Queen Street this week

This is notes around radio shows and a talk by John Walter on Saturday. This post too long for Twitter but there will be versions as myself - @will789gb -and the We Don't Know show - @wenotno  .  Also Facebook page for the Wild Show.

There is no We Don't Know Show this week, it alternates with Cathy Towers. But we will meet tomorrow and record something for next week. The Wild Show is every week. Both 10 - 12 in the morning.

On both shows we have looked at a route around the RAMM museum and the Phoenix arts centre. John Walter has work in both. There could be a circle or block route but how to guide it? Photo, sound, augmented reality?

Also on Thursday the Drama Show - 8 - 10 . @PhonicFM . There is a play "Crossing Queen Street" based on Jon Mahy views last year. I am thinking of my own version to include the new student accommodation built on Harlequins site. Jon has a negative response to the flower containers. I am disturbed by the new buildings such as the Depot. I may need another route to get to the Guildhall. 

Cafe 55 should be open. How to get there?

Saturday John Walter talk at Phoenix. Questions may include open access / remix of art content. Has it gone too far?

#CD Walk in Kendal update

I have now found several of the CDs I bought from Kendal Library a couple of years ago. The Sound of Blackness, a new Jack Swing compilation, Beyonce and Jay Z. They have some stickers for Cumbria Libraries. Dates are a bit vague in my mind but there is a clear sequence. A gradual sale of CDs ollowed by a decision to cease stocking them. I only found out about this in december so that is the date for an event.

There are also four CDs I bought in Scope. The library gave the remaining stock to a charity shop, I don't know which one. So far I have listened to Cher and a bit of Sting on lute. Two are for Jon Mahy to comment on, We Don't Know tomorrow.

Also I will try to talk to people on the next show - The Lost Chord .  They have been in a version based on library stock , then a charity shop. So I will find out more.

I am still thinking about how to relate the later trends around learning. It appears not much is happening about online at this time but there were phases like that with the major record labels and the critique of online sound quality. More detail later.

Class Central and MOOC scene

Ahead of the Drama Show tomorrow I am catching up on the reality of MOOC situation via Class Central. My plays about a #CDWalk and the ruins of the Fortress University continue but reality is part of this. The method of #CDWalk is to take an actual conversation in Exeter for example and then work out some verbatim theatre later. How to compare the move of learning online with the switch to streaming for music? The event over Xmas has been a visit to the library in Kendal. I am not sure when this happened but they no longer lend out CDs. They went to a charity shop. More on this later.

The MOOC reports from Class Central show there is a viable system already existing on a global basis. It has moved into more vocational subjects than when the MOOCs started. Also there are courses from companies , not just universities. So UK universities may continue to keep some distance. The campus will continue as part of a hybrid mode and it is hard to identify much of a shift at this time. Things seem to be going back to normal. But I will explore the discussion that Class Central is working on.

They now support "cohorts" - groups of people who can support each other around a course. This now happens less as courses are repeated more often, less of a mass experience. Class Central also curates lists of options that are still free. These include some from LinkedIn Learning and Google as well as Harvard. There are 800 free courses on Digital Marketing. I will have a look at these over the next year. The Drama Show sometimes has clips or samples of future live performance. There is not yet much established theory on how this can work. But it probably works ok somewhere on the planet.

The stats for 2021 show continued growth in users for MOOC platforms. Also Swayam in India has more users now than Futurelearn from UK. This may be because of governmnet support. In UK the government seems more concerned about culture wars than developing HE policy. I may well be wrong about this. Links welcome to anything about online learning.