Totara is the name of a new venture between Kineo + Catalyst IT - A leading open source company based in New Zealand, Australia and the UK. Catalyst are one of the core Moodle developers and have one of the largest Moodle development teams. Joining this are the Flexible Learning Network - An innovative New Zealand based e-learning company that leads the Mahara e-portfolio project, the most popular open source e-portfolio system world-wide and often used in combination with Moodle. Full press release here.
Totara will offer bespoke flavours of Moodle customised (as they do currently) to the corporate LMS market, integrating training tracking, etc, and now add personal learning plan in the shape of Mahara. IMO, HEIs & FE Colleges could benefit from these new ideas of Moodle / Mahara integration. This new venture also reinforces the increased awareness and uptake of Open Source solutions across the globe.
After trawling through another of my regular Google Alerts on e-portfolios this link caught my eye. It began as an interesting link to a web based tool to create a set of rubrics for assessing e-portoflios: called irubric . Very neat idea, for those just embarking on the use of assessed e-portfolios. And for those (like me) who are not exactly sure what a rubric is : A rubric is a scoring tool that's generally used for subjective and authentic assessments. In subjective assessments, rubrics help create a certain level of objectivity. As a result, learners are more clear about the expectations prior to assessment and are clear about their areas of weakness and strength after the assessment. In authentic assessments (which are usually subjective), rubrics help educators communicate and assess levels of performance.
Which also reminds me of the rubric wiki (for digital story telling) developed by the CEAL team in Cheltenham - again this is a proven framework you can pick up and adapt for your own cohorts.
Moving on to Rcampus - from the above irubric pages, I noted that they host e-portfolios and courses (like a VLE) all for free :OD - why pay more? Looks V good (at first glance) For more info watch the vid :
This is how to do it. Nice & easy. Web 2.0 = PLE. Why pay more, when the web does it for free. And note this is not using any HTML/scripting, it's just editing, copy , paste, insert, link. No more difficult than using a word processor. Neat solution to creating a simple e-folio :oD..
The blurb of this book caught my eye, initially sounded like a rant to begin with, but looks like a useful read into the future of connected learning via the internetwork. "The future lies in personal learning networks and paths, learning that blends experiential and digital approaches, and free and open-source educational models. Increasingly, you will decide what, when, where, and with whom you want to learn, and you will learn by doing. The university is the cathedral of modernity and rationality, and with our whole civilization in crisis, we are poised on the brink of a new Reformation."
I took some notes from the webinar & would like to share them with you plus some related videos that will feed into this blog post neatly.
Scott Hewitt from : http://stressmeless.org/?page_id=308, gave a first half presentation encompassing some very interesting topics and some current projects and platforms.
revising to combat revision stress - Flash based learning game. It included easter eggs + combination scorings. planning revision breaks was paramount - they scored higher if they did this.
Scott then talked about another tool Open simulator : http://opensimulator.org/wiki/Main_Page currently in alpha version - create own virtual environments - d/load onto own server - Open Source - similar to SL. Can build your own "worlds", and make it private - UK Army are experimenting with it. BCU have built Shareville as a 3D immersive world as a learning resource: http://shareville.bcu.ac.uk/
Unity : multiple platform development tool - very advanced, but need some experience to use it. A widespread community. http://unity3d.com/
Thinking worlds (Caspian) : a rapid development engine, SCORM output, scoring and links to LMS to record scoring, shallow learning curve - advantageous to elearning devleopment teams (and as a teaching + learning tools) . Using with Students - pushing the boundaries: http://www.thinkingworlds.com/
Blackberry, iphone, ipod touch are all being used for innovate games design, in schools. Flash support for iphone comming soon, which will help release more applications, quicker and easier.
Can you develop a game in a day? Yes they did with 35 games design students, see the project @ URL:
http://www.realprojects.co.uk/gamebasedlearning/eln%20resources.php , see 1/2 way down page for brief they gave to students to deign the games. They used thinking worlds for this. Split into roles and went through the whole process, including narrative, rewards, learning outcomes, flowchart, storyboards, testing and pilot, etc. All groups (about 6 in each group) did at least 1 game each in 1/2 day. nb/. dentisry looking at the wii controller to teach techniques.
Second half of the session was run by Steve Harris - Northumbria Uni. His talk was equally interesting, but focussed on the underpinning principles of effective games design he teaches. High level concepts about game design and how education can benefit from these high level principles. Some notes I made:
Pace of learning - using games for differentiated learning design.
Recouperation is good for this- command and conquer, ie. intense period of action, then relaxation to reflect. Don't throw a constant barrage of info' at learners. Give time to reflect.
Motivation - fallout 3 game: sense of freedom (like ps2 game) - sense of discovery (not critical to quest) like easter eggs! Player feels as if they are in more control of the narrative - like GTA. ie. medical sim game - delivering medicines - add other medicines. They can discover to use in other situations.
