Tom Hyland, the Sunday Age’s international editor has a good piece, Stifling Soliders of Spin, on the almost total control that the Australian Defence Force has over war reporting about conflicts Australia is involved in.

‘If we’re honest’, he writes, ‘maybe it’s time for Australian journalists to do two things when we’re reporting official versions of defence issues. We should disclose at the start of articles and bulletins: “This news comes to you from the ADF.”

And we should end with a disclaimer: “These claims could not be independently verified.”‘

http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/stifling-soldiers-of-spin-20080719-3hvn.html?page=-1

Two Australian media researchers, Jean Burgess and Joshua Green, who have surveyed 4320 of the most popular videos on YouTube. Their work will be published later this year in a book entitled ‘YouTube: Online video and the politics of participatory culture’.

They have found three themes in YouTube.

1. Its a place where people go to watch their favorite music videos or bloopers or freak shows.

2. Its a place where video is a medium for starting conversations and developing relationships with other YouTubers.

3. Its a cheap, easily accessible outlet for people to express their own creativity, whether by making videos or doing `mashups’ of other people’s videos that may be parodies of earlier videos or form a comment of their own.

More here on Matthew Ricketson’s blog …

http://blogs.theage.com.au/mediamatters/archives/2008/07/the_meaning_of.html

Not suprisingly, different groups are interpreting Kutner and Olson’s recent book on the impact of violent video gaming, “Grand Theft Childhood”, to suit their own ends.

They did find that youths who listed M-rated games among the ones they had played “a lot” in the previous six months were significantly more likely to have problems of a less dramatic nature, such as getting into fights with other children, getting into trouble at school or shoplifting.

When interviewed they said that “Different groups are cherrypicking our results. There are a lot of avid gamers who are saying that we proved there was no relationship, and that’s not true.”

We actually found that there was some correlation among normal problematic behaviours and the amount of gameplay and type of gameplay. And at the same time people on the other side, saying games are evil, were saying: ‘Look! They’re showing this’.”

There are times when people will not let information interfere with their preconceived notions.”

Click here for more …

http://www.theage.com.au/news/articles/shooting-holes-in-gaming-theories/2008/07/09/1215282891184.html

Idit Harel Caperton gave a challenging, research and student focused, keynote address to officially close NECC 2008. It was titled “The Transformational Power of Social Media Technology in Learning: Inspiring Stories from the Classroom and Beyond!”

The emphasis, like much of NECC this year (so influenced by Web 2.0) was on collaboration. She raised the need for continued and greater real world collaboration, for activism, for schools, students and teachers to make connections with people in other countries.

Her current project is the World Wide Workshop Project…

www.worldwideworkshop.org

She is currently continuing her passion and belief in Constructionist Learning through Student Game Design and Production.

In this age of “user-generated content”, she called for an education with a social purpose (most schools don’t do this yet). She called for our school projects and tasks to be much more complex and to fit better with the cognitive natures/abilities of students. For her, constructionist learning is more relevant than ever today.

She had 10 years at MIT Media lab (80s)

Built Mamamedia.com (90s) and is carrying this forth in her current projects … “Students as Designers” can learn from building games (constructivist) from designing software to teach their peers

She showed a moving research documentary of hers from 1989 - about a young (disinterested) student who developed important skills through constructing teaching resources for other primary kids using the programming language, logo. By the end of the segment shown, this little girl had “appropriated” the concept of fractions for herself, she had taken ownership of it, and she had enjoyed taking on the role of “teacher” - this had certainly increased her interest in learning. Emotional, social and academic change for the better was certainly evident.

For Caperton, the Early 1990’s  were about integrating old media into the web.

The Late 1990’s - MaMaMedia - were about exploration, expression, exchange. Where you could create content, send to friends, self-expression, create your own media. Browser based programming. Play and Learn. Global. Hosted on corporate server. MaMaMedia is still available.

Now in 2008 we have the challenge of a transition to Web 2.0 in education.

“Content was King. Now Contact is King.” - great quote!

It is now a participation web. Its abouting sharing not consuming. There is the opportunity for everyone to exchange knowledge. Connect, Contact, Contribute.

There is the ability for schools, student, teacfhers to Participate in more complex global projects on a rather large scale, for more Cross Cultural exchanges.

She showed short interview with a lot of poster session people from the conference  … TiG -ed; Tellingstories.org (one of my favourite student video production projects EVER!) ; and iEarn.

