JISC online conference 2009

I've just been into the first day of the conference. Very interesting keynotes, and discussions taking place.  Plus there's a "have a go" area full of useful resources and demonstrations.  Thought I'd share some of those with you;

• The EVOLUTION project - reusable materials
  
  

The JISC funded EVOLUTION project is an Open Educational Resources project that is disaggregating existing materials so they may be re-used and re-purposedfor different contexts or pedagogies. Click here to listen to a talk about the project and the materials available. If you would like to download the materials for review than please register to use the materials on our repository at www.employability.org.uk. Open to UK HE only!

•  LexDis - student participation, issues and strategies

This project, with the help of students, explored successful 'e-skills' and supporting strategies, including the use of assistive technologies introduced by e-learning and Web 2.0 type services such as blogs, wikis, social networks and mobile technologies. The outcome has been the development of an online database with student strategies, explanations about the technologies used and a series of one page guides with print versions. The latter have been provided to encourage staff to develop accessible teaching and learning materials. Some link to the work of JISC TechDis Accessibility essentials and all have links to further resources.

• The Design Studio: a curriculum design and delivery toolkit
  
  

The newly launched Design Studio is a developing dynamic web-based toolkit hosted by JISC infoNet which draws together a range of existing and developing resources around curriculum design and delivery and the role technology plays in supporting these processes and practices. The Studio will provide access to project outcomes and outputs from the JISC Curriculum Design and Delivery programmes as they are developed and will continue to be sustained as a community resource after the programmes end. A curriculum lifecycle concept provides a structure for this wiki-based resource and the primary portal to materials whilst tagging provides flexible entry levels to information based on e.g. themes, technologies and subject areas. This is a recorded (not live!) tour in Elluminate. Click https://sas.elluminate.com/mrtbl?suid=M.257864C26A4F22C5EE6DB9B8A536AD to view the recording. Access the curriculum change document that accompanies this resource.

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  JISC Digital Media videos

  
  
  
  

These are videos covering a range of topics, including those of interest to teaching and learning:  http://vimeo.com/user2187259/videos

• Internet for Image Searching
  
  

This is a practical tool for learning how to use the Internet to find copyright cleared images to support learning and teaching. The link below takes you to an online tutorial about the tool. http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/tutorial/imagesearching/

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  The Phoebe Pedagogy Planner tool

  
  
  
  

Phoebe is a pedagogy planner tool, designed to help teachers create learning experiences that are motivating and productive for both their students and themselves. It comprises a simple authoring environment and extensive guidance on teaching and learning with digital technologies. Phoebe was developed from 2006-2008 by a team from the University of Oxford, with funding from the JISC Design for Learning programme.

About Phoebe:

• Overview (2 pages, PDF format)
• Introduction and demonstration by Marion Manton, given at the University of Oxford on 28th August, 2008 (23-minute video)

Exploring Phoebe:

• Phoebe Pedagogy Planner
• Exploring Phoebe guide (12 pages, PDF format)

• You might also like to visit the website of the LDSE project, on which we are now working with colleagues from five other institutions.

visual tweeterings

I have recently become aware of some excellent tools that allows us to follow the tweetings of others without the need to sign up for anythng. :O)

And......... these tools also allow us to filter out the twitter wheat from the twatter chaff> Which in my view is using the web more intelligently. The first has been out for a year or more called tweetdeck. It allows you to filter and download tweets onto UR phone or PC. People who've used it report it being very good as a way at managing the avalanche of twitterings. But it requires an install- FAIL!

The next one I was told about at an online webinar with Elliot Maise recently. During the hour webinar someone told me he was using twitter to tweet about sed webinar - and I could catch them on Twitterfall. It's a website, that essentially aggreagtes tweets. Simple & effective. And agian you can apply all sort of filters to only receive the info you want. Neat.

The third one I stumbled across yesterday from a link of Paul Andrews who has an excellent wiki covering all sorts of elearning technologies, including this informative page on all things tweetery. Back to the plot >> that twitter visualiser is called http://visibletweets.com/ and looks visually stunning, with tweets updating realtime on a plain screen. Again filters can be applied to narrow the search down. Neater, like this list of other twitter apps. Some good.

Somehow Paul Andrews has managed to emebed this visable tweet into his wiki page. Looks impressive.

Multiple Intelligences in 3D

Derby University have their VLE linked to SL academic writing area

I have created a webquest to introduce educators to the principle of Howard Gardners Multiple Intelligences and also as an introduction to Second Life.

http://wiki.rscwmsystems.org.uk/index.php/Webquests

Feel free to download the exemplar webquest and repurpose it.


