Derek E. Baird :: Barking Robot

RIAA to Tennessee Schools: Show Us the Money

Wired Magazine is reporting that the State of Tennessee, despite huge budget shortfalls in their public university system, will spend over 9 million dollars of public money to help the RIAA fight music piracy.

"Combating music piracy at Tennessee's public university system is more important than hiring teachers and keeping down tuition costs. Just-signed legislation requires the 222,000-student system to spend an estimated $9.5 million (.pdf) for file sharing "monitoring software," "monitoring hardware" and an additional "recurring cost of $1,575,000 for 21 staff positions and benefits (@75,000 each) to monitor network traffic" of its students...

The law, similar versions of which the Recording Industry Association of America wants throughout the United States, comes as the Tennessee public university system is increasing tuition, laying off teachers and leaving unfilled vacant instructor positions to battle a $43.7 million shortfall."

Earlier this year a UK survey conducted at the University Of Hertfordshire that looked at the music consumption behavior of young people (aged 14-24) found that 63% of students admitted that they download music using P2P file-sharing networks. However, the study also found that:

• The CD is not dead. Even if a legal file-sharing service existed, over 60% say they would continue to buy CDs;

• 80% of current P2P users would be interested in a legal file-sharing service - and they would pay for it too;

• Money spent on live music exceeds that spent on recorded music.

What I find most appalling about this story is that the State of Tennessee is using public money that should be used for faculty, scholarships and other education related expenses to support the bottom line of the music industry. According to Wired Magazine "Using conservative estimates, the piracy measure is equal to the price of about 100 Tennessee professors' wages and benefits."

If the RIAA wants to go after students who download music, they should pay for it--not the people of Tennessee. The RIAA has been suing students for almost 10 years and by and large the strategy has not worked.

The Internet is not going away. It's time for the music industry and RIAA to figure out a way to work with consumers, especially college students, instead of against them.

Related Resources

• 2008 UK Music Rights Survey
• The Highway Girl > Interview with Former Director of RIAA Legal
• Harvard Law Professor Challenges RIAA

Meet the Freshers: College, 21st Century Style

 

Meet the Freshers is a new video series on AOL's popular social networking site Bebo that explores what 21st Century "Freshers" (aka Freshman) are up to during their first semester at college.

The weekly series is hosted by teen publishing tycoon Tom Thurlo and is sponsored by The Student Room (TSR), an UK-based social network "where UK students share opinions and experiences."

So far, most of the students are focused on three things: sex, booze and, well more booze. Watching Meet the Freshers might provide most parents with more information than they really wanted to know or care to remember.

For these Freshers, college life probably isn't much different than it was for their parents. The key difference is that these young adults, unlike their parents, are lifecasting and documenting their adventures on social networking sites like Bebo, Facebook and The Student Room.

Hopefully these Freshers are savvy enough to know that Bebo never forgets.

Related Resources

• Bebo > Meet the Freshers
• Stanford Study Looks at Psychology of Facebook
• Gen Y: Sharing Way Too Much
• Totally Wired: What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online

Web 2.0, Networks & Gen Y

“Putting organisations like that into a network instead of running them as walled hierarchies is a massive step. At the moment it’s only beginning to happen, and that’s just in marketing.

“It’s gotta be another twenty years [until things really start to change]. The people in their twenties now who’ve grown up with computers, they’re the ones who are going to do all this [web 2.0] stuff naturally.”

--Dominic Campbell, via Interactive Know How

Related Resources

• Study Looks At the Psychology of Facebook
• Older Web Users Catching Up
• Social Media Hits Critical Mass

mobileYouth: Research on Gen Y & Mobile Phones

mobileYouth has put together an excellent overview of the key fact and statistics of the youth and mobile market. Whether you're an educator or a marketer, this report provides some valuable insight into how and why Gen Y love their mobile devices.

Related Resources

• Gen Y: Mobile & Ready to Learn
• Mobile Phones & Teens
• Want to Reach Teens? Think Mobile
• Mobile Internet Generation

Watch Out Gossip Girl, Here Comes "Skins"

Geek. Jock. Popular. Outcast.

From the get-go, Hollywood has been fascinated by teen stories of angst, awkwardness, frustration and personal triumph that they experience in the moments lived between the labels. Ever since the early days of the medium, from Leave it to Beaver to My So-Called Life, television has explored what it means for each new generation of kids to be a "modern day" teen.

Beverly Hills 90210 provided American viewers with a slice of life for teens living in the shadows of the entertainment capital. DeGrassi shared the struggles of Canadian teens. And most recently Gossip Girl has given viewers a glimpse inside an exclusive Manhattan prep school.

Now BBC America brings the popular UK series Skins to this side of the pond. Like its predecessors in the genre, the series revolves around the lives of six teens living in Bristol, England.

While the show is a bit racy, especially for American tastes, the dialogue is smart, funny, and very well written. Think more along the lines of Brothers & Sisters, less 90210. But then, real life is messy. And, at times, a bit shocking.

Skins was created by Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain. Perhaps one reason the dialog rings so real is that the series is being written by a talented bunch of twenty somethings who aren't that far removed from the lives of the Bristol teens.

