Kinda Learning Stuff

How not to use social media for customer service...

2011-12-23T08:38:00.001Z

I saw this series of tweets by chance this morning...

Now, as I did... I'm sure you can see that a quick response was needed. It would have been the right thing to do. It would have been the humane thing to do. You only have to read the tweets to see how urgent things were... to find out more... following a link or two would have given you a deeper glimpse of the story behind it. A wife with her husband (and father of her two small children) dying in hospital just before Christmas.

You know what the response was from Vodafone? Silence. When pushed by another person... what was their response?

This:

'We answer our tweets in a chronological order'

And it took them 6 hours to make that response. The same generic response they gave to someone else in their very next tweet. They still haven't responded to @rachelacj as of 8 hours after her original tweets. An opportunity to do the right thing and offer true customer service at a time where it would have made a big difference? Missed completely.

The lessons from this:

1. Be a human being if you're providing a human service on Twitter

2. Prioritise using whatever method you want... but be flexible when appropriate

3. Remember the world is watching

4. Make a difference where it matters.

Sad, sad bit of customer service on the day before Christmas Eve.

Thoughts are with rachelacj. For some reason, though I brushed up against these tweets by chance this morning they've lodged themselves in my head.

Reflecting on JISC Innovating e-Learning 2011

2011-11-30T09:40:00.001Z

Thought it was about time to write up some general notes from the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2011 online conference.

These are my personal summary points for me to reflect on for the future... so here goes...

1. Online conferencing can be a really satisfying experience in terms of the way you can engage with the speakers' presentations with others. The flow of text chat is excellent and you can dip in and dip out as you fancy, influenced by the direction of the presentation leading to lots of interesting ideas and possibly less turgid questions at the end? That last bit is my own theory, but I think that at traditional conferences you so often see the same old people asking questions of the same type that it's refreshing to see a range of questions being picked up from multiple sources.

2. I attend these things for my staff development but also to see what others across the sector are thinking. Sometimes I feel trapped in a time-warp. The same old conversations are going on. The same ideas are being dredged up. The same tale of 'pilot does well... but how did it translate into a tangible change in practice?' remains without answer. How can we escape the hamster wheel of discussion and rhetoric? Small scale change isn't enough any more. Just because you are doing interesting things in your classroom or nicely contained project doesn't mean that we can't and shouldn't be striving to go bigger and more inclusive where innovation is concerned.

3. eLearning bingo is alive and well. Edupunk, anarchogogy and 'changing student expectations' would all have been good to have on your bingo card this time around. There was some debate about the need to change the use of jargon to gain real ground in understanding, particularly where open practice is concerned - however, this was another of those deja vu moments where I wonder what can actively be done to make this change - when all the while we invent and proudly wear our new jargon like this season's latest fashions at each of these events.

4. Education and learning are still being used in an interchangeable fashion. They are *not* the same thing. The sooner we realise this, the better. The ludicrous idea that in some way a PhD is evidence of 'lifelong learning' is as meaningless as the suggestion that a great educational experience for a primary school aged child would set them up for the journey of a lifelong learner is nonsense. Both are about the educational system. Moments where that works well - then yes, perhaps you can say that true, deep learning exists. But devoid of any educational system at all... people have always been learning for life. It's in our nature. It's what makes us human. It's how we cope with a changing, complex environment. It's how we adapt to our various life stages. The arrogance that education is the tool which facilitates lifelong learning is laughable. They need decoupling in order for us to get our heads around what makes for good learning experiences rather than what makes for pretty educational systems. The talk of how people acquired their digital literacy skills was a case in point - most participants (71% of attendees polled during the Digital Literacy panel session) hadn't attended a course or studied it, but had learned about it and gained their knowledge through experience. Yet, there we were discussing how to educate others in the ways of digital literacy. An odd situation.

5. Open is on the agenda. Open practice. Collaboration. Sharing. Learning from and with each other. There was a clear direction away from closed, inward-looking practice to a more shared, open outlook. What that actually means, however, wasn't clear. Was it the small-scale culture of sharing which already exists in departments? Is it the large scaled massive open online courses (MOOCs) which were flagged as gaining ground linguistically? And what is it that we're sharing exactly? I'm not clear that we're at the stage where we're doing much more than batting around buzzwords - though 'open by default, closed by exception', would tend to be the way I would describe my working practices. I also wondered how the culture of open and collaboration will sit with an increasingly financially strapped, competitive higher education sector?

6. Tweetable presentations make you sit up and take notice. Increasingly I think that people's presentation styles will have to change to accommodate the fact that you may no longer be talking to the audience (virtual or physical) in front of you in the room. If you can give people some strong concise statements, some facts, some structure to hang a comment on - then these are likely to go out beyond the room. If you simply describe a project or a process which you've gone through, this tends to be passively received and I noticed that the number of #jiscel11 tweets fell considerably during presentations of this type. Whether or not that's a good or bad thing, I'm not sure. But if you want to work in an open manner, then working out how to open up the various elements of your practice will be the thing that makes a difference both personally and professionally.

7. I really liked the idea of having a 'thinking space' as a kind of reverse plenary on the morning of each new conference day. The thinking space summarised the main themes of the previous day's presentations in a visual form - they had an illustrator put together some great visualisations which weren't necessarily without controversy (the visual representation of education and employment being islands separated by water, but connected by a bridge was a little disturbing yet representative of the disconnect between the artificial nature of education and the workplace possibly?), but which certainly put you in a good frame of mind for reflecting and connecting ideas. Really liked the idea and would like to think of ways to carry that forward.

8. If you're attending an online conference you still need to demark your time so that you can participate properly - whether that's closing a door, finding a separate space to sit etc you have to work extra hard to say 'I'm busy', some how! People don't seem to readily accept that if you're physically present in work that you can virtually need to be present elsewhere. You have to take a fairly disciplined approach to your own attendance to maximise the benefit of an online conference. If that means working from home to properly take part, then it's worth doing this. In the week of 'pre-conference activities' I was so tied up with meetings / ad hoc discussions / other work that I didn't get to participate at all, it was only when I physically removed myself from the office that I could really engage with it.

Think those are my main points - plenty of links shared too and I'll try to pull those together into a separate blog posting.

Definitely worth attending. Really enjoyed it. Didn't miss the rubbish catering or stands flogging ed tech products I'm not interested in. And I've got enough stress balls and free pens to last me... so virtual worked well!

JISC Innovating e-Learning 2011 - Bill Rammell

2011-11-24T06:56:00.001Z

Notes from 'Tensions in collaboration in a changing landscape'. Really didn’t enjoy this presentation. It smacked of the sort of talk you hear VCs give up and down the country. There were nods to ‘student expectations’, the ‘changing educational landscape’, ‘cross sector collaboration’, but really nothing terribly concrete. It felt like lots of soundbites glued together in many ways. The presenter was Bill Rammell, currently Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Plymouth responsible for the 'student experience' (a mysterious phrase if ever there was one) and internationalisation.

Rammell started with an ice breaker, where he asked what was the key source of innovative ideas - students, colleagues, JISC publications or another university. Most people said ‘colleagues’ which doesn’t really come as a surprise since most practice is grounded in the shared day-to-day experience of lecturers. He then went on to talk about cross-sector collaboration and highlighted it as one of the challenges for consideration, what to do about it and how could we facilitate collaboration. I do wonder, however, that if the reality is that shared experiences with colleagues, grounded in their own discipline and practice is where people are comfortable, what benefit would they / could they see from something much broader than that?

After that followed mention of the UK Government White Paper ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ and he said that the funding reform was the most radical change in a generation. The argument then followed - as is typical - that student expectations would increase with the increasing fees. I always wonder however, whether this reflects correlation rather than causation? It also saddens me that the only thing that seems to have shaken some out of complacency about the ‘student experience’ is the thought that students are now paying customers and *that’s* what drives their expectations, rather than the commitment to a high quality education.

The real turning point in my engagement with Rammell’s talk came when he shared the promo video for Plymouth University. It encouraged students to think of their university education as ‘less than the weekly cost of their cinema ticket’. I found this profoundly depressing. Reducing what is and should be a life changing, mind opening experience of university to being something which is ‘less than the cost of your weekly cinema ticket’ seems to trivialise it to the level of just another consumer good. And not even any consumer good, but a form of entertainment. Something which doesn’t even figure in most people’s lives due to cost, the fact that it is a luxury good and often an extremely lightweight, passive means of spending time.

At this point, the response to the talk seemed to change. People seemed uncomfortable with the terminology being used (judging by the reaction on Twitter) and points were made in response about fear of debt, students as customers / partners etc - and very little mention of their learning. Rammell also suggested that things like ‘comparethemarket.com’ might be an appropriate means for selection of HE provider for students - and the commodification of learning made for extremely uncomfortable listening. His examples of students sharing information about university was also lightweight and again, rather uncomfortable.

Rammell moved on to talking about the potential for shared service and highlighted the guidance available from JISC on this as being a cost-effective and powerful possibility - JANET being a prime example, though increasing cost for these shared services also needs consideration. He also talked about the importance of digital literacy and asked whether any institutions had a digital literacy strategy. Only 6% of people responded that they had - however, I’m not sure to what extent this even matter. Not everything that’s working is that way because of a strategy. Not every strategy even makes an impact.

His conclusions were that we face significant challenges in terms of in terms of funding, student numbers, distribution (types of students), increased expectations (from funding) - nothing unsurprising there, but little to do with collaboration. Rammell’s idea of good news seemed to be that with 40% of cuts to the teaching budget in Higher Education, this was better than in other parts of the public sector.

Thoroughly depressing stuff.

JISC Innovating e-Learning 2011 - David Puttnam's keynote

2011-11-22T17:07:00.001Z

Some notes (made up from my tweets during the talk) from the opening keynote of JISC Innovating e-Learning 2011. Held online, the lack of conference freebies was made up for by sheer convenience and ability to participate!

So... the keynote. Delivered by Lord David Puttnam and entitled 'Towards a Digital Pedagogy'. It was a good talk although, as someone observed, he didn’t actually touch on much pedagogy throughout his presentation. However... definitely worth listening to.

He opened with some extremely interesting contextual material - the notion that we have perceived creativity as a Western phenomenon, for example, means that we have taken our eye off the ball in terms of what’s going on in countries like China. There has also been a distinct lack of political wisdom in the West and this is problematic when we start to look at education. Not least because we are complacent in terms of what we can do compared to what others can do. Again, the point goes back to our perception of China as a producer of cheap products, but the reality is that their impact on creativity (primarily discipline-based creativity and innovation as opposed to free-form originality) has been huge. Puttnam said that ‘the idea that China will never be creative is our own personal fantasy... we have been looking West when we should have been looking East’. In essence, as a country we have been complacent and our investment in the future of education - and the investment in ICT in education - has been falling in the EU, despite it representing a dividend.

He then went on to talk about the level of skills within education. An interesting comparison he made was between medicine and education. He said that if you took a surgeon from 1911 and dropped them in the 21st Century they would be able to do nothing as their skills would have become obviated by all the advances which have occurred in the past century. If you took a teacher from 1911, with their ability to stand in front of a board and talk at pupil... and put them in the 21st Century, they’d just about survive. What does this say about education? What does it say about pedagogy? Puttnam concluded that we haven’t moved on in terms of educational development, despite all of the developments in aligned fields such as psychology etc. He went on to say that we’re losing the trust of learners because of this disconnect. In order to win back their trust we need to engage far more with their world and also engage with it as they do.

The point is that ‘you will never successfully influence anyone if they don’t believe you to be authentic’ (Puttnam, 2011) and I think this doesn’t just relate to school-based education, or even student - tutor education - it also relates to our role as professional developers. We are disconnected from the world in which our academic colleagues are working and our guidance is inauthentic and therefore dismissible.

In terms of how the modern learning space should look, Puttnam suggested that students should become the moderators of their own learning, helping each other to learn. Where this puts traditional forms of teaching such as the lecture or the ‘chalk and talk’ work which is so typically found in education, it wasn’t clear. It appeared that an entirely fresh look at education was needed. A useful analogy was that simply digitising existing teaching materials was like telling the man who used to walk in front of cars with a red flag, to jog. He then asked what an entirely digital pedagogy could achieve? An interesting question - and there isn’t an answer to this yet.

There were some interesting points made about the role or potential role for voice recognition in education. The process of ordering your thoughts to make them coherent for a third party is about oracy and about organisation - key skills for the future. Though the technology is in the early stages of mainstream use, with Google, Apple (Siri) and Amazon involved, change will inevitably quicken. It may not be an educational issue now, but Puttnam suggests strongly that it’s an area to keep an eye on.

The last section of his presentation concerned skills development - of teachers - and of the socio-economic value of education. No educational system, Puttnam said, was better than the quality of its teachers and it was essential to commit to teacher training and ongoing skills development (and allow this to be two-way). Further, there needs to be global acceptance of the importance of educating women. Plus, recognition of the impact quality education has on many other areas such as health - investment in education is a win-win situation.

This could be the ‘Gettysburg Address’ moment for education (Cathy Davidson, 2011 - http://www.cathydavidson.com/2011/11/why-this-is-a-gettysburg-address-moment-for-higher-education/) and it’s worth a read as a provocative and thought-provoking piece of writing which looks at these debates. The issues currently faced by students are those faced by society more widely, it’s just that they’re hitting students with particular force.

The TES community - with approx 2 million (off the top of my head that was the figure quoted!) users was cited as being an exciting development. Bringing together teachers who were discussing and developing themselves. This feeds into the creativity in learning which he touched on earlier. Another interesting suggestion he made was that the learning environment should become a ‘copyright-free zone’, where teachers could teach with whatever they laid their hands on. There would and should be a responsibility for them to teach respect for copyright, but that within the classroom, there should be far greater freedom. Issues surrounding copyright and fear of infringement are a real barrier to creativity and reuse - which is currently hampering the type of learning which students can experience.

Three themes were summarised as:
1. Use technology creatively as a means to an end not an end in itself (nothing new here and something I strongly support!)
2. Voice recognition and the importance of oracy plus its value to learners. It is a big issue... what role will it play?
3. This is the ‘Gettysburg Address moment’ for Higher Education - what lessons might we also learn from the student protests of the 1960s?

Moving on to talk about employability, Puttnam said that it was a crime that any young person should be unemployable when they leave school - but asked how this could be meshed with parents so that they understood its importance. He also said that change in education was difficult but used the example of the Open University to illustrate this. It had been with great resistance by all of the cabinet that the OU had been started - and as Wilson’s ‘pet project’ it was allowed to go ahead. When Heath came along, he wanted it closed down as he didn’t see the value - but Thatcher prevented that from happening. The Open University smashed through as a vision. As educators, Puttnam said, we have to take the same risks and get past the obstructions presented to us - even by the leaders of the day. You need guts to get things through (very very true!). Technophobia has no place in education.

A final word about the Russell Group and the divisiveness currently going on in Higher Education. Although it isn’t being explicitly said, Puttnam says that some universities will close as a result of the financial changes being imposed. Students as customers also not that helpful - they have a different set of criteria to students. Imagining that the Russell Group will be able to move the UK into the 21st Century was a mistake. Puttnam cuttingly said that they were a ‘cartel moving fowards on its own terms’ and ‘a disaster’. Educators needed to work together to deliver a compelling learning experience for every student. If we slice away at the edges, as the Russell Group are doing, this makes us failures as educators. A real challenge to those of us who work for Russell Group institutions!

Thought-provoking and challenging. A good keynote and great start to JISC Innovating e-Learning 2011.

Facebook and the little stuff

2011-11-14T11:08:00.001Z

What's that? The sound of Facebook listening to its users? Good grief!

