Google+ Hangouts On Air for Education

Hangouts On Air enabled

Well, in the last few days, Google have been opening up the 'Hangouts On Air' facility within Google+.  What this means is that you now get the opportunity to stream your hangout live and have it recorded on YouTube - which is fantastic.

However... though I think Hangouts On Air for education could work well for sessions you want to be completely open - webinars are a prime example...  wherever you want your students to engage and discuss things in an honest, open - and sometimes vulnerable way... I'm not sure that the recording / streaming of a Hangout On Air outweighs the potential barrier that lack of privacy while the hangout is live would present.

Equally, it's also worth thinking about your institutional policy on the openness of your teaching? Does your institution allow you to broadcast to the rest of the world?  That's going to impact on this too... and is important to bear in mind!

Here are a few of the 'early days' pros and cons... am happy to be corrected / have others add things to this list.  It'll be interesting to see Hangouts On Air develop as a product and to see what Google prioritise...

Pros:

• Easy to use
• Free
• Readily available if you have Google Apps enabled for the campus
• Can stream live to YouTube and reach a global audience
• Can invite specific people to take part live - but have to do this ahead of going 'On Air'
• Can share apps within the hangout (as with normal hangouts)
• Recording made of the hangout which can be downloaded from YouTube
• Can control visibility of YouTube video after the event
• Can embed video within an institutional VLE
• Can create screencasts using a Google+ Hangout On Air - you don't need an audience to hang out
• Can edit the recording using YouTube's video editor - including annotation, closed captioning 
• Can take advantage of Creative Commons licensing within YouTube for the resulting video

Cons:

Copyright notice / participation agreement
on entering a Hangout On Air

• Cannot limit the audience on YouTube when streaming - it's either public or public
• There are extensions on Chrome which will allow people to 'find' your Hangout On Air easily too - and which further publicises your hangout and diminishes any privacy
• Cannot share resources for which you don't have permission / have the copyright
• Difficult to moderate comments on YouTube whilst running the session
• Because when it's live on YouTube it's public, random strangers can comment on your Hangout On Air
• Learners might be put off participating because of the public nature of the Hangout
• You can't kick someone out of a Hangout - only block them
• If the URL of the Hangout On Air is shared then anyone with the URL can join even if they weren't invited
• As the broadcaster, you have to take responsibility for others copyright infringements

Useful further resources:

More on Copyright in Hangouts On Air

Commons questions about Hangouts On Air

Hangouts On Air - Terms of Service

Final thought:

Hangout On Air live and public on a Google+ stream

I think that Google+ Hangouts which you can limit to very specific groups - circles and individuals (or even an institution) will be a more comfortable informal learning environment for now... unless Google allow a finer control of the live audience for Google+ Hangouts On Air.  The advantage of built in recording and integration with Google Apps sites really makes Hangouts On Air a very attractive teaching tool... but since part of learning is about admitting what you don't know and experiencing failure - I think that having a 'safe' environment in which that can take place is vital.  Google+ Hangouts On Air aren't that space at present while Google+ Hangouts can be.

It takes a brave person to learn in public.  It takes an *extremely* brave person to learn in front of a potentially global audience!

Technology in the classroom? Always a good thing?!

Getting out of the box:

"How to teach the so-called soft skills demanded of tomorrow's workforce - creativity, problem solving and the ability to work in teams - is a conundrum preoccupying educators. Once upon a time, schools prepared the workers of the future for the industrial age, according to leading British education expert Professor Stephen Heppell. Children sat in rows with the teacher at the front of the classroom. The teachers had all the answers; they were the sole purveyors of knowledge. Students absorbed what they were taught and regurgitated it in tests. After graduation, they worked in factories that mass-produced hubcaps or they joined the typing pool. Ingenuity was not particularly important. But while such schools may have worked in the 1950s, Heppell says the third millennium poses new challenges. The internet means children have access to more information than ever before. Teachers are no longer the font of all wisdom."

