Flash Platform Game Technology Center

Adobe has launched a new site to support those interested in using the Flash Platform for creating games.

There are a number of articles and videos giving a comprehensive background to casual gaming and games development with the Flash Platform, as well as tutorials, samples and games to play.

Flash Platform Game Technology Center http://www.adobe.com/devnet/games/

Get Brains at Carnegie College!

Come and join the charity Zombie Walk at Carnegie College in Dunfermline on Thursday 29th October. Facepainting will take place at the Mediaspace building from 11am and the walk will start at 12 noon. Come ready dressed as a zombie or have your face painted for a small fee, with profits going to charity. The event will raise funds for the charity CHAS which helps terminally ill children and their families.

Photograph by Xenobia Joy (Flickr)

Anarchy in the classroom? No, just making it work

It's been a while since I identified myself as an Edupunk. In fact it seems it was only 6 weeks after the term was coined that I outed myself as an Edupunk, and now people want to talk to me about it.

This week I had a conference call with some researchers from Ryerson University in Canada who are investigating Maker Culture, and as part of that are researching 'makers' in education, which includes the Edupunk movement.

Of course, I've linked here to more authoritative sources on what Edupunk is, although I did give the researchers my own definition of Edupunk, which you can listen to if you follow this link to the podcast.

Edupunk is only a name, and there are many more educators who wouldn't want to be called 'Edupunk' who regularly do good things in the classroom, challenging the curriculum, finding shortcuts and better ways to teach, engaging students with self-created devices, or hacking/mashing together learning tools. I personally like the Edupunk tag, as long as it's not taken too seriously - there's been too much debate over the name, it's the culture and community that matters. As Shakespeare would say 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet'. It's what educators do that matters, and if there's a slowly emerging group of educators willing to push the limits to educate their students, then education authorities need to take notice and recognise that these educators are doing this in the best interests of their students, and are doing so because there is something rotten in the current system. Something needs fixed, and the people who are fixing it, mending the leaks, baling out the ship are those at the sharp end of education, the people who do education every day, people who don't just see students as little bags of funding, people who are frustrated by the constraints placed upon them, people who care, and those people are teachers.

I want one of these...

2nd Edinburgh Twestival

Thursday 10th September saw the second Edinburgh Twestival take place at Electric Circus.

From twestival

Twestivals are charity fundraising events created by Twitter users for Twitter users, usually featuring live music, fun, raffles and a party atmosphere.

I went along with a number of students who are recent Twitter converts, and also met up with some of my Twitter followers face-to-face.

A good time was had, and the live music was superb. Of course, and most importantly the event raised lots of money for the chosen charity, CLIC Sargent.

Questionable Strategies in Web Marketing

Recently I’ve received several invites, friend requests and messages via social networking sites that go along the lines of the following:

insert name has sent you a friend request,
Hi Colin, I also went to insert university name and studied the same course as you. I was lucky enough to get work with insert company name who makes insert product. Drop me an e-mail or call me on insert number.

OR

Hi Colin, I got your name from insert name of trusted friend who says you might be interested in insert product. If you’re interested, mail me back or get me on Skype insert Skype name.

Both of these sound quite plausible, but after receiving several in a short space of time I got a little suspicious and started thinking about it.

Of course, some clever modern-day telemarketer is searching the social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Bebo for people who match the target audience of their products, then contact their targets with a message that includes some personal information or friend recommendation gleaned from the web to give the message some plausibility. It’s just like the telephone marketer that calls you and says that Mrs Smith who lives in your street has recommended you for a free insert product or service here which isn’t actually free.

To test my suspicions I replied to my old university ‘buddy’ saying. ‘Great to hear from you, do you remember Professor Zaire who taught project management? I can’t believe he still works there, he must be 8o years old.’

A couple of hours later I receive a reply saying, ‘Yes I can’t believe the Prof. is still there either, he should’ve been pensioned off ages ago. Let me know when you’re free for me to call you’.

Of course Professor Zaire is a complete figment of my imagination, so I’ve just confirmed that this is some web 2.0 social media marketing scam aimed at parting me from my hard earned cash.

Be warned!

Blogging about Teaching Experiences

Trying out Wordpress on reccomendation from Mari Smith, Relationship Marketing Specialist. Now keeping a blog on my classroom activities on Wordpress.