Educasting from Ireland

CAO Acceptance Readings

THE FIRST ROUND of CAO acceptances have filtered into Tipperary Institute and it looks like 22 new faces will meet me for Media Writing. I'm getting the inside scoop on these first year students by paging through Managing Generation Y by Carolyn Martin and Bruce Tulgan. They say that members of Generation Y "want to be 'paid volunteers' -– to join organizations not because they have to, but because they really want to, because there's something significant happening there." Gen-Yers may share their lecturers' passion for multimedia but with a twist. They don't do things exactly the way they're told. They don't expect a long apprenticeship doing on the way up the payscale.

Some things I have noted about this slice of the Irish population:

Get Broadband Study Buddies

I THOUGHT THAT I was among a small minority when it comes to using Skype and Instant Messaging in a study environment. Every time I sit down at my work desk, I click through a half-dozen IM texts and about the same number of Skype voice mails. Nearly every one of them deal with third level questions or queries about possible research projects. Less than a hundred miles away, there's a hive of study buddies using Skype, according to Robin Blanford.

Essential Reading

AD AGE -- We need to get college students to read more because Irish reading habits parallel those documented in the States. Time spent reading appears to be diminishing, with older people (age 75+) reading about 72 minutes per day while teens spend just seven minutes a day with written material (not counting homework or time on the Internet).
Young adults and the middle-aged didn't do much better: those age 20-34 read 10 minutes a day and 45- to 54-year-olds read 19 minutes. Meanwhile, there appears to be plenty of time for TV: college-educated workers spend about 1.4 hours a day in front of the tube, while unemployed high school graduates watch four hours a day.

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NewsScan -- "Where Does The Time Go?"
AdAge

Testing digital literacy

NYT -- The Educational Testing Service has announced a new battery of tests designed to test ICT literacy. This foray into the specialist area could conceivably avail an international mechanism for schools from around the world to measure the ability of graduates to perform in the connected work place.

Education Ireland

DUBLIN -- The Minister for Education and Science, Mary Hanafin, announced plans to establish a new statutory body, Education Ireland, to help attract overseas students. The window of opportunity is wide open for this kind of venture since the United States is punting students back across the ocean.

Robodump

TRIGGUR -- In Tipperary Institute, we have Robocode, a competition to the end for electronic tanks that battle on screen. Inside one of the toilets, we might have Robodump, an MP3 loop filled with creative sounds normally heard and quickly repressed. It challenges even the most open-minded advocates of performance art. The demented Kevin Kelm stuck it into his men's room and reports that "the office was abuzz all morning with gossip about the guy in the bathroom. Several people theorized it was the CFO. The janitor commented to someone in the hallway that he wanted to clean the restroom but 'this guy's been in there all morning.'"

M is for Moodle Learning

THE FEATURE -- Howard Rheingold writes about a generation "immersed in cyberculture" when entering school, "mobile and wirelessly connected". Bryan Alexander from Middlebury College in Vermont calls them "nomadic swarms". I wonder if those attributes can be applied to incoming multimedia degree students at Tipperary Institute.

Online education services empower students

MOODLE -- At its core, our online open media programme is underpiinned by a decidedly student-entric ethos. Central to this ethos is the self-service ideal--the notion that online education enables more convenient, user-friendly interaction with educational materials.

Most common Moodle password

CLONMEL -- The most common password into Moodle, our virtual learning environment, is "password" and that will not surprise people who study human memory. On average, the human brain can hold only five to nine "random bits of information" in short-term memory. Considering the brain's limited capacity and the sheer number of secret names, codes, and words a person needs to remember in this password-protected age, it's no surprise that the most common password is simply "password."

Not a beanbag

LOVESAC -- After watching the reaction of people walking through the latest Ernesto Neto exhibition in The Butler Gallery, I know giant beanbags are magnetic. We need one of these.

These giant bags are six feet across. Just the thing for a ready-made snug in the corner of the campus.