Reel+Celtic+Connections

=Ewan McIntosh= //New Technology Research Practitioner, Learning And Teaching Scotland, Glasgow, UK//

=**Reel Celtic Connections: Blogging for 5 Million Years**=

[|Ewan McIntosh] shared how his fellow Scots have adopted Web 2.0 Tools for academic use because of their heritage. 5 million live in Scotland, 30 million live elsewhere. Because of necessity, Scots have accepted and implemented use of web 2.0 technology in their personal, professional and academic life.

He spoke of students getting validation and encouragement from online communities instead of the humans in their lives He shared the example of the ‘cup stacking championship video’ featured on. Over 292,000 viewers have seen this young lady [|Emily Fox], break the world record, yet her mother is shown in the background, unimpressed and seemingly uninterested. Ewan built on this concept and shared how students in Scotland start at an elementary level reviewing their peers’ work with a “2 Star and a wish” format in blog entries. They simply use the comments area at the end of their classmates blog postings and type their responses. He talked about the use of podcasts for foreign language students that are listened to and commented upon by native speakers of the language. He shared exemplars like discussions of artwork taking place on wikis or blogs. The most important things that Ewan spoke of is the responsibility of schools to expose students to the many collaborative tools and social networking sites and how to use them to enrich their lives. He stressed the necessity of building generic skills that can be used after graduation. He’s a fine photographer, too. Check out his Boston photos on. Type blc07 in the search box and share the conference experience with us.