Last week I was a keynote speaker at the ‘ edayz08 ‘ conference in my home city Adelaide, South Australia. While researching my talk I participated in several closely related events online that I could not attend in person. The new material and insights gained from doing this had a profoundly beneficial effect on my own talk and motivated me to look at ways of improving the online component of future presentations. Audio, slides and images from my talk were published on the day of the talk and I hope to be able to publish some video and other material as soon as it becomes available – this way others can incorporate my work into their own if they wish.

Lets take a closer look at some specifics.

#lt08 – 2008 conference, Mooloolabah, Queensland

Just prior to preparation for my keynote presentation I received a phone call from an old colleague (Mark)  who was looking to use some of my work in his presentation at an approaching conference (#lt08). After a brief chat we identified some flickr images and blog posts that might be useful, I explained that he did not need to ask my permission to use them because by licensing them creative commons:attribution I had already granted permission in advance – all he need do is give me attribution. I learned that some colleagues who are very active in on-line social networking would be attending and marked my diary to check in with them while the event was on.

To my delight I discovered (through twitter) that the person who convinced me to do the #edayz08 keynote was live-blogging sessions from the conference and would be attending Mark’s talk. Being the slightly narcissistic chap that I am, I decided to work from home that day and to tune in live and see if I could glean any information about how my work was presented and how it was attributed. I’m glad I did, because, to my great surprise I found that the previous day’s keynote by George Siemens had been recorded and was available as a streaming video via MySpace. So, for the first time in over a year, I logged into MySpace and watched the first few minutes of the video (which, annoyingly downloads in full and auto-plays every time the MySpace page is refreshed – more on that later). While the video was playing in one window, I discovered that George had uploaded his slides to slideshare and that there were recordings of other sessions, one from another colleague Garry.

I decided to see if I could find some podcasts from the event so I could download small .mp3 files and listen to them on my iPod away from the distractions of the other windows on my computer (and in the beautiful spring weather by the beach near my house). Meanwhile, Mark’s talk was in progress and I tuned into the text based ‘coveritlive’ live blog. To my delight, the live blog included links to flickr images taken at the beginning of Mark’s talk and of key slides where my work was used. This was a really engaging experience for me, making me wish there was a live audio stream I could ‘listen in’ to.

Inspired by engaging experience of the live blog, I started to look around on tweetscan for other people at the conference who were using twitter. Before long I discovered Carol, who seemed to be in the know about recordings and publications from the event. I twittered a whinge or two about MySpace and the inconvenience of streaming video for me and before long recieved a link to a ning community site with comprehensive coverage of the event. Still frustrated by the lack of download-able audio (or video) I decided to make my own and to share it with the community. Armed with google and notepad it took me 15minutes to figure out how to download the .flv behind the allegedly read-only video streams. My trusty video conversion swiss-army knife (visualhub) took care of transcoding the video for my iPod touch and stripping out the audio to create an .mp3 file. I uploaded the .mp3 files to my own server and shared the links with the ning community (I figured sharing downloadable video might create issues for the conference organisers so I did not do that).

The next morning (after a few tweets) the conference organisers published .xml file with an RSS feed of downloadable .mp3 files from some of the conference sessions – how cool is that!! I subscribed to that RSS feed in iTunes and watched the recorded audio from sessions automagically appear on my iPod – just the way I like it. Listening to my home-grown .mp3 files I was inspired to create an audio mashup from key lines about ‘the focus of control shifting to the individual’ that resonated with my talk from George and Garry. A few days later I heard a similar line from a talk by Anne and incorporated that in my mashup too (this would not have happened if that talk was not automatically transferred to my iPod). I decided to leave comments and links to my work alongside the streaming videos of each speaker via the ning site. Sadly, each time I navigated to the ning page for a talk, the entire video would download to my computer (again) and start playing – slowing the commenting process to a crawl and blowing my entire months bandwidth in a just a few days. Please, if you MUST embed streaming video, try to prevent it from auto-download (ning, blip.tv, myspace and others – please make this the default).

Inspired by the serendipity of all this I went searching for other podcasts where the ‘focus of control’ line had stuck in my mind. To my amazement, google sent me to my own blog  ‘ePortfolio’ – where I found reference to Howard Rhiengold speaking at the very same event (edayz07 – last year) that I was to keynote. This, ladies and gentlemen, is engaged learning at its best (and a great use of MY Personal Learning Environment (MyPLE)).

