Bedford School Innovation Group

YouTube Edu

Launched earlier this year in March.  YouTube EDU  centralizes the content from over 100 universities and colleges  The collection gives access to lectures by professors and world-renowned thought leaders, new research and campus tours. At the moment, you can access over 200 full courses from leading universities, including MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Yale. Increasingly a number of universities in the UK are also posting content on the site - Nottingham University being a good example.

Another increasingly popular source of open educational resources is Academic Earth. The site has a very simple user interface along with a broad range of content.

Online University - the growth of iTunes U

Following on from the recent post about the use of iTunes U by universities in North America and in this country, a recent report in the Sunday Times highlights the rapid advancement being made in the development of open educational resources. With iTunes U at the very heart of the revolution many universities are starting to realise the potential of this new form of learning.

The article written by Richard Woods reflects on the increasing awareness by the public of the huge range of resources that universities are now making available for download. In this country the Open University through Open Learn along with Oxford University and Cambridge University are very much in the vanguard of this new and exciting development.

The statistics are impressive - In just a year of posting material on iTunes U, Oxford has seen well over 1m downloads of lectures or other academic works. While in little more than a year more than 845,000 people around the world have accessed Open Learn through iTunes U and downloaded nearly 8m items. In the past month downloads have averaged 400,000 a week.

Read the full article.

The Social Media Revolution

Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod are responsible  for the increasingly recognised “Shift Happens (Did You Know?)” video series.  Now one of the most popular technology videos on YouTube, the latest version released last month focuses on the use of social media and the future media landscape. The idea behind the presentations was to start, continue and advance the conversation around certain ideas not least the development of Web 2.0.

Fisch on his blog poses an interesting question for those who like him work in education - " – if you buy that on so many levels the world is a fundamentally different place – then it just begs us to ask the question of whether schools have similarly transformed from when we grew up. If your answer to that question is no, as I think it probably is for a large majority of you, and if you see a problem with that, then what should we do? What is my responsibility, and your responsibility?"

Version 4.0 of Shift Happens

Google Wave

Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

The School is in the process of beta testing Google Wave and Jonathan Choy will be giving an introduction of this software at the next Innovation Group Meeting. The potential for an education setting would seem to be significant. The wave has in some quarters been decsribed as a Facebook / Twitter killer!

Abridged Version of the Google Wave Presentation

Guardian 10:10 Climate Change Campaign

Launched last month the campaign aims to get inidividuals, companies and institutions to reduce their carbon footprints by 10% during 2010. The campaign is backed by a coalition of the Guardian, a range of Non Governmental Organisations, companies and the Carbon Trust.

The campaign is based on the fact that while longer term emission targets are established the need to act quickly is becoming increasingly clear and that emissions must start to fall in the next few years.

A good deal of advice is being offered on how individuals can reduce their carbon footprint. A mass sign-up event was held at The Tate Modern to launch the campaign and the 10:10 website can now be used by individuals and companies to sign up for the campaign which is the brainchild of Franny Armstrong the director of Age of Stupid.

Click here to join the campaign.

Mobile Learning and iTunes U

iTunes U provides a platform for the distribution of digital content through the iTunes store. The resource has rapidly become probably the largest collection of free educational media currently available.

Many universities in North America and increasingly in the UK are making course material available to their students through this platform and their own locally branded site. It is possible to create an internal site which is password protected or to make content available to all.

Some examples of universities using iTunes U are highlighted below. The  iTune U site for each university simply opens in iTunes.

Selected Universities - Stanford University   University of California Berkeley   Duke University

Open University   University of Cambridge    University of Oxford   University of Warwick

In the UK it would seem that no more than ten universities are currently using iTunes U. Could we be the first school to develop such a resource?

Apple claim that it is relatively easy to make iTunes U part of a mobile learning structure. Read more for further information.

Families That Learn Together, Grow Together

More than 90 per cent of parents think it is important to learn within the family, with 78 per cent admitting that they too had learnt something new alongside their children, finds a new report from education innovator Futurelab. With findings like these, the Learning in Families with Digital Technologies report highlights the need for learning in the family to be seen as just as important as learning in the classroom. It also explores the potential of digital technologies such as mobile phones, digital cameras and the internet to support learning in the family and to join up the learning that takes place in the home and school.

Learning in the family can include activities such as playing computer games, visiting attractions and days out, and using the internet. It has received increased attention from policymakers in recent years, namely through the Parental Engagement agenda which aims to enhance parents’ involvement in their children’s learning. It also relates to the government’s Home Access initiative, which will help to make the technologies that could support family learning more accessible than ever by extending computer and internet access into homes than wouldn’t otherwise have it.

The report highlights the fact that learning in families is as diverse as families themselves, and so covers a wide array of activities; different families have different needs and therefore learn in different ways. Everyday tasks from playing games and talking to friends on socila networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, can support learning, with older family members learning from children as much as the other way round.

The key to successful family learning is to remember that it is, by its very nature, different from school. Lyndsay Grant, Researcher at Futurelab, comments: “The challenge is to make the most of learning in the family without attempting to turn the family home into a classroom. Families are relationships not educational institutions - programmes that support family learning therefore need to acknowledge and build upon the power of these intimate relationships and the learning that already takes place within the family rather then trying to redesign the family into a formal educational institution.”

Appy Days

A recent interesting article in the New Scientist (19 August 2009) titled "Appland: How Smartphones are transforming our lives" explores how the the iPhone is at the centre of the mobile application world. In his article Richard Fisher reflects on how the downloadable software tools are permeating every aspect of our daily lives.

As Fisher writes Apps are more than just clever toys. While gaming still accounts for the lion's share of app activity, it is beyond doubt that apps, and the new wave of phones in which they reside, are already influencing the way their users communicate with each other, navigate their environment and do business. Arguably, these tailored bits of software - connected to the internet, location-aware and sensor-supported as they are - may supersede the web. Some say the devices on which they reside are becoming a vital part of our selves, turning us into de facto cyborgs. Could these humble bits of code really have the potential to completely transform the way we interact with the world?

"Out with friends and last orders have been called in the pub. The alpha male of our group pulls out a stack of taxi numbers scrawled on old business cards. None of the firms is close enough. "Richard has a new iPhone - let's try that," my wife suggests. I pull up an app called AroundMe, which tells me where the nearest cab company is. Thirty seconds later and the taxi is on its way. My friends look on in envy and admiration. Alpha male looks despondent. "I am part man, part computer," I tell myself"

Read the full article.

Are Our Heads in the Cloud?

Originally featured as an article in the Sunday Times magazine in August 2009 "Are Our Heads in the Cloud" explores the increasing move online and charts the potential and ramifications of cloud computing - from our favourite books, films and music to our medical records is moving online in to 'the cloud'. It promises us grater freedom, but are we in danger of creating a huge electronic Big Brother?

The cloud is such a big deal that Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, which charts its rise, likens it to the creation of the national grid: “What electricity brought to mechanical power, the cloud is doing to information technology.” For a big idea, the cloud is — fortunately — remarkably simple. It means that the electronic information we want is stored and processed on computers somewhere else — in the cloud — and delivered to us where, when and how we need it.

Today, most of us use electronic devices with closed systems. Each device creates and stores certain types of information. We store Word documents and spreadsheets on our laptop and PC, contacts and e-mails on our mobile, TV and video on our television and set-top box, and music on our iPod. The cloud reverses that model. Cloud-based devices create and store nothing. They are merely connecting devices that draw down the information we need. Computing best illustrates the shift. In the cloud, the internet becomes our operating system. We use online software that runs in our browser to create the files we need. The files are stored in remote data centres.

Read the full article.