Kingdom FM will be having part of its schedule planned, recorded and broadcast by school students from around Fife, after they won their regional Radiowaves Kingdom FM competition.

Winners Kirkcaldy High School and Carleton Primary School form part of the Fife Radiowaves service, bringing together 121 student-run podcast stations, covering every area of school life and the life of young people today.

Glasgow University has announced an interesting research project looking at social networking of today in comparison to the social networking of the 19th century - conducted through the post office instead of the internet. 

The introduction to the project explains, “Social networking employs the whole range of available communications technologies to a fault; but communication has always exploited available technologies as soon as they become affordable.  From the eighteenth century diaries and correspondence increasingly contained non-textual features or were accompanied by parallel series of commonplace books and albums…. Social networks are certainly more tractable than correspondence by our contemporary postal services, but that is no good reason for concluding that they are novel.  In the nineteenth century Gladstone wrote to his wife three times a day, probably as many times as we in our 24/7 culture would wish to communicate with our partners.  Sir Walter Scott, the Duke of Wellington and Queen Victoria all conducted vast correspondence with their extended families and friends.  Social networking takes place within a public space in contrast to the apparent private space of diaries and letters; but in some contexts there are reasons to question the nature of such privacy.  Some diaries and letters seem to have been written explicitly with publication in view or at least to be read by others than the author or the intended recipient.”

The research will concentrate on a large archive in the National Library of Scotland of correspondence between an 19th-century Edinburgh family and their sister who lived in India. The correspondence includes both letters and sketches of family events, rather like the photos that people put on their blogs and Facebook/MySpace/Bebo sites today. Then the researcher will select comparable social networks and blogs operating now and compare the two.

Among the aims are to find out “Is [it] just a question of the technology employed or does the technology radically alter behaviour?  What type of content is most commonly posted to networks and how does this differ, if at all, from content kept in the analogue and will this have ramifications for future preservation strategies?  Does the apparent abandoning of ‘form’ in the digital communication reduce the trust that users place in social networks?”

 More details on the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute website.

Lucy Crichton

Learning and Teaching Scotland

Adam kicks off a roundup of a superb event in Aberdeenshire to get its teachers (and students) motivated through new technologies, including some interesting world-breaking uses of Glow. Tim Rylands, one of the keynote presenters, gives his own take and some of the background of his long-term involvement with the Authority. Martin provides more coverage (and cheesy pics) of what seems to have been a first class event.

The piece featured in today’s lunchtime Guitar Group rehearsal featured a short, slow introduction followed by a longer and much more upbeat section. Pupils had been encouraged to relax in the holidays and to refrain from practice in the hope of returning refreshed. So I wasn’t too disappointed to hear that the intro was a little rough round the edges (and the middle to be honest). However, when the more rhythmic section kicked in, it sounded as though the group had tripled in size, confidence and joie de vivre.

Put simply, teenagers appear not to be fond of slow music. The gaps make them uneasy and, the reduced tempo, rather than relaxing them, can put them on edge. What to do?

Should one, through increased hands-on exposure to slower tempi, cultivate their ability to rely on an internal, as opposed to audible, beat? Or, realising that they are giving up half of their lunch break (more for those who play several instruments), choose items to which they will respond more readily – thereby increasing the chances of a spirited, successful concert item? Answers on a First Class postcard……

Two New Zealand teachers show me how they have created a Second Life universe in which their students can work, learn and play. View below, or on the Connected Live video site.

Edu Twits is a pretty quick and dirty test of creating a no-code-mashup in the style of Non-Programistan and an exploration of how far you can get creating a useful tool without really reading the manual.

I am not suggesting Edu Twits is all that useful, but I can image how we could use this in the classroom in interesting ways.

Background
I mentioned Exhibit yesterday and made a wee test exhibit of EU data, in the same way as I imagined my class would be able to do. In my imagination:

1. I’d start a spreadsheet with the correct column headers
2. Put together a webpage to pull the data via exhibit.
3. The children would research the required info (wikipedia)
4. the children would add the info to the spreadsheet, directly or via a form
5. The children would query the webpage to compare EU countries.

Which seemed fine. Then Tom’s comment:

The pure spreadsheet can be confusing and does look intimidating but with the data entry wrapped in a nice friendly form you’re looking at a much more pleasant interaction (and the ability to restrict choices some for data integrity)- all good things.

got me thinking about data entry a little more. A form seemed the way to go, but my class do not have individual email accounts and I could not send them individual invites to a google docs form.A quick google gave the the idea that a google form could be embedded in an iFrame. I wanted to test this out with real people rather than just add a lot of data myself (avoiding boredom and rsi), so I though of inviting educationalists from twitter to add themselves to a exhibit. This seemed to be a fair test of data entry.Implementation

1. The spreadsheet: all I did was set up a Google Spreadsheets, I set the first Row to:{label:Name} | {twittername} | {blogname} {blogurl} | {photo} | {year} | {iso} | {latlon} | Notes following the Exhibit instructions, you need to property names in the first row, with curly brackets round ‘em, the first must be {label}. The spreadsheet is set to publish.
2. I then set up a web page using the information from Exhibit Authors based on the EU test from the day before. If you know a wee bit of html is is pretty simple to copy-paste-adjust the example pages. also because the editing is done in html it is easy to check the Exhibit examples and view source to find out how to use the straightforward stuff. The Getting Started page should get of off and running, combined with the from a Google Spreadsheet guide if you are going to use a spreadsheet. Part 2 of this post will go into the html in a bit more detail, if anyone is interested.
3. Using the share tab on the spreadsheet, I set up a form and emailed it to myself.
   

