Television
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The radical Ted Lasso lesson for education
I know, I know. There are few things more tedious than taking a popular TV show and applying it to a sector – there have been “Manage the Ted Lasso Way” and “The Ted Lasso method of Leadership” type posts aplenty. But hear me out. The angle here is more about the writing and how it relates to traditional TV than Lasso himself (and no, you don’t have to be a fan of the show). So Ted Lasso ended last week, amidst a wave of pieces declaring that it was about time and it had in fact, been rubbish all along. I think TV critics sometimes fall in love with…
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VCR as formative technology
Having done a couple of DS106 radio shows with Jim Groom (which suffered rather from, erm, technical difficulties), the notion of the early video cassette recorder as a formative technology has emerged for me. Here are some ways in which I think it was relevant: It changed the film industry – home video was seen as a threat by the film studios back in the early 80s, with the fear that it would mean people would stop going to the cinema. This didn't happen, and gradually they realised that it was another very lucrative form of income. Many decent films got a second life on video, and an awful lot…
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Social media in society roundup
I'd like to do this regularly, but probably won't, a review of stories and how social media has related to them. I think it would be interesting to chart the impact social media is having on actual society (not just the techie or ed techie one). Here are a few stories over the past month that caught my attention: Rentokil news release – in March several newspapers ran a story about there being '2,000 bugs in every train carriage'. It was based on "Research by pest controllers Rentokil". Science journalist Ben Goldacre smelt (ahem) a rat and followed it up. Ben chased them up through twitter, email and phone but…
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Is public engagement an old media concept?
"In many ways the Roman Forum was a bit like a Lady Gaga concert…" The OU hosted an event today, in collaboration with the BBC and the National Co-ordinating Centre for Public Engagement called 'Engaging citizens: media, research and the public'. It was an interesting day with presentations from the excellent Mary Beard, the BBC's Martin Davidson and Tristram Hunt from Queen Mary's. All the speakers were engaging and talked about the relationship between academics and media and some of the tensions and benefits collaboration brought. In the panel session the issue of public engagement and particularly reach came up, and how could we get to 'non-BBC' audiences. Mary Beard gave…
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Living in a twitter world
(The last in my trilogy of ALT-C related posts) Two things brought home to me that we live in a twitter world (whether David Cameron or John Humphrys like it or not, and indeed, all the better that they don't). The first was that I attended the ALT-C for the first time post the development of twitter. I have been to this conference (it's the UK's main ed tech conference) three times before. Usually my approach was to hang around on my own in a corner, maybe find a couple of OU people and stick with them, or stand on the edge of a group and hope someone notices me.…
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Death of broadcast?
I am part of the Broadcast Strategy Review group at the OU at the moment. This is currently realised through our relationship with the BBC, with the general audience programmes and the excellent open2.net stuff. But in an e-learning, internet age the very definition of broadcast needs to be re-examined. The OU needs to reexamine what it means from pedagogic value and return on investment perspectives. To put it crudely, is it better to have 10 high quality programmes or 10,000 lower quality podcasts/feeds. There are a number of issues here: Quality – generally people are prepared lower quality on a lot of internet media, e.g. podcasts, video clips, etc…
