Thoughts on Gamification and Higher Education

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

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

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

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:

1. Encourage people to visualise their own PLE in some way to identify what is involved and enable developments.
2. 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).
3. 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

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?

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

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

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

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?

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

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”

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"

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

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]


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The PGCE Survival Guide

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!

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

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

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

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]


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

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.