Ewan McIntosh | Digital Media & Education

The Top 10 Ways To Think About Lists

2009-12-08T10:45:35+00:00

OK, so the headline lied. As we approach the annual crush to listify the world in terms of the top stories of the year, the top pop divas and even the top education bloggers, top Umberto Eco talks to Der Spiegel about the world's fascination with lists.

Lists are a particularly important part of living life as a Bebo Boomer, filling hours of social network use by their users. Lists are also the part of our online life that is most derided: a waste of time, a feckless use of time by feckless people. Yet, lists have always been crucial to our existence and way of organising thought and acting out our intentions.

In the interview, Eco refers to the most common list of all: the one Google churns out after a search, and phrases in an interesting and most simple of ways what media literacy is all about:

Eco: [...] Google makes a list, but the minute I look at my Google-generated list, it has already changed. These lists can be dangerous -- not for old people like me, who have acquired their knowledge in another way, but for young people, for whom Google is a tragedy. Schools ought to teach the high art of how to be discriminating.
SPIEGEL: Are you saying that teachers should instruct students on the difference between good and bad? If so, how should they do that?
Eco: Education should return to the way it was in the workshops of the Renaissance. There, the masters may not necessarily have been able to explain to their students why a painting was good in theoretical terms, but they did so in more practical ways. Look, this is what your finger can look like, and this is what it has to look like. Look, this is a good mixing of colors. The same approach should be used in school when dealing with the Internet. The teacher should say: "Choose any old subject, whether it be German history or the life of ants. Search 25 different Web pages and, by comparing them, try to figure out which one has good information." If 10 pages describe the same thing, it can be a sign that the information printed there is correct. But it can also be a sign that some sites merely copied the others' mistakes.

When "old people" (he said it) like Umberto Eco get it, I'm reassured. But when was the last time you saw a teacher in your school be quite as explicit, though, in how students should run a basic search?

Links for 2009-12-07 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-08T00:00:00-08:00

Global VC Blog Directory – Ranked By # of Google Reader Subscribers (Sept 2009) « Thinking About Thinking
Links to subscribe to the Global VC Blog Directory in bulk via Google Reader (RSS/OPML):
Dean Street Townhouse hotel in London's Soho
Bedrooms are available from £95 in sizes tiny, small, medium and bigger and feature either king-size or super king-size beds and are equipped with treat-packed mini-bars, free wireless internet, Sony flat screen TV's with Sky plus and DVD, and bathrooms with rainforest showers complete with Cowshed goodies. Hotel reservations can be made using the online system.
Fox and Anchor London Gastro Pub and Accommodation
Welcome to the Fox & Anchor, a beautifully renovated traditional pub in the heart of Clerkenwell, serving the finest local food and with a suite of six luxury rooms upstairs. Doubles from £95
4 0 W i N K S
Doubles from £99 Situated in vibrant and trendy East London, David Carter’s home is a historic and elegant four storey Queen Anne townhouse built in 1717. David is an internationally acclaimed interior designer (check out his super cool website at www.alacarter.com), and the extensive work he has carried out has generated hundreds of pages of editorial in leading interiors magazines all over the world.
Hoxton Hotels: Book cheap hotel rooms in Central London
Doubles from £79 The Hoxton Urban Lodge, where urban living meets country lodge lounging, opened in September 2006. With roaring fires and cool cocktails, fabulous linen and flat screen TVs, sumptuous duck down duvets, Aveda bathroom products and free WiFi. With 205 bedrooms, the Hoxton Grille Restaurant and 6 meeting and event rooms, the Hoxton Hotel redefines the urban hotel experience.
Towergate Insurance - Europe's largest independently owned insurance intermediary
Professional indemnity and liability insurance: Towergate is Europe's largest independently owned insurance intermediary and a driving force within the industry. Offering over 200 specialist insurance products, underpinned by strong relationships with some of the UK's leading insurance companies, we're committed to providing customers with insurance they can trust.
Pretty Loaded - a preloader museum curated by Big Spaceship
Pretty things to look at while you wait for things to load.
Fancy a coffee morning? – Colin Gilchrist
Spending time with Ewan and Darcie at Channel 4ip, giving seminars with Mike to Business Gateway, testing new social media product launches, asking for help or advice, putting people together that could benefit from an introduction – hell I’ve even recommended it to recruitment companies. The gem of course has been learning about and taking part in 38 Minutes – which is Scotland and Northern Irelands answer for Media people to Bebo for the over educated… The dominance of this group are a core of freelance very knowledgeable social media people (some have since gone on to work with bigger companies) however it occurred to me that, right there in that room we could solve just about any problem or provide the solution to almost any situation that involved social media. So why don’t we harness it – why don’t we create this social media collective “agency” that answers all those questions you ever had or wanted to know about social media?
Antbits Illustration
Medical animation specialists
“I want MyPolice for Christmas”
“I want MyPolice for Christmas..What a promising and exciting product mypolice is: its independence and user-friendliness making it especially useful for engaging people from those groups who may feel nervous about approaching the police directly: groups who tend to under-report crime, and whose community safety needs may be less clear to the police as a consequence “ Paul Matheson, Equality & Diversity Co-ordinator, Strathclyde Police
Cost of employment [TechScribe software documentation]
Different websites suggest that the full cost of employing someone is between approximately 40% (www.interimmanagementuk.com/management-cost.htm) and 100% (www.startinbusiness.co.uk/flowchart/4flowchart_employment.htm) of an employee's salary, plus the salary itself. How are the numbers calculated? We did not find a detailed cost model that is accepted by professional organisations or HM Government. Therefore, we designed a cost model (cost-of-employment-calculator.xls), with the help of people from UKBF (www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk) and PCG (www.pcg.org.uk). Costs vary by employment sector. The spreadsheet is for office-based work. It is not perfect. As far as we know, there is no one correct method of calculating employee costs. For example, the marginal costs of a new employee do not increase the infrastructure cost. Therefore, do you apportion infrastructure cost to the new employee?

