Re-viewing data in online environments

One of the issues that interests me is how rapid digital developments might change the way in which we use data and multimedia information in all its forms for educational purposes.

In the broader scheme of things there are fascinating developments taking place in the wider technological community that will, I believe, impact on how we can convey meaning and analysis to our students.

Here's a video example of a Microsoft developmental idea called Sea Dragon (thanks to Michael Rosenblum for mentioning it on his blog):

On a less practical yet interesting note for Media Teachers, here's a fun way to deconstruct YouTube videos into streaming film strips, that change every time a shot change is detected. 

Finally, I've written before about Wordle, the free online tool that creates Word Clouds. Now it's possible to extract key words by frequency. I was doing some training with the Religious Studies department at school a couple of weeks back, and my colleagues went crazy for this facility. They realised they could take passages from the Bible, or as one did, Martin Luther King's 'I Have a Dream' speech, and pull out the most commonly used words. It made for some fascinating results.

As one teacher pointed out, this is a great way for students to see easily, quickly, and visually how words are used to convey meaning, and indeed to see the essence of a text, by taking a reductionist and minimalist approach to it, and using that as a starting point for further discussion.

So, there are changes afoot and there are options available now that educators can use to make information dynamic and appealing to Net natives, as well as providing useful complements to traditional methods for encouraging independent thinking and reflection.

The 100th post is all about books

online.wsj.com

So, after nine months of blogging I've reached the magic one hundredth posting. It's been great sharing ideas on how media technology is influencing and affecting education.

My one hundredth post, perhaps appropriately, is all about books, and where technology might be taking us. I've been conscious for the last year that the possibility of 'digital ink' reaching into schools and classrooms is getting ever nearer. 

Several developments have caught my eye:

Firstly, Amazon has updated its digital book, the Kindle, and is launching a new version that can display large format text, like newspapers, without the need to scroll. More information can be found here.

At the same time observers are starting to wonder how the art and consumption of literature itself might or could evolve as more consumers move to the digital domain.

The NY Times ran a great interview last month with Bradley Inman, the founder of VOOK, a new service that aims to combine a wide range of social networking tools and online facilities to create new interactive literary content. The article goes further, exploring what all of this might mean for readers used to accessing information from a trusty book. It's a great report and well worth reading.

Meanwhile Steven Johnson, writing in the Wall Street Journal, has produced an excellent piece on the impact ebooks will have on the way in which we consume the written word. Unsurprisingly it's a long article, but again it's very insightful and a good review of how preconceptions of the past may not hold true in the near future.

What does all of this mean for those of us in education? In the immediate future probably not a great deal. But I suspect that within two to three years we'll see companies offering large discounts to schools who bulk buy e-readers. The advantages are numerous - cheaper updates for new textbooks, since revised editions can be downloaded, easier integration between official textbooks and teachers' own materials, and the ability to search for information with greater speed and ease. Linking ideas together, synthesizing them, and producing a considered response, all key attributes in the modern wired world, may be coming to a digital classroom handout sooner than you think.

Media speculation, social networking, political agendas

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.

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!