Welcome to BAW 2007

I was sitting here as I posted this message. (Photo also taken using the same phone and posted to Moblog.)

My Tagroll

Well I've finally weaning myself off Powermarks (which was the greatest bookmark manager until Delicious et al arrived) and am now routinely dumping things into my Delicious account. And because I'm fascinated by the number of things you can do with a blog I'm adding my tagroll here!

GCast v Hipcast

To see GCast working on its own in a separate blog go over here.While GCast is free, Hipcast costs US$4.95/month.

Audio Post via Hipcast

This post has arrived by phone using Hipcast. (I'll edit this later.)

Life's a Beach

In this short vid I'm referring to Greg Whitby's presentation (podcast) here. And boy it's weird to see yourself up this close. Still...here ya go:

Students' Thermoses

Students' Thermoses
Originally uploaded by mikecogh.

Chinese students like to take a thermos of hot water with them to Uni. They use it to make tea or just to drink hot water. I found out in my last day in Nanjing that Chinese people regularly drink plain hot water with meals. You live and learn!

My First Slideshare Presentation

Wonderin' Aloud

Well I haven't posted any movies on BlipTV yet but dear Steven has done one for me here. Ian Anderson's Wonderin' Aloud - just about my all time favourite song. Filmed in the lounge of a hotel in Christchurch. My bit starts about half way through.

The End of Audioblogger!

What a bummer! Got this in my inbox a couple of days ago. Interesting to see that it comes from the folks at Odeo! I'll now have to look at the other options. Stay tuned.
====================================================================================
As of November 1, 2006, Audioblogger will no longer accept phone
calls. MP3s made with the service will continue to be hosted and
served but you will no longer be able to use Audioblogger to post
new audio.


Audioblogger is an independent product, run by Odeo, Inc., a small
startup company in San Francisco, CA. We are not affiliated with
Google or Blogger except that we operate and provide the
Audioblogger service.


Given our limited resources, we have to make tough decisions
about what projects to focus on. And we've come to the difficult
decision that Audioblogger demands too many resources, time, and
money for us to continue its operation.


However, there are several other services that offer similar
functionality. Odeo is not affiliated with any of these services,
we only suggest them only in hopes that one or the other will be
a good alternative for you.


Gabcast.com is a free service for recording by phone
Hipcast.com has a seven day free trial and lots of features
Gcast.com is another free service for phone recording


All of the phone posting services listed above are compatible
with Odeo in that they produce podcast feeds, which can be
imported to Odeo. Any audio file at Odeo can be posted on a blog
by copying and pasting some embed code.


Odeo would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has
tried Audioblogger. If you are interested in keeping up with our
other blog-friendly projects, please have a look at Twitter.com
and our customizable audio players.


Thanks,
The Odeo Team


Links:
Gabcast - http://gabcast.com
Hipcast - http://hipcast.com
Gcast - http://gcast.com
Odeo Importing - http://www.odeo.com/create/addfeed
Twitter - http://twitter.com
Players - http://odeo.com/channel/102054/embedded_player

Future of Learning in a Networked World - Reflections

OK. It’s time to get this down before the thoughts float away in time. People who experienced the whole 2 weeks of the roadshow may even forgotten I was there! But I was there for the first five days in Dunedin and Christchurch. I wonder if what I think and feel now might be different if I’d been part of the whole event….

As Konrad hinted, this was one of the more significant experiences of my life. Not something that I could or would want to forget. A pressure cooker of learning, thinking and relating. I find my thoughts about it all are more about process than content. I can’t tell you what extra knowledge I gained in the sense of hard facts or artefacts or new skills. That’s something of a disappointment actually as I had hoped to sit down quietly in a corner and grill Sean, or Leigh, or Stephen et al. But it just wasn’t like that. I think about how it was, what it was, what we did, what was said, who I spoke to……

It was exhilarating and exhausting (as I think everyone found) – even for those 5 days. So much information was relentlessly taken in, shared, and recycled or created as audio, text, photos, video. Others have written about it taking ages before it all finds its place in the overall – I know it will be like that. But I’ve already had the chance to run a kind of debrief session with some interested colleagues in a workshop back home. After outlining what it was and how it worked I asked the 12 or so present whether they would like to take part in that kind of professional development event and most were extremely amenable to the idea so I think the idea has legs. Not only for larger groups geographically dispersed, but small groups from the same location or workteam.

One of the more challenging aspects for me was to have to surrender myself to the group totally for all my waking hours, and in the case of the Marae, sleeping hours as well! Stephen’s initial comments about groups v networks, and subsequent discussion from others, are all the more interesting in this context. I came prepared to do that – surrender to the group – and consequently found myself feeling much closer to people within days. So for me it was not just an intellectual exercise of processing ideas and discussion, but about managing personal relationships. None of this was hard per se. It’s just that there was so much of it! Relentless as I said. And as a group travelling together in real as opposed to virtual space, I don’t just function as a head or a brain as I might be able to do online. Online there is also personal stuff of course, but it takes longer, and you have a choice about to whether to explore that side of a relationship with someone.

