Traveling to work this morning I was thinking of ways to get my students to collaborate better in big groups. This is something that students (and adults) are generally pretty bad at, so in my pastoral time I often look for games and activities that allow students to work on these skills. Passing a 7-11, I came up with the idea of buying a chocolate bar (Twix, in this case) and offering it as a prize to students. The catch would be that whilst I came up with the prize, the group would need to design the tournament to decide a winner. The rules would be as follows:

• The competition would need to be fair, giving each student an equal chance (no arm wrestling, mental arithmetic, etc)
• Consensus of all students would be required to determine a winner.
• There would need to be a clear single winner.
• If there was no winner by the end of our time together (20 minutes), I would eat the Twix in front of the students.

At first the students seemed a little confused, but they quickly got to working out how a winner might be decided. However, things quickly broke down, with too many voices, many of which were dissenting or off topic. I encouraged the students, gave some hints, cajoled a few and then gave out some harmless insults suggesting they could not do it, and I was going to be eating the chocolate any moment. After a few failed attempts at a leader taking control, and with time ticking down, one student suggested I pick a number from 1-100, and each student take a guess at it. The closest unique number would be the winner. It was quickly decided that this was the way to go, a number was picked (735 out of 1000 in the end) and a winner was quickly decided.

Sadly, I did not get to eat the Twix.

To end the activity we had a quick discussion about why the students almost did not succeed, and came up with the following reasons:

• They had to brainstorm out the bad ideas to get to the right one.
• They needed the pressure of the impending deadline to make a decision.
• They initially lacked a leader, and students willing to be led.

At the end of the day I think they developed their ability to work collaboratively in a large group, one student left with chocolate in hand, and another left knowing he had stepped forward to be a leader to his peers. More than I achieve in most days at school, and it was only 08:30. I am left wondering what variations I can build into this to make it more useful or versatile.

Note: chocolate thumbnail image from freefoto.com, CC BY-NC-ND.

http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_stewart_how_youtube…

Copyright is an area of immense interest for me: I cannot say exactly why, but I think it is to do with the interplay of creativity, reward and culture. I mostly think of copyright as being a battle between the content creators and content users, with each trying to find the best deal for themselves. Lawmakers, swayed by one side or the other, pass legislation to maintain a balance of some kind (currently far too much in favour of the creators). And technology provides a landscape which is constantly changing, requiring all players to exert effort to maintain equilibrium for themselves and the system as a whole. At the core of copyright is the issue of our culture, and specifically how we create, transmit and enjoy its artifacts (such as music, video and books).

Of late, we have seen many attempts by content creators (recording artists, move directors) and their representatives (MPAA, RIAA) to block technological developments that they see as harmful to their interests. This often leads to a strong perceived delineation between bad/evil/greedy creators and poor/choiceless consumers. In many instances this delineation seems to be fair and accurate, for example when Paramount attempted to claim copyright over someone’s footage of the public filming of movie.

However, every so often we catch a glimpse of developments that are distinctly more subtle in their effort to create benefit for all. My standard examples of these instances are Creative Commons and the Open Source movement. Having watched this fascinating video, I think I might now have a third example. The video deals with YouTube’s automated efforts to allow content creators to have control over their content in such a way that uses economic incentives to encourage them to permit remix and reuse. This softly-softly approach seems to be a great way to get big corporations interested in the power of participatory culture, whilst allowing them to maintain ownership over their content.

From an information technology perspective, the video provides great insights into the way that YouTube uses technology to process, analise and make decisions upon huge numbers of videos. It also illustrates many interesting points regarding information processes, and shows that systems are not just composed of technology, but also consist of people, policies and data. I think many students will definitely be interested to see what happens behind the scenes on the world’s most popular video sharing platform.

I am certainly interested to learn more about YouTube’s efforts in this area, and would love to see this system fulfill its potential to empower individuals to create culture rather than simply consume it. As to whether or not it will, who knows, but given Google’s long history of pushing the envelope when it comes to copyright, it just might.

This collection of 10 interesting photos can be used to stimulate students in a variety of ways. For instance, in small groups they can be asked to produce a story based around any 5 of the pictures, in any order, which can then be presented to the class (with the pictures in a multimedia presentation). This is useful to get students working together as a group, using a short time to apply some pressure.

Download the file.

http://storybird.com/

Storybird is a site that allows you to create short, visual stories that you can share on the web. This is a great tool for encouraging creativity through digital storytelling.

http://www.jamendo.com

Jamendo is a fantastic source for music that students can legally use in their own creative works. Shared under Creative Commons licenses, the site offers a whole range of sounds, much of which is very professional in its composition, performance and production.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/

SurveyMonkey is a free, easy-to-use, online survey tool. Teachers can use this to get feedback from students and parents. Students can use this to obtain raw data for projects. Use this lesson plan to incorporate SurveyMonkey (or any similar too) into a lesson on the collection, analysis and presentation of data.

http://www.lovelycharts.com/

Lovely Charts makes it easy to produce high quality charts and diagrams online. Useful for prototyping websites through wire framing and site maps.

http://drop.io/

Dropio allows you to create an online space (with up to 100MB free) which can be shared by a group of people. There are a variety of ways to drop items into the space (web, phone, email, etc), and once items are there they can be worked on collaboratively. This is a useful tool to allow remote teams to work together.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0;9171;1879169;00.html

An interesting look at the constantly changing face of the Web, and the various ways we use it to communicate. It is vital for teachers to understand the system’s that students use, and  how they operate.

http://getdropbox.com/

Dropbox creates a folder on your computer, which is continuously synchronised with a personal, secure space on the web. The system gives you 2GB of online storage for free, and you can purchase more as required. This is a great way to share files online, either to the public in general, or to a selected audience. The desktop integration makes it extremely quick to use, and the fact that it works on all three major operating systems (Linux, Mac, Windows) means it can be used by all.

If you have ever found it impossible to email a large attachment, Dropbox provides a great solution.