Inside View from Ireland

When Active Citizens Spark

THE CONTINUED RESISTANCE of traditional managers in a wide cross-section of industries to ignore vibrant online social networking amazes me. At the highest levels of Irish government, the dismissive attitude comes close to incompetent public representation. Some managers, CEOs, and politicians don't think that hyper-connected snappy exchanges count in the matrix of public communications. In fact, they often want to use tax money to block, throttle or censor the avenues used by active citizens online. This is so wrong on some many levels. It's pig-ignorant and an example of professional misconduct to ignore active citizens who express themselves in online social networks.

Three years ago, when I first started poking around on Facebook and skimming through Twitterstreams, I heard the first snide comments about both of those social networks. Two years ago, when Tipperary Institute first started weaving social networking into an accredited creative multimedia degree, I had to defend my choice of networking tools (i.e., Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, Flickr, Google Documents, Last.fm and Blip.fm) to students who were happy to live in a world of irregular e-mail. By mid-2009, only students older than 35 needed convincing about using community zones online. Most of them become avid members of online communities within a few weeks. Today, a third of new students check into their social networks on their phones.

Through Others' Eyes

bernie
Originally uploaded by the boy who loved the moon

THIS IS THE FIRST semester I've started ego alerts because it's one of the ways I've discovered some of the most difficult students to locate. We have an effective e-learning system powered by Moodle, an easy-peasy LDAP log-in screen to avail a dashboard to students, free wifi through the campus and good craic in smoking corners and blue couches. But there remains 10% of students who are difficult to contact because of one snag or another. It's handy to look for myself and discover people who have viable online identities on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr with avenues I can use to contact them. I'm doing that on Flickr and Facebook now by internal mail s systems on those sites. With future classes, I'm going to make new students talk about me by name on social networks because it's now proving to be one of the most reliable ways of welcoming people into creative multimedia spaces.

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In Search of Third Level Electives

APPROACHING MY TENTH YEAR inside third level Irish education, now working down the road from the sign at left, I've seen some administrative practises that make me wonder. Above all else, I wonder why Irish universities and institutes of technology are not required to permit students to fulfill graduate requirements with a small sampling of accredited electives earned outside of their own campus locations. If the Higher Education Training and Awards Council laid down this idea as best practise, we would could possibly avoid the current logjam of applicants to want to earn a qualification in renewable energy. At the moment, students apply for enrolment in one place but if the course is full, they wait on a list. As we know from our frontline position at Tipperary Institute, programmes for renewable energy are fully subscribed. The Tipperary Institute programme is Ireland's longest-running (seven years now) and people are wait-listed. There are ways to solve the waiting list but from a higher level position there should be a way for the system to accommodate the desire of a student to upskill or reskill by starting the programme in one area and finishing it in another. This is normal practise throughout the United States. For up to two years, college and university students can often spend half of their timetables on elective courses that are approved by their academic advisors. In Ireland, specific restrictions exist that force students to return for an entire year when they fail a single module. I have never understood this restriction because it seems to fly in the face of the European model of ensuring students can finish a degree in as short as three years.

Start with Teachers Collaborating

IRELAND LOOKS SET TO abandon the most most critical paradigm to Irish economic success as a December 2009 budget imposes several constraints on teacher training and schools' IT infrastructure. It's as though the Department of Education does not believe world-class ICT provides an essential building block for the delivery of education services. A quality system of education believes that teachers need to be educated on the clever use of technology that students now carry in their backpacks. Some teachers have never stepped up from a clamshell phone, never seeing the need to use a phone for more than talking or texting. To keep phones at bay, some schools force them to hibernate in power-off modes when they could be used as low-cost access points to e-learning materials. When I suggest phones or personal netbooks deserve to be incorporated into a primary schools's ICT strategy I often get confined to the corner of discussions by principals who believe computers belong locked in separate rooms, scheduled when they're updated with the latest anti-virus software. That's so wrong--just as it's wrong to assume that the best way to use State-funded computer assets is to lock them down for most of the year in separate rooms. The world has changed--the canteen is the computer lab now (see above).

Handheld Learning Starts at Two

HANDHELD LEARNING STARTS before training wheels fit onto our toddler's bicycle and we're using a three-year old Nokia E90 with Peppa Pig playing on its screen. After a few lessons, Mia figured out how to select, start, stop, and pause video clips by the way their thumbnails appeared on the phone. She validated part of the handheld learning experience by showing the importance of good cover art. We ported Peppa Pig and friends to the Nokia E90 using DVD Fab (version 6 as recommended by Barry Doyle) along with a little help from Xilisoft Video Converter. The result: a handheld video player that works SIM-free and in flight mode (no inadvertent calls to emergency services). The five-times-dropped-on-concrete Nokia E90 has effectively started a new life as a handheld learning device. We'll keep the phone parked in the batmobile's centre console where it can trickle charge itself for the rest of eternity and never enter landfill.