And while most 21st Century parents worry more about what their kids are doing online, perhaps Skins will remind them to also pay attention to what their kids are doing offline. There are still many "real life" pitfalls out there that teens have to learn how to navigate.

Shows like Skins can also serve as a catalyst for parents to discuss with their kids, albeit uncomfortable, some of the heavy issues they may be facing out there in the non-digital world.

BBC America has rolled out a brilliant campaign to spread the gospel of Skins. You can find Skins on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and iTunes. And they have a great site full of good stuff like play lists, glossary (for those of you not attuned to some more of the Brit-centric vocabulary), and character guide.

And oh yeah, remember that quirky kid (Marcus) who followed Hugh Grant all around London in the movie About A Boy? His real name is Nicholas Hoult, he's all grown up and taking on the role of Tony in the series.

Skins premiers August 17th on BBC America.

Related Resources

• BBC America > Skins
• The Secret Online Lives of Teens
• Debunking Online Sexual Predator Myths
• American Teen
• Totally Wired: What Teens & Tweens Are Really Doing Online

Penguin Books: We Tell Stories 6

Penguin Books UK recently launched, We Tell Stories, an ambitious digital reading project aimed squarely at the reading styles of Gen Y students. This is a pretty innovative project and one that I'm sure will engage more than just Gen Y students. Here's the scoop:

"In collaboration with fêted alternate reality game designers Six to Start, Penguin has challenged some of its top authors to create new forms of story - designed specially for the internet.

Over six weeks writers including Booker-shortlisted Mohsin Hamid, popular teen fiction author Kevin Brooks, prize-winning Naomi Alderman and bestselling thriller authors Nicci French will be pushing the envelope and creating tales that take full advantage of the immediacy, connectivity and interactivity that is now possible. These stories could not have been written 200, 20 or even 2 years ago."

There is a lot of talk in education circles about the lack of reading among Gen Y and the population at large. I would argue that the practice of reading is still alive and well, but the way we do it has changed. Reading isn't just confined to a printed book. It can be done via iPhone, iPod or book readers like the Kindle.

However you choose to read, the important thing is to, well, just do it! And if it has been awhile since you cracked open a book, the We Tell Stories program is a great way to rediscover the joy of reading.

Related Resources

• Readius: Pocket eBook
• Barnes & Noble Studio
• Professor Garfield > Reading Ring

Teachers.tv: Kids, Online Safety & Social Networks

Teachers.TV, a UK-based professional development site for educators, has a great video on teaching kids about information literacy, social networking and web safety. This is a refreshingly rational analysis and discussion of the issues surrounding kids, web safety and social media.

This video also outlines several classroom activities that teachers can use with their students (and parents) to help them gain a better understanding and awareness of the potential dangers of sharing too much information in social networks.

Related Resources

• Digizen: Digital Citizenship
• Connect Safely
• Yahoo! Safely
• BJ Fogg on Web Credibility
• eSchool News: Online Safety Myths

The Mobile Internet Generation

The BBC New blog, dot. life, Rory Cellan-Jones has written a fascinating post investigating "how children used – and abused  - mobile phones and they were knowledgeable, articulate and very demanding of the technology." 

Among the findings:

• 4 out of 5 students had mobile devices with video, camera and music capabilities;

• Students also said that the Internet, multimedia, music and Bluetooth were all features they expect to have on their mobile device;

• Out of the 480 students who responded to the poll, only 3 didn't own a mobile phone.

I feel that this BBC story is a good representation of how tweens and teens are rapidly moving away from the PC-based Internet and rapidly adopting the mobile web. This trend will have huge implications throughout society and most especially in the education space.

Last summer, as part of my work on the Yahoo! Youth and Education Initiative, I conducted teacher workshops across the country. During the workshops I heard many teachers share both concern and misgivings about students using their mobile phones in the classroom.

Many of the teachers in our workshops where surprised to learn that you could, in fact, access the web via a mobile device. Other teachers shared stories of how students simply by-passed content blocked on school computers, instead opting to use their mobile phones to connect to the web and get the content they wanted on-demand.

The debate on whether students should or shouldn't have mobile phones in the classroom is becoming a moot point. The phones are already in the classroom, and as Cellen-Jones points out: 

"The children of the mobile internet generation are getting used to being connected – to their music, their videos, their social networking sites – wherever they go. And that means we are all going to have to think hard about how we rewrite the rules."

The use of mobile technologies is growing, especially among the younger generations, and represents the next frontier in learning. Increasingly we will continue to see academic and corporate organizations research invest, design and launch new mobile applications, many of which can be used in a learning context.

While educators and parents might be a bit nervous to embrace this trend, the reality is that Gen Y have already embraced the mobile web and now it's up to us to figure out how to use this technology in an educational setting to keep them interested and engaged in the learning process.

Related Resources

• BBC News > dot.life
• Student Cellphone Presentation
• Learning 3.0: Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
• Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab > Mobile
• Project uses Cell Phones to Teach Maths

UK Teens Say: Violence Doesn't Have to Happen

Justin Kerr-Stevens has an interesting bit on his blog, extended reach, about a collaboration between the Home Office and UK teens to combat knife violence. In April the Home Office invited teens from across England and Wales to a summit to develop an ad campaign to raise awareness of knife crime among UK youth.

