I seem to be walking home at dusk more and more lately. Not due to leaving work early but because the first dawnings of spring mean it's not quite dark at 7ish anymore and that is a wonderful thing indeed.
Walking home the other night I saw this beautiful sight: all the many paper lampshades in the Salisbury Centre were glowing softly whilst a powerfully bright full moon shon out above in that crisp spring sky. You can only partly get the idea from the picture but it was really magical.
Friday 20 March 2009
Saturday 14 March 2009
BarCamp Session 6 - Summary of day, highlights etc.
This is a summary session. Everyone had a very unique experience: Ewen got pitched to at the urinals!
Comments, blog posts, and anything else should be put out there with the tag BarCampScotland.
Mike Madnicks talk was about making the best stuff free and the scarce stuff paid for. He was saying don't freak out about piracy but work out how to make money from attention. How to make things more productive and less intrusive.
Ewen recommends Jeff Jarvis: What Would Google Do, JJ says do what you do best and link to everything else.
Social Networking Sites - and multiple identities on them - how you negotiate that divide. Ewen adds that you must be out there if you're pitching for money. If you want to be getting money for social network stuff, apps etc. you need to be there.
Breastlife - a gadget that's on it's way and there was a session about online marketing etc. How to mix mediums etc. Shadowpuppets on Youtube was suggested.
Mobile app session - talk about different price structures, iPhone, Nokia and Android all vary. Time to use was defined as "latte time" - how can your app be useful in the time it takes to order a coffee.
Hyper local news - Ewen says lots of potential there as BBC Trust blocked development of local stuff so a huge opportunity. Apparently he's seen an idea today he may commission on this theme. IN fact he's seen 3 so worth the train ticket for him apparently..
That's pretty much it but I'll reflect later on what I thought I think... for now off to the bar with vouchers...
Comments, blog posts, and anything else should be put out there with the tag BarCampScotland.
Mike Madnicks talk was about making the best stuff free and the scarce stuff paid for. He was saying don't freak out about piracy but work out how to make money from attention. How to make things more productive and less intrusive.
Ewen recommends Jeff Jarvis: What Would Google Do, JJ says do what you do best and link to everything else.
Social Networking Sites - and multiple identities on them - how you negotiate that divide. Ewen adds that you must be out there if you're pitching for money. If you want to be getting money for social network stuff, apps etc. you need to be there.
Breastlife - a gadget that's on it's way and there was a session about online marketing etc. How to mix mediums etc. Shadowpuppets on Youtube was suggested.
Mobile app session - talk about different price structures, iPhone, Nokia and Android all vary. Time to use was defined as "latte time" - how can your app be useful in the time it takes to order a coffee.
Hyper local news - Ewen says lots of potential there as BBC Trust blocked development of local stuff so a huge opportunity. Apparently he's seen an idea today he may commission on this theme. IN fact he's seen 3 so worth the train ticket for him apparently..
That's pretty much it but I'll reflect later on what I thought I think... for now off to the bar with vouchers...
BarCamp Session 5 - Squeak Smalltalk
This was a small but interesting session about the operating system/programming language/useful idea that is Squeak Smalltalk which is built on Smalltalk - a gui developed at Xerox Park back in the late 70's/early 80s. Squeak smalltalk is powerful but it is so adaptable that it was quite difficult to demonstrate (especially as there were problems with connecting laptop to projector).
We saw the "morphic interface" and the editing and programming of objects. Also saw Croquet - a virtual world built on smalltalk in a very SL way. Interesting but at an alpha development stage at the moment so not easy to see.
More practically Scratch - a basic and very widely used visual programming tool - is built on Squeak Smalltalk, and Sophie - an ebooks authoring tool is also built on Squeak Smalltalk.
We saw the "morphic interface" and the editing and programming of objects. Also saw Croquet - a virtual world built on smalltalk in a very SL way. Interesting but at an alpha development stage at the moment so not easy to see.
More practically Scratch - a basic and very widely used visual programming tool - is built on Squeak Smalltalk, and Sophie - an ebooks authoring tool is also built on Squeak Smalltalk.
BarCamp Session 4 - Mobile visual interactivity
My next session I get to be a slightly more passive person again. This one is on "Visual Interactivity" and is being given by Jeff Ballinger who works for a company called Mobileacuity and he says we should throw things at him if he gets too salesy...
Visual interactivity is the topic up for discussion.
Background:
- Most people have phones they use for voice calls
- Most people send text messages
- Many have cameras on their phone. In a more regular group of punters there are a few less than in this room
- About 5% (if that) have visited a web site on their phone (in our room about 60%)
- Very very few folk have downloaded apps or games (we're much higher than average)
What are the implications for folk on the street. Cameras are used widely. More sophisticated things like browsers etc. are not used very much.
Jeff's company works in brand marketing spaces. They want to use mobile with other mediums. They really want wide usage for it to be useful. It must be inclusive and it cannot put people off (real danger in brand marketing). But perhaps these issues raise the difference between good and bad mobile content.
We're seeing a graph. Most now have camera phones.