   I’ve invited you to fill out the form ” edutwits ” which can be accessed at the following link: http://spreadsheets0.google.com/viewform?key=pIE8c8hh-DgLLHXJQQ8eEfQ&email=true

   This form can be used to update the spreadsheet. I filled in the first couple of rows on the spreadsheet and sent off an invite to a couple of folk to try out. At that point I discovered a couple of mistakes, I had {year] as a column header and the form posted the locations to the wrong column, the first was easily fixed and for the second I just moved the location column header to the column that the form was filling in. I probably should find out a bit more about google forms.

4. I then embedded the google form in an iframe on a webpage:<iframe style="float:left" src="http://spreadsheets0.google.com/viewform?key=pIE8c8hh-DgLLHXJQQ8eEfQ&email=true" width="500px" height="100%"> </iframe> I added a popup to get iso country codes from the name of countries, borrowed for a wee google chart experiment (that helped get the maps and flags onto the exhibit too), and a link to an old page for getting latitude and longitude from a google map.Later on the form was improved by moving stuff around a bit and adding the location map to the actual page rather than opening in a new window.One problem is that the iso codes and locations need to be copied from the form on the right to the google form on the left, but it seems to work.At this point (well before the form improvements, I tweeted inviting folk to try the mashup out).
5. The tweet was picked up by a few folk, one Tom Barrett who has a considerably bigger network than me, Tom’s retweeting has done much to spread the word., at the time of writing 34 folk are on the Edu Twits page.

Initial conclusions

1. Exhibit and google spreadsheets make it fairly easy to create a usable database.
2. Editing via a form works for adding new data, but users can’t get in to make changes once data is submitted.
3. Out the box google forms lack validation, I don’t know if using the data api would be any better?
4. I am keen to try this with a class(es) as I believe it will meet some of the curricular targets for using databases (and it is fun.)

Blue Skyso far I’ve not broken any Non-Programistan guidelines, other than the addition of the google map. This could have been avoided (at least for the US) by using the address to location translation the Exhibit seems to provide. the next bit might overstep the mark a little.

1. Use google data api to build forms that would add and edit users data, load form in password protected page to stop folk messing with others stuff.
2. Add validation and auto addition of locations, iso codes etc. to said form.
3. php to create new spreadsheets and templates for exhibit displays.

In this case blue sky means ‘I have no idea what I am talking about, maybe someone has already done this stuff, maybe it can’t be done‘.Next steps

• Try this out in class after the holidays, use EU idea.
• Try a combo with another class.

If you got all the way to the foot of this page you might want to add yourself to the app. you could let me know if part 2: details of the little I’ve learned about the html bit of Exhibit, is wanted.Many thanks to the folk who have added themselves so far, and if you want your details changed, let me know.

Gaming technology offers many new ways in to getting young people engaged with history, geography, language… Musselburgh Grammar School’s PE department has seen that there could be promise in getting young people fit through their lunchtime Wii sessions. Unfortunately, it’s only for S1 and S2 students. Quite how Mr Bray’s going to get in is beyond me

In a recent edition of The Material World on Radio 4 there was a fascinating discussion on how the brain processes sound. Presented by the mercurial Quentin ‘For me science isn’t a subject, it’s a perspective’ Cooper the guests - Jan Schnupp from the University of Oxford and Sophie Scott from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience - discussed:

• how we select which sounds merit our concentration in a noisy environment
• how, through the one-dimensional information supplied by compressed airwaves hitting the ear drum, we detect location, distance, whether the source is moving and, if so, in which direction. This process, for me, becomes more fascinating when considering that stereo hi-fi products essentially strive to create the illusion of what is already an illusion.
• how 20 millisecond chunks seem to be the choice of the brain for both auditory and visual input - the constant refreshment of sound and vision gives us the illusion of a continuum
• foreign accent syndrome (the Times had a good piece on how the brain works out our accent)
• which parts of the brain become active when an impressionist is conjuring up the sound of of another person - or when a person is selecting different registers of the voice (just take a look at Sophie Scott working with impressionist Duncan Wiseby)

The last of these topics is something we use so naturally in teaching that it is taken for granted:

• the tone used to gently nudge someone back on task
• the slightly more emphatic one used to highlight that what’s being said is a reminder and not the first mention
• the increased intensity which suggests that the behaviour is becoming an issue
• the complete re-orchestration required if we realise that there is a perfectly valid and blame-free source of distraction

You can download the programme here (the item begins halfway through the broadcast).

Sometimes it’s hard for educators to see why anyone would be interested in what they are doing, how they are teaching and what their philosophy behind learning is. For Paul Park, a Saskatchewan teacher sent to Afghanistan with the Canadian forces, blogging for his students and family must seem an obvious thing to do.

This blog provides not only interesting reportage for any student wanting to better understand what’s at stake in this war-ridden country, but the fact that Paul is on top of the comments young people and teachers are leaving means that we have an enviable reach into a conflict that, until now, we’ve experienced through spoonfed mainstream news.

Tanya Byron’s report for the Prime Minister on children, games and the net is, as yet, nowhere to be seen on the web. However, you can find out a bit more about the report and catch up with this morning’s news reports, interviews, blog and newspaper reactions.