Links for 2009-12-06 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-07T00:00:00-08:00

New iPhone App Helps Drinkers Keep Tab : LimeLife
This holiday season, when all your friends want to go to the bars and get liquored up, try bringing a level head with you. Introducing "You Booze, You Looze," a new iPhone app that offers partiers an entertaining way to keep track of their drinking.
Beware the iPod zombie cyclist | Edmund King | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Beware! There seems to be a new type of cyclist out there – not the Lycra lout but the iPod zombie. I must declare an interest as a keen cyclist, pedestrian, train passenger, driver and, indeed, iPod user. However, like drinking and driving, I don't think iPods and cycling mix. On my bike, audible warnings are just as important as visual ones. Even if you can see what is in front of you, you have to hear what is behind you as you move out to avoid potholes or raised manhole covers.
BackupMyTweets Home: Backup Your Twitter Account
Did you know Twitter only lets you see your most recent 3,200 tweets? Take control of your Twitter account and make it permanent. Get started as soon as you can so you don't lose any tweets!
London 1843 - David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
Lovely historical overlay of London past with London present

Links for 2009-12-05 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-06T00:00:00-08:00

Twitter / David Hopkins: Ewan Macintosh . Actor Th ...
Ewan Macintosh . Actor The Office. + numerous characters . TLC regular . Really nice guy. #inthebackofmycab
&klevering: Welkom
Superb shop with toys, oddities and cool stuff, in Amsterdam
Android Developer Challenge
We're pleased to announce the overall winners in the Android Developer Challenge 2
EDUtalk - Audio publishing by educators, using mobile devices
The Art of Writing Great Twitter Headlines | Copyblogger
35 social media KPIs to help measure engagement | Blog | Econsultancy
A list of social interaction metrics / KPIs
10 Sure-Fire Headline Formulas That Work | Copyblogger
The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! - Search Engine Guide Blog

Links for 2009-12-04 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-05T00:00:00-08:00