Showing 3D barcode: has to be printed on original media. Nice to redirect what it points to. The reason most QR type codes are fairly static. This is to do IPR. NeoMedia Technologies have a patent for any redirection via an image. They did this in about 1995 so did originate in this stuff but it makes it hard to get into it now. There is a real usability barrier here as well. How can you tell that
In 2008, 166.6m handsets in Western Europe are registered for MMS usage - 95% of phones. And ages 16-34 generally know how to send MMS.
Recognition
Very simple form of interactivity. Take picture, recognize and then send back content. Q, basic. You take a picture and get sent back data. It's handy but it's really not that useful or exciting. Only great if loads of media are involved. The number for this sort of interactivity has to be communicated to users somehow. Questions raised about trust issues. Any call to action tends to be situational. Mobileacuity tend not to put out a number for responses to help for that.
Image Zoning
A bit more sophisticated. You take a picture with the centre focused on an action point (e.g. Vodafone guess the goal scoring point interaction). Offers better and wider possibilities. another example done by agency AKQA for Nike PhotoiD. A way to customize shoes by taking pictures of the colours you like, you get sent back a mocked up shoe in that colour (from set palate) and a link to buy. Colour analysis being used as input for mobile shopping.
Blue Screening
As in the movies (or in the beach of old!) you can star in an image. You could take pictures of yourself pocking head through a sign and then the service can return content (e.g. a music video) using this. Limited by physical location of boards etc.
Facefinder
Is latest idea on this. It just uses a regular image so can be used better for social apps. Now getting a demo from some friendly faces in the front row! ;) A picture is taken and sent off to the company servers. And a video gets sent back. Really quite fun. Cost of download of video depends on package. 500k is about the video size. Contracts vary. Vodafone do inclusive data. T-Mobile and 3 have add ons but inexpensive and good take up. Other operators not such easy models yet. You can do viral things to build on that content. Could use GPS into apps on some phones but phone dependent. Mobileacuity is focusing on visual end, apps specialists build the apps.
It's very easy to find face like features in an image. There is some false positive confusion here. Can be tricky to separate real from unreal faces. Finding the edge of a face without a fixed template is also tricky.
Now watching demo video from MobileExpo this year. This prompts a question about serious uses other than teenage silliness. There is a project that Jeff is working on that is a public information service (but he can't tell us about it) but there are also ways of getting data on products and services. Snaptel in the US (in Snaptel Explorer) lets you take a picture of DVD, product etc. and then link to tons of data - real time data when making purchasing decisions.
One useful implication could be to tag a face and then search based on it in image searching tools (some common ground here with iPhoto face recognition).
Visual search over text search has an advantage in terms of specificity. e.g. search for Paris and you get the city, you get Paris Hilton etc. If you take a picture of the Eiffel Tower you'll only get info on the Eiffel Tower. Talk here that a theatre listings could be returned from a picture of that theatre.
More demos are being handed out. I am pausing over them as my data package is not that great.
Discussion: there are manual cut out options and web based ideas. Mobileacuity are in discussion with various agencies about options. Someone asked about Facebook - send from phone and return to Facebook or similar.
There are several competitors. All but one uses a licensed software option that limits options. Mobileacuity uses something different and is leading in UK (and only in UK it seems) with clients including Ogilvy, Joule, Nokia, Pepsi, Vodafone, BBC, etc. Mobileacuity is looking at a web service API in a few months. Once it's finished it will be rolled out more widely.
Visual interactivity is the topic up for discussion.
Background:
- Most people have phones they use for voice calls
- Most people send text messages
- Many have cameras on their phone. In a more regular group of punters there are a few less than in this room
- About 5% (if that) have visited a web site on their phone (in our room about 60%)
- Very very few folk have downloaded apps or games (we're much higher than average)
What are the implications for folk on the street. Cameras are used widely. More sophisticated things like browsers etc. are not used very much.
Jeff's company works in brand marketing spaces. They want to use mobile with other mediums. They really want wide usage for it to be useful. It must be inclusive and it cannot put people off (real danger in brand marketing). But perhaps these issues raise the difference between good and bad mobile content.
We're seeing a graph. Most now have camera phones.
Showing 3D barcode: has to be printed on original media. Nice to redirect what it points to. The reason most QR type codes are fairly static. This is to do IPR. NeoMedia Technologies have a patent for any redirection via an image. They did this in about 1995 so did originate in this stuff but it makes it hard to get into it now. There is a real usability barrier here as well. How can you tell that
In 2008, 166.6m handsets in Western Europe are registered for MMS usage - 95% of phones. And ages 16-34 generally know how to send MMS.
Recognition
Very simple form of interactivity. Take picture, recognize and then send back content. Q, basic. You take a picture and get sent back data. It's handy but it's really not that useful or exciting. Only great if loads of media are involved. The number for this sort of interactivity has to be communicated to users somehow. Questions raised about trust issues. Any call to action tends to be situational. Mobileacuity tend not to put out a number for responses to help for that.
Image Zoning
A bit more sophisticated. You take a picture with the centre focused on an action point (e.g. Vodafone guess the goal scoring point interaction). Offers better and wider possibilities. another example done by agency AKQA for Nike PhotoiD. A way to customize shoes by taking pictures of the colours you like, you get sent back a mocked up shoe in that colour (from set palate) and a link to buy. Colour analysis being used as input for mobile shopping.