So, rather than having some hideous automated random content generator sort the newsfeed, users can now change back to 'Recent Stories First'... which is a good thing. Not least because the immediacy of Facebook and being able to react to what other people are doing is part of the reason that it made sense. It was simple, it was easy to understand and sorting things by how recently they'd appeared made sense.

No, this isn't exactly earth shattering news, but it does show how important the little stuff can be when it comes to usability and people's interactions with technology. And how important it is to respond (in a timely fashion) when you're being told by your user group that something just isn't working for them.

Those are the lessons worth learning. Regardless of whether or not Facebook features in your life. Getting the little stuff right is always important.

The problem with...

2011-09-22T12:44:00.001+01:00

... going paperless... is that there's nothing like a good scribble on a piece of paper to get your thoughts together.

Actually, that's far too simplistic, but I have been trying my hardest for the past couple of months to go paperless. The 'going paperless' tools I've been using are as follows:
1. PC
2. MacBook Pro
3. iPad
4. iPhone
5. HTC Desire

Now, as I said above, I do love a good scribble on paper. And I'm also one of those people who write 'in hieroglyphics' (as other people tend to describe it!). In other words, I can do shorthand. As a result, the gap between an idea or a comment entering my ears and onto paper is very very small. I'm also a bit of a soft systems person too. Present me with a complex problem and within minutes you'll be laughing at my stick people (who always have bobbly feet), lines, arrows, thought bubbles as I get to grips with trying to understand what I see in front of me. I can spray diagram my way out of most situations quicker than you can say 'the exit's over there you can stop doing a spray diagram now...'

Going without paper was tough.

Very tough.

The first few weeks of not using pens and paper I physically had to stop myself from taking a notepad around with me. Instead, I diligently noted everything down in Evernote which, after a lapse of a couple of years where I didn't use it, I've been enjoying rediscovering its loveliness. From pictures to audio to text and more, it sat happily on my PC, MacBook, iPad, iPhone etc... waiting for notes to head its way. And it's been great. However, the funny thing is that note taking on an iPad, for example, requires a different level of concentration to just taking shorthand notes. With shorthand I don't have to think about how I'm recording what's being said. It's the difference between listening to words being spoken and hearing the letters read out of a word you have to piece back together. You just listen. With the iPad I found that part of my brain became disengaged as I struggled to touch type with no physical keyboard.

Eventually, this worked okay - my spelling became atrocious, I hated the shift key and its location next to the letter 'a' and auto-correct produced plenty of on-screen comedy for me to sort out later. But it worked. But I still wasn't listening in the way I'd listened before.

I could spray diagram, but instead of drawing, scribbling, adjusting and annotating as before, I had to glue spray diagrams together. The bubbles wouldn't behave themselves, moving about the screen with a steely determination to thwart my order. Eventually, they would look pretty and presentable - but you know what? I could have done that before. Sketching things out roughly using my pen and pad, and then putting the next draft into whichever mind mapping tool did most of the things I wanted. The software inhibited my thinking by conforming it to the order *it* imagined I was after. What was quick and dynamic became laboured and laborious.

What else went paperless? Well, my 'to do' lists also went electronic. My habit of sitting down first thing and creating the day's to do list in my notepad disappeared and instead, I added tasks as I went to my Google Tasks. Actually, this has been a goodie in lots of ways. I can link things to my Google Calendar... can create tasks from emails within Gmail. Yup. It's worked nicely. Especially since Google Apps landed at both of the institutions where I work. But there's something about physically creating a list and physically crossing things out which a little click doesn't capture. Isn't that sad? The 'all ticked off' satisfying flourish of a pen across the list as another item disappeared. Sanitised *clicks* as my 'to do's' became 'to done' wasn't quite the same.

I did, on the other hand, love Dropbox even more than before as my notepad... sorry... iPad... moved from being simply the here and now (and a few scribbles before), to being all of that and my entire filing system and document store as well. Plus, syncing between multiple devices was easy. And the joy of not having to lug a stack load of meeting papers across the campus was something to treasure!

So... where am I now with paperless? I have to admit (and given that the image above was me diagramming a problem just yesterday!), that I'm in 'compromise land'.

Going paperless is perfectly possible. Going paperless is great.

Going 'almost paperless'.. well... that works much better for me. That said, shorthand seems to be a dying art and diagramming will become much easier as software becomes increasingly fluid and user-centred. I can see a (nearly) paperless future. Even for me. My petty issues, such as they were, will be non-issues in the future.

Yet... there's nothing like a good scribble.

On bullet points...

2011-09-18T09:34:00.005+01:00

Most people who know me will have heard me give them the 'I hate bullet points' monologue when triggered. Those who've worked on a presentation with me, may have had the experience of me un-bullet-pointing a presentation we'll be delivering together. Brutally. Not in a mean way - but it would take a *lot* to persuade me that a presentation should have bullet points in it at all. And if they are there, they should be minimal and contain only the key points expressed succinctly enough that they could be written on the back of stamp.

What's wrong with bullet points, I hear you cry (well, possibly you're not bothered either... but if you are, here's the problem with them) - they make you read out what's on the slide. That sounds a weak argument, doesn't it? But the moment you start reading from the slide, you should sit yourself down, distribute the handouts and invite your audience to peruse those instead. It's a presentation, not a book group.

I've seen people turn their back to the audience and read directly *to* the bullet points in front of them. I've attended presentations where the entirety has been someone reading the thing out... bullet point by boring bullet point. Or, one of the worst I attended where someone managed to cram 28 separate bullet points on the same slide... and helpfully said 'I doubt you can read these' as they then read every single one out. Not good.

The other thing that bullet points do is that they restrict your flow. Instead of the presentation flowing from start to finish, it becomes a race with hurdles which you must jump to progress to the next slide. Miss out a bullet point and people wonder what happened. Even if you don't specifically mention the bullet point, you feel obliged to say 'I'm skipping that one' or a variation on the same. But what if as you're presenting you realise that your audience needs more or less of what you're saying? The bullet point hurdles sit, obstinately on screen... refusing to budge... and force you to clamber over each and every one. They don't let the presentation breathe or respond.

So, my manifesto for presentations...

1. Remember you are presenting - the audience is there to hear and see you.
2. Your slides are in the background. They are not the presenter. You are.
3. Think of slides as visual punctuation. They accent points. They highlight specific elements. However, like all punctuation, they are not there to provide the substance, they are there for structure.
4. If you find yourself reading out your slides, you've got it wrong. Watch out for these moments and make a mental note to yourself to sort it out. If your audience has to wade through reading them, then they aren't listening to you.
5. If you're going to use images, really use them. Don't be too literal. Don't distract. Don't go for cheap laughs (unless that's what you're after!). Think about what you want the audience to feel. Think about how visuals might help you emphasise your point. Think about where they're placed. And when. And what size.
6. Less is more.
7. This doesn't necessarily mean less slides though. Two or three words per slide to make specific points can be flipped through very quickly as you speak - which might well mean more slides than normal. This is okay - think of it as a process of animation. Lots of frames to make one moment of animation. If I'm displaying data, I may have several slides to build up the chart so that each element I want to focus on has space.
8. If you're starting to prepare a presentation don't start in PowerPoint. Get the framework planned first before you go near something that might force you into thinking in bullet points.
9. If you really want bullet points, put them in the notes section of your presentation. They're for *your* benefit. And if other people want to have access to them, share the presentation with them afterwards.
10. You don't need bullet points if you know what you're talking about. A good presentation takes time. And practice. And thought. But all the thought that went into it, means you don't need all those bullet points. They're a safety net which prevents you from really talking with your audience.

Oh, and the irony of me presenting the above as a numbered bulleted list doesn't escape me. But this is okay - you're reading this. You're *meant* to be reading it. If I were presenting it, you'd probably get about 10 slides with images and me making each of the points in a range of ways!

Getting going with CMALT

2011-09-16T12:40:00.000+01:00

Since I've just written up some advice about starting CMALT for another audience... I thought I might be lazy and turn it into a blog posting too. Here goes...

If you're trying to make a start on your CMALT portfolio then there are a few basic hurdles to jump first.

Hurdle 1. Making up your mind to do it!
I first looked at CMALT several years before I did anything about applying. Why, I don't know - but it sat in the background for a very long time and it was only once I actually made up my mind that I was going to do it... and gave myself a time frame to complete it by... that I made a start.

Hurdle 2. Deciding how you're going to present your portfolio.
What portfolio will you use? Now, while it really is a free choice for you (and if you have something you'd rather use, provided it can be accessed by the assessor, then whatever would be fine), if you want a quick start then the Google Sites template I created a while back should kick start things. There's a YouTube video on how to use it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI324MW3dgk and once you've done that, you can use Google Sites - either from your own Google account or from within Google Apps if that's available at your institution - to create the basic outline, complete with instructions on each of the the requirements.

Hurdle 3. Starting to write it once the framework is in place
I found that completing the basic stuff got me going... then I put a single sentence for each section which captured the essence of what I might cover just as a place marker and to get me thinking about what might be needed for my description / reflection. Even if I didn't end up writing about the thing I first thought I would, this really helped me move forwards with the process of getting it completed.

Hurdle 4. Gathering evidence
Now, some of this is made easier by the 'right' choice of description. Don't write about stuff from 5+ years ago because a) the relevance would be questionable unless included for a very specific reason (i.e. a qualification) and b) getting the evidence after that gap is very hard! Make smart choices with step 3, and step 4 is easier.

Hurdle 5. Getting feedback.
I didn't have anyone else at my previous university who'd done CMALT so had no opportunity for feedback at all* - but I really would have appreciated it. To get around that, I gave some friends from other institutions the address of my portfolio and asked (begged!) them to take a look for me. This gave me confidence and helped me make the tweaks before I submitted it. Alternatively, sharing the address of your portfolio with colleagues internally would also be helpful, as would 'buddying up' with someone to work on it together. The more visible your portfolio is, the more obliged you feel to get something done! If it can be hidden and forgotten... it is hidden and forgotten!

Hope those give you a bit of a help with getting started!Oh, and if you want to see an example of a complete CMALT portfolio, then mine is online at http://sites.google.com/site/sarahhorriganportfolio/. It's not the best, it's not the worst - but it did pass, so for what it's worth... it's open and shared!

* There is a CrowdVine CMALT site which you can access once you register for CMALT, but since a lot of people get started before they're registered, feedback can still be tricky!

ALT-C 2011 - Wordled...

2011-09-08T17:27:00.002+01:00

Being a curious soul, I decided to Wordle the tweets I'd done during ALT-C 2011 to see what key themes or words emerged. Interestingly, tech balanced evenly with learning... and noticing the prominence of my 'elearningbingo' tag* in there - it's clear that there's still a fair bit of jargon kicking around. What is good though is that there isn't tons of mention of particular tools - things that stand out are education, change, need, listening, interesting, teaching, students, good, talk - and these are far more important than the technical specifics.

Possibly that's what my ear is listening out for! But, a lot of going to these things is filtering to get to the heart of what will get you thinking and moving forwards. Making connections between ideas and having that moment of pause which is so important.

Anyway, off for a mull (and a sleep!). These things sure are tiring!

* I play a game with myself when I go to events - listen out for the jargon / buzzword / phrase of the moment and play bingo with it. The main culprit at this conference was 'doing more with less' - which is a nonsense statement. Less what? Enthusiasm? Interest? Joy? Engagement? Of course not. Tarting up 'budgets have been cut and you have to deal with it' is fine... but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that we're still in this to improve and expand the learning opportunities of others (and ourselves). Rant... out. :o)

So... about ALT-C 2011...

2011-09-08T16:21:00.000+01:00

Not long now until ALT-C is done for another year. This year has involve schlepping up to the University of Leeds... a city which has fully delivered (in terms of the weather!) on the promise of it being grim up North. Three days of rain and gales but as ever some thought provoking stuff to take away... some slightly depressing stuff to take away... and some stuff which fell neatly into the 'well, that was odd category'. But all good in many ways.
So... let's tootle through the good, the bad and the weird.

Good
Hearing about the one laptop per child (OLPC) project in Uruguay from Miguel Brechner was a little dose of inspiration to start the conference. It was clear from the presentation that the impact of technology when it breaks free and into the community is powerful and exciting. It was also clear that the dogmatic insistence on 'traditional teaching and practice' which appears to be the current governmental message in this country would never have helped achieve the 100% laptops for state school children in Uruguay... or given them the freedom to try and take risks... and to invest where needed. I was taken aback when someone from the audience asked Miguel, 'what can we in the UK do to help with the project?' and the thought that they need to learn from us when it is they who are making such a dramatic change to communities and lives is odd to say the least. I get where the spirit of the question was coming from... but the opportunity to learn and grow together across boundaries didn't seem to be the message there.

Other good stuff? As ever... meeting up with old faces, new faces, even faces dressed like a cowgirl (waves at AmberThomas) and share practice, ideas and experiences. Things I've learned about learning technologists? They like wearing checked shirts. They drink *lots* of coffee. They're either implementing new VLEs or in the process of doing so*. They're regularly the subject of structural change wherever they're based. Okay, so I knew most of this stuff beforehand... but the checked shirts thing is good to have confirmed. :o)

Bad
Some really dreadful presentations. Again. I say this every year but... stop with all the bloomin' bullet points. Please!!! If I come to hear you talk... I come to hear *you* talk. Not read your boring, Arial font, bulletpointy, over-full slides whilst trying to keep up with what you're saying. I really wanted to go to some of the petcha kucha sessions with their visual, short, snappy brief - but couldn't due to clashing commitments but it's definitely a format I'm keen to try in the future.

Other bad stuff? Some, and I'm sorry to say it, not great workshops. Not all weren't great, but too many had no plenary... no sense of purpose... and weren't always related to their theme.

Also not good - sponsor sessions disguised as invited speaker sessions. I was seriously irritated by the Blackboard Collaborate session which showed glossy American promo vids and promoted the main benefits of online working with two thirds about cost savings / income generation. Talk to me about the pedagogy. Talk to me about the process. Talk to me about real things Don't flog me your system unless I want to hear about it.

Odd stuff
Several rooms which bordered on the sports hall school of surreal - now, this sounds petty but as someone with tinnitus I have a real problem with echoey venues and this echoed with the best of them. Especially on the morning where a high pitched squeal accompanied the space. Also, rooms which didn't fit the number of participants. There has to be a better room allocation system even though I'm aware that this is a lesson in complexity and then some! Also, vegetarian catering. One option for veggies which had 'had an accident' so we ended up with lettuce and coleslaw! Nice work people!

Ermm... That's it for now. Will write up more specific stuff later. Another talk beckons...

PS It's always a gargantuan effort to get these events off the ground and that's always appreciated and firmly on the 'good' list!

* this one should be on the bad list. When implementing a new technology prevents you from having the time to look at any other learning and teaching practice / innovation / technology then something's amiss. VLEs are a huge time sink for learning technologists and I hope that this starts to change in the next few years...

Help me develop my online course...

2011-09-05T15:39:00.001+01:00

I was chatting to someone earlier today about the sorts of things involved in producing an online course and in sharing our experience it seems there are 10 common areas which crop up when you're involved in projects like this.