Though I was there for only 5 days I frequently heard, and have since read, how people needed more time and space to process what was happening. We were in a totally networked environment, even when we were ‘decapitated’ with no Net connection. No break for personal grounding. And I hear everyday how people are busy. Too busy. So networking of any kind 24/7 is too much. OK. This was an experiment and we were learning as we went, but next time round I’d be suggesting allotted times for

• Working with specific others in the group (though many made this happen anyway)


• Thinking time for processing, creating, and uploading

I guess this is stating the obvious really, but it’s now down on record. I think what I’m trying to say is that we need to be able to model how living the life of a networked knowledge worker/educator can be managed in such a way that there is equilibrium with other parts of your life. That it’s not just constant cognition and personal media bombardment.

Leigh -  for all the driving you did before we all arrived in Dunedin – a huge thank you. You have proved that such things are possible. To everyone else who was in Dunedin and ChCh physically or virtually, thank you for a smorgasbord of media, stimulation, and good vibes.

And is this still the best one stop shop to go to get as much of what was produced as possible? (It’s still pretty daunting for the uninitiated BTW. Will there be a book/CD/DVD?

If you’re interested a few other thoughts HERE

Demo posted from ACEC Conference

Example from eDayZ

Audioblog Example for eDayz

End of Day 1

DSCN2818
Originally uploaded by mikecogh.

Bee (Barbara Dieu) packing up at the end of our first day in Dunedin.

FLNW Day 2

Invite a group of elearning experts to gather in one place to take part in an unconference on the Future of Learning in a Networked World and the rest will take care of itself. Konrad Globowski, Teemu Leinonen, Barbara Dieu and I spent several hours wandering around Dunedin yesterday discussing what might happen at such event. We questioned each other about why we had been invited, and how we might present ourselves and our work at such an unstructured event. There was a level of uncertainty at how one might ‘present’, or not present, but the conversation naturally turned to many of the issues that resulted in the need for this kind of event. In essence it is to present an alternative model to the stand and deliver model of the typical conference, and that typifies so much teacher methodology in classrooms. With a new breed of technological tools available that encourage personal publishing and collaborative learning among groups of connected learners it is timely to offer another way of offering professional development that more closely mirrors what might be regarded as better practice for teaching in a networked world. Fragments of the conversation as we walked included: Konrad: the creative aspect is key. Blogs, wikis, repositories for self-created media like YouTube and Odeo offer free publishing and storage of student work that can be used for self-expression, connecting with like-minded students, and even assignments set by imaginative teachers, and that engage students in ways that traditional text based or rote learning may not. The urge to create and make sense of the world through self-expression in various media is a natural human urge and not typically found in average courses. (I didn’t have one art lesson in my entire school life.) Teemu: the railway is a symbol of how connection was expressed in previous eras. In particular, the grandeur of the Dunedin railway station is indicative of its importance at the time. These days connections via the Net join more people across time and space than railways ever could. Later in the day the entire unconference gang gathered at a Maori marae. Caroline bemoaned the reduced importance of physical place in the new networked world. She wanted her children to feel grounded and know where they come from. I suggested that this notion of place has indeed been reduced in importance, and had been counter balanced with the ability to know people far away from your neighbourhood – people who you perhaps had more in common with than the people who lived next door. The concept of virtual place is now a reality, and rather than detract from my sense of being grounded in my home location, my attachment and enjoyment of home has been enriched by global connections made possible by the Internet. “Home is the where the Internet is.” Teemu : it was only when he realised that he could use them to communicate with people elsewhere that he became interested in them. This initial intrigue has resulted in him taking a path where he has developed a sytem of communication between a mobile phone and wikipedia. Using this system you can ask for wikipedia for an entry on a particular topic and it will call you back and read back the entry on your queried topic. Konrad wanted to do his Ph D on the role of blogging in forming communities for year 8 students. When he presented his proposal to his review committee they asked what previous research had been done on this topic. Of course there is none (because it is a new field) and they were consequently not keen to approve his topic. Such courses of higher study are normally assumed to be based on the work of other scholars, and approved on that basis. This is another example of how new tools and approaches (blogging for example) are challenging accepted practice in education. The educational world is now a place where knowledge is being created and distributed via egalitarian networks without a role for the traditional gatekeepers. Published academics are no longer the people you would seek out if you wanted information on most recent good practice in elearning. So before this unconference had begun, the conversations had already covered: 

• The importance of creativity and personal publishing tools in the new and connected world 
• The importance of the Internet as tool of connection between people 
• The role of the mobile phone as a tool of inquiry and information retrieval 
• Changes in how we view the concept of place 
• The challenge to education presented by distributed knowledge sharing networks 

The learning and discussion on the future of learning had begun in earnest without a single presentation!

Konrad G at Language Centre in Dunedin

First Church Garden

DSCN2794
Originally uploaded by mikecogh.

Yep - Bee and I are both in New Zealand for the 'unconference'.

We spent some time this afternoon at language school talling about blogs, community, role of the teacher, personal publishing, etc

Lovely to be here together!

Bee in Dunedin

The First Day in Dunedin

Some thoughts on this before we begin:

Broome

A sample Digital Story