Conflicts : places player in a situation where they have differing situations - like mad dash racing. Developing tactics and strategies to cope with rules of games. Helps to develop thninking, by allowing them to develop specifc skills i.e. time management.
Condorcet Paradox in gaming : remove dominant strategies: few number of paramenters create larger number of possibilities. Don't allow the learner to always win. Desgin in simple strategies.
Reward systems - fundamental in games: Operant conditioning - the more you use a technique or method, the better you become. It has to be balanced with other strategies to make you follow game rules. And Xbox 360 gamer acheivements online tag, to show others your skills. Simple to bolt on to a platform.
Apply thorough testing: ie. Halo 3 heat maps : bungie has these heat maps on their web site - in relation to specific weapon use - live payer date captured to allow you to learn from others. Intelligent use of gamer data.
Player assistance: i.e. player 2 can take temporary control to help player 1. Works with young and special needs games design.
Look at existing board games for ideas for effective learning/game design.
I posed the question "are games designers utilising existing educational pedagogies to make their games educational?" The answer was a no! Which I thought was very strange indeed. It seemed like a one way street, i.e. educators are looking for games based applications/platforms/technolgoes/graphics to make learning objects or content more engaging, but why are'nt games designers looking at the many (thousands of years) of teaching and learning experiences to make their games better? Or are they? Let me know.
A couple of weeks ago two RSC staff held an "in-house" Second life training/awareness session for UK RSc staff. The event was very well organised, as you can see from the event images.
A whole range of basic SL skills and uses of SL were demonstrated and experienced by delegates. If you are thinking of running your own CPD sessions, contact Jane Edwards of JISC RSC West Midlands for some advice.
Jane is also responsible for a new SL project that allows our new SL island to be experimented with by local learning providers. The list of local learning providers particpating in the project is currently full, but if you need to know more please contact Jane (contact details on above wiki page).
If you want to know more about SL in the Midlands, book onto our free event on 02/12/09
RSC South East also ran an event to launch awareness of their new ISland. This island is also open to educators to use for various teaching & learning projects. Contact Harold Fricker (HE coordinator) to find out more about how you can get involved in their SL project.
Any presentation needs to be short – 10 minutes – focused with clear points for consideration set up at the beginning so that you are listening with a purpose.
If you want to present for longer then there needs to be gaps between major talking points.
Twitter type text needs to be set up so that it is about the presentation and not whether it is sunny.
If there are breaks between key points then when the new point begins the text messaging is relevant to the new point.
There should be a facilitator who can summarise points and act as a conduit between the presenter and listeners.
Animation does not translate to the conference therefore powerpoint slides need to take this into consideration.
Slides should not be too text based and should enhance the presentation not provide subtitles to it.
The conference should have a ‘master of ceremonies’ who calls the conference to order, introduces the speaker and makes sure that communication is as effective as possible.
Each presenter could have a blog set up for further discussion – the posts being the key points in their presentation.
With large audiences keep the conference for transmission with online follow up rather than expecting large numbers to contribute.
When taking part in a conference, either as organiser or participant, enlist a colleague to maintain a check on twitter-type chat and conversations to note key points of use and/or interest.
Is the vitual learning environment now obsolete (was it ever used well??), considering how Web 2.0 & e-portofolios are gaining greater acceptance? You decide by watching the debate unfold.
It's bascially Sharepoint with some added features to improve and enhance the document management system style of workflow already inbuilt into Sahrepoint. The ability to author, and share content was fairly impressive, and the navigation seemed to suit some advocates of MS tools. But is it a Moodle or Blackbored killer? Nope, but a worthy adversory nevertheless. Especially for those organisations completely new to VLEs and are MS /active directory centric. For those types it could proove a neat way of designing, delivering, managaing content to learners .
A note of caution here, using a document management system requires an organisation to evaluate & refine existing (bad/inefficient) practices and procedures well before you let Sharepoint or similar system out of it's cage.
What we also could not fathom is why Microsoft had essentially licenced this Dutch company to design,develop & roll out the LMS version of Sharepoint? Why aren't MS doing it themselves?
They also promise an eportfolio to be added onto the next release. Mind you when we were shown the existing Sharepoint "mysite" option that appeared to add a high degree of personalisation onto the document management system. This mysite could be a pseudo eportfolio tool that could answer your prayers?
I was recently asked by a local College advice on redesigning curriculum to move towards a blended delivery. I have collated a set of useful resources on this subject into three categories for your perusal;
This post is a sideways look at the increasing importance of the gaming genre that's being exploited for educational use. The Bized website has some excellent simulations. And there is a newSerious Virtual Worlds report [which] focuses on virtual worlds for educational uses, and explores the ‘serious’ – as opposed to leisure-based – uses of virtual worlds.