Project management skills aren't necessarily the ones possessed in academia! You'll need these to get it from conception to completion.
The gap between design, reality and delivery can be huge - someone needs to take on the job of helping to close this! It's probably going to be you.
Going from face-to-face teaching to online teaching can be scary - it's important to cut people some slack and find multiple ways to support them in developing skills and confidence
Don't wait until the course goes live for teaching staff to acquire online teaching skills - developing an online course isn't just about content.
Be clear about the objective and get it communicated clearly too - establish what it is you're after early on as being pulled off course by new additions / other agendas / misplaced priorities can be fatal.
The moment someone says 'we'll just put the PowerPoints online' should set off alarm bells in your head. Establish your definition of what counts as online learning early and allow these conversations to air sooner rather than later.
Give yourself enough time - it isn't quick, it isn't easy, it isn't cheap. Counter the myths and be realistic - or you'll spend the month before the course is due to be delivered going grey.
Inactive content is dull. If people need help with activity design, alignment and active learning... support them to get there because it'll be worth it.
Aim big if you want, but start small - testing a small sample of content on a willing group of students and taking on board their feedback is much better than hiding away and developing the whole lot... then discovering it's rubbish.
Establish a visual style guide at the outset - templates, models, examples etc help those new to online course creation - and enables you to produce a consistent look and feel to the materials. For fully online courses, the online content *is* the University!

So... how to do it? Well... there's lots of stuff out there, but some places to kick-start your thinking might include:

Professional Development Framework for e-Learning to help give you an idea of some of the skills needed as well as checklists etc for the production of online learning content
Some nice design ideas from Articulate especially if you're after some 'fancy bits' to tart up a text-heavy course
The ADDIE design approach is also useful in establishing key tasks in producing an online course and this is explained in a simple-to-get manner by Intulogy.
The Design Studio from JISC is jam-packed full of resources and ideas and the curriculum lifecycle is especially helpful when you're starting out.
JISC Infokit on Project Management is a good place to help you with the Project Management side of things and the checklists are dandy!
Open University Learning Design Initiative is one to watch as the resources and links to Cloudworks are great for activity design

Oh, and the other thing to realise when someone asks you to 'help me develop my online course' is that as much as this seems to *just* be about something academic and / or technological... it's about people and communication. Don't fall into the trap of thinking it isn't!

All that caught my eye... 08/24/2011

2011-08-24T12:30:00.001+01:00

TheInterviewr: A Really Easy, Fast, Free Way to Record Telephone Interviews

TheInterviewr is a new mashup that makes it super, super simple to record telephone interviews online using your existing telephone. It is a dream come true and for now at least - it's free.

The system uses APIs from Twilio and Box.net to let users schedule interviews with contacts, enter notes for the interviews and upload associated files to a central place. Then, when it comes time to do the interview, both parties are sent an SMS to remind them it's about to begin. The person performing the interview clicks a button on TheInterviewr website and both peoples' phones are called automatically. Have a conversation, refer to your notes and documents, then click the same button to end the call. A recording will be available to listen back to immediately. It's like magic.

tags: education eLearning onlinelearning free telephone record interviews research tool edtech online
How Online Education Is Changing the Way We Learn [INFOGRAPHIC]

Over the past decade or so, the Internet has become a huge source of information and education, especially for those who might be short on time, money or other resources.

And it’s not just crowdsourced data collections like Wikipedia or single-topic blogs that encourage individual learning; huge corporations and nonprofits are making online education and virtual classrooms a very formal affair these days.

From the first online classes (which were conducted by the University of Phoenix in 1989) to the present day, when online education is a $34 billion industry, more and more students are finding new life and career education opportunities online.

tags: education onlinelearning technology infographic eLearning visualization infographics Mashable online edtech
What Makes Educational Technology Successful in the Developing World?

What makes some technology so compelling and transformational that it thrives in a school setting and others languish? We've all heard stories of computers gathering dust in storage rooms while students and teachers everywhere have taken to photocopiers, calculators and, of course, cell phones.

One of my most surprising moments upon entering a very basic primary school in rural Ayenhyah, Ghana - a room with no electricity or running water - was being told that the school had a no cell-phone policy. Students have such a hunger for communication that they get their hands on a mobile phone by any means necessary. They keep them charged using the full power of their creativity, hooking them up to the small solar cell powering the community's medical clinic or latching them onto a motorcycle battery. Kids from Botswana to the U.S. to Zambia love to text.

tags: educational technology technology developing world edtech elearning online education
What Devices Will You Carry in 10 Years Time?

Futurist and author Kevin Kelly posits that in 10 years time, each of us will carry 2 computing devices on us: "one general purpose combination device, and one specialized device (per your major interests and style)." He also predicts that we will wear on average 10 computing things: "We'll have devices built into belts, wristbands, necklaces, clothes, or more immediately into glasses or worn on our ears, etc."

tags: elearning learning technology online devices predictions

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

e-Learning Links 08/22/2011

2011-08-22T12:30:00.001+01:00

How Are People Using Twitter? [INFOGRAPHIC]

tags: elearning twitter microblogging use users online education learning statistics INFOGRAPHIC
Technology, Feedback, Action!

The impact of learning technology on students' engagement with their feedback

tags: feedback students learning online elearning efeedback education assessment technology

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

To my 17 year old self...

2011-08-19T08:56:00.000+01:00

So, yesterday was A-level results day. Though my own results are years ago, working in a university you can't escape the significance of the day for so many students who are itching to find out what their future holds when their exam results come through. I was thinking to myself what would I want to say to my 17 year old self 19 years after I got the results which meant I hadn't done well enough to get to my first choice university?

First, I'd want to say - let's be honest, you knew that you would get those results - the reason you feel bad is because you feel sad that others are disappointed in you. I know you feel scared about the change and the future that lies ahead. The truth is though, none of this will matter in the long run. You'll end up in a place in life that's just as fine as the 'perfect results' version of your life would have been. The bit you don't realise, is that the university you're going to go to now won't be the end of the story. The degree you're about to take won't make you happy. And, to be honest, you'll loathe just about every bit of your studies. But it's okay. Again, it'll just be one of those things which you'll emerge from at the other end and realise that that didn't really matter either.

Then I'd want to tell me that those results which seem so important. The results that your Head of Sixth Form has asked you if they're enough and you've said 'no', and the conversation has ended there and then. Those results won't even get a mention on your CV in the adult version of your life. You'll vaguely refer to '3 A-level passes' and wince when people mention A-level Maths. But, it still won't really matter.

The thing which you'll realise is that life is a jigsaw puzzle made up of thousands and thousands of pieces with an ever changing picture. And that's exciting. And that's what makes life interesting. And that's why, despite the fact that you think that you'll be done with education when you finish that degree you'll go on to take (and hate). You'll discover that you've only just started learning. And when you've grown up a bit, you'll do another degree. And light a fire of love of learning inside you that you just can't put out. And do another degree. And another. And want to take that passion for learning with you wherever you go.

And you'll know that no matter what, you have it inside you to survive and find a way to find the interesting things in life.

The thing I'd tell my 17 year old me is that this is a blip. A speck. A moment.

And then I'd give myself a jolly big hug.

PS And by the way, 17 year old version of me...
PPS ... I wouldn't change a thing.

[originally posted to my photo journal on 18th August 2011]

Sharing images on Twitter

2011-08-09T06:26:00.001+01:00

If you've logged on to Twitter today or in the next few weeks, you'll probably see this 'Share an image on Twitter'.

They say:

"Uploading and sharing images on Twitter.com is easy! Below you’ll find a brief how-to and some answers to common questions about uploading images on Twitter - right from your Tweet box!"

... and the instructions they provide are nice an' straightforward! No mention of copyright or licensing though... which is a bit an omission. Images up to 3MB, hosted by Photobucket, galleries to come... that all sounds good, even so.

... video next, maybe?

Can I tell you a secret?

2011-08-07T14:31:00.001+01:00

Source: Sarah Horrigan, 2011

I don't get Google+

Well, I get it in that I know approximately how to use it as well as some quick tips to help life on Google+ along. But, shall I tell you what I really don't get about it so far? It's like social networking with your mum in charge.

Firstly, the whole identity crisis thing at the moment. No pseudonyms. What? Why? There is a long tradition of writing being done using a pseudonym going back hundreds of years. From famous authors to performers on stage or those needing / wanting to protect their identity - not using your 'real' name is perfectly acceptable. Only recently I had an experience which made me think again about my decision to use my own name for the various bits of material I share online. I've always tried not to name individuals (though I do mention my children occasionally) unless I have their consent or am writing about something they've publicly created. But you are still liable to things you've written being interpreted in a way you never intended - and that having professional consequences for you in the long term. The temptation to carry on writing but to use a pseudonym instead was strong. In the end, I opted for 'being me'. Despite the knowledge that the things I write could be perceived in a negative light should someone decide to do so, I know that I attempt to write in a personal, reflective and constructive style and I would be happy to discuss with anyone the views and viewpoints I share. 'Me' is still my preference.

But to decree that those who have chosen to use a pseudonym - and especially for those who've built up an online identity which is as 'real' as any other - cannot use a service such as Google+ is bizarre. It's as if someone has just switched on their computer to discover a world beyond the physical and is shocked that the communication paradigms by which they operate no longer need a 'this is my given name' standpoint to function. And function well. Your identity is about the sum of the parts. Your online identity even more so. Using a 'real' name no more guarantees anything about the user than anonymity shields it.

Source: Sarah Horrigan, 2011

So, identity with Google+ is a sticking point. Here's another. Circles. Like a conversational lasso they at once include those within and exclude those around them. Yet, social networks are powerful because of the connections they facilitate and the connections they encourage between people who have yet to 'meet'. I don't necessarily know who will read this blog post. Or share it. Or comment on it. And I don't much care. That's not to say I don't care about those three elements - just to say that the journey something can take you by sharing it online is all the more interesting for the uncontrolled nature of releasing something into a myriad of potential connections. When I tweet something, it can either disappear into a stream of other messages or will float and be noticed. There is no emotional consequence attached to it being 'ignored' because it isn't being ignored, it was just 'there'. Google+ on the other hand encourages you, like a child in show-and-tell, to go up to the front of the class and share your work with others. You select the circle. You present to the circle. The circle comments. Or the circle is quiet. Additionally, if your stream isn't flowing with shared items, then the silence is eerie.

If I were using Google+ in a slightly more formal setting, for example as part of a personalised learning environment with Google Apps during some kind of learning activity... well, that level of control could be very handy indeed. But I'm not. And it feels, just as with most formal spaces, somewhat artificial and abstracted from 'real' life.

Perhaps, as I was with Twitter, I'm not being fair. Not giving it enough time. But this isn't 2007 when I
blasted the concept of microblogging. And then spent the next few years repeatedly going 'okay, *now* I get it'. Especially when I realise that critical mass and numbers are everything. With 25 million plus users already, Google+ has 'success' scrawled all over it. Rapid growth. Mainstream adoption. A familiar concept. Integration of other services. The power of Google harnessed and bulging at the seams.

It's just not doing it for me.

Google+ stop trying to get me to tidy my room into pretty circular piles and behave 'nicely' with my nice little name tag on.

Both the real and online versions of me are kinda irritated right now.

PS Promise you won't tell anyone my little secret? 'kay?

Faced with...

2011-07-24T07:02:00.001+01:00

... fees of £9000 a year...

... I don't know if I would have had the guts to take on that level of debt
... I don't know that if I'd left the decision until I was more sure of myself, that I could have taken the hit on my earnings
... I don't know whether it would have paid off in the long run
... I don't know whether the pressure to 'get value' would have trumped the need to grow as a person
... I don't know whether I would have felt the freedom to continue exploring my learning after university
... I don't know whether I would have done a postgraduate qualification
... I don't know that it would have been worth it.

I just don't know.

I do know that fees of £5000 a year from the Open University would have put my employer off sponsoring me. Which would have closed the door to the tutoring I started the year after my first course with them (I already had a degree from another university). Which would have closed the door to progression in a career that really did suit me. Which would have meant that I wouldn't have been able to take the higher degrees I needed for the profession I'm in. Which would have meant I wouldn't be working in Higher Education now.

Debt. Value. Money. Fees.

Learning? Changing lives? Those factors are apparently, are now secondary to everything else. We talk about improving 'employability' - and I get that. Now. To an extent. But, I don't know that my 17 year old self would have understood it. I don't know that I understood terribly much at that age. When I graduated, aged 20, I don't think that I'd made that link either. I think I probably thought the degree itself was the thing which got me the job. It didn't. But I wonder if it would have been better had I carried with me the panic that this was a once-only 'investment in my future' and, on finding myself on a degree which I couldn't really cope with... well... what would I have done with that? I can't see that version as better. I also don't like the version which says 'explain better to 17 year olds what they're taking on and the responsibility of their choices will be more solidly based'. Because the 17 year old version of me is nothing like the 36 year old version. And to be tied to the choices I made then for good? Well... that is a scary proposition.

If life long learning is about flexibility and growth... how does shackling people with debt and the pressure of high-stakes choices encourage that?

Faced with fees of £9000 a year, I'd question the worth of Higher Education.

Google + blundering in the dark equals...

2011-07-12T11:57:00.002+01:00

... a few quick tips.

1. Circles seem to breed if you're not careful. Less is more. And less which get used in a purposeful way is even more than that!
2. Number your circles so that they sort in the order you want. By default, system created circles (i.e. Friends, Acquaintances, Following) sort above your numbered circles if you don't give them a number... so number those too!
3. The only formatting you can apply to text is bold, italic and strikethrough (thanks AJ Cann for that!) - to do that, just pop a couple of asterisks around the word you want emboldened... *bold* = bold ... for italic it's... _italic_ = italic and strikethrough is... -strikethrough- = ~~strikethrough~~
4. Control your email notifications by going to Account settings > Google+ then adjust the notifications to suit.
5. Post from Google+ to Facebook by going to their mobile site, copying your unique Upload via email address, go back to Google+ create a circle and call it something like 'Facebook update', then paste in the email address you just copied to the 'add a new person' field. Then, when you want to send something to Facebook, just share it with your Facebook update circle.
6. To quickly see all the people you've added to a circle, go to circles, right click and select 'View circle in tab'...

7. ... once they're in a tab, you can select the ones you want to remove or drag to another circle (or even block en masse)

8. Only the things you +1 externally live in your +1 tab on your profile
9. If you want to see how your profile looks to others, there's a little 'view profile as' link on your profile page where you can see what people can view from within Google+ and what everyone else sees .
10. Sparks are good! Too lazy to sift through the 101 RSS feeds you enthusiastically subscribed to? Just type in a search term and it'll pull up related content. If it looks like something you want to see in the longer term, then pin the interest and you'll see it on your main Google+ page.
11. Mute annoying posts by using the dropdown arrow next to the post and selecting mute (or block the individual if you really want to!)
12. If you've uploaded more than one profile picture, you can toggle between pictures on your profile page, just by clicking on your picture.
13. Don't forget to explore the privacy options - make sure you have your profile under control... reveal the information you want to reveal and no more! Share the posts you want with the people you want... and control whether or not they can comment / reshare. Make active choices with this stuff!

That's about it at the mo. It's obviously a system under development. It doesn't quite feel like a rival to Facebook to me. Or a Twitter replacement. Or a Skype replacement. It doesn't really feel like any one thing as yet. It feels like a shell for other things. But, unlike Google Wave which was chaotic and frenetic, it has an order which feels more able to be useful.

... though I still have the nagging feeling that I'm being sucked into the big Google Machine with every click...

Rigor ends in rigor mortis...

2011-06-18T09:28:00.003+01:00

I see that Michael Gove is now pushing for 'tougher exams' and an increase in rigor in education.

Always with the quick fix. Always with the achievement of a standard which can be measured. It doesn't matter that people come out of education with a dislike of learning. A lack of confidence in their own potential. Or their ability to grow and develop. No. What we need is 'more rigor'.

What's so bad about that? I mean. Shouldn't things be more rigorous? Isn't that better? Well... a good place to start is to look up what 'rigor' means in the dictionary...

