Hello world (or Uop)!
I will make a conscious effort to make regular contributions to this blog as I haven’t been very good in the past and I do think they are an excellent tool for disseminating information and sharing resources.
I attended the ALT-C conference in Manchester last week with the rest of the Learning Technologies Team and have posted up my thoughts.
http://uoptel.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/alt-c-2009/
I am currently really excited about the power of web 2.0 and its associated media such as YouTube. There are a couple of videos that really capture that there is in fact hope for the human race.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 Free Hugs Campaign
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7a9xCIAdDU&feature=fvw One World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-BzXpOch-E&feature=channel Full video of The message – one world
If you take the words Human and Unity, then take the U and N out of unity (because U are Needed to make this work) what are you left with??? HUMANITY. Let’s all work on that.
Marshall Mcluhan was an educator and social reformer whose quotes are erudite, and always relevant. One of his quotes as follows “Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either”. Therefore, maybe we should be open minded about using social networking and sites such as YouTube as tools for education, sharing and utilising collective knowlege and building open communities of Practice (Wenger, 1998).