Blue Screening
As in the movies (or in the beach of old!) you can star in an image. You could take pictures of yourself pocking head through a sign and then the service can return content (e.g. a music video) using this. Limited by physical location of boards etc.
Facefinder
Is latest idea on this. It just uses a regular image so can be used better for social apps. Now getting a demo from some friendly faces in the front row! ;) A picture is taken and sent off to the company servers. And a video gets sent back. Really quite fun. Cost of download of video depends on package. 500k is about the video size. Contracts vary. Vodafone do inclusive data. T-Mobile and 3 have add ons but inexpensive and good take up. Other operators not such easy models yet. You can do viral things to build on that content. Could use GPS into apps on some phones but phone dependent. Mobileacuity is focusing on visual end, apps specialists build the apps.
It's very easy to find face like features in an image. There is some false positive confusion here. Can be tricky to separate real from unreal faces. Finding the edge of a face without a fixed template is also tricky.
Now watching demo video from MobileExpo this year. This prompts a question about serious uses other than teenage silliness. There is a project that Jeff is working on that is a public information service (but he can't tell us about it) but there are also ways of getting data on products and services. Snaptel in the US (in Snaptel Explorer) lets you take a picture of DVD, product etc. and then link to tons of data - real time data when making purchasing decisions.
One useful implication could be to tag a face and then search based on it in image searching tools (some common ground here with iPhoto face recognition).
Visual search over text search has an advantage in terms of specificity. e.g. search for Paris and you get the city, you get Paris Hilton etc. If you take a picture of the Eiffel Tower you'll only get info on the Eiffel Tower. Talk here that a theatre listings could be returned from a picture of that theatre.
More demos are being handed out. I am pausing over them as my data package is not that great.
Discussion: there are manual cut out options and web based ideas. Mobileacuity are in discussion with various agencies about options. Someone asked about Facebook - send from phone and return to Facebook or similar.
There are several competitors. All but one uses a licensed software option that limits options. Mobileacuity uses something different and is leading in UK (and only in UK it seems) with clients including Ogilvy, Joule, Nokia, Pepsi, Vodafone, BBC, etc. Mobileacuity is looking at a web service API in a few months. Once it's finished it will be rolled out more widely.
BarCamp Session 3 - My own (maybe!)
Veryifing and reusing information is what I want to discuss...
Two folks showed up and we had a good chat about verifying/reviewing/qualifying websites/online objects and how this might work. Talk of social bookmarking sites, social networking, geolocations, hyper local content etc. followed and we sketched out an idea that would use the APIs of other sites to combine into a "Social Web of Trust" idea which would build on existing social content as well as including ways of showing how trusted or accurate a site was. The idea comes from my own thoughts about reusing webpages or web objects for academic use and how you verify the source of that data without having to curate everything one site at a time. One of my two co-discussers is going to take forward the idea and experiment with it. More news as and when...
Two folks showed up and we had a good chat about verifying/reviewing/qualifying websites/online objects and how this might work. Talk of social bookmarking sites, social networking, geolocations, hyper local content etc. followed and we sketched out an idea that would use the APIs of other sites to combine into a "Social Web of Trust" idea which would build on existing social content as well as including ways of showing how trusted or accurate a site was. The idea comes from my own thoughts about reusing webpages or web objects for academic use and how you verify the source of that data without having to curate everything one site at a time. One of my two co-discussers is going to take forward the idea and experiment with it. More news as and when...
BarCamp Session 2 - Second Life and education
The second session I'm along to is being hosted by DigitalKatie http://digitalkatie.typepad.com/ (@digitalkatie).
Been working with Global Kids charity which is based at the High School for Global Citizenship in Brooklyn. Focus on kids with limited access to education, computing equipment etc. No guarantee of computers at home. When extra activities like blogging or flickr it was kids first experience there. There were also low levels of literacy to tackle. Kate was working remotely via Skype and SecondLife. These kids had never used these tools before so we started by teaching them how to use the spaces in order to learn Global Science topics. Engagement was far higher than traditional teaching options. Got funding for 20 laptops, 20 Macbooks. This doubled the number of computers in the school. Teachers, Head and Admins had those machines. Massive change to level of IT access compared to before and compared to peers.
Second Life Curriculum: How to teach SL skills
We tested pdf files that were OK (tested in a school in Washington) but they were more useful for teachers than for students. The teachers in the classroom needed to gain these skills too so this was still useful.
We got them to texture objects, how to do 3D modelling. But we bombarded them with too much content. We hadn't worked out what they would need to know for the course so we taught too many skills in SL. And wordiness wasn't as good as demonstration for these kids. But there are over 100 free teaching materials for SL available at Gloal Kids
Learning Global Science: How to teach Science in SL
The team reproduced lots of materials and spaces to help the kids engage. Did debates with giant floor panels - SL avatars could move to a floor square and then ask then to justify their reasons.
The first area was Science at Home - giving each student a small house and a box of stuff: recyling bins, taps etc. They had to turn their SL house into a replication of their own homes. So they had to research what resources they used and what waste was produced etc. And they had to add a note to each item to explain usage in their own house. Planned to use these little houses as a base but didn't really return past this exercise.
