Cakes: Learning Technology Blog

Introduction to Using Clickers in Higher Education

2011-11-15T10:03:00.002Z

Clickers (also known as Audience Response Systems, Classroom Communication Systems, and Personal Response Systems, among other things), are systems that support audience participation in lectures.

Some use these tools are used in large group sessions as part of efforts to -:

Allow anonymous interaction

These systems can be used to encourage anonymous answering of questions where the teacher feels that would be beneficial to encouraging participation, or for ethical reasons.

Increase engagement

Some teachers believe that asking the students questions at the start, or part way through a lecture can help keep the students focused.

Start discussions

Perhaps the most talked about use of Clickers is as part of the Peer Instruction method. In this method students would be asked to answer a question which is designed so that only students with a grasp of certain concepts will be able to answer it correctly. Students see the range of answers on a big screen and are asked to defend their answer to the people sitting next to them. They then vote again, and there should be a move towards the correct answer. The lecturer can then take over if they feel that is necessary.
This seems to work best in subjects where a key to learning is helping students understand none-intuitive concepts. Examples are Physics (see the work of Eric Mayer, and watch a video of a presentation by him) or Mechanical Engineering (see the work at the Univerisity of Strathclyde).

Aid Contingent Teaching and diagnosis of common misunderstandings

A lecturer with well written questions can identify where lots of the class are misunderstanding a concept.

Record answers

If anonymity is not required, it is possible to record answers for individual student’s summative assessment.

If you want to look a bit more closely at some of these methods, especially Peer Instruction, the following journal articles might be of interest.

'Examining the benefits and challenges of using audience response systems: A review of the literature' by Kay and LeSage (Computers and Education, 2009) is a major review of the literature in this area and is a must read article. It looks at the history of the technology and terms used to describe it, followed by an in-depth review of 67 peer-reviewed papers published from 2000 to 2007.
‘Characterizing the Effect of Seating Arrangement on Classroom Learning Using Neural Networks’ by Monterola, Roxas and Carreon-Monterola (Complexity, 14.4, 2009) found that when using a type of Peer Instruction there were benefits to seating high aptitude students at the corners of the classroom rather than in any other planned or random seating arrangement.
‘A New Peer Instruction Method for Teaching Practical Skills in the Health Sciences: an Evaluation of the ‘Learning Trail’’ by Dollman (Advances in Health Sciences Education, 2005) looks at “an innovative application of peer-mediated instruction designed to enhance student learning in large practical classes."
‘An investigation of the effectiveness of electronic classroom communication systems in large lecture classes’ by Sharma, Khachan, Chan and O'Byrne (Australasian Journal of Education Technology, 2005). This describes their use of Clickers where “Students used the keypads to answer two step multiple choice problems after a discussion within their group. The questions were generated using students' answers from previous exams”.
‘Peer instruction: a case study for an introductory magnetism course’ by Lenaerts, Wieme and Van Zele (European Journal of Physics, 2003) notes "the positive impact of PI has been demonstrated... Special attention has been paid to the enhancement of the traditional lecture demonstrations by PI... The framework of Vygotsky's zone of proximal development is offered as a pedagogical explanation for the effectiveness of PI."
‘Peer Instruction versus Class-wide Discussion in Large Classes: a comparison of two interaction methods in the wired classroom‘ by Nicol and Boyle (Studies in Higher Education, 2003) reports on research where Clickers were used to make it easier to give immediate feedback to students and to help manage Peer Instruction. The study discovered that the type of dialogue and discussion sequence have important effects on learning.
‘Peer instruction: Results from a range of classrooms’ by Fagen, Crouch and Mazur (The Physics Teacher, 2002) notes users reported that writing good questions can be a major obstacle. When no suitable questions had been written students were asked to read before the lecture to cover breadth and then in-depth study occurred in the lecture.
‘Peer Instruction: Ten years of experience and results’ by Crouch and Mazur (American Journal of Physics, 2001) reports data from ten years of teaching with Peer Instruction (PI). They also look at how they have improved their use of PI, for example they have “replaced in-class reading quizzes with pre-class written responses to the reading, introduced a research-based mechanics textbook for portions of the course, and incorporated cooperative learning into the discussion sections as well as the lectures."

ALT-C 2011: The Videos

2011-11-10T09:31:00.000Z

Selected talks from ALT-C 2011 are now available on YouTube.

To give you an idea of what might be interesting to you I've listed the talks along with a quick overview of those that I've watched.

"Well, the kookaburras thought it was funny anyway!" (27:20) - Gilly Salmon has moved to Australia and gives us a quick comparison of the two Higher Education systems.
“The city as the learning environment: making change happen in Leicester's schools" (23:09) - Josie Fraser works on ICT strategy across Leicester's schools, and here she talks about ways in which the students there want to improve their schools and learning technology use. She finishes by talking about their strategy and aims.
"Leadership in a cold climate: Leading where the past is no reliable guide to the future. A reflection on the strategic leadership of people, technology and institutions in UK HE" (32:46) [Presentation Slides] - Ewart Wooldridge from the Leadership Foundation for HE spoke about the need for agility and change in Higher Education. While technology can have transformative, strategic and operational change on a university, he notes that currently most change is operational and then looks at how less hierarchical models of leadership, respect for professional staff, more entrepreneurial work, and more collaboration, might enable the transformational and strategic change.
"I Have a Blind Student in My Maths/Science Class, Should I panic? How to promote inclusion for blind students" (29:38) - By Donal Fitzpatrick, Lecturer at the School of Computing at Dublin University.
"Remembering Robin Mason" (25:01) - By Sonam Penjor, Head of Educational Technology, Royal University of Bhutan, Bhutan.
"The ROI of Online Collaboration: Doing More With Less" (31:02) - By Rajeev Arora, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy for Blackboard Collaborate.
"On being public...how social media reshapes professional identity" (31:50) - By Anne-Marie Cunningham, Clinical Lecturer and Academic Lead for eLearning in the School of Medicine at Cardiff University.
"JISC's support for learning and teaching in a changing educational environment" (30:51) - By Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary of JISC.
"Open courses: Converting, launching, and letting go..." (28:04) - Jo Axe, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Management at Royal Roads University, Canada.
"The elusive technological future" (51:39) - John Naughton, Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University.
"The educational and social impacts of Plan Ceibal - a new approach to the use of technology in education" (1:02:28) - Miguel Brechner, President of the Uruguayan Centre for Technological and Social Inclusion.

[image by Jez Cope]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

Make the Web come to you: Simple tools and techniques to keep you in the loop.

2011-06-23T16:43:00.002+01:00

[Session Notes]

I ran a new session on Wednesday about using web feeds to keep track of online information. This has made a big difference to the number of topics I can keep track of, and so I'm keen to share about them more widely in the institution.

A section was added about online social networking sites such as Twitter, as some people find that they replace the need for feed readers in their own lives.

I thought I'd share a link to the session notes which contain a link to a screencast version of the session, and some extra resources to expand what we talked about. There's no real replacement for getting a group of people together to talk about experiences and help each other learn, but these resources might be of some use to you.

[image by gdesigneralex]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

Using Blackboard 9.1: Uploading Content into Blackboard

2011-06-13T18:37:00.002+01:00

This guide is designed for those who have lots of resources to upload into Blackboard 9.1 in Learning Edge, for example those manually migrating from Blackboard 8 or those who are running online courses.

We’ll present you with several ways that you can manage and upload those resources, allowing you to choose the best solution for yourself.

Basic file uploads.

Uploading a small number of files

The quickest way to share a few files using Blackboard 9.1 is to upload the file from a Content Area page. This uploads the file to Blackboard and creates a link that students can use to access it.

Uploading folders structures and large numbers of files

If you have whole folder structures to move into Blackboard 9.1, zip files will be the best solution for most people. They are easy to create in Windows XP, and then can be uploaded into Blackboard.

Managing files in Blackboard

If you want more control of your files, look in more detail at the Blackboard file management tools which give you a lot of control over your files and folders.

Using WebDAV

WebDAV allows you to map a Blackboard 9.1 section to your network drives so you can use it as you would use your G: drive. You can drag files and folders into Blackboard.

Note that this system will not work on every computer and we can only currently tell you how to set it up on Windows XP.
Firstly you need to get the URL for the Blackboard section in question.
Secondly you need to add the web address to your Network Places (or equivalent). Our video shows how this is done on Windows XP, but the process may change a little or stop working when we move to Windows 7.

eLearning Content Creation Tools

eLearning content creation tools can be used to create content outside of a specific learning environment. They are most useful where you need to import your content into a number of different VLEs.
In the past we have used Wimba Create to create content for some of our online courses, however eXe is free to use and we will be using that as an example here.
For an introduction watch this introduction to eXe from one of the creators.
Visit the download page to get hold of the software.
To learn to use in details, watch this set of videos covering the use of eXe.

1. What is eXe (0.24) - Windows Media Version / YouTube Version
2. Downloading eXe (0.59) - Windows Media Version / YouTube Version
3. Adding iDevices (1.43) - Windows Media Version / YouTube Version
4. Adding More Pages (1.33) - Windows Media Version / YouTube Version
5. The RSS iDevice (1.46) - Windows Media Version / YouTube Version
6. Changing Content and Styles (1.47) - Windows Media Version / YouTube Version
7. Exporting and Saving (1.40) - Windows Media Version / YouTube Version
8. Importing an IMS Content Package to Blackboard 8 (2:38) - Windows Media Version / YouTube Version
9. Importing the Content into Blackboard 9.1

Export content from eXe
Upload content to Blackboard
Create a link for the students to access the content
After making changes to content in eXe, you need to re-upload to Blackboard

[image by infilmity]

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Initial Thoughts on Livescribe Smartpens and 'Pencasts'

2011-05-12T11:46:00.000+01:00

I finally got to play with a Livescribe pen last night, and the possibilities of using look interesting.

The company describe it as a ‘smartpen’, and it records both what you write and the audio in the room at the same time. I’ve mainly heard people talk about students using these tools to take audio enhanced lecture notes, but the Flash based file that you can export could be used in a very similar way to some screencasts.

The pen requires special paper for it to work but you can print that for free, and you also need to install the free software on your PC or Mac.

An important question regarding this tool would be related to the ethical aspects of recording lectures and meetings. Would students have to declare that they were using one of these in a lecture? Then again some students bring other recording devices to lectures already, so perhaps there is already an expectation that these events will be recorded.

[image by Peter Samis]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

Thoughts on Gamification and Higher Education

2011-03-15T16:08:00.005Z

We've talked about games before on this blog from the perspectives of using them as learning experiences, and learning environments. What we've perhaps explored less is games' role in motivation.

I think that a fair number of teachers see the potential for using technology and games as a novelty to get students' attention. While this might work, it seems to me that there is a high cost of development when novelty only lasts a short time.

With the resources available we might gain more from using techniques from games to increase motivation. I've watched some talks over the last year or so which bring different perspectives, but look at how games and game techniques can change our culture.

Jane McGonigal talks at TED about what we learn, and the skills we develop, playing games.
Seth Priebatsch talks at TEDxBoston about the game layer built on top of the world, both now and it's potential in the future to influence and motivate.
Jesse Schell's 'Visions of the Gamepocalypse' talk looks at ways in which these techniques might affect our lives in the future.

Game mechanics is a very interesting area to look at. As Seth says, we see those used by business in many ways. But how can HE use them? And how do these claims fit in with the work of people like Alfie Kohn who see issues with extrinsic rewards?

Jessie Schell's talk includes a lot about reward systems. We’ve long had reward systems (Nectar points, Airmiles, etc) but the possibilities are expanding with services like foursquare and SCVNGR making it easier for smaller organisations to offer similar and potentially more interesting reward systems.

SCVNGR is especially interesting as you can easily set tasks for people to do, and even offer them a reward when they have. In the HE context this could be used as a potentially interesting, alternative way of giving new students a list of tasks to do for induction. It would have to be voluntary and done on trust, but we could create more complex location aware tours of campus with QR codes to scan, or tasks to do such as check out a book on your reading list from the library or access an ebook on a topic you are interested in.

I've created an example task to show how this works. You'll need the SCVNGR app on your phone, and you'll use it to search for the SOLSTICE Centre (there are two so find the one with the 'Pay us a visit!' quest on it). Scan the QR code on our door and you'll get 2 points. Woo hoo!

I couldn't resist thinking up a list of Xbox style achievements relating to an induction and library activity:

10 - Borrower: Check out and return a book from the library
20 - Book Worm: Check out 15 books from the library
10 - Are 'Books' Electric?: Log into the library catalogue and access an eBook
10 - What Shelf are the eJournals on?: Access an eJournal article
20 - Virtual Learner: Access Blackboard
10 - Big Spender: Spend some money from your UniCard
30 - Egghead: Complete the quiz at the end of InfoZone with 100% correct answers.

However they wouldn't work in reality as they would require a big, complex system to track student activity.

Regarding concerns that motivational techniques might harm intrinsic motivation, I'm not really aware of the discussions around this. I think it might be less of an issue here as we are talking about games, which are by nature voluntarily participated in. Before you join in with the game you make a decision to do so, meaning that these techniques could be presented as a tool for the students to motivate themselves to do things that they know will help themselves learn.

This post is a quick overview of my initial thoughts on an area which is being talked about a lot, and I'd be really interested to hear other people's too.

[image by Bodum]

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Learning Technology Journals

2011-02-25T17:27:00.003Z

Inspired by a recent conversation on the ALT-MEMBERS group on JISCMail, I've developed my list of all the Learning Technology related journals that I find interesting or useful.

The list contains:

1. Feeds for the journals so that you can subscribe with a feed reader (e.g. Google Reader).

2. Links to the journals' home pages so you can find articles and information about the journal.

3. Links to the journals' pages in the EHU library catalogue, for Edge Hill University staff and students.

4. The date when we last tweeted about a new issue of the journal in question. This is mostly relevant for me as I also try to tweet around the time that new issues of these journals are published. You could follow #cakesltd on Twitter to get these updates.

I hope this list might be helpful to people who are quite new to this area of using new technology in teaching and learning, and who are wanting to explore the research.

[image by the.Firebottle]

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SOLSTICE & CLTR Conference 2011: Call for Abstracts

2011-02-11T03:00:00.001Z

This year the SOLSTICE and CLTR conferences will be run as one, and the call for abstracts has gone out.

The conference will focus on the enhancement of student learning through evidence informed practices.

Day one, the SOLSTICE 2011 eLearning Conference will focus on effective practices from a Technology Enhanced Learning perspective and will build on the success of the SOLSTICE Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning’s previous conferences which have run over the last 5 years.

Day two, the CLTR 2011 Learning & Teaching Research Conference will focus on innovation and development in higher education learning and teaching practice, which has been at the heart of the CLTR’s mission for the last 9 years.

Thoughts on Personal Learning Environments for Formal and Informal Learning

2011-02-10T15:08:00.003Z

There are various things that the term Personal Learning Environment (PLEs) can refer to, but any definition would look on them as student controlled environments to support either formal or informal learning. Stephen Downes' 2005 E-learning 2.0 article does a good job of talking through the changes that have been taking place over the last decade, which have led us to using and talking about this sort of thing.

We can gain a basic understanding of PLEs by comparing them to VLEs For example:

VLEs

Managed by institution.
Made of a few pieces of software.
Owned by Institution.
Student uses for the time that they are in formal education.
Content mainly provided by institution.

PLEs

Managed by student
Made up of varying numbers of pieces of software, people and networks.
Owned by student as far as that is possible
Student uses for the time that they are wanting to learn about a topic
Content provided by wide variety of people

This is a very simple comparison and Envisioning the Post-LMS Era: The Open Learning Network goes much deeper (see Table 1).

Some are looking at the idea of the Open Learning Network as trying to merge the best of these two 'systems' in a formal setting, with a different Informal Learning Environment as the solution for informal learning or small scale corporate learning.

Exploring these ideas leads me to two questions.

Firstly, can we see our VLE and supporting tools developing to include what an Open Learning Network is, or would we need to develop new systems to support this? I don't feel that I understand the concept enough to comment right now, although the development of the Learning Edge system, which is more than just a VLE, seems like it could be a foundation for something like this.

The second question is how do we support students and staff to develop their own Personal Learning Environment for their own informal lifelong learning. A good starting place would be to work out what it might look like. Sarah Stewart tried to visualise hers and how it changed over several years. If I was to examine mine looking at inputs and outputs from the perspective of work on my SOLSTICE Fellowship I might find:

Inputs

Face-to-face - Colleagues in the office, other Fellows, academic staff
Web content collected by Google Reader - Blogs, conferences, journals
Twitter - content and comment from around the sector
Personal experiences

Outputs

Face-to-face - meetings, conferences and conversations
Twitter - content and comment
Blog posts
Reports to institution
Relevant research list
Delicious bookmarks

Is this what we want a informal PLE to be for our learners? There are specific goals (reports, influencing people to use the technology where it is appropriate), there is communication and reflection about what has been learned (the process of writing blog posts and reports) but in writing this out I see different outputs and can recognise how chaotic this process is.

In conversations in the office it was noted that if we are to support the development of people's PLEs, we really need to know what process individuals go through when using them. There’s not a right or wrong way to manage your inputs (e.g. Web Feeds, Podcasts, Twitter networks, and Bookmarks), but advice on work flow could help people use appropriate tools well.

So it looks to me like we could:

Encourage people to visualise their own PLE in some way to identify what is involved and enable developments.
Raise awareness about various tools that can be used in your informal learning. (e.g. we could run face-to-face and online sessions, publish blog posts).
Encourage sharing of how work-flows can be improved while performing tasks (e.g. using a feed reader rather than visiting dozens of web sites every week to check for updates, backing up your data).

