Kinda Learning Stuff

Scaffolding and online synchronous communications

2009-11-19T11:09:00.003Z

Steve Wheeler has just posted something interesting about the ZPD and scaffolding in his 'always worth a read' (©Sarah's Made-Up-Taxonomy of blog types, 2009) blog. Anyway, he posted it and it reminded me that I'd been interested in just this thing a few months ago when I was doing my research project to finish off my MEd. I was interested in the impact of a tutor when students were learning in an online synchronous (chat) environment. I wanted to know what happened to any conversation and associated learning... and whether or not the tutor's presence enriched the experience.

Anyway, I ran my research project and got some interesting results. Although the activity itself was fairly carefully constructed so as to provide a light scaffolding for the main body of discussion and the environment was controlled so that I was able to compare both sessions - how each discussion evolved was up to the participants. Different types of reflection were evident in the session with the tutor present and that which took place when just the students were around. The flow of the conversation altered. The type of questions and responses changed. Students seemed to be more passive in the tutor-led session and although there was plenty of conversation, the expectation seemed to be that the tutor was in the driving seat and the ownership of that communication shifted noticably.

If, having read the above blurb, you'd like to read the full report of the research I carried out, then feel free!

Twitter lists as online identity

2009-11-09T09:28:00.003Z

In the last few weeks, Twitter lists have appeared on the scene. I've seen a few useful bits and bobs about the lists and how they might be used (Mashable has some good ideas) but the thing that surprised me most of all was that Twitter lists are an interesting tool to discover a little more about your own online identity. All you need to do is to see what lists you're on by clicking on the 'listed' link on your profile. Simple, huh?

It's interesting to see other people's perceptions of you. Me, I seem to feature on a fair few elearning / ed tech lists (as well as my favourites so far 'fab education folk' and 'geek girls'!) as well as a few Open University ones. It's interesting to see where you're being placed and how much control (or not!) you have over your online identity. It reveals, also, your main purpose for using Twitter. I tend to use it to communicate with others in ed tech. There are other places where I might talk about other bits of my life / personality... but I've always been fairly purposeful where Twitter's concerned. Other people may find that they feature on a wider variety of lists... but either way... have a look... it's really interesting to see where you fit in to Twitter's strange patchwork of communication!

PS Until someone puts you in a comedy list and you think 'Eh? How did that happen???!' :o)

101 Reasons why Google are taking over the world...

2009-10-27T11:47:00.002Z

Get Your Files Out of Google Docs With New Export Options:

"... today, Google announced the “Convert, Zip and Download” feature in Google Docs to tackle this challenge. The new features make it a simple two step process to pull down any and all the Google (Google) documents of your choosing (up to 500 MB), convert them to your preferred file types, and zip them up in a concrete package you can download and save to your desktop."

Gotta love 'em... Google sure are chomping away at the online / offline connected world.

More and more I find I'm using Google docs for collaborative editing rather than entering into track changes hell with Microsoft Word. More and more I'm using Google sites as a wiki rather than faffing about with using other wiki tools (WetPaint withdrawing its ad-free education version forced me to see what Google were up to). More and more I'm using Google forms for surveys / quick an' easy booking systems. And now, I get to not just create stuff online with them, but I can quickly pull all that Googly goodness off the system. More and more I'm using Google to find ways around the red tape / processes which infest institutional systems and make it so painfully difficult to innovate.

Actually, you don't need 101 reasons why they're taking over.

There's really only one: Google get it.

Library learning

2009-10-20T10:22:00.004+01:00

An observation.

The Educational Development Unit where I work is based in the main University library. Last week we had a few powercuts in the library building. As on any normal weekday, there were loads of students in the building. Hardly any spare desks available. Then, the power went off. Though there was no power, but it was still perfectly light enough to work - the only thing missing was the computing facilities and the artificial light. Still lots of books. Lots of desks. Lots of places to read. Lots of places to write.

What happened?

The library emptied.

With no computing resources available, the students left. Virtually all of them. Gone.

Just an observation.

Reserving judgement

2009-10-14T19:16:00.007+01:00

Okay, so... like lots of people I got a Google Wave invite... which was jolly nice, especially if you're a bit of an 'ooooooh, what's that shiny thing over there' kinda girl, which I am. However, I've been struggling to contain my high levels of underwhelm at the moment. I've got a few contacts now, but no real purpose for using it... and the only uses I've seen so far are for what are essentially fancy, collaborative lists. Which is nice. But... not inspiring.

However... two and a half years ago, I remember seeing the following on a blog...

"I have to say if someone I knew thought they should be sending me texts, e-mails, IMs etc about the fact that they were just off to the loo and wouldn't be around for five minutes, I'd be seriously considering turning off my computer forever, bricking up the windows and becoming a hermit. Has the world honestly gone bonkers? My 'persistent presence' is that I'm here. I know I'm here. I don't really care if you are aware of that fact 24/7 and you know what? I'm betting you don't either. Where's the separation between public and private? Doesn't part of that separation exist because we simply don't have time to care about the meaningless minutiae of each other's lives. Isn't it okay not to care????