Rigor: 1. harsh inflexibility in opinion, temper, or judgment
(Source: Merriam-Webster)

Oh, and if you're wondering, the alternatives for it aren't much better.

Is this really what we want for children's learning? Inflexibility in an age where to survive you need to be flexible? Or are we considering rigor as 'a condition that makes life difficult, challenging, or uncomfortable'? Still not looking massively attractive.

Now, I know by treating these kind of statements literally it could be argued that I wasn't being fair. That what he actually means is that we need to have 'better standards' for our qualifications. But what does *that* mean either? Qualifications don't equate to knowledge. They don't equate to a critical understanding. Fact retention or a test of memory in a 'rigorous' exam doesn't mean that you're more prepared to face a challenging, changing and complex world.

What I learned when I was at school was how to be invisible. This isn't strictly true... because it wasn't always like that. I was a curious child when I was little. Could spend hours reading or creating things. Loved finding out how things worked. But then secondary school happened. It was a vast sea of children and with its increased 'rigor' and reliance on tests, streaming and comparisons... I disappeared. I learned instead how to avoid the teacher's radar and survive. On paper I was one of the 'good' pupils. I got the 'good' GCSEs I needed. I got my A-Levels. I did a degree.

I didn't learn a damn thing that mattered.

How could I go through 16 years of education from 4 to 20 and, 15 years later, barely remember a thing from all those years? I have a degree in Economics - but I couldn't talk to you intelligently about Economics. On paper I can speak French and German. Laughable. I have an A-Level in Maths... but an allergy to trigonometry.

Only when I was in my mid-twenties did I realise that I could have a voice. That it was okay to be wrong. That the qualifications I'd been led to believe were all important and that I *had* to have weren't the door opener they were made out to be. That being 'good at school' wasn't the same as being good at learning. Only in my mid-twenties did I realise what I was interested in and had the intrinsic motivation to take myself to other more interesting places. I walked out of University aged 20 thinking 'I'm done with education'. Well, in many ways that's still right. The difference is that I have a further three degrees now... and I'm only just started with learning.

Rigor in education? On the list of important things about learning it is very, very low down the list. Apparently though, Gove would also like to see the influence of business as well as rigor...

Gove would welcome school heads taking a lesson from business: "We now have great headteachers who will become educational entrepreneurs. They will build a brand and create chains."

(Source: The Guardian, 18 June 2011)

Build a brand and create chains.

Build a brand. Create chains.

This almost leaves me speechless. Instead, I think that an author whose work I rather like can express some of my feelings better than me...

Learning. What is so wrong with learning? Messy, creative, exciting, enjoyable, fun, stimulating, puzzling... learning? You don't need a factory-like educational experience to learn. In fact, I wouldn't want an experience like that.

Yet here we are again. Governmental calls for rigor.

Real learning looks like it's about to enter a state of rigor mortis...

Universities are...

2011-06-16T19:12:00.000+01:00

Loved this quote in the article 'An unofficially brilliant way to celebrate Universities Week'

"universities are made up of people – strange, passionate and playful people who are humbly curious about the world – and that's what makes them so much fun."

... and that's why, no matter how insane they are to try to get your head round. No matter how difficult it might be to make change. No matter how complex and frustrating. Universities are exciting places to work.

And being around people who have the courage to be passionate about something is addictive.

Now... about how to spread that a little wider than academia...

You can't knock my ambition, right? :o)

RIP older browsers, Google ain't playing any more...

2011-06-03T21:24:00.000+01:00

BBC News - Google to abandon older browsers: "Google is phasing out support for older browsers from 1 August.

Those using IE7, Safari 3, Firefox 3.5 and their predecessors to view Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites will then lose some functions.

Eventually, it warned, these web services will stop working for those sticking with older browsers.

The move is part of a trend to stop the use of ageing browsers which can be insecure and not sophisticated enough to handle the latest web technologies."

Bye, bye browsers. When the biggest boy decides it's not going to play with you, you might as well go home...

Mind you, the figures at the end of the article - that 34% of Chinese users are on IE6 suggests that size of audience doesn't matter so much as the direction the dominant player has decided to head in.

Google takes over the world. Again.

The final pet bunny solution...

2011-05-22T21:02:00.003+01:00

Pet rabbits are cruelly neglected and mistreated in Britain, survey finds | World news | The Observer:

My favourite quote from this article about pet rabbits being neglected...

"Rabbit meat is lower in fat, cholesterol and calories than chicken, pork and beef"

... I feel a solution to the pet bunny crisis coming on...

PS My second favourite quote is this:

"bored and unhappy rabbits self-harmed and became aggressive and depressed"

... which a) makes me wish I was a cartoonist and b) wonder if bunnies masquerade as teenagers in an attempt to escape their carnivorous keepers...

Privacy in the age of Twitter

2011-05-22T07:15:00.000+01:00

So... the papers seem full of stuff about superinjunctions and Twitter and the current response on Twitter reminds me of the 'I am Spartacus' campaign in response to the throwaway tweet which landed one apparently would-be bomber (after the courts took it seriously) in big trouble. Privacy laws work where communicating on a big scale is barrier-filled and getting a message out takes effort and / or money. But, the world has changed. At least, the world of people with ready access to and ability to create information has changed.

It feels sometimes as if one world is challenging the other. The judiciary are trying to enforce a world which they cannot get back. Where you pass an injunction and it sticks. When the media was filled with professional employers and employees it was far easier to regulate. Tell the newspapers and the television not to do it, and they'll behave. The public were easy to keep in the dark because they weren't the content creators, they were passive recipients. But now - who really makes up the media? I can sit and publish without any effort. The costs to me are minimal. And if lots of others are prepared to join in and repeat the 'offense' then hiding in that relative anonymity seems to open the floodgates to challenging rulings which appear nonsensical.

Gossipping over the garden fence on a global scale. How would you regulate for that? How could you regulate for that? Should you?

Existing in a state of the unknown is one thing. But, once something is known, you can't un-know it. There is no returning to a state of 'before'. Television isn't made of three channels. I don't have to buy a newspaper to stay informed. Stop one source and another starts. It's not necessarily a good thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But either way you can't pretend that a fundamental change hasn't happened. Pandora's box has been well and truly opened. I wonder when the courts will realise and stop trying to close it? The more ludicrous the situation, the more people will mock.

When will our out-dated copyright and privacy laws be examined in light of now and not in the shadow of then?

e-learning isn't working...

2011-05-15T18:45:00.002+01:00

Okay. That's a bit controversial... right? And, to be honest, if I didn't believe in the power and potential of learning in new and non-traditional ways (see how I skirt around calling it 'e-learning'?) then I wouldn't be working in this area. But, I come across the same problems time and time again and it's making me wonder if the 'e' in 'e-learning' isn't causing a whole lot of problems for its potential.

Problem 1: 'e-learning is basically IT in education, so it should be part of the IT department'

This fundamentally negates the massively important 'learning' part of the word. It relegates thinking about changing practices and experiences to second place whilst the technology pushes its way to the front. Big problem when you want to talk about thematic ideas and approaches and instead find yourself bogged down with which version is that, which bug fix is that detail. It doesn't move things forward, at best, it maintains. It's the equivalent of lumping lecturers in the 'furniture department' since their work involves people sitting at desks and chairs. It's not to say that the technology isn't important... but it isn't *the* most important thing.

Problem 2: Most people who end up in e-learning didn't intend to end up there

Over the years I've come across so many people who have the appearance of having woken up and found themselves in a job and a career which they never really intended happening. And on waking up, they sleepwalk through the rest of their job, never taking hold of the fact that to make something of it they need to balance the technical flair which often landed them there with some real educational experiences. Teaching, training, studying... becoming a professional. It isn't enough to 'help someone' develop something. You have to *know* it inside and out. You have to understand the implications of the decisions you're influencing and have a theoretical and practical foundation for your ideas. You have to bridge the gap between technology and teaching - treading deftly between the two. Translating and consolidating and not being afraid to stop once in a while instead of always chasing the next shiny bright thing.

Problem 3: e-learning is seen as a quick, cheap fix to the problems faced by education

'I know! Let's put the course online and we can bring in lots more students!!!' is the current cry... 'We can just put the lecture notes online... simple!'... and does this actually work? Does it really make for effective education? Sadly... and very very predictably... no. It is the instructive 'pour the facts into their heads and they'll be educated' model of education. It isn't real learning. It isn't making the most of what you've got and lighting any fire of passion for learning. And yet, so often this is how e-learning is viewed. 'At least it's a step in the right direction' is the defence for this abysmal practice. How so? When I was at university first, the boredom of the lecture theatre existed... but at least you had someone talking to you. Put the lecture notes online and you remove the last element of interest from it and it becomes meaningless. You don't offer opportunities to engage with and discuss... you document dump. It's pitiful.

Problem 4: e-learning is some how perceived as being different to other forms of learning

When was the last time you heard someone talking about 'pen learning' or 'paper learning'? When did you say 'I'm going to engage in a practical, experiential model of learning' as you followed a new recipe. You just did those things. By separating e-learning out from all other forms of learning it is easy to become detached. To be ignored. Rather than an ingredient you may or may not use from many in your support of students and your support of their learning... it's a thing apart.

Problem 5: In an academic world where the academic reigns supreme, e-learning is allowed to be a whim-based form of delivery

The model of Higher Education in the UK with its academic superstar structure means that poor teaching rarely gets challenged. When it does get challenged it's in a 'come on chaps, don't you think it would be nice to...' manner. Bowing and scraping to the potential for toys to be thrown from the pram and hoping against hope that reason might be heard. Alongside the 'I'm too busy' arguments, attempts to develop new ways of teaching are batted away. To consider, shockingly enough, that actually students might want to see that they're getting some value out of their hefty investment in their futures and to take a long, critical look at what's happening is to infringe on that precious academic freedom. A freedom which seemingly extends beyond the freedom to explore a specialist field but apparently extends into how it might be taught too. The academic not only knows best about their subject - but they know how best to teach. And e-learning? 'Well. It wasn't like that in my day and look how I turned out' comes the reply.

So, perhaps point 5 isn't e-learning's fault - but by allowing it to be a subset of an already maligned area - that of teaching in higher education - it falls even further behind in terms of true progress.

What would I like to see? I'd like to see it drop the 'e'. I'd like to see it become part of a true toolkit of approaches to learning. I'd like to see the people involved in pushing forwards innovative learning become real experts and take ownership of their profession. To experiment, research and provide an evidence base which allowed e-learning to be more than the small-scale innovator in a shed but to be commonplace and useful.

And I'd really, really like to see it supported institutionally - top to bottom, bottom to top, inside and out, side to side. And not have empty words thrown at it in the hopes that words alone would be enough to bring about real change.

It isn't working. But it could be so, so fantastic...

Delicious new moves...

2011-05-09T06:30:00.000+01:00

Only just noticed this (which probably says a lot for how I've been using the site for a while!). So, the end was in sight for Delicious... now a move has happened instead as it headed to AVOS and the ownership of the founder of YouTube.

To be honest, I'd been using Diigo for ages - not least because of the additional annotation tools and groups but also because it allowed me to maintain the presence I'd had on Delicious for a few years by auto-forwarding my bookmarks.

It'll be interesting to see if this fairly recent acquisition sends me back to Delicious 'properly' or if it'll remain a little lost and unloved.

If I were starting in e-learning again...

2011-04-18T11:07:00.000+01:00

Then, I'd really have appreciated someone pointing me in the direction of these resources...

JISC Digital Media - http://www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/

Has loads of advice and updates about all things connected with digital media - from production to presentation, technical to legal. It's a great resource and definitely worth looking through their advice section. They also have some free tutorials which you might want to look at but primarily, the advice is the main resource you'd want to use.

WebAIM - http://webaim.org/resources/

Web Accessibility in Mind is an excellent resource if you want to know more about accessibility within e-learning. Their screen reader simulation (on the resources section) is definitely worth having a go with and the WAVE web accessibility evaluation tool is another resource you might want to bookmark.

JISC - http://www.jisc.ac.uk

Just tons of stuff about education and the use of technology. It's a massive site, so take a look at their Publications section first. You can order hard copies of some of their materials and a good starting point is http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/generalpublications/2009/jischeasupportingacademicstaff.aspx from them which gather together a lot of handy stuff.

HEA - http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/resources

For pedagogical resources, the HEA is a good place to start, particularly looking at their EvidenceNet repository too. Again, a massive site, but set yourself up an account there and subscribe to their newsletter as a start.

JISC Legal - http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/

Another JISC service, this time covering legal aspects affecting technology in education. They have a free helpdesk (as do JISC Digital Media) and if you're wanting to understand the wider implications of the use of a particular piece of technology, then this is a very valuable resource to know about. The Copyright Law Essentials is also worth bookmarking too.

JISC TechDIS - http://www.jisctechdis.ac.uk/

More from JISC, this time about accessibility and assistive technologies. Lots and lots to draw on here, but their Accessibility Essentials is very handy as are their free resources too. They also run 'Web2Access' which if you're wondering about using web 2.0 tools in education, then that's a useful service to know about as it helps to understand the accessibility implications of those tools.

OpenLearn - http://openlearn.open.ac.uk

Lots of openly available courses from the Open University, but of particular interest is 'Accessibility of eLearning' which is a module from their Masters in Online and Distance Education and is worth working through (takes about 15 hours). Also 'Repurposing open educational content' is handy too.

ALT - http://alt.ac.uk/

The Association for Learning Technology's website which gives a pretty good idea of what a learning technologist is - or at least what they should be able to do if you take a look at what's involved in their CMALT certification - as well as their Research in Learning Technology (used to be ALT-J) journal to sink your teeth into.

For more general technical / technology news then...

Read Write Web - http://www.readwriteweb.com/

Mashable - http://mashable.com/

Guardian Technology - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology

... are all good starting points.

Obviously there's a fair bit of JISC-flavoured stuff on there and it's all from a pretty UK-ish perspective. But if I wanted to try to bridge the gap between tech and teaching... these are the places I'd start looking.

What would you add?

Faces on Facebook

2010-11-25T14:38:00.000Z

Was just having an idle muse about identity on Facebook and what we choose (or not) to reveal to others. For example, there are options to 'find friends' and though your memory of School days may be hazy, a picture can help you to think - yup, I do know them. But... looking at the avatars people choose, there seem to be a few different types... so... here they are and here's my completely and utterly non-scientific opinion about what they might represent:

Self-portrait - I haven't time for this
Pet - I LOVE cats / dogs / fish!!!!!!! YEAH!!!
With partner - someone loves me! Woot!
Group of friends - more than one person LOVES me!!!
Group of friends partying - people LOVE me AND I know how to have FUN!!!
Tattoo - I may have a bit too much fun...
Kids - my kids look better than me
Baby - I also have a BABY ON BOARD sticker on my car. I have a baby. Yes. A baby! YAY!
Computer generated avatar - I like to stay in
Holiday snap - I like to stay away
Random graphic - the lights are on... but...

... you might like to take all of the above with a pinch of salt. :o)

I wonder how much we thought we were giving away when we chose the 'thing to represent us' online?

PS Mostly I use a plain ol' picture of me... apart from when it comes to sites where I share photos - in which case I use a flower or a pair of shoes. Go figure.

Keynotes and controversy

2010-09-07T12:10:00.000+01:00

Have just sat through Donald Clark's Keynote at Alt-C and wanted to capture a few brief notes about it.

Firstly, he seemed to manage to polarized the audience... but, to be honest, it felt like style over substance a lot of the time regardless of which side of the fence you decided to sit. I couldn't quite follow how you could start by arguing for scientific method and then proceed to fill your lecture with generalized ranting. Incorrect facts (the OU does have on campus students but hasn't been going for 50 years if you're interested, Donald) and single sample anecdotes. Do as I say not as I do.