Then she called for “Constructionism 2.0″ (a necessary update to Constructionism) that acknowledges the networked environment during the collaboration on media projects

For constructionists, writing has always been very important, for them we learn best by making things.

Now have to also be a connector - this is the new literacy.

In the coming economy, the winners will be the masters of web 2.0, who can create new products, processes, new relationships

A new digital divide will spring up - web2.0 literacies and those who don’t have them.

The mastery of the new abilities and the new spaces for learning to learn, for Caperton, can occur in ….

GAME BUILDING - more precisely - designing games in a networked environment.

She sees Computer Game Building as being able to develop a new group of development abilities (fluencies, competencies)  for dealing with a Web2.0 world named  “the 6 contemporary learning abilities” with new technologies …

Abilities Set 1- invention, progression, completion of an original project: program an educational game, wiki or simulation

Abilities Set 2: project-based learning in web 2.0 environments, and processing complex project management (programmable wiki systems)

Abilities Set 3: producing, programing, publishing and distributing interactive purposeful digital media

Abilities Set 4: information-based learning, search and exploration

Abilities Set 5: social learning, participation and exchange

Abilities Set 6: thoughtful surfing websites and web applications

—-

What learning activities will promote these new fluencies?

most school-based programs for 21st century skills just focus on abilities 4 and 6

Example of student projects created with MicroWorlds EX

Other sessions at NECC this session were Mitch Resnick’s presentation about Scratch.

—-

Then she turned to her newest project/website … Globaloria

- networked participants learn to design and program original interactive media, simulations and web-games with social and educatioanl purposes

Part of Globaloria is  My Global Life

(WikiPedia article for My Global Life) …. My Global Life (MyGLife.org) is a worldwide network of educational, programmable websites and related wikis designed to empower youth in developing countries and emerging markets to learn, create and collaborate online. The goal of this non-profit project is to help the world’s youth experience and master technology tools and methods for democracy and globalization. Site users are mentored to learn Internet technology skills (including wiki development, graphic design and Flash programming skills), build global awareness, and at the same time, experience positive communication with other communities.

—-

What will web 2.0 “best practices” look like for the purpose of knowledge development? Caperton is after “interaction and impact”. She is concerned with questions like …

1- what is the time duration
2- what is the scope and scale
3- is it purposeful participation
4- is there an exhibtion hall? open source spirit?
5- is there global reach

She closed the keynote by calling on us to think BIG and to enjoy living in ETERNAL BETA - where we should relish being constantly ‘under construction’, not wait for a finished product, and constantly share where we are ‘currently up to.’

AFI SCREEN EDUCATION

You have to check out what must be more than two hours of excellent  flim production resources and ‘how to’ videos that can be found at the american film institute’s screen education website.

There is also a Downloadable Production Book to support the streamed videos.

There is a blog at blog.afi.com/screened. I think there are more even more resources at … afi.edu/demo

AFI ScreenNation

Then there is their new site, which is frankly very exciting as well …. screennation.afi.com

AFI Screen Nation, while providing lots of learning resources for video production too, also functions as an Exhibition Site. But AFI values storytelling more than YouTube, and your students may well like to upload their media products to a place like this which arguably respects storytelling craft a whole lot more.

There are new film-making challenges released every few months (only US students may enter at this stage).

All videos on the site are embeddable in blogs and you can create playlists of videos of all students at your school or by genre etc.

There are many good instructional videos produced by AFI and Discovery and users (teachers and students) can put their own “how to” videos up here too.

You can also embeddable their video player in your own blog or website.

Google certified teacher,  Frank Guttler  (fguttler at afi dot com), took us through the sites, and the plethora of fantastic resources they contain, today at NECC 2008 in “AFI Screen Education Center: Digital Filmmaking in the Core Curriculum” - my last session before the closing keynote.

I’m glad I attended even though I was exhausted after three straight days of incredible buzz here at NECC.

How many times did teachers and presenters at NECC mention VoiceThread!?

So what’s a VoiceThread anyway? Find the answer here.

Bascially its most exciting feature is that its transforming media products into collaborative spaces through video, voice and text commenting.

Here’s a link to a written step-by-step instructional on getting started VoiceThread in the classroom.

There is also Ed.VoiceThread a web-based communications network for K-12 students and educators. Simple, powerful and safe, Ed.VoiceThread is a place for creating and collaborating on digital stories and documentaries, practicing and documenting language skills, exploring geography and culture, solving math problems, or simply finding and honing student voices.

