Txt in line

Later today I'm travelling up to the University of Bath to meet up this evening with some of the other speakers at the 6th 'Let's Talk About Text' conference. The event takes place tomorrow, Wednesday 19th May, and I'm presenting the opening keynote speech. I'm actually a little regretful of the fact that once lunchtime comes around, I'm going to have to jump into my car and head over to Bristol Airport to catch a flight to Germany where I will be working on Thursday and Friday (More about that later in the week). But for the short time I'm in Bath, I hope to catch up with a number of old friends such as Andy Black, Nitin Parmar, Matt Lingard and Andy Ramsden.

My presentation, which I have embedded here, will hopefully set the scene for what I am sure will be another great event in the series organised by Txttools Ltd. Stephen McCann, Steve Sidaway and their team have put together an interesting programme which I;m sure the 50 or so delegates will find thoroughly engaging. My keynote will cover a range of issues around the use of SMS in education, including a brief history of human communication, from cave paintings to mobile phone texting, student expectations, cultural shifts, language change including 'squeezetext', the texture of language, and finally ... what the research has already shown us about the use of txt in higher education, good and bad. If you're at the conference on Wednesday, I'll see you there.

Everything you always wanted to know about text

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'Txt in line' by Steve Wheeler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.
Based on a work at steve-wheeler.blogspot.com.

Podcasting and the listening culture

On Wednesday I was over at the University of Bath, keynoting the Higher Education Academy sponsored Podcasting for Pedagogic Purposes SIG workshop on podcasting. Podcasting is quite a new technology, but its roots run deep back to the broadcasting cultures first emerging in the middle of the last century when radio was the prime method of mass communication. Podcasting taps into an even older culture of listening though - one that can be traced back into the mists of time, where tribal elders and story tellers would gather their clans around a village clearing or camp fire and pass on their values, social mores and traditions through a form of cultural transmission.

On Tuesday night I was invited out by the SIG organisers Jethro Newton, Andy Ramsden, Andrew Middleton and others. I was very pleased to spend some time too with Derek Morrison with whom I had a very interesting discussion over dinner in an excellent Indian restaurant. We were able to bring our own drinks, and we brought our own stories too. One thing Derek said stuck in my mind: He asked what would happen if universities suddenly removed their e-mail services. Very little would change for the students, we agreed. They would simply continue to communicate as usual through Facebook, Myspace, SMS and other non-institutional media. It would be the academics and other staff members who would be seriously affected. There were a lot of conversations, and as I listened, I realised that most of our conversation was indeed storytelling.

And storytelling still remains an important component of 21st century conversation. This kind of cultural transmission continues but now at a quicker pace and also in an ambient manner because it can just as easily be technologically mediated. In the Western industrialised society, we find ourselves in a situation where people expect to be able to walk out of their door, and step onto a bus or train wearing their ear-buds or head phones, listening to their favourite music, talking book or web download. Look around you as you travel to work today and you will see what I mean. The technology mediated listening culture that first emerged in the middle of the last century has come of age, and listeners can now travel through their well trodden urban landscapes whilst their imagination and emotions are stimulated by a very portable, personalised audio system. What is the untapped potential for this type of technology in education? What are the underlying psychological principles? These are questions I tackled in my keynote. The slides from my talk are below, and also available on Slideshare.

Podcasting and the Listening Culture

View more presentations from Steve Wheeler.

Related posts:

Wisdom of crowds (Andrew Middleton)
Podcasting and the listening culture (David Hopkins)
Learning through listening (Jean Jacoby)

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JISC does well

Enjoyed an interesting and profitable day at the JISC South West Regional (Higher Education) e-Learning conference in Bristol today. Travelled up under blue skies... a good omen. The venue (At Bristol, left) was high quality, and apart from occasional 'noises off' from the exhibition downstairs, a most excellent place to hold a conference. Food was good - company was good. Met up with some old friends including James Clay (Gloucestershire - who did some live streaming video from the event), and Andy Ramsden (now Head of e-Learning at Bath), both in the picture below.... as well as David Benzie (Marjons) and Ali Press (Cornwall College).

After a somewhat disappointing start from some of the keynotes, we got down to some real business in the breakout sessions. Neil Witt (Plymouth) was on form with his presentation on videoconferencing. Julie Hughes (Wolverhampton) presented an interesting and engaging talk on blogging and e-portfolios for PGCE students. I used my iPhone to Twitter throughout the day directly to this blog for the first time. Will do more of this from other events. My own two sessions on MentorBlog and WikiLit projects were well attended and seemed to be well received going on the feedback I had. There were also papers on mobile learning, Shibboleth and digital storytelling to name a few.

So congratulations, JISC - you have done well with this one day event, succeeding in bringing together the great and the good e-learning bods from across the region in a thought provoking and stimulating day. But, please, one small word to the wise - there is still room for improvement on the keynote speaker front!