2011 Horizon Report: A Quick Overview

2011-02-09T12:07:00.005Z

I always enjoy reading the new edition of the Horizon report. It’s interesting to see what they think is close to being used in mainstream HE, what is far off, and how things have changed since previous years (2008, 2009, 2010). I don't think that they've been far off in their predictions, although uptake of the technologies by the mainstream has perhaps been a little slower than expected.

This year in the One Year or Less to adoption section we have Electronic Books and Mobiles. In the Two to Three Years to adoption group we have Augmented Reality and Game-Based Learning. Four to Five Years to adoption contains Gesture-Based Computing and Learning Analytics.

Over the next week or so, some of us in LTD hope to write up some thoughts on the report and the individual technologies discussed within.

What are the Barriers Preventing Academic Staff from Using New Technologies?

2011-02-07T11:52:00.001Z

As part of my Postgraduate Certificate I'm starting some research into what the barriers/obstacles are to the use of new technology in teaching and learning in HE. To start with I wanted clues as to which areas might be worth exploring. I also wanted a change to play with Google Moderator, as I've not had a chance yet.

Have a look at the Series that I set up and it'd be great if you could add your own suggestions to it.

If you'd like to think about using Google Moderator with your students ktotheb's video gives you an example of how it could be used, and Penn State University have written an overview.

[image by Goulash75]

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Getting Started Using Blackboard 9.1: Collected Resources

2011-01-27T15:06:00.006Z

We've just started using Blackboard 9.1 for teaching on a select few modules. I've collected links to the resources we've initially been recommending to the teaching staff here.

An Introduction

Quick Overview of Blackboard 9.1 (v1. November 2010): This video introduces the new system and notes differences between this and our current Blackboard CE8 system.
Quick Overview of Blackboard 9.1 (v2. February 2011): Screencast version of the awareness raising session complete with Closed Captions, and Interactive Transcript (best viewed full screen at 720p).
5 Essential Skills: Basics that will help you develop your section.
How to log into Blackboard 9.1 through Edge Hill University's Go Portal. This video is aimed at students but relevant to all.

Thinking about what you want to achieve

Blackboard’s Exemplary Course Program: You might find some inspiration and ideas from what others have been doing.

Creating content and setting up the section

Creating a Blank Page: How to create a new page within your section.
Using the Text Editor: Editing text content created within Learning Edge and adding images and hyperlinks to it.
Create a Mashup: Not a mashup as you know it, it’s just embedding resources from sites like YouTube and SlideShare.
Building a Learning Module
Course Files: Note that EHU has the basic version

Communication and collaboration

Creating Announcements
Creating a Group
Creating a Blog
Creating a Journal
Creating a Wiki: If you've not thought about using Wikis before, we've collected some resources to get you thinking.

Assessment

Videos related to assessment: Note that EHU does not use Safe Assign so ignore videos about that.

Technology and Radical Transformation

2011-01-12T15:46:00.001Z

For those who are interested in the idea of technology and its relation to radical transformation of learning, I've read a couple interesting things recently which look at that idea.

Stephen Downes writes in his 'Half an Hour' blog as part of a discussion around the benefits of technology use in education. He sums up his own argument well, saying

"technology does not improve education by making what you are already doing better, it improves education by making what you are not doing possible."

The other resource to explore is the latest issue of the ALT-J journal, entitled 'The Transformational Impact of Learning Technology'. In the introduction the editors write that in this issue they "look for radical change, rather than just doing the same at a different scale." In this issue is the 'Web-based lecture technologies and learning and teaching: a study of change in four Australian universities' paper, where the authors do not see in depth change and conclude that "technologies have been added on, rather than integrated into the curriculum".

These three pieces all give us similar perspectives on learning technology. It's something that enables you to do what you could not before, something that encourages you to completely rethink the way you do things, and something that should be properly integrated into learning design. These ideas give us room for thought and discussion about how technology could affect both our teaching and wider institutional strategies.

Quickly Updating the Files in Blackboard Using WebDAV

2010-11-23T16:39:00.004Z

I've been asked how to update files in Blackboard using WebDAV, and though it worth sharing the instructions more widely. We have not used this method much and so are not aware if any problems and complications may occur. Let us know of your experiences if you do try and use it.

WebDAV allows quick updating of files on Blackboard through the familiar Windows Explorer interface. I'm not sure if this method will work on on other operating systems than Windows.

The first step is to find the URL for your Blackboard section. This video (which has no sound) shows the process in Blackboard version 8 which we currently use. Watch it full screen.

In Learning Edge/Blackboard 9.1, you can find the URL in a slightly different way.

When you have the URL for your Blackboard section, you can add it to your network places following these instructions.

Does blogging make better teachers, nurses, managers?

2010-11-23T11:28:00.001Z

I’ve just started following someone widely regarded as a bit of an e-learning guru: Stephen Downes. The first email update I received inspired me enough to create this posting.

Stephen pointed me to a post by Dean Shareski:

“ … suggesting that the way to make better teachers is to get them to blog.”

I’ve just read the article – perhaps something to consider across all professional courses at Edge Hill? (Can I can hear ethical alarm bells ringing!?)

Comments sought, kindest regards,

David

Image by Steve Rhodes

"Have You Googled Yourself?": Online Presence and Online Identity

2010-11-17T10:33:00.007Z

We ran a session today for 3rd Year Students to introduce concepts around their online identity, which was approached from the perspective of them looking for work.

The supporting slides are below. Select 'View on Slideshare' for the opportunity to see in full screen view.

"Have You Googled Yourself?"

Firstly we noted the evidence that some employers search online for information about potential employees. The case for freelancers needing an online presence is more obvious, but was also mentioned.

We asked the students to search for themselves online using Google, Cluuz and a tool on the MIT site, and asked them to think about what they found about themselves and the impression that might give to the world.

This led on to talking about ways of developing a web presence either though a website, a profile on something like LinkedIn, or a collection of their accounts and published work on a Google or claimID profile.

Next we moved on from static resources and looked at the role of engaging with your community. LinkedIn have created the 'brandyousurvey' quiz to help you think about the way you network online, and the students went through this. This led to looking at ways that you can connect with a global community such as writing a blog, reading and commenting on other's blogs and real-time tools like Twitter for sharing resources and conversations. The links between these tools and lifelong learning were brought up.

Finally students were asked to think about steps that they want to take to develop their online presence, and make a plan.

Has anyone else had experience of running sessions along these lines? Do you have any advice that might help our sessions in the future?

“Facebook for books”

2010-11-09T12:47:00.001Z

LibraryThing, a site described as “Facebook for books”, is a cataloguing and social networking site for book lovers.

Users can; create personal collections (up to 200 with a free account), discover new books (by tags, ratings, reviews and recommendations), and get involved in conversations about books. There is even a ‘local’ search so you can find book stores, libraries and book related events near by.

For more info visit the site and take a tour.

Did you know… that the Edge Hill Library Catalogue also uses LibraryThing for Libraries?

The new feature was added in the summer and gives you another way to find books in the Edge Hill Catalogue – browsing by tag.

When you find an item record in the Edge Hill Catalogue, if it’s been tagged, you’ll see a tag list at the bottom of the page – click on one of the tags to open the ‘Tag Browser’ window.

On the left you’ll see the item’s tags and related tags. On the right you’ll see items that match the selected tag. Click on an item to go to the library catalogue record or continue browsing by tag, by clicking on one of the tags shown or using the search box*.

*You can search for a word (adventure), a phrase (children’s fiction), or a combination of words and phrases (adventure, children’s fiction). You can also demote (-Harry Potter) or remove words and phrases (–19th century).

Take a look next time you use the Library Catalogue.

"YouTube meets Wikipedia"

2010-10-28T12:44:00.003+01:00

WatchKnow.org looks like a great place to search for educational videos suitable for children from 3 to 18.

A large range of subjects are covered including, English Language, Literature, Maths, Science, History and the Arts. You can search by age and by category and there is an option to limit the results to 'school accessible' content only - so the videos you find can be accessed in schools where content from sites like Youtube or Google Video can often be blocked.

WatchKnow was launched last year (October 2009) by the co-founder of Wikipedia, Larry Sanger who describes it as "YouTube meets Wikipedia".

The site aims to make finding high quality educational videos easy to find. So instead of needing to visit lots of different sites, like YouTube, Schooltube, Google Video, Teachertube, National Geographic, etc. and searching through educational and non educational videos you can visit just one site and search through only educationally relevant resources.

The site invites students, parents, teachers, librarians, and everyone interested in the education of children to use and help develop the resource. (Sign up for an account to get invloved.)

I did a quick search for children's book ages 4-6 and found a large number of results; I particularly liked... Michael Rosen Performs 'We're Going On A Bear Hunt' and The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams.

Take a look.
:)

Open Courses and Web 2.0

2010-09-01T10:43:00.014+01:00

Over the last few years there has been a massive amount of research and discussion about how new social web tools, sometimes referred to as Web 2.0, can be used in education.

Often though we get focussed on the tools and can miss some important reasons why these tools are so powerful, an example being the fact that they tend to grow in value as more people use them.

One online course that opened it's doors to allow people who weren't registered students to participate was Stephen Downes and George Siemens' Connectivism course which we've mentioned before. The recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education talks about their experiences in more detail as does this research paper from 7th International Conference on Networked Learning 2010.

This course is interesting as we see some of the effects of running their course this way, with issues arising such as privacy, behaviour (one person joined to criticise the course) and inflexible licences for platforms like Blackboard (a problem we've struggled with in the past).

So clearly, seeking to using social web tools to their full potential is not without potential problems, but reading the research paper we can see courses and modules delivered this way can offer a different learning experience which might be beneficial. As George Siemens himself said "The question for me is ... ‘what are the implications of people being connected in a certain way?'". The Web gives us different ways of connecting as well as new tools, and it is worth thinking about situations where these new ways of connecting could enhance learning.

[image by umkcofficial]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic License.

The PGCE Survival Guide

2010-08-12T17:56:00.004+01:00

This free eBook: 'The PGCE Survival guide' looks like it could be a really useful read for our Teacher Trainees.

It's a crowd sourced book, meaning that the content was largely generated by the online education community - specifically twitter. The idea itself being that of Tim Handley (@tomhenzley / www.classroomtales.com), who has only just completed his PGCE at the University of East Anglia.

It's pretty impressive to learn that Tim is only just about to start his NQT year. My experience with teacher trainees leads me to believe that proportionally few truly understand and exploit the benefits of online technologies - and are so busy once they begin their programme, they struggle to find the time to learn.

I think this is an inspirational effort and great contribution to the educational community. It clearly demonstrates the benefits of engaging with a community of dedicated and committed education professionals online. I will be sharing it with the faculty here, hoping that it will inspire our trainees to investigate and embrace technologies like twitter, blogs and other online networks which can be so useful to them.

@MegJuss

;)

The Web is Mine!

2010-07-29T09:40:00.004+01:00

The nature of the web has changed!

Users are no longer mere recipients of the static web, but agents and co-creators of the Social Web, or Web 2.0. Old school transmission is replaced by community feedback through comments, as in this article itself, and in some cases, content creators, editors and publishers.

Some time ago David Wiley identified Wikipedia to have only two employees for its 15 million articles (over 3.3 million in English) - almost all of which have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. By you and me. Our teachers and our students. This demonstrates unparalleled cooperation amongst global communities of practice, and yet because of this very strength, many traditional academics scoff at the thought of Wikipedia, and other user generated sites, as reliable sources for educational content. However as a starting place for research into a topic, I struggle to find a more appropriate single source as Wikipedia. For example, researching teaching and learning theory leads me to Behaviourist approaches (Pavlov’s dogs and Skinner’s rats), through to the constructivist approaches of Piaget and Vygotsky. Quick searches at other sources such as You Tube might return a Von Glasersfeld talk on radical constructivism. As an introduction to a topic, I now have a basis to explore books and dare I say it, peer reviewed research articles.

This is where the web is educational! The web, educates.

Is there a boundary where web content is simply web content, and educational content is somehow subcategorised into something else? No. The Web is the most powerful educational resource one could imagine. A source which pulls together the thoughts, opinions and research from a global community of users, is shaping our everyday lives. The Web has changed! Such a community could never be achieved, heard or published, without such digital communications. Exemplifying this very point, You Tube suggest 24 hours of user generated video are uploaded every minute.

It is these chunks of content; educational, reusable, repurposable, that brings me to my key point – the openness of the web. The openness of such content can impact upon teaching and learning like no other approach. Like no other technique, tool or technology. Through user generated movements such as the open source movement, came the Creative Commons - a series of licenses that users/authors/developers can freely apply to their works to legally allow re-use, re-mixing and re-sharing.

Listening to Peter Hartley recently, a Professor in of Education Development at Bradford University, I was intrigued at his openness towards his own knowledge, or limitations thereof. A classic study into Social Psychology by Dr Zimbardo, is an area of particular interest for Professor Hartley, and one in which over the years, he has crafted a thought provoking lecture. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo researched ‘What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Does humanity win over evil, or does evil triumph?’ However, as Professor Hartley candidly admits, his knowledge in the topic is ‘limited’, for want of a better word. As he didn't take part in the actual research, he cannot describe the feelings of inmates, the feelings of being dragged off the street and ushered into a police car, the feelings of prison guards watching over the jail cells. Professor Hartley can only convey his understanding, albeit of high regard. His challenging lecture of Zimbardos prison experiment has received somewhat of a facelift since discovering some open resources through the Open University iTunesU pages. There he was, Dr Zimbardo himself discussing his reasoning, his rationale. Leading commentators debating methodologies and ethics of the study. And in a few clicks, subjects of the research, inmates and guards, discussing and reflecting on their mental states throughout the experiment.

So how can anybody teach this topic any better than its primary researcher, Dr Zimbardo? The job of the academic in this instance, is to shape a session which asks the right questions of the learners, or even, encourages the learners to ask the right questions (of the research, other learners, the teacher). His job is to structure resources to engage learners and encourage interaction and reflection.

The richness of such a learning experience is unequalled, and yet there are many questions... But what does this mean for the role of the traditional academic? Who is comfortable with reusing other sources of knowledge than ones-own, with fears of credibility and legitimacy?
But none should reign through more than this: How can I restructure my lectures and seminars to take advantage of such powerful resources?

The answer lies in the changing practices within Institutions.

The new academic and multi professional teams, where people work smarter, where the lecturer is not the font of all knowledge, but where curriculum development is a joint venture between academics, learning technologists, media developers and information specialists.
Changing practices where ‘new’ skills are encouraged: those of searching the complex web, finding, reviewing and reusing appropriate resources, and structuring them in the learning environment.
Changing skillsets in encouraging and harnessing learner exploration, reflection and discussion around topics.

Of course many of the high quality resources available come from those places with the resources to do so - the Open University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Oxford, and other well funded projects. But what about the individual academic who does not have such wealthy resources at hand?

Search, explore, find, retrieve.
Create, share, discuss and debate.
Remix and repurpose.

The web is not a closed book with strict copyright. The web is mine. Yours. Everyones. Just look for the little cc logo :-)

Educational Technology Links: Cakes on Twitter

2010-07-27T14:54:00.004+01:00

When writing posts for Cakes we have usually tried to create something original and substantial rather than merely passing on links to articles. However there is a place for a stream of news from which you can pick out interesting articles, resources and tools from, and so we have set up a Twitter account as a way of passing on links that we have found interesting and relevant.

You can keep track of our posts either by following @CakesLTD on Twitter or subscribing to the Web Feed in your feed reader.

If you are wanting to use a Twitter account in a similar way in your course, you can easily connect it to your Blackboard section or other course pages. This screencast (without any sound) shows you how. Try watching in full screen view.

[image by LittleMissCupcakeParis]

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence..

SOLSTICE Conference 2010: Videos

2010-07-21T16:10:00.004+01:00

Back in June the SOLSTICE conference 2010 took place, and if like me you missed the keynotes you'll be thrilled to know that they are now available online.

In the first keynote Professor Gilly Salmon points to the evidence and enablers for learning in Higher Education to be fit for purpose for the rest of the 21st Century.

The second keynote was by Professor Peter Hartley and looked back at 5 years of the SOLSTICE project.

If you enjoy those videos, there's more to come! The 6th SOLSTICE conference is planned for 9th June 2011.

Making Paper Books Nearly as Good as eBooks

2010-07-16T13:10:00.008+01:00

While I understand the sensual pleasures of holding a real book, smelling the ink in new books or various unidentified scents in old ones, and placing on a real shelf to ornament your house, I think that from a practical perspective eBooks make studying easier in many good ways. You don’t need to wait for them to be returned to the library, or travel there to get hold of them. You don’t need to spend time searching through the book to remember where the quote that you liked was. You just go online, read, and use the search tool to quickly find the section you remember allowing you to focus on the important aspects of studying and learning.

However, many of us still like libraries and paper books and want to get the most out of using them. The good news is that using barcode scanning apps on our Smartphones we can add enhanced functionality to paper books that previously only existed in eBooks. For example ‘Barcode Scanner’ from ZXing Team (which you can find in the Android Marketplace app store) makes it easy search through the text of a book by photographing the barcode on the book in question, and clicking on ‘Book Search’. You are then taken to the Google Books page for the book in question where you use the search feature to search through the text of that book. It’s like having an enhanced index. Or you could just go to the Google Books page directly, but that’s less fun.

I’m sure there are other good pieces of software for the various platforms, which do similar things. Anyone want to share their knowledge and experiences of these?

By the way, to find your way to Google Books for mobile devices, you can use Barcode Scanner to follow the link encoded in this barcode created at Kaywa.

[top image by guldfisken]

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Russell Prue – Keynote at RSC Annual Event 2010, Bolton.

