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

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.

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.

 

 

 

Key Emerging Technologies For Schools

Although written for American schools, The New Media Consortium (NMC) produced  Horizon Report: 2009 K-12 Edition, provides a useful insight to a number of emerging technologies that are likely to impact on learning and teaching over the next five years.  The report sponsored by Microsoft and developed in consultation with an internationally renowned Advisory Board, identifies emerging technologies based on their time-to-adoption horizon – one year or less, two to three years and four to five years.

The New Media Consortium (NMC) is an international not-for-profit consortium of nearly 300 learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies.

Emerging technologies detailed in the report include:

Time-to-Adoption: One Year or Less

• Collaborative Environments
• Online Communication Tools

Time-to-Adoption: Two to Three Years

• Mobiles
• Cloud Computing

Time-to-Adoption: Four to Five Years

• Smart Objects
• The Personal Web

 The report also outlined key trends and critical challenges associated with adoption of these technologies.

Critical Challenges

• There is a growing need for formal instruction in key new skills, including information literacy, visual literacy, and technological literacy.
• Students are different, but educational practice and the material that supports it is changing only slowly.
• Learning that incorporates real life experiences is not occurring enough and is undervalued when it does take place.
• There is a growing recognition that new technologies must be adopted and used as an everyday part of classroom activities, but effecting this change is difficult.
• A key challenge is the fundamental structure of the K-12 education establishment.

Key Trends

• Technology continues to profoundly affect the way we work, collaborate, communicate, and succeed.
• Technology is increasingly a means for empowering students, a method for communication and socializing, and a ubiquitous, transparent part of their lives.
• The web is an increasingly personal experience.
• The way we think of learning environments is changing.
• The perceived value of innovation and creativity is increasing.

Did You Know?

As part of the burgeoning "Did You Know" series on YouTube this video produced by Karl Fisch helps raise awareness of the issues of globalization in our newly connected world first raised in Thomas Friedman's book, The World is Flat.

Some interesting thoughts and facts with background music from the 1992 film  "Last of the Mohicans"!!!

 

Schools Should Be Embracing Twitter

One of the ways to offer a truly inclusive education for all young people is to embrace their diverse learning needs and encourage active participation on popular sites such as Facebook and Twitter to encourage the creation and sharing of information, suggests Futurelab in its latest handbook 'Using digital technologies to promote inclusive practices in education'

The report gives a number of case studies, offering an insight into others’ effective use of technology to overcome young people’s learning, physical, emotional or behavioural difficulties. One of these studies shows how the communicative, collaborative and community-building aspects of sites such as Facebook, Wikipedia and Twitter can be used to foster a more personalised approach to. Researchers go on to suggest that allowing learners access to Web 2.0 sites also helps to promote responsible and creative learning.