This is also a pre-conference activity for our HE in FE conference on May 13th :

HE conference in partnership with the Academy : playing with learning 2. May 13th. Book your place now:

http://info.rsc-wm.ac.uk/events/event_details.asp?eid=412

Programme:
http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/heinfe/Playing_with_Learning_II_Programme.pdf

• Dr Colin Beard & Professor Alan Mortiboys discuss emotional intelligences
• Kirsten Hardie – Problem based learning
• Kim Jackson & Gary Hargreaves
'The Art of Communication with Digital Natives
• Julie Hughes & Kevin Brace
‘The Trojan Mouse’ – hands on workshops covering blogs and wikis for collaboration and reflection.
• Darren Bourne
'Playing with Learning - the opportunity to learn powerful questioning techniques. NLP techniques employed.

Legally web2.0

UPDATE : the notes from the sessions are here : http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/Web2/

A JISC legal presentation last week in B'ham regarding the legalities of offering web 2.0 services to staff & students, scared us stiff. It was nearly enough to put me off recommending it [web 2.0 software] to anyone. There were some proper horror stories of people misusing the technology. Enthusiastic but ill informed dabblers of said technology were the main culprits. Mind you, I made a faux pas recently when I copied a private email conversation to a wiki. I forgot that even tho' the wiki page was "hidden", Google could still spider it, and therefore cache it. The page contents could be googled! And it happened. Luckily for me the offending text was fairly harmless, but acute embarrassment followed. Sorry again Lis. Note to self, emails are private, and wikis are searchable! My story paled into insignificance when we learned that a lecturer used a wiki to get students to recount stories of personal abuse. These highly personal stories were supposed to be hidden, but were in fact very public on an open wiki. Scary stuff. The same goes for your facebook profile and flickr photos, all set as public as default. Be warned, identity theft is rife.

The morning session was very interesting with two specialist lawyers giving case study examples and ideas to pursue. They rounded the session off by summarising the legal aspects to consider of different web 2.0 platforms;

Wikis:

• Use behind firewall is preferable – but again consider appropriateness (see stories above)
  
• Consider DDA/ Privacy – confidentiality – consider the implications of other peoples stuff on the web
  
• Ensure fairness - guides & protocols in place for all users, inclusion/fairness issues
  
• Limit editing & viewing rights
  

Facebook types:

• Again is it appropriate for use
  
• Privacy settings are very open – privacy issues
  
• Terms of use in place
  
• Deletion rights, specified upfront
  
• Confidentiality – it's set to share as open - Flickr & myspace are examples . Migth be password protected – but google can see them in Google cache.
  
• Use an internal closed environment – behind firewall
  

Accessibility:

• Ensure accessible Applications
  
• Accessibility 2.0 guidelines 2007
  
• BSI PAS 78 Web Accessibility Standards have some really good guidelines
  
• DRC code of practice (equality & human rights commission) real world examples of issues you could face in education – very sensible
  
• Ensure you have adequate policies & protocols in place
  

Student guidelines:

• Terms of use for web 2.0 - Edinburgh Uni has good terms – put these in place in handbooks & website
  
• Robust privacy & Acceptable usage Policies (AuP) in place
  
• Inform students & staff regularly of terms
  
• Restrict access to offenders
  
• Must be able to delete offending content
  
• Mindset of info is all free to use – no one owns stuff – social tools are open for all to use. It's not just an IT or HR issue – this flows through all organisation.
  

Institution:

• Develop a central organizational policy for web 2.0 - Uni of Bradford is a good exemplar – NO ad hoc projects by the enthusiastic dabbler. Remember a little knowledge is dangerous!
  
• Conduct a privacy impact assessment
  
• DDA compliance – new laws out recently
  
• Compliance with all policies – staff & IT policy need to be covered
  
• Intellectual Property Right (IPR) policies in place
  
• Information & training for staff – must be ongoing to ensure awareness
  
• Involvement of knowledge management experts
  

There is also a checklist provided by JISC legal, to support these workshops. It's a worthwhile read if you are thinking of using these tools. I was assured that these resources would be online following the events. So have a look round early Nov '08 on the JISC legal website.

Watch this video and presentation on developing a web 2.0 strategy, it may help your institution embed web 2.0 tools alongside traditional VLEs?

