Learning with the Fang

UPDATE:

The first part of this post was obviously ‘live-blogged’ by me while watching presentations and trying to make up one of my own! As such it contains plenty of typos, incomplete sentences, broken and/or missing links. I will try to patch those things up over the next day or two so that this post can be a more useful resource to anyone who wishes to refer back to it. My intention was to model the behavior of live blogging, not to create the most definitive ‘textualized’ coverage of the event.  *Don’t for get to try out the del.icio.us ‘Tags’ mentioned at the bottom of this post.
Michael Cowling (Aberfoyle) is giving us an excellent presentation (from a shiny new macbook). Fantastic examples of podcasts and vidcasts from students - including a mobile phone video. Interesting comment that most of the kids already have the technology to make this stuff at home! And YEP - a podcast of his presentation is available. awesome!

Kerrie Mackey-Smith is now talking about her research with Y8 english and Y9 science classes. Broadcasting background gives structures and bones to hang the podcast on. For me, highlights from Kerrie’s international research include: The advanced use of PodCast in education in the UK, equity in todays ‘highly textualised’ classrooms (Dyslexics of the world ‘untie’), and a very interesting point of view based in traditional media.
website: http://lefevrehs.sa.edu.au/

Nathan Grimaldi/Rhys/Jackie Miers/ Carys Holder/ - Magill PS are setting up for their demo of: early podcasts from Year 7 students about the school. The podcasts are all available online via the school website (see below). They are delightful little pieces that begin with nice google earth shot of the school from the air.

www.magillps.sa.edu.au [Navigate to: resource centre -> magill podcast directory ]

Sean Simper – OAC is now talking about his personal interest in podcasting and how that has led to his work in various distance learning and face to face contexts. Teacher devlelopment is a starting point but student development will happen). Sean’s formal work is just about to start (thanks to some grant money) and will begin with literature review, networking with groups such as the trailblazers, involving the ICT folk, delivery & access systems, rss, and secure environments, mobile phones and more.

Carol Cornish - ABC (behind the news).
Carol began telling us that the ABC views PodCasting as something for the future that is happening now. At present, only limited video streams are available, but there are certainly plans for real podcasts with rss feeds - yippee! Even better they are actively seeking user generated content via the /yournews section.

She then gave us a heartwarming tour through http://abc.net.au/btn/ - including a touching story about Veronica a Sudanese refugee who’s story was posted on btn/yournews, seen by a fellow refugee in Perth and resulted in a very ‘LearnDog’ connection.

Finally, yours truly had 10 mintues to present LearnDog, the not for profit new media company that plans to help kids through recognition. Having seen veronica’s story, I tore up my notes and mumbled incoherently about how the connection between veronica and another refugee in Perth is exactly what LearnDog seeks to do - ensure that every kid who publishes something makes at least one connection - (possibly with the only other person in the world who cares about what they say).

I mentioned three ‘musts’ here they are:

- Must Join - the edtechtalk.com community

- Must Read - the FutureLab Social Software and Learning paper

- Must Listen - to this podcast on New Platforms, Economies, Realities

And, thanks to Yvonne we can all ‘Tag’ stuff with podblazers to grow THIS Excellent Resource!

Fang - Mike Seyfang

podblazers