'via Blog this'

Just read this interesting article on a primary school in Australia which Microsoft have declared a 'mentor school' because of their use of technology.  On one level, it sounds fantastic.  All those kids engaged in their learning.  Brilliant.

But...

... I don't know - there's something about it that makes me feel rather uncomfortable. Too much of a 'good' thing? The quote 'Education extinguishes the skills that you actually need in life' might be true, but why do they feel that exposure to technology which will be hugely dated by the time those children enter their independent adult life is the solution, I'm not sure. Imagine if there had been the insistance that all learning for children in the early / mid 1980s was mediated through BBC Micros (and I know there was some, but the cost of the kit prevented it from being ubiquitous in the curriculum) - those weren't the skills that would have been useful now. Encouraging the skills of curiosity, a love of learning, the ability to reflect and challenge - those are surely key skills which haven't changed?  There is so much time for children to get to grips with technology - and so many different avenues in which they can.  But, instead of thinking about face-to-face social skills and how to nurture those, their faces are instead turned towards a screen of some sort.  They're going global before they even know that *they* exist as an individual in the world.

As soon as someone points to the iPad / [insert name of other hot shiny technology] to enable learners to become 21st Century citizens, I think how we would have laughed in the 1990s if someone from 1912 was declaring that they had found the key to being a 20th Century learner.

It isn't the thing, it's the thinking we should be focusing on.

RSS feeds from tagged items on Delicious

In the good old days, you used to see RSS feeds all over the place for Delicious.  The subscribe option was at the bottom of just about every page.  But then... they disappeared.  And all of that aggregating loveliness disappeared.  Yes, you still get an RSS feed for your personal Delicious bookmarks and that's easy to subscribe to - and of course you can subscribe to other people's RSS feeds too. However, one of the very nicest things about social bookmarking is... well... the social bit.  And subscribing to a particular tag from all users is just not easy at all.

I'll just go back a step and answer the question 'Why would you want to do that?' before I waffle my way into oblivion.  Well, subscribing to a tag rather than an individual is perfect if you have a team that's constantly finding useful resources on the web and they're all linked in some way - just ask them to tag them with whatever they want plus your unique tag and you can happily bring all of them together to share with others.  It doesn't matter who's saving it, you can bring it together with a unique tag.  For example, in the past I've used the tag 'NTUEDU' as a unique tag and asked anyone at Nottingham Trent University to tag resources they saved on Delicious with that tag.  What I could then do was say to other people 'this is what we're interested in, this is what we think are good resources about learning / technology' and get them to subscribe to that link or bring them into places like NetVibes.  Equally, you can use services like ifttt.com to tweet a link that's been saved to Delicious from any user - provided you have an RSS feed for it.  Or use something like Google Reader to find out if anyone's using a hashtag to save resources for a conference you're going to attend.

However, those RSS feeds for tags saved by multiple users disappeared from Delicious a year or so ago that makes trying to do the above things kinda frustrating!

But, I've just been tinkering about with setting up a new NetVibes page and wanted to share what items are being saved from me and others which relate to our work.  Easy.  Just aggregate the things people are saving with a unique tag.  Ah.  Problem.  The missing RSS feeds.

I tried to track them down.  I spent a while messing with feed43.com to create an RSS feed from my searching for the tag I wanted on Delicious.  And it worked.  But mangled my head en route with all those {%} doobries, extraction rules and the like.  And it just doesn't seem like an easy solution.  But it is one way around it.

However, after doing that, I did a bit more Googling to find out the back story to the missing RSS feeds and spotted this from someone else:

http://delicious.com/v2/rss/tag/web2.0

And the lightbulb moment happened. 

Just change that end bit - and there's your RSS feed.

http://delicious.com/v2/rss/tag/changethisbit

If the tag you want to aggregate is 'elearning', your RSS feed would be http://delicious.com/v2/rss/tag/elearning

With that little RSS feed you can then aggregate, auto-tweet, auto-save, easily share and really use some of the benefits of social bookmarking.