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Get DVD Fab directly from the vendor and avoid spyware sites.

Xilisoft is a top-rated video conversion package. Buy it here.

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Working with Facebook Amish

EVEN THOUGH I WORK in a creative multimedia programme where we teach people how to promote their online profiles, I encounter a half dozen students every academic term who do not want to create a public persona online. I respect those opinions because I grew up among the Amish and I know people who enjoy productive lives while living off the grid. The hesitant students are like Facebook Amish and they don't want to be prodded by invitations, poked by friends, or tagged in someone's collection. All the social networks are making it easy to tag people (see how Flickr is doing it above). Sometimes there are skeletons in closets that people want to keep away from the light of the web, so getting tagged isn't nice. Other times there are issues about getting onto the radar of former colleagues, ex-spouses or bill collectors. I can respect all those concerns. But as a Media Writing lecturer, it means I want an essay written that explains the concerns my hesitant students express about wanting to remain cloaked or invisible online.

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See my first Flickr photo with tagged people.

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Controlling the Overheating

MY LONG-SERVING DELL D620 laptop needs good ventilation coursing underneath if it's to continue running while I render HD video for more than 20 minutes at a time. I have an Akasa stand at home (and a less expensive plastic stand at work) and both can dissipate heat and cool the laptop with two fans underneath. I'm also using a helpful screen from PC Wizard 2009 when I start rendering and if the job takes more than one cup of coffee, I refresh the wizard and ensure the temperature isn't above 200F. From experience, I know I get little warning from my laptop once its processor temperature exceeds 200F. It just shuts down and if I'm not careful, I lose the current video rendering project. I hope to learn more little work-arounds related to editing, producing and syndicating multimedia content from my Media Writing class. There's academic credit in sharing the experiences.

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Facebook as Newsrooms and Support Centre

WHILE CHATTING WITH social entrepreneurs in Dublin, I tested the water concerning the vitality of Facebook as a connector node. I was surprised to discover that fewer than 30% of the people I asked were able to point to the community facilitator that Facebook is proving to be for me. Putting an event onto Facebook gets me more traction among my third level colleagues than any other mechanism. Using Facebook chat gives me more client-facing minutes than telephone conference calls or SMS text tag. Coalescing around themeatic content by creating groups, photosets or video collections just happens naturally. As Dominic McKenna writes in a comment to my blog, "Facebook has taken a whole new meaning for me since joining the Creative Multimedia Course in Tipperary Institute." He cites the connections he has discovered with upperclassmen and graduates. And he's noticed something I've never been able to orchestrate before. "If I'm not sure of an assignment, I can always pick someone's brain on Facebook and it's a great way to show my work and get some feedback on it." This feature alone distributes my teaching load and makes Facebook a welcome adjunct to my teaching resources.

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Sent mail2blog from the upper saloon of the 67 winding towards Pearse Street, Dublin, Ireland.

That's a screenshot of my Facebook connections, scraped in late 2007.

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Third Generation Attention Span

I HAVE AN OBLIGATION to ensure college students read books and that they immerse in the experience. I still believe real immersion happens with paper-based books (first generation textbooks). Even though I really enjoy the convenience and the practicality of a 3G wireless Sony eReader, there's something mentally immersive about holding a perfect bound spline and turning a paper page. And I'm not alone in my belief.

Outvesting in Ireland

A FEW WEEKS AGO, James Corbett (at left in brown) mooted the idea of "outvesting" and today it's in the Business section of the Irish Times. "The Outvesting scheme is using Twitter to help gather €5000, asking 100 people to pledge €50 each to the cause," explains Ciara O'Brien. Two weeks into the idea, there's 5000 euro on the table. "Unlike investors, those who pledge their money expect nothing in return." James told attendees at Limerick OpenCoffee that the outvesting idea was inspired by the iQ Prize, which gives a no-strings-attached €10,000 to an entrepreneur with a good idea. This year, Robin Blandford's Decisions for Heroes web-based rescue team management and analytics software got the pot of money for further development. I hope the outvesting idea keeps on rolling because start-ups need funding channels to keep focused on getting their products ready for market.

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James Corbett announces outvesting and "over 100 pledges" received.

Ciara O'Brien -- "Online campaign seeking €5000 to offer to start-up" in the Irish Times, 16 Oct 09.

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