My Boy Ben

I think that many schools miss the point about how social media can be leveraged in education. I recently read:

“Social media is a fast, free and easy way of reaching the parents, teachers, students and staff members in your community…”

Correct, but oh so wrong!

Social media is not a tool simply for communicating with the school community. I think that communicating with the community is a by-product of using social media for education. (And it is really really easy and just needs a process and allocated responsibilities and prioritised usage over other ‘normal’ channels).

If the tool does not add any direct value to how kids learn then everything else is a waste. Simply a duplication of processes that work fine right now and another way to bombard people (parents and kids) with more information.

Kids at shool should be using social media to:
- Invent stuff together (yammer)
- Collaborate on school projects (joint editing of documents)
- Store and share knowledge (wikis, social bookmarking)
- Engage in creative endeavours (games)
- Do more work (better note taking and sharing)
- Learn in better ways (online mind maps)
- Remember things (note taking iPhone apps)
- Plan - their lives and homework
- To set targets and get rewards from peers (similar to organisational mangement systems)
- Share knowledge about things they do outside of school with people from school and learn from it (online photos, trip planners, diaries and videos etc etc)

Plus communicate with parents and friends. But that is already done quite well. I believe teaching can be dramatically improved by applying social media tools in ways that leverage their capabilities to improve learning, not just for more communication!

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Did you see Avatar in 3D?

What captured your attention?





I recently discovered an academic paper nominated for the Tobii EyeTrackAwards (PDF) about Stereographic (3D) eye tracking compared to regular 2D.  The Finnish (Nokia Research Centre) and Japanese researchers used a Tobii X120 eye tracker to track a large Hyundai Stereoscopic display.





How has 3D changed cinematography?

I’m sure James Cameron considered that:

• 2D viewers tend to look at the actors and the significance of the actors start at the beginning of a shot, as the eyes of the viewer focus almost immediately to them.
• 3D viewers’ gaze is more widely distributed. For example, complex 3D structures and structures nearer than the actor captured the interest and eye movements of the participants.

The way that this type of information is generally discovered by movie makers, is to ask viewers to describe their experiences. However, the full experience can not ever be completely described as some things are not fully accessible to conscious thought. This is where eye tracking comes in.  It allows us to see what people focus on the screen immediately, although it may not be processed consciously.



3D (more processing)                                                   2D (less processing)


In a 3D movie people are ‘forced’ to consider more parts of the screen that they normally would. This gives them a richer and more immersive experience.


What do you think?