Ewan @ Jordanhill

Yesterday, Ewan talked to our students about Web 2.0 (a bit), blogs, podcasts and a lot about why we would want to use this stuff in our classrooms in the first place! It was good stuff.

Ewan at Jordanhill,
originally uploaded by DavidDMuir.

This is a picture of Ewan in full flight. (I took it handheld with the flash off, so he looks a bit blurry.) He seems to have an unfeasibly large number of gadgets round his neck and yet later on he took an iPod shuffle on lanyard from out of his pocket to add to the collection! On his own blog (where some of the students have already started leaving comments) he says that he, "Had a nervy start to my lecture at Jordanhill". Well, from where I was sitting, it didn't show. Ewan said, when faced with such a large group, he finds it hard to judge how well what he says goes down. It is also hard to deal with the huge range of understanding in the room. However, as well as the positive comments on his blog, I've also had a few emails from students expressing their appreciation for what he did. For example one said, "I thought the speaker today was very interesting".

One of the things he did that I thought was really cool was to interview some of the students as they arrived in the lecture hall. He took their photo with his camera phone and recorded their replies with his iRiver. Then, while I was doing my spiel, he added this stuff to his presentation so it was ready to use when it came to his turn to speak to the students. Brilliant! Digital native or what?

I think what he did was great and I am very keen to see his presentation again. There was so much packed into what he said that I think there will be a lot to be gained from repeated viewing. (I'll put a link here as soon as its available online.)

The best thing about it though, as far as I'm concerned, was his emphasis on learning and the learner. As he has said before:

It's not about the tech, it's about the teach.

Finally an apology. Ewan asked where was the student was who writes ToProbationAndBeyond. We publicly slagged her off for not being at the lecture. However, if we'd read her blog, we would have seen that earlier that morning she had posted a message from her bed of sickness. She is down with some sort of flu thing and is being forced to watch "This Morning" (worse than having flu in my opinion, but when your ill perhaps normal critical faculties are impaired). So sorry Lesley for calling you out in the lecture. I guess I might have to offer you chocolate on your return to apologise.

If anyone who saw his presentation is reading this, what did you think? What were the best bits? What made you think? What made you go, "Hmm!"? What are you most looking forward to trying out for yourself?

Tags: EwanMcIntosh | Jordanhill | teacher education