Oh, and if you prefer to use Diigo for your social bookmarking, then you can do that, but set up the 'Save to Delicious' function in Tools, and it'll automatically push your bookmarks, complete with tags, to Delicious.  To be honest, this is the option I do because I prefer Diigo, but have always like the RSS-ability of Delicious!

The final RSS treat I discovered on my RSS traipsing was a list of all the RSS Feeds for Yahoo services - I accept this is a little nerdy, but if you like your RSS and like squishing it together with other services / tools, then it's useful to know what else is readily out there.

And here endeth my geekish stuff for the week!

Google+ Circles in Plain English

Of all the things about Google+, one of the things that took me longest to get my head around was Circles.  They just didn't intuitively make sense to me.

However.  The penny has finally dropped.  So, if you're not sure about how a Google+ circle works... this is as simple an explanation as I can manage!

1. Circles are a way for you to organise people you're interested in and to restrict the audience for your posts
2. Putting someone in a circle allows you to follow their public posts

3. It does not mean that if you share something with the circle you've put them in, it'll appear in their stream
4. They can see what it is you shared if they happen to visit your profile
5. For it to appear in their stream, they'd have to have you in a circle too

6. Remember... a circle is not a lasso that you throw around someone else to yank them into a circled conversation!

And that's about it!  Circles have to be mutual for there to be conversation, otherwise all you're doing is following someone's public posts.

Ten ways to use Google+ in Education...

Google+ is a funny thing.  Just the other day, Google were saying that the service had over 170 million users with 100 million of those active in the previous month.  And yet, if you've thought you'd have a go yourself, it can feel eerily quiet.  Well, I've had that experience too and at first found it extremely off-putting.  Add into the mix a confusion between my personal Google account and the university Google Apps account I've got, well... let's just say it took me a while to get my head around it!

However, because I think that as learning technologists it's our job to see the potential in things and to explore them fairly and fully - I persisted.  And I have to say that I'm glad I have.  So, I thought it would be helpful for me to share ten of the ways I've used Google+ which have helped me to find a role for it in the portfolio of online tools I currently work with.

1.  Sharing curated content with comment

Link shared with comment on Google+

One of the advantages (or disadvantages, depending on your perspective) of Google+ is that you can't auto-publish content to it.  This means that rather than feeling spammed you know that every item involved someone thinking about the way it was shared - and that's a good thing.  Because there's theoretically no limit to the number of characters (although I believe it's around 100,000) people can use to comment on a link, it means that you can get the context of whatever's been shared and it can help open up items for further discussion and sharing.  Overall, it boosts the quality of what's there and means that dipping into Google+ is more likely to pull up something useful.

2.  Sharing with a very specific audience

Photos of our new offices, shared only with the team

While it's easy to send out an email to multiple recipients, it's very easy to share with specific groups in Google+.  You just create a circle with those people in it, and then whenever you want to share something with them, you chose that circle as the audience.  It means it goes only to them and for things like shared images / video, you don't open them up to the world or weigh down someone's inbox.  For example, when I took some photos of our new offices, I knew only my team would be interested - so I uploaded the photos, shared it with my 'Learning Technologies Team' circle - provided they had me in a circle, it would appear on their Google+ stream.

3.  Carrying out asynchronous interviews online

Interview via Google+ with David Read, April 2012

There are lots of ways of interviewing someone.  In person.  On the phone.  Via Skype.  Via email.  But what about Google+ too?  I've recently done an interview with David Read - one of our teachers from the English Language Teaching Centre at the University of Sheffield - on his experience of being at the Google Teachers Academy UK.  And since he was away from the university and I was working from home, but neither of us around at the same time, that left us with my emailing a list of questions to him.  Or... using Google+.  So, I posted a message on Google+ with just David as the audience (you can share with individuals as well as with circles / making things public)... and away we went.  Easy.  Like chat but asynchronous.  If we had wanted to chat 'face-to-face', then starting a hangout from the post would have been just a single click away.