• An accountable environment where all users users on the network are known users, responsible for their content and behavior.
• Restricted to K-12 educators, students and administrators, all content is created or vetted by registered members of the community.
• There are no free Ed.VoiceThread accounts, students may only participate in the community after being added by their teacher or school, and student email addresses are not required.

G-cast and Gab-cast were also coming up in conversation and sessions during NECC 2008.Gcast. Make your voice heard.

Gcast.com - the world’s easiest way to create your own podcast channel.

Gabcast.com - record podcasts with your phone. Gabcast is a social broadcasting platform.

Richard Millwood directs Core Education UK and is the Reader in Distributed Learning working on the Inter-Disciplinary Inquiry-Based Learning project in the Institute for Educational Cybernetics at the University of Bolton.

From 2005 to 2006, he was head of Ultralab and worked with Stephen Heppell from 1990 to build it.

He gave a wonderful presentation on Social Software & Learning which can be found here …

http://www.eduweb.plymouth.ac.uk/p75106536/

His blog can be found here …

http://blog.richardmillwood.net/

Assessment of Projects @ Intel Education

You can choose from a huge range of rubrics covering critical thinking, processes, activities, products, performances. You can move them to a personal folder and modify/customise them as you’d like.

educate.intel.com/en/AssessingProjects

intel.com/education/tools

This project came out of the experiences of a number of teachers who did an Intel “Essentials Course”.

The project makes a shift from “Topic based” to “Inquiry/Participatory Learning” and comes at things though UBD, Understanding by Design.

The website can be found here ..

essentials10.21classes.com

This project involves Community Digital Storytelling and the use of Digital Artifacts, where students tell both their personal story as well as interview a partner and then retell that partner’s story.

Artifacts are used to help tell hidden stories about their culture, family or belief systems.

Basically, students are asked to identify who you are and answer the following questions. Who am I? What defines my identity? What is special about me? What makes me unique? What makes me different from others? What do I want others to know about me as a person?

Students create individual wikis, blogs, video podcasts, voicethreads and published books, answering the Course Essential Question: Who Am I?

As they retell someone else’s story, they also address another Essential Question: How Can Someone Else Tell My Story? The course guiding questions choices include:

How can music, art and literature tell stories about someone’s life?

Why is it important to tell others our stories?

How can artifacts tell stories about who we are?

More websites for the project here …

communityvoices.pbwiki.com

communitystories.pbwiki.com (electronic portfolios for teachers doing a pd course)

Are you tired of hearing the same GarageBand loops in your students’ work?

Two composer/educators Ellen Fishman-Johnson, Springside School with Gary Atkins, called for new approaches to using GargeBand in student film production atthe  NECC 2008 conference this year.

The Impact of Sound in Film

They started by asking educators to introduce students to the impact of music - play clips from a movie with no sound, and then five different pieces of music alongside that clip - noting the changes in mood, time, place, story that occur, all because of the music.

Planning

They pushed the benefits of plan the composition against completed storyboards or images from the rough cut of a film - before any music making goes on!

Getting more musical

They showed us how to go beyond the surface of Garageband. Firstly, there was an emphasis on helping students create their own loops….

They suggested that using a pentatonic scale was very forgiving. Students could play a measure or so on one instrument, then record it. Then choose another instrument and do a counterpoint using the same scale. Record it on another track.

They also suggested modifying exisiting rythmic patterns (shifting the beat, taking beats out, moving behind the beat) and that students record their own sounds (fridge door slamming for a bass drum, or keys hitting a saucepan for a snare, or mixing bowl hitting slate for a crash cymbal) and then import them into garageband for further effects treatment

Making Time

Lastly, they asked us to allow more time for composition and scoring the film (often a problem in industry as well). They encouraged teachers to give students time to become discriminating and allow themselves to come through more in the music they write and produce for film productions using Garageband.

Useful Resources

They shared some very useful resources, attached as .pdfs below….

URL:	http://www.efjcomposer.com
Handouts / Papers:	FishmanJohnson_GBKeyboard.pdf 158 KB (Worksheet for lesson on creating original loops) FishmanJohnson_MIDIlabideas.pdf 31.5 KB (MIDI equipment suggestions) FishmanJohnson_patternslesson2.pdf 41.1 KB (Lesson plan for creating original loops) FishmanJohnson_precompositionWS.pdf 40.5 KB (Student pre-composition worksheet)