Presented by the BBC, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Westminster, Children in Virtual Worlds was the first conference in the UK to draw together producers and researchers working on virtual worlds and immersive gaming environments for children aged 7-11 online. Keynote speakers included Richard Deverell, Controller, BBC Children's and Dr Adrian Woolard, Head of Innovation, BBC Future Media and Technology. Other speakers include representatives from Club Penguin, Moshi Monsters, Lego Universe, Prof David Gauntlett (University of Westminster), Lizzie Jackson (University of Westminster), Dr Diane Carr (Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media), Marc Goodchild (Head of Interactive and On Demand, BBC Children's), Aleks Krotoski (Guardian Unlimited), Tamara Littleton (eModeration.com) and Paul Massey (K&L Gates).
Attending the launch of One Morning, a new monthly breakfast event hosted by Policy Unplugged.
Each month Policy Unplugged invite three individuals to answer one question - the first question being What happens next?
Answering at the inaugural event were three of the most pioneering people currently working in publishing, journalism and television:
- Kevin Anderson (Blogs Editor at The Guardian)
- Jeremy Ettinghausen (Head of Digital Publishing at Penguin)
- Matt Locke (Commissioning Editor at Channel 4)
Excellent event - well worth getting up foolishly early for. Very much looking forward to future breakfasts.
Covering the 7th annual Tribeca Film Festival for A Girl & A Gun.
Designing and delivering a workshop covering microblogging tools, techniques and practices (particularly Twitter and Jaiku); lifestream and social search tools and applications (focusing on Friend Feed and Spokeo); and exploring what presence is and why it's important.
Workshop/community meeting run as part of the Emerge community User & Development activities. The session used scenario modeling techniques as a framework for discussing possible futures for the platform and facilitating members to talk about their vision for the future of the Emerge social networking service.
The Emerge project three day online conference, Digital Communities and Digital Identities. I lead on the programming for the event, and recruited many of the speakers.
Each day opened with a project element focus – Appreciative Inquiry, Benefits Realisation, and User Engagement. Running across the whole event we have additional themes, mapped to community activity and interest areas. These are:
• Social networking and
collaborative learning practices
• Multimedia, story telling and
narrative
• Community building and network
development
• Web 2.0 for learning, creating and
discovering
We used three primary environments: Elluminate (java based online conferencing software) for synchronous activities, Moodle (open source virtual learning environment) for asynchronous activity and conference co-ordination, and Second Life (multi-user virtual environment), for the conference social. We also used a host of other tools for specific tasks - twitter, Flickr, wikis, media players, and the Emerge main site (a social networking platform), primarily for blogging.
You can see a visual record of the conference here. I tried to record as I went along, using screen shots of the presenters on cam. A very simple solution to creating a visual record of the online conference, but I can't say I've really seen it used at other online events.
Working alongside a group of invited experts as part of Becta's research programme on ‘Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning’. The seminar was designed to facilitate discussion of the projects research findings to date.
Ewan blogged about the day over at edu.blogs.com:
"Charles Crook and Colin Harrison from the research project team at Nottingham University presented an emerging paper on what some of us working with kids every day have known for some time: there's a perception that young people are "doing it", being highly skilled and creative on the web, and older people [read: teachers] don't "do it". It's not true. It boldly tells us once more that the "digital natives, digital immigrants" statement, brought up again by the Prime Minister's children-the-net-and-gaming Advisor Tanya Byron yesterday, is simplistic."
Contributing to a Policy Delphi workshop informing the e-safety stream of Becta's "Web 2.0 Technologies for Learning at Key Stages 3 and 4" project. The project is commissioned by Becta to carry out a national survey amongst children, teachers and parents of web 2.0
(social networking and media sharing) activities both in school and at home, and to explore the opportunities and risks of using these new technologies for learning. The findings will inform the Becta Harnessing Technology strategy, providing advice to policy makers, schools and local authorities on how the benefits of web 2.0 technologies can be effectively and safely realised.
Issues included infrastructure and technology; visibility and management of e-safety; the efficacy of policies, practices and products; and tensions between e-safety and the opportunities for learning and productive social interaction offered by web 2.0 tools.
The Policy Delphi method is a structured group process to survey and collect the opinions of experts on a complex problem.
Mobile Monday London (MoMoLo) is an informal networking group based in
London, England. They aim is to share experiences of building and
deploying mobile data products and services.
