Poster with bloated title wins award at ALT-C

I gave my talk on ‘Cultural Capital and Community Development in the pursute of Slaying Dragons’ at the ALT-C e-learning conference last week. The talk was well received which was very encouraging. The poster of the talk won a runners-up prize in the poster competition! How much of this was down to tactical voting I cannot say but it would seem that the e-learning community is becoming gradually more interested in the possibleuse of Multi-User Virtual Environments.

Talking about Dragons with Dragons

Last Friday I partook in a stressful but useful event run by JISC. Anyone who could make it had the chance to pitch their project ideas for the Users and Innovation callrun by Lawrie Phipps. The format was similar to the BBC ‘Dragons Den’ programme. Each project had to go before a couple of JISC representatives or ‘dragons’ and pitch their idea in a 5-10 min presentation. The dragons would then feedback on the idea and point out/discuss it’s pros and cons.

I was surprised to find that this process put me into my old ‘exam fear’ mode and I panicked for most of the day. However, there is nothing better for focusing an idea than knowing that you have to explain it to a third party, especially when some of it relates to World of Warcraft! It forced us to look at the marking criteria for the call and to turn vague details into well thought out project plans.

Our actual pitch to the dragons went well and their feedback was very helpful. It seems to make sense to do this kind of grilling before, not after the projects are underway. Hopefully it will lead to a better breed of projects.

What is Web 2.0 and how is it impacting on education?

Not my title but the title of a recent JISC podcast in which myself and JISC strand manager, Lawrie Phipps, discuss the nature of Web 2.0 and its possible relevance for education. We both take a cautious liberal view that recognises the potential in this new style of communicating and sharing whilst being clear that institutions can’t simply dive-in and appropriate the emerging online culture which seems to be in a permanent state of flux. If you are not sure what Web 2.0 is all about then this may be the non-technical introductory podcast for you.

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/Home/news/stories/2007/08/podcast07lawriephippsdavidwhite.aspx