Community and Educational Applications – Milverton Wallace
17/09/05 13:01
Knowledge workers are going to be very important (teachers, lecturers, social workers) are going to be important in the spread of podcasting.
Kids are leaving school without being able to read and write – in deprived areas.
Story of lots of geek kit being installed by big corporates in schools, Ministers, ceremony. Geek heaven and lots of youngsters. Few days later – no kids turned up to take part in high tech wonderland.
Milverton went and had a look and said – but it’s just a class room and they already rebelled against the classroom. Doesn’t work for a significant proportion of the kids. Give them iPods and they will learn (but still look cool).
They didn’t take Milverton’s advice – and ended up closing the facility – so no progress.
The establishment seems unwilling to experiment and take on new IT training. Says he was a ‘web guerilla’ for 5 years in education. Teaching web authoring ftp – stuff like that.
Universities are not taking up blogging fast enough (Warwick excepted). NHS is the same – wasting billions on what they call ‘ITCs’.
Example of problem of contacting Community Nurses – to communicate with them and keep them informed of developments. M suggested using podcasts. Neat solution to a real problem – but blank looks and resistance from corporate IT culture.
Teaching refugee children is a big issue. Podcasting can be used to help them learn English. Teachers in school sometimes find some children have difficulty in face-to-face teachning and need reinforcement – ‘listen again’ podcasts can be used to help.
Kids are up with the technology. They get it.
Biggest resistance to podcasting is ‘one way’ communication. Little interactivity and no direct feedback. Needs to be addressed. People want to ‘talk back’ – hence the rise of blogging. In the learning environment a feedback route needs to found (example of quote box in Fireant).
Dangerous to reproduce old media in new spaces. Revenue models will emerge. Selling speeches example – but not exciting. Need to find new ideas.
Traning, for example, don’t need to burn cds or dvds – big co saved 30% by not burning. Need to involve people – getting them to add tags is a good way – as a guide for future users and to aid group and common interest formation.
Duke University has given everyone an iPod. Reviewed experiment in Jan 2005. They found that people used it to share recordings among themselves – sharing comments on the lectures. Found that access to this accelerated learning, particularly students learning from their peers.