So... You had tuna in your sandwich... but you thought you might have cheese... it took you three bites and a sip of tea to consume it, lasted precisely 2 minutes of your day and another half a minute in which you wondered if there was a little too much mayo and not quite enough salad. I DON'T CARE! Please, if you're struggling to say something to me today, don't bother. Just take time out for yourself. I don't sweat the small stuff in my own life, and I sure don't want to sweat it in yours either!!

Blogging - okay... now get it.
Microblogging - NO! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!

PS. NO!!!
PPS. There. That feels better
PPPS. I'm about to have porridge for breakfast. With raisins. A dash of milk. A cup of tea. I may or may not yawn half way through doing so...
PPPPS See - you don't care either. :o)"

... and could tell that that person really didn't think much of Twitter at all. They were seriously dismissive of it as a technology and weren't going to give it a fair go. Microblogging - no, no and a bit more no!

Thing is. That person was me.

And once I got off my negative high horse and found a purpose for it other than the use suggested by the service, just fill in the answer to: 'what are you doing'... and instead built a network... and made connections... then. Then, it had real value.

So. Rather than being the person who makes dreadful dismissive statements about Wave, I'm going to let the dust settle. Keep an eye out. Keep on having a go... and find my own way in. Or at least, give it a proper chance to be what it will be.

On boring VLEs

2009-09-28T19:39:00.011+01:00

Federal Upset
Originally uploaded by Shermeee
I did a staff development session today on some new tools in the University's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and on the way in to the session (no-one knew it was me delivering the session which put me in a great position for eavesdropping pre-match conversation!) I heard several people chatting about 'another dull VLE session', 'the VLE is so boring' etc and although I get where they're coming from, I do wonder why people get so hung up on the tool itself. I know I probably veer towards the more personalized learning environment camp, but even then, they're all just tools and it's what you do with them that's interesting.

Anyway, I got into the session and made a start and asked them who thought that the VLE was dull... best to tackle this stuff head on, I reckon! So, a few hands went up. 'How many of you... honestly?' - a few more hands went up. Y'know. I agree. It's just a 'thing' after all, isn't it? A shell with some bits and bobs you may or may not use.

So, I moved on. I asked, 'How many of you put your lecture PowerPoints in the VLE?'. Lots of hands. 'How many of you provide anything more than your lecture notes? Anyone put any additional activities in there?'... no hands. I asked them what that might feel like for their students. Was that an interesting or helpful place to be once you'd downloaded those PowerPoints? Were those PowerPoints really that helpful without anything else? Were they engaging? Have to say, there wasn't a great deal of nodding at this point!

I then got them to imagine a really great learning experience that they'd had while they were at school or university and what made it great. I then asked the group 'did anyone's great experience involve a great teacher?' Hands. 'A really great subject area?' A few more. 'A really great activity or experience?'. Lots of hands and nodding. 'Did anyone's great experience involve how brilliant the room was where the learning happened? How great the chair was they were sitting on? How great the desk was they were using? The pen? Anyone particularly excited by the pen they were using?'. No-one.

Y'know. I think I actually heard the penny drop as they realised that it's what you do with something that makes it good and not the places or tools which make it extra special. It's funny how quick we are to blame an environment and forget that inspiring teaching and learning is about the people and the players. As adults we look at an empty cardboard box and see it as a storage device. Somewhere to put 'stuff'. As children we looked at that same cardboard box and saw a plane. A car. A train. An adventure waiting to happen. What happened to our own creativity? It seems like we get confronted by a 'virtual learning environment' and think that's enough. The learning will happen regardless of the effort we put into it. Wrong! So, so wrong! When eLearning works, it's an amazing, interesting, vibrant, evolving, engaging, rich space. When it's just a shell. A place to download PowerPoints... boy oh boy is it a sad bag.

I admit it. VLEs are dull. But what goes on inside them doesn't need to be dull. Here's to opening up the box and seeing what you can really do with it and putting an end to using VLEs as document dumping grounds. Days where you get to see people imagining bucketloads of learning potential and want to hold onto it themselves. Coming up with ideas as you're talking and scribbling them down as quick as they can. Now, those are the really great eLearning days. :o))

The 10 PowerPoint Commandments

2009-09-16T17:25:00.006+01:00

For the past week or two I've been involved in various staff development / conference bits an' bobs and my head is jam-full of PowerPoint loathing. It is such an uninspiring tool... or rather, it is used in such an uninspiring way, so much of the time.

