Learning Technology Learning

21st Century Tools for Teaching and Learning: rules for practical/hands on teaching

2012-01-16T16:57:00.001Z

This post continues reflection on the learning design process I am currently engaged in for a session I run a couple of times a year and am running again on 7th Feb: 21st century tools for teaching and learning. In a previous post on my blog, A learning design process using social media: Brainstorming and Aggregating, I wrote about using a noticeboard tool and a bookmarking tool to help in the design process. I created a noticeboard representation of the existing session to help me reflect on where I was at and where I need to revisit the learning design:

21CT 01/12

(I'd advise you to right-click and open the above in a new tab/window)

Looking at this allowed me to see that there isn't enough practical components. I wanted more and, following a scoping exercise, I added a few bits:

21CLearning Session: 07/02/12

(I'd advise you to right-click and open the above in a new tab/window)
Teaching internet-based tools for teaching and learning in a practical way requires careful thought.

Here are some golden rules I follow:

Simple or no account creation - you can’t have participants spending 5 minutes creating an account. Email validation is a big no-no too. There is fine for real life personal use but if you want participants to try things out, it needs to seem easy. Always make the point that there are many examples of any tool type. Of course, it needs to be free, see Choosing social media/web 2.0 tools for use in teaching and learning for more on this.
Good usability - I try to teach tool types not specific websites. Therefore, I try and show a few different examples. For them to practice I choose the one with the best usability, the one with the lowest learning threshold so they can have a go as quickly as possible. Once you've done this you can share the pros and cons of the different services you have identified.
Learn the processes inside out - This is a logical point but an important one (as are the others really). Teach them the basic usability by doing it yourself and float and help whilst they play with it. It's vital that each click is explained, mistrust of new online tools is quick to take hold so it needs to appear as easy as you can make it. With their personal ICT skills you will get to know who to concentrate on, but in the beginning don't assume anything. This is biggest problem people have with any hands on session involving computing.
Give them an authentic task - I've struggled with this in the past. The more you know about their context the better but there is a usually a generic type of activity you can think of so that they start inputting into a particular tool in an authentic way. One way of doing this is by requesting participants bring content to the session. However you do it, it's important to try and get participants to think about its use in their teaching context. The best way to do this is with them performing an authentic task using the tool.

A learning design process using social media: Brainstorming and Aggregating

2012-01-12T12:17:00.000Z

Here are some reflections on using an online noticeboard tool and a collaborative bookmarking tool as part of a learning design process.

21st century tools for teaching and learning is the title of session I run a couple of times a year and I'm running it again on 7th Feb. Its a workshop where teachers in London can come and learn about a various of internet-based tools which they use in their teaching. What I'm doing is aggregating what's out there, making sense of it and then articulating what I've learnt for those in schools. If you are reading this post then you are probably minded to go out and find these things for yourself. However, this session is aimed at the majority of educators who do not have the time or the inclination to do this. I last ran it in May, 2011 and reflected on it here. Its really interesting to reread past reflections on teaching so that I can remind myself what worked well and how it felt about it.

My long term plan for this session is to break it up into1 hour long chunks and offer them after work so that there are easier and more managable for busy professionals to get to. Anyway, that's for another time because this post is about the learning design process currently underway for the session. For a session like this it's imperative that you keep learning in a fast changing world. I'm not looking for cutting edge software instances of tool types that are quick and easy to use with clearly identifiable applications in education.

For the second time, I'm lucky to have Isobel Bowditch help me with the session. Firstly, we decided to examine what we've got and brainstorm ideas for the different tool type we wanted to cover and roughly how we are going to cover them. Looking at the previous session programme, we had some practical elements where we get participants to practice using an instance of a tool type. The others bit are demo or me talking. There is 4:30 hours to fill. I wanted to visually represent what we have so that we can make sense of it and easily play around the various components. I chose one of the noticeboard tools - http://www.linoit.com/ and added a stickie for each element. (Previously I've used http://www.wallwisher.com/ but I've found it to be unreliable on occasion. The hard part is judging the timing and I've estimated 15mins for practical and 5 or 10 mins for demo/presentation elements. We started by representing the existing programme.

21CT 01/12

Then, there was a scoping exercise.

For this we used various sites/documents which list or describe different tool types. This is pretty unscientific process which I described in the post Choosing social media/web 2.0 tools for use in teaching and learning. So that Isobel and I could aggregate what we found, I decided to use a collaborative bookmarking service. This way we could both add things as we found them and then review together. I used http://www.diigo.com/. My preferred bookmarking service has swung back and forth from http://www.delicious.com/ to http://www.diigo.com/ a couple of times. The current delicious is good because of its simplicity. Its a pure bookmarking tool and adding something is very easy. Diigo's usability isn't great but it does groups which is what you need for this sort of exercise. So I created this group:

http://groups.diigo.com/group/web20_learning

And we started adding things and putting our comments on their suitability for our session. This meant that when we got together for another brainstorming session we could review the diigo group, visit and discuss the different tools and edit the linoit noticeboard. This is the finished product. I've used yellow for practical bits and blue for demo/presentation bits.

21CLearning Session: 07/02/12

The next stage is to start fleshing out the design of the session. Some of the tools that make the final cut need to studied so that we can teach others about them. Also, in some instances we've identified that we want to do a practical bit on a particular tool type but have yet to identify the most suitable instance of that tool to use.

Using linoit and diigo combined with face-to-face meetings we moved smoothly through the brainstorming portion of the learning design process in an organised and efficient way. I can recommend both.

Social media for YOUR learning

2012-01-05T14:55:00.004Z

Happy new year.

We are learning all the time. Structuring and directing this learning doesn’t need to be confined to courses and formal education. For an individual learner it is possible to construct your own personal learning environment utlitising different online tools for different purposes. It’s always been possible but social media tools make it far, far easier than previously possible. I’ve conceptualised some of the possibilities in this mindmap:

I’ve divided it into two categories: Personal Learning and Collaborative Learning. However, because social media is inherently social there are opportunities for communication and collaboration throughout. It’s important to think about the type of learning activity a particular tool ‘affords’. I find affordance a useful concept when thinking about technology and learning. It basically means what a tool lends itself towards doing. Mindjumpers is all about articulating for companies what each social media tool affords for them in terms of marketing; for me, its learning. So, in the above mindmap, I don’t just say blogging, I say written reflection; because this is the part of the learning process that this social media tool affords.

I could sum up the personal learning side of the mindmap by saying:

You can use different social media tools to seek out knowledge/content, aggregate it so that you can store it/find it later in an organised fashion, reflect on this knowledge perhaps using visualisation tools and articulate it in writing.

This post continues thinking from http://tpreskett.blogspot.com/2011/10/in-post-social-media-supporting-teacher.html

The learning cycle and the power of asynchronous learning activities

2011-12-16T16:37:00.000Z

When grappling with the concept of learning I often talk about the importance of reflection. However, another key concept is asynchronicity (I'm not entirely sure that's a word). I've reflected on this previously within Asynchronous = Time and Space Learning. In that post I talked about how learning is more likely to occur when given time and space. I wanted to tease this out a bit more in relation to learning itself.

Learning is hard, really hard. It's a skill just to recognise when it's happening and cultivate it effectively. Often, the pain associated with it is viewed negatively. But the pain needs to gritted out because this is an important stage of the process. Marilyn Taylor characterised learning as a continuous process of disorientation, exploration, reorientation and equilibrium (see p53 of this). It's a cycle and the desired state is multiple loops through the cycle. For every stage the flexibility, time and space offered by asynchronous learning activities is preferable to a purely synchronous involvement from formal education. Of course, for synchronous learning events you always have the time afterwards to reflect. But if you have a formal learning experience where everything is synchronous, the asynchronous times the learner has alone are not facilitated, not supported and without structured communication or collaboration when they need it the most. You may be thinking "so what" but this is the point of formal education - to structure, facilitate and, in some senses, manufacture the learning. When you structure in asynchronous learning activities through the various guises of learning technology tools and carefully facilitate such activities the stages of Taylor's cycle are given the best chance of being rowed through by the learner. It's easy for learners to capsize in the first time they encourage the disorientation stage and they'll keep doing this every time they encounter it. Pretty soon they shy away from the mental states associated with the learning cycle.

I think this has contributed to the a vast mass of humans who don't really know how to learn properly. They grew up on a diet of synchronous learning and the difficult process of moving through the learning cycle wasn't supported in any way. The tragedy is they carry it through their adult life and have trouble becoming lifelong learners thus inhibiting their potential. I am still honing my learning skills but I keep trying and am able to support the process through various social media tool (like this one). BTW, learning overall is great. The "ah ha" moments are worth the pain. It's a bit like going for a run but that metaphor can wait for another posting.

A couple of asterisks to this post. There is, of course, a lot of literature out there on learning theories and models. For this post, I chose one that describe a process I recognise. Also, the statement: "there are vast mass of humans who don't really know how to learn" is based on anecdotal evidence. I think I have a somewhat informed decision but would welcome insights from others on this.

Choosing social media/web 2.0 tools for use in teaching and learning

2011-12-05T09:46:00.001Z

Originally published on ETC Journal.

Connecting formal education to social media/web 2.0 tools is a relatively new area. Educational institutions hope that by purchasing a virtual learning environment (VLE) all of their learning technology needs will be met. However, the world moves fast, and some educators find that our suite of communication and collaboration tools doesn’t cater to our teaching and learning needs as well as they might. Interestingly, VLEs are usually more suited to managing rather than learning (but that’s for another day). So there is an argument for looking outside of the VLE to expand and enhance our options for engaging students in learning activities using technology.

When it comes to thinking about social media or web 2.0 tools, we are looking at tapping into the affordances such tools have towards communication and collaboration. There’s a creative process involved in this, and it takes time, space and a certain amount of risk. However, it’s worth exploring if you want to keep developing as an educator and are always looking to improve the learner experience.

Usually the stimulus for such a process comes from seeing or hearing about a particular tools used in a particular context. In these instances, the process is focused and relatively easy. However, what if you want to explore for yourself what’s out there and make informed decisions on what tool to use?

Firstly, it’s useful to have in mind a set of criteria like the Sloan Consortium’s:

Access
Usability
Privacy & Intellectual Property
Workload & Time Management
Fun Factor

Visit the weblink above for details on this.

What I’ll do in this post is reflect on the stages I go through when scoping our internet-based tool for teaching and learning. I’ve split it into different stages of the process:

What type of tool?

If you have no idea what’s available then you’ll probably need to talk to someone in the know. This will give you a starting point. From here, it’s about finding what this tool does and how that can be applied to learning. So for a mindmap, it’s about creating mindmaps for brainstorming, visualisation, reflection. You’ll notice that it’s not one simple concept here and it rarely is. What’s important is that you know what you want to use it for, choose a tool which is suited to this task and can articulate this clearly to the learners. Confusion can occur with tools that could conceivable perform a large variety of functions. Any collaborative document tool like google docs could be used for a multitude of learning activities. As long as you are clear about how you want the learners to engage in a tool and why, you’ll be OK. Just make sure you are not shoe-horning an activity into a tool that isn’t well suited to it. This process is about finding the best fit. For example, I could conceivably use a group blog for an asynchronous discussion. However, for this learning activity, I might be better off using a message board, a discussion forum embedded within a VLE or social network.

Scoping out tools?

The next step is to choose the particular instance of the chosen tool. For this, you need to scope out the available tools. This is something I do a lot. It isn’t an exact science, and you have to be aware that there will always be good ones you’ll miss. In fact, the hard part is finding the time every few month to find new instances that spring up. Also, in the fickly web 2.0 world, tools come and go so you need to check for disappearances — you usually get warning on this.

I like to start with sites that already scope out tools for educational use — Free Technology for Teachers and Richard Byrne’s Favorite Tech Resources for Teachers. There’s also Robin Good’s Best Online Collaboration Tools 2011, but there’s a lot of rubbish there, and it can be difficult to load up and navigate. What I want to avoid is googling. Although it’s not to be ruled out, you want to start from an informed place rather than a random one.

So what should you be looking for?

Cost: The first thing I look for is cost. Commercial products are a no-no for me. I want to recommend free tools where I can. Sometimes minimal cost tools are OK, but anything more than a few pounds/dollars is ruled out. When it comes to internet-based tools for use in teaching and learning, starting off by paying lots of money isn’t necessary. You can often tell by the look and feel of a commercial website. They will have pricing or product as one of their main pages and will often be aimed at businesses. Most tools will have different levels based on cost. If the lowest level is a free version, then it’s worth investigating. This is especially true if there’s a free upgrade for education. Free tools aren’t necessarily amateur looking, but there will be more variety in their layout.

Trying it out: The next thing is to try it out. Good tools will allow you to try it out quickly and easily. Ideally, there will be a video explaining and showing the features on the front page. Watch this first. This way you can decide quickly whether to dismiss it or not. It’s vital that you record the process you go through when you first start testing something. Answer for yourself questions like:

How intuitive is it?
How many stages are there?
How easy are key functions?
Does it do what I want it to?
Is the language and terminology they use right for my context?
How much learning would it take for learners to work it out?
How does it look, and is this what I had in mind?

The hard part of this is judging whether your learners will have the same experience as you did when trying the tool. My advice would be: Don’t assume anything. A simple process that you were able to move through easily can derail an entire course if taken for granted. I know, I’ve seen it. I’m blessed with an inability to pick things up quickly. This gives me little scope for assuming too much. Providing a three minute screencast can go a long way. The quick learner can simply skip this.

Usually by playing around for a few minutes you get a feel for whether this could work for you. If you are scoping a few services, make a note of them (better still bookmark them) and move on. It’s common to not find anything you really want so you use the best you can find.

It’s worth mentioning the importance of account creation. You should always bear in mind that you want to keep additional logins for your students to a minimium. In this regard, tools embedded within the VLE will always win. However, you’ll be looking outside the VLE for tools that have no internal equivalent. Some tools can be used without creating an account, but most will require it. I’m talking here about communication/collaboration tools that require students to become actively engaged. If the tools are educationally inclined, they may allow the educator to create accounts for a group of students (e.g., Diigo).

For content creation tools like Prezi, only you will have to create an account and simply share/embed the results. You can usually get away with asking students to create one or two accounts on particular tools if the reasons and the benefits are clear. Anything more than that isn’t advisable. In general, account creation is getting easier with possible links to existing accounts you might have (like google). Be careful about linking with social networking accounts like facebook. I advise against it. It blurs the boundaries between the professional and the social. When it comes to using a social network service as the hub of activity, I prefer to go down the Ning or Grouply route rather than Facebook.

A process that needs investigating is the interaction between two instances of the same tool if this is what you want to realise in practice. Most of the time you can test this out yourself on the same machine, but you might need to use different machines or even involve another person. I am often employing different email accounts so that I can create different accounts on the same tool. I have one or two emails that only really get used for this purpose.

If you get to the stage where you think you’ve found something to use, you’ll need to try it out for real, hopefully with a friendly test audience. How it interacts with your VLE needs careful thought. A lot depends on how much you use your institution’s online environment currently and what its capabilities are. It might be as simple as providing a weblink with words around it. If you’re lucky, you can embed it somewhat. What’s important here is to think through what process/navigational support you need to provide. For a tool type that is new, you’ll need to clearly describe how you expect the learner will engage with the tool, with the other learners and to what end. So it’s more than explaining where to click. It’s about purpose and learning outcomes.

I hope this rambling rundown gives some insight into the process of scoping out and choosing an internet-based tool for teaching and learning. As always, I find it personally useful to articulate my thoughts in this way

Institutional E-learning Strategy

2011-11-18T16:49:00.001Z

I've been thinking about the basic strategy for an individual, group or institutional with their online learning design. Trying to draw together all the principles, processes and techniques I recommend. To plan strategically, think about the following.

Essentially, what you want to do is:

1. raise knowledge/understanding of the various online learning activity tools

2. educate staff about the design process itself

3. illuminate for them the strategic issues that need addressing in their context

And then:

4. work with them, guide them through a real learning design process.

What you often get is just the first of these points together with offers to help with the last point. The other points might be addressed in passing but often don't get enough attention. It's about educating before direct assistance in an actual process.
Now more on each of these points.

1. Knowledge of tools

This is knowing about how to use any online tool. For a learning technologist, you want to do more than just demonstrating navigation. You want to help them understand how they can be used, how they are commonly used, show working examples, decontextualised templates, pedagogical affordances etc.

2. The design process

Educating about the design process is about:

getting people to think in terms of time periods
making judgements of teaching hours and learning hours
ensuring understanding of asynchronous/synchronous and how to handle the different types of activities
promotion of a scaffolded learning process
Establish the basic building blocks of bespoke content and learning activities
For content, raise awareness of the various types of media they can use for content
For activities, explain what the tools are (this could include 1)
Explain how assessment can be linked.

3. Strategy

You want to think clearly about the rationale for altering your mode of delivery. Are you looking to open out into new markets? Are you looking to improve engagement through more flexible access? Whatever the rationale makes sure it’s clearly understood by everyone.
Articulate your timeframes both for the design process and the course itself
Identify and involve people that will teach on the course. Large-scale you need to organise a tutor training programme. This would involve raising knowledge/understanding of any online tools used and information about the learning design.
It’s at this point you broach contextual cans of worms that needs talking about so they don't become elephants in the room. You would work hard in advance to talk about ways through these issues. The difficulty in HE is opening cans of worms that often fall across departments or even between departmental responsibilities. Engaging with marketing, engaging with IT, engaging with registration, engaging with assessment/exam boards, broaching issues such as academics time and space to design learning. A consultation role would highlight potential areas for scrutiny.

4. Doing the design

This is best done in face-to-face meetings with the individual or group designing the course. Having the knowledge/understanding from 1-3 could mean they can undertake this alone but it's preferable for a learning technology type person to be present.

So how are 1-3 realised?

Face-to-face sessions

Common are events about particular tools, technologies explaining how, why and, if you're lucky, in what way you can use it. Now you need these. But be careful that this isn't all you do. Just doing this reinforces misconceptions about it just being about the technology. Sessions about 2 and 3 are desirable but rare (I do these). Pedagogically, I favour hands on workshop, and collaborate teaching involving activities and discussions.

Artifacts

It's common for institutional initiatives promoting blended/purely online learning to make stuff/make artifacts for people to engage with on their own: Stuff like advice documents, templates, case studies, videos, screencasts etc. I could talk about which ones I favour and the work I've done in this area. I worry about Institutional strategies which just do this and move on. Just as you would in an online learning activity, you need to support the process by helping staff one on one and in groups engage with any artifacts created. This is to help them contextualise the artifact. Without this process they are meaningless.

In an ideal world you would have an:

All emcompassing face-to-face event

If you're lucky, you can get design teams in a room at the same time with time and space to first learn and then to practice or actually do their own learning design. Effective strategies from the research include Leicester's carpe diem initiative which involved having a captive audience for multiple days. Essentially, this allows you to take people through a learning journey from start to finish then do so on this subject. Within such events you could engage in a variety of teaching methods to iteratively teach or facilitate the learning of the 3 main points. You could introduce and facilitate engagement with any artifacts you've created. All this before guiding teams of people of people through a design process whilst the learning is still fresh in their memories.

Finally a point about motivation. A lot depends on the backing of the senior management. Not just hollow words, but financial commitment and resources. It's difficult to engage the majority of academics in blended/distance learning in their teaching and learning help of this kind would show that they are putting their money where their mouth is. It’s also important to utilize the trailblazers, peers who can show what they are doing and give validity to what’s new to others.

The difference between asynchronous and synchronous learning activities

2011-11-14T21:21:00.001Z

A few points on this subject as I return from holiday.

Synchronous is what we areused to, it's what learners know and expect. For learners with ahistory of success in the formal education system, it works justfine. To articulate how asynchronous learning activities can work well, you need to highlight the breathing spacesuch activities afford the learner when gathering their thoughtsbefore they express themselves. Asynchronous is about time periods lasting days not hours. This could be exemplified usingonline discussion where you are engaging with the content and otherparticipants. Through a dialogue, the learner's views are challenged and their ownviews get refined. This is learning and learning is hard. For me, an asynchronous context gives this process more chanceof success. This is because the learner can engage in an iterative processof thinking, articulating (usually through writing text) andrefining their views. Thinking about a journal, blog type ofasynchronous tool, you have more engagement with thecontent/own experiences than other participants.

It's important whenthinking about asynchronous/synchronous learning activities to acknowledge the importanceof being comfortable in the mode of learning the learner's findthemselves in. Of course, I am well disposed and well used tolearning asynchronous online. Many are not for various reasons. Whatever the reason, good practice involves process/navigationsupport where process support means how a learner should engage with the activity. You could also call this pedagogical support -how to engage pedagogically in what is usually a collaborative ethos. In a sweep of research I did earlier this year, a theme that camethrough strongly was the importance of learning how to learn. Online, its a misconception that the technology is the main stumblingblock. This is wrong, it's the collaborative pedagogical designlearners can't handle. This is because they don't know how to learnthis way as they are not used to it.

Social Media: Personal Learning: Practical guidance on how to do this - Planning/Brainstorming a session idea

2011-10-27T15:59:00.000+01:00

In the post Social Media Supporting teacher CPD - 2 I talked about an idea for a session designed to give educators practical guidance on how to use social media for their learning. It would sit alongside 21st century tools for teaching and learning which I run about internet-based tools for use in teaching and learning. The rationale is that if educators start using social media for themselves and find value in this process they will naturally start thinking about how to use it within their teaching. It's a logical train of thought. It's difficult for educators to use tools in their teaching which have no relation to everyday practice. Part of this is to do with the dominance of sterile VLE features which look like they belong in 1995. But it's more about the concept of communicating in a fashion alien to them.

I've fleshed this out a bit more in the above mindmap and divided it into personal and collaborative. The key with this type of session is making sense of these tools, stating clearly what they offer in their context and talking about it in types of activity rather than tool names. The aim is to reach those who don't have a clue, don't know where to start. The great mass of educators who are left behind and annoyed that no one is telling how to make sense of it all in easy to understand terms. Papers like tweeting for teachers won't have an impact without sustained initiatives of this type. I guess I'm trying to fill this gap albeit in a very small way.
Under personal I've got:

Aggregation
• Knowledge seeking - micro-blog searching, browsing, slideshare - this is about the process of finding relevant information. Once you have your twitter people nicely followed and RSS feeds set up, it's just a matter of tweaking. However, if you start from scratch it's difficult to know where to start. I'll have to think about how best to advice on this because learning technology information flies out and grabs you. Other subject matter might well be different. There'll be information here on browsing too.
• Knowledge storing - rss, twitter, social bookmarking - about storing the stuff you find by twitter following, rss and bookmarking. I could also talk about cloud storage here but this might not fit very well.

Sense-making/learning
• Note taking and highlighting - the various social media options for this activity which many would do by pen or word processing. So this would include tools like evernote, bounce, diigo, also I'll need to check out stand alone highligher tools. I used to use awesome highlighter but I'm sure there are better examples. I'm looking at website notetaking and dedicated notes tools like evernote which I use and like.
• Brainstorming - This one's easy - mindmapping tools principally but I could also do drawing tools and things like thoughtbox and other task management tools.
• Written Reflection - The culmination of everything for me is to blog and reflect.

I could take participants on a journey by creating an account in google and then proceed to create and practice using areas for all the aggregation and sense making areas. It might be that a half day session on the personal side of things would be enough for one learning experience.