2010-07-02T10:18:00.003+01:00

This is just a collection of notes I made during Russell's keynote - not really a ‘Keynote’ as I’d expect it – rather a collage of interesting technologies wrapped between some poignant stuff. Russell is difficult to pigeon hole – perhaps ‘Entertainer’ with an educational evangelist theme. My jury is out on his radio stuff, which he seems to be pushing from all angles, but perhaps I can see the educational potential in communication, team work etc …

So – here’s the poignant notions that I think might be relevant to us at Edge Hill – and the bits in square brackets I’ve added in post-conference:

There are 27,000 unemployed graduates in the UK [the Guardian says up to 40,000 new graduates will fail to find employment within 6 months of graduating - http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jul/02/graduate-unemployment-rise-recession-jobs]

Employers are looking for staff who are literate and numerate, both in traditional and new technologies. Employers are looking for leaders who can motivate, help create stuff and innovate.

This led to Russell urging us to ditch the [Victorian] education system - to move to create autonomous ‘self led’ learners (but not suggestions about how). Perhaps a new system may address the current learners (and future employers?) needs in the 21st century.

Technology can make a good message grow rather fast – ref Lauren Luke who started selling makeup on eBay in 2007, create a YouTube channel the same year, and now as a 60million following: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Luke

Plea to stop being precious about education – don’t ‘Ban’ YouTube, Skype and Face Book.

Students to be involved in the creation of an Acceptable Use Policy. Further, Russell questioned the use of filtering systems to ‘protect’ children in schools – stating that the UK and France are the only two counties to use such systems. [However, are these filtering systems more for the protection of the school than the child?]

I note these snippets:

The use of Twitter for organising people in real-time cutting-edge ways – like organising transport when European airports were shut down under the ash cloud (#AshTag, #GetMeHome and #RoadSharing) – days ahead of any provision from officialdom. If you’re still unsure about Twitter – take a look a the common craft Intro to Twitter: http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter

Free Skype call recorder – http://www.callburner.com/. Consider use for student assessment.

YouTube sharing profits from videos. Russell showed a video created by a primary school community (pupils and teachers) - kids signed up the school for a YouTube channel, made a dance video, and have (unconfirmed) profited £10k from the advertising on the back of the video (Jai Ho Short Film): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ORaS-mJqWA

Text to movie service - xtranormal.com - " ... if you can type, you can make movies" - see: http://www.youtube.com/user/xtranormal#p/u/12/PmzTUEd3ngE

Voki – a free service that creates speaking avatars that you can put on your blog, website, or BlackBoard course. Voki is featured in this video from teachers tv (5:22 on): http://www.teachers.tv/videos/online-communities-in-the-classroom

Dr Who Trailer Maker: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/trailermaker/. I think this would make a thoroughly engaging activity for key stages 2-3 (9 – 13yrs).

Wordle – creates word clouds – see http://www.wordle.net/

Cheap GPS tracking devices that can record someone movements during an activity.

Other snippits too numerous to mention – listed on Russells technology blog: http://www.andertontiger.com/technology/default.htm

Out of all of these, my favourite at the moment is xtranormal.com - have a go ... and get back to me with if you use this in your practice.

Apologies for a bulleted list – but I got Russell’s stuff as a mosaic – hence the format above.

Research into Virtual Worlds in Higher Education: The Cloudscape

2010-06-16T14:02:00.009+01:00

Cloudworks is a kind of social network for educators, which enables people to create 'cloudscapes' - that is collections of links to resources (clouds) about particular topics. Clouds can be added to cloudscapes by anyone with an account and an included discussion tool encourages conversation around the resources.

I've been collating research on using 3D Virtual Worlds in Higher Education, and used Cloudworks to both make the list available and enable others to add to it. If you are interested in using Virtual Worlds like Second Life for learning and teaching, this list might be useful to you or you might like to develop the resource further.

If you're not sure what we mean by 3D Virtual Worlds, have a look at the session notes for 'The World of Virtual Worlds' beginners guide session. This goes through definitions, examples, uses and contains lots and lots of links to resources.

Data Liberation and Online Learning

2010-04-23T10:23:00.007+01:00

In my own formal and informal learning, free web based tools are really useful. For example Feedreaders like Bloglines are a quick and easy way to follow updates from a large number of web sites, journals, and other sources, and social networks on Ning are useful to keep in touch with communities of practice. In my teaching I use Google Docs to create and distribute materials, as each document can be given a web address and easily shared, and even worked on collaboratively.

However as we've mentioned before, nothing lasts forever and whenever you create important data using a tool or service that is out of your control you need to consider how you can back it up and export it to another service.

I write this now because Bloglines has been 'down for scheduled maintenance' for a while now which indicates it might be closed, meaning anyone who hadn't backed up their data from it might have lost it. Also Ning has announced that it is closing down the free ad supported section of it's business, which was used in a small way here at Edge Hill University and by many educators around the world.

Whenever you look at using at any online tool in your teaching or learning, the ability to back up and export your data to another service (you should always have a Plan B) is vital.

----------

Update: Bloglines is back up now at 3pm BST on 23rd April... but still export your OPML file as the owners don't seems to see it as a priority and it might not be here much longer.

Matching Learning Tasks with Learning Technologies

2010-02-26T11:34:00.010Z

There are a wide range of tools and technologies available to support all types of Technology Enhanced Learning, but that range of tools can be overwhelming even to those teachers who are experienced users of technology.

There are some simple methods that Learning Technologists use to help teaching staff understand the potential uses of web based tools. Presenting categories of tools is useful. If you can look at technologies in terms of, for example, those designed for synchronous versus asynchronous uses, you can think more easily about which you will use for a certain purpose. If you can identify Twitter as a tool for public interaction rather than private you can think better about what information might it be appropriate to carry. If you categorise it as a Microblogging tool it allows you to then ask if other Microblogging tools might be more appropriate to use for your purpose.

Sarah Robbins-Bell showed a possible way to structure this way of looking at tools, based on work by Herring (2007 ), which in turn was based on work by Ranganathan (1933). She used Faceted Classification to look at dozens of tools that were identified as Virtual Worlds [presentation slides], and saw 10 facets emerge that would help users understand if each tool would match their learning tasks and objectives. They will only be of interest to those working with 3D Virtual Worlds, but are:

Dominant content form - Either Text or Image or a Mix
Dominant user to user communication form - Text / Voice / Mix
Stigmergy - Stigmergic / Non-stigmergic / Conditional stigmergy
Object ownership - Private / Public / Sharing
User identity formation - Static / Conditional / Custom
Access - Public / Fee / Limited
User relationship with other users - Competitive / Conditional / Collaborative
User relationship with environment - Competitive / Conditional / Collaborative
Access to groups - Private / Public / None
Number of groups - Many / One / None

If you look at pages 33 and 34 of her ReLIVE08 conference presentation slides, you can see that she uses the 10 facets to compare Second Life and World of Warcraft, making it easy to demonstrate that two very similar looking tools are different in many ways that might not be immediately obvious to someone who had not used them much.

This same process could be done for other categories of tool, like synchronous communication tools, collaborative document creation tools and content dissemination tools. This could be a useful resource in a conversation about which of these tools might fit the needs of a certain learning activity. The following table is a very brief example of one for online learning activities requiring synchronous communication.

Facet	Second Life	Blackboard Chat	Yahoo Messenger
Text or Image
Public or Private
Text or Voice

Of course exploring needs and requirements is a very subtle process, but this kind of thing could play a part in making it easier for everyone involved to understand the decision making process.

Another model for matching tasks with learning technologies was put forward by Bower (2008) in "Affordance Analysis - Matching Learning Tasks with Learning Technologies". In this article categories of affordances of learning technologies are put forward along with a methodology for practical application.

[image by Pink Sherbet Photography]

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Rewiring Inclusion: Barrier Free Learning

2010-02-17T15:32:00.008Z

The Rewiring Inclusion conference in Notingham a couple of weeks ago was a refreshing look at the subject of accessibility. Perhaps it was refreshing because the word 'accessibility' was barely mentioned, and holistic, responsive ways to produce 'barrier free learning' and 'digital inclusion' were discussed.

I think that the sessions that I attended illustrated two different sides to accessibility very well.

On the one hand there is creating resources and software that can be accessed using a wide variety of input and output devices, as the user requires. The importance of this was talked about by Dr Dónal Fitzpatrick from Dublin City University.

The development approach that Google use was mentioned by Julian Harty from Google. They have a general focus on wider usability and accessibility for all, with post release improvements over time. This means that they wouldn't hold something back from release because not everyone could use it, but would aim to make it more usable for all users over time.

Julian's presentation proved to be a little controversial, as some people thought that Google weren't taking accessibility seriously enough. It is certainly a different approach than that talked about in Higher Education, perhaps due to our need to support every single student. Google users have a choice whether to use new Google services, while our students have to use the VLE for example.

Another side to accessibility that was covered was making changes to the way activities run, to meet the specific needs of individual students.

Dr Trevor Collins and Dr Jessica Bartlett talked about the Open Universities work making geology fieldwork available to students who for whatever reason, cannot travel out to the field.

They talked about working in areas with no mobile phone signals, and setting up wireless Local Area Networks to enable this. It was fascinating and showed that no-one needs to be left out of such activities.

So what should Edge Hill University's response be to all this? Is there a need to look at how can we make our online learning resources and activities more inherently accessible to a wider variety of people? How could we go about that?

[image by campuspartycolombia]

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Web 2.0 in the primary classroom

2010-02-04T23:53:00.005Z

One of the more enjoyable aspects of my role is helping design innovative approaches to teaching and learning.

A while ago Chris Russell (Education) had the idea of exploring the use of web 2.0 technologies in the classrooms of some of his trainee teachers. However, Chris fell foul of an age limit for the Ning and Facebook services, both requiring users to be 13 years or older.

So we looked at a different approach using Google Docs. This service, combined with notions of the Smart Mob (Wesch, 2009) was thought likely to engage the learners (school children) and offer a more “Social Constructive” approach. The idea is to split up a project into small tasks so that small groups of pupils could work on these and then add their work to a single document containing the work of all groups.

I think google docs is particularly suited to this application because several people can work on one document at the same time, editing the same space, akin to writing on a class whiteboard. I envisage the creation of the final class document will be a highly engaging event, perhaps having the document displayed on the data projector so that pupils will see their contributions appearing as google docs refreshes content from all the contributors.

Chris raised the issue of assessment – how do you assess each child’s contribution to a joint document? I suggest a “… reflective piece …”, possibly using a writing frame, where each child can describe what their contribution was, how they found the experience etc. Further, perhaps year 3 could use the lower stage of Moons stages of learning (ref), and later years use later stages?

By David Callaghan (and collaboration from Chris Russell)
Image by popofatticus

Postscript

A word of caution: Google’s terms of service says “You may not use … Google’s products, software, services and web sites … and may not accept the Terms if … you are not of legal age to form a binding contract with Google.” More info on: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9902548-46.html

However, a colleague (Peter Beaumont) pointed out that Google contradict themselves by “Selling” google services to primary schools:

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/schools/primary.html

It’s your call …

An alternative you might want to consider is WikiSpaces. This service provides free, advertisement free and password protected wiki’s for K-12 education. However, the downside is that using a Wiki, the last edit becomes the current version, possibly causing pupils to become disillusioned and disengaged in a synchronous classroom environment.

References

Moon, J. A. (1999) Reflection in learning & professional development: theory & practice. London: Routledge.

Wesch, M. (2009) ‘How to get students to find and read 94 articles before the next class’ Digital Ethnography. http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=202 [accessed 4th February 2010]

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Emerging Technologies: Horizon Report 2010

2010-01-15T15:07:00.003Z

Each year the Horizon Project releases a report that looks at technologies and tools which are likely to impact teaching and learning over the next few years. The technologies that are highlighted in this 2010 Horizon Report are:

0-1 Years to Adoption: Mobile Computing and Open Content

2-3 Years to Adoption: Electronic Books and Simple Augmented Reality

4-5 Years to Adoption: Gesture Based Computing and Visual Data Analysis

Why is this important to a Higher Education institution? Well, it advises us on which technologies might be at a realistic stage of development and uptake to adopt in our teaching and learning. It also gives educators new to a technology or concept a brief overview of how it relates to our context.

Looking at the Mobile Computing section, this seemed to resound with me most, perhaps because I've been using my own devices to access the internet for my own learning. The report mentions 3 areas that smart phones might be used:

An alternative method of accessing resources - which in Edge Hill University's case would require a complete change in the way our own resources are prepared and distributed. Roger C. Shank thinks that real learning wouldn't take place and that this would not be worthwhile. However this might be down to personal preference as I've not had a problem reading books on my iPod Touch, and can see room for Microlearning activities where they are relevant.
A way of connecting students to each other and the institution - See the iPhone project at ACU and the project in Houston for examples.
For fieldwork - perhaps ideas along the line of Walking Through Time.

While there are some cases where using mobile devices in learning are appropriate now, the Morgan Stanley 'Mobile Internet Report' expects internet access on mobile devices to overtake PC access within 5 years. So while we can use mobile devices in appropriate situations, we're not dealing with a situation where students all want to access everything on their phones right now.

[image by James Nash (aka Cirrus)]

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Does web 2.0 benefit students?

2009-12-21T11:50:00.005Z

Web 2.0 is suffering the same fate as previous “Revolutionary” ICT technologies of earlier decades. Politicians, school governors and university management are often heard citing the benefits of these new technologies, but there is still a lack of empirical evidence to suggest that the use of web 2.0 improves student performance.

However (moving swiftly on …), there are some clear benefits that Rob Spence (English and History) has found whilst using Wiki technology:

Improved student engagement
Students feel less on the spot
Students are more self critical
Tracking of student performance from day 1

Rationale

There is a perception that students are arriving at university with ever decreasing levels of literacy, combined with ever increasing support requirements. Spoon feeding ‘A’ level candidates is thought to be a widespread practice in many schools and colleges, and when combined with a highly prescriptive curriculum perhaps it is no wonder that many students struggle when they arrive at university. It’s not unheard of for new students, when presented with an essay title, to ask for the opening sentence or paragraph, the quotes they are likely to need to use, and other guidance and materials.

These were the kinds of issues that Rob had been experiencing – perhaps informing his rationale for using a wiki for part of his first year “Introduction to Narrative” course.

Benefits

Reflecting on his use of the wiki, Rob found that his students were more willing to get involved in writing at an earlier point in their university career, and found the experience less threatening than being put on the spot in a classroom session. Students were found to be more self critical – perhaps because they were writing for a perceived audience. One of the major benefits that Rob experienced was being able to see students work from much earlier in the learning process than in previous years – he could see drafts and developments from many students in the same area so was able to identify and track “Problem Students” at a much earlier point in the cycle.

Is it for me?

If you are considering using web 2.0 stuff (wikis, blogs, bookmarking …) in your teaching and learning, the Learning Technology team would love to hear from you. We are here to encourage and support you in the use of technology for teaching and learning. You can contact me (david.callaghan@edgehill.ac.uk x 7753) or Katherine Richardson (richark@edgehill.ac.uk x 7754).

David Callaghan
27^th November 2009

Image by Peter Nielsen, 2009

Technology Enhanced Feedback

2009-12-03T16:35:00.005Z

There has been some research undertaken over the last few years, about giving audio feedback to students. The 'Sounds Good' project at Leeds Met was one of the more high profile, and I've bookmarked a few other relevant links.

Online audio use now seems mainstream, and several staff at Edge Hill are giving summative feedback now by means other than text (e.g. via audio, videos of the tutor talking, screencast videos showing the piece of work). In the Learning Technologist's office, we were discussing what is required to enable any member of academic staff to feel comfortable using 'technology enhanced feedback'. Is there a really simple way of creating audio feedback that wouldn't cause difficulties to those staff least comfortable and familiar with new technologies?

Something like Vocaroo is wonderfully simple, and while I'm not sure about proposing that as the Edge Hill solution, this level of simplicity is going to be required by some people. However, the most common approach currently seems to be to borrow or buy a voice recorder, and to email the audio feedback to the student. This contains several steps, but helps ensure good quality recordings, and could be achieved in several different ways.

Sue Murrin-Bailey and Shirley Hunter-Barnett are running a SOLSTICE session which describes how and why they gave audio feedback to students, at Edge Hill on the 11th January 2010. You can book through Edge Hill University Staff Development - staffdevelopment@edgehill.ac.uk - and SOLSTICE sessions are even open to people from outside Edge Hill University, so all are welcome.

After this session, it would be good to put together some very simple, technophobe proof advice that anyone could use to do something similar. Has anyone got good ideas about how this might look, and the tools that would be required?

[Image by mrbula]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic License.

What is the Future of VLEs?

2009-12-02T12:26:00.001Z

As Edge Hill's project to look into what the different people in the institution want from a VLE is underway, it is worth exploring some of the debates that are going on in the wider community.

Most agree that the general way VLEs are used, and design of VLEs by software developers, is not perfect. However there are many opinions and viewpoints on what the way forward is.

A good starting point is the 'The VLE is Dead (or is it?)' debate at the ALT-C conference this year (note that the debate has moved forward now). To summarise, four stances are set out.

VLEs are evil. They aren't focussed on learning, but are content management systems. They are closed to the world and contacts out there who you can learn from and discuss with. They are owned by the institution, which in itself plays a role in switching students off.
Personal learning environments (PLEs) are the way forward. The VLE is based on the same paradigm as the factory system of education. Rather than promoting learning they are designed to commodify learning. VLEs have the potential to open up learning to those currently outside the institution, and we should focus on achieving this with them. The personal learning environment is set up by the learner, and we enable them to develop one that helps them learn.
Use the VLE for now, to teach the teachers and learners how to develop PLEs. Learners don't generally know how to use these web services, certainly for learning. The VLE can be involved in guiding students towards these new web based technologies for learning.
The VLE is good enough, and will get better. The tools in the VLE are good enough. Students expect consistency and reliability, which the VLE (if designed well and used well) should provide.