Finally, on the day of my talk at #edayz08, carol from #lt08 sent out some ‘tweets’ that contain links to all the materials from her event in a neat package, and at the same time, forging a link between the two conferences:

Amazing – clearly the ‘high water mark’ of my online event experience / interaction to date! Also gives me some ideas for minor improvements that I am going to pitch as consulting work to prospective clients. (and share openly with y’all when I figure out how to articulate them)

George Siemens masterclass – Adelaide, South Australia

Once again thanks to twitter for tipping me off that George Siemens (whose @lt08 keynote I really enjoyed) would be in my home town of Adelaide presenting a ‘masterclass’. I went to register to attend face to face (and hopefully meet George) but found myself lacking a required ‘DECS Employment ID:’. Fortunately, I was able to attend ‘online’ via centra, and even more fortunately you can view a recording of the centra session (if you can get centra installed and running on your computer).

theother66 :

Testing Centra link to George Siemen’s Masterclass due to start at 4.30 pm Adel time: http://www.centra.sa.edu.au…

2008-11-10 23:34:48

Reply

EdTechTalk weekly webcast – Global

All this inspired me to try and stream the audio from my own presentation in real-time because I knew KerryJ would be live-blogging and hoped people in the room could take photos and upload them to flickr while I was speaking. The absolute world-leaders in live audio streaming are Jeff and Dave from EdTechTalk.com, so I tuned into the stream of one of their weekly webcasts, introduced myself via the text chat and was invited to join the conversation via Skype. I did so and asked for tips on best practice for streaming my own audio. Within minutes I had a bunch of links to detailed notes and a high level of confidence that a combination of ustream.tv and shoutcast (using nicecast client on my mac) would do the trick nicely. How’s that for just in time learning!!

#edayz08 – TAFE eDayz 2008 conference, Adelaide, South Australia

You can find all the output from my keynote presentation via THIS link, the audio mashup I mentioned above is HERE for quick reference.

Now it’s time to describe what happened behind the scenes at my own keynote presentation – which was an absolute hoot and a learning experience of another kind! I had completely re-written my usual Web2.0 talk to include my recent learnings from my online participation in the events I describe above. I had published my slides, audio mashup, some flickr photos and a blog post of notes for those attending my talk. Furthermore, I had plans to use my nokia N80 and qik.com to stream live video for a small portion of my talk (from my Point of View – looking at the audience) and to stream audio live from my Mac using Ustream.tv and shoutcast. Rehearsals had worked well and I had even made contact with the network administrators and audiovisual team from the venue to make sure these sites were not blocked by any internet filter.

The best laid plans of man and mice…

Turns out that even the network administrators could not help me configure my nokia N80 or my iPod touch to connect via the wifi in the auditorium. A quick rehearsal of the audio streaming showed that while the web sites were not blocked, the ports required for my outbound audio stream and the associated text chat were closed and not able to be circumvented in the time remaining. NETWORK SAYS NO – Which will be the topic of a whole separate post about my new found vigour against any form of ISP level filtering that is on by default.

Apart from the blockage of my planned live streams, the talk was fun, and judging by the reaction inspired some rather creative forms of ‘unauthorised media’ coverage that I hope to expand on later. KerryJ’s live-blog coverage was great, there was much twitter activity and several photo uploads to flickr while my talk was in progress. I recorded my own audio of my talk and was able to post-produce that within 10 minutes of completing my talk and managed to upload it thanks to Stuart and his brilliant ad-hoc ‘portal’ to the internet (bypassing completely the restricted wifi for campus network at the venue).