However, if I wanted to go further and teach about collaborative learning in relationship to educator peer communication/collaboration, I would cover:

• Synchronous Discussion: chat tools like titanpad or sync.in
• Aynchronous Discussion: I'm not clear yet how this could run. I want to teach educators that, by engaging in discussion with peers they can learn lots. So it's about finding peer networks and having those discussions. More thinking to be done here on how best to teach this.
• Collaborative document/text creation: Wikis and tools like google docs. Combination tools like google hangout need to be investigated.
• Sharing: Sharing is one of those activities which don't seem valuable until you do it. So talking about the sharing ethos via twitter/slideshare/blogging with focus on twitter.
• Group creation: Covering the ability to create private social network for groups using tools like google sites, ning, grouply etc.

That's enough detail for talking about it to my colleagues (and specifically my boss). I would only need to prepare properly if it were to run. No doubt I'll reflect on it here if that's occurs.

Social Media Supporting teacher CPD - 3

2011-10-23T20:59:00.000+01:00

More on Tweeting for Teachers although it's more using it as a launchpad for my own reflections.

National and local policymakers should:

1. publish guidelines and support for teachers and leaders to help them use social
media in schools;
There are various social media strategies out there. The emphasis should be on the potential for teaching and learning. Most guidelines I've seen are about control and read like rules and regulations which put teachers off and fit with the "danger" ethos as its mantra. It's true that to write informed guidelines about potential for the various types of tools but it doesn't have to be detailed just give encouragement and a green light to this area. I drafted some guidelines myself which hopefully will be used by my institution in the future. I share them here for anyone to look at.

2. consider how they will begin to unfilter social media sites for use in schools;
Consider! Just do it. It highlights a contradiction in the way we educate. In formal education it's necessary to control communication - quiet in class, no chatting, pay attention. Social media is extra communication channels. So we control it. The problem is we need to use them for teaching and learning. Banning social media is like banning talking in schools. Sure you have to control inappropriate use but we cut off all that learning potential by banning it.

3. recognise and celebrate self-directed professional learning by teachers using
online tools, and the role of social media in this learning;
Building a culture where this is valued is important. There are lots out there but they are isolated and poorly known in the mainstream.

4. create a common online space where the whole education community can find each other;
This is a bit vague and I have visions of a controlled, unwielding space with poor usability if something is done at a national level. In the case study about Edubuzz, I was hoping for some information about how to do this for myself because it's this kind of purposeful initiative that I could see working for groups of schools.

5. ensure that all Initial Teacher Training courses demonstrate a strong focus on the use of social media tools for ongoing professional development.
Yes, make this law. Can't see this happening any time soon.

Social Media Supporting teacher CPD - 2

2011-10-23T19:30:00.000+01:00

This post continues discussing the newly released report Tweeting for teachers. They list 5 recommendations for school leaders and 5 for policy makers. My first thought is how many school leaders will read this? Probably very few unless they have a strategy for promoting it beyond a website. I'll discuss each recommendation which you can read about on p30-33:

1. School leaders should learn about and engage with the social platforms that their teachers, parents and pupils are using every day;
Yes, indeed. The idea that springs into my mind is that what we need to do is get teachers in general using social media for themselves. By using it for themselves ideas will spark about how they can use it in their teaching. Trying to teach using something alien to the rest of their lives isn't easy but this is what we are often asking them to do. Social media are ways of communicating, they are new communication channels. Ways of communicating SHOULD be of interest to us in education.
The logical next step for me is to try and conceive of a training event which caters for this need. This could be a sister session to my 21st century tools for teaching and learning session and would concentrate on how educators can use social media for themselves, in their own learning. This would also fit nicely with the sentiment of this report.
As a bullet point to this recommendation, there is the old chestnut of justifying them using these tools themselves to understand the kids' world. I remember saying this to National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) participants 10 years ago. It's true enough but many argue against it. Practicing what you preach applies and it all comes down to a human beings unwillingness to learn after a certain age. It's incredible how many resist it.

2. School leaders should use a social media tool as part of their communications with the school
community;
This would be a good way of establishing it's validity. The problem is that the only relationship much of social media has with formal education is to be banned, it's associated with negative things.
You have to stick your head above the paraphet to alter this.

3. validate and support their staff in using social media tools for ongoing professional development;
This is a positive strategic move which also give the mode validity for learning. This could start with one tool that some people have good experiences and understanding of within the school or institution.

4. turn online activity into offline actions, in order to harness the benefits of face-to-face interaction alongside those of online interaction;
This is about using technology within the classroom. Tablets will impact on this in the future. However, this is whole new area in itself. In the classroom or for homework there is scope for both but shouldn't be blurred together as both need carefully planned learning design.

5. implement robust systems for evaluating the impact of CPD on teacher effectiveness and student outcomes
No comment on this one.

The next post will consider the recommendations for policy makers.

Social media supporting teachers CPD

2011-10-23T15:37:00.000+01:00

A fews days ago I went to an interesting event promoting a new report published by the Pearson Centre for Policy and Learning here in London. It is called: Tweeting for teachers; how can social media support teacher professional development? I'm going to use it to reflect on the social media and education.

I'm going to give detailed analysis of the parts that interested me to help me reflect and articulate my thinking.

Overall, it's a useful and worthwhile read but it promises more than it delivers. The overall message is noble and it could act as a inspirational call-to-arms for educators to start investigating social media. I saw some of this at the event and I hope the message can reach out there. The recommendations are sounds although a little obvious. There are also some interesting case studies about initiatives I wasn't aware of. There is a deliberate link to teachers' CPD which is good and the review of research is interesting. However, there's a distinct lack of 'how to'. More on this later.

Firstly, the event I attended was well organised and free. Their #tweetingforteachers worked well as they had dedicated people looking after it. I ended up participating quite a lot as things occurred to me. The usefulness of micro-blogging to facilitate communicate in events cannot be disputed. It's a pity they didn't have the stream setup on the screen but there was a fair bit of interaction. It helped that I got a good 3G connection. Interestingly, most delegates didn't participate in this showing how far we have to go.

Next, the title - tweeting for teachers. I don't like this. It's catchy yes but it's a marketing phrase which is misleading as the overall scope of the report is social media. It's true that lots of the examples were about twitter but if the report wants to be about social media in general then it's not an appropriate title. Tweeting for teacher is a great title if you were to extrapolate the bits about twitter and add practical guidance on the processes involved in twitter.

Overall, it's a report that can only scratch the surface of this subject. Social media is a huge, huge area. In a 36 page report it's not going to happen. Also, the contexts with which it can be used a numerous. The case studies consist of 3 people that blog and tweet for their own learning, a local authority blogging facility that worked well, a video competition, #ukedchat and Teachmeet. Of these, #ukedchat and Teachmeet are the most inspirational. They are both established synchronous events which can be engaged in. The others are interesting but they would benefit from guidance on how to act if you're inspired to setup something similar. Also, where are the dynamic image creation and sharing tools, the video creation, use of audio, mindmapping tools, social bookmarking, multimedia posters, social networking/group sites etc. I worry about teachers will read this report and think that the case studies cover everything that's possible.

Finally for this post - categorisation. with some about self-directed learning and personal learning networks and others about sharing, reflective learning and still others about synchronous event, the report is crying out for careful categorisation so that content is made "meaningful to teachers and manageable within the context of teaching practice."(p20 of this report).

This is the massive gap we have in education with learning technologies. We have to make things easier for our teachers and academics. We need to show them how and in their context. Something like http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/ and http://www.freetech4teachers.com/ are more useful in this regard. There is a wealth of policy advice and a wealth of how to use tools advice but it's the middle ground of putting it in our context which is lacking. I believe that largely teachers can do this for themselves but only if we promote and facilitate it.

In my next post, I'll reflect on the key recommendations from this report.

Externalisation of pedagogic principles

2011-10-18T14:22:00.000+01:00

“The first step in redesign often entailed the externalisation of pedagogic principles which had previously been tacit."
This quote is from report on the PREEL (From Pedagogical Research to Embedded E-learning) project which ran at the Institute of Education a few years ago. It was one of those initiative which tried to help educators with their e-learning design. Interestingly, there were deliberate attempts to link research and practice through the promotion and incorporation of IOE's own e-learning research output. This post and the above quote is about educator knowledge of their own pedagogy, the way they teach.

The quote promotes the tactic of asking educators to verbalise how they are teaching a particular course. In articulating this out loud it helps clarify for themselves how they teach. We are not talking learning theory here just how they do things. For some how a session is structured and taught may have evolved over the years. A particular educator may have a natural default pedagogical stance and the reasons why are not clear even to themselves.

I've talked in the past about how some educators don't have an understanding of their own pedagogy stance or indeed an understanding of pedagogical theory in general. I've speculated that this hinders moves to talk about internet-based communication/collaboration tools in terms of pedagogical affordance. The above tactic is instructive because it suggests that this doesn't really matter as the knowledge is there albeit latent and not externalised. It's your job (as a learning technologist) to bring this out of them. They know how they teach and why they do it. And you don't need to be judgmentally about this, you just need to listen and teach them how, and to what end, they could use what's available. What this also says is that it's not about lack of understanding, it's about lack of time and sometimes about lack of learning design. For the former, an educator doesn't have the time to think about their learning design. They are too busy. For the latter, they can't be bothered. This is rare but there's good and bad in every profession.

Asynchronous = Time and space learning

2011-09-30T15:19:00.000+01:00

A common topic of conversation amongst educators when discussing learning technologies is the time and space they need to find out about the various tools in the VLE and redesign their courses. It is no secret that in my context of HE time and space is sadly lacking. What they are saying is that they need time and space to learn. Online, many of the standard communication/collaboration tools available to educators are best used asynchronously. Asynchronous learning activities are time and space learning activities. Well designed courses using such tools to scaffold students' learning through a series of activities which give them time for reflection, time for critical thinking, time for articulation and clarification. The communication can, therefore, be more meaningful and of a better quality all round. Within the sessions, within any synchronous learning event, the quality of any dialogue is compromised by the immediacy of the responses. There can be little time for reflection in such an environment. Some cope better than others with this but overall it's just not as good. I should put potentially at the end of this of course as other factor impact on the learning. But, in essence, the potential for critical thinking and deep learning is better within asynchronous learning activities because...

Asynchronous = time and space learning.

Wordcloud of my blog

2011-09-26T10:21:00.000+01:00

I've updated the word cloud of this blog which you can see in the column on the right. It's interesting to see how things have changed over the last four months from:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3652594/My_blog

to

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4135003/Learning_Tchnology_Learning_blog_-_Tom_Preskett

Although things are largely the same, the biggest word is now learning whereas previously it was tools. There's also evidence of my reflections on activity templates and recent learning design teaching sessions I've been running.

One question I'm asking myself is:

Does this word cloud give a fair reflection of my role as an E-learning Manager?
(for the London Centre for Leadership in Learning (LCLL), Institute of Education (IOE))

The answer is probably not. I reflect on what's interested me from what I've been reading and what's been challenging me and been valuable learning experiences in my job. The mundane stuff doesn't get in there like the setting up of online course areas and the repeated process/navigation demonstrations. E-learning/learning technology jobs are about maintaining and setting up structures and systems and negotiating opportunities and events where you can show that you can offer much more than this. For me, I've done this by setting up sessions on Web 2.0 technologies and online learning design. Showing people how to use a particular VLE tools is the halfway house between the two extremes. It's ostensibly about process but you can shoehorn in pedagogy if you careful about it.

A VLE is like a gym membership - bought for show and used by a handful

2011-09-14T16:10:00.000+01:00

Breaking off from my previous train of thought....

A VLE is like a gym membership - bought for show and only properly used by a handful of hardy souls.

For a few years now the Virtual Learning Environment is a must have for any self-respecting educational institution. For HEs, it's a behemoth of a walled garden where integration with registration and administrative systems takes more time and effort than the teaching and learning integration it's supposed to be about. The use is patchy at best. It's like a gym membership. Both are purchased with the best intentions. There is recognition that change is necessary for proper and fulfilling use. However, this recognition is tacit at best and romantic at worst. Realisation and readily to change the culture of your organisation or the way you live you life is often lacking. When the turmoil of such change comes into view the hard decisions are shied away from and the status quo continues with minor aberrations.

This metaphor just about works, but what's the point of it. It's useful to think about how HE is approaching the use of learning technologies. Where this metaphor is useful is that it highlights how institutions like to play up their use of technology without really understanding or intending to enact the changes necessary to realise what they say is happening or will happen.

Aiding online learning design - more thoughts....

2011-09-05T14:29:00.001+01:00

I'm often engaged in the business of breaking things down for academic colleagues so that the process of designing an online learning course seems less challenging. Sometimes it feels like I'm going against the grain a bit and distilling the academic rigour of the e-learning research that I read and hear about. Actually, its more than a feeling, its a reality and a deliberate policy. I do this because its needed. Its needed for the great mass of educators not convinced by the virtues of teaching and learning using internet-based technology. The hard part is to distill and not water down or dumb down. The aim is for simplicity or to explain in simple terms that which can be seen as too complex and unwielding.

I've blogged previously about example activities templates which I've started using in face-to-face training to give educators a starting point when engaged in designing learning activities using the standard VLE communication/collaboration tools. These templates are as simple and succinct as I can possibly get them. This is one part of process.

Another stage would be to aid educators with a process that is commonly faced - using a face-to-face course design to design a purely online version of the same course. Here you have a starting point, you have content, you have knowledge and understanding of how you taught in each face-to-face session but how would you engage students in the same way online. This is where I will develop ideas. The concepts are simple - discuss face-to-face - discuss online. For those in the know this is simple. For those with no experience and don't really want to do it in the first place, I could support the process by describing the process. More to follow....

Example Learning Activities on VLE Communication/Collaboration tools

2011-08-31T15:06:00.000+01:00

Various initiative this year have led me to one point - the production of example learning activities using the main communication/collaboration tools available in the standard Virtual Learning Environment.

I've often had cause to reflect on the merits of the abstract vs the practical. I've been reading an interesting article by Laurillard and Ljubojevic (2011) called Evaluating learning designs through the formal representation of pedagogical patterns. They talk about it in terms of finding a middle ground between learning theory and learning design patterns. The former is seen as too abstract for practical use and the latter as too specific for widespread adaptation. They are engaged in the LDSE project which should be a very good, well thought through online tool to be used by educators when designing learning. This Learning Design Support Environment (which I have been privileged to see early versions of) is careful to make explicit reference to learning theory. It is a commendable attempt that establishing a link between research and practice. Such an endeavour is worth pursuing.

My output in this area is similiar but less sophisticated and less ambitious. What I have composed are short, succinct examples of learning activities using a particular communication/collaboration online tool. For example, re. an asynchronous discussion tool:

Simple Concept Discussion
What do you understand the term xxxx to mean? Please share your thoughts within this Discussion activity. This is principally a dialogue between you and your fellow students so please ensure you visit and contribute at least three times in the two week period.

& re. a blog tool:

Reflection on learning Blog activity 2
It’s time to consolidate your learning within this session. Reflect on this statement xxxx and then write down your thoughts in a blog entry. Your tutor will give you some feedback in the comments area of this entry at the end of the session.
This could be a recurring activity.

I have a few or these for discussion, blogs, wikis and e-portfolios. These are presented within the context of Salmon's 5 stage model as it's important to present a scaffolded learning experience. The aim is to give example wordings for a learning activities using the common tools encountered in standard VLEs. I have decontextualised them as far as I can. Previously, I had produced templates which included lots more detail. This has now been stripped back so that they are as simple as they can be.

Theory-laden time consuming resources are readily available and under utilised by the great mass of academic colleagues not well disposed towards learning technologies. I see a need for something that engaging them in a different way. In a way that make things as easy as possible for them. I haven't ignored theory but I have deliberately excluded references to it. It's a can of worms I want to keep shut unless specifically asked for (it rarely is). So I am basically saying - you can use this tool like this, and this and this. And I'm saying with an actual wording that can be utilized. This is less threatening and less challenging that framing it within a learning theory or a abstract statement about a type of activity use.

As yet, I have only had a chance to use them within a single face-to-face training day. It went well and I hope to do more this term. I may reflect further on this here.

Designing and Teaching an Online Course

2011-07-24T11:21:00.001+01:00

The title of this post is the title of a consultancy one-day session I ran on 22nd July. Once I'd convinced the client that such a course would be good for their trainers as they looked to develop blended and purely online learning, I relaxed thinking that running it would be simply about bringing everything together from my working practices. This is largely what I did but it was harder than I thought.

To suggest that you can teach everything there is to know about designing and teaching an online course is ridiculous. What to leave out and what to focus on is the challenge. I decided to present via prezi again so that I could create a coherent structure to help participant get a broad picture of events. Using images and much, much more zooming gave me a better quality outcome than previously but it there's still a way to go with my proper use of this canvas presentation tool. The fruits of my labour can be found here: http://prezi.com/4t29bt5r_s7m/designing-and-teaching-an-online-course/. I also did a powerpoint backup with all the same words. This was valuable on the day when I changed the order around somewhat. I've not achieved a neat and tidy framework yet which really justifies the use of prezi quite to the extent I wanted. However, I still think there was added value doing it this way.

The main sections were:

- Strategic decision to make before the design process
- Structural points
- Scaffolding frameworks
- Discussions
- Blogs
- Wikis
- E-portfolios
- Webinars
I organised the bulk of the day around the above 5 communication/collaboration tools. which are common to most VLEs. It wasn't about usability but providing them with example activity types which were context free. For each tool I composed about 12 and presented them on individual small bits of paper. I then had them marry up each activity to a phase in the scaffolding process of the Salmon model as a small group activity (I nearly went with Walmsley's Best practice model). I thought it useful to give them this as a launchpad for discussion or to provide some structure if discussion was struggling. It proved successful in that for the later ones they were less interested in marrying up with scaffolding phases and more interested in talking about the tool and it's possible uses. This is what I wanted and it worked well. I have already agreed with the client that next time we will have the bits of paper laminated and more neatly presented.

In addition to the above, I did a slot on e-facilitation where I presented some actual examples of facilitation in asynchronous discussion and got them to critique. I've done this before and it's worked well both times.

I had a few other subject up my sleeve but only got a chance to do the ones on mindmapping, social bookmarking and glogster. For the latter two it was simply mentioning and showing them. For mindmapping I gave out some guidance and had a discussion but not using the same format as the other tools discussed.

At the end, I had them have a go at structuring a session or course and give them a context they were all familiar with. None of the groups really stuck to this brief but there discussions were still on topic and there was some good good feedback.

Overall, I'm pleased with how things went. But there are bits to work on:

- I wanted a freeness to the discussions around each tool and this is what I got but I should perhaps think about more specific topics to feed back on. I might also abandon the marrying to Salmon stages and get them to do something else in their small groups.
- Everything needs more time. I felt like I was constantly rushing and that's even after I culled a couple of sections.
- Although this deliberately wasn't a hands on practice type workshop, I need to include some look and feel stuff on the tools which some won't have encountered before. For example, I assumed too much with wikis and ended up showing a couple of working examples when it became clear they didn't really know what a wiki was.

If you look at the prezi be aware that like powerpoint each phrase is a launchpad for me to talk around it, I wouldn't recommend presenting from this without knowing the meaning behind everything.

It's hard to make practical use of pedagogical theories

2011-06-29T15:05:00.000+01:00

We want our greater understanding of pedagogy to matter, to make a different. I've been looking closely at different pedagogical theories as part of my studies. It's interesting and challenging in equal measure. But at the back of my mind there's a so what factor which bugs me. In my role, there are very few situations where I can envisage making explicit use of pedagogical theory. Certainly, it's essential to have a good grasp but I want this knowledge to matter at a practical level.

So what are the issues?

The first point would be that they are abstract concepts. Of course they are, this is the point. But thinking about a practical learning design scenario there's a lot the educator has to do to make use of a theory. It's almost as if you read about a theory and then let it subconsciously effect your practice. Basically, the link between theory and practice has to be done by the educator which is a lot of work.

Which theory? Each theory makes it's own claims to get to the essence of learning and how best to teach/facilitate. For the educator, this means some form of value judgement about which to favour. Am I right about this? Certainly, this is how it feels as I read about them. I'm not saying this is bad but it makes it hard for the average educator to make decisions about their own teaching and learning.

Are they really so different? Of course, they are if you have the time to read and reread the important papers concerning each theory. Just reading the highlines can lead to confusing and a sense that some overlap with others. I found that ones with the word construct somewhere in the title take a while to nail as distinct entities.

Research around pedagogy is important and interesting. Long may it continue. But what we need are more conscious effort to make sense, make use and make them matter in the real world of education.

Answers on a postcard.... In my next post I will explore how I'm thinking about making use of the conversational framework to facilitate this process.

Public/Private sector e-learning: the differences

2011-06-02T16:03:00.000+01:00

There are different types of e-learning courses. I going to draw a divide between public and private sector courses purely to help my thinking. The divide is, of course, not that simple but it's a useful starting point for this post.

Appearance is the most obvious difference and this is down to money. The content of the private sector world is dynamically displayed, well designed and often involves bespoke video. The interaction is with the software and often restricted to the odd multiple choice instant feedback job. It's mostly about absorbing the content. It's more about web design than learning design. Pedagogy is firmly didactic and pedagogical thought seems lacking.

For the public sector, there is little money to sink into creating content to the same dynamic, multimedia standard. One area I am starting to explore is the easy creation of web content so that educators are less likely to whack on a powerpoint or word document. Making the content bespoke to a purely online course is an important step which many have not taken. The DIY nature means that it seems less valid to just put content up. They need to look good for this to work. Within education, there is unwritten understanding that learning activities are required regardless of this. However, I'm sure some would make do with just providing content if they could. Hiding behind making the content dynamic would make this easier.

Often, people bemoan the poor look and feel of VLEs. This is a fair point when compared to some of the communication/collaboration tools out there. It's not fair, however, if they are comparing to whizzy graphics of an expensively put together e-learning course. Pedagogically, such courses have less going for them even if they look the part.

This is not to suggest that HE online courses have good learning design across the board. Far from it, my job is try and facilitate this process and we have a way to go just to get everyone listening. However, there is conscious effort to make this happen. Private companies who get into e-learning steer clear of the asynchronous learning-type activities because they want to produce a produce and then sell that product. Ongoing costs are not on the agenda and facilitators cost.

A pertinent point to make is that this is largely what the customers want. Learners of all ages are used to being thrown content and then make to make sense of it themselves. They are not clamouring for a scaffolded learning process. They are not used to it and it seems too hard. All the better if the content they are given looks and sounds great.

Overall, there are massive differences with learning activities, software interaction, use of multimedia, look and feel and pedagogical design. My observation for this post is that private companies concentrate creating impressive looking, well designed software and where they produce courses themselves they often don't go much further with the pedagogy. Is this a bad thing? I guess it's just an observation.

Reflections on teaching about Web 2.0 tools

2011-05-19T09:54:00.001+01:00

It's been a criminal amount of time since I last blogged. The standard excuse of being busy applies but seems lame as I write it.

Today I want to reflect on some teaching I did on Tuesday, 17th May at the Institute of Education (IOE). It was called 21st century learning: using web 2.0 tools. I usually call this session Web2.0Learning but our marketing people didn't like that and renamed it. This was the first time I've been on the LCLL core events calendar so this was quite a bit deal. By the way, the LCLL - London Centre for Leadership in Learning - is where I work in the IOE.