Wikis @ ALT-C

This is a short report on some of the presentations I attended at the recent ALT-C 2008 elearning conference. This year I mostly listened to people who had attempted to use wikis or Web2.0 software to enhance learning. Some successful, some not so. Read on...

The first presentation I attended was a summary of a massive (thousands of students) programme to roll out distance learning across vast swathes of rural USA. This was very interesting to see how mentors and students had been trained up to use the distance learning tools. It was early days, but results were looking favourable. One thing I noted was the use of a pre-online survey tool. This tool : http://www.cma.charysma-online.com/nlst/core/main.htm is promoted to gauge the online "readiness" of prospective students, and also by the look of it as a training tool for online mentors and facilitators to alter their pedagogy to much more of a student centred approach. I've only come across this type of tool once before to gauge suitability of potential online learners. No idea where, but someone could leave a comment if they know of one.

The second presentation I attended was given by some HE academics from Australia, who had attempted and failed to get staff to collaboratively edit a wiki. FAIL. Nice idea, but poorly executed.

I then watched a researcher from the OU discuss how he used a wiki to get engineering students to collaborate. The authentic task that was also assessed. The task was created to replicate the way industry uses wiki tools to create product documents. Overall a useful experiment, with some interesting results gleaned;

• attach a discussion area to a wiki, to enable true collaboration.
  
• Students requirement of initial training,
  
• the need to keep a wiki structure simple,
  
• assessed tasks help galvanise and focus principles (should have seen this one comming!)
  
• all students liked using a wiki & the associated learning experience, with examples of deeper learning taking place.
  

The last workshop I attended on the subject of wikis was conducted by Oxford Brookes Uni business school academic staff. They had tried a number of different methods to get their biz students to collaborate on text and presentations. After analysing the result of the wiki use, all they [students] did was cooperate using a wiki. i.e. they met up F2F , discussed the nature of the task , then went away to compose their individual bit of the report, then pasted it into the wiki. This was recognised as an issue for improper instructional design. They needed to design out methods for meeting F2F and ensure collaboration was done online (they should speak to the OU man above). Another idea the academic staff tried was to allow student to create presentations using as wiki. The results of this were again not so good. I'd guess is that they are using the wrong tool for the job, here. It sounded like a case of "ohh look , we've discovered wikis" now let's use them for anything we can think of". After analysing the results of these two types of wiki use , they concluded some fairly useful observations;

• Most group work was not collaborative, just cooperative,
  
• Don't use a wiki for online presentations, especially if you are unfamiliar with the basic features (read staff!!),
  
• Add a discussion board to a wiki to allow collaboration,
  
• Heavy scaffolding (read training ) required, in a blended context,
  
• Construct a task that cannot be done F2F (to ensure online collaboration) – or at least reduce F2F contact.
  

Overall an interesting set of presentations, but again what I find astounding at some of these presentations is that some basic level research has been omitted from the process of implementing these tools. If only they had taken note (for example) of the basic Gilly Salmon 5 stage model to help scaffold and orientate the use of wikis, I'm sure the results would have been better. The myth of digital natives as expert users of the "web" again takes another beating!

You can now use an itneractive version of this popualr 5 stage model : http://www.atimod.com/e-moderating/fivestepflash.htm

Active [e]learning?

A few weeks ago I was asked to present at a local FE College staff development day. The title was "Active elearning".
As I broadly researched theis topic of "active learning" it became quite evident that most of the underlying pedagogy involved in the plethora of (games'ish based) tasks involved active collaboration with peers. My presentation is now up on slideshare.net, for you to download. Within the prestentation I also discussed the use of Moodle and Wikis to promote active collaboration online. There are a number of links within the presentation regarding effective practice and worked exemplars.


I also located this excellent little website (URL below) full of short videos explaning how lecturers are transforming their previously didactic pedagogy towards a more student centred (and collaborative) approach using the techniques they had learned. Geoff Petty ( a renowned consultant) and other experienced trainers provide the underpinnnig theory and clarifies the active aspect of learning which helps students to embed principles and relate these experiences to new situations.

Access them here : http://teachingandlearning.qia.org.uk/resource/su_ict_introrescd/default.htm

Active learning means:

• involving learners
• enabling them to learn important skills
• allowing them to apply new knowledge

And don't forget that the QIA exellence gateway also has some case studies on effective practice. This site is constanty updated, so please take a while to browse the case studies.

http://excellence.qia.org.uk/case-studies-teaching-and-learning

Active Learning

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: elearning web2.0)