Secondly, it was a strange old Keynote topic. Talking about the death of the lecture... in a lecture. Using a very traditional style. And, further to that, demonizing the face-to-face conference while he was at it. Apparently, he would never go to a face-to-face lecture or conference... while being okay to attend one as the Keynote. Most strange.

Thirdly, it was essentially a single point made over and over. And over. And over. But, it was the same negative point all the while. Lectures are rubbish. They are. They are. And did I mention... they are? But nothing about where to move from here. Where was the vision? Where was the light at the end of the tunnel?

I don't know. I get that he was there to get a reaction of some type to get people thinking. But, from where I was in the auditorium I saw people emailing, writing apps, eating, surfing the web, writing reports and preparing presentations. He was there to convince us lectures were bad. I'm convinced.

CMALT - update

2010-08-11T09:52:00.000+01:00

Well... sorry for the blogging break... again... it's been horrendously busy with work for the past month (marking over 150 exam scripts and providing feedback on what seemed like tons of the things) as well as wrapping up other bits and bobs from work before going on leave for 4 weeks (hooray!) and 'enjoying' a re-organisation at work which is currently rating as one of the most confusing experiences of my life.

Anyhoo... in between all that, I managed to get my CMALT porfolio completed and submitted. It felt kinda draft-ish and I know I could have made it more concise but anyway... it passed! Which is great!

Have to say, the process of going through putting together the portfolio was really intense though also a good opportunity for reflection. Kind of makes you realise a) yes, I do generally know what I'm talking about b) yes, I am interested in this field and c) creating an ePortfolio is about far more than dumping a load of examples together and hoping they stay together purely by the magic of ePortfolio-ness. Definitely takes a lot of thinking about and sifting to get it anywhere near coherent. But... a useful process.

Lifelong learning with ePortfolios doesn't tend to make sense to me (for various reasons which I'm sure I've wittered on about before)... but targetted, purposeful use of them? Absolutely. Good stuff!

So, if you're going to do CMALT then be as methodical as you can when you go through it all. Work through each section, think of examples. Get together evidence. Reflect on it. Share it with others to get feedback. Go through another iteration or two. Oh, and work openly if you can. Using Google Sites helped me to be brave enough to expose my evidence to others for feedback and made me really consider what I was writing as I was writing it. Overall, use the experience - it's a handy process to go through. Bit like an MOT for your professional practice.

PS YAY! My portfolio passed! PHEWIE!
PPS If you're wanting to use Google Sites, then you might find my YouTube video on getting hold of my CMALT portfolio template handy.

OU Conference - a spot o' reflection

2010-06-23T16:59:00.009+01:00

So, over the last couple of days the OU's Annual Learning and Teaching Conference has been held. Normally, that would involve schlepping to the OU's campus in Milton Keynes but this year, the conference was organised by Martin Weller and ended up online instead. Using a handful of 'rooms' in Elluminate, the programme involved both internal and external speakers and the opportunity for a moderated discussion after each session. At this point, I should say that I was one of the moderators so there's going to be a tadette of bias creeping in soooo... y'know... pinch o' salt and all that good stuff.

Anyhoo... here are a few reflections on the experience...

1. A great speaker is a great speaker no matter whether that's face-to-face or online
Wikipedia creator, Jimmy Wales had the closing keynote and I have to say he was excellent. Engaging and interesting - and the discussion was full of great questions with which he engaged well beyond his allotted time.

2. A bad speaker is a bad speaker no matter whether that's face-to-face or online...

3. ... and when it's online-only, bad becomes terrible
With only bullet-pointed slides and a monotonous voice which cuts in and out, the chance of absorbing what's being talked about slips away almost entirely.

4. It requires more dedicated concentration
Conferences using Elluminate seem to be far more concentration-intensive than face-to-face, which means that the chance to tweet about the event, or take questions from sources other than text-chat or voice diminish unless someone specifically has the task of co-ordinating external questions... that wider live engagement dips.

5. Online conferences and open-plan offices do not mix!
I had such a struggle trying to follow the speakers when I was using a headset in the open-plan office where I'm based for most of the days. On both days, I ended up leaving work a little early so I could get home and work using my own laptop with headset. No-one seems to respect that you're 'attending a conference' if its online. You're visible. You're fair game. Your concentration is broken.

6. No chance of networking
Well, not in the 'just bumping into someone from so-and-so institution' or arranging to meet because there are no private / informal social spaces where that can happen.

7. But a real chance of being able to engage with the speaker through moderated discussion
The fact that people didn't have to speak and could use text seemed rather liberating for many. I know that at 'normal' conferences it can be intimidating to have the roving mic shoved in your face... well, none of that with Elluminate. Far more equitable, it seems to me.

8. I'd attend another Elluminate conference
There. That one surprised me as I was a bit 'hmmm, kinda like face-to-face ones really'... but this one gave me the chance to attend without too much hassle, Martin's feat of organisation was outstanding and the technology (more or less!) behaved itself so that at least 95% of the time speakers could be heard and slides could be viewed.

PS My main point is still number 1. Presentation skills matter. They really and truly do.

PPS If you attended, let them know what you thought about it!

What if...

2010-06-12T15:09:00.002+01:00

... today you wiped the slate clean

... today you didn't make excuses

... today you started the things you put off

... today you stood out

... today you explored

... today you created

... today you had fun

... today you stepped up

... today you took a chance

What if?

CMALT ePortfolio

2010-06-10T10:33:00.002+01:00

As it's (almost!) quietish at the moment at work as everyone else is buried under piles and piles of marking, I thought I'd have a proper go at getting together my portfolio for CMALT. Their portfolio submission form is currently a Microsoft Word document, which is fine... but an ePortfolio would be handy too. The CMALT FAQs say that people can use their own ePortfolios... so... to help that along, why not create one using Google Sites? It frees you from problems of a lack of openness of some institutional ePortfolios, is easy to use and... with the use of an appropriate template... becomes a cinch to complete.

Oh, and while I was at it, I created a CMALT ePortfolio template for Googles Sites and made that available. How to get hold of it is dead straight forward just follow these steps:

1. Use your Google account to create a new Google Site
2. Click Create New Site
3. In the templates section at the top, click Browse the gallery for more
4. Change the language to English (UK) using the drop down menu to the left hand side
5. Click Public
6. Type CMALT into the Search box and click Search
7. Click on the CMALT Portfolio which comes up, then in the next screen click Select
8. Name your site (make sure it has a unique name), type in the code they give you... then click Create Site

That's just about it! If you want to see a video of how quickly you can get it sorted or just want to see how it's created... then this'll help too:

The structure follows that given on the CMALT porfolio submission form, as well as including prompts and guidance from the CMALT Guidelines. One nice an' easy ePortfolio. Done. :o)

Blogging break and the power of online community

2010-06-09T17:22:00.001+01:00

Just a quickie (am going to write a proper post later)... but just wanted to wave and say 'hello!'. I've had a bit of a blogging break for the past month and a half. My Dad died very suddenly a few weeks ago and my head has been a little empty of anything to say about technology or education or anything 'proper' for a while. So... sorry for the blogging break.

However, I also wanted to record and reflect on what's happened in the weeks since he died because I did carry on being online in one form: photography. I used my daily photo journal at Blipfoto to record my experience of loss as a way of trying to make sense of an extremely traumatic event in my life. Somehow having an image to talk about was easier than trying to talk about anything more abstract. The thing I found surprising and extremely moving were the comments left by people who looked at my journal. Despite only having been using Blipfoto for the past three months, I was amazed by how supportive people were... many of whom who knew me only through my photographs and in no other context. They not only shared images with me but wrote freely about their experiences, gave unconditional empathetic support - and encouragement to carry on just being however I needed to be.

It's unexpected, touching experiences like this which give me real hope for technology enhanced education. Despite no face-to-face contact, despite there being no reciprocal expectation and with nothing more than the possibility of giving support... people wrote and shared from wherever they were. There are plenty who say there is no substitute for face-to-face. Well, I can see where they're coming from in many ways. But, when for no other reason than they can... people connect and form supportive communities without ever needing to meet the other person... that's a powerful thing.

Browsing via Delicious

2010-04-15T09:32:00.000+01:00

Just noticed a nice little beta feature in Delicious - the ability to browse through a user's bookmarks. Now, it doesn't sound like anything particularly special... but there's something really handy about not just seeing a list of links (and descriptions if people have remembered that information) and being able to browse them in the way that you might with Google Reader etc. You can also go back to the bookmark details if you want to from the browsed version and add it to your own bookmarks if you like.

Would be really handy if they extended this to allow you to browse through bundles of tags etc... but this is a nice little step, particularly if you're one of those people who 'knows what they're after when they see it' and a linear list isn't really doing it for you. :o)

Using online chat in teaching?

2010-04-01T14:07:00.000+01:00

It's been a busy few weeks but amongst the things that I've been doing was a presentation on some research I did to finish off my MEd last year at our Annual Learning and Teaching Conference which I thought might be interesting to share (interesting in a vaguely nerdish kinda way!).

What was my research about? Well, the focus of my project was to attempt to understand what happened to educationally rich dialogue within online chat when students were left on their own, or when there was a tutor present. Anyway, it was an interesting little project and the results were also pretty revealing (and I'd really like to look into this area further), and it led me to wonder whether or not there is any kind of pedagogy for using chat in teaching? Surely we need one if we're to know how to use chat productively. Not least since according to the 2009 CLEX report 'Higher Education in a web 2.0 world' students are familiar with and comfortable using instant messaging (CLEX, p.21) - but it seems that we give them minimal guidance on how best to use it and rarely exploit (for want of a better word!) this familiarity or comfort with online chat. Additionally, there is really very little research into what happens to dialogue in synchronous online chat and in most of the research I looked at, either tutor or participants were novice users to some degree which I felt negatively impacted on their dialogue to some degree. In my project I was careful to make sure that everyone had had prior experience of learning / teaching via chat so as to try to minimize this technological learning curve.

Having looked into things a bit... I decided to try to draw some conclusions from my experiences.... both from the research itself, but also based on my experience of using chat in teaching for the past decade.... which led to this presentation! So, here ya go:

Knowing when to let go - pedagogy for online chat

View more presentations or Upload your own.

If you want to have a look at the notes to see what I was waffling about at each stage, you're more than welcome to - they're available online at the Slideboom hosted version.

So, how to use chat in teaching? There really are no hard and fast rules, but here are a few basic guidelines:

Give students the right building blocks (and these happen either side of the chat session)

Clear purpose - make sure it isn't simply a bolt-on optional extra
Clear introduction - explain how it's going to happen, have some intro sessions first if needed
Clear topic - provide a topic which works at lots of different levels so a discussion *can* happen
Clear timings - 30 to 45 minutes with a group of between 3 to 5 is probably about right
Clear plenary - the chat session should feed into *something*, a summary, a shared transcript... but there needs to be an end just as there's a beginning

Then…

Clear off - well, while the session's running anyway!

The things I've discovered? You don't need to be present within a chat session for it to have educational value. Provided you structure the activity design so that the chat session is bookended in someway (where you can have some involvement) and you bear in mind the type of dialogue you want, i.e. if you want a fairly Q&A-based session then it may well be appropriate for the tutor to be involved in the session; if you want something more free-flowing, then the tutor is probably best off not being a participant too.

Inspiring learners

2010-03-05T19:20:00.002Z

A little bit of background to this one...

I work full time in a traditional brick university... but I'm also lucky enough to get to work part-time for the Open University, both as an Associate Lecturer and as a Moderator on a couple of their short courses. One of the latter is T189 - Digital Photography: Creating and sharing better images. Now, for this fully online course, students work for 10 weeks creating and sharing their images using a Flickr-esque OU system called 'OpenStudio'. They get used to posting images, commenting on them and for those that engage with the course, there's a real sense of community - even though the students never actually meet in person. What there also is, every single presentation of the course, is the spontaneous student-created groups on Flickr (just do a quick search on Flickr for T189 Groups and you'll find our students soon enough!). And what I love more than anything is that long after the course has finished, they're still there. Taking their photographs. Sharing their brilliant images. Constructively discussing and commenting. Setting each other challenges to develop their skills and maintain their interest. It really is just the most amazing thing to see and I love that years after the course - and just a 10 week course at that - the students are still there. Still learning. Still supporting. Still creating. For me, it exemplifies what learning can and should be. The seed was planted and given just the right amount of nourishment to grow into the future.

Anyway, take a look at this. These brilliant former T189 students have gone and set up their first online exhibition:

"After taking part in the Open University Course: "T189 Digital Photography: creating and sharing better images" course first run in May 2007 a number of the students have continued to share images through a Flickr group.

In late 2009 we realised that between us we had started to build up a collection of photographs that firstly we are quite proud of and secondly that we'd like to share with a wider audience.

Thus we conceived the idea of a joint exhibition of our work. In the spirit of the course, which is run on-line, the we decided that the exhibition should also take the form of a website and this is it. Thank you for taking the time to visit. We hope you enjoy it."

Isn't that just the most superb thing? This is what happens when learning extends beyond targets, quotas, learning outcomes and assessment. Deep, long lasting engagement. I feel extremely fortunate to have a connection with such an amazing group of students. All power to them!

Oh look... more fingers in the educational pie...

2010-03-01T22:52:00.000Z

Just seen this little article in The Guardian...

Why David Cameron's schools policy is out of date | Politics | The Guardian:

"We can stop worrying about how to improve schools. It's simple, according to David Cameron. It's a good school if it's got a uniform, and children get up when an adult walks into the room, and teachers set and teach by ability. That clear? Good. But try telling Sean O'Regan that all good schools have uniforms. He runs Edith Neville primary school, with one of the most deprived intakes in London. Its results are brilliant, Ofsted calls it an outstanding school, and it has no uniform. 'People think a uniform is a shortcut to raising standards of behaviour,' O'Regan says, 'but it is not.'

School uniforms are a British obsession. In most of Europe and America, they don't bother. It always seems to be the apostles of economic liberalism who are keenest to dictate every inch of what our children wear. I'm not saying uniforms are always wrong. I've met heads who make good use of them. It's ignorant to make a simple rule out of it. The same applies to teaching by ability. There's a lot to be said for setting – placing children in ability groups for different subjects – though much less for streaming."

*shudder*

When, when, when will politics get its ugly, opinionated, ignorant backside out of learning? Actually, it often seems that the moment something goes mainstream - a practice that kinda worked in a particular context, extrapolated beyond all reason - dogma and ill-informed dictate overturn good intention. Reminds me of this xkcd cartoon:

What follows is my random musing. Feel free to switch off at this point, or go visit some more of those fab xkcd cartoons if you'd rather! :o)

Anyway, it often seems to me that politicians can't seem to steer away from an inherent belief that education is something which must be done to others. "Sit still!! Stand when an adult enters the room. Wear that tie. STRAIGHTEN THAT TIE!!!!! 6 sixes are 36, 7 sixes are 42..."

Real learning seems incidental or sidelined. Provided that predefined 'learning outcomes' and targets are achieved, who cares what really went on in that learner's head, huh? I'm also bothered by the idea of setting by ability as if ability remained static. As if ability was measured by volume. That somehow you're given a certain amount in this life. We'll teach to that ability, no more and no less. Just doesn't make sense to me that 'ability' is a label which is so happily bandied about. Label this child as 'gifted', that child as 'weak'. No get out of jail. No chance of parole. You are the ability you're allotted.