Starting a hangout from the original interview post

There are lots of other ways that using circles and Google+ posts could be used - especially for small groups.  If you were wanting pairs of students to work together, then getting them to use Google+ is an easy way of having them chat to one another - and keep their work private too.

4.  Setting up a Google+ page for an interest group

The Learning Technologies at the University of
Sheffield Google+ page, April 2012

Whether this is for a class project or for a team - setting up a Google+ page is like creating yourself a mini web presence in just a couple of clicks.  You can have Hangouts with 9 other people, you can share links and ideas, photos, videos - but unlike an ordinary web space, you get the ability to control what content goes to which audience with the use of circles.  You can have multiple people manage the page too, so as with the Learning Technologies at the University of Sheffield Google+ page which I recently set up, it's not only proving to be a great way to have additional places for people to chat about learning technologies - but having multiple managers means the responsibility for looking after the page doesn't fall entirely on one person's shoulders.

5.  Sharing content... and seeing where it went

Ripples for a public share on Google+

Ever wondered what happened to something you shared with others?  On Google+ if you share something and it gets re-shared by someone else - that's what's called a 'Ripple'.

Well, those ripples can go pretty far and wide - and it's fascinating to see how something went viral.  And even for things that got shared with only a few people, it's still great to see where things went.

6.  Creating a form in Google docs... then sharing it with a Google+ circle

Sharing a form with a Google+ circle from within Google docs

The integration of Google+ with other Google services is one of its strengths and if you've created a form in Google docs recently, you may have noticed a little Google+ share button at the top when you've been editing.  It not only means that you have another way to share / promote things like surveys, but that you can quite finely control the audience by using circles to control who it goes to.  For example, a staff survey going only to particular members of a team or a sign up sheet going to certain students.

7.  Taming the information flow

Drag the slider to allow more or less content from a particular circle
to appear in your Google+ stream

One of the problems with social media - Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr etc is that sometimes it can feel like the information flow is less of a flow and more of a torrent.  Well, not only is the curation on Google+ one built-in way of controlling that flow, but once you've sorted out your circles, you can then adjust how much content from people in that circle appears in your stream.  From everything to nothing.  That really helps to put some of the control back in your hands.

8.  Sharing connections with others

Sharing a circle with other people

Why would you want to do this?  Well, if you want to recommend other people to follow, then sharing your carefully curated circles (and that's the trick - make sure you think about how you're grouping people) can really help people make connections and find relevant and interesting people.  If you've got a circle for your team, group or class - then sharing it with a colleague is just a click away.  If you're setting up groups for an activity, create them as circles, then share the circles.  Simple!

9.  Collaborating with others

Creating a hangout based on a shared item in your Google+ stream

Hangouts are fantastic for collaborating.  Where 'hanging out' is the very Google+ specific hanging out.  So far I've used them to remotely participate in a meeting and to collaboratively author a document with a colleague (Google docs is well integrated into Hangouts).  The possibilities for small group work are vast and whether you want to create hangouts on the fly or off the back of particular discussion topics / at prearranged times, the fact that they're so well built into Google+ makes them very straightforward to use.

10.  Using unique hash-tags to aggregate content and discover related items

Searching for the #cicsltt hashtag on Google+

I'm a big fan of hash-tags for tagging and aggregating content - whether that's on Twitter or on services such as Diigo or Delicious, tagging is a powerful thing.  And on Google+ it's fantastic for tracking your content, not least because when someone re-shares something you've created (and tagged), they can't edit that content and the tag travels with it - which again, means that you can find what's happening to your resources.  You do that by searching for the hash-tagged items - and then save those searches for future reference.  If you're working on a project and want to bring together items from multiple sources, getting people to use a unique hash-tag is the way to go.  We use the hash-tag #cicsltt (CiCS Learning Technologies Team) for our Google+ posts - but I also tag things with #elearning or #edtech in case other people are searching for those terms - it means our content is more likely to be discovered.