Web2.0Learning is a day's training that I conceived a couple of years ago to teach educators about the various types of tools freely available 'out there' on the internet. I describe them as 'outside your VLE' tools. I've now delivered it 5 times mostly at the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I've always found it a rewarding experience. Part of the satisfaction comes from the fact that it's inspired and dictated by what I read, learn and reflect about in my personal learning on the blogosphere. It's more of a personal interest than a work chore. Also, it allows me to be creative as I seek to make sense of the different tools and software I encounter and distill it down into coherent messages.

There's lots to reflect on. Firstly, this is the programme I arrived at. When I compare to the last time I did it in July, 2010 there is a much that has changed:

9:30 - 9:45 Welcome and Introductions
9:45 - 10:10 Web 2.0 technologies in education
10:10 - 10:30 Our site/Group creation sites*
10:30 - 10:45 Group notice boards*
10:45 – 11:00 tea/coffee
11:00 – 11:10 Knowledge Building
11:10 – 11:35 Mind mapping*
11:35 – 11:40 Drawing tools*
11:40 – 11:50 Word Clouds*
11:50 – 12:00 Tool exploration*
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:10 Brainstorming
13:10 – 13:25 Which media?
13:25 – 13:45 Creating a narrative
13:45 – 14:00 Collaborative bookmarking*
14:00 – 14:10 Screencasting
14:10 – 14:15 Recording audio
14:15 – 14:30 Break
14:30 – 14:35 Creative commons and copyright
14:35 – 14:50 Blogs/discussions
14:50 – 15:10 Collaborative documents/wikis*
15:10 – 15:15 Selection criteria
15:15 – 15:30 Reflection and discussion

The timings seem precise and weren't kept to as we moved through things quicker than planned. It's difficult to judge but it was useful to plan in this way so I could be clear which tools I was covering and in what order. The * means that we did a hands on practice on an instance of that tool. The purpose was to give an overview of what a particular type of tool is for and how it could be used for teaching and learning. My broad plan from this time was to get more contextual examples of actual use and extract this information into templates which I could talk around. I wasn't able to do this extensively for every tool but there was still lots of ideas for educational use. It was really helpful this time to have assistance from a colleague, Isobel Bowditch. She did some valuable research into some of the tools as we made sense of what's out there and decided what's important.

The first reflection was that it went really well. A positive day with positive feedback - the best I've got so far. I wasn't sure about how school teachers would react to it. On reflection, it has more relevance in this context than in HE and FE as a lot of the more dynamic, creative and fun tools don't seem to appeal the older the context. One important structural point was that I house the weblinks and resources here:

http://web20learningmay2011.grouply.com/

We linked to each example from the site and there are extra links to explore after the day. It's good to have a hub of activity and it allows me to build a resource which I can use again. I've left it open so that they can share it with colleagues. My ethos of sharing knowledge comes from a belief that more good than bad comes from it. I had someone this morning request to use a prezi I've done which is gratifying. The success of the day meant that two more sessions have been pencilled in for the next academic year which means I'll get to update the session again.

The group was mostly ICT co-ordinators and classroom teachers. The ICT folk were really good participants as they sought to incorporate the tools into their thinking. But I'm pleased those less ICT minded found it useful. As I suspected some of the tools were familiar to some of the group but this turned out to be no problem as there was sufficient breadth and variety of topics. I think they liked being given context/explanation before being allowed to practice using a tool. The practice were carefully setup to minimise difficulties. I tried, where possible, not to endorse a particular service and explain why I had chosen what I'd chosen. Primarily I was going for tools which didn't require any account creation, was free to use and had good usability. for example, with mindmapping I chose bubbl.us. There are better mindmapping tools out there but they require money and an account to be created so to practice in a controlled environment they are not suitable. BTW, never run a session like this and have them create an account which needs to be validated from an email - it's chaos!

From these principles, I ran the day. I have the following observations about some of the tools:

- Answergarden is a tool where you can ask a question, share the website and get quick feedback in a fun, dynamic way. I found this tool at the last minute, it seems to fit into a bit about brainstorming or generating quick feedback in a fun way so I included it. They liked it a lot and someone discovered that you could create word clouds out of the answers which I hadn't spotted.

- wallwisher and linoit are online noticeboard tools which also hit the spot. They are good tools where account creation is optional. It seems that this kind of quick, interaction, simple and visually impressive tool is right for the schools context. This is unsurprising when you think about it but useful learning for me. I'm sure there is more out there.

- I was almost apologetic in my inclusion of drawing tool, tagging them onto the end of mindmapping bit very briefly. However, they liked this as well which could be linked to the previous point about quick, easy and interactive.

- Collaborative bookmarking was also a winner. I prefer diigo as the educational account allows for bespoke groups to be created and the teacher to create accounts. This is a tool that I will always champion is I think it is under used in education.

- Collaborative documents/wikis - I put these together as they are similar in spirit. For the activity I chose a synchronous collaborative document tool - http://sync.in/ which worked well. I was right to have this at the end as people had got to know eachother a little bit so were ok with the ability to edit others' words. I nearly did this using a wikispace wiki but I'm glad I didn't now.

- I was unsure about whether to dedicate time to allowing them to explore different web 2.0 tools from the sites I'd linked to which had loads of them categorised, e.g. Best Online Collaboration tools, 2011 and Free Technology for Teachers but this worked well and we ended up giving more time for this.

- Word clouds went down surprisingly well. I've not included these before for some reason. I think I thought everyone already knows about them but I was wrong. Their potential for teaching and learning is perhaps limited but the ease with which they can be created make them worth a look.

- Finally, the section I called Creation a narrative. This is the section that Isobel helped me research. I knew I wanted to do something around cartooning/comic strip software and photo/video mashup stuff. We talked at length about how these tools related and what their educational potential was. What we found was not much of a track record for educational use or overt marketing in this direction. However, I felt there was suffificent potential to include them. I couldn't fashion a hands on activity as none of the tools fitted the criteria so I just did demos. At the time, I thought that it wasn't going down very well but afterwards some of the primary people said that they would think about this. The session suffered a little by having weak examples to show but I'm still glad I did it. Have a look on the website down the bottom of the page to see the tools that I decided to demo along with brief descriptions. Zimmer Twins and Xtra Normal are my favourites.

- As an afterthought to the creating a narrative section, I talked about and showed a couple of examples of glogster - the multimedia poster tool. I need to give this a higher profile to as they really liked the look of this. I can see why as there a lot of potential for homework activities with this. I need to look into this more.

Aside from the tools, I need to think of ways to engender more discussion. The computer room setup didn't help but I could have done more in this regard.

The biggest development I need to work on is getting better knowledge and understanding of the schools context. This session has potential if I can give it more contextual relevance. I'm not sure how best to do this so I need to have a think.

Finally, let me give thanks to the ICT gods for having all the technology work for me.

Presentation on "Structuring an online course" and some prezi reflections

2011-04-08T14:42:00.000+01:00

Last week I taught a session (with a couple of colleagues) called Structuring an online course: guidance and example. Here I wanted to share my contribution to this session: a prezi presentation and talk about it. it's not embedding well so I'll just link to it - Structuring an onine course: Guidance and example - public version

What I've attempted to do is group together different sections of the process with a view to helping educators organise their thinking on this issue. The hard part of this is knowing what to leave out. I see this as a work in process because I hope to get clearer about the issues and the relationships as I get more experienced. The point of this practically focused framework is to help a Higher Education institution in 2011 - I work at the excellent Institute of Education. The point is that many academics need help with the basics. Basics that aren't well defined or universally agreed. By basics I mean the key decisions that need to be made; the main structural decisions to take. Some may disagree with the phrases used in the structure but the point is to give a framework from which to work. Of course, it needs context. I work with individuals to give this context. However, I'm interested in the academic staff who aren't banging down my door to have these conversations and are only at this particular session. It's something for them to take away. I want to make the maximium impact I can; an impact that cover the foundations of what they need to know. If this is all the time I get with them I don't waste time focusing on a small piece of the pie before they have tasted a bite or all the slices (not sure that works).

It's true that the pedagogy is only implicit in the presentation, if at all. In an ideal world the pedagogy is the starting point and the structure flows from there. My rationale for leaving this out is based on my experiences working with educators over the years. Rarely do they want to talk in the abstract and apply these abstract principles to their teaching. My best guess is that most educators have only a sense of their pedagogical tendencies but have a firm grasp on what types of activities they like using. So what I deem important for a first stab presentation like this are the types of activity available to them in their context. For this scenario, this meant outlining the main communication/collaboration tools available to people in my institution. A footnote to this is that pedagogy is complex and discussions around is are complicated and challenging. All this takes time, and this could feel a waste if there is only this one chance of communicating with them.

My concern with any teaching session is to avoid cul-de-sacs of discussion on issues of minor importance. Often such discussions focus on processes which hinder the success of teaching online or strategic and sometimes philosophical standpoints. This leads sessions and discussions down a slippery slope. By presenting something like this first, the chance of a focused discussion are much greater.

So the prezi provided has the following sections:

Before designing section - Basically, what I'm concerned with here is ensuring that you know why you are designing a purely online or blended learning course. Our context has a focus of converting from face-to-face but it applies to creating something from scratch. The why question is a whole area in itself which I won't dwell on here. The other noteworthy issue is whether you replace what you are currently doing with whatever you are designing now. This refers to replacing something purely online with something face-to-face. Most will not want to teach solely online, this is not what they signed up for when they embarked on this career! So duplication is the preferred way to go. I will probably rework this section. I think most of important issues are there but I'm not happy about the title and some of the wording.

Structural considerations - The prezi above is minus screenshots of example structures within our VLE. However, we have the key considerations. In reality these considerations are not decided upon before the actually activity/content design. It is an iterative process.

An online course needs - bespoke content, activities, readings This is the meat of the presentation and the focus is on the activities. The categories feel a bit simplistic but I think they work. What I'm keen to do is to make the point that uploading your powerpoint from a face-to-face lecture isn't good enough for bespoke content. You want specially created documents or multimedia at the very least. So I describe this area as bespoke content. Because we are HE, readings gets it's own area (the things in this bubble refer to our systems). For the activities bubbles, my split between asynchronous and synchronous was an easy design choice. They are such different beasts that we need to talk about them seperately. What I've outlined are the main tools available to us in our blackboard VLE. Moodlers out there will notice that moodle has more to offer. C'est la vie. I probably should have put e-portfolios in there however. What this model doesn't acknowledge is the relationship between the activities and the bespoke content. A blurring of the boundaries here would have got in the way of the message but this can come out when you talk.

Finally, some reflections on using prezi for this presentation. I did a few prezis a year ago but haven't done any since. My intention here was to present large structures and show relationships which could then be used to focus on individual elements. Doing it this way forces you to think hard about how the pieces fit together. When I started I didn't know what these structures would look like and, to be honest, I had hoped for better. However, it was a valuable exercise and I think it has a better look and feel using this tool. With powerpoint you can often get away with casually listing things as they come to mind and talk about them. BTW, if you just jump of one thing to the next without any big picture there's no point using prezi. What's frustrating about prezi is that when you decide to move a bubble and all it's contents, it's a fiddly job. There's supposed to be a multiple select option but I couldn't get this to work so I was forever dragging things around. Perhaps sketching things out on paper first is a good idea.

Anyway, I hope you find looking at the presentation and reading these reflections interesting. Presentations without the talking can only be so useful but hopefully you can get something from it. Feedback would be gratefully received.

What a learning technologist needs to be good at

2011-02-24T11:13:00.000Z

I've talked previously about the principle of offering practical advice. This is referring to the level of abstraction you employ when talking about the design of the learning experience. My gut feeling is that because researchers are often employed in Learning Technology positions the tendency is to more be too abstract. This is a completely anecdotal assertion (this blog gives me this kind of freedom of expression).

Aside from this, what are the qualities I need to possess to have the maximum positive impact? By positive I mean giving people a good understanding of key issues with regard to LTs allowing them to make informed decisions on their appropriate use. I will list some qualities:

Good communication/good teaching:
I'm realising more and more that's being a good communicator and teacher is priority number 1 for this job. I need to be able to communicate my message in a variety of fora and a variety of contexts. I need to be able to communicate well and where possible teach well so that I make maximium advantage of each opportunity. I've been a lot recently on what it means to give practical advice on LTs particular with regard to designing a whole course. I think an important principle is making order out of simple but disparate concepts and ideas. It's very common for discussion to flit around lots of different issues, so if you can give order, structure and context for all of this then that's is really useful. Often what you come up with sounds obvious. Don't worry about this, it's still useful. For example, colleagues at the Institute of Education have found it useful when I say think about:

- Start time/finish
- Aligning topic with time periods

And then for each topic, think about:
- What bespoke content you want
- What readings you want
- What learning activities you want

There's much, much more to think about but this is a good basis. Sounds like common sense but key points are easily overlooked and mashed together causing confusion.

Finding opportunities to spread the word
It is often about manufacturing situations where you have a captive audience, placing myself in environment where people will listen. Ideally, people come to something you have organised where they want your help and support. In an ideal world this is one-to-one tuition or group training sessions. However, these can be difficult to manufacture so other situations have to be sought. Working groups for sharing practice are a good idea. You can always slip in advice at strategic points.

Adapting your message to the audience
This is about not banging the drum too hard with the wrong audience, in the wrong context. Because technology can be an emotive issue with some, the context needs to be right before you think about delivering your message. Also, if educators come to learn about, say, a particular tool or technology you can also give some learning design advice within this to give it context.

Initiating and taking control of your own learning
This is probably the hardest part. Clearly it's a principle which could apply to any profession. For LTs, at a simple level, it's about staying on top of new software and environments and ensuring that you understand how to work tools before the edcuator gets to it. This is hard enough but then you add to it, trying to keep abreast of the latest thinking in research terms with regard to LTs. A third strand which I try and do is reading and reflecting on the latest thinking on LTs outside the academia. I am talking about the the blogosphere and the micro-blogosphere. This is hard and involves making time to read and share what you can. It's valuable because it makes you think outside your narrow world. With any job there are times when learning gets swamped by being too damn busy but it's worth the effort when you get a chance. Taking control of your own learning and ensuring that you keep abreast on all three fronts is hard and sometimes overwhelming. But I'm always glad when I do. In fact, this is one of things that keep me interested in my job. Being able to easily find information and opinion and turn this into knowledge by reflecting on it in light of my context.

It's interesting rating yourself against these criteria. I come out ok, but that's probably because I picked the criteria. Mind you, there lots of room for improvement.

Levels of abstraction - Practical vs pedagogy

2011-02-18T14:58:00.000Z

I've done a lot of work these past few months on helping academic colleagues who are thinking about converting their courses from face-to-face to be delivered through blended learning or purely online. This is unsurprising as this is a core component of my job! However, things have been pretty active recently as HE looks for additional modes of delivery to bring in more students and, by consequence, more money. Whatever the motivation, I'm happy.

As a result, there's been lots of learning that needs consolidating. Firstly, I had an interesting discussion the other day about the levels of abstraction. This is in terms of how abstract you discuss things with educators when helping them design an online course. I've always tends to try and grounds things in reality and talk in terms of practical components/examples/templates rather than pedagogical models. This is probably partly because its in my nature to do this but also because my experience is that this is what they want - or at least this is what I think they want. There are a number of reasons for this which I won't go into here. But getting the balance right on the scale of abstraction is a judgement call that a constant issue for any learning technologist. It's certainly important to be able to talk pedagogy if the need arise but it is the best starting point? I don't have the answers. My instincts and practice keep such dialogue in my back pocket. You might be thinking why not do both, why not do everything. Well, you need to be careful. Educators often approach you looking for clarity, looking for answers. Clarity is so, so important and I guess this is the heart of the matter. You have to choose what to say first and how to say it to give maximium benefit to the educator. This will be different for each person but common is the need to practical guidance on how a course could look online and what key decisions need to be made first. My next post will reflect upon the practical advice I've been championing in this post.

Looking outside the VLE is not a crime

2011-02-10T16:46:00.000Z

Note to self - must blog more.

It's good to reflect back on my thinking last year and how things have moved on. I've been reflecting on my Web 2.0 model. I still think it's a useful guide for making sense of what's out there and, although it could probably be refined, I don't think its worth the effort as the changes would be minor. I've said in the past that integration of internet based tools and Virtual Learning Environments will get better over time. The rate of this improvement is frustratingly slow. Our institution, the Institute of Education, uses blackboard. When it comes to integration with internet-based tool, it's not good. Moodle is much better and our potential switch to this VLE would be very welcome from this point of view.

The issue of going outside the VLE doesn’t fit well with formal education. The instinct of an educational institution is to cover its back with anything it uses. As a result, the rules comes first. For the few that want to use something “out there”, they are forced to justify this position against whatever criteria deemed appropriate. The result is that most will not bother. Why risk doing something wrong especially since there is no often nothing to counter balance these rules and regulations and no intensive to think outside the box. I’m talking about resources that portray web 2.0 tools in a good light and champion their potential for teaching and learning. Such resources would be difficult to keep up to date but its a worthwhile endevour. It falls under the category of “seeking to improve how we teach and learn”. Surely this is worth doing.

This issue is related to whether you are proactive, going out there and trying to display what’s positive about learning technologies; or whether you are reactive, giving advice and support when people want it. The norm is the latter whereas I think we should be doing more of the former. I can see the argument for adopting both positions and perhaps I am drawn to the stance that feels like marketing sometimes because it is a minority position. It should be pointed that often lack of resources dictates how proactive you can be with regards to learning technologies.

On the internet based tools front, future VLEs will certainly have to cater for more integration. I can see them acting as a hub for pulling together everything the educator and the learners want to use. However, this probably won’t happen any time soon.

The self-motivated learner

2011-01-04T08:53:00.000Z

I was struck by this headline in a mashable article - The internet empowers self-motivated learners. This is a good way of putting something that is blindingly obvious. But is it therefore not good for learners who are not so self-motivated? The internet is well suited to learners who are completely self-regulated, aggregating learning resources from a variety of sources, seeking out their own channels of support and collaboration. There has never been a better time to manage your own learning experience. However, where you have learners who are not motivated the management of the learning experience is done by someone else. In formal education this is always what happens. All learners have to be catered for and, even where the teacher wants to give free rein, its easier to set a strict agenda.

This is probably why there are so many tensions with online learning. For better or for worse learning is synonymous formal education in 2011 (happy new year) and with formal education more time is spent on managing the learning experience than anything else. This is the way it's always been online or offline. From the learners perspective I also believe that the habit of active learning is sorely lacking. Self-regulation and control is something closely guarded by educators. As a result, when given the opportunity to take control many don't know what to do. They neither want it or expect it. This is a rejection of the ethos of managing your own learning rather than a rejection of technology. Unfortunately, things are often interpreted incorrectly.

There's blended learning and there's blended learning!

2010-12-14T12:09:00.000Z

Wow, it's been ages since I blogged. Certainly, I've been busy (and ill) over the last few weeks but I need to keep in mind the value of this process.

Blended learning has lots of different definitions. In addition, there are the different balances struck between the face-to-face elements and the online elements. I've reflected previously (in Promoting Distance) about the different attitude with which students approach blended vs purely online learning. Here, I will examine how the structure of the course can have an impact on this.

I'll give you two scenarios in my higher education context:

1. The course begins with a face-to-face day or two - often the preferred term here is residential. The course is explained, the course begins, participant get to know eachother and bonds are formed. Importantly, the online environment is introduced with a hands on practice if necessary. More importantly, the educator can (and should) show commitment to facilitation of any communication/collaboration online activities. The rest of the course is taught online with perhaps another face-to-face event at the end of the course. So the only organised way students can interact or collaborate on the content is by engaging in the online activities.
2. The course consists of 8 face-to-face days that occur on a weekly basis. Between these days online activities are run. Each face-to-face session delivers the core content. The online activities build on this after each session or prepare them for a session.

There are various points to make about these two models of blended learning. Firstly, the latter is far more common. The reasons for this are wide-ranging but high up on this list is the fact that fundamental learning design issues are set up almost out of habit. Rooms are booked, sessions are numbered, this is how teaching happens. Afterwards, there is a vague notion and directive from some policy about e-learning. A Learning Technologist is consulted (sometimes) only for the functionality of a couple of interactive tools (usually the discussion board) and that box is ticked. As a result, even if the tutors are committed and diligent in their e-facilitation of the online element there are tumbleweeds blowing across the online forums. Let’s think why? There’s a clear message about the primacy of face-to-face. The online aspect feels and is subservient to this. You couple this with a blended learning student’s natural inclination to think this way anyway (see Promoting Distance) and you are left with what is essentially a face-to-face course.

Compare this with the first example. The key point is that at certain points the learning from a particular subject is delivered online ONLY. In this example, it’s most of the course. This makes is easier for the students to get used to this idea and just run with it. Give a student in 2010 the alternative and face-to-face wins most of the time (in my context anyway). Take away this choice and there might be a bit of grumbling but they soon get on with it.

Another crucial weakness of the second example is lack of time for the online activities to take place. There’s a conflict between the need to think in terms of time periods online and sessions lasting a few hours in face-to-face. If the face-to-face sessions are sorted out first, it’s common for an online discussion to last only a few days. Just as they get going they stop. So for effective blended learning to occur you want careful spacing in the learning design. This is easily achieved if each mode is given equal status in the planning.

Examining the lecture

2010-11-17T11:26:00.001Z

Quite often the lecture finds itself under attack from people involved with learning technology. This is mainly because the lecture is often associated with rigidly didactic teaching and a lot of e-learning people have a constructivist pedagogical stance. I can see where this is coming from but I don't think it's necessarily the right way to go. The main problem is that a good lecture is an inspirational, high quality learning event. An event which doesn't stick to the powerpoint stereotype. Implicit in what I've just said is the notion that bad quality lecturing means a purely didactic pedagogy. I draw this out because I realise that this is a value judgment I am taking that some may not agree with. But this is not just a pedagogical stance, there is very little learning design in reading off the content of your subject matter. By designing in group and individual problem solving or discussion activities shows that the educator has thought about their teaching and their learners at least to some degree. So, in a simplistic way, I'm saying that part of the problem with a purely didactic lecture is the fact that it requires no learning design beyond a mastery and expression of the subject matter.

But does less effort necessarily mean less quality? It's not clear cut. My experiences of what makes a good lecture involve a mixture of both the delivery of content and the discussion of content in some form. However, I know student who prefer extremes of each with those that prefer blanket presentations in the majority.

One of the unanswered questions is exactly how much of current HE teaching is presentation only? I suspect it's a lot, but I don't know. Where can I find evidence of this? And even if I can find this out... so what? Others may say why is this bad?

There are more questions than answers when I reflect on this issue. I guess my conclusion would be to be against bad quality lectures (or bad e-learning for that matter) but what defines bad quality is up for discussion.

One reason why Pedagogy doesn't always drive the technology

2010-11-04T16:16:00.001Z

I've been reflecting on the relationship of technology in teaching and learning and pedagogy. It's right to have a strong link. It's right for the technology to have a pedagogical purpose, an identifiable reason for it's use which fits in with the pedagogy of the teaching and learning. The reality-check here is that (quite understandably) many educators' pedagogical knowledge is tacit or unconscious. All educators have natural leanings towards different pedagogies even if they don't know the particular many syllabled word. Also, there is often not the time to design the teaching and learning to such an extent so that the pedagogy is explicitly stated and identified.