The idea of web based personal learning environments is exciting to me, mainly because that is where I do much of my own learning. My feed reader would be the centre of this, bringing in blog posts, twitter posts, journal articles and news, making it easier and quicker for me to follow and get involved in many conversations in a variety of subjects that I'm interested in. Someone else's environment might centre on their Twitter account or blog, and that's what makes this more personal than a VLE.

The personal learning environment model also fits in with creating lifelong learners. Where ever I go in life my online PLE is going to be available, unlike the VLE.

Have a look at Steve Wheeler's post, and the resulting comments for lots of other responses to this debate.

Another debate that is going on is talking about whether the system that the institution provides should be a teacher controlled VLE (like Moodle) or a learner controlled network (like ELGG). The 'Moodle- the wrong tool for the job?' post on the Learning Conversations blog contains interesting points related to this.

Resources to Help You Start Using New Tools in Teaching and Learning

2009-10-16T13:48:00.006+01:00

I think that a really good way of learning about the area of Technology Enhanced Learning, and understanding the tools you might want to use, is to follow a selection of blogs and other resources written by practitioners and thinkers. It might be a bit of a chaotic way of learning, but it enables you to explore and find a range of people and ideas that interest and inspire you.

I've created a list of some resources below, which be followed easily using a feed reader like Bloglines or Google Reader. To subscribe to them and many others, download my OPML file [right click the link and choose 'Save link as...' or 'Save target as...'] and import it into your feed reader [Google Reader help] [Bloglines help]. The feed reader will inform you as new posts are added. Glance through these each day and read any articles that catch your eye. Delete some feeds and add other ones that you find.

General Learning Technology blogs:

George Siemens talks about overarching issues to think about when using technology for learning. His ideas are interesting and his blog is called elearnspace.

Stephen Downes works quite closely with George Siemens and talks a lot about making education open to all. His newsletter is at OLDaily.

Clive Shepherd writes Clive on Learning which covers a lot of different things.

Articulate's 'The Rapid E-learning Blog' - http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/ - has well written posts about a variety of practical aspects of e-learning development.

Tama Leaver writes Tama's Elearning Blog which also has some useful articles and links.

People and organisations with a more specific focus:

danah boyd's area of expertise is in how young people use the web socially. She's got a lot to say that feeds into how we use technologies like social networking in HE. Her blog is called Apophenia and a list of her best posts is available.

Clay Shirky writes about social media, and his ideas are helpful when we think about how the web affects the world we live in, including education. His web feed is available.

Garr Reynolds writes Presentation Zen which is relevant to educators as so much of what we do is presenting, however that might be done. As a non-designer, I learn a lot from this blog and get a lot to think about.

Helen Barrett has a good understanding of eportfolios and the tools that you might use to create them. She writes e-Portfolios for Learning.

Games Can Teach promote games based learning. They keep track of the research in the area of games based learning.

What is Google Wave Good For?

2009-10-15T17:42:00.005+01:00

There's been a lot a talk about Wave, even though it isn't properly released yet. But is the hype justified? What is it best used for? Does it replace any other tools that we use?

Well, as noted in the video below, Wave was designed to help people move from using email on occasions where there is perhaps a group having a long scale conversation.

Many people have given their views on what Wave is, or isn't, good for. For example:

Tony Hirst sees Wave as basically a set of Wikis organised in an inbox. That seems like it could be a good way of starting looking at it and categorising it.

Scoble argues that the live aspects of chatting in Wave lead to unproductivity, and excess 'noise'. He thinks that things like real Wikis would be better used by projects which Wave is aiming at.

Stephen Downes points out that email is 'trapped' in your email client, and Wave could change this for the better.

Finally, and best of all there are a good few ideas from people about how they might use Wave on Lifehacker. One of these is a student wanting to use it for collaborative lecture notes... which sounds interesting.

However, it is difficult to know how valid these opinions are until you use it yourself. I got my invite to Wave on Wednesday and have had chance to set up a 'Wave', that is, a conversation containing synchronous and asynchronous text conversation, maps, images, etc. On the face of it I like the way it pulls together a lot of the media that might be involved in a conversation, making all of the 'artefacts' from a conversation accessible to a large number of people.

My Wave was public, and a few other interested people got involved. One interesting thing in Wave is seeing people type in real time. This means you can see people type spelling mistakes, and change their minds about things, which might sound annoying but I much preferred synchronous chat working like this. András Beck, who was involved in the Wave put it well, saying that "its more close to real life conversations than usual chat programs. I mean... if a friend talks to u, u usually know what he wants to say after 50-60% of the sentence [and so] you can start to put ur thoughts together while they type. Usual chat means u type, and wait, then type, and wait...".

Sadly I can't yet embed the Wave in this blog yet, but it will be a possibility in the future. This would make it easier to make conversations public.

In conclusion, Wave is a complicated tool, and like any tool it is for certain purposes and not everything. Regarding my question about if and how it should be used, it looks like an improvement on email message boards from some perspectives, and I'd like to use it with a group as a place to store thoughts and conversations about a project instead of using a blog, or a group of students to use it to explore a topic together.

As for my experiences, I had an enjoyable conversation (about Wave itself), with people who were interested in the topic. Perhaps if the tools you use allow your students to connect with a range of people like this, precisely which tool you use matters less.

Finally, here are two views on whether Wave will actually take off: Ryan Carson says yes it will, Anil Dash says it won't.

Using Delicious for Managing Your Bookmarks

2009-10-02T15:03:00.001+01:00

Back in the olden days everyone stored bookmarks in their web browser. In Internet Explorer you'd click on Favourites or in Firefox you'd select Bookmarks.

Many people are now using Social Bookmarking tools to store bookmarks. I use Delicious.com as this allows me to:

Search through everyone's bookmarks on a certain topic, to see what other useful sites and articles are out there.
Access your bookmarks from anywhere, home or work.
Annotate your bookmarks to remind yourself why you saved them.
Subscribe to a feed of another person's bookmarks, if you find that you have similar interests.

To get started with Delicious

Watch this video that explains the benefits.
Create an account at http://delicious.com/
Find a plug in for your web browser. This makes adding bookmarks easier. There are ones available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Google Chrome.

There are certain things to think about when you are using social bookmarking.

Your online identity - Are you sharing your page/feed with other people - perhaps students? I use my delicious account for both work related and personal bookmarks with out worrying who can see what. However if privacy is more important to you, you might just want to mark all your personal bookmarks as Private.
Backing up - When you collect useful personal data in any service you want to know that you can back it up. Delicious isn't likely to loose your data, but you never know. You can backup your bookmarks by choosing Settings > Export / Backup Bookmarks.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Blackboard CE8: Just-In-Time Support Screencasts

2009-10-02T12:23:00.003+01:00

Anyone building or teaching a section in Blackboard CE8 (the VLE that we are using at Edge Hill University) can use our Blackboard screencast videos to remind themselves of how to do various things, for example if you want to give a student access to your section.

By the way, if you are interested in creating screencasts yourself, you have several options. I use Camtasia Studio, which costs about £80 for an educational licence with a £30-£40 headset to ensure good quality sound. Camtasia is great if you are creating a large number of videos as it allows you to do this very quickly. It also allows the addition of simple pan and zoom effects and editing if required. The generated videos can them go on the University's video server and you can pass on the web address to your audience. A while ago I put together a series of videos that might help you get started with screencasting using Camtasia Studio.

If you are only creating a few simple recordings, you are probably better off using a free web based service like Screenr, which also hosts the video and will post it to your Twitter account if you want to distribute it that way.

[Image by Sarahnaut]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

danah boyd: Some Thoughts on Technophilia

2009-08-21T11:17:00.010+01:00

danah boyd has written a very accessible piece for the New Media Consortium's Symposium for the Future entitled 'Some Thoughts on Technophilia'. It aims to 'provoke conversation in preparation for the event', and I think it does a great job of simplifying some important issues that educators using new technologies need to consider.

I think we all know that "Dumping laptops into a classroom does no good if a teacher doesn't know how to leverage the technology for educational purposes...", and so on, but I think that it is also clear that it's tough for teachers to know how to use a specific technology in teaching and learning, let alone a wide variety of technologies. Learning 'deeply' how to use the technologies requires using them in different aspects of your life, thus it requires you changing the way you do things, and this is time consuming and disruptive. It doesn't fit neatly into managed staff development sessions.

I think educators should be encouraged by danah's statement that "Also there are no such things as 'Digital Natives' ... Most of you have a better sense of how to get information out of Google than the average youth." People of different generations, and perhaps even of different year groups, may have different online habits and subtly different online etiquette, but there's no need for educators to be intimidated by perceptions of young students' competence. You have a lot to teach them about information literacy for example.

The second to last paragraph challenges us to be careful with the online spaces that we choose to use in education. The argument here is not refering to the affordances of the technologies themselves, but instead demands some awareness of how students' various online identities are constructed and how their complex social world works online. This might mean not using Facebook and tools that students may already use in a different contexts for socialising.

By the way, danah boyd has studied extensively how American teenagers use the web socially, and some of her insights are relevant to anyone wanting to explore social aspects of learning and teaching online. The video of her interview with Discover magazine is a good overview, and then have a look at her published work.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

My Twitter Trends

2009-08-07T10:59:00.001+01:00

Micro-blogging tool Twitter has become increasingly popular over the last 12 months, with many people 'following' celebrities. Here in the UK, Stephen Fry and Chris Moyles (amongst others) have contributed to the 'outbreak' of such a seemingly strange activity - that is the sharing of what one may be doing at any particular time in just 140 characters. Nevertheless, such celebrities have ammassed huge following by fellow tweeters, and contributing to the development of today's craze. Today's addiction.

I have been using Twitter (properly) for about 18 months now, and have used it in a variety of ways;

personal/social communication with friends/colleagues

following some celebs (although this was short-lived)

share common interests and find links to new places/data/information

Live-tweet from conferences

Over the past few weeks I have been reflecting on my use of twitter, and how it has changed and progressed through my different uses (above).
I think I enjoyed tweeting the most in the 'early days', before the mass frenzy of celeb tweeters. I had a selection of followers, all of whom I actually knew! On a personal level. And people I actually liked (unlike many of the 'friends' I have made on Facebook!)
I could ask a random question, aimed wildly and at nobody in particular, but yet it might be answered. Answered because my followers used the tool in a similar way to me. They followed people that they personally knew. And so they would see my question, and just might post a reply.

Then with my professional hat on, I decided to see who some of my 'friends' were following. Because I trusted colleagues in the elearning field, like @hallymk1, and @narcomarco, I thought i'd follow some of their friends. And this was good. From their tweets I found some new information, new sites and tools that I hadn't already come across. Another useful benefit of Twitter!

I was so excited with twitter, hooked one might say. I thought it would be a good idea to live-tweet from conferences and events, although in hind-sight, most of my followers who shared the same interest would likely have been there anyway. And for those that were unable to make it, how much of the experience would they glean from my 140 characters anyway???

As time went by, I watched the same TV shows and listened to the same radio stations as you, and your friend, colleague (and Grandmother's cat!). And for some strange and random reason, I thought it might be interesting to see what Stephen Fry might be up to. Despite the high regard in which I hold Stevey, I soon became bored with reading that he just had his hair cut by the 'Wonderful Phillip, who's been cutting hair in Ormond Yd, SW1 for 60 years'.

I suppose like many relationships I've had, this was all one-way. Stephen would do all the talking, and I was the passive recipient. Amongst his endless amounts of tweets (many of which I wasn't interested in), it would be physically impossible for him to reply to even a small percentage of his followers (he follows almost 55k people of his 700k followers). I actually asked him a question once. What might I expect in my phone bill from using my iPhone in New York and Miami. He didnt reply. I was hurt! My bill was an extra £300! And again, like the many relationships, I got over it quick. And moved on.

I moved on to another strange phenomenon. One in which I was obliged to follow those people that wanted to follow me. Those people I didnt know. With interests in things different to me. I learned quickly that they just wanted to sell their services (professional and otherwise!). Click. Unfollow!!!!

And it has come to the point where when I open up Twitter just to find some new links/resources. I skim the tweets, perhaps stopping at the people I really like. The people that might have something interesting to say (for me anyway). I'll stop at @Everton_news to see some transfer rumours. I might stop at the friends I mentioned above, as well as some others in the field. But I do this with less enthusiasm as I once did.
And where is Twitter now? Recently we have seen football players (Darren Bent) in trouble for tweeting his desire to move from Tottenham to Sunderland. What this does show us though, is that the media are beginning to keep tracks on the celebrity lives. In fact, Twitter is becoming the new 'live news coverage desk', as people are live-tweeting news stories, as they happen (Hudson plane landing, Iran scandals and local fires). It's becoming a political tool! (Barack Obama's election campaign and the Iran elections).

Having gone through these stages, I have come to realise that I haven't used Twitter for the most obvious reasons - Teaching and Learning. So I was interested when c4lpt (elearning celebrity Jane Hart, who does actually reply to you!) shared links to 'Twitter uses for T&L'.
And now im thinking how this can be used at Edge Hill. And to be honest, im struggling. As I support the Faculty of Health, and CPD in particular, I wonder how (what might be classed as non-traditional) students might take the suggestion of using it as an everyday tool. A tool for learning. Furthermore, I wonder how academics might respond to the suggestion. In fact, I dont even know how many academics at Edge Hill are on Twitter. My guess for those in the Faculty of Health, would be few... Very few.

And now im shortly off to the TEDX event in Liverpool, where i'll be live-tweeting!!! Brace yourselves...

Creating and Sharing Digital Content: Promises and Pitfalls

2009-07-14T09:56:00.000+01:00

This Thursday we are hosting a free 1 day event focussing upon 'Creating and Sharing Digital Cotent'.

Creating the conditions for institutions to develop high quality content for use, reuse and open sharing is high on the agenda for UK Policy and funding bodies, but there remains various challenges that HEIs need to overcome in order to respond effectively: New Institutional practices are required to support environments to mainstream and sustain use, reuse and open sharing of digital content; and Individual practitioners must also aquire new skills and strategies to realise the potential of open educational resources (OER).

As well as sharing our own experiences from the recent JISC funded ReProduce project, there are a number of other excellent speakers, including Melissa Highton (Head of the Learning Technologies Group @ Oxford) and Tom Boyle (RLO CETL).

There are still a few places left for the event. The booking form can be found at http://surveys.edgehill.ac.uk/seminar

The Museum of Learning Technology: Open Day Displays

2009-07-02T13:30:00.007+01:00

We created a display for our open day this week and a couple of people asked for a digitised version. So here it is. It looses a little without the supporting materials, but I might try to add them later.

The idea of the displays was to approach issues and ideas around our work in a simple and entertaining way, using as few words as possible. That's more difficult than we imagined. Let us know what you think. Is it worth creating more resources like this as introduction to specific topics? Even with my drawing skills not stretching beyond stick figures?

They're best read full screen.

Firstly, the whole display...

Museum of Learning Technology

View more documents from Peter Beaumont.

Then in 4 sections...

The Museum of Learning Technology: Part One - The Past

View more documents from peterfromhorwich.

Museum of Learning Technology: Part Two - The History of Writing

View more documents from peterfromhorwich.

Museum of Learning Technology: Part Three - The Present

View more documents from Peter Beaumont.

Museum of Learning Technology: Part Four - The Future

View more documents from Peter Beaumont.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

The 'Edgeless University' report and the £20m Open Learning Innovatin Fund.

2009-06-26T13:27:00.002+01:00

The Demos report on 'Edgeless Universities: why higher education must embrace technology' was actually one of the more interesting reads of late, and i'm sure each reader will probably take something slightly different from it. Already, the Times Higher has published an interesting overview, and amongst others, Suki at De Montfort has posted her take on the report.

Whilst Suki picked up on some of the issues around distributed institutions and flexible learning spaces, another area stood out for me - Open access to resources.

As we already know, the current economic climate means that the public investment most of the sector relies on is insecure. 'Universities are being asked to do more for less' and 'current ways of working are unsustainable. We are entering a period of critical change in which UK institutions will need to adapt to survive.'

Part of this adaptation is to collaborate with other institutions and share resources. This may be in the shape of course content, but equally applicable to research output, ways of working, and frameworks for development. It requires 'commitment to open content and shared resources, and investment in the management and curatorship of vast amounts of data and knowledge.'
A sound basis for linking the technology with the learning and teaching is also a critical issue :
'While technology opens up many new possibilities, matching these possibilities with a vision for teaching and learning is the real challenge".

Obviously this is something we try to encourage through the notion of New Academic Teams, however perhaps we could drive this even further by collaborating across institutions. Dr Shaun Curtis of Universities UK, told Demos: ‘If you have aspirations to be a world-class institution, then there is an acknowledgment that no body of knowledge resides in one institution or in one country.’

Despite such positivity, the fact that reports like this still discuss issues of 'openness versus competition' suggests it will remain a debate for some time yet. Brand development 'makes more sense for established institutions with robust brands such as Oxford or, in the US, MIT, than it might for other less established or high-profile institutions'.
I actually believe the debate is not only between openness versus competition, but openness versus competition versus capability. Even if we philosophically agree upon openness, it is still difficult to participate.
I presented some of the challenges we face in openness at the SOLSTICE conference a few weeks back, such as Institutional maturity and readiness, and mechanisms for storage and dissemination. The Demos report reinforces challenges around Staff Development.

"The UCISA survey noted that staff skills were ‘overwhelmingly seen as the greatest challenge for these new demands’. The answer is not to barrage teachers with imperatives to change how they behave, but to help them find space and the capacity to develop new ways of working for themselves. This needs more resources, incentives and support."

This will undoubtedly remain a key area for the future development of Technology Enhanced Learning, that is of course, if we are committed to using Technology to Enhance Learning, rather than paying lip service to the politically correct stance of ICT inclusion.