Reporting with Mobile Phones: The Experience of Voices of Africa ~ Stephen's Web ~ by Stephen Downes
From what I can tell (I've asked) mobile phones are not really cheaper to use in Africa than they are here. Which means, from my perspective, they're still a really expensive way to transmit information (compared to, say, what internet costs me here). And i wonder sometimes whether all the marketing in favour of cellphones in Africa (and there is a lot, coming from sources like OECD and the World Bank) serves to disguise the extremely high bandwidth charges Africans pay. If you ask me (not that anyone does) internet users where bandwidth is cheap (like, say, here) should be asked to pay a surcharge to ensure that people in under-served areas (such as Africa) are not overcharged for the same service.
Digital technology and the arts: all the world's a screen | Stage | The Guardian
Once a novelty, giant film screens and web feeds are transforming our experience of live performance
How to Achieve Painless Registration
SilverStripe.org - Open Source CMS / Framework
A CMS for website editors Our CMS is fast, flexible, and FREE. It's designed for people who edit website content. Find out more, watch a video overview for content editors, or try it out yourself with our online demo. Sapphire: a framework for developers Sapphire is our open source framework that helps you build powerful websites. Find out more or watch a video overview for developers.
kidmapper
Following RL Stevenson's footsteps with GPS and a Google Map
30 Usability Concepts - Usability and IA Issues
Playdar - Music Content Resolver
Playdar is a music content resolver service - run it on every computer you use, and you'll be able to listen to all the songs you would otherwise be able to find manually by searching though all your computers, hard disks, online services, and more.
Do You Make These 10 Mistakes When You Blog?
Presenting: 10 of the Smartest Big Brands in Social Media
We Are The People
Interesting snippets of film looking at education systems and classroom models around the world
Football Hero Is Awesome, Too Difficult For Me - Chris Littmann - First Cuts - Sporting News
I was once a real nut for the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games. But this? This is some next level stuff. I was barely able to accomplish the minimal task of putting drum stick to pad on expert. I can't even fathom 1. hitting the target with a kick reliably and 2. doing it with any sort of timing like the soccer players (footballers) do in this video. Bravo.
Facebook Ads Now Let You Target Friends of Your Fans
The Science of Retweets on Twitter | Brian Solis - PR 2.0
Scaling
If you have an idea then how could it scale? Which elements of scaling are important to you? And what would it take to get it there?
Advice to First-Time Authors
The problem is that most publishers will not review unsolicited proposals or manuscripts. I personally receive hundreds every year; our staff receives thousands. We simply don’t have the resources to review these. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. So as an author, what do you do?

Mendeley: Last.fm for academic researchers

2009-12-04T19:12:50+00:00

This is great if you are a researcher and, I'd have thought, indispensable if you're a researcher in academia. Make sure your papers are included in this prediction engine of research papers, helping users find academic friends-of-a-friend and papers they might otherwise have missed. It also allows an academic or groups of academics to annotate the reports they find.

And when the time comes to collate your academic report or paper, Mendeley will export to Word or OpenOffice the bibliography you used, in the right format. Are you on Mendeley.com? Should be.

Links for 2009-12-03 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-04T00:00:00-08:00

Envisioning Development: What is Affordable Housing?
Mapping out visually who can afford to live where in New York City
Beim Chef - today and tomorrow
Beim Chef (With the boss) by Roman Signer. Every office should have such a button.
today and tomorrow
Startup Hiring Advice
Assuming you're really in the market for another pair of hands to [screw things up] help out, the question is how to acquire resumes, how to pair them down, and how to identify someone who is going to work well in your company.
12 ways to help your press releases get noticed | Blog | Econsultancy
How to Drive Startup Activity, Investment, and Economic Growth (Part 2) « StartupCafe
People often correlate the lack of start-ups and growth companies to “lack of management talent” and “lack of marketing know how” or “lack of the spirit of selling”. However, what these people are forgetting is that these problems are easily solved with money. It’s that simple.

