Download: Hey Pressto! Conference 2020

The Hey Pressto! Conference 2020 – A WordPress and ClassicPress conference which happens only on Twitter  #HeyPresstoConf20 organised by Phil Barker(@philbarker) and Pat Lockley  (@pgogy).

HeyPressto! will happen on Thursday, September the 24th from 10AM (GMT+1) to 10PM (GMT+1)

Phil and Pat will be talking about the conference, its format, call for submissions and more.

ALT ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2019 – Preview

ALT’s Annual Conference 2019, 3–5 September 2019, University of Edinburgh, is seeking to confront and challenge established assumptions, approaches and accepted truths in relation to key dimensions of digital education, and to advancing our practice and thinking through critical dialogue and reflection, closer scrutiny of evidence and theory, and a stronger commitment to values including creativity, community, social good, openness and porosity, and more democratic access to knowledge and learning.

Listen to  those involved in making the conference happen to find out more, how to listen in and participate remotely and also what’s in store for everyone able to come to Edinburgh. ALT Annual Conference 2019

Guests
Sue Beckingham, one of our conference keynotes. Sue Beckingham (@suebecks) 
Martin Hawksey, our Chief Innovation, Community and Technology Officer. Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey)
Maren Deepwell (hoping to join), Chief Executive Officer. Dr Maren Deepwell (@MarenDeepwell)

Download Alistair McKay on Edutalk

Alistair McKay of the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) on ‘Enhancing your Senior Phase offering’.

Click here to download Alistair’s Powerpoint.

Download Alice Thompson on Edutalk

Alice Thompson, co-founder of Social Bite, on the Wee Sleep Out.

Download Rohit Naik on Edutalk

Rohit Naik, Head Teacher of Hope School in Liverpool, keynote at CELCIS Education Conference in Glasgow on Thursday 16th May 2019.

Download Dr Adam Burley on Edutalk

Dr Adam Burley, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at NHS Lothian, keynote at CELCIS Education Conference in Glasgow on 16th May 2019.

Download Developing a Research Engaged Teaching Profession: Practitioner Enquiry on Edutalk

Developing a Research Engaged Teaching Profession: Practitioner Enquiry (recorded at the University of Strathclyde on Thursday 2nd May).

All presentation slides are available to download here.

Download Douglas Hutchison on Edutalk

Douglas Hutchison, Lead of the South West Educational Improvement Collaborative.

Download Linda O’Neill on Edutalk

Linda O’Neill, Education Programme Lead at CELCIS, on the organisation’s education work and education conference.

Step Conference 2019 – Paul Dix & David Cameron Q&A

Paul Dix (@pauldixtweets)

David Cameron @realdcameron

STEP (@STeachersEP)

STEP

2019 Conference | STEP

Get it Right for Girls

The introduction to a workshop by Jenny Kemp and Aileen Lynch: Why schools need to “Get it Right for Girls”: the dangerous consequences of misogyny.

Step Conference 2019 David Cameron

Step Conference 2019 David Cameron “Trumping ACES”  – how do we promote well being?

Recorded at the Step Conference

David Cameron @realdcameron

STEP (@STeachersEP) | Twitter

STEP

2019 Conference | STEP

John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills

Step Conference 2019 Keynote 1: John Swinney, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills.

Introduced by David Cameron

John Swinney @JohnSwinney

David Cameron @realdcameron

STEP (@STeachersEP) | Twitter

STEP

2019 Conference | STEP

Download Carol Craig on Edutalk

Connect (formerly SPTC) Annual Lecture – Carol Craig on ‘Learning to Cope: How Do Children Become Resilient?’ (first 45 minutes only). Recorded in Dundee on 14-03-2019.

Download: an Guest “Exploring teachers’ professional development with Twitter”

Dr Ian Guest talking about his recent PHD “Exploring teachers’ professional development with Twitter”.

Ian Guest (@IaninSheffield) | Twitter

Marginal Notes – Musings of a PhD student

Ian’s phd can be downloaded Exploring teachers’ professional development with Twitter: A sociomaterial analysis – Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive

Download John MacKay on Edutalk

John MacKay, Principal Teacher of Fitness, Health and Well Being at Kingussie High School, on School Partnerships.

Tayport Community Garden

Ali, Kaska and Peter from the Tayport Community Garden in Fife.

The Garden is the key project run by PLANT (People Learning About Nature in Tayport), Tayport Community Trust’s gardening subgroup. Since 2011, PLANT has been working on projects bringing people together to grow food and flowers, while reducing carbon emissions and enhancing Tayport’s natural environment. The development and work of the Garden has been funded by Scottish Government’s Climate Challenge Fund and Big Lottery.

