Community Media - Interactive World

I suspect that none of this will happen, but we dare to dream. My Utopian Manifesto To retain teachers and attract them back into the profession: (1) reduce testing, marking and assessment regimes by 80%. Have we forgotten that education is about learning not testing? Constant externalised evaluation exists to serve the machinery of capitalism insofar as the latter thrives on selection, competition, and elites. Learners, like teachers, are being worn down by intrusive and unnecessary testing. (2) cut admin and planning duties by 75%. Let us trust spontaneity and allow teachers to respond to a more participatory, learner-led environment. Education has become a factory production line and a bureaucracy. (3) raise starting salary by 25%. Teachers are very poorly paid compared to the business and financial sector. They should be rewarded for their work, and for making a sustainable contribution to human life on the planet. (4) trust teachers and schools to design their o...

As a former Professor at a College (Nene) that became a New University following the award of research degree powers, I would like to congratulate the higher education institutions that will now become Universities. In my view, we need more creative disruption in higher education in Great Britain, and much of that innovation springs from the new blood that has been running through the system since the major expansion that took place in the 1960s. In fact, Universities do not have to be super-instiutions that operate on an international scale and bloated global reputation. In order to be vibrant academic cultures what is needed is a capacity to serve the needs of students and their teachers; to value research and scholarship; and to connnect with their local communities. I assume that all of that includes wealth creation in a sense that is larger, wider and richer than the familair slogans about business entrepreneurship INSTITUTIONS BECOMING UNIVERSITIES Arts Universit...

Some people like editing, others don’t. Find out early on in the project about people’s skills and preferences, and training requirements – don’t leave it all to the end. Edit the film as you go along, in a rough and ready fashion. If you filled half a tape accidentally recording irrelevant chair legs there’s really no point wasting that space on your hard drive. Respect people’s wish for their contribution to be deleted. Review the day’s shooting with participants, if possible Make notes on the best clips of the day. This is called logging. Invent the system that works best for you. Always label tapes or disks at the time of filming.  Keep a note of the best clips, and the ‘who, what, where, when’ bits of information. It should be possible to create a rough edit based on (a) a selection of the best material actually filmed; (b) the valued work of a trained editing person or small team; (c) referring back to the story and storyboard as guides. In communit...

You do not have writer's block as such. It's a myth! It’s far more likely that you are stuck in an unimaginative rut, and that you are experiencing a shortage of stimuli, or a lack of variety in the brain and body soup that should be feeding and nourishing your creative mind. If things are really bad you may be depressed. The good news is that creative strategies may help to decrease the depth and frequency of your depressive phases. Other Common Solutions to poor creativity that you might wish to consider are: Engage in a variety of activities that are uncharacteristic for you. This may involve taking up a new hobby. It almost certainly means moving away from the torture of staring into a flickering screen. (See my other blog on internet and social media addiction, here .) Start a new project. Sometimes it’s your determination to stick at a dead project that explains why you can’t move forward. But you can always return to older projects in the future,...

Factors involved in Creativity Making an Effort : mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. Courage : to take risks. Stamina : not to give up, to revise and redraft many times. Perfect Imperfection : knowing when to stop. Mentors : to follow, and to rebel against. Style : it’s not just what you say but how you say it. Surprise : walking the unexpected, deviation from norms, serendipity Flow : an intense state of mind when you deliver peak performance Skills and Tools : to build and develop projects Confidence : to aspire and to avoid destructive thoughts and negative outlook Team work : ability and willingness to collaborate effectively and to respect others Solo or Group? It is often forgotten that creativity is not just individual, it can exist within a group or a community. Typically a small group will develop more ideas than a person working alone. That's why everyone is getting into co-creation now, from wiki, to games,...