The campaign, It Doesn't Have to Happen, includes a series of ads being delivered via radio spots and mobile phone alerts designed by teens, for teens. In addition, there is a micro site over on the popular social networking site Bebo where teens can learn more about the issue.

This is a brilliant example of a collaboration, as well as a great way to meet Gen Y on their own (digital) turf. And at a time when teens are constantly being reminded about the dangers lurking in social networks, it's always good to remind them that there are still plenty of dangers left in the non-digital world.

Related Resources

• Connect Safely
• Young People & Social Networks
• Digizen: Digital Citizenship

Nielsen Mobile Report on Social Networking

Today Nielsen Mobile released a report that finds that social networking has gone mobile in a big way with the UK and US leading the way. Among the findings:

• U.K. leads Europe in mobile social networking.

• In the U.K., 1.7 percent of all mobile subscribers in the country, visited social networking websites on their mobile phones in the first quarter of 2008.

• In the U.S. 1.6 percent of all mobile subscribers (4.1 million in all) accessed social networks via their phones in December 2007.

• In the U.S., MySpace lead the mobile social networking trend with 2.8 million  unique mobile users in December 2007.

• Facebook is the second most popular mobile social network in the U.S. with 1.8 million unique  mobile users.

• MSN’s Windows Live Spaces led in Italy (154,000 unique mobile  users per month) and France (106,000).

The report also notes that “social  networking is already a global phenomenon, and going mobile is the next big  thing.” This is a trend that will have a significant impact in the world of online education and move us more and more towards mobile learning.

Students are already totally (un)wired, and so it's natural that they will expect to use their mobile phones, iPod Touch, or other mobile devices as a tool to facilitate learning and meet their "always on" learning styles.

Related Resources

• Nielsen Mobile > Social Networking Goes Mobile
• Learning 3.0: Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
• Gen Y: Mobile and Ready to Learn
• Wikipedia > MoSoSo

It's Rubbish: National Anti-Bullying Week

Originally uploaded by jimmy0010 on YouTube.

Related Resources

• Media Awareness Network (MNet)
• Be Web Aware (en)(fr)
• YPulse >Totally Wired blog
• eSchool News: "Programs Aim to Stop "cyberbullying"
• New York Times: Cyberbullies
• GetNetWise.org
• Wes Fryer > Video Conference on Cyberbullies
• Yahoo! Safely
• Jeff Utech > Parents Want to Know

Get Connected: Handheld Learning

Handheld Learning is an UK-based organization whose mission is to promote the use of mobile technologies to support learning. In October they held their annual conference in London and now the highlights of the conference are online and available for the education community. Here's some links to some of the media from the conference now online:

• Handheld Learning TV
• Podcasts
• Presentation slides
• Handheld Learning 2007 > Flickr
• Tony Vincent > Handheld Learning '07 Review
• Bob Harrison > Handheld Learning '07 Review

Those of you who are avid members of the Facebook may be interested to join the Handheld Learning Facebook group. There are lots of ways to learn more about the mLearning movement, so what are you waiting for? Join the Handheld Learning community and get connected!

Related Resources

• Learning 3.0: Mobile, Mobile, Mobile
• Mobile Learning and Pervasive Computing
• Gen Y: Mobile and Ready to Learn
• Blog > Mobile Learning
• Mobile Persuasion @ Stanford University

Get a Life: Facebook and Gen Y

Ran across this interesting article about Facebook in The Times (UK, not LA or NY) about the culture clash between employers and the unions over the banning of Facebook and other social networking tools.

Does a quick check of OMG, your email, Twitter, or Facebook page make you less productive than your colleagues who stand at the water cooler to discuss American Idol?

Gen Y has grown up being connected 24/7 and the influx of these "totally wired" employee's is going to force employers to rethink banning Facebook (or Flickr, or Bebo...), mobile and other to-be-invented tools in the workplace.

Related Resources

• Twitter Blog
• Flickr Blog
• Facebook Blog

Mashup Edu: A New Digital Pedagogy

Dr. Mercedes Fisher and I just finished a new book chapter titled "Pedagogical Mashup: Social Media, Gen Y and Digital Learning Styles" that will be published early next year. I'll have more details in a future post, but in the meantime I wanted to share the bounty of resources we culled together for the article.

We've saved the links for all the resources and references cited in the book chapter over on the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us, which you can find here: http://del.icio.us/mashup.edu

If you have any questions, or know of a great Education 2.0 resource that we should include, let us know!

Related Articles by Mercedes Fisher & Derek E. Baird

• Making mLearning Work: Gen Y, Learning & Mobile Technologies
• Social Software & Online Learning Design
• Social Media & Digital Learning Styles

Research Study on Web 2.0 in Education

Becta and Nottingham University are seeking examples of the use of Web 2.0 technologies in schools. Please send details of any Web 2.0 education projects or  examples you have of classroom, school level, or LA use of Web 2.0 technologies.

Further details are available at: http://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/web2.0/