So, there you go.  Ten ways of using Google+ in education.  How are you using it?  Have you got to grips with it yet?

Sarah

What makes a good learning technologist?

I was pondering this question just the other day.  I'm involved in the professional development of learning technologists as part of some of the work I do and over the years I've worked with plenty of them who've zinged with knowledge, enthusiasm and understanding.  What makes the difference?  What makes a learning technologist stand out as being a really 'good' learning technologist?

Some of it is wrapped up in how you define the role of a learning technologist at all.  Just because someone has the job title of 'Learning Technologist' doesn't mean they are one, just as someone who is a Librarian or a Lecturer isn't automatically *not* a learning technologist because they lack that place holder on their CV.  If you think that a learning technologist is someone who can bridge the gap between learning and technology, can translate between the two fields, can spot opportunities and help make change happen within teaching practices and importantly, understands the context of learning in which they're placed... well... there are some key attributes that people who excel in this area seem to possess.

First of all they're...

Curious
One of the biggest and best tricks a learning technologist pulls off is to go around with an open mindset.  And one that actively *wants* to find out new things and to learn to do new stuff.  That spirit of curiosity permeates their working life.  They need to find answers.  They want to see how things work.  They ask questions when things don't go as expected.  A good learning technologist always comes with a good dollop of curiosity.  They're also...

Playful
Great learning technologists tend to be playful people.  I don't mean this is the sense of a session down the local activity centre or adventure playground.  But, they know that you don't just learn things first off.  It takes a bit of play (and failure and a fair few mistakes) to explore and find out what something and someone can do.  The very best learning technologists I know don't restrict their work to the working arena.  Their 'play' leaks into everything they do.  If they find something interesting to do with learning or technology out of hours, they'll play.  They can't stop themselves.  They just don't clock off because why would you clock off completely from something which was inherently fun? And that leads into the next attribute because you'll also find that they're...

Connected
If you're a learning technologist and you know how to make connections between ideas, people, things and beyond - I'm betting you're good at your job.  Ideas aren't picked up in isolation, instead, connections are made and boundaries become elastic and movable.   An ability to look inwards and outwards, to shape your perspective by bouncing ideas off others, to be open to finding out what else is going on through the myriad of connections you've made.  Working openly and collaboratively is the norm.  The people I know in this field who stand out - well, this is a common trait for them - as is the fact that they're...

Proactive
Here's something.  I bet if you care about what you do in your work it isn't enough to be passive.  Sometimes you have to create opportunities, talk to people you haven't talked to before, listen and understand - and keep on keeping on even when the initial answer is 'no'.  If something sounds interesting, then great learning technologists will find a way to make time to look into it.  Excuses aren't good enough because trying to make learning brilliant is too important for that. This means that they're spotting trends and perservering with a new technology or approach rather than dismissing things because they're 'just not that kind of person'.  Their proactivity makes a huge difference as does the fact that they're...

Passionate
The best moments I've ever had in education have been when I've been talking to someone for whom passion is like electricity flowing through their body and sparking out in conversation or presentation.  Passionate people create enthusiasm.  They care.  They inspire.  They're not ashamed to tell you they love doing something.  Or that something is fantastic.  The best learning technologists I know make me want to explore and do more than I'm already doing. And this passion for their field means that they're also...

Learners
This is the really big biggie of them all.  If you're bridging the gap between learning and technology, academia and the technical... you have to be able to talk the language of your context.  And it never stops needing to be learned and refined.  Let's face it, you can't *not* do your research when you're working with people who are professional researchers.  You can't do things in a sloppy fashion when you're working with those who have a keen eye for detail.  You need to build evidence and underpin what you're saying with solid foundations.  You need to share ideas.  You need to understand.  You need to analyse.  And you need to know there is no end point.  To be a brilliant learning technologist you are forever a learner.  And you accept it.

