How to do it and do it right

Serendipity is a wonderful thing – I am curious – sometimes too curious for my own good but today I had a few things happen that gave me an insight into the future of education and I’d like to share them with you. The first is an interview I did with an old friend, Alfie Dennan of Moblog.

He runs through how Moblog is used in Education in the film and we did talk further later about how effective Moblog is in schools. He even talked about the genesis of the business where he got together with his co-founder to solve a problem of getting data to a phone wirelessly but what intrigued me even more was his use of Moblog and other new API technologies to bind together community involvement to tell stories to change the way people do things. A culture shift in other words towards using social media and digital tech to effect change and build learning and awareness and all done within an ethical framework. Sound familiar – yes some core curriculum for the new digital literacies there I think and Alfie is a fine example of how to do it. I thoroughly endorse Moblog – I’ve been using it to put photos on the web for almost five years now from my phone.

Ethical use of Social Media

But now we come to the interesting part. We then talked about his campaign that used Moblog and its community and outside observers and interested parties to spread the word about XDRTB – an insidious disease but a mouthful to remember. He talks about the creative process that went into the campaign and I recommend you read about the genesis of the whole thing here. What is fascinating about this interview from an educational viewpoint is it is a case study in innovation. How ideas coalesce in someone’s mind to bind together a learning community for the common good. Watch the film and see how the idea evolved – it is a rare case study of how someone uses personal insight and creativity to work up a really engaging idea that binds together people in a common cause. It says more about the uses of Moblog than any dry demonstration of functionality could do – ever. And it’s inspirational.

What is fascinating about it is the way Alfie worked out how to mashup Google Maps aggregated map pin feature, Moblog and an entire community of very technically savvy people to tell a story through the medium of a low level ARG. It’s also for an ethical cause and I think it is one of many digital narratives that are going to be emerging soon. As you watch the film remember it was the back end community that made this story possible. Some people used highly creative ways to find the objects hidden in London and the ways they gave out and found the clues using GPS phones, photos, Second Life and even a fake number station is quite incredible. Here are a group of people who are highly technically literate contributing and collaborating in something more than just a game. At the end of the interview he also talked about the process o...