So, wanting not to fall into that trap myself (though I'm sure I've done some of these - I have vague memories of thinking the typewriter entrance effect was cool at one point!), I'm going to set myself 10 PowerPoint Commandments:

1. Thou shalt have other tricks up your sleeve as well as PowerPoint
2. Thou shalt not use rubbish quality images or diagrams
3. Thou shalt not use stupid effects
4. Thou shalt restrict bullet points
5. Honour thy audience's eyesight
6. Thou shalt not bore
7. Thou shalt not use the slides as speaker notes
8. Thou shalt master the slide controls before the presentation
9. Thou shalt be concise
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's Prezi... learn to present well without any props first

If I don't have to use PowerPoint, I'm not going to. When I do, it should be in a purposeful manner. If I ever catch myself simply reading the slide contents out to the audience, I'm going to take myself straight home and read to my kids instead. They like me reading to them... I'm sure the rest of the world doesn't. :o)

So there!

ALT-C '09

2009-09-10T09:07:00.003+01:00

For the past three days I've been tootling to and fro going up to Manchester for ALT-C 2009 and although I'm a bit shattered (understatement of the year) it was a really useful experience. While it is still fresh in my head, and before I crash out, here are my five highlights from ALT-C:

1. The VLE is Dead debate. Okay, not so much debating as a good ol' e-learning ding dong with no winner declared... but the best thing about that? Hearing people getting really engaged and passionate about e-learning! So often we get stuck in the mire of everyday institutional / academic battles and forget that e-learning has the capacity to really grip you and get you thinking. About its complexity. Its potential. Its issues. Its benefits. Drawback. The whole good, bad and ugly shebang.

2. Jonathan Drori's talk on making successful pilots and 'being mighty'. A super talk and he came up with 10 great pieces of advice about projects, so, in reverse order, here's his top 10:

10. Understand the barriers - cost, relevance, ease of use, experience, talent, resources, coherence. Be honest about the talent! This one is hard to do!

9. Think about who are you trying to impress!

8. Sort out project management from editorial leadership

There is a confusion between what is project management and what is editorial leadership and you need to know the difference between the two. In other words, you need someone to say 'that's a bit crap' and take that role in the project - it can make or break a project!

7. Ensure everyone understands the pilot! Seems obvious but so often we skip straight into what the project is now doing rather than giving it a background and contextual description

6. Understand where your pilot fits in

Whereabouts on this chain...

stimulate interest > engage > guide > communicate > create or 'do' something

... does your project sit?

Try to create virtuous circles

5. Choose good measures of success - make the measures make sense!

4. Partnerships - on this... when encountering new partnerships ask this question...

- what does each partner say they want?

then work out this one...

- what do they actually want?

No matter what they say, they may well also want a mix of the following: political influence / power / limelight / money / credit

Universities want some combination of the above - but contextualized
Personal agrandizement is also important!

3. Know everything you can about your audiences - don't just look at the known

2. A word on new formats and services - sketch it out using a storyboard. It's cheap, efficient and can open dialogues with people who should then be able to understand what your project is about

1. Is something missing? Ask yourself this question! Are you testing the wrong thing?

A useful and interesting talk and grounded in lots and lots of experience of projects, which was excellent. I loved his closing thought:

"Meet your audiences. Fiddle. Be curious!"

It should be every e-learning bod's mantra.

3. Excellent opportunity for putting faces to names - even though I did get the carbon footprint conference guilts from Terry Anderson's keynote you can't beat a bit of face to face stuff and I wish that the packed timetable and stupid amount of commuting I was doing had allowed for more chatting. :o)

4. Some great keynotes from Terry Anderson, Michael Wesch and Martin Bean and following the #altc2009 hash tag throughout their presentations gave a good sense of what was relevant to the audience too. Nice way to capture the 'relevance flavour of the month'.

5. The CrowdVine site - worked well and was a useful way to network pre-conference. Liked it and good to see that it was used by most people attending ALT-C.

Okay, so those are my five main highlights. What made the not so good list?

1. The catering!!! Absolute rubbish! Well, unless you like a queue, cheap biscuits, limited drinks and soggy pasta o'course.

2. The lack of quiet spaces to chill out. A seriously noisy venue and for little ol' me who has a bit of a struggle with tinnitus at the best of times, it made networking tricky.

3. PowerPoint overload. I came across presentations with too many slides. Too many notes per slide. Too quick transitions. Presenters simply reading out the contents of their slides. And a generally uninspiring PowerPoint-fest. There has to be a better way than PowerPointing everything. And I can feel a PowerPoint boycott coming on while I work out what that might be.

4. Hashtag spam on the Twitter feed for the conference. Must try to find ways of filtering spam when using hashtag aggregation for events... it's not good on any level.

Okay, am slinking off to collapse. Hopefully will get my 'thinking about it all' head back on soon once I've got a tad of energy back! I'll leave you with my twice-daily view of the Peak District which I had the pleasure of seeing on my gargantuan commute!

