HelloSpiders

Homebase blog for a group of sites updated by Will Pollard. The hope is to work out how they link together so people can find the bits of interest.

Tuesday, February 06, 2024

15 minute STEAM Village

 These notes are a basis for tweets with clips of the route. there may be other 15 minute STEAM villages, This one is in central Exeter.


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15 minute STEAM Village


Last week on Drama Show I left for a visit to Tech Exeter breakfast at Innovation Hub. Both trips there and back were under 15 minutes so the timing scope is a possible space.


BETT at ExCEL had a STEM Village based on Micro BIT. But the STEAM Village is gone ( Arts into Science Technology Engineering and Maths ) . Related terms? - Creative Economy as part of Innovation . 


Tech Exeter featured a music discovery project - DISCO - itsdisco.com - based on sharing tracks and comments. But no mention of radio. How to connect with Phonic.fm ?


Thursday may be a good day for Creative Industries at the Innovation Hub so another visit possible or exchange via Twitter etc.


Topics could include relating BETT to central Exeter / how to promote performance through radio clips and social media. Phonic is a music channel usually. Not obvious how to represent drama through clips and remix.


This week Janey Godley is at the Northcott. Promo includes many clips online. Study this for clues on method.


There are Adobe courses at the Phoenix. At BETT launch of Express, cloud based AI. What to think?


Micro BIT can be borrowed from the library.


There will be another #EdTech show at ExCEL - Learning Technologies in April. Same time as one on digital universities in Exeter. Can they be compared? Is HR part of HE ?


MOOC scene seems viable for Tech and Business. Can online work for Humanities and Social Science ?


Digital Humanities has a podcast studio. Is there still a role for radio in real space ?

Monday, December 11, 2023

Tweet bundle ahead of next year

 This text became three tweets. Here in blog as one chunk. To be expanded /  repeated next year.


( April exists now as part of the mix )


News is that Times HE will launch a table next year for online universities. Starts in April, close to a conference in Exeter. Same dates Learning Technologies show at ExCEL London. Coursera and Udemy will be there, just about mentioned in blogs about HE and #EdTech. I think the training / company end of online learning is interesting as it shows something is possible. HR has moved courses online /hybrid faster than the campus. ( impression from last year, needs a check ) Meanwhile climate continues, relates to science and storytelling. ExCEL could be under water on certain scenarios. Topic for BETT as well.

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

Six month plan



Starting with reality, main events outside Exeter are BETT in January and Learning Technologies in April, both at ExCEL in London. Issues around online learning can be part of discussion already, including voice computer interface. Climate topics connect to the mural near Phoenix that will appear in the "Spring" , date unknown. 


Moving on the fiction / drama there are stories from Exeter University as part of the mural project. Also stories from Widsith and Deor / Climate Hub.


The Drama Show tries to promote live performance in the same style as music radio / sound samples with edit / remix. this is not well established for drama but may work better with "musical theatre" . Phonic FM is now on DAB in Plymouth were "musical theatre" is studied. 


The Drifters Girl is in Plymouth 13 -17 Feb and there is a CD of London version. In Exeter,  Motown in Jan /Marvin Gaye in Feb. These are performances, there is no "book" but still a good reason to play tracks.


Other examples may appear. Previous talk clips on creative commons and content marketing can be repeated as time allows.


Education moving online raises similar issues. How can a MOOC approach be funded ? How to promote courses that are paid for as part of this ?

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Notes around drama , BETT, Plymouth DAB 2023 / 24

To be expanded later. BETT is edtech show in Jan '24. Phonic FM will be on DAB in Plymouth by the end of '23.


Drama Show ( Thur 8 -10 ) has included stories from Exeter University on climate. Issues around copyright, recording, creative commons determine the scop of what can be broadcast. Links online can be promoted.


BBC clips can be put on YouTube for example STEAM from Today. 

https://youtu.be/bsvczv2rxvY


School in Bournemouth has Arts as well as STEM. Some words


Science  Technology  Engineering  Arts  Maths


from schools this could relate to universiy topics via


Digital Humanities  Communication


drama may be part of communication but not mentioned on this video


https://youtu.be/slJO1DOo7xs?si=8nkPNS8v4SbXJOuR


https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/communications/comms/#course-content


When drama show is available in Plymouth maybe other forms of drama course and performance can be found. Link suggestions welcome. Also for BETT.


https://www.livingstone-aspirations.org/bournemouth-universitys-led-wall-provides-exciting-opportunity-for-livingstone-academy-collaboration-to-benefit-careers-of-students/


PC Pro has reported on how trade shows will soon offer digital locations. Possibly at personal computer price levels. Universities may have studio resources as at Bournemouth. Phonic FM has a reasonable sound studio. Digital Humanities Lab  might be a radio studio in some ways. AI now has possibilities, campus budgets best option over next year or so.


Stephen Heppell is on YouTube with Creative Commons licence so could be replayed


https://youtu.be/FvFE8MI2lvY?si=k3l2ZQE99i5OYqLL


Since lockdown the option for learning to move online has gone away from campus discussion. Everything back to normal for the student experience. So it seemss, comment welcome. Is there a "golden generation" of school students who learnt during lockdown? What options exist for HE ? 


Russell Prue and NetSupport radio may be able to get an interview with Stephen Heppell to ask about what is happening around the time of BETT. 

