[learning on screen - day 2]

1st speaker of the day: Paul Maidment, BBC Worldwide, BBC Motion Gallery

check out: https://jisc.bbcmotiongallery.com (but this is the corporate site although there is a 30 day free trial), the accessible version is here.

(nb: am struck again how un-googleable some of these speakers are...)

One of the pros of using the bbc motion gallery is the ability to view a video (which are tagged with key words but the tags are more or a taxonomy rather than folksonomy as it is the bbc who ass the "search related keywords") and then choose the key words which allows an "intuitive" way to search.

Interesting is the ability to choose the "inspiration" link which provides a *concept randomiser* "spawning new keywords as fast as you can click."

500 new BBC clips added each month, feedback from establishments to dictate future content addtions, more content collections to be added each quarter, including both broadcast and niche archives, showcasing of student work, competition to encourage students to creatively use BBC material (winning entries will appear on BBC tv)

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Professor Sean Street, Bournemouth University speaking about Online Access to the Archives of Independent Radio




Challenge: how to make available radio archives: radio.bufvc.ac.uk


(just tried to access the site but, sadly, my athens account doesn't give me access...so is this really accessible?)




We're being shown a radio documentary on Albert Pierrepoint called "The Hangman." Though a sound piece they're using windowms media player and have the image randomization turned on so we're all feeling slightly hypnotised.



Sean decides to show us how the search function works on this radio archive and decides to search for "suicide"..funnily enough: "no clips match your terms." The archive is still under construction. What is available is Brodsky and James Stewart, The Glen Miller Story (with some typos but we're told "it's a work in progress"). The idea of making independent radio clips available

The problem: the digitisation of clips. sticky-tape syndrome, some take was left to oxidise and that means part of the tape would be unreadable. The British Library figured out a way to *bake* the clips which could then be played ONCE and digitised then, if not the clips would be lost. This is restoration as well as access.

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Nipan J. Maniar, head of advanced interactive multimedia research group (what a great job title!) at Uni. of Portsmouth. He's talking about the university's use of streaming media.

• there are security issues, DRM
• right now the database has to be updated manually so out of 3000 uploads only 380 are available
• available in different kinds of quality because "bandwidth is not an issue" hrm...I think it's a huge issue in this country, some parts don't even have the possibility of broadband (lack of providers or inadequate lines etc..)
• they track the usage of any media that *leaves* portsmouth
• how to combine the teaching with the showing of streaming video? it shouldn't be a case of spectatorship but should be interactive
• look at www.lifesign.ac.uk and stream.port.ac.uk but nanonet.org.uk seems to have a really useful tool that allows people to upload ppts and video so on one side of the screen there is an image (ppt or page of text) and on the other side of the screen is a video of a lecture or presentation.
  

Here is a sample of Nipan using streaming media in his lectures:

• One stop media shop


• securing media
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

• log usage


• tools for teachers - helpful way of encouraging/enabling academics' independency
  access to streaming media server


"it is good to give academics some weapons to make media interesting"

Nipan's idea to have educational media online for people to download as and when (like any other kind of video store but online and for educational media): www.sourcelearn.com.

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Chris Lane: "Presentation of DVD player/text commentary software (DPTCS)


This seems to be an idea that allows DVD content to be re-edited and integrated with other media such as text etc...

as teachers, we are moving from film educators to film makers, enacting while teaching

why is more sohpisticated DVD control important - prepare a teaching presentation, embed production in student learning

There is a really great idea - add GIS information to films so that students can literally track not only the shots but how the events/timeline unfold - the actual physicality of the more ephemeral film.

They have also created a massive database of their films that means all film files are searchable by character (how many shots and types of shots, close up etc...), by mood, by lighting...a major taxonomy behind each film but how great a resource would this be in any classroom?