Lock Down Learning

2009-09-08T11:28:00.004+01:00

I have a question which goes round and round in my head and it concerns trust. In fact, it concerns trust of adult students / employees and the conflict with a web 2.0 / user-generated world. Why don't we trust people? In fact, I can tie it down a little further.... why do we only trust people when we feel that it doesn't really matter?

Here's an example. An institution has a stance whereby constructivist learning is promoted. Students should 'own' their learning. They should construct their own knowledge. Be critical. Thinking. Reflecting students. We want them to engage and be interested in what they study. But... we put those flowing, interesting, fluid notions of ownership and contextualisation and shove them into a VLE. We encourage people in with the idea that these tools have potential and the capacity to offer them a useful learning environment... then, it seems, we slam the door shut behind them and tie down all the tools until our systemic desire for control is satisfied - "what if someone's offended?", "what if they sue us?", "what about quality control?", "what about... what about... what about...?". "Oh, just turn it off, that'll be easier".

Nominally, we want them to learn it 'their' way, but the reality is that we don't feel comfortable if we're not learning 'our' way. Why don't we trust people? As soon as something becomes institutionally hosted then issues of liability, reputation and administrative control rear their heads and lock down ensues.

Is it any wonder why systems get only a token use? Is it any wonder why students are out there every day using their own tools and systems - making choices, being supported by their peers, when we're too scared to let go just a little. Unless, of course, it's behind closed doors and it doesn't really matter anyway. Are VLEs symptomatic of 'lock down learning'? Where's the trust? What would the educational landscape really be like if we put some real control in the hands of users?

I've just read 'Here Comes Everybody' by Clay Shirky (yeah, late to the party, I know!) - and it occurs to me that what if our VLEs aren't a case of 'here comes everybody', but instead result in 'there goes everybody' as the PLE offers the flexibility and personalisation which makes learning really meaningful?

PS Thanks to AJ Cann and Steve Wheeler for feeding my inner rant. :o)

Web2practice from NetSkills

2009-08-26T07:51:00.001+01:00

Guides to emergent technologies and innovative practiceAre you thinking about using web2tools for research, administration or teaching? If so, make a quick start with the web2practice user guides.The web2practice guides explain how emergent web technologies like RSS, microblogging, podcasting and social media can enhance your working practice. Each guide consists of a short animated video explaining the key concepts (such as microblogging in the example below), supported by a more in-depth guide covering potential uses, risks and how to get started.

Netskills: Web2practice

Useful guides from JISC - giving a bit of heavyweight legitimacy to things regularly dismissed as superfluous / superficial / damaging. Good to see and handy to bookmark!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Three cool tools

2009-08-17T18:56:00.006+01:00

I'm always trying out new tools. Some of them make me go 'hmmm'. Some of them make me go 'nice idea'. Some of them make me go 'ooooooh, that could work in x scenario'. Others... I really get using and they become part of my online toolkit.

So, here are three which have taken pride of place on my virtual mantelpiece in the last few months:

Doodle.com - unbelievably simple to use tool to schedule meetings. You just create a free account, give your event a name... put in some suggested days / times... and send out the URL to others who simply enter their names and select their preferred times. The beauty of it is that you get to see at a glance what times work... what time the majority can make and it doesn't matter what diary system / calendar people use, this is just a click, click, click and you're done kinda thing:

Another great tool is Dropbox - if you work on more than one computer and want to move files from machine to machine, keeping them all in sync is a pain. With dropbox, you set up a free account (which gives you up to 2GB of free space) and your files are synced via the secure online Dropbox. Doesn't matter what operating system you're using - it just works. I have a PC at work, PC, MacBook Pro and Linux netbook at home... if I want to work on a file and I know I'm going to need access on a number of different machines, I just put it into my dropbox. On Windows it installs as a folder in your My Documents area / as an icon in the status bar. On a Mac it appears in the Finder and the top menu. No more copying stuff onto a USB stick / e-mailing it to yourself - if you have an internet connection, you file will be updated. But... if you want to roll it back to a previous version, then you've got 30 days to sort that out. Oh, and you can also share your Dropbox folders with others. Love it!

My final new tool is Mindomo - it's a terrific, free online mind-mapping tool and it's even won me away from MindMeister which I liked for years. The advantages of this? Well, once you ignore the Google ads down the right hand side, is that it's seriously feature rich, collaborative and really flexible to use. Work on your maps online, import from Freemind or export as a pdf / rtf / xml file / an image file. It's a bit Microsoft Office 2007 / 2008-ish in appearance and it doesn't feel like 'free'. :o)

So... there ya go. Three free, simple, online tools which have 'stuck' in the past three months: Doodle, Dropbox and Mindomo.

Anyone else got any recent favourites?

