— Originally saw at Gerd Leonhard’s blog
On 07/13/2011,
in Australia, digital storytelling, story, storytelling, transmedia,
by Daniel Christian
X Media Lab Presents: The 2011 Jeff Gomez Transmedia Masterclass Series (Australia)
Part I: The Power of Transmedia Storytelling
- The history, the value proposition, how Jeff came to embrace it, and the latest industry news as its potential begins to begins to be realised in the entertainment industry.
Part II: Immersion & Incubation
- The role of the Grand Narrative
- Criteria for a successful transmedia franchise
- The elements of storyworld incubation
- Criteria for an evergreen franchise
Part III: Development
- Fiction vs. Non-Fiction / Open vs. Closed systems
- Brand archetypes and aspirational drivers
- Intellectual Property Bibles and Mythologies
- Building platform-neutral Storyworlds that are extensible over multiple touchpoints
- Establishing Authorship and Pitch Materials
- Failed properties
Part IV: Production
- Building partnerships, fans and coalitions
- Role of the driving platform
- Defining and incentivizing canon
- Constructing bridges between marketing, digital and creative
- Remaining the visionary (consumer products & licensing)
Part V: The Future of Transmedia Narrative
On 06/20/2011,
in Australia, innovation, interactivity, learning, learning spaces, play, smart classrooms, social learning / networks,
by Daniel Christian
On 06/13/2011,
in Australia, Canada, colleges, community colleges, disruption, education technology, Europe, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, Google, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, online media, trends, universities,
by Daniel Christian
Google Building “Global Classroom” in YouTube EDU with 400 Colleges Worldwide — from blip.tv
About the above video:
Having launched just over two years ago as a hub for college and universitie YouTube channels, YouTube EDU has become a destination for education, providing an index for a broad range of topics and campus activities, says Angela Lin who manages the education program at YouTube. The YouTube site integrates content from 400 colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, Europe, Israel and Australia.
On 04/11/2011,
in Australia, consortiums, content development, aggregation, repositories, online learning,
by Daniel Christian
Originally saw this at
one of Stephen Downes’ blogs
Excerpt:
In particular, the report outlines the operations of two significant distance-learning institutes in Australia:
- Open Universities Australia (OUA), a consortium of universities providing distance-learning opportunities for students across Australia.
- eWorks, focusing on Technical and Further Education (TAFE), equivalent to college education level courses.
This report outlines unique features and best practices of both organizations, details specific roles within the organizations, and explores options for potential collaborations and project partnerships.
Open Universities Australia (OUA), a $70 million for-profit consortium which originated in 1992 with Federal Government funding, is now fully funded from student fees and projected to double in growth in the near term. 70% of students receive financial aid. As a consortium, it relies on the reputation of its constituent members. The board, comprised of participating university chancellors and independent directors from the professional workforce which includes an academic committee, governs the introduction and quality of programs and vets new providers. Most course work is delivered asynchronously with increasing progression towards synchronicity. Demand (rather than supply) drives new courses which are offered to complement existing courses in accordance with market forces. More than $1 million is available to aid in development of online delivery of existing face-to-face courses.
eWorks, a support service of The Australian Flexible Learning Framework (AFLF) develops (rather than delivers) content, based on nationally mandated curriculum competencies for the Vocation Education and Training sector (VET) sector, and coordinates access to existing vendor products into a single environment, generated from a single platform. Standardization of both learning objects and formats for storage and accessibility resulted in a federated search engine: the Learning Object Repository Network (LORN). Success of LORN relies on standards compliance by each state and territory.
On 03/23/2011,
in Australia, online learning, online media, teaching online, UK,
by Daniel Christian
Why is online teaching important? — originally saw this at creativityineducation.co.uk
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Also see COFA’s series of videos:
On 03/01/2011,
in assessment, Australia,
by Daniel Christian
On 01/31/2011,
in animation, art, Australia, creativity, digital audio, digital learning, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, multimedia, music, online media,
by Daniel Christian
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Also see this video on project-based learning:
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— Originally saw this from Tim Hawkins, in Melbourne, Australia
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Google Tech Talk
April 6, 2010
ABSTRACT
Presented by Dr Matthew Todd, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney.
Science shaped itself in the founding days of learned societies: individuals or teams competed, in secret, with paper-based communication in subscription journals. Why are we all still doing science like this? The internet has had a major impact in our sharing of data by traditional means, but it has not yet radically changed the way we actually perform science.
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Here’s a list of the projects mentioned in the video:
Praziquantel is being used in the treatment of schistosomiasis, a parasitic infection spread by freshwater snails in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Gates Foundation is funding an operational research program – SCORE to control and eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases.
This operates out of Imperial College, London and is led by Professor Alan Fenwick OBE.
The Cathedral model is where a professor and students conduct funded research to develop a solution whereas the Bazaar model invites other people to collaborate in an Open source way to develop a solution. Firefox, Chrome, Wikipedia are all Bazaar models.
Open Science involves publishing in real time and letting people respond as they see fit and then collaborate in real time.
