There's been rather a lot of hot air spewed into the ether recently about the risks of using social networking sites and the harm it can do to students.
As I'm in the middle of marking A level coursework and preparing my Media students for their exams I've watched but not commented so far, as I wanted time to make a considered response.
Thankfully, the excellent Bill Thompson has done it for me, writing on the BBC website.
His informative and factual report analyses the data that's been used by the Press to suggest that Facebook use can result in lower grades. The article makes for fascinating reading, not least because it highlights the degree to which media outlets can become quickly hostile to communication methods that threaten existing and future audiences.
Tuesday, 5 May 2009
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Google makes news visual and pictures contextual
Two interesting releases yesterday from search engine giant Google, both of which may be useful in educational settings.
The first is the Google News Timeline. Essentially, type in a search term, decide how you want to see the content displayed (by decade, year, month or week) and hey presto, a timelines of related news stories appears on screen. This will be of great use to History teachers, but it's application should be widespread across different curricula areas.
The second tool is called Similar Images. It allows users to search for pictures based on analysis of the image itself, rather than the tags associated with them. It's rather a neat demonstration of how we're moving to a visual rather than a text based culture. It works well, and should be useful not just to Art/Design students, but anyone seeking images for presentations and the like.
Another Google Labs utility that may useful is called Audio Indexing. This piece of software enables users to search within the audio of YouTube videos for specific text references. It then takes the user to that point in the video. It's quite remarkable to see/hear in action, and has all sorts of possible uses in education, not least for those teaching students with visual impairments, for whom YouTube has now become a massive searchable audio library of content.
Pirates made to walk the plank
The Pirate Bay story broke at the end of last week, as I was transporting myself back from my home in France to the UK. This week has been somewhat manic at school, as we get ready to bid farewell to our A level Media students, so forgive the tardiness of this post.
In essence, in case you missed it, the Pirate Bay trial saw one of the largest peer-to-peer file sharing services taken to court and its four founders successfully prosecuted for copyright theft.
Their argument, that they weren't hosting the content, merely providing the infrastructure that allowed thousands of users to make file transfers, was rejected by the judge in Sweden.
As well as large fines all four have been sentenced to a year in prison. An appeal has been launched.
The bottom line is that it's wrong to take work that someone has spent money and creative capital in producing and distribute it for free. It's morally dubious and legally banned.
I am one who thinks there does need to be a radical overhaul of the system - what about a DRM program that allows users to send content for which they've paid the full price to a friend, who then has to pay a reduced fee for the hand-me-down content? In effect, this generates secondary and tertiary sales, while ensuring the point of sale price is paid for at least once. The increased use of embedded advertising might be another way to make content free to users, but still profitable for content producers.
Whatever the future system of paying for creative content turns out to be, as I always say to my students, if you can't afford it then you can't have it. I remember having to save up to buy records and PC games as a kid. This generation seems to think they can have it all and screw the consequences. As many of them are planning to go into various branches of the creative media, I'll be interested to see what their views are once their content's been ripped and the cheques are failing to turn up in the post!
Friday, 17 April 2009
Britain's got issues with the representation of females
Tanya Gold: It wasn't singer Susan Boyle who was ugly on Britain's Got Talent so much as our reaction to her |
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The Guardian
As a follow up to my recent posting about online Britain's Got Talent sensation, Susan Boyle, I'd recommend reading the following Guardian article by Tanya Gold.
In it Gold attacks the negative representation of women in the British media, although I suspect her views are applicable to many other Western media outlets.
It's one the key themes developing in an age of rapid content delivery across numerous platforms on a global scale - how can we ensure that groups and individuals are represented fairly and without malice?
One of the issues that concerns me is the education of parents about controlling web access by their children. While many people may feel that such control is a form of censorship, I'd argue that it's a form of educational protection.
Not infrequently I am shocked by the content students talk about, or try to show me on their iPods or mobile phones. What they find amusing, having been persuaded by unmediated opinion from their peers, is in fact cruel, spiteful and degrading.
If parents and teachers shy away from confronting the darker side of web content, out of embarrassment or concerns for individual liberties, then we should not be surprised to find that subsequent generations, upon whom we will rely in later years, turn out to be far less tolerant and understanding than ourselves.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
iTunes U - free learning from the World
What some teachers may not know is that it's also home to iTunes U, a free and growing library of online podcasts, video seminars and other material. Although it's aimed primarily at undergraduate level, nonetheless there's a lot of great material that can be used and adapted for secondary (K12) classes.
Apple has just announced that the UK's Tate gallery, plus France's Chateau de Versailles and Fondation Cartier have made content freely available to download.
One of the great advantages of iTunes U is that content can be taken away by students and viewed on PCs and iPods. Thus, this creates some great opportunities for individual learning assignments, either as homework or as part of a larger project.
iTunes is free to download onto a PC or Mac, and by subscribing to a feed from iTunes U, subscribers receive automatic updates straight into a mailbox within iTunes.
It's a useful and free learning resource that's certainly worth a look-see.
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