Education 2.0 - not afraid of Second Life!

"Teachers cannot keep ignoring the digital revolution"

Dissatisfied with a recent PBS Frontline piece on the "Digital Nation", Mr. Despres went to Second Life & was impressed how teachers in the trenches use technology to transform American education. Draxtor thought we were doomed, but now - optimism has returned!

Media, Education, and Technology - Bonnie Bracey

Watch it on Academic Earth

The News from Sweden

The Pirate Bay trial judgement is going to be announced on Friday. There will be a live video press conference at 1pm (CET) on Friday no matter what the verdict is. A possible jail term is one outcome for the four individuals charged with assisting copyright infringement. The outcome of the trial against The Pirate Bay has little consequence for the Peer to Peer global community but it does have significant consequences for the media ecology of Sweden. For this reason I will be following the trial result on Friday. Whatever happens their will be an appeal on Friday to a higher court. So this could go on for a long time yet. The trial has polarised the file sharing community and any further legal action will probably continue this. One amazing development from the Pirate Bay Trial is the formation of the spectrial thread on Twitter which remains active and has brought thousands of file sharers into communication with each other.

Here are some observations on the situation in Sweden regarding the Pirate Bay and the IPRED Law and what will happen tomorrow in the Stockholm Local Court:



The second event of interest coming out of Sweden this week is the closing of applications for tertiary study in the whole of the country for the Fall Term 2009. Higher (and lower and middle) education is free in Sweden. No charge for university. Nothing! I think this is amazing. I took part in the No Fees! demonstrations in Australia in 1989 (my first direct political action as an adult) as we witnessed the death of free higher education in that country. Not only is higher education free in Sweden, anyone anywhere in the world can apply to study here. Also for free. All you need is a visa, the requirements for the course (language etc.) and enough money to live on.

The contrasts in Sweden interest me; the severity of the IPRED law against file sharing and the amazing progressive attitude when it comes to education. Both are concerned with the spread of information and knowledge. One, education, is seen as a basic human right, while the spread of what are largely immaterial commodities over the internet is a crime. I would argue that both are related through the desire of people to expand themselves, to learn and experience.

Learning in a Networked World

Keynote presentation at Handheld Learning 2008 (many more fine presentations from link) by social media scientist, danah boyd

A Course in Englishes

Yesterday I finished marking the exam papers for a first year course I wrote and have been teaching this term. As part of the course video podcasts were made of each of the six lectures (two hours each). As well there is a website (actually a wiki, which I think I would like to hand over to the students in future courses) which takes up well over 100 pages of text with images and dozens of videos. I suppose in one way it is now a free online course.

Cultures of Commonwealth English
A first year university English studies realia course titled Cultures of Commonwealth English. It attempts to provide a short but rather intense introduction into the the history, cultures and institutions of four nations that were once united as part of the British Empire. These nations are England, India, South Africa and Australia. In each of these nations the English language plays an important role in society. The Cultures of Commonwealth English course is an examination of why English is spoken in these nations and what events and practices led to the situation we have today where the four nations are members of the Commonwealth of Nations. We will discuss some of the cultural and social areas where English is spoken and consider some examples of where it is resisted, perhaps as a sign of a colonial past that still has repercussions today.
One of the aims of this course is to teach you to process information and not just absorb it. You need to look critically at what I have included in this website as course materials. DO NOT USE EVERYTHING!!! Choose parts from each section. Try to make connections between the parts. An example could be that the use of Australia as a prison in the early years of it as a colony gave the churches a special role in education which persists today with the power of so-called private schools in Australian education. There are many similar examples.

I am very glad it is online and freely available to all. I wonder if I can register it with a Creative Commons licence if it is on a University server...I shall have to ask about that. I will be teaching it again next term

E-learning 2.0 Live in Second Life

On Friday Sept 5, the Second House of Sweden will be live-streaming the eLearning 2.0 Conference from Stockholm. The cost of attending the actual conference is 3000SEK, while the sessions in Second Life, with live stream, are free. Sessions start at 9am and will finish around 6pm, Stockholm time (midnight to 9am, SL time).

