RSC-MP3 is a monthly audio podcast highlighting some Higher Education focused e-learning news, interviews and resources brought to you by Kevin Brace (JISC RSC West Midlands) and Martin Hawksey (JISC RSC Scotland North and East). As ever we have summarised links to the various topics we discuss and indicate the timestamps so you can jump straight to our insightful repertoire. You can listen to this podcast on your computer, or when “on the move” by adding it to your ipod playlist. Here is an archive of our recordings, which is also available on iTunes.

“Technological convergence – changing the way we create, consume, learn and interact with each other”

This month Martin responds to a listener request and discusses Google’s latest social feature Buzz. Buzz has been designed to make sharing easier, linking to Google other services including YouTube and Reader as well as third party networks like Twitter and Facebook. We conclude that whilst Buzz is currently of limited benefit to the majority of educationalists it is another example of how the interlinking of separate communication and media streams has the potential to benefit formal and informal learning, technological convergence ‘changing the way we create, consume, learn and interact with each other’. An example of this convergence is outlined in Martin’s recent work which allows twitter discussions made during television broadcasts to be replayed as subtitles in BBC iPlayer downloads.

Aspects of ‘convergence’ are further highlighted by Kevin has he discusses his months blog posts which includes his reflections on the recent Learning Technologies Conference and the JISC Business and Community Engagement programme. In particular Kevin highlights the growing importance of both informal and “rapid e-learning”, discussing some of the tools which can be used to facilitate and measure its impact as well as highlighting some effective practice case studies.

Kevin also highlights JISC’s Business and Community Engagement programme which is “designed to support institutions in their strategic management of relationships … in order to deliver services which benefit the economy and society”. This programme is a response to the Governments desire to enhance knowledge transfer/exchange and Kevin discusses some examples of this happening locally in the West Midlands and nationally. This also links to Kevin’s interview with Ian Hart who is Head of Schools and Colleges Partnerships at University of Wolverhampton. Click here for the interview with Ian Hart.

HE Update February 2010

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Duration: 36 minutes

Size: 34 MB

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Our blogs

Gabber – Kevin’s blog

MASHe – Martin’s blog

Links from Martin’s subjects: Timestamps represented as [minutes:seconds]

Google Buzz – another Web 2.0 service [1:30]

Offical Google statement on Buzz [1:30]

Orkut, Google’s first social networking tool [2:00]

Friendfeed, share your digital stuff  [2:45]

Robert Scoble’s (Scobleizer blog), article on Buzz [3:15]

bloglines, A web-based personal news aggregator [3:30]

What is an RSS feed? or Commoncraft: RSS in plain english [5:30]

Google (RSS) Reader [6:00]

MASHe Festive fun: Auto tweeting your Google Reader shared items using Yahoo Pipes and twitterfeed [6:10]

Google Maps [7:00]

Geotagging – how to [7:15]

Whats is Geotagging

MS Bing maps [11:00]

TED talks video on Bing Maps – stunning!

Google Apps’ for education [7:45]

Kevin’s netvibes personal (web based) aggregator [8:45]

What is pagecasting? [9:00]

Professor Michael Wesch’s course pagecast [9:15]

Personal Learning Environments (PLE) – what is a PLE? [9:45]

What is push technology? [10:30]

Google Alerts

Martin’s BBC iplayer + twitter subtitle mash(e)up [12:00]

Dr Tony Hirst – Open University Lecturer [12:15]

The Virtual Revolution TV program supporting website [12:30]

What is a twitter hash tag? [...]