hello!

hey,

just thought i would communicate for communications!

hannah x

Google Zeitgeist Conference 2007

Google’s Zeitgeist Conference is available on Youtube. 

Now in its third year, Zeitgeist brought together 400 of the world’s leading marketing, media and industry executives and thinkers to explore ways in which we can become more innovative in our professional and personal lives. This year we explored the ramifications of “Collaborate and Connect”, examining how we use the internet to communicate, create and partner at scale. We all know that the Net has changed our lives forever. You’ll hear a parade of world-class speakers help you understand how it’s changed, and how you and your organization can survive and thrive in this brave new online world.

It’s all well worth a look but this discussion between Tom Brokaw and Yvon Chouinard is fascinating.  Yvon is the founder of Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company and he lives an unwired life.

Mental Health and Young People

1 in 4 of us will suffer mental ill health at some point in our lives.  For our information gathering task the Y141ers spent last week looking for information for young people on mental health.  Some of the links to the websites they found are listed below but we would like to say that information on its own isn’t enough. 

Our job as youth workers is to support young people.  That means providing information where appropriate but being there to talk, encourage, sit quietly and generally be around to help the young people we work with who suffer mental ill-health.  The information on the sites below is as much for our benefit as for the young people we work with.  We, as professional workers, need to be informed about mental health.  I would suggest that part of our job is to tackle the stigma and ignorance that still surrounds depression, schizophrenia, paranoia, eating disorders and self harm.

Here are a few of our links:

moodjuice- information from Forth Valley NHS for young people with worries or in crisis, carers and professionals.

Penumbra – one of Scotland’s leading Mental Health organisations.

Young Minds- information for children, young people and parents as well as professionals and supporters.

See Me – campaign to end the stigma attached to mental ill-health

edspace – Edinburgh mental health information

Students Today

Ever wondered what it is really like to be a student?  The students of Kansas State University’s Digital ethnography Class have been finding out what students really do withe their time…

Is this how your student experience is turning out?

The Scary Guy

What we say, the words that come out our mouths, are our choice.  How we treat people is our choice.  Sound simple?  How come we call people names and say horrible things?

The Scary Guy talks to a group of teenagers in this short video to explain how we can make different choices.  Worth a watch, even if just to see his communication style.

Information

Y141 is about communication.  But communicating what?  Information!  So this week, while I’m in London being reviewed the Y141ers are looking for information to bring to class next week.

Last week was Mental Health week here in Scotland and the class task is to find information for teenagers about depression, self harm and suicide prevention.  As a starter for 10… check out the Scottish Association for Mental Health website…

interference

Today in class we talked about Shannon & Weaver’s model and Grebner’s model of communication.  Both models try to show how a message is transmitted and received and all the things that can interfere with that process.  The Two Ronnies sketch above shows just what can go wrong!

mobile phones and learning

Teacher’s TV have posted this video about mobile phones in learning.  Worth a look.

(HT Ewan)

what is blogging? and why blog?

Rob Howard of Community Server talks about blogging from a business point of view (about half way down the page – watch our Converations Matter video) but makes lots of great points and give some interesting statistics and trends following up some of the stuff we discussed this week in class.

The Future of Learning?

Berkeley, University of California, has started posting some of its classes on YouTube.  Is this the future of learning?