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With friends like these, musicians don’t need enemies
Nothing in this post is new, but I had a reminder of the idiocy of copyright today. I got a message from YouTube telling me my Edupunk video had been blocked because of a copyright claim. The account read: "Your video, Edupunk, may have audio content from Anarchy In The U.K. by Sex Pistols that is owned or licensed by WMG." Well, I can't argue, that is obviously true. But let's examine the logic of this and ask a few questions: Question 1: "Is it likely that my use of Anarchy in the UK as the soundtrack to an ed tech video will damage sales? Will anyone who was going…
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Blogging as occupational therapy
It is a bit incestuous to blog about blogging, but as it is still relatively new as a medium, I do find it interesting when it reveals the way in which blogging has forced itself into the interstices of your life. As friends on Twitter may know, my wife was recently diagnosed with tongue cancer. Please don't post comments of support – I know people mean it, but it will make me feel as though I was only blogging this for sympathy. I mention it only to give the context to what follows (the long term prognosis is good by the way). With hospital visits, surgery, nursing at home, ongoing…
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Ownership ain’t what it used to be
I recently signed up for Spotify, a music service that allows you to find, and listen to, whole tracks and albums. It's less social than LastFM, say, but more focused around the specific music you want – whereas LastFM uses the artist you like as a springboard for finding other artists, Spotify uses it just to give you that artist's music. It brought back to me some considerations I'd had about the nature of ownership. My generation will have a distinctly different concept of ownership to that of my daughter's generation. For my generation you partly constructed your identity around what you owned – your bookshelf, record collection and DVD…
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MixedInk – affordances for collaboration?
From the always useful Jane's elearning picks I came across MixedInk. It's a tool to promote collaboration to produce joint documents. Before you raise eyebrows and say 'not another one,' bear with me. It has some neat features – you are working towards a definite goal document, it has time limits to focus effort, but most intriguingly it positively wants you to take and adapt the text of other writers. As you type it finds similar phrases from other contributers, and you can add these in. Each submission can be voted on, so you can see which are the most popular/useful. And then when the document is finalised it shows…
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Shiny show 2
Following on from the hugely irrelevant Shiny Show 1, I bring the next instalment, where I look at any new technologies that have crossed my path and evaluate them from an educational perspective. The usual proviso that some of these may not be that new, it's just when I get to them. Odadeo – a social network site for dads. It is built around the concept of 'pledges', eg 'I pledge to be more patient', or 'I pledge to take my daughter to see High School bloody Musical 3'. You can then 'pip' your pledges when you do something towards them. You can share pledges and there is a 'Dadsdaq'…
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PostRank as course content filter
I’ve been playing with PostRank. They use an algorithm to analyse which posts have got the most ‘engagement’ from a particular RSS source. The good thing about this is that it gets over some of my reservations in previous posts about the use of metrics to measure your blog value. These are often relative to everyone else, so as with Technorati, you’ll get lumped in with professional blogs. PostRank tells you about the engagement relative to your own posts. This is potentially useful, as it tells you, and more importantly, the reader which posts have generated feedback. They measure engagement not just by back links, as Technorati does, but by…
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We get the culture minister we deserve
Camus said of Mersault in L'Etranger that he was the 'Christ we deserve'. This phrase has been used many times, usually to indicate that if a society has a problem, then the reasons can be found within the society itself, eg 'we get the Government we deserve.' In the digital world though, maybe we can reclaim it to mean we really do get the X we deserve and want. This came to mind when Tech journalist Mike Butcher of Techcrunch, 'stole' (or kidnapped, hijacked?) the twitter id of the UK culture minister Andy Burnham. He hasn't stolen anything of course, just claimed that twitter id. He did it part in…
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Blogging isn’t about fame
I think I was rather muddled in my last post, as all three comments interpreted it as saying 'I want to be more famous'. This wasn't my intention, so let me clarify what I meant. Firstly, let's place my blog in its role to me as an academic. One of the joys of blogging is that there are no restrictions – blog posts can be long or short, text or multimedia, blogs can be about a subject or an individual, they can be serious or fun. If I was a research student, say, then the role of my blog would perhaps be much more as a tool of self-reflection. As…
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It’s all gone a bit Affleck
I was reflecting on this blogging lark the other day. It is something I enjoy doing, but in terms of academic return it's been hit and miss. The big hit is that it has connected with a global network of peers, who I wouldn't be able to engage with if I didn't have a blog. It's like being able to talk the same language. The miss part is that I feel occasionally like I am shouting into the void, or typing eruditely into the void more likely. I write what I think are interesting, well crafted posts – not a link, not a comment. I write a mindless, quick review…
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The RAE – Packt Like Sardines
"After years of waiting After years of waiting nothing came And you realize you're looking, Looking in the wrong place I'm a reasonable man Get off my case" Packt Like Sardines In A Crush Adblock Found at skreemr.com The results of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) were announced last week. As readers may know, I'm not keen on it, so this isn't an objective view, but I thought I'd explore the motivation behind it, and the problems with it. I have three main objections to the RAE: It is overly complex It is expensive It is fundamentally flawed Complexity What is the justification for the RAE? There are two main…
