to take a random working day and record my working pattern and my use of technology. Yesterday was that day, and so here is my account: Before breakfast, while getting my daughter ready for school and feeding the dog, I do my morning communications check, including email, my blog and Twitter. Via the latter I see that Scott Leslie has posted a response to my blog piece on reductionism. Scott is someone I have known online for a few years, but finally met this year. We have been debating this topic in some detail over the weekend on twitter. We have differing views…