It's funny.  The best learning technologists aren't all about the technology.  They're not all about the pedagogy either.  They walk the line between the two and care about what they do and what they *could* do as well.  And if you come across a really good learning technologist - talk to them.  They'll fire you up so that you'll believe you could do anything with your teaching!

All that's good with Google+

I admit it, I struggled to get my head around Google+.  I just couldn't quite see where it fitted between Twitter and Facebook.  It didn't seem to be one thing or another and I found the stream of posts ranged between sparse and baffling.  However, I've been really trying to explore its use and it's gradually, slowly starting to make sense.

So, what is Google+ actually good for?

1.  Sharing resources for comment by others
This takes it beyond Twitter.  Whereas on Twitter I can share a link and perhaps a couple or so words of comment.  That link may or may not have some comment made on it, but following the conversation / having multiple participants in a conversation on the link quickly gets confusing.  On Google+ the opportunity to share and discuss is far more contained and easy to follow.  It's a very clean environment with no distracting ads or intrusive elements of Facebook - it makes Facebook look like MySpace.
2.  Discovering quality resources
On Twitter, I have to admit, I do a fair bit of automatic tweeting - whether that's new blog posts from this blog, my photo journal or the work blog I contribute to - there isn't always the greatest amount of thought behind my Tweeting.  I share resources with others from apps such as Zite or articles I think people might like, but in terms of bringing things together for in depth discussion and consideration - Twitter just isn't like that.  Google+, on the other hand, doesn't allow you to auto-post content.  Every bit has to be selected and the amount you can write is, apparently unlimited (or approx 100,000 characters if other sources are to be believe) - which means that Google+ feels more like a mini-blog than a microblog.  The curation is its strength.
3.  Getting site traffic
I know this sounds rather cynical as an advantage - but looking at the Google Analytics for a couple of sites, I can see that for every 10 visitors coming via Twitter, 7 are coming from Google+.  As an additional source of traffic, this is really handy.
4.  Sharing with very specific groups
If I just want to update a couple of people on what I'm doing, Google+ is brilliant for that with the use of circles to control audience.  Sharing photos with just a small group is far easier on Google+ than Flickr, Facebook and far less space hungry than a group email.
5.  Discovering how content has spread
Re-Tweeting on Twitter is fine for seeing where your link has gone, but if you get dropped from the tweets as the share goes wider, then you lose track of it.  Google+ Ripples let you see where all the public shares of your posts have gone and how they're linked.  This is interesting for your own content, but it's also fascinating to be able to see how other posts have gone viral, just by selecting the drop down arrow on any post that's been publicly shared and choosing 'View Ripples'.
6.  Sharing resources with other tools
I really like the fact that I can easily send a Google+ post to Evernote.  It sounds trivial, but you can't easily do this with Twitter and having an offline copy that I can think about and save for later is brilliant - especially if I'm trying to pull together a load of resources and ideas.  This pushes Google+ as yet another source of handy information.

What else has potential?
The thing that I haven't really played with very much yet but can see the advantages of are Google+ Hangouts - as a collaborative space for learning they are simple, flexible and potentially integrated for any educational institution using Google Apps.  Being able to share, collaborate on and discuss documents easily, use a sketchpad for collaborative diagramming, sharing your screen and being a good mobile environment - well, all strengths (though the screen sharing is not a great quality).  I also noticed yesterday that apps are coming to Google+ hangouts... and that really seems like a bit of a game changer in terms of collaboration.

Google+ pages also look like they could well have value in an educational context.  For bringing people together and working collaboratively / communicating with a wider audience they look great.  However, not having a critical mass of interested people to experiment with this feature has meant that I haven't explored it to the extent I'd like... but am on the look out for interesting uses.

