Data Liberation and Online Learning

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

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

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

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

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:

1. 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.
2. A way of connecting students to each other and the institution - See the iPhone project at ACU and the project in Houston for examples.
3. 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?

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

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?

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.