Tuesday, September 05, 2023

Gutenberg Parenthesis another update

 During a week of holiday I have started to read "The Gutenberg Parenthesis2 by Jeff Jarvis. that is i started abouthalf way through and concentrated on the ideas about what to do next. So I still have only a vague idea of the chronology. I have another sort of holiday, a fortnight, coming up soon so will try to read it from page one to 250 . Depends on the rain, I may be moving about.


This is not just a copy from the storytelling version of Gutenberg Parenthesis as in the MIT video you can find on YouTube. There is reference to cafe society in London as described by Habermas. Jeff Jarvis seems to defend the internet and social media as we experience them today by casting doubt on just how civilised the London cafe was in reality. Some mean speech, low gossip, bad jokes apparently. 


Continues on Thursday in Wild Show. Main problem for the show is how to combine a radio studio and a cafe. Voice is anothertopic that seems stronger in the storytelling video. Audio books may not be doing as well as sometimes claimed but  there is a dynamic there. I am still puzzled about scale and timing. The closing of the parenthesis is a different date for different places.




Monday, August 21, 2023

Three Thursdays in May ( play about #HeavitreeWhipton set in May 2024 )

 Guardian Story 


This story confirms mt impression that the discussion around low traffic areas has gone beyond facts. It assumes the opposition to Low Traffic experiments is all contrived as part of a culture war. There is no space for considering if the issues raised are real. I may try to continue in some ways but more likely I will work on a play, a drama set in May next year. Premise is an independent candidate with a single issue - reversing the traffic experiment in #HeavitreeWhipton . It is a general election as the UK economy not doing well enough for PM to hold on much longer. Fiction maybe, just a device to speed up the action. The drama tension will either be how they are elected or what they do next , talking to Devon County Council. Voters all over #Exeter so cyclists included in the discussion. The candidate will have a panel for academic advice. I am aware of academic comments and claims but they would be easier to respond to as part of fiction. For example traffic studies seems to have no concern with business trading. So if reduced traffic is a challenge for shops this is ignored. Apparently Exeter Council only get involved as planning if there is a change of use. So newsagent and print shop for example would have to cease trading before there was any attention. An election could widen the scope. I will start with episodes of a situation around a bus stop. It is a voice interface bus stop with AI and broadcast. Started as a version of the talking bus stops in the bus station. Now in fiction very advanced and a bit of a gossip. Overhears things.


Below is a bit of background, tweets by Peter Walker. South London Press may be misleading or maybe just covers some reader views as they are experienced. Academics have opinions. Then I get tweets suggesting I have to get an academic to confirm there is extra traffic in North Street as my own observation is quite unlike any other story from lots of other places, apparently according to studies.


By the way, going back to Jeff Jarvis and Guardian Unlimited Talk this is a rare example of a Guardian journalist responding to a reader comment. My concerns are not significant. But maybe in a play some of this can be the basis for dialogue.

Gutenberg Parenthesis update

I have been reading some of the Jeff Jarvis book on the Gutenberg Parenthesis but cannot read it page at a time in the right order as intended. I think most of the history is in the first hundred pages or so then there is a lot of opinion.

Using the index I found Postscript but not Adobe or PDF. Maybe over 500 years ot so the last 50 cannot get much space. As it happens the news today is that John Warnock has died. Frank Romano writes in whattheythink


John and his partner, Charles Geschke, were a great pair. The “standardization” that PDF brought to the printing industry engendered computer-to-plate and digital printing. As well as digital publishing.


But my main problem is thinking back just a couple of decades to when the Guardian had a media section and Jeff Jarvis often contributed. There is a recent talk on YouTube hosted by Alan Rusbridger. I had hoped they could discuss Guardian Unlimited Talk and why it was discontinued one Friday afternoon. I think this decision was contrary to everything Jeff Jarvis was trying to explain. In 2023 we may be closer to the end of the Gutenberg parenthesis but the culture is still very strong. Newspaper print circulation trends to zero but BBC Today on radio still reading them out.


I think the earlier take on the parenthesis as "story telling" makes more sense. I have just watched the MIT video on YouTube and looked at a few papers. Twitter and most social media seem to have gone beyond facts anyway. Maybe the same for some "newspapers". I will first try out forms of fiction / drama and think about journalism some time later when I can concentrate on the book in sequence. 





Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Tweet Your Thesis

  I visited Exeter campus yesteday and will come back to EduExe later. Some of the talks will be availabe as podcasts so I will link then.


I also saw posters for recent thesis projects. There is a #TweetYourThesis tag for Twitter . Four have interesting links that turned up. Pankhuri Singh explores modern taks on Shakespeare. She follows @CEMSexeter where I found an interview on Radio Somerset - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0fjzp1m . I am interested in Shakespeare versions as I will be looking at the Gutenberg Parenthesis during the drama show on Phonic FM over the next few weeks. More later.  Search on blended learning found this but I am no sure it is the same author. https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/11/5/207 . Antika Emyaem has research on corporate museums but on Twitter is found with @flipthemedia "I am a flip camera" . University of Washington Department of Communication hasa video on YouTube from 11 years ago  https://youtu.be/mcwN_PNkNzw . Latifah Almughayribi looks at influencers and social marketing. There is a PDF of a previous poster www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/doctoralcollege/researcherdevelopment/posterentries2019/Latifah_Almughayribi_Poster_Entry.pdf


I will mention some of this on the We Don't Know show tomorrow. The posters are on display most ofthe week. Links online continue.