The issues around collaboration across institutions has obviously been considered for some time, as David Lammy (Minister for Higher Education and IPR) announced a new £20m open learning innovation fund for UK universities, encouraging collaboration between institutions to innovate. There is also encouragement for the Open University to be a national resource for UK HEIs, allowing us to develop a world class infrastructure to build build on our "international reputation for online distance learning". The Money will ensure institutions collaborate and establish renowned expertise in relation to distance learning.
Attention is also drawn to the importance of Open access:

"Knowledge is Power. But access to that knowledge is absolutely key.. Rules and means to distribute must be accessible to all."

For further reading see;
Times Higher article on Demos Report
DMU Learner Exchanges blog post on Demos Report
or the full Demos report itself.

Happy Birthday! Cakes

2009-06-10T16:35:00.006+01:00

Cakes is 5 years old today! Over those 5 years, it has developed a lot, and I think it is worth taking a closer look at that experience and to ask what new bloggers could learn from it?

Early on, Cakes was just a way for the Learning Technology Development team to share bookmarks. Although now I might use a social bookmarking tool like Delicious to share links, it was worth starting off just doing something simple that gave us the chance to explore the process of blogging. It also gave us an understanding of the blogging software and surrounding technologies like web feeds.

It was only after a few months that we really started adding value in what we were doing. There are many, many blogs that just link to things, but when we started writing up our own knowledge and opinions we began to find what it made sense for our voice to be in the external conversation around elearning. We started becoming more outward looking too.

My advice to new bloggers would be just to start writing about things that interest you. Over time you usually need to develop some sort of focus and identity if you want people to read your work and subscribe to it. However if you need time to find out what this identity is, just find time to write about and properly explore the topic you are interested in. For me this has been a very important activity in my own learning about learning and about technology.

[Image by ĻiĻ Pië]

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World

2009-06-09T10:01:00.001+01:00

Within the last couple of months we have seen the release of the much talked about report: 'Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World' from JISC. Its a pretty hefty document, so hopefully I have summarised some of the key aspects (or at least some of the points that really stood out for me).
Before delving into them though, it is worth noting that the term 'Web 2.0', in the report, is identified as 'social software' or 'social media', and works to bring about "a culture of participation and collaboration." (of course this ties in with Pete's earlier post on 'Making Peace with Web 2.0').

One of the first key points raised is that the digital divide has not been completely resolved i.e. a perfect segregation between the youth and the elders, the have's and have not's, natives and immigrants. Of course, the debate around the topic has identified that such a finely tuned definition and segregation by age group is inaccurate - lets not forget the enjoyable 'barrage' on Prensky's work last week at Tara Brabazon's keynote at #solstice2009 conference (keep a look out on the SOLSTICE website for when it is available online).
Whilst the issue is identified in the document, it goes on to stress that the divide (albeit blurry) still exists and can be seen between students and tutors, which causes concern not only in the development of blended and supported online courses, but in the everyday usage of technology by academic staff;
"Staff capability with ICT is a further dimension of the digital divide, and effective use of technology, ie to enhance learning, is as much of an issue as practical operation, ie getting it to work"

However, and whilst staff development is clearly an important issue, some of the most interesting points (for me at least) revolved around students;

The findings report that "Present-day students are heavily influenced by school methods of delivery and are not pressing for change in traditional HE delivery methods", which kind of suggests we are getting off easily at present, but changes in school approaches will likely impact upon FE/HE in the future. For today's students, "Imagining technology used for social purposes in a study context presents conceptual difficulties to learners as well as challenge to their notions of space", tying in with, and reinforcing the widely accepted viewpoint that Facebook is for the students, and tutors should keep away!!! The report also highlights that "Face to face contact with staff – the personal element in study – matters to students", thus providing a potential demotivating kick in the teeth (or at least considerations) for completely online courses.

The report cites other work to alert us to findings of today's younger generation (11-15), labeling them as ‘digitally-social’ and alludes to their likely expectations when reaching FE/HE. Some statistics identified include;

75% Having at least one social networking site
90% Using email and instant messaging
60% Playing online multiplayer games
80% Owning an MP3 player
85% Owning a mobile phone with camera
Source: Learners’ use of Web 2.0 technologies, Becta 2008

These figures suggest great potential when considering the 'art of the possible';
avoiding Facebook, but considering Personal Learning Environments combined with Social Networking elements such as Ning and Netvibes should not be alien to the future student (if indeed alien to today's);
The use of online multiplayer games bodes well for those immersed in virtual worlds (2nd Life);
and where I see great uses is that in mobile technologies - camera phones are already being used for field work, but 85% of 11-15 year olds suggests this could be almost taken for granted, needing only the insight and imagination of academics to take advantage;
and the 80% of the age group owning mp3 players calls out for academics to take advantage through pod/vod-casting to provide greater flexibility for students to be (academically) active anytime, anyplace.

The report does turn our attention to the current state of Web 2.0 usage of today's academic staff, and claims that deployment is principally driven bottom-up, coming from "professional interest and enthusiasm of individual members of staff", and as such, usage in learning and teaching is patchy. Lending to the problem is that there is "no blueprint for implementation of Web 2.0 technologies, and each [institution] is currently deciding its own path."
Therefore a huge responsibility rests on us to support academics by raising awareness, skills and usage of Web 2.0 tools within teaching and learning in order to raise the quality and match the expectations of future students.

Of the recommendations of the report, a few are striking;
we should continue to focus on transitions between FE - HE, and I know Richard Hall at De Montfort has a project currently focussing upon peer mentors to assist new students in their freshmen year;
Information literacies continues to be a major focus - an area in which I think we have been addressing for some time through Fast Track / Fast Forward / Springboard;
and we should continue to support staff in the use of Web 2.0 and e-pedagogies in order to cater for the future student.

So, a lot of work ahead. Perhaps a Web 2.0 course for academics is in there somewhere too :-)

Students Hooked on Screens, Hooked on Reality

2009-05-07T12:32:00.008+01:00

Ori Inbar who writes on the Games Alfresco blog has released an engaging version of his 'Augmented Reality Now' presentation.

Ori talks about something relevant to educators, asking how we can use augmented reality, i.e. taking the power of digital technologies and layering them on top of the real world, to get students to engage with reality when it seems that some are more engaged with fantasy (TV, games, etc).

Augmented Reality Today: WARM '09 from Ori Inbar on Vimeo.

I'd argue that much time spent online is already augmenting reality, as it is building on existing face-to-face relationships by playing games or talking together. Ori puts forward the idea that augmented reality, could be used to draw a 'digital native' generation out into the sunlight again. Students who are hooked on screens, now seeing reality better through the screens, out in the real world. Not sure how true that idea is, but while watching the video it feels like an inspiring vision.

Ori also touches on how games designers have, through decades of trial and error, developed a deep understanding of what motivates people and makes them happy. Mark LeBlanc's '8 Kinds of Fun' is mentioned. How could these be applied to education, to motivate learners? Not forgetting that ultimate device to motivate gamers - Rewards. As Bill Fawcett mentions in 'The Battle for Azeroth', World of Warcraft players have the opportunity for constant rewards in the game, most of which mean something important to your character's powers, and which encourage you to just play a little longer. Again, and again.

But while games can bring about learning, learning isn't a game. An obvious difference between these games and education is that education is a much deeper and more complex undertaking. You wrestle with deep learning, and it changes you as you wrestle with it. Therefore giving 'experience points', for say, reading books would be silly and damaging to students' understanding of learning. Giving students formative feedback on quizzes, and scores as personal motivation might go a certain way towards them being able to regularly think about and track their development.

[Image by antjeverena]

This work (but not the video) is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Making Peace with 'Web 2.0'?

2009-05-06T13:26:00.005+01:00

'Web 2.0' - The term still excites many, but to be honest when I hear it now I wince. It was originally a call by Tim O'Reilly for businesses to realise that the Web had changed. So for example, the real power of the web was not tapped from putting company brochures online, but the Web could be a platform supporting services that grow in value as more people use them. It was a message that pointed out to media businesses that people want to create and share their own content, not just consume yours. Looking at the way the education industry uses the web, it is still a call that we still need to hear. We keep students in small groups in VLE sections, rarely connecting with other groups of students. We supply them with content, but VLEs are not designed with user generated content in mind.

So why does it make me wince, even when the message is still valid, and it's implications still able to open up the potential of the web for learners?

Well, Tim O'Reilly never defined what the term Web 2.0 meant. People explored the possibilities of Web as Platform and everything that came with it, and the term came to mean a lot of different things to different people. For example, my above explanation of the Web 2.0 message will be radically different from other people's. From this mix of meanings the term becomes meaningless, and when I hear it I'm not sure what the speaker actually means.

So what do we do with 'Web 2.0'?

My opinion now is that we should stop using the term because it is hindering communication, not helping. We should say what we mean. If we want our students to use online services like social bookmarking which are valuable because many people use them, and the reason is that we think it will help their research into a subject, it is better that we explicitly say that. Often when we use these vague terms, we are preventing ourselves from realising that we don't really understand what we are saying in any detail, or at least preventing others from understanding what we are actually trying to communicate.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's a useful 'shorthand', and everyone understands pretty much the same thing from it. Maybe I should make peace with, and embrace the term 'Web 2.0'?

What about you? Do you use the term? What does it mean to you?

[Image by luc legay]

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

SOLSTICE Conference 2009: It's All in the Blend?

2009-04-27T10:55:00.004+01:00

2009 sees the fourth annual SOLSTICE Conference here at Edge Hill University, on Thursday 4th June.

The conference aims to 'explore the 'blend' between innovation, research and development of supported and blended online learning'.

In the keynote sessions, Dr Rhona Sharpe and Professor Tara Brabazon will be speaking, and abstracts for other sessions are available covering many topics including social networking, online formative assessment, learning spaces, 3D virtual worlds and the user experience.

If that sounds relevant to you, register online.

[Image from the SOLSTICE archives]

Virtual Worlds in Education: Journals

2009-04-20T11:32:00.006+01:00

For those interested in using virtual worlds in education, there are 3 'special issues' of journals looking at specifically that. These are a good starting point to survey what work is going on in this area.

ALT-J's September 2008 issue "Learning and Teaching in Immersive Virtual Worlds" covers a wide range of introductions to issues such as using gaming worlds, and socialisation within virtual worlds. [EHU Library Link]
The Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Vol 2, No 1 "Pedagogy, Education and Innovation in Virtual Worlds" specifically looks at education. This issue includes looks at simulation based training and science in Second Life. The other issues of the Journal will have articles relevant to certain areas of interest so explore them too.
Finally, there is the British Journal of Educational Technology's May 2009 issue of which about half the issue is devoted to virtual worlds. [EHU Library Link]

If you know of any other good resources that you'd like to share, why not leave a comment below.

[Image by Peter Beaumont]

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Virtual Gaming Worlds and Learning

2009-04-08T14:38:00.009+01:00

One of the interesting thing about looking at using games in education is learning from the game designers. They know how to keep a player motivated to play the game, and to keep learning the complex rules and possibilities. This is especially noticable in a MMORPG like World of Warcraft where players talk about playing the game for 2-3000 hours.

I have a couple of questions that I'd like to explore. Firstly is there anything that educators can learn from game designers relating to motivation and learning, to feed into designing learning experiences? And secondly how can games (either out of the box, specifically created or altered for purpose) be used as a valuable part of a course or module?

To begin thinking about the first question, have a look at Jane McGonigal's talk at the Web 2.0 Summit from 2007. She talks about how, compared to games, reality is 'broken' and she asks how we can make reality work more like games. Games come with a clear goal and clear pathways to achieving that goal, and they give you good feedback on your actions. Most importantly though, games are designed to make you happy. Some attempts to capture these ideas for non-traditional gaming uses are Chore Wars (join my party!), Seriosity (to help an organisation deal with too much email), The Nethernet, and Cruel 2 B Kind.

To help start answering the second question we could listen to David Gibson at the recent Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference in which he talked about putting together a synthesis of ideas to help plan, implement and assess serious games. He tries to combine ideas from Prenky (2001) [EHU Library E-book Link - see page 52 for the list that is mentioned in the talk] about how the new 'Games Generation' thinks differently, with appropriate learning theory, an activity theory framework and Mislevy's assessment model.

If you want to explore these things further you might also want to look at:

"Collaborative Virtual Gaming Worlds in Higher Education" article in September 2008's ALT-J (16.3) by Whitton and Hollins.
10 day free trial of World of Warcraft as an introduction to the genre.
James Paul Gee's work, for example "Games, Learning, and 21st Century Survival Skills" in April 2009's Journal of Virtual Worlds Research (2.1).

[Image by mi2starsfan]

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Adaptations that I would like to see in my classroom

2009-04-01T00:00:00.007+01:00

Trawling through an archive of my e-learning masters course I found my thoughts about hopeful improvements within the next 10 years. Here’s what I said in 2006:

Adaptations which I would like to see in my classroom and may be financially and technically possible in the next 10 years (briefly, as I think most are aware of my ideas):

Thin client, cheap laptop, robust technology.
Increasing use of VLE, especially the forum feature – encouraging students to learn from each other.
Project based learning – less discrete subject and more ‘joined up’ (is that word making a come back, please) teaching and learning.
Use of variety of software, away from monolithic Microsoft towards other commercial and open sourced provision.
Get the kit to become more of an assistant than a hindrance:
currently we:

need to type, I want to see voice recognition;
we need to look at small screens, I want to see wearable displays giving a complete field of view;
we rely too much on text, I want to see multimedia used to it’s proper conclusion;
we have to say “Wait whilst my computer boots up”, I want to have a
turned on instantly available source of information, as accessible as a piece of paper in my pocket.

… how far do you think we’ve come?

I think the above brings to mind that

There has been some movement in thin client, but perhaps not as much as I’d like;
The VLE forum is being challenged by the “small parts” model (utilising other web based social tools, as well as phone technologies); and
Open source is becoming more mainstream (look at cheap netbooks operating systems).
It also highlights that we have far to go with the human-machine interface (to lower that barrier), more use of multimedia and a machine that switches on when you ask it to, not 5 minutes later when it feels like it.

On the latter point, consider the OLPC, (this from their discussion of power usage page):

"Resume on our system is extremely fast: even without any serious attempt to optimize resume, we can resume from RAM in 160 milliseconds (mid-April, 2007). We are still determining the minimum resume time, as a 63ms delay we thought was required has a workaround in the Geode. B3 and later systems are probably similar to the GX. We will work in the future to further speed resume. Note that for most uses, 100ms is considered at the edge of human perception (e.g. typing).”

So, if OLPC can do it …

Thanks for reading – thoughts and comments sought.

David (image by mangee)

Designing for 'Flow'

2009-03-19T13:23:00.004Z

When we are designing online learning experiences for students, it could be argued that there is an even greater need to keep students focussed and interested than in face-to-face sessions. The greatest attention stealer ever, the internet, is only a click away to an online learner, although even a 'captive audience' in a lecture might not always be paying attention much of the time.

Relating some of Csikszentmihalyi's ideas about 'Flow' to an online course, Shin's research from 2006, 'Online Learner's "Flow" Experience', explores Csikszentmihalyi's ideas and previous related research to explore how these ideas can improve students' focus and engagement. 5 measures of 'Flow' are identified, enjoyment, telepresence, focussed attention, engagement and time distortion (how much students lost track of the passage of time).

The data analysis noted the importance of students feeling that the level of challenge is relevant to their own skill level, in students achieving this 'Flow' state, and that female participants tended to underestimate their skill levels. However Shin concluded that the student 'having a clear goal' was more important in achieving 'Flow' than the appropriate level of challenge. Finally achieving 'Flow' was a good predictor of student satisfaction with the course.

So what does this tell us when we are designing online courses?

Firstly this research reinforces the idea that students need internal motivation and curiosity to completely focus on their studies. This level of motivation will vary from student to student, as will the appropriate level of challenge for their skills.

The research perhaps emphasises a need for a personalised experience suitable for the student. Is this at odds with social constructivist ideas about knowledge being formed socially? Does it mean it would be more difficult for students to work together and think together through a course, if they are being encouraged to learn differently?

Finally, one way in which we can help online students achieve 'Flow' is by reducing the cognitive demand of the technologies they are using. This can be through better design of systems and devices that they are using, which makes the technology invisible or at least more transparent. Devices like touch screen phones also increase transparency because they act more like the real world that we are used to interacting with. Better education about using the technology will speed up the learning process, further increasing transparency.

Don Norman talks a lot about the effects of good design in 'The Design of Everyday Things' and Steve Krug does in 'Don't Make Me Think!'. In the short term we've got more control over better educating users to use the systems well, than directly improving their design. This education seems like a small thing, but it's a step towards freeing those students who are very motivated to focus on learning, and making sure that the challenge students face is related to what we want them to learn and not the underlying technology.

[image by margolove]

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Thoughts around re-usable stuff

2009-03-17T16:05:00.002Z

I come to the debate on Reusable Learning Objects (RLOs) a little uninformed, but I thought of something earlier which I thought was an interesting observation.

If you know what RLOs are - then skip to the next para. For those uninformed or wanting to be re-informed, Nottingham's working definition is: "an interactive WWW-based resource based on a single learning objective which can be used in multiple contexts".

Whilst looking at a colleagues excellent work (well done Ken), I couldn't help but think what a pity the HE community in the UK can't work together better to work as a team to produce content - thus Ken's excellent work might be used by Liverpool, UCL or Brighton, and Edge Hill might use objects from other leading institutions throughout the UK, perhaps even worldwide.

Besides the usual RLO issues (fit for purpose, context specific content, multiple outcomes misaligned with the re-purpose and the largest issue: copyright and IPR), a major barrier to working like this is fear of sharing good work with our competition - why would we want to give our excellent materials away to Hull, Leiden or MIT, when these are the very things which drag student here. Well, two observations about that:
1) I think we are being a tad arrogant to think of our stuff as "World Class";
2) I don't think the quality of this type of work does bring students here.

