the forgotten generation?

Amidst all of the heat and light about the learners' experiences of technology, and the almost semi-divine regard for the student voice, I wonder whether the voices of academics are being lost. Even worse, are they being ignored?. I'm not sure that I have evidence that this is the case. However, I just get a sense that we are so very focused on the Google generation and its experiences of Web 2.0 world, that we are in danger of forgetting that their education experiences are mediated by teams of academics. What is more, those academic teams are now having to deal with fragmented and diversifying institutions that work beyond any notional Google generation, to engage differentially in a variety of contexts, for example with SMEs, in providing flexible and work-based learning and foundation degrees, through UCPDs and knowledge incubation. Providing our academic teams with access to networks of people and data with whom they can associate, in order to develop their pedagogic practice, is critical.

Voki - Create your own avatars

Suki forwarded this link to me and I thought I'd create an avatar for myself.
Whilst experimenting I thought of Vincent, our Training and Development Adviser, who had requested a way to capturing real case studies of work place bullying and harassment, perhaps as a videoed voxpop to be used to train and develop staff. However there was always the issue that the video needed to be masked and voice cloaked for obvious reasons. Somehow I think that Voki maybe the answer to Vincent's request. In little over 30 minutes (mainly taken this long to familarise with the interface, otherwise it would probably take half the time) I created an avatar, see below,
I'm sure there will be other scenarios where avatar can be used in a Higher Education environment, any thoughts?(remember to press play):

Bullying and Harassment in the Workplace:

Get a Voki now!

Staff Engagment - show them this!! - Thanks Nick Allsop

Many thanks to Nick for bringing this to our attention. It is just too good to be tucked away, unlinked in the comments. So I've brought it up front, big and bold.

Apart from the creative and technical skills used to create this, the information crammed into this short video is phenomenal and the use of music, video editing and play with words i found had an emotional and motivating effect on me.

This should be used as a resource in any teacher training that we do. If you have not seen it already Enjoy!


[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g]

Too old for networking?

Interesting article I recently came across about a journalist in his middle ages trying to 'social-network'.It's interesting that he finds that he can't make much friends due to his age. For me it certainly dampens the idea of having such a thing for staff at DMU as most of us are past the juvenile ages....or are we?



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