Comparing Digital Voice Recorders

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:

1. 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.
2. Allows easy export of files from the voice recorder to the PC.
3. Records audio at a suitable quality.
4. 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]


This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

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

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)

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Choosing Images

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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