DIT Digital
Inspired by the previous year's students we developed the first application to the TEL Innovation Awards.
We learnt a lot, about how annoying Padlet can be, about the value of working with Ma mentors, and about the impossibility of matching together the timetables for different courses in the same institution, let alone elsewhere.
The initial report was published in a number of formats, formal and less so, and was the basis for both academic presentations and training workshops.
DIY Digital: First Steps to Selling Out
DIY Digital - Innovating with TEL
TEL Innovation Scheme Case Study
Padlet- Digital Walls for Sharing, Learning and teaching
What the Students Made
The students made two resources
and
What Students Got Out of the Process
They identified their transferable skills:
•Team working, analytical skills, teaching and leadership, research skills – secondary and primary, follow orders but take initiative, curatorship, and creativity, applying theory, the value of being self motivated, time management, riding on coattails of innovative and Lucy and Chris being brilliant, moral panics have taught me everything I know about journalism.
They also left some tips for the next year's students
•Commit from the start,
•Embrace it its different and unique, take it full on
•Turn up to the seminars and be ready to engage
•Use the forum and post stuff that you think will interest people
•Don’t worry if what you have to present it a bit off topic because you’ll find a way to make it on topic
•There’s lots of opportunity to do you own thing – so
•Use that and use the full breadth of the course
•You’ve got to enjoy it – or what’s the point (don’t take it too seriously aim for 60%)
•If you’re worried that you don’t know anything, you actually do.
•You do have general knowledge in the subject
•There are no stupid ideas
Beyond Sussex
Very generously Paul Ward shared the resources with his students at the University of Huddersfield who provided us with some useful feedback
Cultural Circuit Feedback
This task was my first encounter with Padlet and it gave me an opportunity to experience a seminar in a new and versatile medium. One thing that I found particularly useful was the fact that Padlet allows you to embed a wide range of media, which is a welcome change from the often monotonous and drab experience of a PowerPoint presentation. I was impressed with the way that primary sources were incorporated through embedded news articles, interviews from Youtube and music through Soundcloud, and how this was complimented by secondary analysis to give a clear introduction to the topic.
While I would consider myself a fan of Grime it is a subculture that is relatively new to me. I found the content relating to grime intriguing as it allowed me to view it in relation to other subcultures in terms of its relationship with the zeitgeist and also how it deals with opposition from the media and establishment. Before undertaking this seminar I would have struggled to draw any sort of comparison between the Grime and Goth subcultures, however the seminar allowed me to draw comparisons between the way in which subcultures are developed and the problems that they often face.
The tasks were a good introduction into using new types of digital media; having never used Buzzfeed before this seminar I now feel confident in using it to support future projects. In terms of criticism, I would say that the fact you can use such a variety of media can also cause issues, with some types of media failing to embed fully. Also for a first time user I found the site a little difficult to navigate, however this became easier as I became more familiar with the layout. However these issues are relatively minor and were resolved quickly; overall I found the seminar to be a stimulating and worthwhile experience.
Moral Panic
Informative and insightful the tasks set encourage personal involvement when exploring an interesting subject matter. The use of social media such as Tumblr I particularly found to be an extremely efficient way to get student participation while encouraging a digital presence that can be used for experience on CVs. I also found the timeline of different moral panics to be an inventive way to both show an outline of different moral panic and as a way to encourage students to get participate in an original way. I also liked the use of popular websites such as Buzzfeed (to show an example of Stanley Cohen’s moral panic framework) and Souncloud as this breaks up the tasks set in a more enjoyable manner. I did find the Soundcloud link not to be working however as it couldn’t find the playlist. The PowerPoint used for the ‘prep work’ from the university of Worcester I found to be a welcome addition to the rest of the work as it explores a series a varied and extremely interesting moral panics both in Britain and the United States that students might not know about.
Cultural Circuit
The page layout for this seminar was confusing as the information and sources for different tasks were muddled which made the seminar far more confusing that it should have been. Despite this the range of material and interesting methods of work allows for a good understanding of what is the Cultural Circuit and the difference between subcultures and media representations of subcultures as well as other online representations through Buzzfeed, Tumblr and others. The use of Buzzfeed and ‘the Buzzfeed project’ was extremely interesting and in seeing how articles are distributed online the seminar provides a unique and original way for students to participate. I found the use of sources to be extremely good with sources such as a Noisey Film ‘The Police vs Grime Music’ (Noisey being Vice’s coverage of music) with JME as the presenter, the Grime forum (although this can only be accessed by registering), JME recordings and lyrics, and newspaper articles being used as well as other sources. I found these to be both informative and interesting as well as being a good introduction for students especially in regard to Task 2 with the sources providing an ample introduction for those who may not have listened to grime personally or know about the Grime scene or Form 696.
The Padlet seminar was clear to understand. The instructions on which post to look at first was really useful as at first glance it is difficult to see how to go about starting the seminar. The moral panic seminar had a professional feel about it there were Power Point presentations and timelines as well as an online seminar podcast. Although the podcast part did not work for me which was a bit disappointing as the Padlet page could not find the source from Sound Cloud. This felt like an important part of the seminar missing from the page. However, the use of these additions made the work better than reading long post after long post. The layout of page had nice clean background being a concrete theme that didn’t affect visuals with the rest of the site it gave the background looking fuller while still remaining plain. Although very striking the use of red in the text made the titles really stand out, this can be quite handy when you have one post sat on top of another and this makes it easy to see at a glance where one ends and the other begins. The instructions of the seminar go further than being pointed in the right direction; it helps with user interaction with the seminar, making the transition from reading to active work easy. The instructions on the interactive elements of the seminar are simple to follow with access to the timelines account and the Tumblr account gives the feeling as being part of the seminar.
There are a few issues with the seminar though that I
struggled with. Although a timeline was included, it was incomplete in its
latter stages which was disappointing. Although there was an audio of the seminar,
the file could not be found so again this was disappointing. It lowers the
overall experience of the seminar. (EDIT This was a really useful thing to find out as the Soundclouds were originally stored on a student's personal account rather than the group account. We located the files and reuploaded them)
Notes on Padlet
Padlet seems very easy to create and edit on. Being able to embed other programs and other files into the webpage is great and it seems pretty simple to do. However the fact that anyone can post onto the page and that this will go to the top of the page will eventually put everyone’s work right at the bottom of the page. As well as issues arising when embedding other files like a Sound Cloud file I think a more traditional website would be better another issue that I found out when I used my computer at home rather than my laptop was that Padlet changed the layout of the posts to fit the larger screen which made it more confusing for me to follow the seminar on my pc rather than my laptop.