Links for 2009-12-02 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-03T00:00:00-08:00

You Booze; You Looze watches how much you drink – SoftSailor
The guys from Digital GoldFish launched You Booze; You Looze, a funny, social app that constantly monitors and gives data about your health and wealth impact of your drinking habits. The new You Booze, You Looze application allows user to store and create individual profiles and also to update constant data and calculate how much “fun” is being had in one night.
APP WATCH: You Booze, You Looze for iPhone - News - Mobile Choice
Apps - they make everything fun, including keeping an eye on your booze habits. Channel 4 has released an iPhone app to help you count up how much you're drinking and how much you're spending on it.
NEWS: You Booze, You Looze iPhone app launches | Tech Stories, Games and Gadgets - BackLINK
A new iPhone app has launched that offers a “fun approach” to getting people to consider just how much booze they are sloshing down their gullets at this time of year. As the title would suggest “You Booze, You Looze” warns of the health and wealth dangers over indulging during the festive season could bring.
You Booze, You Looze iPhone app launches - Pocket-lint
The app is the first to be launched from Channel 4's 4iP stable and is supported by The Digital Media IP Fund, in partnership with Scottish Enterprise and the Creative Scotland Innovation Fund.
NEWS: You Booze, You Looze iPhone app launches | TechFloat.com
The short-term effects of drinking are highlighted with You Booze, You Looze mini-games and sobriety tests that measure co-ordination levels, concentration, balance and reaction times.Should you want to share the results of the tests, or your drinking stats, then the app offers Facebook link-up and a Twitter stream.
iPhone Apps - You Booze You Looze by You Booze You Looze : AppAdvice - AppBase
Discussion: NEWS: You Booze, You Looze iPhone app launches | mocoNews
You Booze You Looze iPhone App... (Geeky Gadgets) » TechNews.AM
This is a post from Geeky Gadgets, who bring you the latest cool Gadgets.You Booze You Looze iPhone App
iPhone App helps keep track of Christmas boozing - What Mobile
Channel 4 has launched an app for iPhone called 'You Booze, You Looze' to let users see how much they spend on drink, and how many calories are consumed - as well as the impact on health. Will you dare find out what you probably already know?
The best booze-based apps for your iPhone - Asylum UK | For All Mankind -- Men's Lifestyle, Opinion and Humour
But what you need is something to monitor your alcoholic consumption, to keep you on the straight and narrow, your belly small and your wallet fat. Enter the recently released 'You Booze, You Lose' iPhone app, designed to keep you in the know when you're down at the boozer.
IT Sneak blog - V3.co.uk
Worried about your drinking? Afraid it might be spiraling out of control? Need some help? Well, forget about AA, now there's an app for your problems ... and it's wearing a kilt.
4iP’s New £500k Slate Shared By Yoosk, ScraperWiki, Jones & Webb | paidContent:UK
So exactly what kind of level is Channel 4-led innovation fund 4iP investing at? An average £71,428-a-time, judging by its latest slate. C4 says £500,000 is going to seven outfits... We’ve already covered the MirrorMe and Slugger O’Toole investments; they have been given between £25,000 and £100,000 each (we know MirrorMe got five figures).
You Booze, You Looze iPhone app launched - iPhone News - Know Your Mobile
You Booze You Looze iPhone app helps keep a check on your pub-session calorie intake : Tech Digest
Just in time for Christmas

Links for 2009-12-01 [del.icio.us]

2009-12-02T00:00:00-08:00

4iP launches first iPhone app | News | New Media Age
Developed by Digital Goldfish, the application allows users to monitor their alcohol consumption. They can create their own individual profiles which can then be updated with personal details to help calculate how much ‘fun’ is being had on a night. The app’s virtual bar keeps track of the ‘fun’ being had by monitoring how many and what kind of drinks are being purchased, the number of calories consumed and a running bar tab.
You Booze, You Looze iPhone App Keeps an Eye on Your Drinking Habits
Are you among those who wouldn’t say no to a beer now and then, some quality whisky, your favorite rum or a good cocktail while relaxing on the beach, then you should know that a new fun, social app has been released to keep tabs on what you drink. Dubbed You Booze, You Looze, and created by the good folks from Digital Goldfish — who’ve been behind the hugely successful Bloons, one of Apple’s all-time top 30 games — the new application offers a health and wealth impact of your drinking habits, and gets the convo started for those who’d like to brag about their consumption in an informed way.

On leaving Channel 4

2009-11-27T15:41:53+00:00

About 18 months ago I was made an offer I could not refuse: to help shape the startup of a £50m innovation fund, 4iP, with Europe's most creative public service broadcaster, Channel 4.