The next area of study looked at Waste Management in Naples. Naples have a really bad waste management problem. There were cardboard cut out type city officials and if they asked the right questions they would find out about what was happening. These were programmed responses but with some variance so students had to ask a lot and talk to each other. This worked well as there were about 8 characters in wider areas but a later exercise had fewer characters and this worked less well. Not real people behind them in this scenario but SL hooked up to another service quite cleverly.
As part of waste management class students could trample through a virtual landfill to understand the issues better - something you could never do in reality.
The next are was Non Renewable Resources. Looking at coal, oil and the ozone layer. Built a coal mine (with water that was grottier by the mine than on the approach). Had a real problem with lag with the coal mine BUT the kids got the point of the coal mine - it was cramped and difficult. In NY it wasn't as if they could go visit a coal mine in reality (something you could do in Scotland). For the ozone exercise you could take measurements and research. Went well but not interactive enough
The next area was on Renewable Resources - we had a house they could explore (used a maingrid resource that we were able to put into the teengrid - not always possible). Needed to give more web resources, the kids got bogged down at the details. They type in a huge sentence and then take first answer. Need to change our approach to cope with that for next time. It worked but not as succesfully as it could be. From the images though you can at least see that it's a rich resource.
Next up was a Virtual Fieldtrip to a water treatment plant with guest via Skype. The issue was that the expert wasn't terribly audible so had to transcribe instead. Kids had great engaged questions though. The water treatment plant was also moved from main grid - scripting causes problems when you move from main to teen grid.
This was a real class in a real high school so to get credit a project was required so the class had a Final Project. Kids had a billboard to fill with Comic Life to present their project and they could accompany with objects etc. They did try out ideas well. Emphasis was on assessing the science learning not the SL learning. This was why an imported poster presentation worked. In future would focus the SL learning so that only useful skills passed on and more focus could be given to the science.
The kids had very little IT skills. So they learned other things - for instance we used Comic Life for exercises and teaching materials. Every day the kids were blogging about their experiences. They would blog about questions on the board and of their experiences etc. Used Google Earth - most hadn't seen before. This worked well although kids were putting up Flickr pictures with their addresses after looking at maps - swift teacherly removal there. But seeing actual science in action on Google Earth was great. And actually real life presentation skills were helped with the final projects and the confidence building.
Daily class first thing in the morning (for them), about lunchtime in the UK. Really great to be able to talk with different people in their classes, not just their teachers/local peers. Helps them see the wider world. Some of the Brooklyn kids had never even been into Manhattan. Brilliant that they could then speak to people in Scotland and get a slightly bigger mind view of the world.
We asked for feedback on the class. Really really positive. Came from a viewpoint of not engaging with science to being interested and open to learning about science.
The kids did a lot nore group work than they were expected. A lot of kids were enjoying the class and said they would miss it. A kid who was excluded for a few days actually logged in from home for class! That's a huge thing: the sign that something had been done right.
Kate managed to visit. Working on Kids Connect in Florida so went across to visit. On the team they had the teacher of the class, a science advisor, and a SL developer. The resources are good to go for others. We had a whole sim to work with but it only requires a little bit of SL land.
Resources
www.rezed.org/group/GKslcurriculum
Questions
Do you use SL in the UK? No. Real problems in Edinburgh and lots of local councils as they have security concerns, issues etc. Bute is the only Scottish area to do this, they set up a private island on a teen grid, no strangers etc. It was for after school usage but other teachers were interested only to be blocked by IT dept. Ed council computer specs are not up to the job, graphics cards can't do them, broadband connection can't handle that traffic. The set up is more for office workers than education. Glow is an initiative that should help though - will increase quality and speed of broadband. Kate's changing syllibus to Digital Media rather than Computing so blogs etc. will be included. At present school rules don't allow staff to change website let alone kids. But there'll be lots of safeguards: we should be teaching kids how to be safe online not blocking anything. The curriculum includes social software including tons of currently blocked sites.
There is an age issue for SL. Even SL Teengrid you have to be a minimum age of 13. Although the US law has been challenged. OpenSim is an alternative hosted option but most schools don't have that technology. One school in Edinburgh allows students to add stuff to their server. Comment from the floor: St Andrews University are working with OpenSim. At the moment not a lot of kids are doing computing and moving to computing at university so the universities are very supportive in terms of their own teengrids etc. Comment from floor: there are maths and sciences areas in SL? Yes but these are in maingrid. But some nasa, library etc. resources they can be moved to the teengrid as needed. The database code says whether resources are maingrid or teengrid. Resources developed in the maingrid not the teengrid work poorly, especially scripted objects.
Beacon of hope - we spoke to the head of the SL teengrid. They are planning for an open PG area in the middle. This would allow 18 year olds, parents and kids etc. to work together and would allow building and sharing space. Been talked about a long time but not happened yet. Comment from floor: great math models area, a shame kids can't see those.
Question re:resources. Most of what we used we built and developed but we had a good relationship with the maingrid so we were able to use existent objects. If you go to Global Kids you can access materials and reusing content. Pdfs are open for all but the resources cost money so the model wouldn't be reuse as is, would need to work out with Global Kids how those resources can be used/if there's cost. You need to bear in mind you need 2 to 3 people supporting the kids to do this type of learning. Comment: classroom management is very difficult when computer based learning - also do the kids become insular? Kate says that actually lots of interactivity. As adults in the teengrid (we're now classed as kids) we couldn't pass objects or see messages etc in SL. Kids were chatting away but we couldn't tell! LindenLab won't let just anyone do this. Even to be an adult in the teengrid you have to meet approval. To get your avatars in as teens you need very special permission. As adults you have island priveledges only. As teens you can see all so Linden want you to be seriously trusted. This is an issue of how it was developed: started as a game but having to catch up to uses now.
