Using Technology Creatively - Event Details
Here are details of an event at Eton College that I am speaking at early in December. It is being organised jointly by Cancom and Adobe and hosted at the Design Schools.
Experimenting with Google Docs - the Rise of a Digital Conglomerate
I have started using Google docs as a tool for collaborative work between my students. It is early days yet but my aim is to set a discussion question once a week for each group to contribute to, I will credit students for the input they have having reflected on the edit history for the document. Here is our first attempt.
The expansion of Google and the economics behind their growth strategy offers interesting avenues for study as part of your A2 micro course. This document asks a simple question “Which industry is Google in?” The answer(s) will reveal much about the nature and ambition of Google as a business and the economics of contestable markets and monopolistic markets. The full document can be downloaded below as a pdf file.
read more...»Steven Johnson – Where Good Ideas Come From
I really enjoyed listening to Steven Johnson’s talk at the LSE tonight. He had some fascinating things to say on the architecture that might provide ripe conditions for a fast flow of innovative ideas in society, government and business. His new book centres on idea eco-systems and in particular the ways in which slow hunches – many of which can lay dormant for years – often times collide with the hunches of others to provide the fertile groundwork for fresh thinking.
In the latter stages of my own teaching career, it is fun to have one’s mind opened up with this kind of approach and I want in this blog to pick out one or two aspects of Johnson’s talk that resonated with me.
read more...»Online Resources E-Letter October 2010
This will be a regular e-letter flagging up some new teaching and learning resources available online. My hope is that it will cover fresh digital content across a range of subject departments. Please email suggestions for future editions – I am always happy to offer a suitable ‘hat-tip’! The e-letter is available to download as a pdf file and I hope that if it is interesting you might pass on a link to this blog to colleagues in other departments in your school or college.
Download
Online_Resources_Oct_2010.pdf
Word format
New_Online_Resources_for_Colleagues.docx
Moodle v Blackboard Face Off
A revealing interview below with two leaders in learning management systems. The CEO of Blackboard and the Founder of Moodle. One obsessed with finance and products (and management-speak) the other driven by community, the commons and innovation driven by users. I will let you decide who is which.
Technology is not destiny - connectivity and the human brain
If you have a spare time this half term when you can sit down and listen to some podcasts and lectures can I recommend this hugely thought-provoking talk from futurist Richard Watson in an address at the RSA last Thursday.
In his address, Richard Watson explores the ways in which constant digital connect may be impacting on human brain development - are we in danger of being continually distracted? And distractions lead to mistakes. How strong are the cultural pressures to leave technology on? Is an avalanche of text depriving us of context? Is addictive technology damaging relationships and eroding our empathy and tolerance? Crucially is the array of new and emerging technologies adversely affecting our ability to generate ideas and be innovative in business and society? Will the Turn it Off movement gather as much momentum as the Slow Movement?
This lecture forms part of the RSA’s Social Brain project and will be of particular interest to teachers who are embracing new technologies as tools for teaching and learning but who value an alternative approach to challenge our views. Last week I also went to London to hear Don Tapscott laud the positive impact that new digital collaborative tools can have in reshaping institutions and society. This is a well crafted and persuasive counter-view.
Richard Watson’s What’ Next website can be found here.
Cows with IP addresses and social networks as modes of production
Dom Tapscott - author of MacroWikinomics - was on great form in his evening lecture at the LSE on Friday. He talk - “Rebooting Business and the World” argued that many established institutions have become atrophied because of the global financial crisis but that a new open network model built around collaborative technologies available through the web provide incredible opportunities to address key challenges in the environment, transport, government, education and health care.
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Open Web - Resources for Economics Teachers
This is a link to streamed presentation of some new resources for economics teachers available on the open web. I will be adding more resources to this blog page in the coming days.
A Proud Moment!
A proud moment for me today. Chander Velu - the first person I ever taught in my teaching career - is featured in the new series of podcasts from the Judge Business School!
Judge Business School Podcasts
The Cambridge University Judge Business School is putting a series of podcasts online for a wider audience. The early entries look particularly promising - here is the link
Resources from the Open Web for Teaching Enrichment
I have streamed a copy of the presentation that I gave at a lunchtime seminar Dulwich College on aspects of the open web and some resources for teachers. The presentation focuses on three areas - first the rapid growth in open course-ware; second the productive uses of Twitter and third, the terrific range of audio visual resources available on iTunes U and You Tube Edu.
pdf handout of slides - two per page
I am always happy to visit other schools and colleges to give presentations and contribute to CPD sessions. Please email if interested.
Three Perspectives on Innovation
Three video resources on innovation - the last one has generated a huge response from students!
read more...»What are your recommended iPad Apps?