10 Pleasing MacBook Pro keyboard shortcuts

2009-08-12T20:30:00.003+01:00

Being a total Mac newbie (well, I last had a Mac five or six years ago, so it's pretty much all new), I'm finding out some handy things which I thought might be useful for other people too. So... here goes my 10 handy keyboard shortcuts:

1. There's no hashtag key on my MacBook Pro keyboard - to enter a hashtag you need to press alt and 3 together

2. You can get a whole load more symbols by pressing the alt key and another key... here are some useful ones:

alt + 2 = €
alt + 0 = º
alt + 8 = •
alt + r = ®
alt + w = ∑
alt + p = π
alt + s = ß
alt + g = ©
alt + ; = …
alt + x = ≈
alt + c = ç
alt + / = ÷

3. There's no delete key, only backspace. To forward delete just press fn and backspace

4. If you want to delete one word at a time, press alt and backspace

5. Pressing F12 brings up the Dashboard gadgets. Press it again and the Dashboard disappears again

6. Pressing F11 moves everything so you can see the desktop. Pressing it again brings everything back.

7. When you're in your web browser, press F6 and you select everything in the address bar

8. Press F9 and you can toggle through all open windows

9. To select words one word at a time, hold down alt, shift and press the left cursor key

10. To quit any application, press cmd and q

That'll do for now! My closet nerdness loves finding keyboard shortcuts! :o)

The joy of the Fail Whale

2009-08-10T18:51:00.000+01:00

Nice little piece in the New Scientist about Twitter and its delicate disposition...

Innovation: Why don't users mind when Twitter breaks? - tech - 10 August 2009 - New Scientist:

"The strong roller-coaster-riding community of Twitter, by contrast, have tied their personas to the service. They simply embraced the fail, enjoyed taking a break from maintaining their 140-character selves, and prepared to celebrate when the service came back."

Yup, people hate Facebook, Google, Amazon etc going down... but there's a certain humour in the fail whale-ness of Twitter going down the loo yet again. A sign of an immature service or one that's got its users on-side from the start in terms of allowing itself to have a wry sense of humour?

Maybe it's just because it's not seen as corporate as the others on the failure hit-list? Maybe it's not seen as essential as the failure hit-list? Maybe it's a bit more opt in... which means temporary 'opt-out' isn't as painful?

Who knows? Fail Whaling (spotting and celebrating the appearance of a Twitter Fail Whale) seems to have an opposite reaction to most systems failures. Bet you any money IS departments all over would kill for that kind of sympathetic, forgiving band of users! :o)

Changing online demographics...

2009-08-06T23:38:00.000+01:00

It's SO over: cool cyberkids abandon social networking sites | Media | The Guardian:

"From uncles wearing skinny jeans to mothers investing in ra-ra skirts and fathers nodding awkwardly along to the latest grime record, the older generation has long known that the surest way to kill a youth trend is to adopt it as its own. The cyberworld, it seems, is no exception.

The proliferation of parents and teachers trawling the pages of Facebook trying to poke old schoolfriends and lovers, and traversing the outer reaches of MySpace is causing an adolescent exodus from the social networking sites, according to research from the media regulator Ofcom.

The sites, once the virtual streetcorners, pubs and clubs for millions of 15- to 24-year-olds, have now been over-run by 25- to 34-year-olds whose presence is driving their younger peers away."

Where are they going then?

Interesting!

Social Swine flu fever

2009-07-31T16:39:00.000+01:00

This week I have mostly been ignoring swine flu...

Universities prepare for swine flu worst as nurseries take away soft toys | Education | guardian.co.uk:

"The guide for childminders tells them: 'Try to avoid children sharing soft toys as these are hard to clean adequately; you may find it easier to avoid using soft toys altogether. Clean hard toys after use as the virus can survive on hard surfaces.'

The guidance for schools and nurseries says: 'Discourage the sharing of pencils, crayons and pens during a pandemic. Encourage the wiping and cleaning of hands and objects when passing round objects like musical instruments or toys. Do not allow children to share musical instruments.'

A spokesman from the DCSF said: 'We are not suggesting taking all toys out of play settings, just to take care with the use of shared toys, which can be a way of spreading infection. This is about striking a sensible balance between continuing life as normal but also taking simple, common sense steps to protect children.'"

... and watching the world going mad. "Kids. Don't share your teddies. No! Don't!!! Those soft toys are evil. Burn them! Burn them all!!!!" *sigh*

Okay, so my 3 and 6 yr olds have had it... but it was JUST FLU... okay. Honestly. They didn't turn into piglets (they may eat like them, but appearances can be deceptive)... they didn't turn violet... they didn't... well... they didn't do much really. They had flu.

Paranoia about Swine Flu and the Gartner Hype cycle... I bet there's a relationship which is pretty much identical. I also wonder if our increasingly virtually connected world is heightening that sense of paranoia. Before we may or may not have known someone who was poorly. Now, through status updates and Tweets etc... everyone is now a 'friend' and it seems closer and more dangerous than it is.

PS I've also got a bit of a chest infection. A bit of a chest infection. And. It's. Not. Swine. Flu. Honestly!

Return of the Mac...

