Earlier this year I asked my Year 8 students to record a 2 minute warning to their parents, aiming to highlight risks which they might face online. This piece of work followed several smaller tasks (such as Me vs Me), and lots of discussions, regarding digital citizenship, what being online means and how we can stay safe. Of all the excellent pieces submitted, I was most taken by work of Chloe, who I believed manage to convey a lot of meaning in an easy to understand message:

Chloe runs a nice blog where she posts some of her other work, if you are interested in taking a look.

The older I get the more interested I seem to become in the history of the place where I grew up: Hong Kong. Having read a few books on the subject (Hong Kong, History of Hong Kong, Diamond Hill and Gweilo), I am always delighted to find video footage to put images to text. Despite not being born until 1980, I feel a strange affinity for images and footage from the 1950s and before. Recently, my father-in-law (a Hong Konger from way back) shared the presentation below with me, and I thought it was worth sharing:

Whilst searching for an embeddable version of this file online, I also found the videos below, which are very interesting. Sadly, the two best videos, could not be embedded, but you can watch them here and here.

Credits: a big thank you to Michael Rogge for curating and sharing this amazing archival footage. Thumbnail image of Hong Kong by Shizhao on Wikipedia, under Public Domain

This short movie, introduces copyright and sharing from a teacher’s perspective. It is aimed at students and teachers, and will hopefully help viewers to understand copyright, and inspire them to create and share more. In making this film, I remix Brett Gaylor’s “RIP!: A Remix Manifesto” to produce something similar but different.

If the video won’t play within this page, try it here on YouTube.

Press Pause Play is a feature-length documentary that is part inspiring, part demoralising and all stunning. Using a patchwork narrative, it explores the constantly evolving landscape of digitally-empowered creativity. A lot of amazing new work is set against the views of industry veterans, who spend a lot of time bemoaning the demise of creativity as the domain of the cultural elite. A typical tale of freedom and choice pitched against the profitable machine. The juxtaposition of hope and inspiration played against maintaining the status quo, was extremely powerful. In my opinion, creating, as an active endeavor, is generally more fulfilling than consuming, and I see nothing wrong with a world full of individuals and groups creating in earnest. In the end, the best talent will still rise to the top, as there will always be plenty of consumers with an ear and eye for what is great. After all, being a producer does not prevent me from consuming: rather, I think it makes me a more thoughtful, engaged consumer.

Thanks to David Dworsky and Victor Köhler for producing such an entertaining and thought-provoking piece which will hopefully lead to a lot of interesting conversations within education.

I’ve been a committed believer of climate change for at least 10 years, but I have to admit that in the last few years I have started to have my doubts. The reading that fixed my mind in the first place (The Weather Makers, Boiling Point, etc) has diminished in my memory, the movement seemed beset by scientific scandal, and there seems to be a fog of FUD obscuring the issue. This video provided a timely reminder of the urgent need for action if we are to avoid destroying ourselves and huge parts of the world around us. It is important to focus on the message provided by the science, and in the strength of the scientific method, which is, after all, one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal.

Joseph Kony, head of Uganda’s LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), is responsible for the abduction, sexual enslavement, multilation and militarisation of thousands of African children. Although he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, he remains essentially invisible to the world’s media, governments and armed forces. Kony2012 is a massive online and real-world campaign to push for the capture and prosecution of Joseph Kony this year. Watch this video, share it, and take action.

My current thinking is to bring this to my students in the hope that they will be inspired to take action.

Edit 09/03/2012: it seems like this story is taking the world by storm. When I watched the video it had 40,000 views: two days later the figure had jumped to 49,000,000 and within the last three hours it has accrued a further 3,000,000. This really attests to the power of social media, although of course there are years of grassroots campaigning behind this seemingly spontaneous combustion. I guess Malcom Gladwell’s “tipping point” should be invoked here. As is to be expected, a huge number of critics have surfaced regarding all manner of issues to do with the operation and methodology of Invisible Children. It is nice to read a level headed response to these, and whilst they need to be acknowledged and dealt with, let’s not lose sight of the fact that this movement shows that a huge swathe of humanity are willing to stand up for their less fortunate brethren. I think the critics need to take a good hard look at themselves and ask if their negativity is due to a lack of personal success in this very same sphere.

Ericsson, having been partly consumed by Sony, are no longer the mobile handset powerhouse they once were. However, they are still a force within other areas of the telecommunications industry, and as the video below shows, seem to have developed a powerful understanding of what high technology is doing to us as a species:

As inherently narcissistic creatures, we often believe that we are the summit of human evolution and achievement. Obsessed as we are with our sparkly mobile devices and lightening fast communications networks, we often simply fail to consider where the future might be taking us. This video provides the refreshing perspective that we are merely at a single point in a long journey, and as far as ICT goes, that journey has only just begun. In particular I found meaning in the suggestion that whilst we have all this technology, really we are only just learning what we can do with it and what it might do to us. I find many of my students, having grown up with ubiquitous computing power, simply have no idea that they are in the midst of a serious upheaval in the way that we live, work and play. At the same time, most teachers and parents have no idea either, simply because they are not equipped with a big picture view of technology. Just as with previous revolutions, be they industrial or political, we have unleashed an unstoppable force that is going to drag us kicking and screaming into a brave new world.

On a final note, comparing the video above with the one below (from a younger Ericsson) provides an interesting porthole into change over a short period of time. We see evolution in action, not only in the thinking at Ericson but also in our collective ability to comprehend and articulate what is happening to us.

Despite the fact that sarcasm is often held to be the lowest form of wit, a mockumentary can be a great way to introduce students to a topic. This beautifully crafted video gives plastic bags the full nature documentary treatment, and in doing so provides a humorous way for students to approach a very serious topic. For environmental leaders, this can provide a great jumping-off point for school-based action. From a Media Studies perspective, it also provides a way for students to think critically about the distinction between content and presentation. This can lead to discussions on the production of persuasive, emotive content that is not necessarily grounded in truth (such as propaganda).

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.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMqM13EUSKw

Each of us has our own understanding of the laws of physics. These beliefs are formed through personal experience (falling out of a tree), classroom education (an apple falls out of a tree) and much more. My own experience has taught me that the way we experience physics everyday is not the whole story, it is simply the way things are under “normal conditions”: change these conditions and everything can change. In relation to this, most people would say that golf balls are solid objects. However, as shown in this brief clip, fire one hard enough at another solid object, and it starts to display some very liquid properties. In real-time this deformation would be too quick to see, giving a truly educational example of the gulf that exists between our perception and reality.

Interestingly, as an avid golfer I have seen photos of golf balls deforming on impact, but the extent of the deformation shown here really took me by surprise. I would guess that the speed of impact is significantly higher than the 160km/h that good golfers can achieve