bronwen clune

Last week we had some students from TAFE drop in to the Silicon Beach House to chat about what we have set up here and working in the web industry as a career option.

The students are part of the Gaining Access to Employment and Training project, which is trialling a new learning methodology called Heutagogy to explore innovative ways that students can use new technologies in an educational setting.

Harriet Wakelam told me the the project came out of an argument over whether or not Gen Y kids were ‘digital natives’ a la Mark Prensky, and therefore able to instinctively use technology to learn vs, they use technology instinctively for entertainment/communication, but do not know how to use it for learning/do not want to use it for learning.

Heutagogy is the process of allowing learners to decide what they want to learn, how they want to learn it and when they want to learn it. It enables the students to become responsible for their own learning. The project aims to use Web 2.0 technologies to engage and motivate the students and then mentor and support them while they complete a project based outcome.

The students all shared a bit of their background with us, most of whom had become disengaged with a traditional classroom setting.

It’s great to see the support for these sorts of projects and the students I spoke to had really enjoyed the experience with most now realising what they wanted to go on and do. I had no idea anyone in education was prepared to take these sorts of risks - big kudos to the people involved in setting the project up.

It was a reminder to me about how much I love what I’m doing and I think we may have even convinced one of the students that this could be his area of interest. Actually, in fairness I think it was Myles who did that with his live coding session.

Better still I learnt something. It occurred to me by it’s very nature being a founder of a web 2.0 start-up means I am learning based on the principals of Heutagogy. It’s certainly self-determined learning.

I’ve been reading everyone’s comments and coverage on Podcamp Perth and it’s great to see so much interest from around Australia and even from Boston. I’m hoping to hookup with Jeff Pulver some time in the next few days to talk about Podcamp, as he’s invited me to be a guest on Pulver TV.

Mostly I’ve spent the last few days rethinking a lot of things - and I’m not the only one. Cameron Reilly made some good points in his Podcamp post-mortem:

Whenever we get together at events like Podcamp or MODM, whilst there is a certain level of geek community bonding and a few impassioned conversations, that there is a general lack of BIG IDEAS. I’m including myself in this by the way. I come away from these events feeling slightly hollow, like a great opportunity has been missed.

It seems a few of us retreated into our geek pods to ask ourselves “can we make a difference?” Can we put our geek powers to good and extend them beyond the geek-to-geek community to make “the world a better place”.

Thing is, I think it’s easy to take what we know for granted and what we’ve learnt, while we look for the next BIG IDEA.

The best write up I’ve seen of Podcamp to date is on a basic WordPress blog, with no “about page”, from a guy (from his writing I think I can place him) for whom all these ideas were relatively new. I think his words speak for themselves so here they are, but overall to me it’s what made Podcamp wort it. BIG IDEAS or not:

Late, headed for the back. Regretted seating choice, which was directly behind a behind - a grotesquely big one - belonging to an obese geek whose pants had slipped way too far down as he leaned forward. Not much of a sight so soon after breakfast.

The speaker was Cameron Riley (see thepodcastnetwork.com), whose topic was “Is Podcasting Dead”? It was only recently born, as far as I knew.

Charismatic speaker with tendencies toward megalomania, his stated aim being to develop an alternative global media empire. Claims the world is run by “200 rich white men”. Sounds plausible. Claims mainstream media hates the web because they can’t control it, and are forfeiting power and influence to bloggers, podcasters, etc. YES! (I inwardly punch the air).

As an aside here – sorry, can’t resist - I am in love with the Net because it is a great leveller, and in being that, is ultimately subversive. There is a bloodless revolution underway that many are not yet even aware of.

What do I mean by “revolution”? Basically, a profound shift in power - and finally, into the hands of The People. Privilege, power and big bucks mean fuck all on the web. The mainstream media, for example, pours millions into establishing a web presence, but they can be outplayed by some blogger in a grungy apartment somewhere in Nowheresville who has no influential contacts, no journalism quals, no big buck backing. Cameron pointed out that some of the biggest political stories in the US in recent times have been broken by bloggers, leaving the mainstream media choking in their dust.

All this from someone who asks:

And how come I’d never heard of terms like “meme”, never heard of Sitemeter, never used Google Analytics in assessing my blog traffic? What the screaming fuck is Twitter? Photobucket?

Check out the full post here.

Thanks to Nick Hodge for the photo. You can see all the photos at PodcampPerth07 Flickr pool as well.

Lastly, a huge thanks to everyone for making Podcamp such a great experience. Looking forward to the next one.