The online work was backed up with real life group tasks so working and talking together there - hard to tell as virtual tutor in Scotland!
Question: would you virtually recruit for an assistant? Might want to but funding would need to be in place. An audience member is at education dept in Edinburgh and reckons that trainee teachers etc. would love that experience. Expensive to clear people. You have to get police checks for all countries you've worked in and get documents translated. Maybe £300 per check for some. Real difficulty of safety causing siloing of data.
Assessment: class teacher generally did this. Some text exported from SL and that was passed on to teacher. Blogs also used. Kate also approved blogs as they went live. Vetted and published as a result of having assistance available.
Been working with Global Kids charity which is based at the High School for Global Citizenship in Brooklyn. Focus on kids with limited access to education, computing equipment etc. No guarantee of computers at home. When extra activities like blogging or flickr it was kids first experience there. There were also low levels of literacy to tackle. Kate was working remotely via Skype and SecondLife. These kids had never used these tools before so we started by teaching them how to use the spaces in order to learn Global Science topics. Engagement was far higher than traditional teaching options. Got funding for 20 laptops, 20 Macbooks. This doubled the number of computers in the school. Teachers, Head and Admins had those machines. Massive change to level of IT access compared to before and compared to peers.
Second Life Curriculum: How to teach SL skills
We tested pdf files that were OK (tested in a school in Washington) but they were more useful for teachers than for students. The teachers in the classroom needed to gain these skills too so this was still useful.
We got them to texture objects, how to do 3D modelling. But we bombarded them with too much content. We hadn't worked out what they would need to know for the course so we taught too many skills in SL. And wordiness wasn't as good as demonstration for these kids. But there are over 100 free teaching materials for SL available at Gloal Kids
Learning Global Science: How to teach Science in SL
The team reproduced lots of materials and spaces to help the kids engage. Did debates with giant floor panels - SL avatars could move to a floor square and then ask then to justify their reasons.
The first area was Science at Home - giving each student a small house and a box of stuff: recyling bins, taps etc. They had to turn their SL house into a replication of their own homes. So they had to research what resources they used and what waste was produced etc. And they had to add a note to each item to explain usage in their own house. Planned to use these little houses as a base but didn't really return past this exercise.
The next area of study looked at Waste Management in Naples. Naples have a really bad waste management problem. There were cardboard cut out type city officials and if they asked the right questions they would find out about what was happening. These were programmed responses but with some variance so students had to ask a lot and talk to each other. This worked well as there were about 8 characters in wider areas but a later exercise had fewer characters and this worked less well. Not real people behind them in this scenario but SL hooked up to another service quite cleverly.
As part of waste management class students could trample through a virtual landfill to understand the issues better - something you could never do in reality.
The next are was Non Renewable Resources. Looking at coal, oil and the ozone layer. Built a coal mine (with water that was grottier by the mine than on the approach). Had a real problem with lag with the coal mine BUT the kids got the point of the coal mine - it was cramped and difficult. In NY it wasn't as if they could go visit a coal mine in reality (something you could do in Scotland). For the ozone exercise you could take measurements and research. Went well but not interactive enough
The next area was on Renewable Resources - we had a house they could explore (used a maingrid resource that we were able to put into the teengrid - not always possible). Needed to give more web resources, the kids got bogged down at the details. They type in a huge sentence and then take first answer. Need to change our approach to cope with that for next time. It worked but not as succesfully as it could be. From the images though you can at least see that it's a rich resource.
Next up was a Virtual Fieldtrip to a water treatment plant with guest via Skype. The issue was that the expert wasn't terribly audible so had to transcribe instead. Kids had great engaged questions though. The water treatment plant was also moved from main grid - scripting causes problems when you move from main to teen grid.
This was a real class in a real high school so to get credit a project was required so the class had a Final Project. Kids had a billboard to fill with Comic Life to present their project and they could accompany with objects etc. They did try out ideas well. Emphasis was on assessing the science learning not the SL learning. This was why an imported poster presentation worked. In future would focus the SL learning so that only useful skills passed on and more focus could be given to the science.
The kids had very little IT skills. So they learned other things - for instance we used Comic Life for exercises and teaching materials. Every day the kids were blogging about their experiences. They would blog about questions on the board and of their experiences etc. Used Google Earth - most hadn't seen before. This worked well although kids were putting up Flickr pictures with their addresses after looking at maps - swift teacherly removal there. But seeing actual science in action on Google Earth was great. And actually real life presentation skills were helped with the final projects and the confidence building.
Daily class first thing in the morning (for them), about lunchtime in the UK. Really great to be able to talk with different people in their classes, not just their teachers/local peers. Helps them see the wider world. Some of the Brooklyn kids had never even been into Manhattan. Brilliant that they could then speak to people in Scotland and get a slightly bigger mind view of the world.
We asked for feedback on the class. Really really positive. Came from a viewpoint of not engaging with science to being interested and open to learning about science.