2009-07-20T20:00:00.003+01:00

I just bought myself a MacBook Pro and while I'm waiting for it to arrive, I thought I'd just share the various links others have kindly shared with a PC-based ignoramus like me for making the switch to (or back to, in my case!) a Mac:

General Mac basics
For free and useful, take a look at Apple's site. Their support pages are good.

Also, Mac 101 and Switch 101 (which is great if you're moving from PC to Mac)

These might answer many of the questions that crop up in the first few days/ weeks.

Also, Mac Help, Finder> Help> Search usually works well.

Open University-related:
For Open University-related questions, try the Mac General website (although this is jam-packed with stuff anyone using a Mac in education would find helpful)

The best news is that Virtual PC is no longer needed. If you need to use a PC, you can install Windows OS onto your Mac- see Mac General for details.

Other recommended sites:
Mac Rumors and Mac OS X Hints - both sites have forums too; you can pick up tips and tricks in those sometimes as well.

Books and Magazines:
Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual, David Pogue
MacUser magazine and website.

Oh, and if you're a student or work in Education... take a look at the deals available via the Apple Education Store. Well worth the saving!

Learning Outcomes... again...

2009-07-10T10:03:00.003+01:00

Would love to know what people think about the following... yes... no... anything else?

Do learning outcomes really improve student learning?

Am having a mull about this and would like to know what other people think!

More Tricks to using the iPod Touch in education

2009-07-07T14:14:00.002+01:00

Really useful list from David Hopkin's eLearning Blog on how to uses the iPod Touch in education.

mLearning; Tricks to using the iPod Touch in class eLearning Blog // Don’t Waste Your Time … included the following:

Screen-grab

Save images while browsing

Emails

Apple App Store

Internet & Surfing

Note-taking

Podcasts

Documents"

I commented on it, but thought I'd expand his list a little further to include the following:

Get a headset with an in-built mic and you can record voice memos

Sync the calendar with Google Calendar to keep track of appointments / assignments etc (also good for accessing your Gmail too)

Use the Contacts organiser to keep track of numbers / e-mail addresses you're given when out an' about

Create shortcuts to web-based e-mail by adding that page to your home screen - just open up Safari > go to your webmail > Click on the "+" (plus sign) button and then touch the "Add to Home Screen" option (see screenshot, left).

Get hold of the free TED Talks app to view some inspiring talks without needing to download the podcasts

Install the Skype app (also free) to use with that ipod headset with mic mentioned above... and free Skype-to-Skype calls / the ability to make phone calls becomes available wherever there’s wifi available

Access presentations from SlideShare by using mobile slideshare

Writing a timed essay or trying to motivate your way through a batch of marking? Click on Clock and Timer and speed yourself up!

The calculator is useful... but a quick rotate to landscape and you get yourself a free scientific calculator.

Me, I love my iPod Touch. It's got just enough stuff to fill in most of the gaps when you haven't got access to your main computer. It's lighter and quicker to turn on and get online than a netbook. It has oodles of apps available (though you end up using just a few select ones). It's 'shove in your pocket-able'. The battery life is excellent (can be left in sleep mode for days) and it charges quickly. What's not to like? Oh, and although you don't get the phone bits you do with an iPhone, for on-campus use, you'll most likely have a wireless connection available... so who needs the additional monthly contract cost / extra initial cost of the iPhone? :o)

"Free" by Chris Anderson - available... free!

2009-07-07T11:25:00.002+01:00

Living by what he's writing, Chris Anderson (of The Long Tail fame) has written a new book, "Free" and made it available via Scribd for nowt:

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

Like the price... may like the content enough to pay the 'real' price too! Like this model of distribution!! Here's to 'free'!

Things I love about tagging

2009-07-03T12:56:00.005+01:00

I'm a bit of an online hoarder. I love collecting snippets of information, articles, news items, hints, tips... you name it... I want to put it in a little bag and save it. However, 'favorites' and 'bookmarks' and me don't really get along terribly well. I'm also a bit of a computer-floozy. I'll swap computer at will. As long as I have an internet connection and a keyboard I don't care so very much about the hardware that I'm using... so managing multiple instances of bookmarks is a pain in the backside. Yes, something like xmarks can be a useful add-on, but I still have to sort out installing that... and y'know what... I'm lazy. Something I can use on-the-fly really works for me... which is why tagging is such a handy dandy thing to do.

So, what're the plus points of tagging?

Categorise resources in the way you want to categorise resources
No favorites folders! The same bit of information can have lots of different 'tags', no need to try to shoehorn it into one folder.
They help you search and retrieve resources easily
Those tags are shareable and subscribable... which means you can share what you find and keep track of what others find too
Agree on a unique tag for a project / subject area and you can track all materials for that project

Of the above, number 5 is one of the most useful, I find because it lets you do things like this:

Using something like Friendfeed or NetVibes you can quickly add in the various RSS feeds for your tag of choice and... bingo... all resources in one place, no matter where they came from or who originated them. If you're using Twitter, just use a unique hashtag and you're away. Unique tags are also great for following what happens at conferences and can help create a vibrant backchannel for live comment and discussion. Have a look at the CommonCraft intro to Twitter Search for more detail... it's sure to fire off some ideas on how to use this stuff!