Saying that the starting point is the pedagogy (in relation to technology) is correct. However, hand on heart do all educators start with the pedagogy? I'm not so sure. I think they start with the content, designing a lesson comes second and sometimes a distant and poor second. So where the pedagogy isn't really thought through, it's difficult to associate technology to something that isn't really there.

The context of the message about pedagogy and technology is often motivated by the desire to ensure that we are technology led. This is right and important. But if you are wondering why this utopian ideal isn't working, then part of the reason isn't evil technologists pushing technologies onto education. It's because knowledge and awareness of pedagogy isn't what it should be. There are a variety of reasons for this which I'm not totally clued up on. I'm just reflection on what I experience.

Proactive or reactive - the learning technology choice

2010-10-20T15:09:00.000+01:00

How best to create an environment where educators feel comfortable and willing to embrace the use of technology in education is what my job is all about. There are various strategies you can employ. It's very easy to focus on the process of the particular project you are working on. So you prepare the environment (usually a VLE), show the tools, make sure everyone knows how to work the thing and look after the technical running of the space. It's important you do this for sure, but there are often larger issues that need to be addressed and it's important to establish yourself as a contributor to design, startegy and policy where this is coherent with other strategic areas of your organisation. This is difficult and messy and often fraught with problem and setbacks but it's necessary and the right thing to do. People in learning technology should not just be about processes. It can feel like tech support and, for the educator, this is exactly what you are.

I guess it boils down to a choice between whether you want to be proactive in your promotion of learning technologies or reactive. I like to be in the proactive camp but sometimes this is a hard stance to sustain for a variety of reason. One sad footnote is that there are often not enough people or enough time to be truly proactive.

Promoting Distance

2010-09-24T16:37:00.000+01:00

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change journal

Recently I have arrived at the opinion that developing a viable distance learning offering is the way to go for Higher Education. Much of the e-learning I've been involved in has concentrated on developing blended learning where there was previous just face-to-face. This is largely like banging your head against a brick wall. This policy is often seen as a safer, less ambitious step along the learning technologies route. THIS IS WRONG!! It's wrong because most of the time the educators and the students don't really want to use technology. They'll do a bit for admin but for learning, no way. It's a face-to-face course. Why tamper with it. I am of the opinion that this is misguided but it's not a battle worth fighting (for now). Fighting this resentment is unnecessary. The most important point is that the participants have signed up a face-to-face experience. Some might not mind adding a bit of technology but it shouldn't take over. Shoe-horning e-learning into an already designed course is like swimming upstream with half the people not knowing how to swim. These metaphors aren't great but the sense is right.

Pushing to develop a number of quality distance learning offerings is, I think, the way forward. Certainly, for any educational institution is a way of seperating you from the competition. I don't there's enough market research in this area but I am convinced there are more and more people out there who can't attend face-to-face but still want to study. With distance learning, the learning is only delivered online. Therefore, the students will engage. They have no choice. But feeling towards this mode of learning is largely eradicated past the the few couple of weeks. For this to work in HE, you need entire MAs offered online, not just one or two modules. This way the market you want can be tapped into to. It's pointless having the odd module online. If a student can attend one module face-to-face, the chances are he/she can, and will want to, attend the others face-to-face. The main problem we face with promoting distance learning is convincing academic to teach in this way. Unfortunately, I fear this problem is underestimated. There's also the issue of whether to run it in parallel with the face-to-face. What about the capacity for this? It's a bold move - one that is hard to take.

I'm pleased and excited that the Institute of Education (my place of work) is pushing the distance learning agenda and working towards increasing what we offer at a distance - we're using the term "Open Mode" (which I like). It's the first step on an important journey in an uncertain time for HE.

Time and Space for learning design

2010-09-08T16:07:00.001+01:00

A mantra you often here with regard to technology in education is designing the learning first and then using the best medium to deliver this learning be it technological or not. Clarence Fisher puts this better:

"We cannot choose tools and then find ways to use them. We must consider the skills and abilities that we want our students to have and then choose the paths to help them get there."

Of course, I agree with this and I think I've said so on this blog many times. The gap comes with the fact that many educators simply don't know what tools are available and what they can be used for. I am often surprised by how seemingly established online tools have not penetrated into the real world of education.

One relevant issue here is the problem of allowing our educators the time and the space to think about their teaching. The profile of this activity isn't high enough. If it was, showcase events of new tools would occur as a matter of course; pedagogical discussion and debate in relation to such tools would be standard. Instead, such activity is anecdotal and the domain of the enthusiastic few.

My observation, therefore, concerning the above quote is that it applies only to a utopian educational system. I'm not saying learning design doesn't happen, but it's our system is not designed to accomodate assimilating new tools into our teaching and learning. Such tools therefore go unnoticed and become subject to misinformation and misinterpretation.

Formal/Informal learning

2010-09-07T10:13:00.001+01:00

It's been a while since I last blogged. This is mainly due to getting married and going on honeymoon. A welcome distraction from my Learning Technology Learning.

Recently I've found myself reading more academic articles than blogs. I aimed to catch up with my blog reading but it's been enlightening to gain some academic perspectives. Overall, blog reading is easier. It fits in with my informal learning ethos and lends itself to the extraction of ideas which I can then weave together as I reflect. Academic article reading is hard but rewarding. Hopefully I can achieve a good balance of learning from both in the future.

A recent bit of learning has been around formal learning on reading the paper Theories of formal and informal learning in the world of web 2.0 by Charles Crook (2008). He says:

"It is the act of deliberate teaching that ‘formalises’ learning. But deliberate teaching is complemented by deliberate learning. Ideally, both parties in the
educational contract have a degree of this intent – albeit not equally well or equally enthusiastically developed."

It is easy to bash formal education but the above reminds us that, in essence, its a wonderful thing. It's about deliberately engendering learning and this should be celebrated. So what's the place of informal learning? I promote informal learning because I know how powerful it can be and I would disagree with the notion that the only "proper" learning is done through formal education. Where it's good quality a formal course is the best and easiest way of accelerate your learning in a certain subject. But such instances are not always available when, and where, you want them. This is where informal learning comes into play. It's take a certain skillset and mindset to do it effectively but these can be learned. And certainly from my perspective, technology is fundamental to being able to realise it.

The above quote hints that motivation isn't always there with formal learning. Essentially in schools, we are forcing people to learn whether they want to or not. Or, at least, we are trying to. Informal learning only exists where there is motivation to learn. But if we took away formal education I'm not so sure that everyone would jump into doing it themselves enthusiastically. The learner control aspect is often mooted is a big plus the informal learning and that this can aid with learners who are disenfranchised from formal education. Here there is a clear role for informal learning and what we need are processes and support mechanism in place to help learner get started.

In Learning Design, Pedagogy First, Medium Second

2010-08-13T11:13:00.000+01:00

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal

It's common to hear the argument "we need to use social media in learning because that what the kids are doing." This position has merit but there's a lot that's packed into statement and this can sometimees cause confusion. The sentiment is correct in that there is a desire to engage with school age students on their terms. However, often this gets wrapped up in intentions for more learner centred and collaborative pedagogical stances. That's fine (if that's what you want), but it's important to make a distinction between the medium and the pedagogy. Although the affordance of social media to clearly towards to collaborative.

It's also interesting that this statement is often tied in with increasing the engagement of learners who are not engaged. It's almost like we are saying "let's speak their language." Again, this has merit. But it's important to understand that this is part of a bigger picture. Choosing the right communication channel is important if it will mean greater chance of validity with a particular group of learners. However, this will only take you so far. What most important is good learning design. Take your pedagogical stance, design the learning, and choose the mediums to deliver this learning appropriately. If you are taking a participatory or collaborative stance this could well involve internet based tools. I won't go further on this track as I've been this road before.

What I will say is that it's easier to talk in terms of communication channels. Teenager are communicating through facebook because they can. We now have additional communication channels. These supplement what we had before - talking, telephone, email. They allow people to be in contact in times and places where they couldn't before. We should be interested in using such channels for learning. Expressing the issue in this way takes the edge of statement: "we need to use it because they are using it". It also takes it away from merging it with the pedagogical debates.

Overall, I think it's useful to seperate the tool you use to deliver the learning away from the learning design process. Starting with the medium in mind is dangerous in that it can determine how you teach.

Acquisition or Participation

2010-08-03T11:30:00.000+01:00

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal

When you think about the various options for using technology in teaching and learning there is a stark contrast between those that come from the Web 2.0 movement which are often free/easy to use; and those that come from the commercial software companies - expensive and often cumbersome. Overall, you can also draw a pedagogical dividing line between these two areas - acquisition or participation.

Acquisition is all about preserving what we have, transmitting the knowledge in the way we have done in formal education. I'm talking here about web conferencing system, Learner Management Systems (I mean the core products not the added on interactive stuff), Lecture capture systems. They are complex, bandwidth heavy and are usually accompanied by a manual or require expensive training and support.

Participation is about... well participation, collaboration, knowledge construction, all that stuff. The tools to achieve these are usually stand-alone, free, easy to use, graphically impressive, and have build in communities of support to draw on.

I wonder why this is. Perhaps it's because commercial companies know they can make money from building a product that fulfills what the customer wants rather than what some people think they should want; it might be that it's more natural to make a tool about communication and collaboration online than it is to build something that is all about preserving the face-to-face lecture, it's certainly easier.

Whatever the reason, it feels from where I'm sitting that acquisition stuff is made the priority. No matter what it costs we want technologies to preserve what we do already. Ok, there is all this collaborative stuff but we can think about later once I get my head around this LMS control panel!

I'm simplifying things of course. The divide isn't that stark and in reality you need a combination of both. What's interesting is that if ever we want evidence for the dominant pedagogical model we only need to look at how we are using technology. Despite all the affordances for collaboration and communication it's the transmission we want it for.

Word Cloud of this blog

2010-07-16T11:25:00.000+01:00

I did a wordle of this blog which is now sitting on the front page. There are no real surprises. Learning is the biggest word which makes sense. I always intended this blog to be about my learning so I use this word in this context and in the context of using technology for learning. Technologies is second which is an obvious dominant theme. The important point for me is that when thinking about technology in education thinking about the learning should always come first. Any technology is there to act as an appropriate communication tool through which the learning can take place. It's all about informed decision making when it comes to choosing the right tool (be it online, offline, face-to-face etc). This is where educators need help. Making an informed decision is hindered by lack of training, training that concentrates too much on how to use a technology or a pedagogical model, and not having the time and space to undertake reflection and course design.

Accelerated learning

2010-07-15T16:19:00.000+01:00

It feels like the last few weeks I have experienced accelerated learning. This is mainly because I've had to create a lot of bespoke content for consultancy work lately. In many ways, this is the most rewarding work activity I have. I love to create and in my subject area I feel like I often have a blank canvas on which to draw together my experiences and knowledge. The creation process is about getting the message right - which is about broaching the subject at the right level - the subject being using technology in education.

I've always been a big picture kind of guy and recently I've been bolder in talking about the big picture with clients. This is vital and will never teach again without some reference to this topic. The big picture is basically about how the reality of the educator changes when delivering learning at a distance or through blended learning. When addressing nervous and disorientated educators this is good place to start because it shows empathy with their situation. In addition, I run through the basic arguments for using learning technologies. This is important because it forces them to reflect on why their company or educational institution is going down this road. The answer to the "why" question often gets lost. I also ask "how ready are you to teach using technology?" It's a good way of teasing out the problem areas and tenor of the group.

Much of what I offer to the educational world is still about giving people an opportunity to practice using different types of internet based tools which they may not have encountered and discussing their potential for teaching and learning. Where I feel confident of value is that much of what I see out there is either too technical or too pedagogical. I try to find the middle ground in an attempt to always be relevant.

This sounds like a sale pitch but it's written for me to help articulate my thoughts.

Levels of learning

2010-07-07T17:31:00.000+01:00

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal

I'm doing a lot of consultancy this month in various contexts under various titles designated by my clients. These include etutoring and master class in blended learning. The latter of these is good for my ego but is perhaps a bit grandiose. The content is never exactly the same as different emphasis is required with changing contexts. As long as my overall message is the same I am happy.

Titling is an issue I need to get to grips with. I haven't hit upon a one that I'm fantastically happy with. I've been using Web2.0Learning a lot but I don't want to be totally web 2.0 tool focused and the content often reflects this now. One important development has been that I've introduced a section which broaches the subject of practical issues surrounding teaching at a distance or blended. I find that there's a black hole of practical issues that don't get accounted for. Educators either get taught how to use a technology or something on the pedagogy - so more theoretical stuff. The praciticalities get left behind. Recently, I've been shoehorning in content which covers the reality of what changes in the life of an educator and organising oneself is so important. It's all pretty logical stuff but important nonetheless. I will reflect here on how things go in a few week.

What I wanted to record here today is how valuable the creative process is for me. What I learn through social media and my experiences at work get reflected on in this blog. I'm lucky that when called upon to deliver a consultancy session it involved crystallising my thinking from this learning for a public audience. It feels like a two stage process - writing down my thought forces me to clarify my thinking (and that's the first level of learning) whereas designing and delivering a session crystallises it even further (this is the second level of learning). I guess the third level is analysing the respective success or failure of the output!

Spreading the word

2010-06-25T11:41:00.000+01:00

This year, more by luck than judgement, I've started doing consultancy in the broad field of e-learning. I hope to continue and grow this strand of my work. It's good to bring money into the IOE and it's really rewarding to construct and deliver something myself. The variety is interesting and challenging. As I teach in the various setting I am gradually seeing the wood from the trees in how best to structure what I do.

The first thing to say that it's hard - very hard. The first challenge is knowing what the client wants. Usually it's about wanting their trainers/educators to know how to teach online. To approach it the right way, you have to get a feel for the culture of the organisation and the context of the proposed use of learning technologies. This is vital so that what you say is relevant. I have always been heavy on the practical. I've come from a job where showing VLE navigation and usability was a core task and explaining things clearly is a skill that I have. The first few days were very Web 2.0 tool dominated. This worked well but I now feel there is a need to balance it more with pedagogical discussion and practical considerations.

I've been reflecting on my teaching style and, although there has been a lot of hands-on using the technologies sessions, my style is pretty didactic. I prepare slides to talk around and, although I invite discussion, I don't programme in much group discussion time. This will change in the future. I guess this is partly confidence but it's also a desire to practice what I preach. There's no point banging on about the evils of didactic dominance if I don't practice a more participatory pedagogy myself.

What's exciting about this type of work is the lack of precedence. There is no established right way of doing this. Making sense of technology for education is relatively new and companies are looking for someone to come in and give them some answers. So my job is to give a balanced, informative picture based on my experience of working with learning technologies in Higher Education and all the learning I do here and in the blogosphere. Interestingly, it's the latter of these elements that is often the most valuable.

Conversational Framework - why I like it

2010-06-20T09:34:00.000+01:00

When imparting the message of learning technologies, I am often asked to fulfil a more practical role than I would like. There are many reasons for this. One is my inclination to steer clear of models. I have an almost subconscious feeling that in the real world your average educator won't be interested in some complicated diagram that takes ages to understand. Maybe this reflects the lack of time/lack of value we have in education for learning design in general. Models are supposed to help with this process but if you don't value or the system doesn't value the process then they serve no purpose.

However, I've been reflecting that perhaps it's irresponsible to ignore and not promote aids to the adoption of learning technologies that are also often aids to learning design in general.

The conversational framework has emerged for me as the most useful for my context as someone promoting the use of learning technologies. It's pretty comprehensive and seems to sum up the situation pretty well whilst giving a useful checklist to the educator.

What's important to realise is that that many model seems to involve taking a pedagogical stance. I'm happy to do this but it's not always an easy sell for others if they don't agree or don't really know what pedagogy their teaching philosophy fits in with. This is where the converstaional framework is good because, by catering, for a great variety of all different teaching and learning methods it not championing one pedagogical stance over another. Instead it caters for the key elements of a number of different ones. It also seems to have a logical inclusion of every common sense and established way of teaching and learning. I guess to be receptive to the conversational framework you just have to agree that including all these thing in teaching is a good idea. Not many would disagree.

Balancing theory and practice in e-learning advice

2010-06-14T15:07:00.000+01:00

Recently I've been involved in a project where I seem to have assumed the role of balancing theory and practice in the context of the design and delivery of educational use of learning technologies. It's not surprising that my natural tendencies have let me to fulfil more of the practical side of things rather than the theoretical pedagogical. This is partly because this is where my skills mainly lie although I am developing my pedagogical knowledge (what I call the academic underpinning). But it's also partly because I think this is the area that can often get lost where theory gets overplayed. In a course situation, you need that balance as there is a tendency to concentrate on the theory without allowing the participants the time and space to play with the various tools. In one-to-one consultation with educators approaching learning technologies from scratch you need a bias towards the practical. This may seem wrong but here's why:

I work in an academic culture where teaching is part of what the researchers do. You would think that such people would be minded to treat the use of learning technologies in an action researcher capacity (in the way put forward by Laurillard, 2008). But they don't. Teaching and the design of their teaching isn't something that your average HE academic will approach by reading about the pedagogical underpinnings or recent research into this or that use of a particular tool. They are more likely to ask their colleague what they used and what for (if anything). This is not criticism of them. It's a reflection on the culture surrounding all teaching I think.

In this regard, I would always advocate a practical approach when advising people about using learning technologies in their teaching. Using the phrase "this tool lends itself to..." is better than "this tool has the technological affordance of..." which in turn is better than "the pedagogical underpinning of this tool is..."

When I say better I mean in the context of talking to a sceptical, slightly negative academic who has been told to talk to you about this e-learning "thing".

Taking the ego out of education

2010-06-02T16:12:00.000+01:00

There are a number of barriers when it comes to approaching the tricky subject of converting an existing face-to-face course to being purely online. I want to concentrate in this post on what motivate thes teacher/educator to do the job they do. I touched on this in my post from last Nov – Lecture Your Way to Stardom where I put the case that, for some, the performance involved in teaching has a certain appeal. I raise this point again because I think it’s often an unspoken aspect of the teaching profession. Changing the mode of delivery from face-to-face to online (using whatever technology) has an emotion bite to it that is often underplayed and I think part of this is that the teacher doesn’t get to “perform” in the traditional sense of the word.

Or at least that is the perception. Whatever pedagogical stance you take, the educator has a vital, fundamentally important role to play. For me, there is no threat to the subject expert in formal education whatever the future holds. Online, there is ample opportunity to be the centre of attention, to perform. It may feel different but it’s there.

But why is this important? It’s important because I have a hunch, a strong hunch that many educators like the sound of their own voice, they like getting up and being the centre of attention. This is especially true if you’re good at it. Learning technologies are a threat to this position. But education should be about what’s best for the learners not the educators. We need to take the ego out of education!

Making sense of e-learning strategy

2010-05-12T17:24:00.000+01:00

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal

It's very common for the message to get confused or diluted when you try to introduce and encourage the use of learning technologies/VLEs into the Higher Education world. The main reason for this is that the message is inherently confusing. Ask two people tasked with encouraging their use and you'll get two different answers. There isn't a dominant reasoning across the sector. I have mine, but I know it's at odds with what others say. For me, there is a belief in collaborative pedagogies over the transformative/didactic mode. The learning is simply better, the teaching is simply better and the resulting graduate is a person better equipped to keep learning throughout their career. The problem with this is that I can't prove it and it would be fruitless to try. I just believe it and certainly it's true for my learning.

I'm not convinced that many of those who are prevalent deliverers of lectures with little or no interaction necessarily believe that this is the best way - although certainly there are some. It's just that lecturing and passive learning are, in the short run, the easiest options for both faculty and students. It's just easier, take less effort. They prepare the content and just speak it. I tweeted the other day "If you don’t ask questions, learners aren’t doing anything. Lots of questions, variety of questions." to advertise the blog post Key Steps to Preparing Great Synchronous Interactions. I don't think it's as stark as that but the sentiment is true.

Back to the confusing message. The pedagogy argument is difficult to make and obviously confrontational. Far easier to talk in terms of efficiency saving and money saving. So this is often where we end up and, for many, this is all we should legitimately seek to use learning technologies for. On this path, the result is often a simple case of e-administration.

So you have these two schools of thought. But what often happens is a illogical blending of the two. It doesn't work and it doesn't make any sense. One challenges the status quo, the other enforces it. They don't fit together. It's a tough one when you think about it because by exposing this tension I make my job harder. On the other hand, I'm not doing my job properly if I don't. And on a third hand, who am I to try and influence pedagogy!

Casual community building

2010-05-10T14:57:00.000+01:00

Casual community building is something that I've encountered a lot over the years. Often people come to me wanting help in starting something online where a particular group of people can exchange views and share resources. Now this is a core activity of social media and one that can work well in a work related special interest group. However, mostly they end up being empty spaces of little or no activity, sometimes after great expense and frustration.

I've been reflecting on the issues behind this after reading Don't blame the technology on the excellent Learning Journey blog. The following extract rings true with me:

Sometimes I hear people saying: “I created a blog, but no one joined in”. Or “ I have just set up this network site…seemed to go well at first as some people joined, but now no one is doing anything in there”.

My first reaction is to ask, why did you set it up in the first place? What was the purpose? The answer usually is: for people to come together… to create the community! That’s fantastic…but then as we analyse the situation a bit further I am usually tempted to ask if they intend ‘to join the communal activity’ too or if their role was just to offer the space?!!! It always puzzles me!

What I still see most often is individuals creating a space in the hope it will just take off by itself – as if people would adhere to their brilliant ideas for no reason. The fact is that there isn’t lack of brilliant ideas in this world… we all think we have them! Creating spaces for people to congregate is definitely one of them…(we are always complaining about the lack of opportunity to network and share stuff, or that we don’t know what other people are doing and how much we would benefit from it… so it must be a terrific idea…!) but what makes brilliant ideas materialize in something really meaningful is the effort we ourselves put into it for it to develop and grow coherently.

The most important point here is the issue of devoting time yourself to the endeavour. It's something that nearly always isn't thought through or put into action and is the biggest single factor affecting community participation. Without a driving force, no social network or online community will take off. It doesn't matter how appropriate the space is to the needs of the group - it won't run by itself.

Unfortunately, I can predict all too easily whether such an online space will work or not and it's sad when people have spent time, effort and sometimes money setting something up only for it to fail. Even with this time and effort, there is no guarantee that a particular group of people will engage with it as there are a miraid of other factors to take into consideration. But it's safe to say without it there is no chance.

Teaching with technology isn't easy to arrange

2010-05-04T10:57:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since I posted to this blog. Largely, this is due to moving house and not having the internet until today but also things have been more hectic than usual at my work. It would be impossible to capture all the learning I've been doing here but an important teaching experience I had recently need attention on this blog.

I guess the biggest challenge I faced recently was delivering a session where the working title I got was Delivering Content with technology. It was an important learning experience and one that deserves reflection here.

I'm working as part of a team charged with teaching all things e-learning to a particular set of trainers. Delivering half of the first day, my aim was not to challenge their pedagogy but showing tools (Web 2.0 or otherwise) which allows them to present content in different ways to the norm of powerpoint slides and talking.