However, if we did "Share" our stuff, then these two issues are addressed, because:
1) we would be encouraged to raise our standards to be seen on a world stage;
2) Our resulting excellent materials would be seen by far more students and therefore we would be more likely to attract students here as more will ahve seen our excellent work.

Finally, the interesting twist which niggled me to write this: around here academics DO produce world class materials and DO make them freely available to the world - and are rewarded by this institution for doing so, and in turn this institution is rewarded too - so what are these materials called? Books and Journals. Why can't we do the same for "Content"?

Presentation Slides and Learning in Lectures

2009-03-12T11:33:00.008Z

The humble presentation slide is used by many educators, and I suppose that it would be easy to overlook the impact on learning of decisions made when creating and distributing these.

We've posted before regarding some issues to think about when creating slides. These have included asking if PowerPoint's animations help or hinder learning, and how to choose appropriate images.

What I'd never properly considered was the effects of when slides are made available, but this is something explored in Babb and Ross (2009), "The timing of online lecture slide availability and its effect on attendance, participation, and exam performance" in Computers & Education 52.4 [Edge Hill Library link]. Walter van den Broek has written a good overview, but very basicaly the authors found that when slides were available before the lecture there was greater student participation in the lecture, but no significant difference in exam results.

In the same issue of the Computers & Education journal there is an article by Savoy et al (2009) "Information retention from PowerPoint™ and traditional lectures", which aims to suggest situations in which presentation slides are beneficial for retention of information, and in which situations they have the opposite effect.

Like most things related to teaching and learning, there are a lot of things to take into consideration when trying to understand the impact of presentation slides on different types of learning. However these articles have started me thinking a bit more about how I use them in my own sessions.

[image by Andrew Scott]

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Wikis: The Community and the Technology

2009-03-11T11:42:00.004Z

Recently I've come across more people who want to use wikis for projects and collaboration in the classroom. On the face of it using wikis is simple, but it is worth staff having a good understanding of how wikis work, and an awareness of issues that could arise.

We'll start by having a look at a range of wikis.
- Wikipedia (English Version) - The largest wiki.
- Pulp Bard - Colaborative project to translate the Pulp Fiction film script into a Shakespearean equivalent.
-Wikipatterns - A collaboratively updated book about different ways in which wikis can be used.
-Reading List for a Course Created by Students - Barely started wiki that students could use to recomend relevant books to each other. The idea is that it could both encourage students to reflect on why their reading was worthwhile, and to communicate to other student both now and in the future why different books and articles would be worth reading.
-Wikis in Plain English is a video that explains why wikis and collaborative online documents are useful, using the example of planning a camping trip.

From these we see that wikis generally contain editable pages, discussion sections, history sections and a web feed to subscribe to notifications of any activity on the wiki. I guess the first step is for users to know about these and gain some understanding of the processes that took place in the development of the articles.

Firstly someone needs to start off an article. On Wikipedia many articles start off as short 'stubs' just to get them started. If enough people are interested in updating an article the development can be very interesting, as shown in this screencast by Jon Udell from a while back. In this screencast we see Jon extensively using the History feature of the wiki.

The screencast linked to above shows how incidences of vandalism are dealt with on an openly editable wiki. Classroom wikis will generally be only editable by the class, and vandalism is easily traced back to the culpit in that sort of situation. If people have genuine disagreements with a claim made on the wiki, they can use the Discussion area of the wiki to query it with people before making changes. If you use a wiki in your class, perhaps you can encourage this as an initial step when making changes to existing work.

In Minocha and Roberts (2008), research such as Minocha and Thomas (2007) is said to show that

"inadequate socialisation at the start of the collaborative activity was a key obsticle in conducting group projects or activities at a distance".

They define socialisation as

"the social act of coming together for a common purpose, for example, when students familiarise themselves with one another and learn about the norms, roles, rules and code of conduct.

If you are teaching at a distance using colaborative tools like wikis, it is worth thinking about how trust and understanding between students can be encouraged and protected.

So if you want to get started using a wiki, what can you do?

Edge Hill University isn't able to provide staff and students with access to wiki software in the near future, so your projects will need external hosting. This does mean that users of the wiki will need to register for a username and password to edit the wiki.

pbwiki is the external wiki host that I have used myself. You can get one for free, but it doesn't contain the functionality to back it up, so you might need to either do this manually or think about paying. 1 wiki hosted for 1 year would cost about £70, or if there was funding and enough potential users and institution wide licence would be about £600.

If you want to explore other wiki hosts, have a look at WikiMatrix's Choice Wizard to see lots of different wikis that could be right for you.

If you want to delve much deeper into the world of wikis:

Listen to: a few episodes of Wikipedia Weekly to hear what goes on behind the scenes in the Wikimedia community. There's a bit of waffle at the start of these but bear with it it'll aid your understanding of processes in a very large scale wiki.
Read: Wikipatterns which contains advice about running wikis with different purposes, what to do and what to avoid.
Read: How Wikipedia Works which is an in-depth explanation of everything that goes into making Wikipedia work.

Finally, note that there are other ways to create collaborative documents that might be more suited to your needs than a Wiki. Online tools like Google Docs and CmapTools (for creating concept maps) might work for you.

[image by one laptop per child]

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Thoughts on the Future of Virtual Worlds

2009-03-09T14:01:00.006Z

Virtual worlds like Second Life offer certain possibilities for teaching and learning, however issues like hardware requirements currently act as barriers to a wide uptake. Hopefully these issues, won't be a barrier for much longer and the possibilities will both become greater and more widely explored.

This beautiful video by Bruce Branit imagines one way in which virtual worlds could look and change our lives in the future.

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

Daden aimed to ask questions such as "How important will Virtual Worlds become?" in their "far reaching and provocative" 2007 Virtual Worlds roadmap (PDF). This monograph looks forward 100 years, and during the next 10 years they are expecting a massive increase in users and a move away from the model of isolated virtual worlds, running in seperate clients. In that timescale they also expect that virtual worlds may come to contain things like animation close to what we see in high end video games, better links with the real world (augmented reality), and automatic language translation.

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Managing Your Online Identity

2009-03-05T14:47:00.007Z

There's an interesting conversation starting on the The Identity Studies Blog about blogging, asking the question "How compatible are the identities of blogger and published academic?".

In LTD we had conversations around slightly different, though related issues to do with general online identity. I suppose our questions would be "Do you try to keep your personal and professional online identities separate? Do you try to keep them controlled?"

I've created a simple diagram to help me think about the information available about myself, and it is interesting to see how personal and professional overlap. It is also perhaps a little alarming that there is so much information out there that is publically available.

I've just collected my information together on MyBlogLog while I'm thinking about managing online identity, and I'm setting up a page on ClaimID. Does a central place like this enable you to manage your identity and reputation properly? Does it enable anyone to find so much about you that there are dangers involved?

Why is this relevant to Edge Hill University? We are asking questions at the moment about what our role is in educating our students generally about new literacies and skills required in the emerging digital world. As we make decisions about encouraging students to use various open online services as part of their courses, do we want to advise students as best we can as to how they can be safe and in control of their reputation and identity? Perhaps even how they can use the resources created and stored in these services as an ePortfolio.

Two very interesting articles on this subject are The Shifted Librarian's Who is Managing Your Online Identity and the article from New York magazine that it links to.

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Comparing Digital Voice Recorders

2009-02-26T15:01:00.009Z

We often get asked to recommend digital voice recorders, and in this post I'll try and describe what the options are for affordable models. We're not going to look at the top end stuff for more professional audio recording.

When choosing a digital voice recorder for recording feedback, lectures, or other learning materials, you are probably looking for a voice recorder that:

Records in a widely used format, so that no time needs to be spent saving between formats. Currently, MP3 is widely supported on people’s computers and portable media players. WMA would probably be OK for most students too.
Allows easy export of files from the voice recorder to the PC.
Records audio at a suitable quality.
Is not going to cost too much to replace batteries.

The two main manuafacturers are Olympus and Sony. Olympus devices tend to record in WMA format and Sony in MP3 or WAV, so if you are set on one format over the other this may direct your search. MP3s will be important if you are wanting the audio files listened to on portable media devices, without you having to convert them before you distribute them. WMA files will work on the current Edge Hill University media server, if you are wanting to use that.

If you want to know the details, Olympus' offerings are divided into Notetakers (the VN and WS series) and Dictation Systems (the DS series). For the VN series you'd be looking at paying between £20 and £40, but with these you'll probably need to convert the file to the format you require. The more expensive devices like the WS (£40-£70) and DS (£90-£250) series are therefore better if you can afford them. In the past in LTD and SOLSTICE we have used DS-30 devices which cost about £85, and I've had the WS-321M (£70) recomended to me too. Sony's ICD series devices include the UX models (£80-£100) which look of interest to us, but which I've never used.

If I was to purchase more devices for academic staff to use, I'd want to spend around £100 and go for the Olympus WS-321M with an external Olympus mic like the ME-51S for office use or a ME-15 tie mic for recording lectures. The WS series seems to me to have a good balance between ease of use, quality of recording and cost. We also know from experience that the DS-30 is a good buy at around £90. If you want to record in MP3 format Sony's ICD-UX80 devices look handy, and they would ideally need an external mic too.

Has anyone else got opinions and advice on digital voice recorders?

[image by jinny.wong]

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Monkeys, Birds and Spirits: Differences in How We Experience Second Life

2009-02-25T09:42:00.005Z

Jeremy Kemp suggests that there could be a certain development in the way people use Second Life over time. From this it follows that we need to think about which of these groups our own uses might be in, so that we can design for them better.

His idea is that we start of as monkeys, liking a replication of the real world environment. We walk our avatar around the world, walking through doors and up stairs. He also uses the word verisimilitude, which is very impressive. It means that when you build for these users, you should replicate real life to make them feel comfortable.

We then tend to grow into birds. We fly to where we want to go, using atriums rather than stairs. We move and land with comfort and grace. This group of people require phantom barriers. If you use walls and ceilings they should allow you to pass through them, but really you probably just need some sort of landmark. It doesn't rain in Second Life.

Finally we become spirits, seperate in many ways from our avatar bodies. We teleport to where we want to go, even if it isn't far. Rather than move to see something we use the camera controls to change our view. He suggests that for these experienced users we design for an out-of-body experience. Lots of objects replicating the real world environment are just getting in the way of these users' experiences.

See the slide-show embedded below for his slides. The ones that I've been talking about here are 14, 15 and 16, but he has other interesting things worth thinking about.

SJSU SLIS Campus - Second Life Unifying Concepts

View more presentations from jeremykemp. (tags: second_life campus)

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Choosing Images

2009-02-13T14:19:00.006Z

There are lots of reasons that you might want to use images in your teaching and in the development of online materials. You might want to illustrate a point in a document or in your presentation slides. You might want to change the icon image in your VLE area to better communicate to students what the link leads to.

Whatever the reason, you'll need to be able to:

- Find images that help communicate your point. The images should always be there for communication, not to decorate. Using images as decoration can just add extra unimportant information that detracts from what you are trying to communicate.

- Find images that are copyright cleared to use. Go to a site which supplies copyright cleared images, and keep details of where you got the images so that you can credit the creator.

- If the images are being used for icons, you'll need to edit the images to a usable size.

Image Collections

The two sites that I use to get images are Flickr and Stock.XCHNG.

Flickr is a site where anyone can upload any of their own photos. Not all will be licenced for use but you can search through those photos that are Creative Commons licenced at the bottom of the Flickr search page, or the independent flickrCC search page made by Peter Shanks.

Stock.XCHNG is a site where people upload their own quality photographs for other people to use. You'll need to sign up for an acoount, but it is free and only quality images are allowed.

There are different licences attached to images on these sites, but generally if you search for images that you can adapt you'll be fine. Some of the licences require you to give the creator credit - and that is only polite anyway.

In my projects I now keep a list of where I got the images from, who the author is and a link to the licence agreement. In a website or VLE area, I'll have a small link named 'image credits' which lists this information and in presentation slides, I'll have a page at the end doing the same. This makes sure that you and anyone who re-uses your work at a later time, knows where they are regarding copyright.

Thinking about Purpose

Images can help communication if chosen well. If you are presenting you want images behind you that support what you are saying - not ones that are talking about something else and just creating 'noise' for the students to process. If a student gets to a link on your website or Blackboard area they would benefit from you communicating what it is they will find by following the link - they will benefit from an image that communicates this.

Let's say I'm creating a template for my department to use for its online materials on the VLE, and we've decided to use photographic images for the icons. The icons are probably going to be small - perhaps 150 pixels wide (pixels are) and 75 high - which gives us something else to think about. Will a picture I find look good at that size? Will a small section from the image help to communicate what I want to say.

Firstly I need one for the Discussion Board. I'll go to search through the Creative Commons licenced images on Flickr. I start off by searching for board and get images of chess boards, surf boards and notice boards. It's important here to remember is will the image help the student know what the link is for, and give as much information as possible about it's use.

A photo of people talking would be ideal for this, as the Discussion Board is for communication. OK the Discussion Board is text based, but the image communicates a lot. Don't fall into the trap of using a picture of a notice board, and forgetting that that would not communicate anything useful to the students.

Editing Images for use as Icons

If you are using images, or sections of images as icons, you'll need to edit them and save them as perhaps 75 by 75 pixels. Pixels are the tiny little squares that make up the picture on your screen. Here's how you can do it.

If you are at Edge Hill on campus you'll have access to PhotoEditor (pdf).

However, even if you don't have access to any software there are free web sites that will enable you to edit your software. For example Snipshot.com is very easy to use and is free.

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Using Comics to Educate

2009-02-12T12:13:00.004Z

In his 1993 book, 'Understanding Comics' [Edge Hill Library Link], Scott McCloud argues well that Comics are a valid form of communication. From more recent times, take 20 minutes to watch his fantasic TED Talk.

While using comics in education is nothing new, Scott's introduction to Google's Chrome browser comic from last year is an example of an educational application of comics. I read this through, while I would never have made it through the average manual.

The growth of very basic animation as an acceptable serious education tool, can perhaps be seen in series like Nutintuit Studio's technical training videos, which were inspired by the Common Craft Show's In Plain English videos.

I wonder how our basic introductions to technologies and technology enhanced learning might work if we created them as a comic. Would they feel more 'human'. Would they be more widely read than if they were just text? Would they be more memorable? At the moment we're looking at creating a short introduction for staff about using new and emerging technologies for the web site. Perhaps we could use the skills in the team to approach it in a slightly different way.

Predictions for 2009

2009-02-06T16:07:00.004Z

At the start of every year we see a host of predictions about what the future will hold for technology enhanced learning. In this post I’ll give you links to some of them, and briefly try to sumarise.

The Daddy of all annual Technology Enhanced Learning predictions is the Horizon report. This year it looks at Mobiles and Cloud computing in the ‘One Year or Less to Adoption’ category, Geo-everything and the Personal Web in the ‘Two to Three Years to Adoption’ category, and finally Semantic-Aware Applications and Smart Objects in the ‘Four to Five Years to Adoption Category’. There are also sections covering Key Trends and Critical Challenges.

eLearn Magazine has invited many experts to talk about opportunities and challenges that they expect over the next 12 months. Many of these focus on the financial situation and the impact of this on eLearning - for example many seem to think that in the corporate world, eLearning will be again seem as a way of saving money. Other possible trends mentioned are the quiet infiltration of mobile devices, the further development of Open Educational Resources, and the use of more informal online learning environments.

The Educause community has identifies their top five challenges in teaching and learning with technology, in 2009. I quite like the fact that these predictions are more ‘classic’ challenges which will be relevant for our thinking over several years. For example, ‘Developing 21st century literacies (information, digital, and visual) among students and faculty.’. There is a project wiki available as a hub for collaboration in the pursuit of solutions.

Finally, and I'm sure with less well considered conclusions, here's the transcript of my Pete's Crystal Ball session that I ran last month about technologies that could to enter mainstream use at Edge Hill over the next three years. It’s written for a non-technical audience, and so is quite straightforward to read through.

Backing-up Your Personal Learning Environment

2009-02-06T14:49:00.004Z

With the news that the social bookmarking site Ma.gnolia might have gone down for good, it's a good time to consider exactly how we can ensure we don't lose all the data that we collect in various online services.

Feed Readers make it easy to do this. I can download an OPML file from Bloglines, either to backup the list of feeds that I subscribe to, or to read them in another service like Google Reader. OPML is used as standard, in feed readers and podcast aggregators.

The same is possible with some social bookmarking sites, but there doesn't seem to be a standard way of migrating bookmarks similar to OPML. I use Delicious, and this allows me to download a list of my bookmarks, along with data like my tags. However to import them in to Google Bookmarks I'd need to run them through a third-party program rather than an official Import Bookmarks function.

At the far end of the scale are virtual worlds. There are moves towards your avatar being able to move between worlds, but this is in a very early stage. The fact that Google closed Lively while educators were using it, shows that it is important to be able to move your avatars and creations, in some form, to another environment.

Anyway, the point of this post is really to emphasise the importance of backing up your data. If you've found some web services that you are settled with, and that you are collecting large amounts of valuable data in, the experience of Ma.gnolia shows us that it's not as safe as it sometimes feels.

iKnow!: Learning Languages Online

2009-02-03T13:58:00.004Z

In the spirit of diversity week, I thought I'd write about a language learning site that I like.

iKnow makes it easy for you to set up word lists in any language, including adding audio, and provides the learner with tools to help them learn the words,to understand context, and to test their learning. These tools include basic social networking tools, so that you aren't learning alone, and the BrainSpeed game that tests your learning. Watch their screencast video to find out more, and have a look at the courses for a language that you want to learn like Mandarin or my Romanian lists which took about 10 minutes each to set up with text and audio.