I also thought it would be handy to quickly jot down some of the main ways of I use tags:

Aggregating resources for my own use
Aggregating resources (from a variety of sources) for projects
Pooling resources for a team (for example in the Educational Development Unit at NTU, we use the tag NTUEDU on Delicious to pool any elearning-related links we find)
Creating a backchannel for an event using a unique tag
Subscribing to specific tags to follow what's happening in that field

Will try to add more to the above as they come to me.

PS Am I very sad for my tag-love?! :o)

Communities of reciprocity and Twitter

2009-07-02T15:30:00.000+01:00

Just seen the following on the BBC website...

BBC NEWS | Technology | Twitter followers 'can be bought':

"Twitter users who lack an audience for their messages can now buy followers.

Australian social media marketing company uSocial is offering a paid service that finds followers for users of the micro-blogging service."

Oh, good grief... buying followers? Hmmmm...

Actually, this has got me thinking. There seem to be three main ways in which Twitter is used:

1. Those who see it as a consumption-only medium: happy to follow but rarely contribute directly... primarily following celebs etc
2. Those who see it as a community of reciprocity: sharing, retweeting and commenting
3. Those who see it as a broadcast-only medium: collecting followers, but rarely interacting with them... primarily using it as a means to transmit their message

There are people who seem to flit between the three main groups above but I think that people / organisations tend to broadly fit into one of the above. I suppose there's a fourth way in which it's used - as a 'because others are using it' choice. However, these people rarely if ever post updates or add followers and eventually the account lies dormant and the service is declared 'pointless'. For me, however, the way it works most effectively is in the middle - the community of reciprocity. You build up an idea of the person behind the account through the way they behave. The way they interact. The way they involve and share. For those people, a network can't be bought... it's sought out and / or earned.

I was thinking that this idea of online communities of reciprocity relates to why online communities do or don't work as well. It's not enough to say that an online community is automatically a 'community of practice' just because someone has set it up to be so (I've attended several conferences / talks where the talk was of communities of practice and all they actually meant was that they'd set up some online forums). Without the recipricous element, it is a sterile place to be and the potential for longevity isn't (I would guess) as powerful.

You can buy your Twitter followers if you want... it won't necessarily buy an engaged set of followers. I wonder how effective services such as uSocial will be and what the quality will be like for those who pay for it??

VLEs and real learning

2009-06-25T11:02:00.001+01:00

Over on Learning with 'e's: Another nail in the coffin?:

"Is this yet another nail in the VLE coffin, and should we now be looking toward more simplified, personalised learning environments based on individual needs?"

... some useful reflections on VLEs' worth or otherwise.

I guess I'm a bit torn on this one. I use a VLE as part of my work and my studies. I support and develop others in their use of VLEs and yet I also see them used so statically, so badly, so linearly, so sporadically that they also frequently make me question their worth. I sometimes wonder if the drive to have an online presence is worth it, if that online presence is only going to be an online document dumping group? So often a VLE becomes a place to put all the PowerPoint slides which have already bored your students in their face-to-face lecture (Mann and Robinson, 2009). Where is the educational worth? Where is the research that shows how effective and enhancing a VLE can be? Where are the models of really good VLE practice which can be adapted and adopted as with effective face-to-face teaching? Would you think a VLE was a good thing if you were a student and all it ever did was bung online the things which have already bored you once? Would you want to engage with it further? Would you rather go elsewhere?

VLEs are often packed full of 'worthwhile' tools. But, institutional VLEs can take on an appearance of a kitchen which, while having some useful equipment, has become filled with the kitchen gadgets you buy because you think you can see a value in them (fondue set, avocado slicer, icecream maker, cappuccino frother etc)... but actually, they sit and moulder at the back of the cupboard. More useless than useful. We describe the various bits of a VLE as 'tools', but in reality, we don't want to use 'tools'. We're not bashing together bits of furniture... we're after creative spaces for learning and thinking. "Tool" is a hard word. A working word. A functional word. It's awkward and not terribly aesthetically pleasing. Deep learning can be a soft, woolly, wonderful, messy, exploratory, meandering thing. How do virtual learning environments really encourage that sort of learning?

The VLE concept - a safe space where we get on with learning - sounds like it works and should work. But our online lives aren't like that. Where physically we attend (or used to attend) physical spaces our online world is free of the constraints of requiring a physical presence in a single location... and yet... the VLE seeks to provide us with that constrained world again. It jars. VLEs don't have to be used in that way. Learning doesn't have to be like that.

