In October 2008 as CORE Digital Producer I registered edtalks.org and began loading videos.
Eight years, 800 videos, and many millions of page views later, we are launching the fourth version of the EDtalks site.
EDtalks has always been a place where the videos recorded by the CORE Digital team around New Zealand can be made freely available to educators everywhere. The site has prospered because of its popularity and relevance. We are encouraged by viewer contributions and support, and will not only continue to do what we do well, but also bring bigger and better EDtalks experiences in the future.
CORE’s own events, especially uLearn, have always been rich sources for EDtalks videos. In fact, the very first videos were recorded at uLearn 2008, and included Ewan McIntosh’s “Identity in a digital age“, and CORE’s Mary Ann Mills explaining “How schools are approaching the revised school curriculum”.
These days, EDtalks is visited by thousands of educators each month. From our surveys we know that our videos are regularly used for professional learning in schools, and are viewed by teachers all over the world for their own professional learning. And it’s easy to see why — in the last eight years we have interviewed more than 350 experts, leaders, researchers, thought leaders, enthusiasts, and talented practitioners. We have filmed EDtalks throughout New Zealand, in Australia, Thailand, and England. And, we have focused on new and emerging themes in education in order to provoke and inform school leaders and educators in early years, primary, secondary, and tertiary institutions.
What’s next? We have plans for more ways to capture and share conversations about innovative practice. We currently have a series of 12 videos in postproduction that explore different aspects of culturally responsive practice in primary schools, and these will be published as a series in August.
In October, CORE Digital will be filming the new Connected Conversations at uLearn 2016 — three 90-minute sessions over three days, each featuring a number of expert educators. As well as live streaming these sessions CORE Digital will be posting all of the presentations on EDtalks.
And we have a series based on students’ perspectives of learning now and in the future, planned to be released before the end of the year.
There are many reasons for CORE to continue to provide this service to education: teachers are early adopters of technology and eager for personal professional learning; schools are now used to accessing and using media rich resources across a range of devices; and New Zealand teachers continue to be more than happy to share good teaching and learning practice with their peers.

Jedd Bartlett

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