Find out how Second Life is being used to create new, innovating learning experiences. eLearning 2.0 is being organized by the Swedish Association for Information Specialists (SFIS) and will be conducted in English.

Direct teleport link to the conference venue in Second life:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/swedish%20institute/70/212/30

Here’s what the schedule looks like:

Friday, September 5
8:30am: Registration. Coffee and sandwich.
9:00am: Introduction to eLearning 2.0
9:15am: Conference tool kit: Second life, Jaiku, Facebook
9:45am: Web Conferencing Tools – overview for education and effective meetings (Mats Brenner, NSHU)
10:00am: The Best of Both Worlds! Moodle + Second Life = Sloodle (D.I. von Briesen)
12:00pm: lunch
1:00pm: Let’s Web Conference! (Part 1) Angele GIULIANO. Tips and tricks for successful web conferencing
2:00pm: Adobe Connect (Dan Lidholm, WeZupport)
2:20pm: DimDim (Sundar Subramanian, Co-Founder of DimDim and Director of Business Development)
2:40pm: WiZiQ - A free virtual classroom tool that needs no downloads! (Vikrama Dharman)
3:00pm: Coffee & Visit to Kista Science Tower
3:30pm: Let’s Web Conference! (Part 2) Tips and tricks for successful web conferencing
4:30pm: Conclusions / end discussion / evaluation

The Free University of the Airwaves

Online and On Resonance FM:

Monday 18 August to Friday 22 August 2008, daily from 10am to 3pm (GMT), repeated nightly 7pm to midnight.

Resonance FM announces a “summer school on the radio” for a week during the holidays. Designed to appeal to the general listener, this series of lectures ranges restlessly across many subjects. The Free University allows listeners to dip into a vast range of material, a snapshot of contemporary thought and provocative and intriguing subject matter.

The Free University is certainly that. Historian Ariel Hessayon (Goldsmiths) speaks on two subjects: about Jews in England from their expulsion in 1290 to their readmission in 1659; and “Restoring the Garden of Eden in England’s Green and Pleasant Land,” which takes a new view of the seventeenth century Diggers. There is more visionary stuff from Plymouth’s Professor Malcolm Miles, who specialises in concepts of Utopia, while at the other end of the scale Mark Miodownik of King’s College’s Materials Library takes us through an elemental reading of the making of a cup of coffee – illustrated in robust fashion in the station’s kitchen. Oneupmanship not intended, Professor Steven Connor (Birkbeck) talks about The History of Air; and, refreshing beverages sorted, ethnographer Caroline Osella asks, How do you make a man?

There is a strong anthropological strand, with contributions from Monica Janowski (Potency, Hierarchy and Food in Borneo), Magnus Marsden (Muslim village intellectuals) and Edward Simpson (Remembering natural disasters and memorials in Gujurat); while Alpa Shah asks, Would Yosemite be a better place for the Elephants of Eastern India? Only Resonance FM can provide the answer.

Influential professor of design Peter Rea offers various insights into Visual Literacy, illustrated with audio from Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd and the rural blues of the 1930s; Dr.Julian Stallabrass talks about visual representations of war; Professor Jean Seaton has recourse to George Orwell’s enduring relevance; and Roberta Mock asks what constitutes avant-garde performance.

Philosophers AC Grayling and Jonathan Wolff, cultural theorist Nicolas Bourriaud, “new complexity” composer Richard Barrett, folk music specialist Professor Reg Hall and Christine Kinnon, Professor of Molecular Immunology at UCL, are among others of the two dozen contributors to this extraordinary project.

Interactive Videos

Here is a collection of 'interactive video' student projects from Södertörns högskola outside Stockholm:

http://student.ktd.sh.se/~sh04hp2367/iota/handen/

http://student.ktd.sh.se/~sh04hp2367/iota/handen/

http://mt.sh.se/kurssidor/movies/india/index.swf

A nice way to end my first week back at university.