You can see the High Definition video of the launch here. Actual launch at 8:56 mins into the vid.

Wonderful - quite wonderful. The presenters gave me a list of the acronyms associated with the mission here:

http://www.itc.nl/~bakker/nasa.acr.html

and all the Web 2.0 links to do with space are here:

http://arielwaldman.pbwiki.com/space

Enjoy

- the mission goes on for 15 days.

Twitter links

- http://www.twitter.com/SSEndeavour

- http://www.twitter.com/spaceVidcast

Youtube Vidcast channel - http://uk.youtube.com/user/spacevidcast

Wikipedia page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceVidcast

I volunteered to attend and give  feedback to the first strand of this event

"Teaching and learning, with particular attention to personalisation"

at the Thistle Hotel in London today. I have replicated the slide handout we were given about the consultation process and then documented some of  the discussions that went on in text, picture  and audio formats using Web 2.0 collaborative tools - please annotate and comment on my observations.

There are 8 strands in all - I am only reporting back for event number 1 emboldened :

1    5 November 2008    10am-4pm    Teaching and learning, with particular attention to personalisation

2    6 November 2008      Assessment for learning and the use of performance data for pupil tracking

3    11 November 2008    Subject knowledge for teaching

4    12 November 2008    Curriculum and curriculum development, literacy, numeracy, 14-19 developments and ICT

5    13 November 2008    How children and young people develop and how they learn, and management of their behaviour

6    18 November 2008    Inclusion – special educational needs, English as an additional language

7    19 November 2008    Leadership and management, especially for subjects or curriculum areas

8    20 November 2008    Working with others in and beyond the classroom – the school workforce and the children’s workforce, and working with parents and carers

Where possible I have rerepresented diagrams in the powerpoint to avoid copyright issues and also to clarify feedback in diagrammatic form. All content is copyright TDA and I fully acknowledge them as the primary source.

Masters in Teaching and Learning : The Aim

Slide from TDA consultation rerepresented for explanation. This is the TDA's main aim on this .

So this was the first slide (rerepresented to avoid copyright issues) that we were presented with. It's a broad brush view of the TDA aim. It's obviously transformative.

The next slide is what was called the "snail diagram":

Key factors ensuring transformation model.

This diagram outlines the process whereby this particular strand can be implemented and consultation was asked for around this as a basis for the model being rolled out.

Enablement

Improved teacher quality

Timetable of consultation prior to rollout

Three phases and in more detail each phase -

Phase 2 in more detail

Phase 3 in more detail:

We were then given a separate sheet clarifying the starting point of the TDA which I have also replicated below - then I will outline further context and the day:

Timescale of rollout - very tight!

I had notes on this saying 2009 all NQTs in North West - Newly apointed NQTs. The outcomes from the consultation will be to develop:

"a national framework for MTL that can be used by providers of MTL to develop the programme and that is tight enough to gain national consistency, but flexible enough to develop a programme to meet local needs. The TDA will work with a range of national  expertsto develop this framework, using the outcomes from consultation as a starting point. Once this framework has been reviewed by social partners and representatives from schools, HEIs and local authorities, it will be used as a basis for those providing MTL, for roll out from September 2009, to develop their MTL programmes."

Our first task was to :

Develop an example of a real-life classroom or department scenario that an MTL participant needs to engage with in order to broaden and embed professional knowledge skills and understanding.

- How would coverage of 'teaching and learning' as a content area thread through this scenario?

- How should the scenario draw upon any of the other content areas? 

I took a mobile phone shot of our outcomes and annotated it on flickr - just click on the picture to take you to the original and roll over the boxes.

I am not going to into any more immense detail - we had a look at Core Professional Standards - M level descriptors  and M Level descriptors and Core Professional Standards and tried to square them. We wondered why we were being asked to do this and we guessed it might tie into money interms of professional development linked to the qualification - and so there was some mapping going on.

Here's our and another table's feedback at our stab at that with quick feedback that I recorded on the Mac.

Click for audio recording here 

Things that came up throughout the day:

Role of Coaches?

Possible dumbing down of standards - constant referral to competencies - worry by HEI over this as opposed to proper academic rigor.

HEI's on our table were concerned about lack of time for reading and writing and higher order reflection informing practice.

When best in the cycle of NQT to do the more intensive stuff. Basically you need to get established to before you can get a focus for a masters.

Possible conflict between schol Prof Dev and Masters coaches - you may find something extremely useful from study but not being seen to get your game together in terms of requirements in prof dev.

So chinese walls solution perhaps?

