Learning with the Fang

My previous post ‘Virtual(ly) School of the Future’ was an attempt to document the joyous discovery I had last week after watching a YouTube showing how to make an electronic whiteboard out of a Wiimote and stuff you might find in a school.

UPDATE:

Johnny Lee’s wii mote electronic whiteboard makes it to Ted Talks (and inspires more open research).

I would like to present my findings in a more logical order because I think we can discover clues to very effective use of the social web for both education and research.

Research:

Johhny’s academic home page and personal project site model a workable balance of work / life, fun / work, open / proprietary elements. Within 15 minutes I found:

• A list of patents and publications (very ‘old school’ and important)
• YouTube of ‘foldable interactive displays‘ (umbrella and scroll with FaceBook profile)
• A .pdf of a paper on ‘brain computer interfaces’ (in collaboration with MSFT research)
• A way to connect with someone whose job is my passion (the intersection of humanity and technology)
• Video of a community pelting a building with paint from a giant slingshot
• Kinetic Typography (some very moving examples)
• A model for the practice of ‘open science’

It should not take too much imagination to find ways of blending traditional research and publication with emerging read/write culture through tools such as blogs, podcasts, youtube and more.

The fact that Johnny’s YouTube videos about the Wiimote have been passed around so much (getting close to half a million views last time I checked) shows that science can be interesting without a huge marketing budget. The demonstrations are interesting in and of themselves and connect with people because they are achievable by mere mortals with access to only commodity electronic equipment.

More importantly, the less popular videos are just as meaningful - for instance the demonstrations of ‘foldable displays’ inspires me, as do the artful close-up shots of a toy train set.

Educators:

I would hope that the reaction of many educators would echo the sentiment of my previous post - ‘what a great learning project’. Unfortunately, the overall tone seems to be ‘at last a cheap alternative to those overpriced electronic whiteboards’. I would like to see a bunch of educators and students trying to build projects and blogging about:

• the learnings, alternatives, tweaks to the idea
• completely unrelated spin-off projects based on the technology
• limitations and problems that prevent robust production use of a prototype
• potential solutions to the abovementioned problems
• evidence of a robust system built on these principles (ie opensource hardware)
• age appropriate documentation of the process and scientific method

Thanks for the inspiration Johhny, your ever useful digest of all things cool in education Stephen, your original post Tim , your vibrant community of commentors Will.

Fang - Mike Seyfang

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