The kids did a lot nore group work than they were expected. A lot of kids were enjoying the class and said they would miss it. A kid who was excluded for a few days actually logged in from home for class! That's a huge thing: the sign that something had been done right.
Kate managed to visit. Working on Kids Connect in Florida so went across to visit. On the team they had the teacher of the class, a science advisor, and a SL developer. The resources are good to go for others. We had a whole sim to work with but it only requires a little bit of SL land.
Resources
www.rezed.org/group/GKslcurriculum
Questions
Do you use SL in the UK? No. Real problems in Edinburgh and lots of local councils as they have security concerns, issues etc. Bute is the only Scottish area to do this, they set up a private island on a teen grid, no strangers etc. It was for after school usage but other teachers were interested only to be blocked by IT dept. Ed council computer specs are not up to the job, graphics cards can't do them, broadband connection can't handle that traffic. The set up is more for office workers than education. Glow is an initiative that should help though - will increase quality and speed of broadband. Kate's changing syllibus to Digital Media rather than Computing so blogs etc. will be included. At present school rules don't allow staff to change website let alone kids. But there'll be lots of safeguards: we should be teaching kids how to be safe online not blocking anything. The curriculum includes social software including tons of currently blocked sites.
There is an age issue for SL. Even SL Teengrid you have to be a minimum age of 13. Although the US law has been challenged. OpenSim is an alternative hosted option but most schools don't have that technology. One school in Edinburgh allows students to add stuff to their server. Comment from the floor: St Andrews University are working with OpenSim. At the moment not a lot of kids are doing computing and moving to computing at university so the universities are very supportive in terms of their own teengrids etc. Comment from floor: there are maths and sciences areas in SL? Yes but these are in maingrid. But some nasa, library etc. resources they can be moved to the teengrid as needed. The database code says whether resources are maingrid or teengrid. Resources developed in the maingrid not the teengrid work poorly, especially scripted objects.
Beacon of hope - we spoke to the head of the SL teengrid. They are planning for an open PG area in the middle. This would allow 18 year olds, parents and kids etc. to work together and would allow building and sharing space. Been talked about a long time but not happened yet. Comment from floor: great math models area, a shame kids can't see those.
Question re:resources. Most of what we used we built and developed but we had a good relationship with the maingrid so we were able to use existent objects. If you go to Global Kids you can access materials and reusing content. Pdfs are open for all but the resources cost money so the model wouldn't be reuse as is, would need to work out with Global Kids how those resources can be used/if there's cost. You need to bear in mind you need 2 to 3 people supporting the kids to do this type of learning. Comment: classroom management is very difficult when computer based learning - also do the kids become insular? Kate says that actually lots of interactivity. As adults in the teengrid (we're now classed as kids) we couldn't pass objects or see messages etc in SL. Kids were chatting away but we couldn't tell! LindenLab won't let just anyone do this. Even to be an adult in the teengrid you have to meet approval. To get your avatars in as teens you need very special permission. As adults you have island priveledges only. As teens you can see all so Linden want you to be seriously trusted. This is an issue of how it was developed: started as a game but having to catch up to uses now.
The online work was backed up with real life group tasks so working and talking together there - hard to tell as virtual tutor in Scotland!
Question: would you virtually recruit for an assistant? Might want to but funding would need to be in place. An audience member is at education dept in Edinburgh and reckons that trainee teachers etc. would love that experience. Expensive to clear people. You have to get police checks for all countries you've worked in and get documents translated. Maybe £300 per check for some. Real difficulty of safety causing siloing of data.
Assessment: class teacher generally did this. Some text exported from SL and that was passed on to teacher. Blogs also used. Kate also approved blogs as they went live. Vetted and published as a result of having assistance available.
BarCamp Session 1 - 4IP funding.
Today I am at BarCamp Scotland so I'll be live blogging what I hear as I go. The idea of BarCamp Scotland is that you share all your thoughts and ideas as you go hence I'm liveblogging as I go. I'm signed up to talk about quality checking, credentials and reuse of ephemeral content (I think I've managed to describe it ok on the sign up
I'm starting at a 4iP presentation from Ewan McIntosh who is talking about getting your ideas funded by 4iP and also touching on pitching/ideas development more generally.
Ewan starts with destination sites to which he basically says "NO!". People don't use destination/portal sites. Normal people use maybe 6 sites regularly. Facebook, maybe a picture sharing sites, work and/or personal webmail, bbc news, amazon. that's about all. So you have to bring content to them.
4iP is looking at various areas:
APIs, plugins etc. Lovely firefox plugin about local news in development (can't talk more about it).
Games - one of biggest games cos in UK (PlayPen) makes facebook games. 5 are in top 10 of facebook games. And in total they make 7 games. Very Wii look and feel. Collaborative and friendly looking. Growing sector - social gaming.
iMob - biggest iphone/ipod game - text based adventure! Missions etc. Links to address book and you can skip levels by buying credits. Kids nick parents phones and empty parents iTunes accounts!
4iP has an iphone game in development - should be self funding even if only moderately successful. Game about drinking (you booze you lose?) to self assess drunkeness.