As 4iP's first recruit in the summer of 2008, I worked at opening the route to over £7.5m of that public co-investment funding, building on the initial legwork work of Director of Nations and Regions, Stuart Cosgrove, and colleague Claire McArdle. I've turned Letters of Intent into over £1m of real green money invested in digital media companies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the North East. I've helped stimulate everything from some of the finest Twitter-bashing to some of the most serious digital media debate I've ever seen, on the growing 38minutes community.

The model works. And now it has come for me to move on, and try something different.

4iP has been simultaneously a hoot and one of the most demanding gigs out there, but I'm happy with what I've helped achieve. Besides making the vision a reality, I'm most proud of the products I've shaped from their 20 word elevator pitches into working, clickable, running code. I'm currently in the middle of an announcement and product launch spree running right up to Christmas:

This week I was frankly delighted with the reaction from the political, journalistic and social media savvy echelons about our investment in Slugger O'Toole, one of the most 4-like means through which to open the political debate. In the same breath we've let MirrorMe out of the lab and into Facebook, showing what the broadcaster of Embarrassing Bodies and Ten Years Younger can do in the same space with a standalone web app.

The arts platform Central Station was a concept on which 4iP was explained and sold, and this month we published the code that makes it a real, living and vibrant community of both aspiring and Turner-prize-winning talent. When we started out in earnest looking at how this thing would actually function it was a far cry from the nascent but impressive collections and communities we see there now: not all two-week old projects can claim a Turner Prize winner as one of their first supporters and members.

FestBuzz was, by four days at least, the world's first Twitter crowdsourced review site, and I'm still convinced this technology from the leading School of Informatics in Edinburgh will be the focus of innovation throughout 2010. Sentiment detection went mainstream this summer thanks, partially, to FestBuzz.

I was not-so-secretly keen to engage its competitor's creators, Blonde, in helping build discussion around and use of the You Booze You Looze iPhone app which we hope to launch next week. Along with MirrorMe, both are designed to cajole, shock and laugh us into thinking seriously about what we're putting down our throats and up our noses this Christmas.

Nearly all the companies I've worked with share something in common. With the exception of Central Station's ISO, who are big enough and ugly enough to fight their corner in a London-based commissioner's office, none of them would have had an easy time getting under the nose of a traditional broadcaster. Having a commissioner "down the road" has led many more people through Channel 4's doors in the digital media space. A minority, of course, were actually commissioned, but most left with some feedback, encouragement or a contact elsewhere who would be interested. I know of at least one major investment in a product that was too young for us, but which was perfect for another broadcaster and is now in early stages of a major commission. Having the chance to have informal chats with a regional commissioner, passionate about independent commercial production of media with a public purpose, has been a boon.

Both represent what I think 4iP has achieved most in a recession-bound digital economy. Digital Goldfish, discovered in January in a Dundee office too titchy for their 7" CEO, has now quadrupled in size and in confidence, claiming one of their games as Apple's Top 30 all-time bestselling. Ideonic is a games company out of the unlikely setting of Middlesbrough (Channel 4's Phil and Kirsty declared this the worst place to live in Britain not so long ago). They still wanted to work with us, and we were delighted to make a significant investment in a firm where no member is older than the CEO - and he's only 25.

I am going to spend the next four weeks wrapping up one of my most exciting commissions to date, before going on to do something just as exciting, but with fewer 4.30am starts, fewer 400 mile commutes and, regrettably, fewer airmiles.

As someone once said, it's been emotional.

Slugger O'Toole was drunk as a rule but sober enough to keep typing: my latest investment in local political news

2009-11-26T13:33:00+00:00

This week I announced my latest 4iP investment in the Northern Ireland-based political blog Slugger O’Toole, in the fund’s first co-investment with Northern Ireland Screen. The investment adds to a range of web products running along the theme of “keeping an eye on money and power”, providing a means of exploring localised political debate at scale.

Working with Belfast-based developer and instigator of beautiful things Andy McMillan (@GoodOnPaper), we're helping to revamp the Slugger site for existing readers, with a relaunch of the site planned for the New Year. The goal is to make what is currently a crowded, busy and perhaps intimidatingly quick-posting blog more accessible for newbies and more enjoyable for current readers and commenters.