For more information see: https://tayportgarden.org/ or find them on Facebook @plantgroup.

They also have a |PLANT Voices podcast: https://anchor.fm/plant-tayport-community-garden

download: Radio #EDUtalk 27-02-19 PressED WordPress and Education twitter conference

Pat Lockley talking  about PressEd the conference about WordPress run completely on twitter.

PressEd uncovers many aspects of the use of WordPress in all areas of education.

We discussed some of the aspects and features of running a conference on twitter the previous and upcoming conferences.

Pat invites anyone who uses WordPress in any area of education to submit a proposal to the conference.

Pat Lockley on twitter Pgogy WebStuff (@Pgogy)

Pat’s Website: Pgogy Webstuff – Pedagogic and Techological Outfitters – WordPress / Drupal / Moodle / Digital Humanities

PressED Website: 2019 PressED conference – A WordPress and Education, Pedagogy and Research Conference on Twitter

PressED PressED Conf – A tweeting WordPress conference (@pressedconf) on twitter.

Download Eileen Prior on Edutalk

Eileen Prior, Executive Director of Connect (formerly SPTC)

Loose Learners Episode 15 Tales of two classrooms

Image adapted from this source.

In this episode John and Mariana take a new path for the Loose Learners show. We wanted to find find a theme that would enable us to engage in critical reflection about our own teaching practice and compare and contrast our two classrooms as a vehicle to inquire into the same question that has driven this show to date: Is technology good or bad for education? Yes. We are widening our core question to include technology as a whole and not just the internet, as we want to give ourselves a larger brief to explore.

This first show with the new format seeks to introduce our million listeners to the classrooms the two of us operate in. John in a primary school within a physical setting, Mariana in a virtual classroom within higher education.

We spend a little time setting the scene in conversation, and are already struck by the potential for dialogue offered by our contrasting settings. We speak to the gratitude we feel to be in settings where we have small numbers of students, where we can provide continuity of presence in their education, and can dedicate time for what Mike Wesch defines as soul learning with our students. We speak about how we may be at time in our career where we value teaching the whole person more than we value flashy presentation and lecture masterclasses on our areas of expertise.

Unsurprisingly, given our love for all things technology, we spend some time inquiring into how for Mariana’s virtual setting, technology seems to enable dedicated one to one time that is harder to create in physical classroom setting. This is, of course, supported by the gift of few students and a capacity to act as our own learning technologists as well as teach content from our respective fields. We spend some time exploring the challenges of those who may not have the gift of a love for technology or the expertise and those who are, to some extent, being coerced by educational institutions to work online more and more.

So, when you listen to this episode of the show, you will find informal conversation and a description of our two classroom settings. We plan to revisit this theme of ‘tales of two classrooms’  in future shows bringing to the show 1 salient element from each of our classrooms to dialogue about, compare and contrast, and generally interrogate together. And yes, more likely than not, our dialogue will circle around the educational use of technology.

We are back on March 6th at 8pm UK time as usual.

Do let us know in the comments if this new direction feels interesting/useful or not. Our motivation is to learn from each other’s practice in conversation, as we get little time to explore our work with others in our own institutions.

MOOC in Social Pedagogy

Kara O’Neil, Colin Patterson and Gabriel Eichsteller on the new Massive Open Online Course in Social Pedagogy.

Download Andrew Millar on Edutalk

Andrew Millar, headteacher of West Lothian’s Inclusion and Wellbeing Service.

Download Jonathan Wood and Rowena Arshad on Edutalk

Jonathan Wood (Place2Be) and Rowena Arshad (University of Edinburgh) on their mental health pilot.

Powering Up Children: The Learning Power Approach to Primary Teaching

Guy Claxton on his new book – Powering Up Children: The Learning Power Approach to Primary Teaching.

Download Angela Gardner on Edutalk

Angela Gardner, producer of Informed Scotland, on ‘Learning & skills across the landscape – the hottest topics in 2018 and what’s on the horizon for 2019′.

Download Patricia Anderson on Edutalk

Patricia Anderson on the Give Them Time campaign.