I was concerned there seemed to be a lack of communications infrastructure - suggested solutions but HEIs seemed to think there students should remain within their portals but admitted their students used social media extra murally :). I outlined a distributed model - don't really think people understood what I was talking about.

From my viewpoint.

A lot of video and new social media web 2.0 apps could solve the problem of time for reflection and collabortion. A lot of HEIs seemed resistant to this idea, some of them seemed to think I was talking about a completely virtual environment that would replace face to face meetings - I had to explain that they would augment rather than replace. I was surprised not to see any JISC members there.

Unfortunately the tenders have already gone out so this aspect could not be included in any spec - and that, in my estimation is not an ideal situation.

However  if collaboration is a major strand people are going to have to build quick solutions because the timeframe for this and the scope and scalability have implications obviously for schools if all NQTs are to get this opportunity. So my question would be how do you scale this up without dumbing down - I really do think a Web 2.0 Personal Learning Environment would be a solution if implemented otherwise I think people will have missed the boat on this one - that is a personal view but I'm willing to take odds on that there will be problems of scalability and implementation further down the line if this is not to become burdensome...

We did discuss the possibility of social networks to enable tutors or students to come together and find like minded peers with similar situations or problems but I really do not think people quite understood this concept...the senior manager in a school on table did though and has a localised solution in his school.

And that is my feedback on the day - the food was good too...

I was looking for some way of introducing dynamic content into Second Life using Flickr and Twitter and other video services in some sort of mashup. It was then I came across Chris Smith's blog on Media Players in Second Life.  And because of that I met Sylvio Runo inworld who runs the NHC Media Center test area. After a quick demo I immediately bought the suite of Media Players he has made.

These play YouTube videos that link and autoupdate by HTML, PHP, ASP. It plays MP4, MOV, 3GP, and a lot more file types;  also images such as JPG, BMP, GIF and more. There are also audio options (MP3, WAV, MPA,). It also has a search function that will play the video results of a key word search and load videos into a cache system to play later as well - impressive. I hadn't realised that this would be so powerful a device to make the viewing of media so easy inworld. It's very robust and works very efficiently. But that wasn't the Eureka moment.

Earlier in the day I had purchased a little app called Flickr2SL that plays Flickr streams and groups. This is nothing new Matt Biddulph and Kisa Naumova  did much more dynamic stuff a couple of years back.

Flickr2SL is a very limited little app that pulls in content from the Flickr site and also displays the results for users who have open permissions on their content. But when messing around with both apps' players and their channels I noticed that - well you'll have to look at the video to see what happened next...

And this got me to thinking - that it will soon be quite possible to parse media XML RSS feeds dynamically on the fly into a video player using key words and parameters. So if people around the world decide to video, twitter or twitter pic a field trip or event - the results can be aggregated and will come streaming into Second Life and for a fraction of the cost of traditional outside broadcast media if you use services like the new Mogulus Pro Web site for example. You should also be able to aggregate videos taken on handhelds by suggesting a keyword and away you go - ubiquity of viewpoint and debate at events. Take the concepts as far as you want.

You can have a 2 way, real time, live auditorium. A live remote TV station with several channels pushing in and out of SL. The media and activites will join and augment via Mashups like this. Inworld participants can push out content through Machinima - the scope of possibilities is endless. You will also have dynamic search. You could track someone videoing live in the real world for instance by entering co-ordinates if they had an always on wearable cam; panopticon or gamers' heaven? This is very, very exciting.

I IM'd Sylvio Runo inworld to show him the chance interaction and he was kind enough to pop in and have a look. But he was unimpressed and told me of a few dynamic features coming to his new player in a few weeks' time which I will look forward to.

With the NHC players I like being able to load a URL straight in - I'd like it even better if I could load and search a video feed based around users' aggregated content. I can't wait for that to happen, but for now, look at the vids in this blog to get a flavour of what these players can do.

Oh and yes the Beatles quote was modded - this is Second Life you know!

That's one of the bullet points on Martin Weller's excellent presentation on Twitter - just about says it all really. Lot's of interesting asides and a very perceptive analysis of the tool - I notice he mentions Clay Shirkey's HCE as well.

The Outside the Wire informal learning patterns underwritten by these technologies and apps - especially mobile, personalised and ubiquitous devices are changing the culture of learning from outside. They aren't even a Trojan Horse they're a whole new city of Troy.

And there it was - Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne - large as life and twice as small, pinned to the wall in St Anne's Court. Wonderful. The sun came out in my heart.

 Click on the pic for the My Maps location and once there click for a description of the painting in the National Gallery.