What are the niggles?
The one thing I still haven't got my head round is managing multiple identities.  I have a Google Apps account through work.  I have my own  Google+ account through gmail.  Working out which one to use and which one to invest time in building a network / connections has been difficult.  I don't think that Google handles the complexity of online identity well and the lack of advice on this one is a real barrier.  For me, my work G+ account tends to be more for stuff I want to draw people's attention to internally, my personal account is for reaching my wider network.  I use slightly different photos with 'my work account' and 'my personal account' as part of the photos to help me differentiate, but mistakenly posting items to the wrong G+ account is a source of frustration.  From experience, I'd advise against including your alternative identities in your circles, i.e. your work G+ account in your personal G+ circles and vice versa, because seeing multiple instances of content you've shared gets extremely confusing.

Not being able to select a default Google+ account is also irritating.  When I log in to my work email (we use Google Apps), it then means that if I +1 anything it goes to my work Google+ account and I don't get to switch accounts.  Yes, you can switch between accounts at other points - but even then, logging in and out of accounts is frustrating and I'd far rather set a default which would 'stick' than have to remember that the default account is the first one I've logged in to.

Generally, it's not quite as intuitive as it might be.  Getting rid of the 'what's hot' content was a relief, but it sure wasn't easy to find!  Understanding how circles work is kinda confusing!  You always have this nagging suspicion that you may not be seeing what others are seeing because you're not in the circle they've shared something with.  It's hard to know what you're missing when you just can't see it - and for people who are yet to build up a network or find a purpose, the sheer emptiness of Google+ can be a real turn-off.  If you're already active on Google+ and have got some circles set up which you think would be of interest to other people, then share them. It'll help build up other people's networks which in turn will help engage them in using Google+.

Sell it to me then...
If you're after a tool that provides a nice clean environment where you can connect with others to share and comment on resources, to follow tags and discover ideas, to work collaboratively - synchronously or asynchronously, to fit nicely into a professional context... then there's a lot to be said for Google+.  It could even be the personal learning environment for those who don't want to collect together a bag of separate tools and technologies.

And if you'd asked me about it 6 months ago, I'd not have been able to say that.  Stick with it, it'll grow on you!

Google+ Hangouts Get Apps

Nerdy things to get you excited...

Spotted this bit of news about Google+ today.  Oh the possibilities for learning, collaborating and sharing...

Google+ Hangouts Get Apps, Including SlideShare and Diagram Tools: "After launching a Hangout, look for an "Apps" button at the top of your screen (and don't worry if you don't see it today or tomorrow—it is, like all things Google, "rolling out"). Click it, and you can choose to add another layer to your Hangout. One of the neatest tools is Cacoo, a free diagram/flowchart tool we've previously covered in its webapp form. As a Hangout tool, though, you can hear tips and approvals from your small crowd as you piece together your inter-connected charts. There's also a SlideShare app, so you can pull in presentations on the popular sharing site to show to the crowd. You could previously show Google Docs Presentations in a "Hangout with Extras," but SlideShare is a good, popular option to have handy."

This is making me think that in terms of a personalised learning environment... Google+ is starting to shape up...

Ronseal sites for educators

This is my little collection of Ronseal sites - sites that do exactly what you want, just when you want them to.  It's hard to know how to categorise the following other than they're 'sites that once you know about them you'll find them pretty darned useful even if you didn't realise you needed them'.  And they're especially useful for educators because part of the battle of working online / blending face-to-face with online is trying to manage your time, so anything that can help make the online bit easier is all good by me.  So, here they are.  My top five Ronseal sites:

1.  http://ifttt.com
I've gone on about this before but it's a brilliantly simple idea - If this then that.  You create recipes from tasks which are associated with services - the recipes basically trigger things to happen automatically.  For example, when a new blog post occurs here, create a note in Evernote there.  When I favourite a tweet here, create a bookmark in Diigo there.  There are so many combinations and 'recipes' other people have created before which you can use / adapt yourself to get you started.  Definitely one of those 'didn't realise that would do what I wanted' sites.