For developers there is an API, and people have linked it up for use in Second Life.

Don't know if it's pedagogically sound, but it keeps me interested, especially the BrainSpeed game :)

Choosing a VLE - or Something Else?

2009-01-09T10:41:00.007Z

Tony Karrer has written an interesting post on his eLearning Technology blog about the time it takes to select and implement a Learning Managment System. Not quite the same as a VLE but close enough for this post.

This is relevant because at Edge Hill we're looking at what we're going to do in the future. Our contract with Blackboard is for another 18 months at least, but to prevent ourselves remaining tied in to a system, we need to get to a place where we can answer questions such as:

What systems are available, and possibly customisable, that would help us improve teaching and learning?
Are the systems flexible enough to deal with a quickly changing Web? This is something that VLEs have struggled to do in the past.
Is anything flexible enought to keep happy all stakeholders with their, often specific but always changing requirements?
What amount of work would be involved in implementation, maintainance, migration, staff development, student training and support?

In his post, Tony mentions data from the eLearningGuild that suggests the process takes 23 months from start to finish, but notes that some things can reduce the time taken, and that the selection part can take under 2 months in some cases. At Edge Hill we've not experienced this process, having only upgraded from WebCT/Bb CE4 to CE6 in the past. In that case, upgrading was the only realistic option with the resources available, but if research is done and decisions are made in enough time, it widens the possiblities.

There's a lot of talk about moving away from VLEs, and I'm interested in the idea of educating students to develop and maintain their own personal learning environments which will live on beyond their formal education. However it seems to me that there is still a place for the VLE. While a personal learning environment (including VLEs and ePortfolios) is a place for the student to learn and be in control, there still needs to be a place for the teacher to teach.

Also I've still not heard anyone give a realistic suggestion as to how, other than a VLE type system, we could enable staff to use a variety of online tools that all the students can easily access, without administration and student support requirements growing massively.

However, perhaps the actual technology chosen is not the only issue? In Mark Stiles' article Death of the VLE?: A Challenge to a New Orthodoxy from a couple of years ago, he notes that "rather than resulting in innovation, the use of VLEs has become fixed in an orthodoxy based on traditional educational approaches". I've heard more than one educator say that VLEs and other online technologies were of benefit to them because they made them challenge and rethink their teaching methods, and so understand them better. Perhaps it's the process of change itself, alongside guidance around good practice, that will help us better understand and practice teaching and learning?

Bloglines vs. Google Reader: Feed Readers for Heavy Users

2008-12-16T11:55:00.004Z

I've been using Bloglines for quite a while to subscibe to web feeds, and it has worked wonderfully even with over 1000 subscriptions. Looking around about 18 months ago, nothing else seemed to deal well with that number of feeds.

Google Reader though, has developed and looks like a possible competitor. So in this post I'll take a quick look at how the two compare.

Browsing

With both services the experience of browsing feeds, marking them as read, and following links is fine. There is no major difference between the two.

Subscribing

Subscribing to feeds is simple in both, but while Bloglines makes it easy to choose what folder the feed with be held in, Google requires you to choose it manually. A small point, but it's an extra step.

Language translation

With Bloglines I used Yahoo Pipes to translate the feed's contents into English, which takes 10 minutes to set up, but Google reader allows you to set a feed to be translated into your language by going to 'Folder settings' and choosing 'Translate into my language'. This is much easier.

Other points

If you use lots of Google's applications, Google Reader would integrate well with them, and save you logging into an extra service. If you like stats, Google Reader keeps track of which feeds you are reading posts from, amoung other things. Bloglines still makes it easier than Google Reader to manage large numbers of feeds, and folders.

In Conclusion

Overall there isn't a major difference between the two services. Because it is easy to try different feed readers, by exporting your OPML file and importing it into another service, it's easy to give both a go and discover which works best for you.

Online Discussion Workshop

2008-11-20T11:26:00.001Z

I have just developed a workshop around online discussion (asynchronous), which ran for the 1st time yesterday.
The technical aspect of creating discussion forums in Blackboard is the easy part... the real problem lies in the understanding of why, and how, to embed discussion within course content, and how the tool aligns with learning and teaching e.g. Social Constructivism. Understanding at this level is critical for courses that hope to create and engage in meaningful online discourse.

The session has already generated some interesting discussion, as it encourages reflection upon previous experience, the actual use of the tool alongside teaching styles, as well as some practical aspects to gain experience in creating and using the discussion tool within Blackboard. The session also picks up on Netiquette guidelines and 'what to expect in online discussion', as well as highlighting some key texts around the topics such as; Contingent tutoring, Lurking or Learning?, a Model for eMentoring, and Structuring online discussion for meaningful discourse.

The discussion workshop will run again on the 4th December so contact staff development to register. Also look out for the other workshops that look at the various Blackboard tools in more detail.

Using eXe to Create Web Pages

2008-11-18T16:00:00.009Z

Blackboard is not a web development environment, and so we've tried to find other pieces of software that allow academics to produce simple collections of web pages for use in Blackboard.

Wimba's Course Genie (now Wimba Create) was used by some staff for a while, but cost was a barrier to a wider role-out of it's use, as well as difficulties with Wimba's licencing system.

A collegue mentioned eXe editor to me. I'm pretty impressed with it's ease of use and the fact that it is freely available and Open Source. There is also a version of the software that can run from a memory stick, meaning you don't have to install software to use it - very important for those who use Sunrays.

I've put together a series of short videos to show how you could get started using the eXe editor. It would be really good to hear from those of you who have used it, to find out what you think.

1. What is eXe (0.24)
Windows Media Version
YouTube Version

2. Downloading eXe (0.59)
Windows Media Version
YouTube Version

3. Adding iDevices (1.43)
Windows Media Version
YouTube Version

4. Adding More Pages (1.33)
Windows Media Version
YouTube Version

5. The RSS iDevice (1.46)
Windows Media Version
YouTube Version

6. Changing Content and Styles (1.47)
Windows Media Version
YouTube Version

7. Exporting and Saving (1.40)
Windows Media Version
YouTube Version

8. Importing an IMS Content Package to Blackboard (2:38)
Windows Media Version
YouTube Version

Using Virtual Worlds in Higher Education

2008-11-17T12:10:00.009Z

As I'm focussing my SOLSTICE Fellowship project on using Virtual Worlds in Higher Education, I decided to put together an overview of the possibilities and challenges relating to using them.

For my purposes, 'Virtual Worlds' includes 3D social spaces like Second Life, simulation environments (like Google Earth might be used as part of) and gaming environments like World of Warcraft. Metaverse Roadmap's overview especially their diagram of where Virtual Worlds, Mirror Worlds, Lifelogging and Augmented Reality fit together, looks like a useful tool to help me keep a focus.

Much research has already been done and made publically available. For a visual overview of virtual worlds in general Kzero have produced diagrams which do a great job of helping us to visualise the overwhelming variety and number of non-gaming virtual worlds that are being developed. For the 3rd Quarter of 2008 they have a diagram that shows the age group that use the environments, the number of subscribers and when each was released. They also have one that shows the type of the environment, and the age group that use it.

Other interesting starting points include JISC's new scoping study, Serious Virtual Worlds which links to relevant research. The Second Life in Education wiki is a extensive collection of links to the ways that educators are using that particular environment.

After looking at some of the research and activities going on, there are several general areas and questions that I think might be worth looking at.

1. Online Synchronous Discussion.

The Openhabitat project included a cohort of Philosophy students using Second Life for group discussion and David White's excellent presentation about Openhabitat includes information about this. Listening to this presentation got me thinking about how online interaction differs in a Virtual World, compared to the basic Chat tools that we use now. Is anything useful added to the experience by using Virtual Worlds? As the technology develops how will these experiences and the value of using the environments for online discussion change?

2. Learning to Navigate and Create.

Some Virtual Worlds allow you to build complex environments and simulations. Pretty much any project going on in Second Life will require some building, and projects like the PREVIEW project will require more complex scripting. If we are going to create environments for Edge Hill courses, it would be useful to the planning process to know what skills, processes and time are required to build environments, of various levels of complexity, in different Virtual Worlds. Also what time and skills would the student require to use each environment?

3. The Future.

a. It seems like the initial rush by businesses to set up in Second Life has slowed down. What are businesses in general likely to be doing next in the area of Virtual Worlds? Can we help prepare students for any uses of Virtual Worlds that they may come across in their working lives or future lives outside of work?

b. Currently, according to Kzero's data, the most subscribed to Virtual Worlds are aimed at children. This suggests that, over the next 5 to 10 years we might be expecting people who have grown up using virtual worlds. What might virtual worlds look like then, and how can we best prepare for their possible mainstream use?

e-Portfolios: Practical and StrategicThinking

2008-11-05T17:12:00.005Z

I've been attending the JISC Innovating e-Learning online conference this week, and found the discussions around ePortfolios useful.

The idea that we can split the uses of what are being called e-portfolios into 4 areas is popular. This is covered in the AlphaPlus document about existing e-Portfolio use, and gives a framework when thinking about what the purpose of their use. The 4 areas in this document are:

-Portfolio of work that demonstrates learning - The learner can put anything in here that demonstrates learning. If they make it available more publically it can be used for formative assessment by peers and teaching staff.
-Portfolio for summative assessment of learning on a course - This is marked against criteria.
-Portfolio to transfer learner information between institutions - The learner has little control over this.
-Portfolio to present your work, perhaps to a potential employer - This contains specially selected work for a particular audience.

Whatever you want to achieve by asking or encouraging your students to create an e-portfolio, you need to be able to communicate this to the students. Even if the advice is vague, and full freedom is given to the student, they need some idea of what is achievable and why they will benefit. The learner could see what could be done by seeing exisiting portfolios, like this gallery at Penn State University, and the 'e-Portfolios: Why Create an e-Portfolio' video on the e-Portfolios at Penn State podcast might help answer the 'Why?' question.

This is all at a practical level, but there is also a lot to think about around institutional strategies.

Thanet College seem to have done a lot of work in this area, and the document 'Thanet College: Personalised learning spaces - the next challenge for ILT', is worth a read if you are interested in the strategy side of things.

The ideas that stand out to me from Thanet are firstly, providing all tutors with PebblePad (an e-Portfolio system) accounts. If the staff think about their own e-Portfolio and use the system then they are better prepared to lead the students in their use.

Secondly, the idea of the Institution 'owning' the VLE and the learner 'owning' the e-Portfolio is useful, as it helps us think about and communicate to the students what we can expect from the different software tools we use.

Finally they saw a challenge in deciding where the college stood on transferability of the portfolios, which perhaps fits in with ideas around lifelong learning.

Running a University using iPhones: Revisited

2008-10-10T16:27:00.005+01:00

Back in May I wrote about ACU's video which gave an idea how a university could integrate systems, the student experience, learning and teaching through iPhones.

Well respect to them, because they've given it a go in reality. Every new student gets an iPhone or iPod Touch which runs the university created application. This gives access to things like timetables, Google Apps, and seems to contain basic VLE functionality.

It wouldn't necessarily have to be these products used. I can imagine it would be wonderful just to know that all students had an identical reliable platform to access information and files that we know works. It's so time consuming for both students and the institution to be troubleshooting all the potential issues that come with the wide variety of devices and browsers.

The use of the devices has also replaced the need for seperate Clickers/Audience Response Systems in the classroom, as everyone can do that using the university application via the newly vastly expanded wireless networks. This use and any other potential uses, save money from being spent elsewhere and so perhaps begin to pay back the costs of launching the system.

Also from a learning and teaching point of view, every student now has a mobile device available for storing and consuming video and audio materials.

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Locus of Control

2008-09-24T08:53:00.006+01:00

This article from 'Inside Higher Ed' discusses an issue pertinent to the debate around Locus of Control in Blended Learning; a consideration we have begun to address within a number of CPD courses in Edge Hill's Faculty of Health.

The issue of Locus of Control is often avoided (or even frowned upon), but perhaps the debate is becoming more pertinent in an age where HEIs compete for every last student. The debate basically suggests a shift in Locus of Control in blended learning settings, from a Tutor-controlled blend, to a Learner-controlled blend - creating/enforcing/allowing a greater sense of ownership for learning (on the learner's part). Traditionally, it is the academic who determines what parts of a course must be accessed face-to-face, and what 'extension activities' can be through e-learning means, and so the amounts of choice is minimal.

e-Learning promised flexibility. Is this really flexible?

Being involved in any such debate and seeing the different viewpoints is interesting;

Academic managers are certainly in the 'For' side, due to the obvious benefits of recruiting wider audiences, which basically translates to 'more money'!
Then we have the Faculty based champions of e-learning, who genuinely seek to use technology to enhance learning and teaching, and see the possibilities afforded by the developments of Web 2.0, and consequently e-learning 2.0 (yes you all know who you are!).
From a CPD perspective, Employers also sit in the 'For' crowd. Nursing trusts 'send' employees on CPD courses, which translates into time away from wards, which means less man (or woman)-power on the ground. By shifting the locus of control, such learners can access content from a work PC (if by chance they are hooked up with a decent connection, and of course, a firewall that doesn't block everything and anything (is that asking too much?)).

Many people on the ground (not all, but many academics) are shouting for the 'against' side, as they simply do not have the time or technical expertise to create engaging and stimulating content that warrants online access (in opposition to the face-to-face session). Similarly, the 'againsters' (?) believe their students are not technically capable to access materials in such a mode (i.e. too old) or educationally immature (i.e. too young). The notion of educational maturity is a debate which stretches beyond this post, but nonetheless applies equally to the academic as it does to the learner. Some also believe that online learning cannot make up for the interaction within classrooms (see the comment in the article from Dr J, Asssitant Director, Student Services at Florida Gulf Coast University, at 9:41 am EDT on September 23, 2008).) I must say that these viewpoints are becoming more of a minority, and are likely unfamiliar with e-learning theory (with little experience therein).

Andy Guess' article from 'Inside Higher Ed' highlights the willingness, and perhaps educational maturity of many learners to take more responsibility and ownership without having to travel to classes. Afterall, much of contemporary education subscribes to Social Constructivist theories whereby such ownership is a clear objective, and where learners are provided opportunity to find, select, critique, share, and create knowledge, opposed to traditional rote learning 'chalk and talk' approaches. The capabilities for this through use of the Internet and Web 2.0 are endless.

In my opinion, this is the future of learning and teaching, and the worries of many academics (many of which I share) can be tackled through consideration of different conditions to, for example, create and harness a larger Community of Practice that could ever be possible in face-to-face environments.

So, shifting the Locus of Control onto the learner... Possible? (un)Desirable? Over to you...

Moving Back off the Web: From Virtual Reality to Alternate Reality

2008-09-12T16:24:00.005+01:00

A lot has been said over the years regarding using games/Online Games to aid the learning of complex topics and skills. For example using Civilization III to help children develop an understanding of historial development of civilisations, or using Lord of the Rings online to aid understanding of narrative and it's development in different media.

Jane McGonigal spoke at the New Yorker conference about alternate reality/pervasive games, which can use the connecting power of the web to create Massively Multiplayer (Offline) Games. These are in some ways similar to role playing simulations that I've seen used in the past, but the emphasis is taken off role play - you play yourself in an imagined alternate reality. Looking at the example she spoke of, the game World Without Oil, it is difficult not to be impressed by the potential educational value.

In World Without Oil, instead of players playing an online game set in a virtual environment, they changed their own lives for 32 days, as they would have to if there was an oil shortage. This could be done without being based online but the fact it was, brought together 1800 people who were interested in doing this, created synergy. For example there are the videos that people made to develop this alternate reality, blogs where they shared experiences and ideas, and even personal interaction where people worked together to modify cars to run on biofuel.

Where would it be appropriate to get our students involved in things like this? Is there scholarly value in them? Do they have a place in Higher Education?

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'Connectivism and Connective Knowledge' Open Online Course

2008-09-09T12:08:00.005+01:00

The new Connectivism and Connective Knowledge Open Online course run by George Siemens and Stephen Downes started yesterday at the Univeristy of Manitoba. It is a 12-week course that "will explore the concepts of connectivism and connective knowledge and explore their application as a framework for theories of teaching and learning."

It is particularly interesting because it is an open course that anyone can take part in. Only those who are wanting credit need to pay fees. It also uses a wide variety of online services to enable communication. Matthias Melcher has created a diagram to try and show how some of the tools and services link together and the course Pageflakes page brings together all the RSS feeds related to the course. The university's Wiki is probably the best place to get an overview.

It'll be interesting to see what happens, but at the moment I think open courses like this can bring benefits to the paying students as well as those who just take part. There are lots of readings and learning materials, but there is also real value is in the conversations surrounding them. An increase in the number of people in the debate can, in my experience, help undertanding by making more connections between ideas and bringing diverse ways of looking at things. For an example of the numbers that are at least thinking about getting involved, there are currently about 250 people in the course Facebook group.

ALT-C 2008 - Rethinking the Digital Divide

2008-09-05T17:02:00.006+01:00

The ALT-C Conference takes place over the next week. If like me, you find it difficult to get away to conferences at this time of year, you can still get involved in the three keynote sessions which are being 'broadcast' using Elluminate Live.

See details on the ALT Conference Weblog, but basically:

-Tuesday 9th Sept 08- 9:50-11:00 BST - Hans Rosling talks about world development.
-Wednesday 10th Sept 08- 14:00 -15:00 BST- Itiel Dror looks more deeply into what learning is and how that might change the way learning materials are created.
-Thursday 11th Sept 08- 12:10-13:10 BST - David Cavallo looks at learning environments and the OLPC.

