So what have I achieved with the podcast so far? Well it’s only 7 weeks so that’s early days. What did I achieve with the previous year? Better question. I achieved a large number of videos on the andyrobertsmusic youTube, a following of 50 subscribers, a handful of people who have turned up to my broadcasts from time to time, I’ve probably improved my own playing and singing technique through performing live for half an hour once a week, and improved my confidence at singing my own songs. The shortcomings are quite big though. I’m still not number one for my own name, I failed to build a growing audience for the live shows, and I still don’t have a CD or paid download page that earns a little bit of money.

That was an informal reflection on the milestone of getting to seven episodes, and we have a larger one now with the 12th podcast being published yesterday. What’s needed now though, from an Action Research perspective, is a proper guided and formal reflection using a well established and carefully chosen model of reflection.

In 2009 there were a total of 12 blog posts posted on the ICT-Tutor blog, including this one.

We also move web hosts once or was it twice. In 2010 we may take a new direction, or close down or amalgamate or something, very uncertain times we live in.

Here’s a very easy to use storyboarding tool that’s lots of fun as well.

All you need to do is write a playscript, then input the dialogue text to the animation generator and it will create an action orientated cartoon movie video with talking head and body characters.

What a great way to visualise how your playscript might work when it’s performed by real actors.

The softare used is called xtranormal

Mostly all I need is a web browser so the platform doesn’t matter much. The first thing I’ve missed so far though is Skitch, the screenshot and annotation utiity for Mac. I tried downloading and installing Jing but that needs to have the .net framework which is another 50Mb download – too much for my mobile dongle.

On the other hand there are some distinct disadvantages of video. It tends to be a broadcast medium rather than an interactive community channel for dialogue. Also it can be a slow way of absorbing information. The fast forward button doesn’t work nearly as well as an eyeball scanning over text looking for particular items of interest. As a view, you get lulled into a slow frame of mind, patiently waiting for the video presenter to get to the point!

What?

So What?

What Next?

[HTML1]

Information and Communications Technology – or technologies (ICT) is an umbrella term that includes all technologies for the manipulation and communication of information. The term is sometimes used in preference to Information Technology (IT), particularly in two communities: education and government. In the common usage it is often assumed that ICT is synonymous with IT; ICT in fact encompasses any medium to record information (magnetic disk/tape, optical disks (CD/DVD), flash memory etc. and arguably also paper records); technology for broadcasting information – radio, television; and technology for communicating through voice and sound or images – microphone, camera, loudspeaker, telephone to cellular phones. It includes the wide variety of computing hardware (PCs, servers, mainframes, networked storage), the rapidly developing personal hardware market comprising mobile phones, personal devices, MP3 players, and much more; the full gamut of application software from the smallest home-developed spreadsheet to the largest enterprise packages and online software services; and the hardware and software needed to operate networks for transmission of information, again ranging from a home network to the largest global private networks operated by major commercial enterprises and, of course, the Internet. Thus, “ICT” makes more explicit that technologies such as broadcasting and wireless mobile telecommunications are included.

So you can see that there’s a bit of a generation thing going on here. Anything to do with mainframes, data processing and even “computer science” was covered by IT whereas the “C” in ICT was added in order to emphasise the networking and broadcast aspects of the technology.