As with other similiar teaching I've done, the preparation centred around what to include and what to leave out. This involves updating myself in what's out there and making informed decisions on where to focus my attention. What's important is giving the right context and provide intensive and reasoning to take any alternative provided seriously. As always, there's a bit of soft-sell marketing to be done. This might seem wrong but it's a fact of life with Learning Technologies. One of the things I showed prezi and that went down well especially as we could do some practical work on this. The other big winner was screencasting where Jing was demonstrated, unfortunately we couldn't do anything practical with this. So that it wasn't just showing different tools, I used the excellent Onlignment document Media Chemistry which presents checklists of pros and cons for each media element. This provided context for the session.

As well as the content, the other major learning point was all the issues around negotiating the room setup and equipment/software availability. Knowing exactly what I can and can't do it vital for teaching of the kind I do and it's always a challenge in a new venue getting what you want. To some extent, the quality gets diluted when you can't do what you want and I need to think about how best to deal with this. Certainly, when you try to do anything requiring audio devices and software installation things get complicated very quickly.

The important issue thing about this isn't that you often have/don't have a particular bit of equipments or software but that most training facilities aren't set up for using learning technologies in anything more than a symbolic way. This symbol often takes the form of a computer room - mostly kept locked and hidden away and usable in special, carefully controlled sessions. They are viewed more like a security risk rather than a learning aid. I think this is generalisable statement for much of education and shows we are still, as a sector, missing the point.

Largely, this particular experience was a positive one. It's always tough when we got to a new facility and teach to a new audience as you are never quite sure what to expect. But this is part of the challenge.

Social Media doesn't threaten literacy!

2010-04-08T15:44:00.000+01:00

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal

You can read a lot about the threat of new media to literacy and the printed word. Harold Jarche blog post Literacies is an example. Often there is a link made between an ability to engage in deep and meaningful understanding and learning and reading large bodies of text. Or rather, a link between an inability to do this with the fast-pace of linking between different media in the Web 2.0 world. Well, I just don't buy this. In fact it's rubbish.

Firstly, literate doesn't just mean reading large bodies of text, you can be literate in a number of diffrerent communication tools. Not just the one that dominated by necessity being the only means of mass media distribution available for a while. Now the oral tradition is making a comeback and I have no real problem with that. It's the way it was done before books were on the scene and its still the dominant way in many non-western societies who can now take advantage of what's on offer. Also, text literacy isn't threatened by social media it's enhanced by it. Facebook and messaging forced teenagers to use words and sentences for their communication where previously it was only speaking (I never wrote a letter to a friend when I was a teenager). Ok, it's short but what the matter with that. I'm more in line with Negroponte on this issue. He says:

"Reading and writing are going to be around forever. The word is not going to go away and collecting words into bodies of thought is not going to go away." and

"There is no question that words are powerful, that they always have been and always will be … But just as we seldom carve words in rocks these days, we will probably not print many of them on paper for binding tomorrow."

Let's not confuse reading with publishing. Publishers want reading to be synonymous with books. But it doesn't have to be this way and it really isn't now.

The ability to quickly reference, aggregation, annotate and manipulate text is a massive, massive plus for learning and understanding. It can be done and was done in the old way but not by nearly enough as we'd care to admit to ourselves. Often the book champions are avid readers. What about those that don't read much. Surely, engaging in social media is plus for them. There exposure to words goes up drastically. Now the conditions for learning (admittedly only in computer rich societies) are far more desirable. Thinking about how I learn, I like printing and noting, but I also like RSS, online note-taking, bookmarking, and blogging. There things are fundamental. These things facilitate my learning and democratise it for all. The single biggest factor in helping the quality of my literacy is this blog (please don't comment on my grammar, it's improved a lot)!

The biggest barrier to this is learning how to learn this way and an obstacle in the way of this is the negative light social media is painted in.

Ebook readers/Ipad for education?

2010-04-06T16:42:00.000+01:00

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal

I'm doing a project on Ebook readers at the moment and it's led me to follow closely the advent of the iPad and the ebook reader developments. My interest is the potential impact on education. At the moment, the contest is in the commercial/entertainment market. Once things settle down education will be looked at. From what I've been studying, you can't just give students and educators an ebook reader as it is right now and expect it to transfer across to education successfully. Looking at it just from a book replication point of view it has to, at least, perform the tasks students need from any text well and efficiently. Principle amongst these is taking notes and flicking back and forth through the pages. It seems that, at the moment, Kindle and co. don't do the annotation and navigation well enough for the devices to sell themselves in an educational context. This is crucial because, for learning, you have to be able to personalise the resource in some way and, for the classic textbook, this is done by scribbling in the margin, underlining, highlighting. A recent pilot programme using ebook readers showing these issues is discussed in the article Highlighting E-Readers by Steve Kolowich.

Alongside this, you have the easy sell of the storage saving and long term cost saving together with the environmental plus point. This last issue is a complicated one but I come down on the plus side largely because of the article Ebook readers greener than books, study says by Martin LaMonica. However, I've heard some awful things about the black market that exists around the disposal of old hardware.

When the time comes for educational use, the selling point be with the textbook. The classic ebook reader will not challenge the didactic pedagogy and therefore has a chance of success - as long as it can be seen to do what is done already better. The biggest obstacle in the way of this will be publishers jockeying for position to control this market. It's annoying but inevitable.

Now to the ipad. One impact will be making Kindle look horribly out of date. Even though they are not doing exactly the same things, they look and seem comparable and the ebook reader pales by comparison. I suggest Kindle sorts out it's web browsing and lack of colour pretty damn quickly! Looking out of date shouldn't matter, but this is always a valid bullet point when you approach the whole issue of e-learning and "connecting with the kids." Still this is the important point. What's important is the impact it will have on mobile learning in general. Yes, e-reading can occur, but being a suitable, valid, legitimate devices to house to house mobile learning could be its biggest legacy. It's far too early to say but my instinct tell me so.

When it comes to pedagogy, whereas the ebook reader will reinforced the didactic, the ipad would challenge it by offering such a vast array of features and media options any educator who teaches with one would be foolish not to explore what's available.

Now I know none of this will happen any time soon. But the potential is there. Having said that the potential is there to do a lot of things with technology and it doesn't happen, but you know that right.

New Personal Knowledge Management

2010-03-26T11:30:00.000Z

I've been reading a lot about Personal Knowledge Management and Personal Learning Environments recently and I've recently made some changes to my PKM which I thought I'd share in this space.

Previously, I learnt mostly from reading the blogs. I tagged them in google reader for reference and, every do often, I would blog myself here to reflect on what I was learning. This has worked fine but there are two things which I'm not happy about:

- I've found my blogging to be a little sporadic and random at times.
- Tagging doesn't often result in much reference afterwards

A few weeks ago I discovered the awesome highlighter. Immediately, I incorporated this into my daily practice. Now, as well as tagging in google reader, if I read something I like I use the awesome highlighter to highlight the best bits. Then, every few days, I revisit what I've highlighted and tweet the best bits. I can tag things as well which is useful. This is a whole extra layer of reviewing and sharing. A whole extra layer of learning which didn't previously exist. The final stage is the blogging. My plan is to blog about what I was tweeting now that I am doing this regularly. I feel that there will be value in looking at my twitter stream and reflect on themes or key tweets. As I haven't done this, I can't say for certain how valuable this will be. However, if I can do this regularly then my blogging will also become more regular.

What's been excellent so far has been the ability to mine the best bits of the blog posts I read. Usually, there is a sentence or a phrase that really sticks out. Now through highlighting and twitter I am able get right to these gems - regularly.

If you have been here before and find value in reading this blog, I would suggest you follow my twitter account - TomPreskett.

Real Openness

2010-03-15T16:29:00.000Z

I took a lot from David Wiley's post on Openness. He outlines what openness represents at the moment and where it should be:

For over a decade, openness in education has been an adjective describing educational artifacts.

Open content, open educational resources, open courseware, and open textbooks all mean teaching materials that are shared with everyone, for free, with permission to engage in the 4R activities.

The 4Rs are reuse, redistribute, revise, remix. Openness is about overcoming your inner two-year-old who constantly screams, “Mine! Openness reminds us of what we knew intuitively before society gave us permission to act monstrously toward one another.

What is the appropriate role of openness in education?
The question is deeply insidious. The question implies that openness might play any of several roles in the educational enterprise. The question distracts people from seeing that openness is the sole means by which education is affected, and that education is inherently an enterprise of generosity, sharing, and giving.
we see technology being turned against it potential and made to conceal and withhold. For example, a course management system like Blackboard theoretically has the potential to greatly improve educators’ capacity to share. But instead CMSs takes the approach of hiding educational materials behind passwords and regularly deleting all the student-contributed content in a course. If Facebook worked like Blackboard, every 15 weeks it would delete all your friends, delete all your photographs, unsubscribe you from all your groups, etc.

Education finds itself using radical new technology in backwards ways, reinforcing those outdated ways of thinking with law and institutional policy, and unable to satisfy rapidly increasing popular demand.

Education has to some degree lost its way; forgotten its identity. We’ve allowed ourselves and our institutions to be led away from our core value of openness – away from generosity, sharing, and giving, and toward selfishness, concealment, and withholding. To the degree that we have deserted openness, learning has suffered.

The spirit of teaching is openness; sharing your knowledge, guiding the learner and hopefully teaching how to be a good learner. But we made learning a commodity; something that can be packages and sold. This is actually one big trick. Learning can be done by anyone at any time and now this is easier than ever before. The threat to formal education is this packaged, controlled, guarded and expensive world is being challenged by the very notion teaching was founded on - openness and the instinct to share. If institutions continue to scream "Mine!" Then, ultimately they will suffer.

Brain changing technology

2010-03-15T11:46:00.000Z

I found some interesting quotes about the impact of digital media on our brains. Oppenheimer paints a negative picture:

My concern with this digital media is that it’s such short attention span stuff that they get bored. It’s what I call instant gratification education, a thought comes to you, you pursue it, you see a web site you click on it. You want to hear music while your studying you do it. All this bifurcates the brain and keeps it from pursuing one linear thought and teaches you that you should be able to have every urge answered the minute the urge occurs (Todd Oppenheimer, Author, The Flickering Mind).

I don't see it like this at all. Having lines of thought answered or satisfied instantly is a good thing. We'd have always done this if it were possible. And why is linear necessarily good. Life isn't linear, life is complex and every-changing. The learner needs to learn this way and cope with it. Why learn for a world that doesn't exist. I don't see this as a barrier to deep and meaningful thinking. On the contrary, we now have better tools to do the job properly.

So I prefer this quote:

There was always gains and losses … when print replaced aural culture, when writing happened there was certainly things we lost, one of them was memory. You think of the Homeric poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey. The Homeric singers could produce thousands of lines of poetry out of their own memory. We’re not good at that any more because print took it away. Is it a loss? Sure. And to a certain extend getting people to be contemplative and a little bit slower; not to multi-task all of the time, paying avid attention over a long period of time to a certain extend might be lost. But that’s the price of gain. (James Paul Gee, Arizona State University)

Sure, I'd like a better memory and if we are naturally less adapt at this then it's a shame. But memory can be improved if you really want to. The important different is that we have greater opportunities to realise different pedagogies in an increasing number of ways. We are changing who we are for the better. Interestingly, the aural culture which was replaced by printing can now make a resurgence thanks to the ease with which podcasting/videoing can be done.

The point is that this is a problem that we as human beings have coped with throughout most of the 20th century and into the 21st century and the good news is we survived it. As a culture we learned how to adapt to it … so we are seeing this period of evolution and at the end of the day we’re better off as a society if we go at this with a sense of open mindedness and exploration. (Henry Jenkins, University of Southern California)

This is spot on - open mindedness and exploration.

Stock and Flow

2010-03-10T21:21:00.000Z

I'm always interested in new ways of describing things to perhaps give greater clarity.

Stock and flow by Lee Lefever (mentioned in Harold Jarche's blog) is a way of describing digital media contrasts the products or finished entities of stock with the interaction and communication of flow. YOu need flow for context, flow for the learning conversation. Jarche characterises Open Education Resources as the stock. For the flow, you need the teacher.

Thinking about the current predicament of Higher Education, fighting against the openness, fighting against the freedom and the knocking down of the walls. Its useful to show that having open content need not destroy everything they own of value. The message is very clear:

If you teach well, then it is of value to learn within your institution.
If you present content and call it teaching, then it is not.
If there is only stock - get some flow.

Unfortunately, I can't see myself talking about stock and flow in my Higher Education institution. It wouldn't work.

Dealing with Information Overload

2010-03-06T21:35:00.001Z

George Seimens elearning space blog is good because it's always short and sweet. Like this one:

Obviously, any tool or innovation that permits increased connectivity between information and people will not result in a dumbing down of humanity. Initially, there will be (or currently is) a period of feeling overwhelmed and distracted. That’s an incidental effect of increased access to creation and consumption tools. Information abundance has been a key concern of humanity for centuries. First we need the content and conversation connections. Then we devise strategies and methods to prune and make sense of the chaos.

People construct a reality for themselves where they are comfortable based on the options available. When you suddenly have way more options things get disorientating; things get confusing; and, above all, things get annoying. In education most people are annoying by the new possibilities. To become less annoyed they first need to understand and then learn how to assimilate and utilize this new world, for themselves and for teaching and learning. This is huge! This is a big challenge. But it's also a natural process which I hope to contribute to speeding up.

Web 2.0 Description

2010-03-06T21:15:00.000Z

I had to record here this description of Web 2.0 I found by the great George Seimens

Saying web 2.0 is easier than saying “the means by which we alter the existing mindset in computing from centralized broadcast services subject to hierarchical authority structures to open, distributed, read/write methods that permit end-point users to contribute to and even direct conversations and content through social and technological networks”.

My main attraction to the concept of Web 2.0 is what it represents and what it can teach us about how we can evolve education. I guess I'm hoping the evolution from broadcast to collaboration on the web is mirrored in education.

"Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time!" - Tapscott D and Williams A, D (2010) Review

2010-03-06T17:42:00.000Z

Originally published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal

I've read and re-read Innovating the 21st-Century University: It’s Time! by Tapscott D and Williams A, D (2010) published within Educause to try and absorb it's key messages.

What I'll do here is quote some of the key messages and make comments:

Universities are losing their grip on higher learning as the Internet is, inexorably, becoming the dominant infrastructure for knowledge — both as a container and as a global platform for knowledge exchange between people — and as a new generation of students requires a very different model of higher education.
The important point here is that the internet has taken away the power of the monopoly of information away from all the previous custodians. Universities are one example. This has to be a good thing for learners and learning. If it's bad for the educational institutions in their current model then they have to change.

We need to toss out the old industrial model of pedagogy (how learning is accomplished) and replace it with a new model called collaborative learning.
This is an argument often made (particularly in educause). I've often talked about how it's really all about pedagogy not the technology. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement but the debate is very difficult to have and even more difficult to win. Firstly, because of the "no significant difference" argument, i.e. it's impossible to win a pedagogical argument. Also, in my institution (and I suspect elsewhere) there is no didactic mantra and code of conduct that everyone lives by. Sure, it's the default style but there are instances of collaboration, discussion, groupwork etc in many places. The point here is that much of higher education can make a case for innovative, collaborative pedagogy already existing if the need arises. So a "model of collaborative learning" would be difficult to implement not least because a "model of broadcast learning" doesn't officially exist. There are many other barriers but this is important.

With technology, it is now possible to embrace new collaboration models that change the paradigm in more fundamental ways... this represents a change in the relationship between students and teachers in the learning process.
This relates to the previous point and there's lots more like this which reads like a advert for collaborative pedagogy. I agree with it but there's not much to add.

We like the direction of Vest's thinking. For universities to succeed, we believe they need to cooperate to launch what we call the Global Network for Higher Learning. This network would have five stages or levels: (1) course content exchange; (2) course content collaboration; (3) course content co-innovation; (4) knowledge co-creation; and (5) collaborative learning connection
The main point of this article proposes this Global Network for Higher Learning. The stages are pretty self-explanatory. I'm not sure they really need 5 stages.

The lowest level in the Global Network for Higher Learning is simple content exchange: colleges and universities post their educational materials online, putting into the commons what would have traditionally been viewed as cherished and closely held intellectual property. MIT pioneered the concept with its OpenCourseWare initiative (http://ocw.mit.edu), and today more than 200 institutions of higher learning have followed suit.
This is the first stage. I've includes this to mention how far away we are from making this a reality. In the UK, we have the Open University and tiny, tiny amounts of a couple other institutions. As everything in this model flows from the free exchange of content it's hard to see how such an system could get off the ground. You would need a big sea change for it to be considered. Realistically, consortiums could spring up making a mini-networks. Consortiums set up for survival. The end result could act like a regional network and snowball from there.

What higher education desperately needs is a social network — a Facebook for faculty. But it shouldn't be a standalone application; it should be integral to the Global Network for Higher Learning.
My initial reaction to this was "no way". But we've seen how quickly such networks can explode. Perhaps an education only network is the answer and a valuable plank in this idea. At the moment, informal learning happens in an infinite variety of places (e.g. the blogosphere) but for formal education a truly collaborative communication platform is mouth-watering and I guess the obvious opposite of the closed VLE discussion boards.

Why not allow a brilliant ninth-grade student to take first-year college math, without abandoning the social life of his or her high school? Why not encourage a foreign student majoring in math to take a high school English course? Why is the university the unit of measurement when it comes to branding a degree? In fact, in a networked world, why should a student have to assign his or her "enrollment" to a given institution, akin to declaring loyalty to some feudal fiefdom?
I have mixed feeling about this but they have a point. At the moment, you go where your subject is strong. Is there enough of a need for variety to demand a piece from here, there and everywhere? This challenge the whole notion of a degree in one subject in favour of a variety of different one. I'm not sure this is really an issue. Certainly, all the identify that you are supposed to have with one institution is challenged in the Global Network.

Next-generation faculty will create a context whereby students from around the world can participate in online discussions, forums, and wikis to discover, learn, and produce knowledge as networked individuals and collectively.
I guess the logistics of this worry me. How will this happen? Who will look after it? Certainly, a global network will caters for all HE is far fetched. But an initially small scale one which gradually gathers pace could happen.

As the model of pedagogy is challenged, inevitably the revenue model of universities will be too. If all that the large research universities have to offer to students are lectures that students can get online for free, from other professors, why should those students pay the tuition fees, especially if third-party testers will provide certificates, diplomas, and even degrees? If institutions want to survive the arrival of free, university-level education online, they need to change the way professors and students interact on campus.
I think current survival is based on this generation of learners not quite being able to tap into what's out there and the quality and quantity of what's out there not quite being enough. This will change and it will be shock when it hits. I'm been saying this in my place for a while now.

Many will argue: "But what about credentials? As long as the universities can grant degrees, their supremacy will never be challenged." This is myopic thinking. The value of a credential and even the prestige of a university are rooted in its effectiveness as a learning institution. If these institutions are shown to be inferior to alternative learning environments, their capacity to credential will surely diminish.
Credentials is an area which I've seen argued as a area HE can effectively focus on in the future. This paragraph threatens this notion in an interesting way. Certainly, reputation is vital in this world and it's true of HE as much as anything else.

As part of this, the academic journal should be disintermediated and the textbook industry eliminated. In fact, the word textbook is an oxymoron today. Content should be multimedia — not just text. Content should be networked and hyperlinked bits — not atoms. Moreover, interactive courseware — not separate "books" — should be used to present this content to students, constituting a platform for every subject, across disciplines, among institutions, and around the world.
Some of this stuff is almost apocolyptic! I'm not totally on board with this. Yes, ebook readers will have an impact on how text is presented, structured and mixed in with multimedia but there will always be a place of text and books of text.

In this structure, students would enroll with their "primary" institution, which would handle the disbursement of their tuition fees depending on what other courses they study. The value of, say, a second-year psychology course at Stanford would be determined by market forces, not by some central bureaucracy.
This is key to the global network and feel like a utopian ideal fraught with danger. Still, I like the message it sends to the learner - "whether you like it or not you're in charge of your learning."

If universities are to become institutions whose primary goal is the learning by students, not faculty, then the incentive systems will need to change. Tenure should be granted for teaching excellence and not just for a publishing record.
ABSOLUTELY!

The analogy is not the newspaper business, which has been weakened by the distribution of knowledge on the Internet, he notes. "We're more like health care. We're challenged by obstructive, non-market-based business models. We're also burdened by a sense that doctor knows best, or professor knows best."
The article finishes with some interesting statements about the reasons nothing changes.

A powerful force to change the university is the students. And sparks are flying today. A huge generational clash is emerging in our institutions. The critiques of the university from fifteen years ago were ideas in waiting — waiting for the new web and for a new generation of students who could effectively challenge the old model.
Ultimately, the change will come from the students. Government talk about e-learning without really understanding what's going on but the students will demand this pedagogy. What we need is a clear choice. The model proposed here is a second stage structure. Initially what we need is a good HE example where all that's best about Learning Technologies is embraced. Someone needs to stick there head above the water to give the students a clear choice. After that market forces will take care of the rest.

Communicate not Broadcast

2010-03-02T16:10:00.001Z

This is going to be my new mantra. Following on from my previous post, this is my message to staff in my place of work - the Institute of Education, University of London. I want colleagues to see the VLE as a place to communicate and not broadcast. Or communicate as well as broadcast. If you don't like the communication tools within our VLE, I can help you look elsewhere. But all this follows from the principle of wanting to communicate with your students and not just disseminate information.

I think this applies across education, and indeed businesses. This may be different way of approaching things to my normal "use the learning tools as part of your learning design" but it amounts to the same thing and it might be more successful.

Anyway, now to practice what I preach.

Learning Technologies promote conversation

2010-02-28T21:47:00.000Z

I stumbled upon How Managers Learn by Good Practice for Leaders and Managers. Although aimed at businesses rather than education there is one very interesting finding that's obvious when you think about it:

The most-used as well as the most effective informal learning method was: informal chats with colleagues... Conversations carry news, create meaning, foster cooperation, and spark innovation.

The excellent Harold Jarche observed

There are many great tools and technologies to facilitate conversation... but the key is having a culture of conversation.

Think about education, think about the pedagogy. Facilitating conversation is really what social media is all about; it's what a lot of Web 2.0 of all about; it's what many learning technologies try to do. Maybe describing things in this manner will be useful when describing (sorry selling) learning technologies in my work context. The more I think about it, the more I believe it. It's difficult not to reveal a bias towards the active/communicative pedagogies as a natural consequence of being a Learning Technologist (at least for me anyway). The problem with this is that it's open to question/debate particularly in the academic world I inhabit and rightly so. For some reason, it seems less controversial and more valid to talk about things in terms of promoting conversation. Even though it's feels more facile and too simplistic.

Anyway, this feels quite powerful and I can here myself saying it and hear it sounding ok.

Web2.0Learning

2010-02-18T11:49:00.000Z

I delivered a new training event for the first time on Wednesday. I called it Web2.0Learning - Using Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning . The aim is to teach educators about the principles of Web 2.0 and get them using some tools. The idea is sound and I had bits of content that I was going to use. However, it has been a challenge creating it from scratch. A much larger challenge than I anticipated.