Several teaching colleagues have been spotted in my own staffroom brandishing their iPads and some students are also bringing them into lessons for note-taking, tweeting and other research activities. What are your favoured iPad apps? I have listed mine below. For those colleagues interested in following a lecturer who is experimenting in a bold fashion with iPads in the classroom, I recommend this blog: Teaching with Angst
read more...»Starter Activity - Economic Cycle in Pictures
This is an exercise that I have used in the past with AS level students and I decided this year to introduce it very early on in the course, indeed just a few lessons in when we sketched out the economic cycle and were discussing the economics of a recession. The exercise is a simple one - to think about the different stages of the business cycle and then discuss where in the cycle various examples might fit. There are no unique right or wrong answers, indeed in our discussion today students were sufficiently confident to justify their choices.
read more...»The Economics Blog on the iPad
We are enjoying experiementing with various news readers on the iPad. There are some great apps out there which make keeping up-to-date on breaking economics stories or specialist topics both a pleasure and a breeze.
read more...»Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education
One just to enjoy and relish as we start a new school year. TED hosts a talk from Sugata Mitra who enthralled us all at the UK Moodle Moot in London back in April 2010. “If children have interest then education happens”.
read more...»More on Hole in the Wall
I blogged about the Hole in the Wall project last April after hearing an inspirational talk by the founder at the UK Moodle Moot. This news feature from August 2010 takes a fresh look at the Hole in the Wall project - wonderful stuff - a marvellous way of exploring the ingenuity of children just left to themselves!
read more...»Don Tapscott on Generation Net
I really enjoy listening to Don Tapscott, I feel that he is someone who gets to the heart of the big changes that are unfolding as a generations bathed in bits - the net generation - moves from extended adolescence into the world of work, politics, business, society and community. He is on especially good form in this interview
Data is the new soil
Data is the new soil, a creative and fertile medium offering huge opportunities for data detectives to reveal hidden and interesting patterns within the data. This is a fascinating presentation from David McCandless (author of Information is Beautiful) at the TED talk in Oxford in July 2010. Information is beautiful and data is beautiful according to McCandless who is now turning instinctively to data design and visualisation. And he emphasises the need to get relative data as a way of putting the data we are bombarded with in context.
read more...»Economics Matrix Unloaded!
Shani Hartley has a dynamic and innovative approach to teaching not just Economics but also Business Studies, Commerce and Society & Culture in her teaching job in Australia. A prolific and hugely positive user of Twitter, Shani tweets on a great range of issues and her blog “Harts on Fire” is refreshingly honest, engaging and full of useful and stimulating teaching ideas. This week she has posted a revision matrix for her economics students as they approach their HSC economics papers. It is available here. The idea is to produce an economic policy / multiple intelligences / Blooms matrix for HSC revision and many colleagues here in the UK might draw on some of the suggestions here and feel inspired to try out some of them in their own teaching! You can follow Shani by going to her twitter page right here!
Twitter Daily Newspaper
You can now organize and read Twitter as a daily newspaper. My own twitter daily can be found here
Google Docs - New Drawing Tools
For colleagues who plan to utilise Google docs for real time collaboration between students in the new school year, Google has announced improvements and extensions to the drawing functionality of the Google Docs app. Details can be found here
Google Goggles - A tool for marking indecipherable essays?
Perhaps this might be the way ahead for reading and marking scruffy essays late at night? (!!) David Mitchell a teacher from Lancashire tweeted that “Just used Google Goggles to scan some pupils writing and it levelled it, marked it and gave next steps! Blimey it’s good!!
Social web around the world
Global web index has this background data on the usage of social web applications in different countries around the world. Interesting background on web 2.0 tools as a transformational process.
The new BBC news app for the iPad
There is a clear video here about the new BBC news app for the iPad!
Creative uses of the open web in teaching and learning
I have developed a short presentation on aspects of the open web of learning and the opportunities it creates for teachers in the UK and beyond to fully embrace the web as a platform for collaborative teaching and learning. Many of the examples and ideas were generated by discussions with and presentations given by fellow delegates at the recent Australian MoodleMoot.
Streamed: Presentation available here
Handout: Presentation available here in pdf format
A Hoot at the Moot
What makes a great conference? The location? The speakers? The chance to network? The quality and variety of the food and drink? Or simply coming away with the sense of being part of a vibrant no-fail community of teachers? In our mash-up world, no one factor makes or breaks a conference but for me the 2010 MoodleMoot in Melbourne ticked an awful lot of boxes!
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Has digital learning come of age
It was a pleasure to listen to and meet Dr Curtis Bonk at the recent MoodleMoot in Melbourne. His presentation on future directions for blended online learning using digital tools was staggeringly good and so full of detail and supporting examples from around the world it was hard to keep up and make proper sense of it all. Here he talks to Alan Carrington immediately after his talk in one of Alan’s Between the Buttons podcast (he has some interesting comments on tje iPad as a social learning device).The talk itself can be found here
