The Teacher as DJ – Rip, Mix, Burn
The notion of Teacher as Disc Jockey goes back at least to the time Apple’s iTunes introduced the concept of Rip, Mix, Burn to the world. Since then trainers, educators and instructional designers have been inundated by reports on social media, Web 2.0 and collaborative learning while fending off rising demands to crank out more educational media in less time, with less money. Now the prevalence of open source media and courseware has exceeded a critcal mass with thousands of open source courses being distributed by organizations like Open Courseware Consortium and ccLearn.
With that in mind educational technologist Scott Leslie of Victoria, BC, has gven an excellent talk on the current state of web-based open source tools and techniques available to teachers who need to rip, mix and burn a new course or presentation. Using the metaphor of the DJ, Leslie’s basic work flow follows these steps:
- Search – finding the PLE diagrams
- Sample – grabbing ones that weren’t already easily saveable
- Sequence – tumblr? how to get in a mediaRSS feed
- Record – my own PLE diagram
- Perform – cooliris and wii controller?
- Share – blog it
The reader should be cautioned: If you are not familiar with Web 2.0 concepts in teaching, this talk will be the proverbial ‘drink from a fire hose‘. Leslie presents dozens of sites and tools that designer and educators can use in the preparation and dissemination of a whole course or simple talk. Having considerable experience with these methods, Leslie suggests that we pick and choose among the sites and services for those that match our objectives and personal style.
“You may find the metaphor of ‘educator as DJ’ doesn’t work for you – fine. Maybe it’s ‘educator as mashup artist’. Maybe it’s ‘educator as painter.’ maybe it’s ‘educator as architect’. But…
I URGE you to seek out the metaphor YOU ALREADY BRING to your teaching practice, because inevitably you do. Becoming conscious of it is important not only because of how it lets you expand on it, but because the act of teaching IS the supreme metaphorical act; just as metaphor allows us new understanding by using a familiar vehicle that conveys attributes to a specific tenor, so do you as teachers seek to help your learners move from their existing understanding to somewhere new.”
Leslie’s talk is presented here in both slide and video formats. Notes and references are also included.