The embedded video above is from the Coventry based serious games institute, who research this topic. They have a base in second life, which brings me neatly to my next point. Last weekend the newspapers were awash with the usual poorly researched sensationist stories about the first second life divorce. I happened to catch a Daily mail article - the so called voice of middle England! Their strap line was "Fantasy world awash with sex & porn"...Well if you hadn't noticed, so is most of the interweb! Educators are only beginning to use Second Life effectively for teaching & learning purposes, and its still early days for most. Experiential (running a conference/pop concert/shop, learning a second language) and modelling abstract concepts (modelling very large & small experiments, etc) are being investigated. As are simulations and small group teaching ideas. There is even a SL for under 18s called teengrid, supported by SCHOME. Mind you Google are shutting down their virtual world at the end of this year! But they have developed a 3D ancient Rome layer in google earth?
Mind you they said that VLEs would revolutionise teaching!!
Back to the plot. Last weeks SL divorce stories followed hot on the heals of the release of a new World of Warcraft update, which is played by millions of people online. This is a real escapist world for many. PLayers were lambasted on TV for racking up stupid amounts of hours on line. But some are seeing the potential of such games ; West Nottinghamshire College, which developed the ‘Neverwinter Nights’ Key Skills assessment tool. This is an initiative designed to encourage learners to complete work by stimulating their desire to achieve. In 2004/5 the Neverwinter project won the Association of Colleges Becta Beacon Award for The Effective Use of Information Learning Technology to Enhance Teaching and Support Learning. Last weeks lively (forgive the pun) article from the ReLIVE08 conference, draws all of these strands together much more succinctly than I can.
All this points to developers making use of new interfaces to make the technology more accessible to all. If you wander around youtube you'll see that there have been some very clever Nintendo Wii hacks. Some have even managed to turn a wii remote into a digtial/interactive smartboard ! There are loads of other youtube videos and google sites dedicated to some really useful and stupid "wii hacks". I know that some local Colleges and councils are investigating Nintendo Wii's for use with disabled learners and engaging students generally. A colleague of mine has developed learning objects/manuals for the army to be used with the Nintendo DS lite. In fact you can get an adapter to add memory cards to the DS lite, which means you could turn it into an e-book reader or watch videos or listen to podcasts?
If you are interested in establishing some positive ideas about the educational benefits of serious gaming, I suggest that you read the book Everything Bad is Good for You. It's a light and informal read, but a real eye opener. Talking of eyeopeners and assistive types of interface design - I bet you never though the amazin' drag and drop interface featured in the minority report film was just science fiction? well, it's not.
My third posting connected with the ALT-C 2008 conference. This presentation caught my eye as it featured the words collaborative learning + teacher training in the title. And that's what we do? Kind of. Anyhoo, the sesson was looking at a community of practice, namely trainee teachers, and how they were supported using technology.
ASSociate Online are a HEFCE funded collective of a number of HE organisations, that also contribute to the Huddersfield Centre for Traineee techers - HUDCETT. This is all quite confusing as our host organisation Wolverhampton Universiy are a part of this group. Surely they should be part of the WMCETT we have started to collaborate with? Can someone please explain?
Anyhoo, back to the plot. HUDCETT have a fantastic Moodle created to allow trainee teachers to collaborate under their subject specialisms. Their Moodle has been set up to allow collaboration and locaton of existing reosurces, etc. There should be one of these in every CETT in my opinion, that all HE and Colleges training teachers send their trainees - to find their study buddy! We were given a quick demo, and it's impressive. They also run an emoderators + ementors scheme, and encourage subject specialist to join on a contractual basis. You can join now.
The last part of the presentation involved the Director talking quite candidly about the poor [pedagogic] uptake of VLEs right across academia. She discussed the challenge facing all educators/trainers, attempting to promote the use of VLEs for teaching and learning. We all chipped in with some ideas of our own why this is the case. Here are some quotes;
" The staff that embrace technology are racing ahead - the staff that are scared of technology are being left behind. The students suffer as their miss out of the power and opportunities of E-Learning and VLEs."
"There is a digital divide between Staff that embrace new technology and Staff that are scared/fear/misunderstand technology."
"pedagogic models are primary transmissionist. VLEs = no f2f contact. Students want to socialise @ college, plus a lack of good practice, inlcuding a lack of time to change pedagogy to student centred modes."
"getting 'lost' in the system. Fragmented versus holistic approach in design."
This is my favourite
Often asandwich with no filling:
----------Resources (PDF/Word) on the top------------
+++++++++++No learning in the midde! ++++++++++++++
---------- Discusssion forums on the bottom------------
We did discuss benefits of VLEs as well. And I thought it was just me being a little to negative about lack of uptake for VLEs!
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