Doctor Who: ‘Time Crash’
In a seven-minute special filmed for the Children in Need Appeal in the UK, the current Doctor, David Tennant meets his earlier, fifth, incarnation Peter Davison. The episode is largely fan service, but it’s still a good little clip. Check it out here:
Oh, and for those fans who noticed all sorts of continuity references there is a good Wikipedia entry for the episode with all the details.
From YouTube to UniTube?
It would appear that the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has the dubious honours of being the first Australian university to have their own YouTube channel. In the past couple of months, there have been a number of reports of US universities setting up on YouTube. For example, this article from News.com on UC Berkeley’s channel:
YouTube is now an important teaching tool at UC Berkeley.
The school announced on Wednesday that it has begun posting entire course lectures on the Web’s No.1 video-sharing site.
Berkeley officials claimed in a statement that the university is the first to make full course lectures available on YouTube. The school said that over 300 hours of videotaped courses will be available at youtube.com/ucberkeley.
Berkeley said it will continue to expand the offering. The topics of study found on YouTube included chemistry, physics, biology and even a lecture on search-engine technology given in 2005 by Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
“UC Berkeley on YouTube will provide a public window into university life, academics, events and athletics, which will build on our rich tradition of open educational content for the larger community,” said Christina Maslach, UC Berkeley’s vice provost for undergraduate education in a statement.
Similarly excited press has greeted other US universities, this article on the University of Southern California’s channel (Via). However, the I think educational administrator and web 2.0 aficionado Greg Whitby notes probably wins the most excited prize for his take on the UNSW channel (Via):
While it’s a great marketing strategy, it recognises where today’s students are. Although the channel will broadcast some lecturers in an attempt to reach potential students, it captures the ubquitous nature and popularity of Web 2.0.
This is the democratisation of knowledge – no longer contained within lecture theatres or classrooms but shared. Learning becomes accessible, anywhere, anytime. Transportable, transparent, relevant and exciting.
The University of NSW is to be applauded but we still lag behind. iTunes has developed a store dedicated to education called University. It’s ‘the campus that never sleeps’ – allowing universities across the US to upload audio/video lectures, interviews, debates, presentations for students – any age, anywhere. And it’s free. It’s astounding and exciting to think that a cohort of students and teachers from a school western Sydney can watch a biology lecture from MIT.
The challenge for us is to open our K-12 classrooms to a new audience – to share knowledge as professionals and to showcase quality learning and teaching as we move from isolated classrooms to a connected global learning environment.
Readers of any of my blogs will know I’m also an advocate for integrating certain web 2.0 tools into learning and teaching. However, these announcements seem oddly familiar to me – it’s just like the press that came out as pretty much every university in the world embraced podcasting one after another, each pushing out press releases about embracing the future. However, what didn’t happen half as readily was the pedagogical discussion about how podcasting should or could be used in education. Nor, I have to say, are we seeing much interrogation of the use of online video via YouTube or other services. Let me be clear: there is certainly value in using YouTube in particular ways in education. However, as I argued about podcasting in the past, it’s probably more important to focus on working out new ways to engage students (such as having them create content for podcasting or to post on YouTube) rather than primarily just replicating the top-down structures of lecture delivery. (I don’t have a problem with recorded lectures, I should add, I just don’t think that’s all we should worry about.)
It’s also worth keeping in mind that YouTube is a two-way street as demonstrated by clips of teachers at their worst appearing on YouTube.
links for 2007-11-14
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“…what was uncovered in this study does not clearly support either of the two visions of copyright, suggesting that the Creative Commons may not entirely solve the conflict between the two visions. However, the Creative Commons can alleviate…”
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Summer Nights, in blocks. Nifty.
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“IBM has released a survey of 2400 consumers, called the End of Advertising Survey, that found that %11 of respondents would pay a small fee to remove advertisements from their online video viewing experience. A YouTube Premium subscription option?”
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“Thousands of Facebook users who have asked in recent weeks to be added to the list of Kevin Rudd’s “friends” have instead found themselves moved to a new “fan” page for the Labor leader. The fan page allows Labor an opportunity to email…”
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More on young Bill Adama’s first mission and his discoveries about the Cylons. This clip is from the upcoming Razor dbl ep. This is a direct continuation from Flashback 05.
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Ze says more about the WGA Strike. Ze funny (but also more serious at moments).
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Take photos of your CC Swag and achieve fame and kudos! (Well, a little.) Seriously, though, a great opportunity to get creative and get behind the Creative Commons!
Special Journal Issue on "Social Network Sites"
The latest edition of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication is live, and contains an outstanding special section on “social network sites” edited by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison. I’ve not had a chance to read all the articles, yet, but I can say with certainty that danah boyd and Nicole Ellison’s “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” is definitely going to be one of those oft-cited and even more often read papers in university courses! Here’s the announcement from danah’s blog:
JCMC Special Theme Issue on “Social Network Sites”
Guest Editors: danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/[X] “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
[X]“Signals in Social Supernets” by Judith Donath
[X]“Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances” by Hugo Liu
[X]“Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites” by Eszter Hargittai
[X]“Cying for Me, Cying for Us: Relational Dialectics in a Korean Social Network Site” by Kyung-Hee Kim and Haejin Yun
[X]“Public Discourse, Community Concerns, and Civic Engagement: Exploring Black Social Networking Traditions on BlackPlanet.com” by Dara Byrne
[X]“Mobile Social Networks and Social Practice: A Case Study of Dodgeball” by Lee Humphreys
[X]“Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube” by Patricia Lange
While not getting quite as much blog attention, it’s also worth noting that there are a number of other great papers in this issue of JCMC, too. In particular, I found these two very engaging:
[X] The Creative Commons and Copyright Protection in the Digital Era: Uses of Creative Commons Licenses by Minjeong Kim; and
[X] Every Blog Has Its Day: Politically Interested Internet Users’ Perceptions of Blog Credibility by Thomas J. Johnson, Barbara K. Kaye, Shannon L. Bichard, and W. Joann Wong
links for 2007-11-08
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Interesting perspective from Dave Winer. For him, Google launched Open Social because they “were scared because Facebook has a better advertising story than Google does.”