So, in conclusion, how does all this “healthy online activity” create value for its organisers, participants, those who cannot participate in person and the world in general? For a start, anyone reading this post is now more aware to the fabulous events I have mentioned – and hopefully some of you will pay attention to future events. I am going to make every effort to attend the #lt09 event next year and will be encouraging many of my social network to do likewise. While there might be an initial dip in attendance of events with a strong online component it seems pretty clear that if the events are any good, the face to face attendance will eventually increase through the ad-hoc publicity and the fact that while information translates well online, inspiration and deep social contact are better done in the flesh. Those who cannot attend in person get some level of engagement through highly social tools like twitter, and openly licensed, downloadable audio (and possibly even video) provide re-useable learning objects for all future generations.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

p.s. Update with more links coming soon.

p.s.s. On the way to work this morning I randomly stumbled over the most delightful web2.0 talk I have ever heard (given by a stone-mason) that I would never have discovered if it had not automatically appeared on my iPod – testament to the importance of the ‘last mile’ difference between online streaming video and a real podcast!!!

p.s.s.s. Mark – this is my ePortfolio, it works, and it is a great sales tool ;-)

UPDATE:

Podcast of my talk from the Wine2030 blog.

Radio Adelaide Interview (used with permission).

Powerpoint (mac) presentation available HERE.

Slideshare version HERE.

Related BookMarks http://del.icio.us/mseyfang/eo

More Links

• Hugh McLeod ‘word of blog‘ wine marketing experiment
• National Innovation System review
• audio podcast mashup (dave/lifekludger/cam/hugo) 1:46
• kids band fan videos

Books:

• starfish and spider
• cluetrain manifesto
• tipping point
• wisdom of crowds
• its alive

p.s. I’m hoping we can continue the conversation over at the wine2030 blog!

I have some interesting NEW IDEAS (thanks to Mr Squiggle) and want to help promote local innovations like the zork!

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:seyfang, mikeseyfang

I just finished listening to the last talk while riding my bike along the foreshore and rushed straight home to download the slide images and to share this here little blog post with you. Martin eloquently and skillfully delves into the latest Neuroscience research to address really important questions about education and personal development. He presents evidence that align strongly with my own (refreshingly fact-free) feelings about changes that are occurring in my brain as I move out of my area of expertise into new territory.

If any of these statements interest you, make sure you download, listen and learn!

• Dyslexia, creativity, artistic entrepreneur or jailbird?
• How school/work robs us of creativity
• Neuroscientific myth-busters spoiling the fun of learning styles and left-right brain bias
• Strategies for dealing with amiguity
• Cool experiments with counter-intuitive results (how to trick your own brain)

Attribution: lorelei-ranveig
Credit: Dr Jonathan Clarke. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk

Well done Martin, Well done education.au !
And thanks for sharing.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:seyfang, mikeseyfang

I will be there helping education.au staff with PodCasting – we are going to try very hard to get at least one podcast from each morning and afternoon posted on the same day.  Tune into feed.educationau.edu.au for the podcasts (and other good stuff from education.au ).

If you want to join the conversation about this important event, use the tag ‘GlobalSummit06‘.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:GlobalSummit06, gs06, education, edna2

The post with my comment can be found HERE.

Text of my comment for convenience:

Morning Kerry – this post jumped out of my RSS aggregator this morning and really helped to clarify my understanding of the difference between (A) the ‘blog’ functionality of moodle and (B) ‘real blogs’ like this one!

I think this mornings ‘happy accident’ provides a clue to the secret of how edna can really add value in a ‘Web2.0′ sense.  Let me try to explain what happened:

1. This post from Tue Oct10 came into my RSS reader because it was posted ‘in public’ and is part of a community (or rss feed) to which I am already subscribed.

2. The personal tone and language of the first sentence caught my eye ‘Mark Tranthim-Fryer and I are delivering the keynote’ – because I care about people more than topics and I know ‘Mark Tranthim-Fryer’ I wondered who the ‘I’ was…

3. That caused me to take the unusual step of opening the post in my browser, and for the first time, something of the context of your sentence was revealed – and education.au blog, Kerrie Smith.

4. That got me interested enough to read the second paragaph which talks about a topic I am interested in – blogs in moodle for edna.  Since you provided a link to your moodle blog, I opened it in a new tab, and for the FIRST TIME actually discovered the blog interesting enough to subscribe to from inside the moodle environment.

5. Once I had your edna groups blog open in a browser it was fairly easy to find the RSS feed I want to subscribe to, although its URL is a tad long (do I really need to care which version of php it runs on???) – http://www.groups.edna.edu.au/rss/file.php/1/1/blog/user/26/rss.xml

So what can we learn from this little rant?