The next step is to take the most influential political blog in Northern Ireland and turn it into a sustainable collaborative public service media platform, moving the means of pluralistic political debate forward elsewhere in the UK. We're also keen to explore how we amplify the voices of those commenting: the debates under each post are just as vital as the posts themselves.

Slugger is unique among political blogs for its combination of public service levels of trust with the blogosphere’s forensic and adversarial demands. According to a recent poll, 96% of the Northern Irish Assembly’s politicians read it regularly, and it's demonstrably reaching deep into local political issues. With many major political news stories being broken by its readers before the mainstream media gets hold of them, it is also Northern Ireland’s journalistic watering-hole of choice.

The Obama social media effect: in Northern Ireland for nearly a decade.

For politicians and the public, the value of good political blogs has never been clearer. The last twelve months have shown what the power of social media can do to inspire and engage the public in the decision-making processes that affect them, from digging though expenses claims to helping claim electoral victory for the Obama administration.

But proximity to what 'real' people think and the provision of a forum to amplify those voices is what Slugger O'Toole has been doing for the best part of seven years.

Why did I want to pursue an investment in Slugger O'Toole, though, and not any one of the other political blogs out there? Slugger's readership is large, and arguably more varied than any other political blog, especially given its geographic focus: to have both your national Assembly and a critical mass of your local councillors coming to you for genuine breaking stories on a regular basis is something that any national newspaper would be content with.

Their support was particularly demonstrable on Tuesday night, as nearly 300 politicians, journalists and readers from across Northern Ireland packed into Belfast's Black Box for the Slugger Awards. For goodness sake: even Bob Geldof joined us.

I'm particularly fond of Slugger’s ethic of “play the ball not the man”. 'People want to debate the issues, not the politicians', believes its founder Mick Fealty. Many of his political blogger compadres would and do disagree. But when we've excluded the political hacks and scandal junkies, the vast majority of us want change on specific issues and we want a place to debate them where our politicians see our view. Slugger provides that. In spades.

At a time when politicians and citizens are subject to more noise than signal in a growing web of unmoderated “citizen-produced democracy”, and national news repeatedly fails to account for local political issues, 4iP’s investment is a timely one.

In the next four weeks we will finalise a refreshed design for the site, with new functionality in the New Year which should help spread Slugger's ethic further into the mainstream, further into its already highly localised audiences. We will uncover yet more voices that need amplified for the eyes and ears of the political classes in Stormont, Westminster, Brussels and Strasbourg; we will see Slugger pushing these representatives to get more done for their people, rather than just talking about it.

Towards Spring we will see Slugger trying to replicate the same, honest "play the ball" political coverage in Scotland, and perhaps further afield. We're building some business cases around the work Slugger's authors are arguably the most capable people in the world at carrying out, having lived through Western Europe's worst civil war and come out the other side with an online forum for genuine political discussion between all sides. Slugger will help fill a significant media gap of coverage and comment on politics at local levels while having a growing impact nationally in Westminster.

This is not a 4iP 'investment' on the same level as some of our six figure sums, but with the impact Slugger-the-blog is already having, Slugger-the-platform is a win for "amplifying voices" from the word go. It is exactly where Channel 4 at its most cantankerous should be.

Picture Credit: John Baucher, with permission. Blogger Alan In Belfast picks up his Martin Rowson portrait after winning Slugger Awards Blogger Of The Year for his "election monitoring" of the darker side of the EU election processes.

Can you help shape the future of informal learning? Apply within.

2009-11-23T11:40:25+00:00

A group of folk who I believe are spearheading informal learning in the most unlikely of ways are looking for some help, and edu.blogs.com readers are almost certainly likely to be able to help.

Do you undertake some informal learning already?
Do you want to do more informal learning but find you can't: lack of time, motivation or space?

If you answer yes to either question and want to help out a gang of really tuned-in people, please leave a comment on this post, making sure to include an email address, and someone will be in touch shortly. And thanks - you'll be participating in one of the most exciting informal learning opportunities going.

Picture credit: What is the mass of a question mark?