Education = Extrinsic motivation, carrot and stick, rules and requirements
Learning = Intrinsic motivation, enjoyment, creativity, expansion, curiosity etc...

How much easier to meddle with the former. How much damage to inflict on the potential of the latter? Today's musing is done. More pondering later no doubt!

PS They don't wear uniforms at my kids' school either. Shocker, huh? :o)

The ePortfolio myth

2010-02-23T21:50:00.001Z

Had a bit of a thought today about ePortfolios. Yes, I know... not many people have terribly many thoughts about ePortfolios they're probably doing something else more interesting instead, me, however... I think about this stuff. :o)

So... anyway... my thought. It concerns the oft touted phrase you hear in, oh, probably the second breath after the word ePortfolio and that is 'supporting lifelong learning'. Everyone's at it, from manufacturers of ePortfolios to bodies such as JISC. I wondered to myself what do we really mean by that? Lifelong? Seriously??? ePortfolios have been around for a blink of an eye in educational terms and yet... suddenly... they support or even better, they 'harness' lifelong learning. How can anyone make such grandiose claims?

I'm reminded a little of the BBC Doomsday Project which took place when I was a child in the 80s. There we were, writing about our local areas... storing photographs and other snippets to make our mark in history. It really was touted as a Doomsday Book Mark II from what I remember (I was one of the schoolchildren who participated in what was probably an early instance of wiki-esque generation of content!)... and yet... where is it now? Lost to incompatibility and data preservation issues. Published less than 25 years ago - hardly the average lifespan - and yet, gone. Whizz forward a quarter of a century and here we are again spouting about 'supporting lifelong learning' with a technology which is unproven and lacks the basic interoperability standards to help it move towards any kind of sustainability.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I put it to you that ePortfolio is being over-promoted off the back of an unsupportable claim, that of 'harnessing lifelong learning'. Furthermore, I pronounce it 'guilty' as charged.

PS I really don't care whatever it was I wrote for the Doomsday project back in 1984/85 - so, like old family photos, I'll leave leafing through my ancient bits of childhood work for dewy eyed relatives and continue moving forwards with an underpinning of experience, qualifications and confidence which doesn't need a 'lifelong' record of stuff to support.

PPS You didn't see me say this... right? ;o)

PPPS I have a whole other theory about the currency of learning and the expiry date of 'evidence'. But I'll save that ranty waffle for another day.

Prezi for Educators

2010-02-16T23:15:00.000Z

Now, I haven't quite made up my mind about Prezi. I've seen some really interesting presentations, but I've also seen a lot of seasickness-inducing efforts and since the latter outweighs the former, I've been struggling to get a sense of what I could do with it.

However... if you are interested in having more of a go with Prezi and you're a student or teacher... then have a look at the free Student / Teacher license upgrade option. All the stuff you can do with the free account, but an additional ability to make your Prezis private... remove the Prezi watermark... and get an additional 400MB of storage - all of which would normally cost you $59 / year. Gotta be worth an extra look, for that, I reckon!

Let the bad times roll: Job losses bite into HE

2010-02-08T16:39:00.000Z

One word for this story...

"Ouch"

Read more below:

Thousands to lose jobs as universities prepare to cope with cuts | Education | The Guardian: "Universities across the country are preparing to axe thousands of teaching jobs, close campuses and ditch courses to cope with government funding cuts, the Guardian has learned.

Other plans include using post-graduates rather than professors for teaching and the delay of major building projects. The proposals have already provoked ballots for industrial action at a number of universities in the past week raising fears of strike action which could severely disrupt lectures and examinations.

The Guardian spoke to vice-chancellors and other senior staff at 25 universities, some of whom condemned the funding squeeze as 'painful' and 'insidious'. They warned that UK universities were being pushed towards becoming US-style, quasi-privatised institutions.

The cuts are being put in place to cope with the announcement last week by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) that £449m – equivalent to more than a 5% reduction nationally – would be stripped out of university budgets.

The University and College Union (UCU) believes that more than 15,000 posts – the majority academic – could disappear in the next few years. Precise funding figures for each university will be released on 18 March."

Difficult times ahead. Could wax lyrical about this being an opportunity for efficiency savings, OER being mainstreamed into education, working smarter not harder, innovating our way out of a restrictive financial climate, opportunities for change etc. But... doesn't the above just suck? Bankers and governments get us into a financial nightmare... and Higher Education gets to pay a significant price as a result.

Ouch.

eLearning Pedagogy Speak Generator

2010-01-20T20:07:00.002Z

For those moments when you need to find that latest bit of eLearning pedagogical terminology in an important meeting for high-level funding, I thought you might like my eLearning Pedagogy generator.

Feel free to use at will. :o)

Google docs and sharing stored files

2010-01-15T10:50:00.005Z

Just noticed a nice new little feature in Google Docs - the ability to upload any type of file without having it converted to a Google Docs. Now, I know this seems like a pretty minor feature but it's actually going to be a useful little bunny to know about if you don't want Google stripping out the formatting for a document you just want to store and share with others. Okay, so there are better services for file sharing which allow you more than the 1GB / 25oMB per file limit imposed by Google (the superb Dropbox is one which immediately pops into my head), but you have to love the convenience... again... of Google allowing you to just get stuff done via a simple tweak to a service.

Stuff which Google has tweaked in Docs lately which has made a difference:

1. File storage without converting your file

2. Sharable folders

3. Bulk uploads

4. Translation of words, phrases or entire pages into any of 40+ languages.

What's not to like?

Sarah 'I sold my soul to Google but I liked what I got in return' Horrigan :o)

And to sum up...

2009-12-24T09:12:00.004Z

Well - after a frantic couple of months (parents ill, I moved house, waiting for exam results - passed my MEd - woo hoo!, job changes at work, piles of marking, swine flu, sick children etc etc etc)... I just thought I'd pop onto my blog to say 'hello' and to reflect, briefly, on this year's bits and bobs.

2009 Highlights
So... my highlights from this year:

1. Social networking makes your brain turn to mush
2. But it's okay... because just about everything else gives you cancer anyway
3. The VLE was dead
4. Then it wasn't
5. Twitter took over the world
6. While Google Wave-d
7. Microsoft Bing-ed... then got sued for binging and their Word was no longer law
8. And Facebook kept managing to annoy people for messing with layouts and privacy settings
9. But it still won the battle of the social networks
10. And Apps were 'it'

Reading stuff
Oh, and when time got tight and I was under pressure, I still found time to catch up with Steve Wheeler's excellent Learning with 'e's, John Connell and Martin Weller's ed tech goodness, Jane Knight's tool recommendations, Mashable's stream of social media goodness, educational goings on with The Guardian and ReadWriteWeb for their tech trend interpretations.

Tech stuff
I also still love Google Reader, Delicious , YouTube, Blogger, Google Docs, SlideShare and Twitter

... while Slideboom, WordPress, Plurk, ScreenToaster and Diigo have also emerged as useful tools during the past 12 months.

However, SecondLife I still don't get but nor do others, Google Notebook was quietly left to die,
Etherpad sparkled with usefulness then disappeared and Google Wave is very, very alpha and I'm waiting for the lightbulb moment with it.

And next year?
But... next year will be another year of ed tech loveliness, I'm sure. Funding crisis in HE or no, there's always interesting stuff happening and with luck... we'll find ways of making learning more interesting, relevant and (dare I say it?) engaging for everyone concerned.

Scaffolding and online synchronous communications

2009-11-19T11:09:00.003Z

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

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

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

Twitter lists as online identity

2009-11-09T09:28:00.003Z

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

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

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

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

2009-10-27T11:47:00.002Z

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

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

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

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

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

There's really only one: Google get it.

Library learning

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

An observation.

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

What happened?

The library emptied.

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

Just an observation.

Reserving judgement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thing is. That person was me.

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

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

On boring VLEs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 10 PowerPoint Commandments

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

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

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

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

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

So there!

ALT-C '09

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

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

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

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

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

9. Think about who are you trying to impress!

8. Sort out project management from editorial leadership

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

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

6. Understand where your pilot fits in

Whereabouts on this chain...

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

... does your project sit?

Try to create virtuous circles

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

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

- what does each partner say they want?

then work out this one...

- what do they actually want?

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Meet your audiences. Fiddle. Be curious!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lock Down Learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Web2practice from NetSkills

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

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

Netskills: Web2practice

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

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Three cool tools

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyone else got any recent favourites?

10 Pleasing MacBook Pro keyboard shortcuts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. To quit any application, press cmd and q

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

The joy of the Fail Whale

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Changing online demographics...

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

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

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

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

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

Where are they going then?

Interesting!

Social Swine flu fever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Return of the Mac...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning Outcomes... again...

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

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

Do learning outcomes really improve student learning?

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

More Tricks to using the iPod Touch in education

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

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

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

Screen-grab

Save images while browsing

Emails

Apple App Store

Internet & Surfing

Note-taking

Podcasts

Documents"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Access presentations from SlideShare by using mobile slideshare

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

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

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

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

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

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

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

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

Things I love about tagging

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

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

So, what're the plus points of tagging?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Communities of reciprocity and Twitter

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

Just seen the following on the BBC website...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VLEs and real learning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Multiple-personalities and making connections

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

The Ed Techie: Riffability and MPO:

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

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

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

The copyright dance and making a video

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

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

The way I did it was as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

3. The video itself was created using free online tools

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

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

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

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

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

Twitter Search by CommonCraft

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

New CommonCraft video on using Twitter Search...

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

Boredom x 2

2009-06-12T09:45:00.003+01:00

On my list of quotes to remember...

Why do 60% of students find their lectures boring? | Education | The Guardian: "

One of the main contributors to student boredom is the use of PowerPoint. PowerPoint slides are a powerful aid to today's lecturer, who can use it to easily prepare dozens of slides to accompany a lecture. And that is the problem - lecturers tend to prepare too many slides, pack them with too much information, and whizz through them in a manner that obliges students to spend most of the session attempting to copy copious amounts of text from the screen, while bypassing active processing of the material."

Q. What's worse than a boring lecture, filled with PowerPoint slides?

A. A VLE crammed with PowerPoint slides from a boring lecture.

*sigh*

The price of 'free'

2009-06-11T11:12:00.006+01:00

... and *ping* they were gone!

All podcasts uploaded to Switchpod, gone in an instant... and because I only had a free account, no notification that this was going to happen.

Ah well, being a mug, I've signed up to Podbean and will start again from scratch there. Obviously this time it'll all be different. *hollow laughter*

A few questions. What would you do if your free Blogger, WordPress, Flickr, Google Docs / Reader etc site disappeared overnight? How much of a pain would that be? How much of an impact might it have? What if you'd encouraged students to sign up for those services and the work was to be assessed?

What can we do to balance web 2.0 free-goodness with the reality that we're trusting something we have no financial stake in?

No such thing as a free lunch, huh?

Potted Guide to RSS

2009-06-09T17:10:00.004+01:00

My quick guide to using RSS feeds... am still faffing about with it but wanted to test it out by uploading it here!

I did do a voiceover for this - but since I have a chest infection, the whispery, cough-infested version wasn't great, so I replaced it using YouTube's very handy AudioSwap facility!

Notspots and control

2009-06-04T15:18:00.000+01:00

Interesting one on digital exclusion...

BBC NEWS | Technology | Need to tackle 'social' notspots:

"The latest research from the Communications Consumer Panel, set up to advise government on broadband issues, has found that nearly three-quarters of Britons think broadband is vital to their lives. Not everyone in the country agrees.

Some 17 million people in the UK - 30% of the population - are estimated to be offline because they simply don't want it.

Some have opted out for economic reasons while others believe broadband has no relevance to their lives.

It is a problem acknowledged by government, as it realises that social and digital exclusion are increasingly walking hand in hand."

Worth tracking down the original report from the Communications Consumer Panel too if you've got time. Some of the stats and quotes make for interesting reading, but you gotta admit... the following doesn't really come as a surprise...

"There is a continuing desire expressed in the qualitative research for people to control the technology (and not the other way around), and for a balance between technology and 'real life' to be struck."

Ownership and control are important issues in terms of adoption of all forms of technology - whether it be educational change or technologies in the home. Will have another ponder on that article later!

Things I discovered on the web this week...

2009-06-04T10:17:00.007+01:00

Another week... another trawl through Google Reader after I'd let it's aggregating goodness get on top of me so had to do a massively quick skim through. And here are the resulting finds:

Harvard University has a gay and lesbian chair... which is odd because I didn't know that furniture had a sexual orientation
Google Wave is washing its way round the world pretty quick before it's even available...
I would love to see people being filmed using Microsoft's Project Natal and put that to music (sure that's just me)
Audio doesn't have to be tricky... this is a fantastic resource giving 4 great tips for people starting out with recording audio
Web 2.0 tools are often said to be awkward in terms of accessibility - this excellent site from TechDis tells you what's good, what's not... and helps you make some sensible tool choices
Opera 10 arrives in beta... but I haven't found time to have a look see
The over 50s are fed up of Facebook... maybe all the retiring Professors can fill the gap?
Oh, and China could well be running out of things to block... but I doubt it

Phew!

Rev it up, baby!

2009-06-01T15:22:00.003+01:00

The Hype Cycle is in full effect!

Google Wave and Microsoft's Bing (hate the name for some reason) are both hot topics at the moment in 'shiny-new-stuff-world', although the shine seems to be brighter where Google Wave is concerned. Here's Google Trends take on it in the UK over the past 30 days. You can see where both technologies appeared and the sudden whoosh of interest:

Compare this to the Gartner Hype Cycle:

Looking similar, no? Google Trends as Hype Cycle spotter? Will keep an eye on this as the flurry of Google Wave / Bing-related stuff settles into some kind of real understanding / use.

I wonder if these cycles are getting shorter and shorter? Within a week or two, Wolfram Alpha is already old news. I suspect that there are different hype cycles which exist in different groups of Adopters: for the Innovators, the Early Adopters, the Early Majority etc. Twitter had been getting people interested long before the celeb-fuelled boom which has happened in the last 6 months or so... and just as those early adopters are questioning whether or not it's going to die a death.

If we're in a time of exponential change, then how on earth do we ever like and use something long enough to really understand it?!?

Things I discovered this week...

2009-05-27T12:13:00.004+01:00

How to:

Use Twitter as an electronic voting system during presentations...
Use Twitter at conferences
Share files using Twitter
Totally wipe a computer of data before getting rid of it
Face disciplinary action for Twittering
Discover your deleted photos aren't really deleted if they're on the social web
Use a computational knowledge engine even if all you can think to do with it is put in your birth date
Put the phrase "Web 3.0" into a sentence without knowing nothing at all about it
Be a successful e-tutor (even if the term e-tutor makes my skin crawl for some reason!)

PS I also discovered that I still think Susan Boyle is over-rated no matter how many people view her on YouTube!

The inevitability of inevitability...

2009-05-19T13:20:00.000+01:00

Just read this... which follows on nicely from my last blog entry...

BBC NEWS | Technology | When the new becomes old:

"Those of us who have been watched the network grow over the years need to make sure that we do not stand in the way of progress, that we do not act as if the way things were done in the old days of the internet should somehow be set in stone.

We need to remember that the wave of creativity that the network has unleashed is crashing over the digital world just as much as it changes things in the analogue one, and we should not expect to escape the revolution."

Yup. Hang on in there and enjoy the ride!

Twitter bitter?