It was ok sorting out what I wanted to say about Web 2.0 and education and VLE and all that interesting stuff. But when it comes to a hands-on session involving Web 2.0 tools, the practicalities and logistics bring their own challenges. Firstly, you have to decide which tools you want to showcase. This is hard. I had a day or actually 5:30 of teaching time. So it's a question of what do you leave out and why is one tool better than another. I had a principle of only showing one instance of any particular type of tool but it's difficult to be sure you are showing the right one. I don't profess to be familiar with everything (it's impossible) but if you are going to do something of this nature you have a duty to be up to date and clear why you are showing one thing over the other. I'll need to upskill in this area as I probably made a couple of wrong choices. Overall, I'm happy with what I put together but there was a lot of learning having delivered it.

For the delivery, I was in an unfamiliar ICT setting and largely, things went smoothly. However, when you are working with a variety of different tools with different requirements you are likely to come up against some problems if you in an educational setting with all their blockage and rights issues. The learning here was to check thoroughly beforehand what they have and what you need. I thought I'd done this but had assumed some basics (like audio) which I shouldn't have. In a session like this, when the technology fails you are stuffed. Luckily, if it failed for one tools it was ok for others. Also, there's always a couple of machine which don't work properly - it's the law!

For those that are interested, here are my session titles:

What is Web 2.0?/How does this fit?
Ning
Imagination Cubed
Delicious
Bubbl.us
Aggregation
CreateDebate
Finding Web 2.0 tools for education
Blogging
Voicethread
Twitter
Prezi
Googledocs

If anyone wants to know which sessions went well and which didn't go so well and for what reason then make a comment and I'll let you know (I don't want to do a massively long post here).

What's important is that I did a surveymonkey at the end where I gathered views on their attraction to the types of tools on offer. The more I do of this the better so that I can get a feel for what educators want and are interested in.

Mapping Web 2.0 tools onto Higher Education

2010-02-01T11:41:00.000Z

I wanted to post something that got back to the purpose of this blog - my learning experience. So I thought I'd reflect on what happened last week and how my thinking moved on. Here at the Institute of Education (an HE college in the UK) academic individuals are more inclined to seek my help than previously. Mostly this is to do with increasing financial pressures which mean that distance learning is a logical way to tap into overseas and long distance markets. I think this is true of HE everywhere. So what I need to do is make sure that what I say to them is at the right level and steer them in the right direction with the result being good quality use of learning technologies. If we end up offering something substandard then it's better not to do anything at all.

Broadly, I want to give educators the understand of the pedagogical values behind any particular tool and the skills to use it. My first thoughts were to present to colleagues my vision of Web 2.0 and hope they could interpret this and map onto their own learning design. I created a voicethread on the subject and a prezi which give some examples of tools that fits within these categories and could be of use within education. I thought that this could be my opening move which gives the big picture from which I could then focus on different areas.

However, in presenting this to be few people, it became clear that I needed to simplify things. I need to speak the language of an HE academic trying to grapple with learning technologies. To do this, I need to stop focusing so much on Web 2.0 and its ethos and get straight to the tools themselves, mapping their use onto the practical consideration of a typical educator in my context. To this end, I created this prezi. Essentially, my previous concept maps were too big with too much information so I've simplified this. Also, people no longer have to understand Web 2.0 and its ethos at the same time as seeing a number of tool names to which they are unfamiliar. Instead, they just see the tools and which activity of their learning design it fits in with. So now there is only one layer of newness instead of two. The next step will be to create a voicethread to get some audio onto this and to start showing people the tools.

You will notice from the prezi that each category includes the relevant blackboard tools. What I'm not doing is getting educators to shun our VLE. However, if there's an outside tool that does a job that the VLE doesn't, or does it much better - we should be tapping into that. I'm not sure that this a majority viewpoint but it's certainly mine.

Value Learning Design not E-learning Design

2010-01-08T09:14:00.000Z

Originally published in the Educational Technology & Change Journal.

I've been reflecting over the last few days on common questions I get asked as I go about my job as a Learning Technologist. Questions like "I don't have time to think about this" or "why should I use this?" come up a lot. It's clear to me now that a key skill in my role is to be able to respond to these questions effectively, in such a way as to cause the questioners to rethink their position and begin in open up to a new viewpoint. I can tell you now that this isn't easy. Here are some pointers:

- In my education context, the worst thing you can do is throw blame around. Talk about "what we need to do" rather than "it's terrible that we don't do."

- Another important point is don't just talk about the technology. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, in education in 2010 understanding of learning technology is low, so talking about technologies they don't have any experience of and don't know anything about is confusing and off-putting. Also, you want to be talking about processes and value they understand and can relate to. Further, it should always be about how the technologies fit into the bigger picture and it you just bang on about the ICT it's feel alien to their world.

- I also like to stress the the possible incorporating of learning technologies is an element of the learning design process. So, as an organisation, the key is to value learning design; to value giving time and space to reflect and think about how you teach. The potential use of learning technologies is part of this process in the sense that they exist as tools in the toolbox from which you pick and choose. I spoke about the tools in the toolbox metaphor a few days ago. Valuing learning design is key and it comes from the educators themselves and the management of organisations. So the subtle difference here is that you are NOT pushing e-learning because it ticks a box that needs to be ticked, but you ARE promoting good teaching and learning by engendering a culture of giving time and space to reflect on learning design.

- Yes, there is learning to be done. But I think a good quality educator should be prepared to continually learn and adapt. Learning and adapting is an important part of living.

- The change isn't so drastic. Learning online isn't different to learning offline. Learning is the same as it's been forever. Learning strategies may change as we have more options (more tools) but the end result is the same thing you have always been asked to deliver. All you need to do is understand how to work the new tools and, more importantly, understand the values behind each one.

Web 2.0/Social Media overview

2010-01-06T15:52:00.001Z

I've created a presentation which gives an overview of Web 2.0/Social Media and framed within the structure I introduced in the post Structuring Web 2.0. I haven't been creating presentations in this way for long so my technique needs a bit of work.

Anyway, I thought I'd share it here:

Tools in the toolbox

2010-01-05T09:21:00.000Z

Tools in the toolbox is a phrase I use a lot when I talk about learning technologies. The basic message I want to get across is that there's no imperative to use these new tools but you should at least know about them. I've been mulling over whether I can stretch this metaphor.

If you have a toolbox (which I don't really) I would guess that you would want to know how all the tools work. For any DIY job you don't necessarily need to use all the tools but you can make an informed decision about which tool to use if you know how they all work or at least what they are and what they do. As time goes by new tools come out and you have to adapt because that's how life works. Often new tools perform the same functions as the old tools so they act as alternatives. So learning about new tools is a fact of life. For education the toolbox is the toolbox for learnign design and the tools are the ways the educator can deliver the learning.

I will probably soften this slightly if ever I voice this metaphor so that it's less threatening but I think the bulk of this could be a useful way of explaining where learning technologies fit into education.

Formal Learning/Informal Learning/Just Plain Learning

2009-12-24T11:48:00.001Z

There are no real interest new ideas in this post, just some reflections on a personal venture of mine. I felt the need for self-disclosure - satisfying the basic human need to share and communicate.

It's been a long time since my last post. This is mostly due to an assignment I am writing for an MA I've just started. I've toyed with the idea of doing one for a while now. I work in an academic institution but my role is mainly one of learning design, advising people on learning design, delivering training, setting up VLE pages. There is no immediate imperative to become 'academic'. However, I resolve to do one for the following reasons:

- It's free (as a member of staff at the Institute of Education)
- The subject matter is ICT in Education so it should be topics that I can relate to
- I aim to learn, learn, learn. This is the main reason. I'll be forced to research areas where I currently scratch the surface giving myself an academic rigour to some of my ideas. That's the theory anyway.
- I'm a firm believer in informal learning. My use of this blog and reading other blogs is my primary learning method and it works for me. However, for many of those in education they want to stamp of approval that an award like this gives. It's the only language they understand. So by doing this I will hopefully gain respect, gain validity. The validity I want is validity for my ideas and suggestions around learning technologies.
- I hope to gain insight into being a student in Higher Education. I've already done a lot of this. I'm learning first hand about the type of students we get, the approaches the lecturers take and difficulties students face.

I did two thirds of an MA 5 years ago but never got around to finishing it. At the time I couldn't see any real point. It had no real impact on what I was doing but now is different. So now I am starting again from scratch and viewing it as a learning exercise. The only real downside is that studying competed with my time previously devoted to my informal learning in the blogosphere. I will hopefully manage this better from now on.

I will also say this. It's hard to study and work. I'm used to working, coming home and not working. Now things are different. However, I guess this is now in line with my views on learning. Learning doesn't just happen within formal education structures, it happens all the time at the learner's discretion. I'm trying to view much of my work as learning so why not extent this out beyond the four wall of my office. I think that makes sense.

Happy Xmas everyone.

Digital Natives

2009-12-01T16:05:00.000Z

I've been reflected on the digital natives issue after reading The 'Digital Natives' debate: A critical review of the evidence (by Bennett, Maton and Kervin, 2008.

The argument is well put that there is an element of 'moral panic' that brings unnecessary emotional reactions from both of this debate. Defenses are put up and little progress is made. Overall, I think to say that there is little empirical evidence to support the claims made about how we should change education because of the digital natives is fair enough. However, it's difficult to study changes to education which haven't happened. You can't study what hasn't happened!

Personally, I don't like the term digital native because it suggest a generational thing which isn't helpful. It's as if humans are intrinsically different from 1990 onwards! Rubbish. However, we can learn something very important from all human interaction with ICT over the last few years and think about how we should be educating people as a result. What I mean by this is that we are using Web 2.0 because they allow us to communicate in better and deeper ways. We are a social species. If we weren't, there would be no facebook, no twitter. Or at least not with the same widespread use. These tools were develop because of an inclination to communicate, to play, to create, to experiment. Why now? Because we can. We simply couldn't before. Or at least, most of us non-techie's couldn't. A lot of these tools are simply ways of interacting in different and deeper ways. So the fact that we, as humans, are doing this or want to do this is an important message.

Is it such a leap to think that there are lessons here for education? Not for me, but to a certain extent this is a leap of faith. The paper talks about digital natives being held up to "active experiential learners." No, this is what they want to be; this is what they are doing by choice; this is where we can surely accomodate them through formal education.

Overall, if you want labels I prefer the digital visitor, digital resident distinction made on the Don't Waste Your Time blogpost - Digital Native/Immigrant … or Resident/Visitor?. This is mostly because it doesn't distinguish between ages.

Motivation, Self-efficacy and Training

2009-11-30T14:40:00.000Z

I've been reflecting recently on motivation for educators to use Learning Technologies. It's a topic that should be close to the heart of any learning technologist because it defines our success or lack of success. In higher education, for various reasons already discussed in this blog, we have an LMS content dumping situation. Self-efficacy is closely linked to this. Wikipedia describes it as:

"It is a belief that one has the capabilities to execute the courses of actions required to manage prospective situations."

Apart from being difficult to say, why is this important? It's important because it's behind a lot of the dismissive, ill-informed, sweeping statement we were about learning technologies. It's easy to dismiss something you don't understand. This is why my mantra is to educate the educators. The best way to do this at the moment is to talk in terms of Web 2.0 because the concept and values behind Web 2.0 are a good way of getting the right message across about learning technologies in general.

But why should we expect the educators to go out and learn these things? This just isn't going to happen surely. Well we need to make it as easy as we possibly can. At the moment, I'm trying to get some Web 2.0 blended learning short courses off the ground with my fingers in various pies. I'm convinced this is the right way to go. A few years ago, I was involved in a project which sought to educate the educators in personal ICT skills. We got UK government funding in London and it was best training I've ever been involved in. Why was it good? There was a clear gap in the market; a clear need; and lots of eureka moments where understanding was gained by the bucketload and motivation to use ICT was switched on like a light switch. Web 2.0 training would be more conceptual but still hands-on. It is astounding to me that we are not currently doing this - everywhere. I just hope I can get some people to see the light. Wish me luck.

Don't Tell me how to Teach!

2009-11-19T09:09:00.000Z

Ok, this has never actually been said to me, but it's implicit in a lot of my conversations and is a major barrier to the adoption of Learning Technologies in education. So why would they be thinking this? And what business is it of mine to poke my nose into their teaching? The simplest answer to this is that to adopt anything new you have to incorporate it into the learning design. You have to think holistically about how you teach and fit it in. This is true of any tool/method/environment. I wouldn't be doing my job properly if I didn't make this clear.

So what's the problem? It's because they don't want to go through a redesign process. A process that I would find natural and necessary. Underlying both is the natural human defense against outside influence into their course/lesson - What's wrong with what I'm doing and "don't tell me how to teach". For some, in the lazy teaching club, they teach by a bog-standard content dumping, didactic method. So here we have an added barrier. I like to think this isn't widespread but I'm sure there is no study which measures this. For others and in our Learning Technology context, there's an issue of lack of confidence/skills/understanding or what Learning Technologies have to offer. This is definitely widespread and I don't need any research to tell me that. Wrap bits of all these issues up and you get a pretty tricky situation.

And the standard result in this scenario? Add-ons. Adding on file repositories (most common), adding on a discussion forum or sometimes adding on something like audio files (often mistaken called podcasts) to give the illusion of e-learning wizardry. But what's important is that there is no threat to the existing course design, even if there hasn't really been any real design process in the first place.

So whatever you do Learning Technologists out there - DON'T TELL ME HOW TO TEACH!"

Have belief in Learning Technologies

2009-11-09T17:19:00.001Z

One of the questions I've been asking myself recently is Why am I in Learning Technology? Did I fall into it and just run with it? Is it simply a job that I don't really believe in or care about? I tell myself and others that it's because I believe Learning Technologies provide something positive for education. Not just for themselves but positive in the ways of learning that they bring to the attention of education, make visible and demonstrate are viable and sometimes better than the didactic malaise education finds itself in. One of my main learning points (amongst many) recently has been how it's simply impossible to "prove" anything to do with Learning Technologies - or indeed anything to do with learning. You can point to a study that give a certain finding, but there's always a counter study or a context that leaves it open to question.

So how do I know that a particular Learning Technology is positive for education? Simply put, I don't. But I believe it to be true. The evidence and the experience I have leads me to this conclusion. I think it helps if you believe in what you're selling and certainly I couldn't function properly if I didn't. Also, maybe proving learning benefits is the wrong tack. Is it more about a vocational or workplace imperative? Or it is more about teaching learners how to learn that's important? It's probably all of these things.

What's important is that I have conviction in the virtue of my role. Also, I don't see it as a bad thing if I go too far in this conviction. In my context, there really isn't enough positive energy with Learning Technologies. Someone needs to provide it, if only to get people thinking.

Personal Cyberinfrastructure

2009-11-01T15:49:00.000Z

I read the article A Personal Cyberinfrastructure with interest. Gardner Campbell pulls no punches when he advocates for personal cyberinfrastrucure. He says:

"Suppose that when students matriculate, they are assigned their own web servers — not 1GB folders in the institution's web space but honest-to-goodness virtualized web servers of the kind available for $7.99 a month from a variety of hosting services."

The reasoning is:

"In building that personal cyberinfrastructure, students not only would acquire crucial technical skills for their digital lives but also would engage in work that provides richly teachable moments ranging from multimodal writing to information science, knowledge management, bibliographic instruction, and social networking. Fascinating and important innovations would emerge as students are able to shape their own cognition, learning, expression, and reflection in a digital age, in a digital medium. Students would frame, curate, share, and direct their own "engagement streams" throughout the learning environment."

There's so much here it's difficult to digest it all. However, the principle seems sound. Give the student real ownership and there can be real manifestation of personalised learning - a subject I reflected on in Personal Learning Environments - Concept not Tool. This is the kind of personal choice I was talking about but with the stability that education institutions crave. He continues:

"This vision goes beyond the "personal learning environment" in that it asks students to think about the web at the level of the server, with the tools and affordances that such an environment prompts and provides... These personal cyberinfrastructures will be visible, fractal-like, in the institutional cyberinfrastructures, and the network effects that arise recursively within that relationship will allow new learning and new connections to emerge as a natural part of individual and collaborative efforts."

This post is more quotation than reflection from me but I wanted to capture the essence of his ideas. The obvious question to arise from this is - are we ready for such a scenario? Clearly, it's no and I shudder at the idea of trying to sell this to the UK higher education world. However, I stiill love to be involved in an example of this nonetheless.

I might as well finish with some for quotation from this article. This time concerning the current LMS/VLE world:

"Higher education, which should be in the business of thinking the unthinkable, stood in line and bought its own version of the digital facelift. At the turn of the century, higher education looked in the mirror and, seeing its portals, its easy-to-use LMSs, and its "digital campuses," admired itself as sleek, youthful, attractive. But the mirror lied."

I include this to illustrate a particular frustration of mine. We think we are fully Web 2.0ed up, we think we are fully e-learning compliant. The truth is we are not. It's open to debate whether we should be or not (I say "yes") but don't think you've captured and are practising what it's all about when all you are doing is using VLEs as file repositories with token discussion boards! The 'we' here is UK Higher Education by the way. But I think you could extend it all education with confidence.

A Learning Technologist in 2009 in Higher Education

2009-10-29T11:45:00.000Z

I've just read an interesting post which has helped move my thinking on a bit. It's "Training" faculty to teach online by Lisa Lane and is about the nature of the usual offerings of "training" on teaching online. She distinguishes between Technical training, which is the mechanics of how to work and navigate a particular tool/artefact, and professional development for effective online teaching where the pedagogies behind them are explored. She says:

The misconceptions about the validity of online teaching are only encouraged by using the word “training”. It implies a false proposition: that instructors need to learn the tools first, and that once they have done so they will develop good online classes. Neither of these is true. Instead, instructors should be encouraged to examine their pedagogy as they begin to teach online, and be provided with extensive technical support as they develop courses based on their chosen pedagogy. And powers-that-be (accrediting agencies, Chancellor’s Offices, and our own colleagues) should be aware that the need is for creating a good environment for encouraging such practices, instead of certifying “training in teaching online”.

The weakness is one of understanding on the part of colleagues and administrators, and, in some cases, lack of meta-cognitive pedagogy (whether online or on-site) among faculty.

There's lots of good points here. Knowledge of pedagogy is lacking, knowledge of the values behind any Learning Technology is lacking, knowledge of Web 2.0 is lacking and personal ICT skills are lacking. These issues are just so huge! Where do you start? Well, the place most people is with the technical training. The problem is this is mostly where it ends. As Lisa argues in her post, perception of online training is often only about how to use a tool. We need more! But this is recognised. Not by the users or the employers.

Thinking about my practice and what goes on in Higher Education, things could be better. A lot of what I do ends up with showing how a tool work (technical training) and we often don't get beyond this. Mostly, people don't want me to go beyond this. Or if they are interested, there isn't the time. Should I force the issue? This depends on what type of Learning Technologist you are. If you are happy reinforcing the status quo, then trying to effect the way they teach isn't on the agenda. If you believe in the spirit of Web 2.0 and think that pedagogies and values behind it can have a positive impact on education then you MUST force the issue.

I think I'm shouting this word at myself more than anyone else. But it's hard. Hard to force the issue, hard to challenge how someone teaches, hard to annoy someone, hard to make your worklife more complex and more difficult than it needs to be.

So being a Learning Technologist in Higher Education in 2009 is all about challenging the status quo. But to do this properly feathers will be ruffled. I need to lie down for a bit!

Didactic Teachers are expendable

2009-10-26T15:10:00.000Z

The title of this post doesn't really tell the whole story, but I'm hooked on trying to have catchy, short titles (maybe twitter is effecting me too much)....

After reading Free Online Higher Education Courses?, I reflected on the whole principle of OER. In the posting, Robert Hughes argues that watching a lecture isn't as good as taking the course (in a critique of another article). This is true where the course is well run. But what about a large lecture where the didactic rules. Wouldn't watching a video or listening to an audio in the comfort of your own home be just as good. No, it would be better. So I agree that taking a course which uses a variety of pedagogical approaches can't be matched by OER. But a course where your only involvement is scribbling notes at the back of a lecture theatre can, and is, matched by an OER on the same subject. And if you get your friend to go to the lecture for you and record it, then you win any way you look at it.

In some ways, OER exposes educators who clings to the didactic as the only form of teaching. The logical step from the above scenario is that they are expendable. If it's all about the content, then the employee can produce this in cheaper ways than the expensive face-to-face model currently used. Sure, we'll still need experts. But not as many and not for the same amount of time. I don't want this. The teacher is vital to formal education - if they teach well. Hopefully, this can cause some realisation that we need to provide more than just the facts, delivered in broadcast fashion.

So educators, make yourself indispensable - design your learning incorporating collaborative and personalised pedagogies. We need you for that. So, if you think that Learning Technologies threatens your existence, you're wrong - they are your saviour.

Web 2.0 tools in VLEs - Just not that good

2009-10-24T13:43:00.001+01:00

I found this great slideshow.

Thanks David Hopkins for your post - Presentation: Moodle; an alternative to Blackboard for Web 2.0. (not that it's likely he will see this). The learning point for me is the around the question of using free standing Web 2.0 tools or a VLE with its own tools that could be characterised as Web 2.0. The slideshow stated, quite rightly, that an integrated tool offers less quality in terms of features but offers greater control and less risk.

The first to say is that, almost entirely, there is no choice for most higher educational institutions. They get a VLE - control and integration is a given. It's viewed mostly from a content viewpoint. Tools, web 2.0 or whatever, come secondary. I think if the learning opportunities presented by the tools were the priority there would be more consideration paid to the choice being discussed.

Moving on from that slightly depressed footnote, back to the issues of pure Web 2.0 and those integrated in VLEs. Here's the tension: Web 2.0, by definition, has a spirit of openness and sharing. VLEs are about control and walling the learning behind closed doors. You can take the mechanics of a tool like blogging, but walling it in away from the blogosphere changes its essence. The social side chopped off at the edge of the institution. This is far more of a difference that just having a few less features in the VLE version. By taking the social almost organic nature away from the concept it becomes an altogether inferior representation.

And what about the risk. Risk is always the first thing people think of - often becoming the reason for not using something. These risks are always overstated. But what is the risk in this context? I think this is what the slideshow is referring to is the risk of things breaking down or disappearing. Yes, this is true. Websites can shut down and you have no control over how they develop. However, this is rarely down without warning and there are always equivalent tools to use. Also, in the Web 2.0 world websites die for a reason - mostly because they just aren't that good. Moving to different version is probably a better option anyway. Certainly what you don't get is 90s looking interfaces and navigation that some VLEs possess (BLACKBOARD!!!!). In any case, costly VLEs with costly hosting have been known to fail. One of the ones I work on took a week off at the start of term a couple of years ago.

For any educational institutions, there's also the issue of ownership. A VLE is owned and not simply customised. A manifestation of the controlled, walled physical environment. So when I introduce an educator to a Web 2.0 tool outside the VLE, I'm chipping away at this notion. Well, I tell myself that anyway!

Web 2.0 tools and techniques

View more presentations from Mark Drechsler.

Introducing Learning Technologies - the Utopia, the Reality

2009-10-22T10:49:00.000+01:00

I've was asked the below question on the Educational Technology and Change Journal. I thought I'd post my response here as well as on there.

What would you suggest for helping teachers move beyond this passive use to the more active use that VLEs are capable of?

That's a good question. My utopian answer approaches the issue from a pedagogical point of view - promoting a collaborative and personalised approach. I would use the phrase teaching methods instead of pedagogy to keep things simple and talk in terms of allowing the learner to be creative and involved in the learning process – active rather than passive. I don’t think many educators would disagree that these techniques have a positive impact in principle. Once this is established, the idea that a particular Learning Technology artefacts or tool can be used to achieve such an approach, can be introduced. It’s important the Learning Technology itself isn’t seen as what’s valuable or important but the value or particular pedagogical stance behind it. That’s the utopia. The reality is different.