Remember that there are ways and means to change behaviour

2009-11-22T19:44:00+00:00

Via Euan I saw this lovely example of how we might think about changing behaviour, not always in the way we'd associate with those in positions of authority. Mind you, I wonder if only the Dutch Danish Police could get away with doing this...

Technology can help parents connect better with school

2009-11-22T15:25:40+00:00

Becta, the UK education technology agency, has been looking into how schools communicate with parents and vice versa. Their initial research has discovered some home truths that, unfortunately, are all too recognisable:

‘Invisible’ parents: Of the parents who admitted they rarely made contact with their child’s teacher, nearly a quarter (22%) said they did not see the benefit for their child. The majority (67%) of school staff said that these parents simply do not realise how important their support is in their child’s development. And 60% said that these parents often feel their job stops at the school gates.
Confidence issues: 42% of teachers said the reason so-called ‘invisible’ parents have so little contact with the school is that they lack the confidence to discuss their child with teachers - 43% of school staff admit parents might find them ’difficult to approach sometimes.’ One in five (19%) parents are worried about bothering teachers and more than a fifth (22%) say they don’t want to add to the teacher’s workload, resulting in many taking a back seat in their child’s education.
Lack of information: More than one in ten (11%) of the parents who do initiate communication said they felt dismissed by teachers as an ‘overly demanding’ parent and a further 11% commented they often feel they are imposing on the teacher’s time. More than a third (36%) of school staff encounter parents who want ‘constant reassurance’ and others (19%) who try to ‘influence everything that goes on in the classroom.’
Lack of effective communication channels: 89% of parents say technology could help them become better informed about their child’s education so that they can then have more focused face-to-face discussions with teachers. However, despite all schools having electronic communication tools, 46% of parents say their schools don’t communicate with them in this way.

Read the full research report on the Becta site.

So in the red corner we have some parents who can't get enough information and conversation about their children's learning, with teachers who resent having parents crossing some imaginary line of learning and teaching competence. In the blue corner we have other parents who the schools want to see more of and teachers who think that, actually, coming in to see a teacher must be too threatening for at least a quarter of parents.

If only more schools took a leaf out of the book that we know works. When Dave Gilmour and I set up eduBuzz.org over three years ago we had one simple aim: get people sharing what goes on inside classrooms and the learning will improve. We set up a simple-to-use blogging platform on the nascent WPMU and worked with clusters of enthusiastic teachers to get them sharing regularly - twice a week at least - on what was going on in their classrooms. We got them to get their students to take over that role. Parents loved it, with web traffic peaking just before parents left their offices to come home and then late at night when the kids were in bed (the red wine surfers, as I imagined them). I described how we did it in more detail back in 2007.

We ended up with 3m page views a month as the nodes of conversation between parents, teachers, students and managers lit up. Above all, I heard first hand how parents enjoyed being able to see in a light touch manner what their children were up to and, indeed, when they did meet the teacher face-to-face the interactions were deeper and more friendly.

In 2006, what we had achieved is effectively what users of Twitter enjoy so much - ambient intimacy. Stephen Heppell has often referred to the "nearly now" of our technologies, and I think it's the same thing.

By allowing parents to take out of their school what they want, on their own terms, at their own pace, we are almost certain to encourage more interaction from our least engaged parents. Those whom the research calls "overly demanding" will find a new quality to their face-to-face interactions; gone are the questions about what their son is having for lunch, what the next classroom project will be, and what the plans are for Red Nose Day. Instead, those "overly demanding" parents will start to engage in the whys and hows of learning, being demanding in a much more positive sense.

Is this utopic? I'd say not, because we did it. But we did it with some degree of top-down support that is not always visible in other organisations, and I'm not convinced bottom-up initiatives alone can achieve the impact required quickly enough to gain acceptance in the long-term.

Pic: Creative Commons from Sean Dreilinger

"People act different behind cameras": strangely disturbing cartoon

2009-11-09T13:12:55+00:00

Via Graham Linehan's blog and Techcrunch is This American Life examining our attitudes to censorship, citizen journalism and how people change when they're behind a camera.

Shocker! | Cable TV News and Public Sector Leaders: They're The Same!