2009-05-19T12:22:00.003+01:00

Okay, this post isn't just about Twitter but it's about resistance to technology generally. I'm sure there must be a name for people who take delight in not knowing about technology. Take a conversation about Twitter. It typically goes:

'Is anyone using Twitter?'
*murmer as people say that they are*...
*interjection from technophobe*
'I'm not using it. It's weird and creepy'
'Me neither. Can't see the point.'
'I wouldn't use it anyway. Seems a bit sad'
'I don't use Facebook either...'
'Nor me. Nor blogs - what's that about?'
'I don't have a mobile phone either'
'I hate mobile phones'
'I can't stand them. What's wrong with people these days? Why can't they just talk to one another normally.'
'Pathetic really.'
'Yeah. Pathetic.'
*nod and smile*
*nod and smile*

There's something slightly odd about these sorts of attitudes towards technology. It goes beyond resistance I think - there's a delight in it which I can't get my head round. From the "social networking gives you cancer"articles which regularly appear to "twitter causes car accidents" and the like. I don't know. It's all a bit odd. Why take pride in the dislike of technology? I guess you get it in other areas, that pride in the lack of a skill or interest - "I've never read a book" would be a prime example. But, what is that about?

What word captures it though? Some kinda Techno-FAIL with a teeny slice of schadenfreude chucked in for good measure... :o)

PS The lovely John Connell came up with 'Twossers' which is joyous on lots of levels!

PPS He offered the suggestion via Twitter... which is useful because a) it's funny, b) the twossers won't see it and c) I've put it on my blog which... oh... that's covered by b) :o)

Virtual technologies and university involvement

2009-05-12T10:26:00.000+01:00

A report says universities' use of virtual technologies is 'patchy' | Education | The Guardian:

Worthwhile review of a report into universities' use of virtual learning in today's Guardian and there are some useful points made throughout about the boundaries between informal and formal online learning. However, it was the following quote which I noticed from Brian Kelly which got my 'questioning head' pinging:

"'Facebook is the equivalent of students chatting in the pub after a lecture, in which case it's not for universities to get involved in that informal learning,' he explains."

"the equivalent of students chatting in the pub after a lecture" - hmmmm... not sure on this one. I think there's more value in these informal systems than meets the eye. I've seen students from one of the Open University courses I work on (T189 - Digital Photography) take their studies way beyond the boundaries of the OU and continue developing their skills using what might be dismissed as 'informal learning'. You can find those students on Facebook. You can find them on Flickr. They set each other photographic challenges. They constructively critique each other's work. Share techniques. No, I'm not saying that the University should step into those locations to somehow make them 'official'. But it's not just chatter either. And it's certainly not a low-level informal piece of learning either. This is real, deep engagement with a subject. When are we going to recognise and value that? How are we going to recognise and value it? We don't create the definitions of what does or doesn't have value any more - students are carving out the places and spaces they want and need. We don't have to be directly involved to be involved... do we?

Principles for future VLEs?

2009-05-11T15:53:00.000+01:00

Just seen the following on Niall Sclater's Virtual Learning blog:

Virtual Learning » Principles for future VLE/LMS development:

"Principle 1: The VLE should facilitate easy online collaborative content development. The systems are not currently in place to make this easy – and they need to be enhanced.

Principle 2: The VLE must recognise the needs of specific subject areas and business needs. Areas such as maths, languages and continuing professional development courses have unique requirements for displays, technologies and formatting which need to be catered for.

Principle 3: The VLE must be able to allow access to a variety of users. Employer engagement in particular will require increasing access from outside the university and there are various other types of user which require access.

Principle 4: We need to assess continuously whether we have the right balance between “control” and “freedom” in the use of the VLE by staff and students. A compromise needs to be reached between allowing users to have sufficient levels of access to VLE facilities and maintaining the quality of our learning content, activities and support.

Principle 5: The integration of external tools will be continually evaluated. While the University considers an in-house VLE to remain essential there are facilities such as email provision which may be better outsourced.

Principle 6: The OU VLE should be visible on a wide range of channels. All student facing systems should be accessible and easy to use on mobile devices as well as on desktop PCs and laptops.

Principle 7: All textual content should be stored in XML format where possible. This will help considerably with repurposing for delivery on other platforms eg paper, e-books and mobile devices.
Principle 8: Documentation should be good enough that course teams do not feel the need to write their own supporting notes around use of the VLE facilities. A proposed revised Computing Guide will address this issue which results in duplication of effort and the production of paper resources which go out of date quickly."

It's missing a key principle and one which I feel is routinely diminished / ignored within Higher Education...

Principle 9: Accept that the VLE is only one way of learning online, there are informal channels which we should not discourage students or academics from using. Content doesn't just have to be created by the institution to be a valid part of the learning journey.

These principle are all a little too "VLE as sage on the stage" for my liking. Isn't 'guide on the side' where teaching is moving? Monolithic VLEs are not the sum of elearning. Why should it take on the role of Jack of all trades? Can't it work in harmony with the tools and services students are already using?

Struck by a thought or so...

2009-05-11T10:46:00.003+01:00

Listening to a Webcast from the Open University on "The Net Generation" I'm struck again by how much time we spend trying to categorise and label technologies and usage of technology which are used innately by those who are the most active participants. It reminds me of David Attenborough, high on the African plain doing a softly worded piece to camera about the behaviour of the animals he's observing... all the while the animals in question are simply getting on with their own thing and merrily ignoring his insightful, considered words.

The talk by Judy Caruso on the 2008 ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology highlights this, revealing some interesting attitudes from students. Not least that the things which might be counted as use by one generation aren't counted as use by younger students - 'just checking my e-mail', 'just sending a text' etc are not counted. It seems to me that so often use of technology in education comes from the outsiders' perspective. We're attempting to make policy and procedures for things which, regardless of what we come up with... will be used anyway. Come up with a policy on Web 2.0 usage in Higher Education and it's like trying to hold back a tide of use, collaboration and distribution which will continue whatever we do. Information Systems departments seem to try to cling on to the last vestiges of control in a world where the user can happily exist outside officially installed products, licenses and policies. Academics worry about the demise of the lecture, claiming that putting their slides online before a lecture (which would be of benefit to students) will mean students don't attend. But this isn't borne out in reality (ECAR, 2008). The fears of one group do not match with the reality of what's happening with another.

I have doubts as to whether or not there is a "digital native", a net generation who 'gets this stuff' and, conversely, a group of outsiders who don't... but the consistent lack of real engagement with new technologies / communication channels by those making policy decisions is baffling. 'I haven't got time'. 'I don't get it'. 'But we provide a perfectly acceptable solution'. 'It's really not my thing' etc. I wonder when we're going to stop observing students' use of technology as if it came from an alien species and stop resisting the changes which are happening and will continue to happen. Me, I don't care if someone studying on one of my courses uses official discussion forums, Facebook, chatting to their mates down the pub... if they're learning. They're learning. And that's good... right?

A little bit of knowledge goes a long, long way...

2009-05-07T13:26:00.003+01:00

One of the things which has been bothering me about Twitter lately (sorry if my blog seems a bit Twitter-ish these days!) is the number of spam followers which have been coming through to my mailbox on a daily basis.

Well... look at the bit of detailed loveliness I just got to my inbox about one of my latest followers:

Just enough to help make a quick decision and certainly better than the previous mystery package which was the old way of notifying you. The added "You may also block [whatever their name is] if you don't want them following you" is another nice touch and gives back a little of the balance which was lacking. Maybe the realisation that part of what makes Twitter work (or doesn't work) for individuals is having a network and being part of that network. Without a bit of participation, a fair number of people have been using the service long enough that they just can't afford the time to reciprocate the Twitter follow.

On my 'stuff I like' (but realise I am nerdy for liking!) list. :o)

The Horrigan Tripe Cycle

2009-04-29T14:48:00.007+01:00

Just read John Connell's fantastic riposte to another shockingly-bad Baronness Greenfield-penned piece.

A particular favourite extract from her piece:

"A second difference in the young 21st-century mind might be a marked preference for the here-and-now, where the immediacy of an experience trumps any regard for the consequences. After all, when you play a computer game, everything you do is reversible. You can switch it off or start again. But the idea that actions don't have consequences is a very bad lesson to learn, when in life they always do.

And in games the emphasis is on the thrill of the moment. This type of activity can be compared with the thrill of compulsive gambling.

The third possible change is in empathy. This cannot develop through social networking because we are not aware of how other people are really feeling - we cannot pick up on body language when we are communicating through a screen.
As a result, people could become almost autistic. One teacher wrote to me that she had witnessed a change over the 30 years she had been teaching in the ability of her pupils to understand other people and their emotions. "

Isn't that just special? There's so much to unpick of it, it's almost hard to start... but never shy of a challenge... here I go...

Firstly, "A marked preference for the here-and-now"- what utter, utter tosh. She's likening the consequences of particular styles of computer games with the preferences of an entire generation. Effectively writing off all other experiences with one swish of her pen. We've played games for centuries. If anything, many games these days allow for longer game play and a further delay of consequences - which, using her argument is a positive thing.

Secondly, game playing as akin to compulsive gambling? Evidence? Links? Causality? Que? Also, what point is she trying to make? That the thrill is equivalent to the thrill of compulsive gambling? The emotive aspect of this is odd. She's not referring to gambling, but to compulsive gambling. The compulsion element is obviously there for a reason. Then, somehow the "thrill" of the two is the same. It's obviously, to her mind, qualitatively different to the thrill you might get from other activities. But how? Why? Or is it lazy writing to point score and set up the link in your average Daily Mail reader's mind as follows:

"Hmmmm, compulsive gambling. Now, that's bad. I've heard it's an addiction. It can lead to the break up of relationships. Of families. It's damaging our kids. It's bad. And the thrill someone gets from that is the same as social networking. So... social networking must be additive. Which means... *penny dropping* social networking is the work of the devil!!"

Ri-i-i-i-i-i-ight...

Thirdly, in this oh so special extract... her point about a lack of empathy from those communicating online because we're not aware of how people are feeling. I'm imagining that at some point during the last couple of decades Baronness Greenfield was involved in a 'being shut in a cupboard and cut off from all current research into online community' accident and is unable to track down any of the studies into just this area. "We cannot pick up body language when we are communicating through a screen"... unless you're involved in video conferencing... or using various other cues which are emerging to express emotion and feelings online.

And lastly... the gargantuan leap to the final conclusion... "people could become almost autistic". Ta da! Based on her comprehensive research of "One teacher wrote to me". Y'know. That last one isn't even worth unpicking. It's too easy. I'm just going to let it stand on it's own.

"People could become almost autistic"

Thank goodness for "leading neuroscientists" showing us how to read situations correctly. *sigh*

PS The reason for this post being called "The Horrigan Tripe Cycle" is that sadly, or maybe unsurprisingly, these are the attitudes I come across all the time in terms of resistance to technological change. There are several stages of this resistance:

Ignorance
Denial the new technology is important
Observation of adoption whilst feeling increasingly out of touch
Random accusations about the perilous consequences of adoption
Grudging acceptance / grumbling in a corner periodically.

Inspired by the Gartner Hype Cycle, I'd like to call this the "Horrigan Tripe Cycle". :o)

Boomers and generation gaps

2009-04-27T16:54:00.003+01:00

Interesting report from LexisNexis on their Survey into the Technology Gap.

One to mull over...

Right now, my head's still in holiday mode even though my body has put in an appearance at work.

Guardian reveals insight into birds and bees...

2009-04-16T10:54:00.000+01:00

Nothing vaguely e-learningy to write at the moment, but I thought I'd share how pregnancy happens which I saw in The Guardian...

Parenting qualifications for young people recognised | Society | guardian.co.uk:

"Sandra, 24, from Gloucestershire, did her first minor accredited course when she became pregnant at 17 after her youth worker referred her to the NCLP"

So, to avoid teen pregnancy... don't allow your youth workers to refer you to the NCLP :o)

A few of my favourite web 2.0 things...

2009-04-06T16:00:00.006+01:00

Just fancied collating some of the free web 2.0 goodness I've liked over the last year or so, and which are particularly useful if you're working in education... so here they are...

Writing tools

Google Docs – good for online document storage, collaborative writing, off-site backup

Evernote - note-taking facility available via mobile, online and offline with synchronization available between any installation / version

Scribd - share documents which are automatically converted so they can be downloaded as Word, Adobe pdf or .txt files / can be embedded in HTML pages

Wordle – useful for analysis of a topic or issue by simply uploading the text you want to look at

Zoho - full suite of tools from Office-type word processors to note-taking and project management tools. Free option available on most tools.

Blogging / RSS / Collaboration

Blogger - good, free blogging service from Google

Delicious - one of the original social bookmarking sites. Straightforward to use!

Diigo - great social bookmarking tool with added annotation, communities and discussion. Can also automatically post your links to Delicious if you've already got a Delicious account you don't want to lose.

DimDim - free web conferencing / web-hosted online, open-source meeting tool

Drop.io - instantly create collaborative working spaces, private, no account necessary, shareable outputs, easy to use.

Google Reader - full-featured RSS aggregator with good integration into other Google services

WordPress - another blog service, but is slightly more 'professional' looking and the ability to view stats on blog postings is also useful

WetPaint - free wiki with plenty of templates and features

Video / audio

Jing - web-based screencasting tool, create screen captures, narrated video etc.

quietube - view or share YouTube videos without distracting comments and other YouTube branding

ScreenToaster – create and record video to create screencasts or tutorials

SlideShare - useful for hosting PowerPoint slides to share / embed, also good for linking in MP3 files to easily create a slidecast

Xtranormal - create 3D videos by selecting characters and inputting the script. Sharable video output.

YouTube - video sharing site with lots of creative commons licenced resources / facility for comment / closed captioning

Social Networking

Facebook - major social networking site, useful for both personal and business networks / use of groups for students etc

LinkedIn - similar to Facebook, but with a more professional feel

Twitter – microblogging tool, useful for concise communication, resource-sharing, networking, discussion, current affairs / breaking news

Diagramming

Exploratree - from Futurelab this is an online ideas tool, a little like mindmapping but with other types of 'thinking' diagram templates available

Gliffy - creates flow charts, organisational charts, plans etc in the style of Microsoft Visio and can support collaborative working

MindMeister - mindmapping tool, allows users to create up to 6 mindmaps for free and export in various formats including jpg, rtf etc

ProjectDraw - CAD-like online drawing tool

Skrbl - free, shareable online collaborative whiteboard.

Image editing

Flickr - online photo sharing (plus tagging, commenting and annotating) and photography-related discussion forums / community

Picnik - online image editing with links to popular image-hosting sites such as Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook etc

Miscellaneous / Utilities

Box.net - online file storage service

Doodle - meeting scheduling tool

DownForEveryoneOrJustMe - does what it says! Put in a URL to check whether or not a site is down or it's just you having problems.

How Do I? - search Google for tutorials on any subject

Media Convert - convert files from one format to another using this free tool

Read The Words - create MP3 audio files from text input with a variety of voices and speeds to select

This list is a work in progress, so watch this space (i.e. I'm sure I've forgotten some of the ones I really like and I may sneak back to edit them later!) :o)

Twitter mysteries and "twetiquette"

2009-04-01T11:10:00.011+01:00

Ever feel like you just got aggregated on Twitter?

Following lots of people and not one single update. Why do people do this? If you want to be interested in my life... have a bit of a life yourself, if you don't mind, ta everso. I don't want to be followed by a service or website unless I followed you first or signed myself up to be added. I'd really like just a tiny sliver of control over my online life. Yes, I know it's not massively realistic to want that... but... where's the twitter-etiquette (good grief, I nearly invented a hideous word then: "twetiquette", but stopped myself just in time!) when you need it???

Why also, do they follow you and then protect their updates?