   I hope that your exams have not been as traumatic as mine were at school. In this blog, I have taken a long hard look at exam success and failure. Obviously my research is based on real experiences, rather than irrelevant and dodgy theories. In my experience of 30 years of teaching in English, and in the Arts, in Schools, and in the University sector,  these are the most common reasons for poor results: 1.    Anxiety based on lack of confidence, poor planning and fear of the unknown 2.    Lack of familiarity with past exam questions 3.    Poor memory skills 4.    Failure to produce model answers in exam conditions 5.    Revision that does not edit and select key points 6.    Revision that does not tailor knowledge to the exam 7.    Answers which are too short, or too long. 8.    Poor awareness of what the examiners are look...

Classic Non-sense Poet - Edward Lear Even some of the more successful charities, NGOs and nonprofit groups have failed to adapt effectively to the new opportunities afforded by social media. Twitter has often been neglected as irrelevant and vain. As a useful social media tool, Twitter has often lagged behind Facebook. I suspect that's because the first impression of Twitter is that it is chiefly populated by celebrity gossips and ephemeral personal details that have no relevance to the goals of social transformation and ethical awareness. Having researched this topic I would like to offer 25 tips for nonprofits to make effective use of Twitter. 1. Tweets (comments posted on Twitter) need to be written with professional care and attention, just like any other form of writing. That means that Twitter will have an impact on your resources. But don't let it take over... 2. Avoid flippancy, rudeness, and excessive personalisation. By the same token, a dull corporate t...

As a participant in the The 17th International Symposium on Electronic Art I was struck by how many delegates were hostile to the notion of community. Is it that, in the humanities, perhaps, academia is fatally geared to recognition of solo-achievement at the expense of collaborative methodologies? Perhaps that’s because the ‘art’ element is still understood in terms of romantic-period notions of self, ego, genius, and originality?  In these terms community is the wicked Father called Family, or Tradition. Individualism, in contrast, is Rebel Energy; it is innovation and creativity. The available writing on the self has arguably been more inspiring than that on the community, which tends to fall into windy utopianism or dreary sociological treatises. But we certainly have a degree of nostalgia for our self-willed creativity, despite the thinly veiled reality that the majority of human beings are merely tiny cogs in the global machine. In part, the delusional component arise...

In recent years I have been working with parents and children to improve reading skills. There is strong evidence that boys' reading skills are increasingly falling behind those of girls, and that boys come back to school after the summer holidays with poor reading skills. These are the questions that I asked in this blog: How can we guide and support the enjoyment in reading and help to improve skills? How can we link reading with creativity, community, and interactivity? The results . Here are 15 motivational tips (with an emphasis on reading for boys): 1. Any reading is good reading.  Boys often re-read books that they have enjoyed. But don't just stick to fiction; there are great factual illustrated books, top tips for boys, motor car books, jokebooks, sports annuals, magazines and graphic novels. Don't just stick to the classic fiction that adults say they enjoyed reading in their childhood. 2. Lead by example  Children copy those around them. ...

Online publishing opportunity CFP for academic and non-academic writers Submitted by Sam Oneill on May 20, 2012 -  Visible Margin is a new section of #Alt-Academy which will feature high-quality critical writing in the form of peer-reviewed essays and blog posts, as well as creative writing and work in other media. In keeping with the theme of #Alt-Academy, we are especially interested in contributions from authors and scholars pursuing alternative, non-tenure track, and non-academic careers—individuals whose voices are heard less often within the academy. Complementing #Alt-Academy’s existing clusters, Visible Margin will focus on cultural and intellectual production, with the aim of increasing the visibility of this growing majority of knowledge workers and of democratizing knowledge within and outside the university.   We also welcome contributions from non-academic writers who share our goals. http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/alt-a...

This website is strongly recommended for collaborative writing projects: Writing Spaces Open Textbook Chapters Each of these titles is available under a Creative Commons license (consult the individual text for the license specifics). Click on the title to view the chapter abstract and a downloadable PDF of the chapter. Click on any of the keywords to see a listing of chapters tagged with that keyword. On the main information pages for each volume, you can also download full versions of   Volume 1 or Volume 2 . Title Author Series Edition Keywords A Student’s Guide to Collaborative Writing Technologies Barton, Matt and Karl Klint Vol. 2 collaboration ...