When you walk into the Learn 4 Life offices - if you have your audio set to on in the toolbar you will automatically be greeted with the latest podcast streamed out to you on demand. Here's a screenshot from one of the Whiteboard slides.

If you click on your video button you'll see a video on the wall. 

There is also a powerpoint of all our services to date on the large whiteboard and that's just for starters.

Ideally I would now love to be able to live stream into and out of Second Life but that may take a little more doing :) But it should be doable.

Not that it all stops here - Second Life is a world in which perpetual innovation is going on but for the moment I think I need a little lie down. 

Unfortunately I can't as I'm off filming content today in the real world and tomorrow and in post-edit all weekend.  

If you are 'in-world' pop by and see how it all works and leave me a note.

The slurl to telport you in is here - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20UK/224, 127, 21

Imagine you are in a virtual world. Imagine that in that virtual world there is a virtual island. Imagine on that virtual island (one of a whole archipelago of virtual islands) there is a virtual ICT library - one of many specialist libraries. Now imagine that you are walking around and browsing that virtual ICT library (built by a real Art and Design expert from a real Leeds artschool in the UK but with a SL digital counterpart called called AngryBeth Shortbred - who is involved with a SL / Artschool arts collective ). Then suddenly a colleague walks in and you have a discussion about why walls and doors are even needed in a virtual world. At one point he breaks off and asks:

"But have you seen the holodecks?"

He is talking about experiencing mediated reality within virtual reality and instructional design. That sort of thing can do funny things to your head late on a Friday night after a hard week.

But that's exactly what happened to me and I found it to be quite an amazing experience all round - literally. Rezzing in Second Life is when you wait for a picture on the walls or your clothes or any object to come into focus at a higher resolution, depending on how fast your computer, the server and the internet connection is.

So when my in-world colleague, Milosun Czervik, started up a conversation about architecture and environments in this virtual world, it was a natural extension for him to actually show me some of the latest technology going on there. I followed him out of the library area of the island where he took me into a room. Once inside, the experience was not unlike a QuickTime VR movie but we were totally inside this as everything gradually came into focus (rezzing) around us on the 'ceiling', 'walls' and 'floor'. Milosun issued a series of commands and several different environments began to replace the ones before: a beach scene; China; rocks and canyons. Using the camera control features in Second Life I was able to see the whole environment from different perspectives. It was a fairly immersive experience but there was more to come.

We then teleported up to another floor and we went into the second holodeck room and he set this to 'Religious' themes with the result below - one of many:

But this still wasn't the end of the tour. The last teleport and stop was a 3D holo environment where you can interact with the objects in the room and they can be rezzed in different solid (as much as solids can be in a virtual world!) formats.

Milosun showed me his Virtual Monet Exhibition - bear in mind we were tall Avatars, about 7 feet and the scaling might be out for real world comparisons but this has obvious applications for real world field trips, library visits and the like. Milosun told me that not many educators had taken advantage of this yet and my mind immediately jumped back to 1994 when I was one of the first people in this country to make a virtual tour of the British Museum.

After a brief discussion of the wonders of the BM Milosun left me to it but not before giving me the URL of the SLED Picayune blog and on going there I found an excellent article by Jeremy Kemp with the words:

"...the MOST troubling feature of this setting for education is the lack of affordances for reflective learning and asynchronous tools in support of learning communities.

Many class sessions in SL seem to wander into the realm of decorative chat."

I couldn't agree more - this blog post is a reflection on my activity in SL and the chat was very much to a purpose i.e. finding out about new resources and how to evolve a possible pedaogy in the light of these.

If I just wanted to go talk to someone with a costume on then I'd go to a fancy dress party. But each visit I make to this world is full of learning and that's what drives me at the moment.

One of the most fully realised educational Second Life projects in the UK if not the world is the Schome project where a community of teenagers in a virtual place (not school not home) have built their environment from the ground up. Not only the buildings but also the customs. laws and mores. Very exciting stuff and totally innovative. Go and see for yourself! Another home grown UK Second Life education site is Education UK where a whole education community is beginning to thrive.

If you've interested in seeing the session - I recorded it live - it's not a highly edited Machinima but does show what happened. If you have QuickTime professional download it and watch full screen. You can find it here.

So if you are interested in riches other than mineral wealth get yourself over there and have a look.

I am now trying to be extremely focused in where I go and whom I meet in Second Life. I have realised that in a virtual world everything takes just as long to do - sometimes longer - as it does in the Real World, even if you can fly or hover.