We've just been shown a little clip of how users can add commentary to a dvd: AMAZING! I wish I'd had this software for my thesis. It means I would have been able to annoted web fictions with my different points of view. The clip we've been shown is a "traditional" reading of Vertigo, then a commentary employing theories of the male gaze and finally a third commentary with suggests a feminist interpretation.

But, right now this software seems only available for DVDs.

[learning on screen - york 2008]

Yay the National Science Learning Centre in York has wifi...and it's working!

I'll be blogging throughout the two-day conference when things of interest arise.

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Simon Campbell-Jones, former Editor Horizon
BBC Horizon - History of a Science Television Programme

• importance of beginnings
• how do you fill 50minutes of lecture...without being boring when science is basically *boring* (at least in the mid 60s)
• "medicine is not a science"
• showed an early clip from Horizon dealing with "continental drift" (for all you geologists out there) - this programme led to further programmes on plate techtonics
  
• interestingly, Simon says he had to first understand the geology before being able to make a film about it, conceptual learning
• Horizon did the first test-tube baby film, first "Whisper from Space," first film on absetosis, first programme on hot-blooded dinosaurs and first film on aids but these were not just educational films but these were dramatic and visual
• need to challenge ideas
• question on why people *hate* maths - because it's taught like *gospel,* about abstract ideas because "2 and 3 make 5." Interesting clip of video of a teacher asking a little girl (looks about 6) to add 63 plus 7 and she writes it out and adds it up, correctly. But, when asked why the number 7 is placed under the number 3 and not under the number 6, the little girl, after some thought, explained "that's how my teacher does it."
• "explanation, interpretation, application, implication...."
• every observation is like a detective story, science (and learning in general) should be exciting
  

[transliteracy and us]

I've just been reading Sue Thomas's post over at PART on how (and whether) the bbb.co.uk is meeting their targets:

1 Sustaining citizenship and civil society
2 Promoting education and learning
3 Reflecting the UK's nations, regions and communities
4 Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence
5 Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK
6 Emerging communications

Initially I began to think of discussions I've been having with my students in my new media seminars. We've talked about the potential to contribute to the bbc.co.uk via comments on photos and stories and the ability to write one's own reflections (more so on the bbc.co.uk local sites). On that level it would seem that the bbc is participating in the digital world and allow us to participate alongside it.

But, then I saw this video:




How far is the bbc (among other institutions) really going to involve and collaborate with this kind of user? (See Euan Semple on the BBC and web 2.0). With Facebooking and IMing etc..., collaborating and satisfying targets like the bbc's can't be a product, something that is *done.* It's got to be more about a *becoming;* a constant evolving process. I don't have any answers but I think that's the trouble with asking that kind of question. There are no single answers out there. I'd suppose we all (as businesses, teachers, parents, schools, universities, libraries, museums, etc...) want/need to be part of the process... but that also means having access and we know that's not something everyone shares.

[are you posh?]

Well you know you're posh if you say loo/lavatory instead of toilet, sofa rather than settee, lunch not dinner, and napkin instead of serviette. This is according to BBC 2's Grumpy Guide to Class, a 30 min explanation of how language situates you as either lower or upper class. It was quite funny but I do wonder about the napkin/serviette distinction: should napkin only refer to those of the cloth variety while serviettes are only paper (but then there's that whole French/English divide)...

There was a very funny story about how to sound posh - talk about something not even mildly interesting (like a boiled potato) in excruciatingly effusive terms: that was the most fabulous boiled potato, utterly divine... But one must talk about grave events in mild tones: oh yes, he lost an arm.

Then there was a section on posh names. Posh people have long names: see this image: Hugo Ponsonby Fethergill, or Sebastien etc...Girls' names should end with the "e" sound as in Emily, Chloe, Emmy, Tilly, Ellie...


Hrm...important matters...

[blogs are corrupting popular opinion]

So says Andrew Keen. Lastnight on newsnight Gavin Esler was supposed to "interview" Keen but seemed rather to put forth his own prepostorous views (though they were aligned with Keen's more of less).