- edna group’s new blog functionality from moodle already provides a comfortable and safe place for people who are used to the structure and ‘private by default’ nature of things to begin experimenting with ‘blogging’.

- education.au and edna are in a unique position to provide services that will help such people move into the scary, disintermediated, chaotic and public world of ‘Web2.0′

- education.au and edna are also in a uniqe position to reach a whole new audience by providing some of its fantastic features to citizens of the Web2.0 world.

The trick is to get some discussion going around the types of services that could make this magic happen.  Here are two ideas from what happened this morning to get things rolling:

- Promotion / Discovery services for ‘public blogs’ inside the moodle environment.

- RSS feed services for subscribers (short, memorable feed names)

- RSS feed services for publishers (too many great ideas to write here!)

OK thats three things but Im on a roll.

Good post Kerrie, lets try to get some discussion going around this little rant.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:education, moodle, edna, blog, web2

More on Collaborative Knowledge Capture for Conferences Using Social Media ToolsMy colleague Loretta Donovan pinged me to let me know of her newest blog and her take on the topic of “Capturing Collaborative Knowledge from Nonprofit Events.” I love seeing this through Loretta’s lens of learning. Specificallly, she challenges the idea put forth by Nancy White “The act of production is an act of meaning making.”

Beth’s Blog: More on Collaborative Knowledge Capture for Conferences Using Social Media Tools

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:education, event, conference, community

ScreenCast of demo rehearsals [SILENT] demo1.m4v, demo2.m4v

iPod video of mashup preso.m4v

Bloglines RSS Feed of demo elements

My flickr photos
Anthony Burnett flickr photos [Nice original artwork]
http://www.abc.net.au/services/podcasting/
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/btn [Podcasting 15th August]

Podcasts, Flickr & Mashups – Mike Seyfang
A recent Pew study shows that 57% of teens create/share some form of digital content. This segment will take you on a whirlwind tour of some of the things they are up to. Podcasts – what are they, how to ‘catch‘ them, listen to them and create them. Flickr – what is it, how to find images, how to upload images and why its called ’social software’. Finally we will play a couple of ‘mash-ups’ that show how stories can be told using a new kind of literacy.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

A six minute reflection of the recent education.au seminar (http://www.educationau.edu.au/jahia/Jahia/whatschanged); Audio in full at http://feeds.feedburner.com/eduauweb2

*Note – the better feed link is http://feed.educationau.edu.au

Podding Downunder

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:eduaueventaug06, eduauweb2, education, podcast

[rockyou 35408325]

And if you want to read more widely on the subject, try this flickr search:

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:sign, crazy

I was fortunate to be able to attend education.au’s “So what’s changed?” event, Wentworth Sydney, August 4th, 2006.  I have been working with the team at education.au over the past few months, wrestling with this beast some call ‘Web2.0′ which seems to be emerging from the primordal slime of the Read-Write Web.

As Gerry White pointed out in his introductory remarks – I was in ‘Blue Shirt’ mode, working hard to capture, upload and post-produce audio in close to real-time.  My primary role was to design and run an interactive workshop just after lunch.  I tried to give a ‘live blogging’ behind the scenes view HERE.  Consequently, I did not pay full attention to the content of sessions, but a few ’sound-bites’ caught my ear and got me thinking.

So, what has changed?

EVERYTHING BUT THE SIZE OF OUR BRAINS – Gerry White

Gerry’s talk ended with quite the punch-line.  As we know, these fixed sized brains are remarkably adaptable.  I find it marvellous to watch the development of my teenage kids in our household which offers an abundance of technical gadgets and internet connectivity.  Talking with my oldest (16yrs) at breakfast – “I don’t know how SHE (our youngest – 13yrs) can do her homework with music, videos, email and SIX msn messenger conversations at once”.  HE can only deal with TWO msn messenger conversations and those other things while doing his homework.  This makes me think of one of the illustrations so elloquently delivered by the next speaker…