With that in mind I was determined to visit the Particles Lab to gather information on where all those lovely nebulous, organic particles that emit or grow from some objects in SL come from and try and backwards engineer a few to see how they work.  

The first thing I encountered on teleporting there was this delightful balloon. Imagine going to a coding class in this world by balloon? This is where SL wins hands down in terms of compelling educational experiences. 

Once there everything was so well laid out - even their aerial map image on Sloog is clarity itself :

Couldn't miss that from the air could you?

But you didn't have to, because once I was there, the signs how to get around were accompanied by bright, translucent irridescent arrows on the ground.

As I walked, bumped, stumbled down the pathway to the tutorial (there must be an awful lot of virtual grazed knees in SL!) I came to the interactive displays at the lab.

There are lots of dynamic objects displaying their various particle properties suspended in mid air with notes about their contents. Click on them to see particle effects and read notes about the code inside them.

I read and kept most of the notes and bought a couple of objects to dissect later. Although I can see myself coming back here often to view the exhibits. When I can envelope myself in smoke on arrival to any social occasion I'll know I've arrived as a SL resident.

And then I left, but not, unfortunately, in a puff of smoke. 

In my case, last night, it involved being caged and rattled around. Not a very pleasant experience. It's a very anti-social activity and more time wasting than anything else. I just teleported out and back again but it happened several times. Ho hum - just like real life several people want to spoil the fun. I was also shot at and ejected from the island. This always seems to happen late at night GMT time so I guess the intruders are coming from the daylight part of the Real World globe...

But it was more than made up for when I had a lesson in particles for two members (Susan and Cerberus) of Education UK.

This was an amazing demo of how to make particles and how they grow - it's a combination of a scripting and weird and wonderful art forms and I was full of awe at the whole process. There is a big art movement  in second life and I am very interested in people constructing and performing mediated installations - more on that later.  I plan to go to the Particle Laboratory to learn a little more in due course. For vid - click on the pic above.

I was trying out the new ventrillo audio client on Education UK

It more or less solves the problem of how to take turns when there is a large group of people wanting to speak because the Linden chat box doesn't show who is saying what to whom. It also has TTS - (text to speech) facilities and the entire Island is mapped for sound. Why is that useful in an environment like this? 

Well - for example, you can set your chat locally to where you are on the Island - in the Foyer; the conference amphitheatre; the Literature Class. And you can set it to Island Wide Speech too - just like in those old episodes of The Prisoner.

In fact the whole of Education UK Isle is being wired for sound and video - it's a very exciting thing to see people build such an environment.

Every time I enter Second Life I learn something new and want to learn more. It's a kind of learning addiction and for someone whose business is just that - it's wonderful. I keep coming across new learning objects and protocols and I am impressed by the standard of construction and how deeply embedded the ICT is. Here I am, a grown man, in his early middle age, wandering around in childlike wonder at the possibilities of the whole place. Many people have a vision of an effective pedagogy for education and how it can be transformed in this place and I admire their courage and innovation. They really are like the early prospectors staking out their claims before the boomtown begins to take off and they have to be admired because, like it or not, this is one part of future learning and as far as I can see, it's in excellent hands.

At the help entry point the Librarians were very friendly and they pointed out that this was one of a chain of library islands.

I am still having to get used to information popup everywhere. Touch an object - you get a note - you can either keep or discard it. I now tend to scan them quickly and then discard unless it's something I need for reference later. I am very soon getting to the point of need a good reference, index retrieval system in my inventory - guess I'll have to sit down and read the Knowledge Base on the Inventory before I'm swamped.

Everywhere I go I am taking snapshots and little movies - kind of lifeblogging in Second Life - I call it Sllogging. 

After this the first thing I did was take the tour on an automated tour hoverbot. I noticed there was an ICT in Education Library so afterwards I headed straight for that.

Sloog is an exceptionally useful tool for navigating around SL. It's a kind of del.icio.us for the world. You can tag a place and see who else has tagged it and look at their other travels looking at their trail of interests to see if they co-incide with yours. 

After a brief walk around - (click for video).

 I came to the free scripts for educators section. (click for video)

As coding stuff for educational use has always been a bit of an interest to me I saw this as a complete treasure trove. I noticed Matt Biddulph's Flickr script from Hackdiary was there. I flicked through the 40 or so scripts on the three screens and copied them into my inventory to explore later. I fancy having a go at trying them out with objects I build. Excellent. It will be a place to explore in some depth later. I also picked up a copy of a couple of periodicals about educational events, people and places in SL.

Just before I went home my new friend Azwaldo Villota IM'd me and showed me his pollster app on the Widgits Wiki.