You get a message saying so an' so is following you. You think... oh, that's nice... I'll go see their profile and see if I should be following them. But oooooh no. You can't. Protected updates only. What *is* that about? If you're following people who don't know you... why are your updates protected? Don't you want to let me see just a tiny bit about you? Okay, so you may be new to Twitter... I accept that. But for those of you who aren't... que???

So, my Twetiquette list*

1. Fill in your profile - I don't want loads, I just want to see a tiny smidge of the real you which would help me decide whether or not following you is a good idea

2. Picture please - it doesn't have to be anything much, but I do like to see that I'm talking to a someone or something

3. Don't protect your updates - Twitter is social... it's not a private club. I know it looks like a nice privacy feature, but if you're to get the most out of Twitter you've got to make connections and protecting your updates, hiding your status, is another Twitter-turn-off

4. Participate don't just aggregate - I'm sure no-one minds the odd bit of blog promotion or Blip-ping... but actively participating with a few thoughts of your own sure makes for a more interesting Twitter

5. Update don't stagnate - a few updates here or there... that's not too much to ask, is it?

6. Learn the importance of @ and 'd' - if it's one-on-one communication you're after, direct messages (d + twittername) are much better than clogging someone's stream with personal communication. If you want to make a comment which'll get noticed by someone else, but which isn't private / exclusive... then an @ reply is the daddy.

7. Retweet selectively - yes, I may have missed someone else's tweet or not be following them and find their message really useful... but use the retweet (RT) facility too often and I start to wonder what you've got to say of your own. Think before you retweet.

Am sure there are more... but those are my main rants converted into a handy little list. Ta da!

* see what I did there - said I wasn't going to use that word and then did - shame on me!

Skype for iPhone and iPod Touch!

2009-03-30T14:44:00.001+01:00

Skype for iPhone: It's official | CTIA show - CNET Reviews:

"Assuming your connection is solid, you can dial a number or quickly call a contacts stored in your address book. iPod Touch users will need earphones with an embedded mic to talk. During a call, you can mute the line, go on hold, or put the call on speakerphone. In the My Info window, you can follow a link to buy more SkypeOut credit online."

Cool! iPod Touch as IP phone care of Skype, wifi and a headphone + mic combo. Bring it on! :o)

Deleting bits of my online self

2009-03-29T19:58:00.004+01:00

Sometimes a gal gets a bit bored. Y'know. The shiny sparkly new service / tool she's started using loses its lustre. In the spirit of that, I just deleted myself from Plurk. It's not that it's a bad tool, particularly. It's a bit unreliable along the same lines as Twitter and its infamous Fail Whale, if y'know what I mean! There were some advantages to using it - the threading of discussions was good, for example. But, the difficulty of following conversations where you missed the start or where your contacts have lots of other contacts you don't know (and who you wouldn't choose to follow)... and you can't avoid their interjections makes it much harder work than it need be. Yes, you can easily mark all messages as being read... but you can't just pick out some messages to read and others to avoid terribly easily. On Twitter, I dip in and dip out and it doesn't seem to matter. I don't have lots of messages waiting for me. I just have a stream which continually flows. No 'read or unread' required really. Just watch it passing you by.

So... bye-bye to Plurk. It was fun. I couldn't keep up. Turns out I like the simplicity of Twitter more than I thought! Now then... about that next shiny bright thing on the horizon... :o)

PS Deleting my Plurk account involved a couple of clicks. Can hardly believe it was that easy. Time will tell no doubt...

Tranmission misunderstood

2009-03-28T16:28:00.000Z

Yet another journo gets their own transmission-media mindset tangled up with the concept of Twitter:

Is your life really better for being Twittered? - Telegraph:

"I can see that Twitter is a useful tool for genuinely breaking news, as during the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, but it is somewhat less compelling when charting the minutiae of daily life. Our parents' generation made do with a handful of curling photographs, letters, and their memories. Now, every tiny happening can be instantaneously logged and broadcast: 'Finding time to put the rubbish out!' people tweet, or 'Just enjoying a glass of champagne in the sun!'"

I suspect the author in question is yet to have that 'ah-ha, that's an interesting use' moment with regards using Twitter because she's certainly neglected to consider it as being anything other than a means to broadcast. For me, it's a useful place to see what's going on with colleagues, whether they're ones I see on a day-to-day basis to those who work in remote locations or simply in the same field as me. It's a useful place for a bit of occasional chit-chat / banter to break up an otherwise intense day. It's a useful place to explore ideas / concepts in a manner which forces you to be concise and clear about your writing style. It's a useful place to pick up links and resources. It's a useful place to make connections. It's a useful place to quickly canvas opinion. It turns out, it's just a useful place.

Two years ago, I had the exact same reaction. Why bother? Who cares? But... it's one of those things. Shift your mindset and you might find that it could become a useful place for you too. Y'never know. Transmission-only, it ain't.

Bringing your online life together - Skimmer

2009-03-25T14:17:00.003Z

Skimmer - We Are Fallon:

"Skimmer℠ is an Adobe AIR desktop application designed to streamline, beautify, and enhance the experience of participating in your most frequently used social networking activities. It improves upon your day-to-day interaction with multiple social networks, removing distractions and providing a rich experience that is particularly suited to multimedia content."

I do like a nice simple life and anything which pulls 'things' together all those bits of my online life into one easy to access place is good for me. I've been using Digsby for a while and I do like it in lots of ways. It's quick. I can access Facebook, Twitter, MSN, MySpace (although I don't know why because I very rarely log on there) as well as Gmail and Google Talk all at the same time. When I'm online, I'm online with those services without having to sign in umpteen times. However, it's not that pretty. If you're not after chat, then for pretty... take a look at Skimmer.

So far the supported services are Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (which trumps Digsby), Blogger (also not available via Digbsy) and YouTube. The streaming of the feeds from the various services is excellent and although it won't set the world on fire in terms of speed, the concept behind it is great. A bit like "Flock does Adobe Air".

Screenshots are available on the Skimmer site and perhaps it is design over function, but hey, I like design from time to time! Will be interested to watch this develop.

Ada Lovelace Day dithering

2009-03-24T12:41:00.000Z

A couple of months ago, I signed up to the following:

'I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire' - PledgeBank:

"Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements."

... and the slightly sad fact is that I cannot think of anyone. I don't actually revere any particular person for their role in technology. A quote I remember reading about ten years ago has always stuck with me:

"Over the course of several hundred years new people come along and each lays down a block on the top of the old foundations, each saying, "I build a cathedral". Next month another block is placed atop the previous one. Then come along an historian who asks, "Well who built the cathedral?" Peter added some stones here, and Paul added a few more. If you are not careful, you can con yourself into belief that you did the most important part. But the reality is that each contribution has to follow onto previous work. Everything is tied to everything else."

(Source: Paul Baran cited in "Where Wizards Stay Up Late -- The Origins of the Internet", Hafner and Lyon, 1996)

... and it's true. No one person made 'the' difference which made all the difference. No one woman made 'the' difference. We innovate because others innovated. We are the sum of all that's gone before.

So, while I reconise the difference that some people, women included, have made. And whilst I recognise that women don't have parity in the technological workplace (definitely haven't within any of the tech-type jobs I've had over the past decade or so) and that there is an issue there. I rather like the writing of several women in technology / ed-tech... but I still can't think of a specific woman who I particularly admire above all others.

My Ada Lovelace Day post is going to have to just be a celebration of all those who do help build that cathedral. Who do take what's gone before and push to see where it can take them. Who can stand back and transform ideas into reality. No names. No individuals. Inspiring people are all around us... whether they're male or female. A society in which those innovative, creative voices can be heard. Now that's gotta be worth celebrating.

Wearable computers... a step too far...

2009-03-18T16:47:00.000Z

Bleurgh!!! In today's BBC News:

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Finn creates USB 'finger drive':

"Jerry Jalava uses the 2GB memory stick, accessed by peeling back the 'nail', to store photos, movies and programmes.

The finger is not permanently attached to his hand, so it can be easily left plugged into a computer when in use."

Things not to do on a first date: "Hold on dear, I'm sure I've got that photo to show you somewhere..." *removes finger and plugs it in to nearest computer"

Bleurgh!!!

SlideShare goes Mobile

2009-03-18T11:31:00.001Z

SlideShare goes mobile. Having tried it on my iPod Touch, I have to say it's okay but slow and in just a few minutes of using it, it couldn't cope with a couple of slideshows and the search facility will only allow you to search for slides not users or groups/events. But, it has potential (cooer, that's the sort of thing I might write in feedback on an assignment... whoops!) :o)

Introducing SlideShare Mobile: use SlideShare on the go!

View more presentations from Amit Ranjan.

Wordling WCAG 2.0

2009-03-13T11:06:00.003Z

Why the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines are not a helpful day-to-day resource for people:

Do you notice how 'reasonable', 'adjustment', 'accommodation', 'needs', 'usability', 'accessibility', 'improve' etc don't feature in them at all? If we're trying to get across the concept that embedding accessibility within education is about improving teaching and learning... potentially for all who want access to it... then directing them at a set of guidelines which have a specific technical purpose is not helpful. It gives the impression that the issue is complex, confusing, filled with issues, standards, levels, adherence etc etc etc. It's so far removed from the purpose or intention of making things more accessibility that it risks becoming a barrier to change for those exposed to it.

Love Wordle!

The beauty of simplicity

2009-03-12T16:00:00.002Z

For the past week or so I've been battling with trying to get a VLE to behave in the way I need it to behave for the group of academics I'm currently working with. I want them to be able to get access quickly and easily to the tools they use most often. Yes, there are plenty of other tools and things the VLE can do... but we don't need to know that right now. I've been messing about with workarounds to get the navigation system as simple as it needs to be... and a few minutes after coming up with a design which was more user-friendly, I saw this image on the LifeHacker:

Isn't that just fantastic? Point people at the bits they need, explain in a few words what they do and hide the rest (for now, they can always take off the paper as they get more confident).

So often in elearning-land things are made so much more complicated than they need to be. We get caught up in the things that can be done. The things that might be done. We forget that because it can be done, it doesn't mean it should. We forget that just because there are lots of tools available, they don't all need to be made available.

Simple is good. But simple can be the furthest thing from your mind when you're caught up in trying to explain something complex, can't it? Here's to paper-wrapped remote controls and ingenius ways of making life simpler.

The conundrum of the celebrity Twitterer

2009-03-02T15:57:00.000Z

The Ed Techie: Celebrity twitter doesn't matter:

"My beef with the celebritisation (that's not a word is it?) of Twitter is twofold: Firstly, I think if you're signing up for twitter to follow celebrities, you'll miss the point of it. A conversation with a celebrity is not a normal conversation. It is unequal, and this skews the conversation. But if that's what people want from their use of it, that's fine."

Totally agree with Martin (although thinking about it, our reaction isn't exactly 100% logical since there may well be other people I follow who I don't expect a reply from). It's something I've been mulling about for a while since the explosion of Twitter-celebs and the general oddness of seeing someone you 'know' (either solely online or a combination of online / face-to-face) sending messages to people you know they don't know. The internet has always felt like a pretty democratic place. I can't see you. You can't see me. Stripped of other cues we communicate only through the power of what we have or haven't got to say. But then, along comes a medium in which things start shifting - celebs on Twitter. I can see the attraction, in some ways of watching a celeb's life float by - they're supposed to be living a more interesting life than us, right? But why bother sending a reply to them when the odds of them actually replying are many thousands to one? Is it for the thrill that you're reaching into their world? For the pleasure of making contact with the otherwise uncontactable?

Comments on a blog invite conversation. Discussion forums invite conversation. Twitter invites conversation. It's not cyber-stalking made easy, is it? I generally follow people who have decided they want to follow me on Twitter. I don't mind following organisations who I'm interested in. I expect them to be broadcast only. I don't mind following people in the same field - at least following them is relevant to me. If I reply to them, they may or may not reply, but it doesn't really matter because professionally what I'm getting is kinda useful. Replying to a celebrity. Hmmm. That's a whole host of oddness right there that I don't really get.

Half-formed thoughts on this one only from me. I guess this was my long-winded way of expanding the question which pootles through my mind when I see an @StephenFry message from one of his quarter of a million followers and internally ask of them, 'why are you bothering?'

29 rantable tech phrases

2009-03-02T10:50:00.000Z

This article appeals to my inner ranter... take a look...

29 tech phrases you should be punched in the face for using | News | TechRadar UK:

"We're told that if you give a million monkeys a million typewriters, they'd create the works of Shakespeare - but what would you end up with if you threw a million typewriters at a monkey?

The internet shows us the answer: perfectly good phrases are replaced with rubbish, grown-ups talk like toddlers, and business bullshit is everywhere.

In an ideal world, anybody using these expressions would be punched in the face by their PC; for now, we'll have to make do with mocking them instead."

Have to say, they could have made that list 30 if they'd just included the word "FAIL". No, no and no.

PS For some reason I particularly hate items 23 and 26 and could rant about them for a fair while if so induced... ;o)

PPS I know I use too many emoticons. I'll have a stern word with myself in a minute. :o)

'Infantilising' - social networking under attack again

2009-02-25T19:56:00.000Z

Oh no... my Twaddle alarm has just gone off...

Facebook et al risk 'infantilising' the human mind | Media | guardian.co.uk:

"She also warned against 'a much more marked preference for the here-and-now, where the immediacy of an experience trumps any regard for the consequences. After all, whenever you play a computer game, you can always just play it again; everything you do is reversible. The emphasis is on the thrill of the moment, the buzz of rescuing the princess in the game. No care is given for the princess herself, for the content or for any long-term significance, because there is none. This type of activity, a disregard for consequence, can be compared with the thrill of compulsive gambling or compulsive eating."

Yes, of course, Lady Greenfield... game playing is despicable... the thrill of the moment. The lack of long term significance. And shocking when you consider that human beings haven't been playing games for hundreds and hundreds of years. Oh... ermmm... slight flaw in the argument...

She goes on to say...

"She said she feared "real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitised and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction."

Isn't that just a fabulous quote? Comparing real conversation with butchery. Fan-tas-tic!

Coupled with Twitter giving you cancer. Hasn't this just been a splendid news week for social technologies? If you're after a list of other 'interesting' things that'll give you cancer... take a look at this from the Daily Dust. :o)

Wordle your work

2009-02-25T14:05:00.004Z

I've been aware of Wordle as a tool for a while but have never wordled a piece of my own 'real' work before. It's actually really helpful! The following is the Wordle I created of my project proposal which is looking into the impact of tutor-provided scaffolding within online discussion on students' communication:It's a relief to see that the main themes I wanted to investigate appear strongly in the resulting Wordle. If you're after a tool to help you pick out key themes and issues or to double-check that your argument is staying tight and focused... Wordle's not bad little academic tool, huh?

Wonder how many academic uses of it are taking place right now? Will have to see if I can track a few down! V.useful!

Zotero moves cloud-wards

2009-02-24T09:49:00.001Z

Online Research: Zotero Moves Into the Cloud - ReadWriteWeb:

"Zotero, the popular open-source research and bibliography tool, just announced the latest version of its Firefox plugin (1.5b1), which now allows users to synchronize their databases between different machines, as well as a number of smaller updates that will make it even easier to create and curate bibliographies with Zotero.

Zotero also announced a new online component to its plugin, which, in conjunction with the new synchronization features, automatically creates an online backup of your database on Zotero.org."

Fantastic! This is a great little tool for academic research... and its move into the cloud builds in a layer of flexibility that other note-taking services such as those from EverNote and Zoho have been offering for a while. Will be giving this one a good bashing over the next few weeks... not least because I've got a lit review to write and any help is good help in my book!

Take a look at the full ReadWriteWeb article for more details on this 'un. My inner nerd is happy! :o)