MY FRIEND PETER CAN EFFORTLESSLY SCAN 20TV MONITORS AT ONCE IN THE TV CONTROL ROOM – Phillip Adams

This resonated with me because I am much more comfortable with the massively parallel, highly visual bombardment of digital data than I ever was in the highly serial / textualised classroom or boardroom.  I’ve always felt threatened by Phillip Adams (and anyone else who is more eloquent than myself) probably due to the years of bullying I endured in 25 years of corporate ICT and the 13+3 years finely honing my deep sense of inferiority in the formal education system.  I did, however, warm to Phillip, because he gave us a glimpse of the heart which beats beneath his carefully presented ‘pompous old fart’ exterior.  He did this by offering connection with his audience – albeit briefly and somewhat flippantly – something we could redress if I were to take up his offer to stay at his home in rural NSW.  Phillp points out that while the ‘unmediated world’ (as he sees the read/write web) seems to be open to every possibility – there is an increasing narrowness of view, a ‘panorama of collective insanities’ in which porn, hatred and conspiracy theories seem to be the order of the day.  I am grateful to Phillip for making me think and will try to do something more substantial to share my thoughts on his talk.

BYE BYE BLACKBOARD – James Farmer

James points out that institutional Learning Management Systems (LMS) are not (and have never been) engaging tools for any form of collective learning.  The air of disdain for the objects of his ‘hall of shame’ was almost palpable.  His contempt for the ‘threaded discussion’ is a joy to behold and the alternative he offers as a ‘giver of blogs’ via edublogs.org, learnerblogs.org etc a real harbinger of things better.  To my mind, the recent hoo har surrounding patents and lawsuits over LMS is ridiculous because people are fighting like vultures over scraps of a rotting corpse – the really engaging learning experience comes through the connectedness offered by learner centred Personal Learning Environments (PLE).  As James points out and Liam Hodge demonstrates, each learner strings together a very personal collection of tools.

C-Learning, PEOPLE WHO DON’T GET CARRIED AWAY SHOULD BE! – Annika Small

Connectivity, Community, Creativity, Construction, Collaboration.

I really need to go back and re-listen to this talk and hopefully re-visit the three excellent ’show and tell’ videos from FutureLab projects.  From memory, if you download and watch the three videos (links in the previous sentence) online and read this excellent whitepaper, you would off to a good start.  Phrases like ’spraying my territory’ and the sounds of car engines revving echo sentiments from some rather excited, connected and engaged young learners.  A question from the audience re the sustainability of the learning experiences that were showcased stuck with me.  This is something I have been thinking about for several years, since my own work in the Microsoft and South Australian Government’s Innovation Centre here in Adelaide.  A cunning plan is needed in order to take any Proof of Concept (POC) from prototype through development to testing implementation and finally sustainable production environments.  And yes, I happen to have something in my box of tricks that is so cunning one could pin a tail to it and call it a fox!!!

So, what’s Changed? – the weather for one thing.  It is a beautiful sunny morning here in Adelaide, and I intend to fill my MP3 player with podcasts from the event, jump on my bicycle and head off to the beach for a late morning engagement with myPLE.

Fang – Mike Seyfang – LearnDog

technorati tags:eduaueventaug06, eduauweb2, education, myple, ple, seminar, podcast, audio, presentation, learning, learndog

1. By responding to THIS POST

2. Call me 0414 164 895 when you are at the Wentworth.  If I can drag myself away from my audio and workshop duties I will buy you a coffee.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:education, eduaueventaug06, eduauevent

As you may be aware, I will be attempting to add a new media / web2.0 twist to education.au’s ‘What’s Changed’ event in Sydney next Friday, August 4th. May aim is to help ignite some conversation about the event, and the topics it covers through a workshop I will be facilitating just after the lunch break. And this, my freinds, is where you can help:

• Come to the event (if you can get to Sydney)
• Blog from the event (we can arrange wifi access for you)
• Blog about the event (eduaueventaug06 is a tag we will be using)
• Subscribe to feed.educationau.edu.au and comment / post about the podcasts, photos and posts you discover

I look forward to your support in this important work – to start debate on how to leverage emerging technologies in education.

Fang – Mike Seyfang
http://www.educationau.edu.au/whatschanged

technorati tags:eduaueventaug06, eduauweb2, education, web2

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

via e/mail

zooomr does it way better

 http://beta.zooomr.com/photos/fang/near-by 

(How – upload a pic to zooomr, tag it, then click on ‘lightmap’ on your zooomr homepage, point to the place in the world the use your tag to find the photo you wanna tag)  too cwoool for schoool.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

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