2.  http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
Down for everyone or just me - I barely need to explain this one.  If you want to use a site and it doesn't appear when you go to visit it, it can be extremely frustrating.  That's where this site comes in.  Just enter the address and you'll know straight away if the problem is yours or not.  Very handy to know about.

3.  http://www.moreofit.com/
More of it is a hidden gem - I only discovered it recently but there are plenty of uses for it.  For example, the classic of a particular website or service being blocked (YouTube is frequently victim of the web filter police within education) is frustrating, but all you need to do is go to 'more of it' and enter the name of the site you're wanting to find similar sites to, and it'll suggest some.  Great simple idea.

4.  http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics are absolutely fantastic - and free.  The reason they're so useful is that once you've installed the simple little tracking code you get access to a whole load of stats about how your content is being used.  If you've created a wiki or a blog for use with your students, then knowing how and when they're accessing it / knowing what they're looking at and how long for can give you great immediate feedback and food for thought with designing your content.  Don't be put off by the need to install a tracking code - it's straightforward and with things like Google Sites or Blogger, it's just a copy and paste exercise and you're away.

5.  http://alternativeto.net/
Very like 'more of it', but this time with applications / software.  You can choose free, open source, commercial alternatives to just about anything you can think of.  Again, very handy for the educator who might not have the biggest budget when it comes to getting software and needs to know what options are out there.

Stabilisers vs. balance bike...

I had a thought this morning... and it came off the back of a conversation about my kids learning to ride their bikes.  With my daughter, we dutifully bought a bike with stabilisers - because that's what you did. She would pedal furiously to get herself going - backwards.  And go nowhere very fast.  When she did get herself going, if the road was at all bumpy, she would wobble and scare herself and stop.  Or, the stabilisers would form a stubborn bridge, suspending the wheel in the middle so that it could gain no friction to get her moving.  Going up hills was torture.  And the noise of the plasticky wheel on the ground.  Eurgh!

When my son was about three, rather than getting him a bike with stabilisers we bought him a balance bike.  How much fun did he have on that?  And the speed he got up to!  And the independence!  And the freedom... for him and us.  It was brilliant.  Rough surfaces he scooted over with ease.  Slopes were walked up and were simple.  And it was quiet.  We could go walks with the children and they would whizz ahead on their bikes, scooping up the space ahead of them with gusto.  Co-incidentally, one of our friends had also bought my son a balance bike for his birthday, so we had two - which meant one each for the children and my daughter discovered how much fun riding could be as well.

One day, when he was four, we were walking around a lake with him on his scoot bike and my daughter, by now aged 6 and riding a 'proper' bike.  Out of curiosity I said to my son, 'do you fancy having a go on her bike?'.  'Yes', he said.  And we swapped the children over.  I held the saddle, he sat on it.  And started to pedal... and that was it.  He rode the rest of the way, pedalling happily and never ever fell off once.

My thought this morning was about the way people learn and how it relates to those two different approaches to supporting their learning.  The first, provided a rigid scaffold which is then removed.  The second, a far more authentic experience of bike riding - attain balance and experience, then move to pedals later.  Stabilisers present the bike as a given, and then add on the metal struts and wheels to support it.  A balance bike strips back the experience of learning a bike to the most important bits - getting your balance and feeling the freedom of riding.

I'm wondering whether scaffolding students' learning is the wrong approach.

I'm wondering whether we're approaching things by saying 'this is the whole and I want you to get there... I'll support you en route' rather than 'this is how it truly feels to be competent in this area, I'm going to light that fire of enjoyment which gets you to take it further'.

This really is just half a thought.  I just wanted to record it before it slipped away.  Does any of what I've written strike a chord with anyone?  Or even vaguely make sense?