To make things participative and interesting - some piece of media, code, etc that plugs into people's existing spaces. Channel 4 are quite good at watching media but trying to get more into participative spaces. Want to get real world outcome to online spaces. Performing spaces (e.g. SecondLife). Publishing spaces - most in the room have blogs, but most have small readerships. "A place where..." is about the riskiest place to be.
Group spaces - bebo, facebook, tagged etc. People complain about C4 pitch process - 800 words but many say it's too much, they want funding to go figure that out. You'd be a mug not to use group spaces to research your ideas and try things out.
Secret spaces - get no idea that take advantage of Instant Messager BUT it's the number 1 place to make money from advertising on the web. Huge amounts of trust etc. which you can use well. For example: Embaressing Teenage Bodies (C4 TV show) had anonymous comments so people contributed. Skins has a realtime Instant Messanger service with private chat but also referrals to useful parts of the C4 support sites. Very cheap, very effective ideas.
Pitching is a tough thing - you should be able to do short Elevator Pitch. Some come in at 400 words. Too much. All you need is "X is the only Y that allows these folk in this place to do this at a time when...". This is a great micro public service orientated pitch.
School of Everything - learning platform. You pick what you want to teach, you search for what you want to learn. Some people charge, some are free. Match up is geographically designed so real meet ups can be had and real learning can take place. 4iP has invested in this twice in the last year.
Through the Roof - wanted to measure how much money through energy loss the UK government through their roofs (with thermal imaging). Two models: can licence data and create a story (and bump a 4 logo on it); can also send data from those images - there is a company in Dundee that can work out lost heat from those images and sell that data on. Timely as lots of reviews of school buildings etc. Major undertaking.
Return On Investment
Try to keep investment small so returns can be good. 30% fees on project management is not a good budget. 10% production fees is fairly realistic. Education not traditionally appealing to advertising. Changing on the web. However for 4 the importance is also Return On Attention: most people are on the web because they can't see what's relavant to them there. Ofcom has researched and confirmed this.
Attention
There is about a 99:1 ratio on social sites. Lots of people consume but very few create. About 4.5% of wikipedia users contribute, they are exception to the rule. Discussion here about Twitter and Twitter "going mainstream" - Jonathan Ross's show encouraged people to read and watch, not contribute.
Once you have attention how do you keep it? YouTube lures you with new/recent/popular videos and allows subscribing to streams etc. Maybe they embed/share a video if they are more proactive (A graph here suggests some levels of use: Visitor/Fan/Contributor or Distributor.
If you have an idea you have to grab attention, keep attention again and again and turn that into a tangible result.
Mobile Content
4 like the iPhone - can give stuff away for free in UK and Europe but also sell the content outside EU. It's a nice model for public service/publically funded remit. Examples include graphic novel app, AudioBoo (lots of auto cleverness built into audio capture and sharing).
Questions & Discussion
How does business to business work for this model for 4ip. Facebook is important as well. People criticize use of Facebook but Bebo is bombing. All these things have a natural half-life so you pick with that in mind. Ewan makes differentiation between users and consumers. Users want more from an idea. How does your idea change people's lives?
Follow up question: Facebook is essentially a platform. What happens if people come with a platform idea. Ewan says 4 aren't against this but it's a big deal. Signing up for a platform asks a lot. If there's a logical reason or need then that's fine. Comment from the floor re: Google single profile idea. You can be compatible with lots of different extant logins and if you can you let your users use whatever login they want. Also lets someone else worry about users data. Ewan adds that user data has really limited use for 4: real liability and expensive to manage. Ewan is showing the site of Matt Locke who does education for Channel 4 (turning programmes into sites). He has A Manifesto for Data Literacy which calls or transparency, portability and not sales of data. 4 likes OpenID - you can access and move data. Facebook is almost the oppositte of this!
Funding wise 4iP have a match funding deal so they put in money and various Scottish bodies match it. You can sign up to 4iP: http://www.4ip.org.uk/. Ewan claims this is the easiest and most open VC and media pitching opportunity going. Maybe it'll take you 15 mins to fill in. 4iP have over 10 million to spend in Scotland and NI. Small good ideas are what they are after. A catalyst fund though, 4iP want out in about 18 months. Needs to be a sustainable model and be self-funding as soon as possible. Speedy ideas desired. Small ideas might take a month from idea to funding. Lots of money and support available in exchange for good useful ideas. Pretty but useless is a no. 4iP wants to be first or distinct second. Otherwise don't bother pitching. Want ideas that are participative and collaborative. And it must thrive without telly. 4iP might link from channel4.com. It's not about 4 marketing. Mostly they fund other things. 4 commissions they don't make. Themes for the next year for 4iP: ultra/local news; health and wellbeing; mobile gaming; environmental/green stuff.
See more on 38minutes.com
I'm starting at a 4iP presentation from Ewan McIntosh who is talking about getting your ideas funded by 4iP and also touching on pitching/ideas development more generally.
Ewan starts with destination sites to which he basically says "NO!". People don't use destination/portal sites. Normal people use maybe 6 sites regularly. Facebook, maybe a picture sharing sites, work and/or personal webmail, bbc news, amazon. that's about all. So you have to bring content to them.
4iP is looking at various areas:
APIs, plugins etc. Lovely firefox plugin about local news in development (can't talk more about it).