In Higher Education, for a standard lecturer in my context the standard way of teaching is lecturing with a bit of group discussion. It’s all face-to-face even though a VLE exists. It’s a tough sell to challenge both the delivery and the pedagogy that lies behind this. Where we are at in my institution is challenging the delivery by introducing the VLE as a tool for file repository and maybe assignment submission and grade management. This is seen as an important first step. However, we seem to have been on this first step for quite a while now. I have been talking about the other tools available both within and outside our VLE but they fall, largely, on deaf ears.

So the main barrier is promoting the collaborative and personalised approaches to learning mentioned earlier. Promoting them challenges the way an educator teaches. Who am I to challenge this? People will reject such an advance for a variety of natural human reasons. You could also argue that this isn’t my job. I’m a Learning Technologist not a pedagogical adviser (not that such a thing exists). The problem is that I think that changing the way we teach is at the heart of what a Learning Technologist is trying to do. So what can I do? My goal is to build up enough of an educator base so that an element of peer pressure exists. This would also give validity the Learning Technologies. Apart from that, keep chipping away.

I’d be interested to hear what others think.

Personal Learning Environments - Concept not Tool

2009-10-16T11:56:00.000+01:00

The educational response to the concept of Personal Learning Environment has been to try and create a tool and present it as a ready made Personal Learning Environment. Well, this misses the point. Also, it is symptomatic of educational institutions desire to control. So they create walled, narrow tools (usually something like an e-portfolio system) and pass it off as a Personal Learning Environment. My Personal Learning spills over a number of different tool. I would say that igoogle is the major gateway but google reader and blogger are key elements (at the moment). Maybe by having the word "environment", the concept is given a false representative quality that it shouldn't have.

I've been prompted to reflect on this whilst reading Exploring Personal Learning Environment by Graham Atwell. Amongst this resource I found the following useful quote:

"Another approach is to consider the PLE not as a specific tool, but rather as a concept, a way of organizing a variety of Web 2.0 technologies. The PLE would be unique to each user, and would change according to the user’s needs and experiences." [Kompen R, Edirisingha P & Monguet J (2009) Using Web 2.0 applications as supporting tools for Personal Learning Environments]

Sums it up nicely I think.

Choose your own path and collaborate!

2009-10-15T11:35:00.000+01:00

I read Graham Atwell’s post Cartoon Planet – A Pedagogy of Change a few days ago. I set it aside to study later because I knew there was lots to reflect on. I’ve now found time to do this and there has been one major learning point. Prompted from the quotes below, I’ve been able to think through the two major themes of Web 2.0 learning – Personal Learning and Collaborative Learning in a more coherent way.

The below 4 quotes give insight on this:

“Whilst young learners in the 21st century are seen as being increasingly independent, simultaneously group skills are more important than ever before.”
“The ‘educational shift’, grounded on social and personalised pedagogies, as advocated by most of the literature, is still in progress (Williamson and Payto, 2009).”
“The construction of new knowledge through collaborative and cooperative activities, which are personally meaningful to the learners, are core to a pedagogy of change (Learning and Teaching Scotland, 2007).”
“Learning relies both on granting the individual an active voice and creating an environment for collective listening and mutual support (UNESCO, 2002).”

These quotes crystallises the issue for me. Everyone can pick and choose their collaborative path. Look at how social networking works, everyone chooses their friends on facebook, they each join the groups they want and communicate with each set of people separately. The choice is entirely theirs and everyone has different connections. Groups can be subject specific or a particular social context or grouping. I think network is a more helpful word here than community. But what’s most important is that the learner is creating their network for themselves.

Let’s think about education. Well, let’s face it, it’s not set up to cater for this type of freedom. Any group work is strictly controlled and limited, be it physical or virtual. With this control, you can compromise achieving what’s “personally meaningful to the learners”. This has the best chance of coming when you give a level of independence. The learner creates and chooses their own path. Downes’ and Siemens connectivism course delivery shows what can be done (it’s a pity I’ve pretty much dropped off this (next year maybe)). I think control is at the heart of what education is all about so this is tough nut to crack. But it’s worth recognising that by controlling how students learn, you can inhibit their ability to learn – both now and in the future.

This has ended somewhere different to where I expected. I had intended to highlight how important the personal and collaborative elements are to my ‘informal’ learning in the blogosphere. I have created my own bloglist which gets refined all the time; I study them, as well as the odd article; I do my job and learn things; I collaborate by talking to a couple of key colleagues; I collaborate in the comments of blogs; I reflect on all this and blog myself. The most important part of this for me is the reflection. Previously, I never found time to reflect and this is the missing elements for lots of people. The other things can happen naturally, if you are lucky, but standing back and reflecting often gets lost.

Blackboard reinforcing the Status Quo

2009-10-12T15:24:00.000+01:00

Originally published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal

I discovered the article Insidious pedagogy: how course management systems impact teaching by Lisa M. Lane thanks to the WISE Pedagogy blog. It's one of those gems that you find every so often. And I'm going to do my usual quotes with comments blog posts to make sure I get the full reflection and learning benefit from it. The subject area is the implied pedagogy of standard LMS'/VLEs.

"Course management systems (CMSs), used throughout colleges and universities for presenting online or technology-enhanced classes, are not pedagogically neutral shells for course content. They influence pedagogy by presenting default formats designed to guide the instructor toward creating a course in a certain way. This is particularly true of integrated systems (such as Blackboard/WebCT)... Blackboard "tends to encourage a linear pathway through the content", and its default is to support easy uploading and text entry to achieve that goal."

I've always approached this from the opposite angle and said that VLEs are designed for the current education market rather than to improve or change in any way. So it's file repositories and grading books all the way. Remember, unlike Web 2.0, many of these VLEs are commercial products and in business you give the customer what they want and the customer doesn't want their pedagogy challenged. You also have to remember that a lot of the collaborative tools have been added on as VLEs react to what going on out in the real world. But when they are addons they don't really impact on the intrinsic design or structure. They could redesign as new versions come out - but they don't. Certainly, each new version of blackboard is so simliar to the last that it's almost indistinguishable. Maybe the consistency is important to them but it's a real missed opportunity. By the way, I'm quoting Lisa's use of CMS but I use LMS/VLE. I steer clear of CMS because it can get mixed up with Content Management System.

"a CMS must be designed around a central pedagogy: consistency of interface relies on consistency of approach. It is only important to recognize that the interface of any software reflects its intent."

I'd not thought about it in these terms before. Although I agree with this, I'm not sure that blackboard is designed with any particular pedagogy in mind. I think it's more a case of designing around the prevailing perception of what teaching is. Moodle is deliberately different. The collobarative tools are much more prominent and the grading system is rubbish, probably deliberately so (only joking).

Lisa then characterises most educators as "web novices". She says:

"These users were trying to reduce their cognitive load by limiting their use of the software, while Web experts were able to keep their goal in mind easily while searching more deeply."

And:

"When faced with a different interface or online environment, novices are inclined to utilize only the aspects they understand from a non-Web context."

It's a double-whammy. First, you have a majority who's personal ICT skills don't allow them to easily explore and experiment with the full range of what a VLE has to offer. Second, you have a majority who are content, if not happy, with the prevailing pedagogy of current teaching. Thus, there is no desire or compulsion to embrace/explore/experiment with software that challenges this. I also feel the knowledge of pedagogy within education is pretty limited but I don't base this on any hard facts. Anyway, both these issues are massive barriers to the adoption and use of Web 2.0 type tools . If you've read this blog before you'll know how sad that makes me.

Some more attacks on the blackboard functionality:

"Most professors think in terms of the semester, and how their pedagogical goals can be achieved wtithin the context of time, rather than space... Blackboard's default organization accepts neither of these approaches in its initial interface."

You can, of course, change this which is what I often advise my academics to do. But why have it like this? What it does is validate and reinforce the notion that content, course news and grading is all the VLE is good for. It's not for teaching or learning, but to get things from. It's a passive rather than active relationship, Web 1.0 not Web 2.0.

She continues:

"There is more satisfaction in mastering a few elements than in experimenting. Instructors move very slowly into features of the CMS that support less-instructivist models, and experience with the CMS over time does not necessarily lead to more creative pedagogy, or even to more expanive use of system features."

So we have a situation where educators struggle to get to grips with what a VLE can do AND they don't really want to anyway. That's not good.

Structuring Web 2.0

2009-10-08T14:35:00.000+01:00

Web 2.0

As a follow-up to Clarifying Informal Learning & Web 2.0, I've been reflecting further on a Web 2.0 classification system and resolved to do my own one. One which tried to simple and clear. The stimulus for this has been the need to design some Web 2.0 training. Previously, I've used the classification from the document Education 2.0? Designing the web for teaching and learning which aligned web 2.0 with four typically human dispositions:

Socialising the playful: games and virtual worlds
Socialising the expressive: media design, sharing, and publication
Socialising the reflective: blogs, social networks, and wikis
Socialising the exploratory: syndication, recommenders, folksonomies

However, I wanted something simpler and came across the Make, Share, Find classification in The CU Online Handbook. However, I think this misses out some of the key messages. So, I have come up with what's at the top of this post.

The idea is that everything fits into 1 of the 3 categories. I seperated the social element because it should run through everything. Overall, it serves a purpose for myself and is hopefully presentable enough for others to understand. However, I'm not crazy about the shape and there might be more reflective to be done on the details so things may change.

Anyway, it certainly fits into the category of Learning Technology Learning so it's worth posting here.

Question from John Traxler - 'Education - Fit for purpose?'

2009-10-04T07:56:00.000+01:00

John Traxler commented on my post from last Saturday Review of Traxler’s ‘Students and Mobile Devices’ and stated that the following question was his overriding concern for the article:

My over-riding question... is something like 'do the social changes associated with universal connectedness and mobility mean major aspects of the education system are bust and not 'fit-for-purpose'? or will technical/tactical fixes (maybe 'mobile learning' is one of these) and compromises continue to see us thro?'

It took a while for me to get my head around what this is asking, but once I did I could see that it was worth reflecting on. In essence, what John is asking is:

Does the social media/Web 2.o mean that the education system isn't 'fit for purpose?' Or can we compromise the protect what we have?

The short answer is YES. And we will compromise but in my utopia we shouldn't.

The first thing to consider is what has Web 2.0 taught us about learning? Most importantly, it's taught us that humans are SOCIAL. We are social beings, we want to communicate, share and network with eachother. It this wasn't true facebook and twitter wouldn't have exploded or we wouldn't keep inventing new and better ways to communicate with eachother. So what does this have to do with learning and changes to our educational system? I guess this has to do with how important you think these things are to learning. For me, communicating, sharing and networking are a fundamental of it. What Web 2.0 does it give this 'social learning' a massive outlet. An outlet that grows and develops all the time. Why not utilise this? By the way, I've deliberately stayed away from talking about pedagogy here. Partly because I'm no expert on this and partly because I try to keep things non-academic on this blog.

So to put this issue simply, the education system isn't social enough and, by using the social media (amongst other things), we should make it more so. All this threatens is the didactic, transmissive model of teaching which for many IS teaching.

Other things Web 2.0 has taught us? There's the whole area of formal vs informal learning which I'm going to link here to the issue of why have a physical entity that is the school or university. These areas are both challenging the notion that you can compartmentalise learning. That you can give learning a elite status that can only be accessed through formal educational institutions when and where they deam to convey it. This is just rubbish. Learning happen all the time, or it can do if you believe and recognise this. Web 2.0 allows us to believe and recognise this. It's been called 'informal' learning which is useful when you want to distinguish it from 'formal' learning but really it's just learning. Of course, you can and do learn in the specialise learning environment, but there is an artificial exclusiveness about it which programmes us the wrong way.

The final area I'm going to raise is the issue of personal choice. Personal choice doesn't exist much in the learning journey through education at the moment. Well it can now! The main reason here is the access to information, access to others to learn from has exploded through Web 2.o - OER, OET, social networking, blogging, micro-blogging etc.

So what about the compromise. I said that we will compromise but shouldn't. Iit's probably better to say dilute instead of compromise. This is because currently any tool adopted gets diluted as we seek to fit it neatly into what we have. By diluting, we lose the essence. For example, sticking a blog tool in an LMS closes it in and thus loses it's social, open nature. This cuts it off from the blogosphere which is the lifeblood of any blog (in my view). So why the compromise? It's because education is run by the educational institutions for the educational institutions. New ideas and tools are fine as long as they don't threatens their existence. In these circumstances they will, of course, defend their patch. You have to think about it in terms of what's most important - if it's the educational institutions then you dilute anything new to fit in what you've got; if it's the learners or the learning there interests come first. The best learning experience is debatable but it would be an easier debate if you took out the inhibiting factors of the rights and interests of the educational institutions.

Interestingly, what links the 3 areas I raised above is CONTROL. Educational institutions will resist them because they cannot control them. In some ways, current education is about control.

Anyway, these are some thoughts on this question which you could probably write a book about. If you have any comments on this, I'd be interested to hear them because there are lots of angles you could come at it from.

Clarifying Informal Learning & Web 2.0

2009-09-29T11:38:00.000+01:00

I've been reading The CU Online Handbook which I found through someone's else blog. It's a fairly big document and I wasn't sure it was worth wading through. However, early on I've found a good article which has some insightful comments on Informal and Web 2.0.

Apart from a belief that informal learning needs to be acknowledged and utilize in our education, I have a lot of "learning" to do on informal. The following quote by Phil Antonelli in the chapter Make, Share, Find: Web 2.0 and Informal Learning has helped:

"learning is a natural human cognitive process that is constantly occurring whether someone is in a formal learning setting or not. A simple example of this is how toddlers learn to speak their native tongue. They may be "coached" by parents and familiy members but barring physical deficits there are no formal classes necesary to learn ot speak. This type of learning had been defined as informal learning."

This is a useful example. Just as I hope we can eventually drop the e off e-learning, I hope we can eventually drop the informal/formal prefix to learning. Let's just learn! And not have it defined against our organisational structure or the delivery methods.

Phil also uses a useful classification structure of Make, Share, Find with Web 2.0. In the past, I've used the classification from the document Education 2.0? Designing the web for teaching and learning which aligned web 2.0 with four typically human dispositions:

Socialising the playful: games and virtual worlds
Socialising the expressive: media design, sharing, and publication
Socialising the reflective: blogs, social networks, and wikis
Socialising the exploratory: syndication, recommenders, folksonomies

The latter is more comprehensive and more academic, but the former feels like a better way of spreading the message. I always look for the simplist way to explain something. You could align:

Make with playful and expressive
Share with reflective
Find with exploratory

I'll keep reading and share the learning here.

eLearning Learning, Blogging and Reflection

2009-09-28T11:07:00.000+01:00

I've joined the eLearningLearning stable run by Tony Karrer. Thanks again for the invite Tony!

I read his blog and was aware of the growing aggregation resource of Learning Technology opinion within eLearningLearning so it seems like a good idea to become part of it. I don't actual use the eLearningLearning site as my blog source (I have a carefully put together google reader list), but I can see the attraction of subscribing to this one feed to get the the best Learning Technology opinion. Having joined, it's been useful looking at the list of blogs featured because I've found some new good ones to read. Anyway, if you are reading this you probably know all about eLearningLearning because that's probably where you came from.

The question I am reflecting on now is whether having a greater potential readership will affect this valuable reflective tool I have. I'm pretty sure it won't. I always write as if I'm talking to someone so I'll just continue in that vein. What's important is that I don't lose focus of the essence of this blog. Something I outlined in my very first post:

My aim with this blog is to fill the sharing and reflecting side of my Personal Learning in my role as an e-learning professional.

Also, I am mindful of this passage from a later post - Blogs for education, blogs for yourself

My motivation for blogging is to capture my learning for myself. By making it public facing, I’m forced to be coherent, and it’s in that process where the learning happens. Quite often I end up in different places than I expected. So for me, if no one reads it, the blog is still valuable since it serves my purpose.

It's the reflection I want to keep hold of. I had an interesting discussion about this today. The person I was speaking to didn't find reflection easy. I think this is true of lots of people. But I think it's more to do with the process not being something we are used to. Reflection and the learning that results is a very personal thing. So often, education is about reaching a perscribed learning goal. A goal achieved through a perscribed learning path. And once they reach this goal is achieved why bother going any further. Why personalise your learner by reflecting on it with reference to everything else you know.

Thinking about my reflective time, I've only really been doing it for that last 6 months and that's because of this blog. Certainly, it was never a part of my education. This blog has exceeded my expectations. I wouldn't have thought having a virtual space for my learning would be so important, but it is. Maybe because it's so easy to make look professional, so easy to edit, so easy to link to. Whatever it is, it works for me. I can recommend it.

Review of Traxler’s ‘Students and Mobile Devices’

2009-09-26T10:30:00.001+01:00

Originally published on the Educational Technology Journal

I heard that the best ALT (Association of Learning Technology, UK) paper this year was Students and Mobile Devices: Choosing Which Dream by John Traxler so I thought I’d review it.

Generally, it was very interesting and gives a good overview of the implications mobile devices have for education. There were times when the words “mobile devices” could have been replaced with “Web 2.0″ and there were points with which I disagree.

Here some of the key passages with my comments:

“Students no longer need to engage with information and discussion at the expense ofreal life but can do so as part of real life as they move about the world, using their own devices to connect them to people and ideas…”

That’s a great description, isn’t it. Even if you don’t agree with it, it’s great. When you read it, you need to think in terms of multimedia rather than text. However, for the connect part I don’t think we are there yet. Certainly, my iphone doesn’t connect well enough in enough places to be used in this way.

“Interacting with mobile technolgies is different and is woven into all the times and places of students’ lives. Mobile phones have created “simultaneity of place”: a physical space and a virtual space of conversational interaction, and an extension of physical space, through the creation and juxtaposition of a mobile social space.”

Thinking about it, maybe mobile devices more than Web 2.0 in general will have more success in challenging the domination of the didactic lecture. With mobile technologies woven in, education will have to accomodate them and their social nature will slowly creep into the teaching and learning.

“When we say we can ignore desktop technologies but not mobile technologies we mean that desktop technologies operate in their own little world, mobile technologies operate in the world.”

Again, this is catchy, but I think this goes too far. It’s not as if every office space with a computer exists in another world or is outside reality. Anyway, the point is well made that there is a here-and-now aspect to mobile technologies that can surely be utilised by education.

“With the possibility of perpetual contact, the mobile phone ends in fact by shaping time as a container of potentially continuing connection.”

With the always on connection and a myriad of methods to do so, the only constraints to staying in contact is the consent of the people involved. There are now no restrictions. It’s worth saying that this isn’t all about mobile technologies because once people reach home most switch to laptops/PCs. What this means for education is that it’s one of the more obvious challenges to the ridiculous notion that we learn in neat sessions according to a timetable Monday-Friday. This is part of the formal vs informal learning debate.

“Mobile devices are also eroding physical place as a predominant attribute of space. The phrase absent presence (Gergen, 1996) describes situations where groups of people physically together, co-located, are all connected elsewhere.”

This is challenging the physical buildings of our education institutions. Some good points in this issue have been made in the CreateDebate: UK Higher Education needs more radical change than a debate about who funds it. It’s worth noting that it’s wrong to attribute all these notions to mobile technologies in isolation. I see them as part of the Web 2.0/socail media ethos — an ethos which has at its heart the natural human inclination to communicate, network, and, above all, socialise. I talk about this in my blog post Use Social Media — Fulfill Your Destiny!.

“Educational provision is built around time and place: the timetable, hand-in dates, the classroom, the year-group, the deadline and the laboratory… the education system, especially the formal university system, is getting out of step with how many students perceive the world they live in and… changes are needed to keep universitites aligned to a changed and mobile society.”

This is worth recording because it echoes a sentiment that I agree with: Higher education is behind the schools when it comes to use of learning technologies. Again with the above, you could substitute the word “mobile” with “Web 2.0.”

“These changes and trends will cause significant shifts in the idea of ownership,specifically the ownership of technology and of knowledge.”

This is an important point that relates to learners taking more control of their learning. However, it needs unpicking. From students’ point of view, they are owning when and where they access their learning so there is freedom and choice in that sense. This is important because of the impact that it should have on the way learning is delivered.

“In its earliest forms, knowledge and learning came from lectures, a linear format from an authoritative ’sage-on-the-stage’ with no pause, fast forward or rewind, and from books, substantial and linear but segmented and randomly accessed. the delivery of knowledge and learning by networked comptuers meant . . . new heuristics of usablity that prescribed how knowledge and learning should be chunked and presented.”

There are two important issues here. First, a major motivation for change from me. The transmissive mode is flawed because if you miss something then you’ve missed it. And if you’ve missed something at the beginning then that’s it for the rest of the lesson. It’s as if part of the challenge of learning is being able to concentrate fully for the entire time. Any mind wandering (something I do) and, well, that’s tough! Any disruption (more on this later) like communication and you’re out!

The other issue is the attempts at chunking of textbooks that I remember from school. We would skip from chapter to chapter in an attempt to follow a contextualised route through the learning. You would think once a better mechanism for achieving this were invented education would jump all over it.

“Mobiles devices extend and enhance this voice because they allow users to capture content, for example images, sounds, data and voices themselves, form the real world, from events as they happen, specific to when and where they happen.”

It’s important to note that the other big area where mobile devices can really make a difference (apart from the “simultaneity of place” issue) is with multimedia. It really is so powerful to be able take videos and photos on the spot and network this immediately.

______________________________

It’s important to note that the other big area where mobile devices can really make a difference . . . is with multimedia. It really is so powerful to be able take videos and photos on the spot and network this immediately.

______________________________

Now some things I disagreed with:

“There are drawbacks. The first is that these developments reinforce a tendency to view knowledge and other forms of content merely as commodities or assets. The second is that this choice and control are exercised at a purely personal level, allowing individuals to each pursue their own curiosity, constructing their own private libraries and inhabiting their own worlds of knowledge. This erodes the idea of a commonly accepted canon, a common curriculum, of things we all need to know and are assumed to know and replaces it with what some poeple have referred to a neo-liberal nightmare — not dream but nightmare.”

With the first point, I don’t really see the problem. How people view the knowledge or engage with the learning is up to them. We don’t need to control how people think. The second point I disagree with. He views greater learner freedom and a loosening of control over educational institutions over any aspect of the learning process as a bad thing. The opposite is true for me. He’s actually describing a utopian PLE. Strange as this passage seems at odds with the spirit of the rest of the paper.

More on disruption: “There is a weak version of disruption that amounts to nuisance; phone calls in class, texting in exams, photographs that should not be taken, inappropriate ring-tones and so on. There is however also a strong version of disruption. These devices allow students to access and store images and infromation of their own choosing and perhaps create and distribute new images and information independently of the lecturers and of the university.”

I would add communication opportunities to this. What he’s challenging here is the notion of disruption as necessarily bad. — a notion that prevails at present. Certainly, mobile devices are seen purely as a nuisance in current educational structures. Theweak version description is what they say, but really the strong version of disruption is what they are worried about — worried that they will have to change and accommodate.

On infrastructure: “Wholeheartedly adapting an approach centred on student devices is challenging and radical for institutional IT units. Their roles would change drastically, depending on the institution and its mission, and on its finances.”