Visit the Elluminate support pages to make sure your web browser will work with the site. Then go to the conference Elluminate pages at the relevant time to listen to a session, and interact with others who are listening. Elluminate Live is more than just a content delivery tool as it allows audience communication, so it might be an interesting experience if you've not used anything like this before.

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Nicon's Universcale

2008-08-28T14:59:00.006+01:00

I love things that help develop understanding of difficult concepts, and Nicon's Universcale does that. It is a visualisation of the massive differences in size between the size of the whole universe and the sub atomic scale.

I think it shows the way that online technologies (in this case Flash) can be used well to convey something that would be very difficult any other way. Well made visualisation tools like this and Google Earth, can help change the way we see the world around us.

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SOLSTICE Conference 2008: Videos

2008-08-14T11:04:00.006+01:00

Did you miss the SOLSTICE 2008 conference? Well at last you can put aside your regrets as some of the presentations from 'SOLSTICE: eLearning and Learning Environments for the Future' conference are now available as WMV files to watch online:

Les Watson: From Space to Place - In which Les explores what we should think about when designing new spaces for learning - 50 minutes - [abstract] [slides]

Eric Hamilton: Learners, Learning Environments, and Classrooms of the Future - In which Eric explores changes in educational settings, now and in the future - 43 minutes [abstract] [slides]

Peter Hartley: Summary of the Conference - 9 minutes

China, Learning Objects and Sharing

2008-07-31T12:11:00.006+01:00

We've had some people from Edge Hill University in China showing an onlne course, and this brought up an interesting question; Will the learning objects hosted outside the University (YouTube videos, etc.) be blocked in China?

With a move to running online courses that can be used internationally, this is one of the hidden localisation issues that will sometimes need to be considered.

Wikipedia has a list of websites blocked in China, which seems to be updated regularly and might be a useful resource.

Perhaps the best way to solve this and other issues, is for content producers to make their learning objects licenced in a way that would allow people to download and place the objects in a VLE when necessary. Creative Commons can help you licence your work in a way that would allow sharing while you hold on to the rights, and David Wiley's presentation "Openness, Localisation, and the Future of Learning Objects" is an eloquent argument for doing this.

iTunesU: Worlds of Wordcraft at Vanderbilt

2008-07-25T16:25:00.006+01:00

I've been exploring iTunesU a bit more recently, since British Universities started appearing on there, to see what resources institutions are releasing.

The course that I've enjoyed looking at most has been Worlds of Wordcraft that ran at Vanderbilt. This is a first year English module exploring narrative and how it changes moving from novels, to movies or to games.

The technology used to support this course feels so well integrated into the course. Their video 'Narrative forms in the Digital Classroom' explains it well, but from the point of view of looking at these materials after the course has run through the class blog and the recordings available via iTunesU, the wide variety of technologies used, feel like they are being used as an important and relevant part of the course.

Looking at iTunesU, I was wondering what use it could be to us at Edge Hill University. Basically it's wouldn't supply us with anything that we don't already have, as it is just hosting videos and linking to your course blog or web site. I could see it being used for marketing (i.e. look we're using iTunesU), and if management saw that as a positive thing, it could bring the neccesary investment needed to record more teaching sessions.

Towards a Scalable and Sustainable Model for e-Learning Development

2008-07-09T15:47:00.005+01:00

I can see two ‘models’ that are used when approaching the development of e-learning courses and resources at Edge Hill.

On one case we’ve got the courses that are simple to put together, perhaps containing a few documents, web links and VLE tools like Discussion. The time taken in running these courses falls almost totally on the teacher/facilitator. They spend time communicating with the students, perhaps being involved in online discussions and debates. I’d say that, providing it is acknowledged that staff require time to teach this way, this is a sustainable model.

On the other hand you’ve got the courses that contain lots of HTML based materials, video, animation and other learning objects that take a lot of work to produce/maintain – even to produce at a pretty low quality. The added work here usually falls on support staff, and I see in Learning Technology Development that we can spend a lot of time creating and maintaining resources for a small selection of courses. This can mean that we have no time to spend with other staff who are starting to use technology in teaching and learning.

In the early days of Learning Technology at Edge Hill, the idea of designing ‘prize’ courses which take a lot of work to create and maintain was seen as good because it would show people what was possible. However this way of working has never been replaced by something more scalable and sustainable. So what models are out there that work, and how could they fit in with Edge Hill?

The most useful article I’ve seen on the subject is ‘Building a Sustainable E-Learning Development Culture’ by Tracey Leacock, 2005.

The model covered in this article involves developing resources using flexible teams of developers, instructional designers and project managers. Other specialists can come and go from the team as required. The development works as a project, with time scales and most people working on the project as a full time focus.

Developers would have the technical skills, instructional designers and assessment experts would provide “leadership and guidance in innovations in e-learning pedagogy, e-learning tools, and related support services” and would also try and find resources that had already been produced elsewhere to cut down on development.

This set up is very different to Edge Hill, where development work has been done in Learning Services, or sometimes by IT Services or outsourced to external companies. I definitely like the idea of the split between development teams and e-learning guidance, as we’ve seen in our department that it’s tough to do both as well as we’d like.

So this article brings up lots of ideas that could be involved in sustainable e-learning development such as re-use of learning objects and ideas around what a development team/new academic team might look like.

Does anyone have any other thoughts around how we could get to a place where developments are scalable and sustainable?

SOLSTICE Conference 2008: One Minute Mix

2008-07-09T14:41:00.004+01:00

This video contains photos and clips from interviews taken at this year's SOLSTICE Conference, entitled 'eLearning and Learning Environments for the Future'.

Below are links to blog posts about the conference:

Anywhere Learning by Stuart Smith
Yukiyama's Daily Life by Yukiyama
Web Services by Mike Nolan
E-flections by Paul Lowe
Blog by Lawrie Phipps

My Top 5 Learning Technolgy Blogs

2008-07-04T11:58:00.004+01:00

I've never written a "top 5/top 10/top 100..." blog post. I guess I've always seen them as a cheep attention grabbing tactic - but nothing wrong with grabbing people's attention cheeply if you got something you think is worth saying. So in this post I'm going to share with you the 5 elearning related blogs that I never want to miss... in no particular order.

1. elearnspace by George Siemens
Elearnspace is a great collection of links covering a wide variety of educational/technological issues, always with insightful comment from George's perspective. You could just subscribe to this blog and keep a fairly good grasp of developments and thoughts in elearning.

2. e-portfolios for learning by Helen C. Barrett
If elearnspace covers everything, then this blog details an obsession with e-portfolios and the technologies which could be used to create them. Dr. Barrett has created and recreated her own e-portfolio using almost every imaginable tool. If you are thinking about using e-portfolios with your students this is a good place to start your exploration.

3. apophenia by Dana Boyd
Dana writes about a variety of issues, but her real area of specialisation is on "how American youth engage in networked publics like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Xanga, etc". If social networking is an area that interests you then having a look at the Best of Apophenia page will be a good place to start. I'd say that we should be very careful about how we use social network sites in education, but understanding what engages our students in their personal lives can help us a lot.

4. Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
So much of what we do in education is presenting. Whether it be lectures, conferences, or training sessions. This blog gives plenty of ideas about how one can experiment with presentations, and it is always interesting and inspiring.

5. (No Longer) Alone in a Library by Kimberly McCollum
This blog is quite new but so far I've found it's enthusiasm and honesty engaging. If you are interested in using blogs with your students, have a look back at her experiences of undertaking the Comments Challenge and give something similar a go yourself.

These blogs speak to me where I am, and might not be relevant to everyone. But if you're wanting to subscribe to a comprehensive collection of learning technology feeds I'm sure you want most of these in your OPML file. Other blogs that are great and that you might want to subscribe to are:

Remote Access by Clarence Fisher
Eide Neurolearning Blog by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide
Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold

Always remember that much of the value of blogs is in the interaction in the comments or between blogs, that can create communities. If you've got any recomendations, why not share them in our comments.

Running a University using iPhones

2008-05-28T18:10:00.004+01:00

I liked this video from ACU in Texas. It's a fictional exploration of how a University could use mobile devices to connect with students in different ways.

The video is arguing that giving all students an internet connected device might increase their connection to the university, to resources and experiences provided for learning, and to each other. Also if the university supplies a device like that, perhaps the students would be OK with it being used for learning and not feel like it was intruding in their personal, informal space, as has been an argument against using Facebook for example.

I guess the students need to see why they might want to use the technology to enhance their learning, and we can start explaining that now. If we can communicate the value of a personal learning environment which makes use of RSS and mobile video and audio, and which is easy to develop, then students would use the resources that they've got to build and maintain it. Without this understanding, the students wouldn't end up using their university iPhones for learning anyway.

I like the idea of using a piece of hardware like an iPhone that is designed primarily with the user experience in mind (rather than technical specifications), and which is designed to just work. Surely that could only improve the student experience and retention?

Blackboard World Europe 08: Student Led Audio Creation as a Group Assessment

2008-05-16T14:38:00.014+01:00

Been at Blackboard World 08 in Manchester this week, and the food was great. There were also some sessions that I thought brought up important points for people thinking of doing similar projects. I'll try to communicate the content of one here.

Using Blackboard Technology for Student Led Podcasting and Group Assessment:

This session by Christopher Stokes and Paul Wigfield from the University of Sheffield was the story of what happened when they asked the dental students to create group presentations as audio files rather than as classroom presentations.

They were asked to create 5 minute audio files on their topic, where the whole group had to speak. They admitted that these aren't really podcasts, but that's what the students wanted to call them. Submission was by attaching the audio file to a message on the VLE's discussion board.

They gave the students little advice on recording and equipment, and were surprised to find that none of the groups came to them with technical problems. They assume that there must have been someone in all the groups who had the understanding to sort out any issues, and said that it might had been different if the assignments had been individual ones.

They also thought that recording in this format meant that the individuals in the groups worked together more, where in the past the students had split the responsibilities. For example they might have had one person creating the presentation slides for the introduction, one person putting all the slides together and one presenting in class. This was what the presenters were most pleased with.

Other important issues brought up were:

-When feedback was collected on the students' experiences they said that it was good to do this near the start of term when people had more time, meaning that it was easier to get together.

-Some students raised concerns that the assignment was crossing over in to their personal/informal spaces (e.g. Garageband software that they usually use to make their own music rather than University work) and later on when students were offered the audio files as a podcast, they weren't interested in subscribing to it with iTunes for similar reasons. Their MP3 players are seen as being for music and not University stuff. It would be useful to find research or undertake research around these student perceptions of informal online spaces.

-Accessibility. Will Deaf or hard of hearing students be able to participate fully in creation and peer review? Do students need to produce transcripts?

-Students awareness of copyright issues. Home made music is OK, but if some use commercial music are you going to refuse to accept their assignment?

Setting up a Section in Blackboard: The Complete Beginner's Guide

2008-04-30T17:43:00.020+01:00

Blackboard (Campus Edition 6) is the upgraded VLE that Edge Hill University is currently switching over to.

The following screencast videos have been created to introduce staff to setting up and using their own Blackboard areas, and to act as a reference. They are available as streaming WMV (Windows Media) files.

The first section will briefly introduce you to teaching with on-line technologies at Edge Hill University, and show you the Blackboard environment. It is probably worth watching all of these if you are new to Edge Hill or to Blackboard CE 6.

The second section will demonstrate the various tools available in Blackboard, such as discussion boards, student profiles and online assignment submission. You are probably best just using the videos that relate to your needs at a particular time, rather than watching them all as there's over 90 minutes of videos.

Part One: An Introduction

01 - Introduction - 1:55 (details of contacts)
02 - Logging In - 1:53
03 - The Environment - 3:15
04 - The Home Page - 3:24
05 - Manage Course - 5:55
06 - File Manager - 2:13
07 - Instructor Tools - 3:15
08 - Adding a Student - 0.53
09 - Turnitin - Adding - 1.25
10 - Turnitin - Settings - 0.53

Part Two: The Blackboard Tools
Communication Tools

Discussion
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 1:01
02 - Setting up Discussion Boards - 2:41
03 - Things to Consider - 1:54

Profile
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:50
02 - Editing and Viewing Profiles - 1:45

Mail
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 1:08
02 - Settings - 1:12
03 - Sending and Managing Messages - 2:40

Chat
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:41
02 - Chat Rooms - 0:38
03 - Checking Java - 0:57
04 - Using a Chat Room - 4:08

Who's Online
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:39
02 - Using in Your Section - 1:12
03 - Using Via the myBlackboard Page - 0:33
04 - Setting Your Availability to Chat - 0:44

Announcements
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:46
02 - Navigation of the Calendar - 1:33

Content Tools

Learning Modules
01 - Introduction - 0:46
02 - Add Tool - 0:29
03 - Add Learning Modules - 1:23
04 - Add Content - Externally Created Files - 1:53
05 - Add Content - Content Links - 0:33
06 - Add Content - HTML Pages - 0:47
07 - Content Page Headings - 0:55
08 - Editing the Titles of the Links - 0:29

Web Links
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 1:00
02 - Add Categories - 0:36
03 - Add Links - 1:42
04 - Linking to the Library Catalogue - 3:08
05 - Adding Links to Folders and the Home Page - 0:55
06 - Managing Links - 2:13
07 - Alternative to Web Links: RSS Feeds - 3:16
08 - Sharing Lists of Feeds with Students - 2:19

Media Library
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:51
02 - Creating and Linking to Glossary Entries - 1:36
03 - Creating Collections of Images, Audio and Video - 1:06

SCORM
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:39
02 - Importing the Content- 1:12

Organisational Tools
Calendar
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:42
02 - Navigation of the Calendar - 1:02
03 - Adding Entries - 1:20
04 - Settings - Part 1 - 1:26
05 - Settings - Part 2 - 1:11

Search
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:33
02 - Searching - 1:18

Syllabus
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:45
02 - Adding Sections to the Syllabus - 1:41

Student Learning Activities Tools

Assignments
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 1:15
02 - Add Assignments - 3:33
03 - View as a Student - 1:20
04 - Manage Assignment Dropbox - 1:31

Assessments
01 - Introduction - 0:38
02 - Adding the Tool - 1:20
03 - Creating an Assessment - 1:26
04 - Changing Assessment Settings - 2:27
05 - Creating a Question - 2:20
06 - Previewing Questions - 0:50
07 - Managing Questions - 0:57
08 - Adding Questions to Assessments - 0:35
09 - Exporting and Importing Assessments - 1:03
10 - Revealing Assessments to Students - 1:53
11 - Assessment Manager - 3:57

Goals
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:56
02 - Creating Categories and Goals - 1:16
03 - Linking Goals to Content - 1:04

Student's Own Tools

My Grades
01 - Introduction - 1:37

My Progress
01 - Introduction - 1:16

Notes
01 - Introduction- 1:02

The Blackboard Student Tools: My Grades, My Progress and Notes (4 minutes)

2008-04-29T16:25:00.005+01:00

Here is a beginners guide to using the My Grades, My Progress and Notes tools in your Blackboard CE 6 section. Again, these are initial versions and feedback/corrections are welcome.

My Grades - 1:37
My Progress - 1:16
Notes - 1:02

More Blackboard Tools: Assignments, Goals, Media Library and SCORM (17 minutes)

2008-04-29T15:07:00.005+01:00

Here is a beginners guide to using the Assignments, Goals, Media Library and SCORM tools in your Blackboard CE 6 section. Again, these are initial versions and feedback/corrections are welcome.

Assignments
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 1:15
02 - Add Assignments - 3:33
03 - View as a Student - 1:20
04 - Manage Assignment Dropbox - 1:31

Goals
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:56
02 - Creating Categories and Goals - 1:16
03 - Linking Goals to Content - 1:04

Media Library
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:51
02 - Creating and Linking to Glossary Entries - 1:36
03 - Creating Collections of Images, Audio and Video - 1:06

SCORM
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:39
02 - Importing the Content- 1:12

More Blackboard Tools: Chat, Discussion, Mail and Who's Online (20 minutes)

2008-04-25T15:13:00.009+01:00

Here is a beginners guide to using the Chat, Discussion, Mail and Who's Online communications tools in your Blackboard CE 6 section. Again, these are initial versions and feedback/corrections are welcome.

Chat
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:41
02 - Chat Rooms - 0:38
03 - Checking Java - 0:57
04 - Using a Chat Room - 4:08

Discussion
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 1:01
02 - Setting up Discussion Boards - 2:41
03 - Things to Consider - 1:54

Mail
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 1:08
02 - Settings - 1:12
03 - Sending and Managing Messages - 2:40

Who's Online
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:39
02 - Using in Your Section - 1:12
03 - Using Via the myBlackboard Page - 0:33
04 - Setting Your Availability to Chat - 0:44

More Blackboard Tools: Profile, Search, Syllabus and Announcements (9 minutes)

2008-04-24T12:37:00.005+01:00

If you are wanting a quick introduction to using the Profile, Search, Syllabus or Announcements tools in Blackboard CE 6, these might help you get started. Again, these are initial versions and feedback/corrections are welcome.

Profile
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:50
02 - Editing and Viewing Profiles - 1:45

Search
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:33
02 - Searching - 1:18

Syllabus
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:45
02 - Adding Sections to the Syllabus - 1:41

Announcements
01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:46
02 - Navigation of the Calendar - 1:33

The Calendar Tool in Blackboard (6 minutes)

2008-04-22T15:25:00.008+01:00

The Calender tool in Blackboard (CE 6) is a very simple way of sharing times of events with students, and keeping track of appointments.

If you have your own calendar/diary you probably won't want to use it as it will be another place for you to look for appointments, but it's there if you want to use it.

Again, these screencasts are initial versions, so any feedback will be appreciated.

01 - Introduction and Adding the Tool - 0:42
02 - Navigation of the Calendar - 1:02
03 - Adding Entries - 1:20
04 - Settings - Part 1 - 1:26
05 - Settings - Part 2 - 1:11