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Joss Whedon on the Writer’s Strike in the US: “Compared to what the studios have made off me my share is tiny and cute, but I’m in no position to complain…. This is an era of change, and for the giant conglomo-tainment empires …” (A good read!)
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Ze Frank briefly returns to the videoblogging world for a very amusing and insightful look a the US Writer’s Strike.
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“… the unhappy saga of Michael Noonan’s PhD project on the disabled at the Queensland University of Technology seemed close to playing itself out with the resignation of John Hookham and Gary MacLennan…”
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“The enforcement arm of the Australian music industry has dismissed damaging overseas research that found illegal music sharing actually increased CD sales.” (I’m shocked …)
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“More than one-third of teenage girls in Australia have been sexually harassed via the internet, and more than a quarter admit to cyber-bullying other girls, according to a survey released yesterday. A psychologist, Michael Carr-Gregg …”
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“Hackers have unlocked violent content that was censored by the publisher of the game Manhunt 2 to give it a marketable rating. The game, initially given an Adults Only rating by the US Entertainment Software Rating Board…”
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An interesting look at “subfans”, those international fans of usually English TV shows who produce rapid sub-title translations, often as part of the peer 2 peer sharing of TV shows via Bittorrent.
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“Researchers introduced a state-of-the-art social robot into a classroom of 18- to 24-month-olds for five months as a way of studying human-robot interactions. The children not only came to accept the robot but treated it as they would a human buddy…”
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Good summary post on the way the WGA strike will impact Battlestar Galactica, and the clear support of Ron Moore and the show’s writers for strike action. (Esp relevant to BSG as it’s been into digital media payment grey areas already with webisodes.)
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Funny clip looking at exactly what some of the most notable writers in the US are doing for a crust during the WGA strike! 🙂 (Via Gregg Rossen. Thanks!) Also: WGA Strike Channel.
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A good, accessible explanation of the issues at play in the WGA writer’ strike in the US from media scholar Jason Mittell.
links for 2007-11-02
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“Joss Whedon is heading back to TV– along with his “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” ingenue, Eliza Dushku. Dushku will star in the Whedon-penned series “Dollhouse,” which has been given a seven-episode order by Fox.”
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“Hip British graffiti artist Banksy, whose true identity has long remained a mystery, was thrust into the spotlight on Wednesday after the publication of a snatched picture allegedly of him at work.”
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“Video game developers are jubilant after the [Australian] federal Opposition signalled it might extend a 40 per cent tax break to their industry if it takes power in the November election.”
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“What amazed me the most was how [Barack] Obama’s 1 Million Strong Group took more than 8 months to get about 380,000 members, but Colbert’s 1 Million Strong Group took less than a week to get 750,000 members,” Mr. Vachhani wrote …
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“High-school teachers and college professors receive next to no training on copyright law and fair-use doctrine, a new [US] report argues, and their students are suffering as a result.”
Podcamp Perth Wrapup
Last weekend was Australia’s first Podcamp, right here in Perth. It was pretty good with an engaging mix of tech, talk and interesting folks. I don’t have time to hunt down all the many, many blogposts and photos from Podcamp, but Simone van Hattem links to most of them in her blog, or else you can check Technorati or Flickr. I was intending to add audio to my presentation slides, but the audio didn’t quite eventuate. However, Stewart Greenhill did an excellent job capturing video of many of the Podcamp sessions, and so if anyone wants to hear the session on Podcasting in Education which was led by Sue Waters and I, here you go:
(Yes, I do use a lot of gestures!)
For those who prefer a static image, here’s one picture of me attempting a ‘Presentation 2.0’ style of slides mainly because I wanted to try something a bit different (but also to keep my co-presenter Sue happy):
I also rather like this photo, of white and black Macs at play:
(Photos by CW.)
PS Yes, it’s October 31st, but, no, most Australian don’t celebrate Halloween. However, if we did, I’d definitely give the most candy to anyone who knocked on my door who was geeky enough to be wearing this.
links for 2007-10-31
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I think Dan Gillmor’s retort is most appropriate: “But his publications and broadcast outlets have done more to poison the public sphere than any other media empire, by far. This is not heroic…”
links for 2007-10-29
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Young Bill Adama fights one-on-one with an OLD STYLE CYLON CENTURION!
[Better Quality Torrent] -
“I wasn’t able to catch the recent CSI:NY / Second Life crossover, but thankfully other bloggers were on the case. Here’s a link-dump from around the blogosphere about this TV / virtual-world mashup…”
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“Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded the skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated it. Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz. …”
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Is the Joss Whedon-helmed Buffy Season 8 comic book a harbinger of the shape of comics to come, with TV names embracing corss-media and drawing more readers to comic books than the usual demographic?
Creative Commons New Zealand
A hearty congratulations to the Aotearoa New Zealand Creative Commons folk who announced yesterday that they’ve successfully ported the Creative Commons licenses to the Aotearoa New Zealand legal system!
Tama Leaver dot Net by Tama Leaver is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.