A broad range of speakers contributed to the March networking event focusing on the theme of Mobile London:
Ian Henderson - TfL
Li-Qun Xu and Ron McArthur - BT
Nick Knowles- Kizoom
Ian Drury - BT
Gary Waite - O2
Phil Derry - TrackaPhone
Nick Norman - Consult Hyperion
Claire Maslen - O2
Davide Mancuso - PA Consulting
Marcus Taylor - Erlang
Stephen Browning - NXP
Delivering a session on cyberbullying issues and prevention for the NSB dialogues and forums: Tackling School Bullying conference.
"In this conference, we set out to examine what best practice can tell us about managing bullying within our own schools. What works with the bully? How can bullying be identified in the first instance? How can an anti-bullying ethos be encouraged and rooted in the school’s policy and practice? How can teachers themselves be led to a more robust view on bullying when it is reported? And, often in the news currently, what can be done to tackle technology-related bullying using such things as mobile phones and Internet.
The range of professionals at this conference will explore some of these key issues in a way that will help delegates consider their own policies and practice around bullying and also be informed at a more fundamental level about what bullying is and how is can be tackled."
Channel
4 is the first broadcaster to refocus its commissioning budget for
education away from linear TV to cross platform projects. This is a
bold move in which TV is just one of many platforms for the Channel’s
new education content for teenagers.
One of Channel 4’s first new commissions for 2008 is the Bow Street Runner, an online game aiming to engage young people with history. ‘Bow Street Runner’ will take the historical themes of the TV programmes and create a compelling game world, in which the user dives into the murky underworld of Georgian London to solve a variety of mysterious crimes.
Presenting the keynote at e-Learning in HE: a symposium for FE/HE strategists and practitioners. The session was titled 'New Digital Literacies" and provided an overview of some of the recent shifts and challenges facing the FE and HE sectors in response to Web 2.0, and outlined why a national digital literacy framework is increasingly important for institutional strategic planning and delivery.
"This essential signature HE event for 2007/08 promises to be exciting and relevant for both strategists and practitioners alike, covering themes of 'Strategy in Action', 'Transforming Practice', 'Partnerships & Collaboration' and 'Research & Pedagogy'.
The packed programme will provide an overview of current practice, current research and possible future trends in e-learning within the HE sector. It will explore examples of collaboration within the sector and discuss the efficacy of various tools and technologies.
The event was targeted at managers with an HE in FE/HE remit and involved in e-learning Strategy and Decision Making, Course Coordination, Course Delivery, or Supporting eLearning.
Paul Walsh & Robert Loch's February Top Cat meetup: "The goal of the event is to forge stronger ties and greater collaboration between the internet start up, mobile, interactive marketing, TV and advertising communities."
Speaking at Enhance Media's open seminar Online Recruitment 2008 on Social Networking Services:
This session looks at the ongoing rise of Social Networking Sites - including Facebook and LinkedIn, and how they are being used, both by potential employers and employees. What are the benefits of using Social Network Sites professionally? What moral and legal issues do companies using Social Networking site searches during the recruitment process need to be aware of? What steps do companies need to be thinking about regarding their own recruitment practices and employment policies? And what do we, as individual users of Social Networking Sites need to be aware of?
Speaking at Enhance Media's open seminar Online Recruitment 2008 on Social Networking Services:
This session looks at the ongoing rise of Social Networking Sites - including Facebook and LinkedIn, and how they are being used, both by potential employers and employees. What are the benefits of using Social Network Sites professionally? What moral and legal issues do companies using Social Networking site searches during the recruitment process need to be aware of? What steps do companies need to be thinking about regarding their own recruitment practices and employment policies? And what do we, as individual users of Social Networking Sites need to be aware of?
The Learning Technologies conference is widely regarded as Europe’s foremost organisational learning gathering. I was invited to speak alongside Donald Clark in a Learning Technology track session on social networking transforming learning:
The big buzz in learning at the moment is around how communities of practice have a newer, younger cousin called social networks. Unbounded by the organisation or by geography, social networks can enable almost instant expert finding, together with a bonding experience and a sense of community for the individual at a desk.
Like so many tools used for learning, they weren't designed that way, but they are free, they are easy to use, and they seem to be on everyone's desktop. But they can also let personal and corporate secrets out of the bag - so what's the right way to unlease their power for learning and development?
My presentation was titled how social networking services are changing the web:
Social networking is a valuable tool for learning, networking and communicating - but how can you ensure that it works well for you?