Games - one of biggest games cos in UK (PlayPen) makes facebook games. 5 are in top 10 of facebook games. And in total they make 7 games. Very Wii look and feel. Collaborative and friendly looking. Growing sector - social gaming.
iMob - biggest iphone/ipod game - text based adventure! Missions etc. Links to address book and you can skip levels by buying credits. Kids nick parents phones and empty parents iTunes accounts!
4iP has an iphone game in development - should be self funding even if only moderately successful. Game about drinking (you booze you lose?) to self assess drunkeness.
To make things participative and interesting - some piece of media, code, etc that plugs into people's existing spaces. Channel 4 are quite good at watching media but trying to get more into participative spaces. Want to get real world outcome to online spaces. Performing spaces (e.g. SecondLife). Publishing spaces - most in the room have blogs, but most have small readerships. "A place where..." is about the riskiest place to be.
Group spaces - bebo, facebook, tagged etc. People complain about C4 pitch process - 800 words but many say it's too much, they want funding to go figure that out. You'd be a mug not to use group spaces to research your ideas and try things out.
Secret spaces - get no idea that take advantage of Instant Messager BUT it's the number 1 place to make money from advertising on the web. Huge amounts of trust etc. which you can use well. For example: Embaressing Teenage Bodies (C4 TV show) had anonymous comments so people contributed. Skins has a realtime Instant Messanger service with private chat but also referrals to useful parts of the C4 support sites. Very cheap, very effective ideas.
Pitching is a tough thing - you should be able to do short Elevator Pitch. Some come in at 400 words. Too much. All you need is "X is the only Y that allows these folk in this place to do this at a time when...". This is a great micro public service orientated pitch.
School of Everything - learning platform. You pick what you want to teach, you search for what you want to learn. Some people charge, some are free. Match up is geographically designed so real meet ups can be had and real learning can take place. 4iP has invested in this twice in the last year.
Through the Roof - wanted to measure how much money through energy loss the UK government through their roofs (with thermal imaging). Two models: can licence data and create a story (and bump a 4 logo on it); can also send data from those images - there is a company in Dundee that can work out lost heat from those images and sell that data on. Timely as lots of reviews of school buildings etc. Major undertaking.
Return On Investment
Try to keep investment small so returns can be good. 30% fees on project management is not a good budget. 10% production fees is fairly realistic. Education not traditionally appealing to advertising. Changing on the web. However for 4 the importance is also Return On Attention: most people are on the web because they can't see what's relavant to them there. Ofcom has researched and confirmed this.
Attention
There is about a 99:1 ratio on social sites. Lots of people consume but very few create. About 4.5% of wikipedia users contribute, they are exception to the rule. Discussion here about Twitter and Twitter "going mainstream" - Jonathan Ross's show encouraged people to read and watch, not contribute.
Once you have attention how do you keep it? YouTube lures you with new/recent/popular videos and allows subscribing to streams etc. Maybe they embed/share a video if they are more proactive (A graph here suggests some levels of use: Visitor/Fan/Contributor or Distributor.
If you have an idea you have to grab attention, keep attention again and again and turn that into a tangible result.
Mobile Content
4 like the iPhone - can give stuff away for free in UK and Europe but also sell the content outside EU. It's a nice model for public service/publically funded remit. Examples include graphic novel app, AudioBoo (lots of auto cleverness built into audio capture and sharing).
Questions & Discussion
How does business to business work for this model for 4ip. Facebook is important as well. People criticize use of Facebook but Bebo is bombing. All these things have a natural half-life so you pick with that in mind. Ewan makes differentiation between users and consumers. Users want more from an idea. How does your idea change people's lives?
Follow up question: Facebook is essentially a platform. What happens if people come with a platform idea. Ewan says 4 aren't against this but it's a big deal. Signing up for a platform asks a lot. If there's a logical reason or need then that's fine. Comment from the floor re: Google single profile idea. You can be compatible with lots of different extant logins and if you can you let your users use whatever login they want. Also lets someone else worry about users data. Ewan adds that user data has really limited use for 4: real liability and expensive to manage. Ewan is showing the site of Matt Locke who does education for Channel 4 (turning programmes into sites). He has A Manifesto for Data Literacy which calls or transparency, portability and not sales of data. 4 likes OpenID - you can access and move data. Facebook is almost the oppositte of this!
Funding wise 4iP have a match funding deal so they put in money and various Scottish bodies match it. You can sign up to 4iP: http://www.4ip.org.uk/. Ewan claims this is the easiest and most open VC and media pitching opportunity going. Maybe it'll take you 15 mins to fill in. 4iP have over 10 million to spend in Scotland and NI. Small good ideas are what they are after. A catalyst fund though, 4iP want out in about 18 months. Needs to be a sustainable model and be self-funding as soon as possible. Speedy ideas desired. Small ideas might take a month from idea to funding. Lots of money and support available in exchange for good useful ideas. Pretty but useless is a no. 4iP wants to be first or distinct second. Otherwise don't bother pitching. Want ideas that are participative and collaborative. And it must thrive without telly. 4iP might link from channel4.com. It's not about 4 marketing. Mostly they fund other things. 4 commissions they don't make. Themes for the next year for 4iP: ultra/local news; health and wellbeing; mobile gaming; environmental/green stuff.
See more on 38minutes.com
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