To me, this discussion seemed just another attempt to subvert the positive potential of blogging or any other collaborative enterprise based on the internet. Esler's introduction highlights discrepancies in Wikipedia and he makes grave assertions that the *poor* public will be misinformed. In fact, he says rather smugly, it was the BBC that created the page on Alistair Darling replete with incorrect information; they cunningly replaced Darling's photo with an image of a badger (innuendo?). Oh goodness me. Esler says that's the problem with web 2.0 - "anyone" can edit and create thus everything online is unreliable (his logic, not mine). Really? He's assuming that "the masses" (as Keen calls us) aren't critically literate and the web just enables us folk to do too much. We know that educators are consistenly teaching students on the merits of certain sites and isn't that what we might call critical literacy? Does that mean everyone believes what they watch on television? I think it's safe to say we *understand* life isn't quite like tv...and guess what, neither is the 'net. It does seem that Esler thinks it should be; he asks viewers who think everything they read online (but wouldn't that apply to offline too?) is true whether they'd be interested in his flying machine (which doesn't fly...).

After his scene-setting intro. Esler turns to Keen and says (now how's this for journalistic objectivity?): "Andrew, I mean, a lot of things on the web are pretty stupid or irritating..." Keen later responds: "If we are all amateurs, there are no experts." And there you go - a nice summary of the ensuing talk. I wonder what sites Esler navigates to lead him to that odd assumption. Charles Leadbeater was there too but sadly wasn't able to get a word in with Keen and Esler raving about the woes of web 2.0. Leadbeater did constantly remind Esler and Keen that the public is knowledgable. The key is to make people participants and that of course would help them develop critical literacy.

I did video it and was planning on uploading it to youtube but probably can't do that for copyright reasons (seeing as I didn't make everything in the video...). At least the bbc have put a link up to the video on their site, here. This is the blurb that goes with the video:

"In the era of what author Andrew Keen calls online amateurism, can we trust everything we read on the internet?"

Interestingly, the bbc's blog post about Keen includes segments of Keen's latest book (oh no, is that distributing unreliable information?!), but more interestingly there are 120 comments. All those people participating but does that mean more unreliable information is being created (as both Keen and Esler claim)? Maybe Esler et al should read Nancy Patterson's helpful guide on how to evaluate web resources. To me, though, it seems so odd in this day and age - after postmodernism, modernism, poststrucuralism, feminism, postcolonialism, and a myriad other "events" - that people like Keen and Esler still seem to believe in a single Truth. Whether in print or online or on tv or on radio - who's *truth* is it really?

If you're interested in what Leadbeater has to say, there's a presentation of his here.

[youtube banned in Thailand]

From the bbc:

Communications Minister Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom said the site was banned after a 44-second film showing graffiti over the king's face was aired.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, 79, is revered and it is forbidden to insult him.

The minister said a ban came after the Thai government asked YouTube's owner Google to remove it and they declined.

The contentious film also shows feet being placed over the king's face - an offensive act to Thais, who consider feet dirty.

YouTube 'disappointed'

"It's a serious case of lese majeste," said Mr Sitthichai, referring to crimes of offending the country's monarchy. "We asked Google to remove it some days ago, but they refused to."

The minister said access within Thailand would be reinstated once the film had been removed.

YouTube's head of global communications, Julie Supan, said: "We are disappointed that YouTube has been blocked in Thailand, and we are currently looking into the matter.

"The internet is an international phenomenon and while technology can bring great opportunity and access to information globally, it can also present new and unique cultural challenges."

The profile of the YouTube user who uploaded the movie onto the site lists the US as his location.

The ban follows the jailing for 10 years of a Swiss man after he pleaded guilty to charges of insulting the Thai king.

Oliver Jufer, 57, was arrested last December after drunkenly spray-painting posters of King Bhumibol Adulyadej in the northern city of Chiang Mai.