2009-11-03T14:52:22+00:00

I love watching Jon Stewart's continued picking apart of the bias in cable TV news, notably in Fox (the YouTube clips should suffice as explanation). Now, Seth talks about how Cable TV News' attitudes can be seen in any board room around the world:

Focus on the urgent instead of the important.
Vivid emotions and the visuals that go with them as a selector for what's important.
Emphasis on noise over thoughtful analysis.
Unwillingness to reverse course and change one's mind.
Xenophobic and jingoistic reactions (fear of outsiders).
Defense of the status quo encouraged by an audience self-selected to be uniform.
Things become important merely because others have decided they are important.
Top down messaging encourages an echo chamber (agree with this edict or change the channel).
Ill-informed about history and this particular issue.
Confusing opinion with the truth.
Revising facts to fit a point of view.
Unwillingness to review past mistakes in light of history and use those to do better next time.

From Seth Godin's Blog

I'd say there are a good few educational and Governmental establishments where at least 11 of these hold true in day-to-day practice. Shouldn't every organisation, public or private, check itself on a regular basis against these statements? If you did it on your own one right now, how many statements can be seen in your work?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Fox News Fear Imbalance

www.thedailyshow.com

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[Video not available outside US]

Pic: Bush takes responsibility. Jon looks shocked.

Why backward social-network-banning education authorities are wrong

2009-10-24T13:30:56+01:00

Where many education authorities continue to routinely block, filter and ban social networks not just for youngsters but for teaching and management staff, new research from Gartner (via Euan Semple) reveals yet more logic behind opening up networks and encouraging teachers, learners and managers to network online as well as at their twice-a-year in-service get-togethers:

"While a job may be regarded as an economic transaction, the human brain thinks of the workplace as a social system," she said. Social networking can make employees "feel valued, a part of a community, and earn the respect of peers."

Read more here. I therefore continue to be disheartened by the backward policies of regions such as Argyll and Bute, who admit that "social networking sites are blocked in all schools as policy... Staff are not able to maintain or access personal sites such as their own blogs or Twitter pages through the council's network." They want teachers to share practice through "all available means", but one can only assume they mean the telephone, one-to-one email or pigeon carrier. A shame really, since when I was a student at school there in the late eighties we were using Macs for desktop publishing and the authority area was a world leader in video conferencing for isolated community learning aeons before the rest of the world got the Skype collaboration bug. But, as they say, you're only as good as your last gig...

Three years ago the national education agency in Scotland and Don Ledingham, the then education chief in East Lothian, took the lead and paid me public cash to help amplify the groundbreaking, award-winning work with colleagues in East Lothian, who continue to reap the educational and managerial benefits of a more-or-less open network and promotion of sharing practice through blogging and Twitter amongst many platforms.

It is therefore becoming increasingly embarrassing to me that, three years on, most education authorities in Scotland continue to be ignorant of the possibilities, fearful of the occasional [human] mistake (and at a loss, it would seem, about what to do when someone does make such a human error).

Adding to the embarrassment is the apparent own-goal scored by me and my colleagues whose learnings are often adopted more enthusiastically in countries elsewhere around the globe while those leading education on our own doorstep put caution ahead of innovation. Our £35m national intranet has just added functionality of blogs and wikis, three years after I recommended they be the keystone 'learning diaries' of a personal profile. This is good, but it is slow.

What do I reckon could be done (only my tuppence worth, I add...) In a recent interview for Merlin John's new Innovators series I outline how I believe things could change:

design new and use existing tools and learning spaces that entice and delight young people, rather than tools contrived "for schools" which we have to mandate them to use - if the kid had a choice, would they use that or the competition?;
plan less up front, 'for the sake of planning', creating time and room for movement as innovations come up;
stand still and do nothing: carve out time to look at what is working in the world around you and steal, steal, steal (and give credit where it's due);
if there's a bandwagon, jump on it and see if it goes anyhere (a Coulterism, but not that kind of Coulterism);
don't do pilots, just do the real deal from the start (you can still start small and fail quietly, but the word 'pilot' tends to preempt an assumption of failure).

Pic of phone [what you can use to collaborate in the meantime]
Thanks to Doug Belshaw's post for making me go back and fill in more detail on the above bullets.