Links: www.givethemtime.org, FACEBOOK: Deferral Support Scotland, TWITTER: @GiveTimeScot

“MAID IN LONDON” flickr photo by Shht! shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license

On our first episode for 2019, we tackle a serious topic. We leave behind poetry and gifs behind for now… Instead we ask: What are the ethics of volunteer labour in online education? Is Volunteer digital labour good or bad for education? On this topic more than most, we answer with a clear ‘YES’. We have been reading about ‘free digital labour’ and have been reflecting on its impact on education. This episode is more of a meandering inquiry than our usual conversations, as the issues are varied and complex; we talk about about many threads and repeatedly acknowledge our difficulties grasping the theory as well as the practice of volunteer labour online beyond a technological utopias.

ᴹᵃʳⁱᵃⁿᵃ ᶠᵘⁿᵉˢ (@mdvfunes) on  Twitter
john johnston (@johnjohnston) | Twitter

We discuss the work of Kylie Jarret author of the Digital Housewife as she offers a frame for understanding some of the challenges of free digital labour within ‘big data capitalism’. Her work is wider than education. Although we only scratch the surface here, we highlight something aligned to a recurrent theme for us on this show,

“Is digital labour alienating and exploiting or is it meaningful and self-actualising? I saw this a a fruitless debate, is it not both? Domestic labour seen from a marxist lens gives as a framework for understanding labour, understanding practices that are both: exploiting and integral to capitalism for its productive output but are also socially meaningful exchanges with the potential for resistance. Domestic labour straddles the cultural and the economic.”

This idea suggests the possibility of learning from the study of domestic labour to help us navigate how we labour online. Jarret, quoting Merteuil, speaks of platforms as pimps in the context of digital labour; platforms do the same things a pimp does – find clients and take a cut! Jarret suggests that unpacking structural inequalities in our relationship to platforms, for example, can help us see how that which we do willingly can be exploitative; she uses the ‘gig economy’ as example and asks: how do the powerless resist?

We then try to bring these abstract ideas into specific educational examples. We focus on @dogtrax’s post: The Gap Between Open and Closed: OER vs TPT. The post explores issues in the choices we make to offer educational resources for free or for a fee. The post looks at Open Educational Resources and Teachers pay Teachers as examples of each approach. Dogtrax concludes in comments to his post: ‘I don’t have an answer either, the system is broken…’ and we share his confusion in our discussion. We also highlight Stephen Downes’ comment on the same post: “My issue with Teachers pay Teachers isn’t so much the commercial aspect but rather the idea that teachers should have to pay for anything. Why aren’t the schools and school boards paying for all this?” This leads us of into a conversation about how the free digital labour we offer via open education may be having the unintended consequence of keeping mainstream educational systems, such as universities and schools, using educators in precarious and unsupported ways. We discuss some examples from our own contexts, and how we often spend our own money to support our teaching.

We discuss Wendy Liu’s distinction between consumers and producers,

“When we glorify what the web has brought us as consumers, we obscure what the costs have been for producers. The benefits that the web has brought have come at a cost, and it’s not a cost that’s evenly spread. […] and most of the work was provided by volunteer labour – people like me who lived at home and didn’t really need money, or people who eked out a few hours a week in between their day job. The point is that it wasn’t sustainable, in material terms, to avoid corporate money.”

We discuss situations where we have volunteered, yet may be unaware of the impact our good intentions and enthusiasm may be having on the larger system.

Wendy Liu sums up the issue in the context of software development with volunteers, which she sees as ripe for take over from large corporations:

“Ultimately, there is an irreconcilable incompatibility between the idea of free information and the existence of corporations that profit from its commodification.”

We tried to discuss in greater or lesser depth some of the following questions:

When educators offer this kind of labour to ‘connect’ and ‘support’ colleagues, is there a hidden cost?
Are we maintaining a structurally unequal system at the same time as we create socially meaningful and fulfilling relationships?
Does it matter we are being exploited by other actors?
Some gurus in the open web often fall for this ‘free labour trap’ – Let’s see if we can get students to create complex computer code, otherwise it’s expensive! Does this make us all complicit?

And predictably, conclude that it’s complicated.
Extra links for following up we did not get to discuss during the show:

• Wendy Liu “Freedom is not free”
• The Great Internship Scam: Free Labour Dressed Up In The Fancy Cloak Of Reciprocity
• Making a profit from someone else’s product(s)
• Paying for the Privilege: The Collective Move to Patreon

Download Mark Burns on Edutalk

Mark Burns on his new book, ‘The Learning Imperative’.

Download Claire Gillespie on Edutalk

Claire Gillespie, Skills Development Scotland, on how they are supporting young peoples’ development of digital skills.

Download Jonathan Brown on Edutalk

Jonathan Brown on The Family Learning App.