I don't know whether the VLE is having nails hammered into its coffin as Steve suggests in his blog posting... but... summat's up with it all. Technology should be enhancing and empowering. VLEs, so often, are not. I don't know if blame lies with the VLE or with the culture in which it sits? Change is happening amongst learners, society, cultures... everwhere. What happens if we don't find ways to be creative, to support and exist with that change? Will we look back at VLEs in a few years time and say 'did we really think that was the way to go???'

Multiple-personalities and making connections

2009-06-24T16:43:00.000+01:00

The Ed Techie: Riffability and MPO:

"Of course, many people do this very well at the moment, and some environments (virtual worlds in particular) actively encourage a separation of 'real' identity and online one. My conjecture is that it will become the norm, and take place in more publicly social spaces. And it is likely people won't stop at two identities, but have many. When you add into this that people find you in different spaces and so may have one facet of your personality exaggerated (eg if you follow someone in LastFM but not twitter, you would have a different impression of them), then defining what exactly is 'your identity' becomes increasingly difficult."

As ever, an interesting one from Martin's blog. I understand what he says about the difficulty of understanding your identity from contact from just one account... but I tend to think that that's just life... and is like everyday life generally. We only know people from the particular contact we have with them. Work colleagues. Neighbours. Friends who share a leisure interest. Family. We see that facet of them. In many ways having lots of online versions of you is better because should you want to track down a more complete version. The 'you' who likes taking photos and appears on Flickr. The 'you' who communicates with old school friends on Facebook. The 'you' who connects with professional colleagues on Linked-In. The you who shares resources and snippets of communication on Twitter. This isn't a new thing, it's an old thing in a different space. Are you the same person in the pub with your friends as you are during a committee meeting? Are you the same person chatting about your kids as you are talking about your projects? Nope. The ones who have been able to act and be the 'right' version of them in whichever space they find themselves tend to be the ones who cope best. Online, offline. Real, virtual.

PS I think the more identity-savvy are aware that there is an additional ease of traceability and jigsaw assembly of your online personality than there is your face-to-face one. Maybe it's not the multiplicity of personality which is new or heightened, but is instead the ease of making connections between your multi-faceted life which has changed?

The copyright dance and making a video

2009-06-18T14:00:00.002+01:00

Often people post resources online and I think "Oooooh, that's good... I wonder how they did it". Well, I thought that I would share some of the stuff I put together about creating the copyright-happy video I did recently on RSS but also give it a bit of a copyright-aware focus too. The RSS stuff I presented recently at work (in front of the Uni's librarians - who will jump on you at even a whiff of a copyright infringement) and at the time I heard a few murmurings about whether or not I'd infringed copyright by including audio and images... and the answer was... no.

The way I did it was as follows:

1. The audio is provided using the YouTube service "AudioSwap"

More details of it are available on YouTube, but a quick summary of the service is that it allows you to replace or add an audio track with any item from YouTube's library of authorised music so that copyright is not infringed - a brief further explanation of this is available in the Copyright section of YouTube. Not only that, but it can look at the length of your video and suggest tracks of a similar length to make video editing extremely simple. Handy!

2. All photographic images had a Creative Commons license and were sourced via Flickr

Within Flickr you can easily search and find relevant images to use for a presentation, but one thing to be aware of is that if you just carry out a normal search you won't necessarily be pulling up images which have a Creative Commons license. Instead, click on Search and then select "Advanced search". Within the screen that follows just scroll down and find the section labelled "Creative Commons":

Select "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content" and when you carry out your search you'll find your search only looks within the millions of Creative Commons-licensed images on Flickr. Adhere to the Creative Commons' license and you're sorted.

3. The video itself was created using free online tools

The rest of the video was put together using a PowerPoint presentation I'd created (you could use OpenOffice for this quite easily if you wanted the 100% free version!) and then captured using a tool called "ScreenToaster". You can then save your video and upload it wherever you want. If you want to put it on YouTube, use the option to save as a .MOV file and upload that (as it's more reliable than ScreenToaster's "Upload to YouTube" feature.

4. The full presentation I gave was made available on SlideShare

The presentation included not only the PowerPoint presentation which I'd uploaded but also the video on RSS and can be found here on SlideShare. The advantage with this is that the service allows you to easily combine PowerPoints with YouTube videos with none of that horrible clicking between applications which so often happens when someone's delivering a presentation which includes a vid.

Hope my little guide on how to put together a video which will keep the copyright bods happy! Okay, I'm sure someone will point out a flaw in the above, but y'know, a gal's gotta keep trying with this stuff don'cha know.

For some far more reliable Web 2.0 legal wisdom, there's a great little checklist available from JISC Legal which you might like to take a peek at too!

Twitter Search by CommonCraft

2009-06-18T11:26:00.003+01:00

New CommonCraft video on using Twitter Search...

Great timing because I've just got to put together some information on Twitter and how it can be used. Gotta love internet serendipity!