In this presentation, social and educational technology expert Josie Fraser looks at some of the practicalities of social networking, from setting up permissions in Facebook, to dealing with inappropriate content and conduct. As well as exploring social networking as a tool for personal professional development, she will also touch on:
- What systems are there, and how do they differ?
- Building and joining groups and communities
- Using social networking for in-house communications and marketing
- Learning and coaching using social networking
- Just what is 'acceptable use'?
The Learning Technologies conference is widely regarded as Europe???s foremost organisational learning gathering. I was invited to speak alongside Donald Clark in a Learning Technology track session on social networking transforming learning:
The big buzz in learning at the moment is around how communities of practice have a newer, younger cousin called social networks. Unbounded by the organisation or by geography, social networks can enable almost instant expert finding, together with a bonding experience and a sense of community for the individual at a desk.
Like so many tools used for learning, they weren't designed that way, but they are free, they are easy to use, and they seem to be on everyone's desktop. But they can also let personal and corporate secrets out of the bag - so what's the right way to unlease their power for learning and development?
My presentation was titled how social networking services are changing the web:
Social networking is a valuable tool for learning, networking and communicating - but how can you ensure that it works well for you?
In this presentation, social and educational technology expert Josie Fraser looks at some of the practicalities of social networking, from setting up permissions in Facebook, to dealing with inappropriate content and conduct. As well as exploring social networking as a tool for personal professional development, she will also touch on:
- What systems are there, and how do they differ?
- Building and joining groups and communities
- Using social networking for in-house communications and marketing
- Learning and coaching using social networking
- Just what is 'acceptable use'?
JISC's Users & Innovation Programme Meeting was a two day event, designed and run by the Emerge team, which took place at the Royal York Hotel, York.
The event objectives were:
- To welcome successful projects to the programme;
- To allow projects to understand how the programme will be evaluated;
- To ensure that projects are aware of what JISC expects of them;
- To ensure that projects are aware of what they can expect from the JISC Programme Team and the Emerge Support Project;
- To induct projects into JISC and Emerge methodologies of working;
- To demonstrate ways from non project community members pathways for participation.
- To enable participants to develop their networks across projects and benefit from each others areas of interests and expertise
As well as supporting and helping to shape the development of the event programme, I additionally:
- Chaired Learning from Existing Projects, a benefits realisation session involving projects managers from the 7 2007 Emerge Community of Practice funded small projects
- Ran the Benifits Realisation for Current Projects workshop, briefing the 20 projects in attendance and associated organisations on preparing for active participation in the mornings Community Showcase session and the event Wall of Fame - a community mapping exercise
- Hosted and collated materials for the Community Showcase session, allowing all of the new wave of projects to identify their interests and benefits realisation aims to the whole community
- Ran a practical workshop in using communities (group features) within the Elgg platform to maximize project presence within the Emerge community
JISC's Users & Innovation Programme Meeting was a two day event, designed and run by the Emerge team, which took place at the Royal York Hotel, York.
The event objectives were:
- To welcome successful projects to the programme;
- To allow projects to understand how the programme will be evaluated;
- To ensure that projects are aware of what JISC expects of them;
- To ensure that projects are aware of what they can expect from the JISC Programme Team and the Emerge Support Project;
- To induct projects into JISC and Emerge methodologies of working;
- To demonstrate ways from non project community members pathways for participation.
- To enable participants to develop their networks across projects and benefit from each others areas of interests and expertise
As well as supporting and helping to shape the development of the event programme, I additionally:
- Chaired Learning from Existing Projects, a benefits realisation session involving projects managers from the 7 2007 Emerge Community of Practice funded small projects
- Ran the Benifits Realisation for Current Projects workshop, briefing the 20 projects in attendance and associated organisations on preparing for active participation in the mornings Community Showcase session and the event Wall of Fame - a community mapping exercise
- Hosted and collated materials for the Community Showcase session, allowing all of the new wave of projects to identify their interests and benefits realisation aims to the whole community
- Ran a practical workshop in using communities (group features) within the Elgg platform to maximize project presence within the Emerge community
Running training sessions on cyberbullying for Gloucestershire College, one of the largest Further Education colleges in the UK.
Here's the SurpGlu flavor of my combined feeds: SocialTech, my primary blog full of social and educational technology related goodness; Blogfolio - my recent work related activities; The feed from the Edublog Awards has also been added.
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- November 2005
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