The UsefulChem Project led by the Jean Claude Bradley at Drexel University – aimed at producing molecules that will be used to treat malaria. Bradley is a proponent of and practises Open Notebook Science.
Open Source Drug Discovery: http://www.osdd.net/ – OSDD is a CSIR Team India Consortium with Global Partnership with a vision to provide affordable healthcare to the developing world.
Open WetWare: http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:About – OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering.
The Open Dinosaur Project: http://opendino.wordpress.com/ (founded to involve scientists and the public alike in developing a comprehensive database of dinosaur limb bone).
Chemspider: http://www.chemspider.com/ – ChemSpider links together compound information across the web, providing free text and structure search access of millions of chemical structures.
Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.
NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ – advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.
GenBank: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/ – is the NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences.
The Tropical Disease Initiative aims to apply an open-source collaborative approach to biological and medical research for tropical diseases.
The Synaptic Leap: – Open Source Biomedical Research.
Stack Overflow allows you to post code and ask for help on a problem.
Chempedia is a free service for uniquely identifying and naming chemical substances.
CML (Chemical Markup Language) is an open standard for representing molecular and other chemical data. It includes XML Schema, source code for working with CML data, and was devised by Peter Murray-Rust who worked with Microsoft to develop a Chem Word Add-in enabling a Word document to be searched and the chemical information in it to be automatically annotated and extracted. When you hover over a word, you get a structure and you can change the structure.
Chemicalize.org – a public web resource developed by ChemAxon.
From GetIdeas.org:
Australia’s New Higher-Ed Authority Calls for Fresh IT System — which links to “New higher education authority calls for fresh IT system” in CIO — by Rodney Gedda (Techworld Australia)
The federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR), is designing a new core information system for a new higher education agency – the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) – which is scheduled to begin operating around mid-2011.
TEQSA will be an independent body with powers to “regulate university and non-university higher education providers, monitor quality and set standards”. Its primary mission will be to help students receive the best quality higher education at any provider.
At the core of TEQSA will be a new information management system in the form of a Web-based portal.
On 01/15/2011,
in Australia, budgets, economics, education reform, Europe, global / globalization, India, K-12 related, Michigan, online learning, open courseware and systems, relationships, UK, United States,
by Daniel Christian
Half of Detroit’s schools may close — from good.is
Financial mismanagement and declining enrollment are ringing a death knell for Detroit’s schools. According to Detroit Public School Emergency Manager Robert Bobb, to close a $327 million budget deficit, he’ll need to shut half of the city’s campuses over the next two years.
Under the plan, the 142 current schools in the district would be reduced to 72 by the 2012-13 school year. What will happen to the students attending those schools? Bobb plans to shift them over to the remaining campuses, raising class sizes to 62 students per teacher.
From DSC:
Seriously…this is crazy and completely unfair! Those of us who have more resources need to step in and help out. But how can we best do this? How can folks outside of the Detroit area make a solid, helpful impact? Coming from the tech side of the house, I’d like to see us offer FREE materials…online.
That assistance could come from private corporations, individuals, colleges, universities or for-profit organizations such as K12 Inc. Another idea along the lines of individuals, is to allocate $1-$5 billion from the amounts being donated by some of the nation’s wealthiest people. Use those funds to make outstanding educational materials that engage our youth. Then we could offer those incredibly-well done, multimedia-based, interactive, engaging, highly-sophisticated materials FREELY to anyone who wants access to them — whether inside or outside the United States. This would be a massive undertaking from a curricular, instructional design, programming, production, etc. standpoint. But WOW! What a difference it could make to level the playing field!
Perhaps working with vendors, some of the funding could be used for loaning out the devices needed to “play” and interact with the materials, and perhaps some other funding could be allocated to the city of Detroit to provide wireless access throughout the city and surrounding suburbs.
Also see:
The $600 billion challenge– from Fortune
Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett are asking the nation’s billionaires to pledge to give at least half their net worth to charity, in their lifetimes or at death. If their campaign succeeds, it could change the face of philanthropy.
On 01/10/2011,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Australia, collaboration, global / globalization, Google, videoconferencing, web-based collaboration,
by Daniel Christian
A classroom without walls – Google Teacher Academy Application — from murcha.wordpress.com
Educators in Australia are being given an opportunity to be certified as Google Teachers in an Academy that is coming to Sydney in March. Part of this process is to make a 1 minute video showing on either “Motivation and Learning” or “Classroom Innovation.”
I wish to thank @edsaid for telling me how to add videos to my wordpress blog. It is to much appreciated and I will now be able to add more engaging features to my posts with this knowledge.
Here is my movie reflecting some of the connections, global interactions and collaboration that has taken place beyond our classroom walls. It is very difficult to summarize in 1 minute some of the amazing activities that we have been involved in, but it gives the viewer a glimpse and hopefully a taste for more. If you are interested in applying, check out the Google Academy. Thank you to my wonderful personal learning network and global colleagues.
On 08/10/2010,
in Australia, business side of he, game-changing environment, leadership, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, strategy,
by Daniel Christian
Professor Tim Kastelle at the University of Queensland talks about business models
for information businesses and identifies three key areas that require leadership attention.