Not much to say except yes. But I don’t think, wholeheartedly, adaptation will happen any time soon. Here and now, wifi has to be standard and of a high quality in education and elsewhere.

Some points about formal/informal learning: “We used to make a distinction betweenformal learning activities in our universities on our equipment and self-motivatedlearning activities outside our institutions not on our equipment… If we are to embrace student devices, this simple dichotomy breaks down and the boundary becomes blurred.”

This is informal or learning that needs to, first, be acknowledged and then engaged. The breaking down of the boundaries is only troublesome if you teach by habit rather than design. If you have deliberate and informed learning design then catering for this is manageable.

“Guaranteeing e-safety becomes more problematic when on the one hand we encourage the use of student devices for learning but on the other hand have no ability or authority to control how, when or where they are used, nor any control over the applications, data or networks they support. At the very least, policies of acceptable use must evolve rapidly to address the affordances of student devices.”

I think seeing everything through the prism of control isn’t correct here. It comes from a standpoint where the institutions are at the centre of education rather than the learner, which is wrong. E-safety is so overplayed in education. Yes, we need to take care, but we shouldn’t shut things down on this proviso. Also, I wouldn’t worry about “policies of acceptable use” as these seem to spring up almost before they know how to use something.

About training: “. . . faces staff developers with the enormous challenge of preparing teachers and lecturers to work with a range of devices.”

Yes, and this is a mantra of mine as I can often not get past this area in my context. However, I would say that the goalposts are shifting in this respect. Increasingly, new tools/environments are becoming easy to use and more intuitive. So it’s more a case of getting educator to experience using a tool/environment rather than learning how-to use it. Only by experiencing a tool/environment can they understand what it’s all about. This is particularly true of Web 2.0.

Use Social Media - Fulfil your Destiny!

2009-09-24T15:01:00.001+01:00

There are some interesting ideas in the slideshow "Getting Real About Enterprise 2.0". By far the most interesting for me is slide 8:

"The social web emerged because it reflects basic HUMAN NEEDS."

I've been saying for a while something a bit like this - something like humans are naturally social and we use social media because we want to. Web 2.0 is popular because people want to use it. They want to share, network, create and above all communicate.

This presentation echoes this sentiment in a different and maybe preferable way. I like the idea that we are reflecting basic human needs through our use of the internet. It's as if we are inventing and finding the tools that we need to satisfy our natural inclinations. Ever since the printing press, we have gradually improved our methods of communication and the advances of the last few years are pretty impressive.

Anyway, another useful idea comes in slide 5 where it says "we need to see PEOPLE as the platform." This reflects a common thread running through the slideshow which holds the internet up as a force for demoncratic good. This is true - potentially. And why corporations/governments seek to control it.

From an education perspective, Web 2.0 is all about the user/learner participating and control. So, by incorporating Web 2.0, you are giving the learner more control, more chance at being creative, more chance at being social and more chance of fulfilling their destiny as a human being!

Getting Real About Enterprise 2.0

View more documents from Acando Consulting.

Lecture Your Way to Stardom!

2009-09-23T09:06:00.000+01:00

Originally published on the Educational Technology and Change Journal.

Karl Kapp talks about teachers who have gone on to become rock stars in “Teacher . . . Stepping Stone to Rock Star?“ Interesting . . . and surprising they let a young Sting teach at a convent school! Anyway, my point here is the notion of teacher as a rock star is something that is common and can be negative when it comes to challenging the sage on the stage notion and moving towards a more collaborative approach. Sometimes I see it in their eyes: “Do you really think I’m going to give up being the centre of attention?” Of the many barriers to the adoption of learning technologies of the Web 2.0 variety, this is one of the least acknowledged.

Taking the focus away from the teacher/lecturer isn’t what the all powerful one wants. This is where ego gets in the way, and quite simply there are many who like the sound of their own voice too much. When thinking about a blended approach, how likely is it that someone like this is going to countenance replacing some of the face-to-face with e-learning? Or adopt any kind of learner centric approach that diminishes his or her role from expert to facilitator or guide?

I am, of course, playing devil’s advocate to some extent. I have more respect for the teaching profession than almost any other, and there are so many brilliant teachers. However, some of the brilliant ones fall into the above category. They need to be more flexible and, in some ways, feel less threatened by new ideas.

Remember the focus should be on what’s best for the learner — not the teacher.

Protecting the System vs Helping the Learning

2009-09-22T16:57:00.000+01:00

In Don’t, Don’t, Don’t vs. Do, Do, Do, Will Richardson talks about how he turned around a hefty policy of don't concerning use of the internet to a heft policy of, well, possibilities. It's useful to record here his list of do's:

“Do use our network to connect to other students and adults who share your passions with whom you can learn.”
“Do use our network to help your teachers find experts and other teachers from around the world.”
“Do use our network to publish your best work in text and multimedia for a global audience.”
“Do use our network to explore your own creativity and passions, to ask questions and seek answers from other teachers online.”
“Do use our network to download resources that you can use to remix and republish your own learning online.”
“Do use our network to collaborate with others to change the world in meaningful, positive ways.”

This is a conversation that I am familiar with and I feel a common reaction education has to anything new is "How can we control it!" I remember how one the UK's Quangos was obsessed with codes of practice and rules in their new online communities space before anyone was actually using it. Large amounts of energy were spent honing these rules and all it achieved was putting people off. I am always of the opinion that you should concentrate on building the community/network first. This is hard enough in itself! The rules and regulations should be buried and buried deep. Admittedly, my contexts have involved few instances of conflict online or audiences that you think would be prone to this sort of behaviour but I think we miss the point if we overplay this aspect.

As I said earlier it comes from the instinct within education to control (which I think is also part of the resistence to moving away from the didactic way of life - but that's another story). For an education institution's point of view they often view the internet (and to a certain extent the whole of Web 2.0) as a challenge to the status quo; a potential for trouble; a potential for too much student power. I can't deny this potential, this challenge. But I advocate the use of the internet, and the Web 2.0 world, because of the do's eloquently described above.

Notice that the do's are all to do with learning and the rules and regulations have, at their heart, the purpose of protecting the institution/the system. Which should be more important?

Learning Technologies - Disrupting Teaching and Learning

2009-09-20T09:28:00.000+01:00

Sessums comments in Reflections on Transforming Teaching and Learning ring true with me.

"only disruptive innovation—adopting digital learning wholesale—will change education. This disruption is most likely to emerge in places where traditional ways of teaching are outright failing; over time..."

Where I have been able to get academic use of Learning Technology to influence their teaching and learning in my workplace it's been where we are starting from scratch or addressing perceived "failure" - usually low recruitment. Trying to influence an established course taught in the traditional didactic way - forget it. Almost exclusively, the academia won't entertain the idea of thinking about how they teach. I've reflected on this before in Challenging didactic teaching. In these cases (which is the norm), failure is not perceived because this is how we teach. Learning Technologies are extra tools which they don't have time to and don't want to learn about. This is where the above quote is spot on. It is disruptive. Especially, if you do it properly and really reflect on how this tool or that tool can impact on the teaching and learning in your course. Who wants disruption?

The learning journey continues....

Social Media - Negativity

2009-09-20T09:02:00.000+01:00

I am often surprised of the way some will talk about social media. Some of the comments quoted on Reflections on Students and Social Media: Consuming the Consumed seem to think of it as some sort of monster devouring and deviling everything in it's path. A force for evil destroying all that is natural and innocent. I'm exaggerating of course but I think this misses the point. People use social media because THEY WANT TO; because it's a good way of communicating. Clearly, a better and easier than that which existed before. If this wasn't the case, all the different social media environment that are part of everyday life for so many of us would have died before they started.

It's fair to point out that a lot of the comments on this blog post came as a response to a leading question - In what ways are we at a tipping point with social media? Who says we are? With the myriad of things that constitute social media more is bound to follow as we develop and innovate. Much of the sentiment of fear and annoyance over social media is about the time spent using it. Well this is time spent COMMUNICATING. This is time spent building networks, sharing ideas and creating. How can this be anything but good.

This is not meant as a attack on a blogger I respect and read regularly but an attack on the attacks that reign in on the force for good that is social media.

Connectivism Course - First thoughts

2009-09-17T16:43:00.001+01:00

I signed up for the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge open course and it started this week. I used to read Stephen Downes daily so I know and respect his work and I try to read both George Seimens' and Downes' blog when I get a chance. I've been looking forward to it for a while but there is a slight air of tredipation as I worry about disciplining myself to commit the time to it. For example, I hoped to be writing this first blog entry on Tuesday and it's Thursday already! My biggest attraction to participating is the way the course is delivered, the lack of structure, the openness, the use of networks and, well, connectivism. Not that I know exactly what that is at the moment.

Anyway, the purpose of this post to give my first thoughts on reading, watching and listening to the initial set of resources posted on Monday. Even though I've heard of connectivism and pretty much know nothing about it so I am starting from scratch with this.

I probably made the mistake of reading the What Connectivism Is blog post by Downes first. This was the hardest to understand, but things became clearer once I'd watched all the videos and read the Wellman paper. As I expected, I found it difficult to grasp the finer points of the pedagogy and this will probably take a few weeks. So here is what I think I've learnt about connectivism.

Esesentially, learning is all about networks. Knowledge is distributed across the networks and learning is about traversing them, tapping into them and creating them. Technology has a role because it makes the process easier and much more accessible. Thinking about the networks possible over the www makes connectivism easier to conceptualise.

Knowledge is not an entity in itself "it's literally set of connections formed by action and experience." I've quoted Downes here because I don't really get this. I'll try and expand staying close to his words - knowledge is an inability to see something another way. Once seen, it can't be unseen. Stephen also says that two people seeing the same thing don't form the knowledge. I think this means that it's different based on the connection each person is making or the network of knowledge they have traversed to get to this point is always going to be different.

I started off seeing connectivism as a underlying network of all knowledge that was always there and it's just a question of finding it. But following what Seimens says - not everything is known. Connectivism is about making associations or the ability, the skill to make associations. "Learning is a process of growth and development." I'm quoting again to hold onto what is me and not me.

Downes ends his video with 2 objectives:

1. how networks are grown or network, processes you go through
2. Successful networks – what networks work and are reliable.

I look forward to finding out more on these.

That's enough for now.

Characteristics of Millenials

2009-09-15T10:46:00.000+01:00

Tony Bates in It's all about Millenials - or is it? explores the whole issue of we need to use technology because they are. He is right that we shouldn't accept this notion knowing all the facts and the lack of real, hard evidence for the net generation concept is worrying. I've never been an advocate of the idea that Millenials (this is first time I am hearing this particular word) are somehow wired differently. Anyone who’s experiences and uses Web 2.0 should be considered a Millenial, whatever their age.

Also, it’s useful to see these characteristics of the net generation by Oblinger and Oblinger (2005a):

digitally literate in the sense of being comfortable and familiar with digital technology
connected to friends and the world through technology
‘immediacy’: rapid multi-tasking, fast response to communications - experiential: they prefer to learn by doing rather than being told
highly social: ‘they gravitate toward activities that promote and reinforce social interaction’
group work: they prefer to work and play in groups or teams
a preference for structure rather than ambiguity
engagement and interaction: an orientation towards action and inductive reasoning rather than reflection
a preference for visual (i.e. graphics, video) and kinesthetic learning rather than learning through text
active engagement in issues that matter to millennials

It’s worth noting that currently in Higher Education this is not the case for many. Certainly for my institution, The Institute of Education, which has a lot of mature and overseas students, it is common not to fit this profile. However, I would still advocate a strategy would has the above points in mind when it comes to learning design. This is because it’s up to any teacher/lecturer to design the best learning experience possible. If you believe the above is better than the normal didactic, transmissive model then it’s worth pursuing even if the class is out of their comfort zone initially. Just because you fulfil their expectations and experiences by doing “the norm”, it doesn’t make it right.

Passive Learning

2009-08-31T09:46:00.000+01:00

Just read an interesting blog post Kicking Powerpoint to the Curb. In it, there is this statement:

“Strangely enough, the people who are most resistant to this model are the students…Students have been socialized to view the educational process as essentially passive."

There is a tension here between what we perceive your average young person is used to and motivated to use, i.e. Web 2.0/social media and this statement. Passive learning is how things are done in the didactic world and it's actually less effort day-to-day for the students to experience this. For me, this is the main problem with lecture and didactic teaching. You can get away with not listening and therefore not learning. This is easy path and many look for it. With Web 2.0, it's the ethos that I am attracted to more than anything else - the collaboration and active participation in the process. Forcing someone to do this forces them to pay attention. So, although your average students is used to using Web 2.0/social media they are not accustomed to the active learning that it's use in education would entail. This isn't an argument for not pursuing this route. On the contrary, forcing them to active learn is a vital step forward for education.

Higher education actually has a tougher job because it probably isn't the case at the moment that your average student is so clued up on Web 2.0 as the younger generation. This is particular true in my case where the demographic is often a higher age group.

EdTechRoundUp30 - Learning Points

2009-08-13T09:07:00.000+01:00

I recently discovered the EdTechRoundUp podcast. I'm trying to make a conscious effort to introduce podcasts of this kind into my learning. I'm often too tired to read when commuting and listening to a podcast while resting my eyes could work well - now that I have my iphone (hooray).

I've only listened to one and it was good quality. The only issue I have when I listen to a discussion like this is that it can be frustrated when the point you would make doesn't get made. Anyway, here is my learning.

"Teachers think VLEs are clunky" was centrepoint of a fairly long discussion. I think the clunkiness perception comes from the glimpses your average educator has had of social software where drag and drop is common and intuitive is the norm. Broadly, I agree that the perception is there and also that this perception is correct. In 2009, they do feel clunky. But what does this really mean? The dictionary definition is:

clumsy or awkward
not stylish or attractive

It's difficult to know much of the clumsiness when compared to Web 2.0 tools or whether they are intrinsically clumsy or awkward. What is definitely true is that with a social networking site, like facebook or ning, there is less to learn and the usability is better. When it comes to attractiveness, I think a certain amount of this comes from social software looking more up to date. There is a fashion factor just as clothes go in and out of fashion. Overall, web 2.0 is all about the user getting involves easily. The usability has to be good for any tool to be viable. Just thinking about what it takes to upload and publish a file on moodle and I can think at least two points where it should be made easier.

But surely the answer is to make them less clunky! Well this is easier said than done as the clunkiness seems intrinsic to how they are built. There are two reasons for this:

Any tool (like a moodle quiz or a blackboard blog) has to have the same look and feel as the rest of the system. So whereas independent Web 2.0 survey or blog tool can concentrate on making it the best in terms of usability and attractiveness. Within a VLE, you are limited to the template of the bigger picture. A bigger picture which is much more difficult to change and is much slower to change. This is why a blackboard blog looks archaic compared to blogger.
Any online tool in education has the question of security to consider. Security protecting the children from the outside world; security protecting the outside world from the children; security protecting the privacy of the class; security protecting the intellectual property rights of the educator; data protection! This security add layers of clunkiness that other websites don't have to the same extent. This is one of the tensions education has with web 2.0. At its heart, web 2.0 is about openness. VLEs first and foremost are designed to protect (almost obsessively). This is why where VLEs have adopted a web 2.0 tool into its system it often doesn't feel quite right. So whatever tool we use, clunkiness is unavoidable to a certain extent as securities are put in place. Maybe we should try and bring this spirit of openness more into education! That's another can of worms.

The discussion went down the line of using other tools instead, e.g. facebook. Well yes, as long as we understand that usability is just one of the reasons for this. Overall, it should be done in the knowledge and understanding of what social networking has to offer over and above your average VLE. By the way, I would favour Ning over facebook as facebook for learning can bring up tricky issues. Something they discuss on this podcast and it's worth a listen.

I have slight concerns about using a social networking site as the house within which what currently happens on a VLE occurs. This is because, for most, the VLE is a file repository and an assignment dropbox. However, I would favour the shift because the social aspect of a Ning, for example, are so intuitive and attractive that it would encourage educators to explore their use in a more recpetive frame of mind.

Faculty resistance to using IT tools in active learning instructional strategies

2009-08-04T11:08:00.000+01:00

I've been reading through a behemoth of a discussion on the Ning network - Innovate-Ideagora called Addressing the problem of faculty resistance to using IT tools in active learning instructional strategies. There is so much of interest that I had to read it all. I wanted to record my main learning points here because I am positive there are many. The problem is that, as with any discussion, the discourse jumps around a lot and it's difficult to absorb properly as you move through the debate. However, I'm going to try and record the main issues here. When reading debates of this kindsd common issues crop up:

Challenging the notion of the "lecture"
Didactic vs collaborative pedagogies (in this discussion active learning is the key phrase)
Higher education research priorities
Assessment - and it's driving force dictating the teaching
Process learning now becoming more important than fact-based learning

Interesting side issues here including the nature of blended learning and issues of cheating which was linked to the nature of assessment. Below are some additional thoughts.

A lot of the debate pitted the lecture against active learning strategies exemplified in the TEAL initiutive from the physics dept. of MIT. So the heart of the issue is the realisation that the most important thing we are doing is promote active learning through learning technologies - not just learning technologies. It's important that we understand that.

The discussion explored how a lot of learning technology use involved augmenting the lecture experience, reinforcing it in a way that didn't promote active learning - a reinforcement that added to the cost of the learning experience. Steve Eskow was prominent in challenging the notion of the lecture as all powerful and advocating alternatives to the face-to-face. I happen to agree with this. For most (nearly all) the traditional didactic lecture is so much the right way to educate that it isn't even worth debating. Currently, learning technologies have to fit in around these face-to-face events which are a pegs to hand our education onto. It's a fit that can work but often doesn't. However, this approach makes things more difficult than they need to be. Of course, face-to-face has value. But start off thinking of all your tools on an equal footing not with one on a higher plane.

The discussion described the performance involved in giving a lecture. I have a hunch that this is an important element for many educators. Why be receptive to different teaching methods if we like you already do? Put bluntly, some like the sound of their own voice too much. There, I said it. But how can you challenge that? Not easily for sure.

I've said in previous posts how important it is to educate the educators in learning technologies. One good idea from this discussion is to give them a reason to use it in their real lives, e.g. an aggregator for their news, and they will naturally start thinking about their teaching once this is embedded.

Face-to-face to Online - A Process

2009-07-27T16:22:00.000+01:00

I've been way behind on my blog reading but have been learning loads converting a face-to-face course into an online one. My key learning point from the last couple of week is not to underestimate the time and effort it takes to do this. Overall, it's very rewarding. This is especially true as the lecturer I am working with is receptive to the process and happy to learn about everything that's an offer. I thought I'd record here the process we have gone through so far:

- I learn about the course
- I demonstrate the organisation VLE we are supposed to be using
- We decide where to house the course - The VLE with Web 2.0 linked in where necessary
- We talk through the activities used on each face-to-face day. Each activity is unpicked and I suggest and demonstrate the options available online
- I set up the course online
- Timings are set and activities are edited

Actually, we haven't finished and the last 3 points are currently being worked up through several iterations. Much of the time is taken with distilling the activity to what's most important and addressing that above everything else. Another big issues is ensuring making it right timing-wise. At the heart of this issue is transferring the synchronous to asynchronous. It sounds straightforward to try and replicate any face-to-face discussion online in a forum of some sort. You could do the odd one synchronously but largely this will need to be asynchronous and with any asynchronous discussion you need to give it time to develop. I favour two weeks for any subject but one week often has to do. So, if you have 4 discussions during 1 face-to-face day and you want to keep all of these online, you will need 4 weeks at least. Hopefully, timeframes are not as pressing as time spent - which needs to be comparable with face-to-face. All this needs to be carefully thought through.

One of the other main things I am trying to do is mix things up and use a wide a range of Web 2.0 tools as possible. You shouldn't really do things for the sake of it so I'm trying to ensure suitability and appropriateness. However, there is an evangelical element to it. I want people to experience a new learning tool to show how good it is! Show how easy it is! It makes it harder to be tied to a less than impressive VLE but they are getting better as they cobble together some Web 2.0-like tools to keep up with the real world and I can link to outside tools easily.

Learning about TPACK

2009-07-17T11:30:00.000+01:00

I went to an interesting seminar yesterday run by Punya Mishra where I learnt about TPACK - Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. The A is present to make a better sounding word. Basically, it's what educators need to know in order for effective integration of technologies into their teaching.

“Effective technology integration for pedagogy around specific subject matter requires developing sensitivity to the dynamic, transactional relationship between all three components. A teacher capable of negotiating these relationships represents a form of expertise different from, and greater than, the knowledge of a disciplinary expert (say a mathematician or a historian), a technology expert (a computer scientist) and a pedagogical expert (an experienced educator).” Punya MIshra’s website

As with any model or theory that rings true with me, this is not really telling me anything new. But it articulates one of the fundamental issues facing education. And articulates it very well.

How do we address this? Well, firstly I guess people in position like me need to help educators use learning technologies appropriately by not just showing them how to use the tools, but also learning about and helping them integrate it into their course. It’s a two-way process that requires the educator to involve the Learning Technologist in the learning design helping him/her understand the learning process with the LT helping the educator understand the essence of a particular tool.

Interestingly, Punya didn’t advocate a presentation of the TPACK model to teachers. It’s useful for us to understand the process we are trying to get the educators to go through. But it’s not necessary to draw the circles. I’m not sure you should hide things but he’s right that if you talk too much theory most people switch off.

One other good learning point centres around repurposing. We repurpose any technology for our own ends. This is true and obviously so but I really like its simplicity. Presenting things simply is very, very important and a skill that I constantly strive for.

Web Squared comments

2009-07-14T15:15:00.000+01:00

I have learnt a lot from reading Web Squared: Web 2.0 Five Years On by O'reilly and Battelle. It may be business orientated but it's given me insight into the future and a different perspective on the essence of Web 2.0. However, when I went back over it and thought about some of the main points with education in mind, I didn't get a great deal of insight. But one point is worth exploring:

Web 2.0 is all about harnessing collective intelligence
Yes, indeed. Web Squared talks about how applications get better the more they are used. The tools learn and use the user contributions. The key phrase here is harnessing collective intelligence. For me, this reinforces my belief in the collaborative/constructivist pedagogies. You could say that Web 2.0 is a collaborative/constructivist approach to the internet. An approach that people have voted for en masse. Similarly, you could liken Web 1.0 (if that's a phrase) to didactic teaching. No input from the user into the static html.

So what for education? Well, the above is my biggest learning point. But conceptually educators need to get used to the idea of constant improvements and updates and actively engaging in this process themselves. Putting up with a static VLE for years and years isn't what we want to be doing in 2009.

Some interesting stuff on how the Web learns from bodies of data. This is useful to know and you can see how the semantic Web will take shape from this. However, there is nothing profound here for education that springs to mind except how exciting some of the tools look. Definitely some educational potential here. If only everyone had an iphone!

My PLE update

2009-07-13T15:21:00.000+01:00

I've revisited my PLE document and updated some areas. It was useful to reflect on how my working practices have changed. Not just from April to now, but also from a year ago to now. The way I learn has been invigorated by my engagement with Web 2.0. Instead of reading academic journal and JISC documents intermittently, I now engage almost daily with the the latest Learning Technology news and opinion. I won't spell out for you which is better.

Overall, my core tools are Igoogle, googlereader, bloglines, delicious and blogger.