Month: May 2008

Stepping Up a Level

Last week I gave an online presentation with my colleague Hervé Didiot-Cook as part of the Wimba Distinguished Lecture Series (Distinguished = we said yes): Winning with Wimba? From early enthusiasts to the mainstream at a UK University. We were talking about the Wimba Voice Tools which we love but it was a taxing experience as we had several problems with audio, some self-inflicted, others due I think to the Wimba Classroom software which we are less sure about – see Web Conferecing a-go-go by my colleague Kris.

Some of the problems Hervé & I experienced are due to our relative inexperience with these kinds of tools, and this what I mean by stepping up a level. I think for many staff and students it is something of a step up from text-based keyboard & mouse interactions to ones involving audio, headsets, video & webcams as well as host of non-technical stuff. (The lack of visual signals etc). If a learning technologist & a learning technology enthusiast struggle with adapting to this then we know it’s going to be a bigger step for staff & students who are less confident with ICTs.

The week before last I was at Imperial talking to a mixed audience (lecturers, learning technologists & IT staff) about our use of Wimba Classroom & Voice Tools. I made this point about these tools being a step up for many users and although there were a few nods of agreement I think there was a certain amount of scepticism too. I’d be interested to hear what others think.

And finally… Donny Donny Donny (sung to Ruby)! Congratulations to Donny Rovers for playing passing football and stepping up a level on Sunday!

Images: Going Up! Doncaster Rovers 1- 0 Leeds United, 2008 League One playoff Final at Wembley.

Engagement in the Digital Age

Digital DivideI’ve just finished reading Futurelab’s Beyond the Digital Divide paper from June last year. I must have missed it at the time of publication but came across it in a round-about way thru’ their blog: flux.

There were a couple of things that stood out for me. Firstly, the need to move away from a conventional simplistic understanding of the digital divide which is essentially one based on access to technology.

That’s not to say that this divide between those with and without access should be ignored or downplayed just that it would appear to be more complex than simply the haves and have-nots. For example the Futurelab paper refers to people who have access but don’t make the most appropriate use of it & those who just don’t engage with ICTs or get little from their engagement. In an earlier post I referred to digital dissidents, those who avoid using technology whenever possible, which in one UK survey accounted for 20% of teenagers (See Synovate survey in CIBER report in Net-savvy post!!).

The Futurelab report refers back to a 2000 paper More than Access (PDF) which identifies a number of literacies to consider around the digital divide. I particularly liked the idea of an adaptive literacy – an ability and willingness to apply previous learning to new situations. This is crucial in the world of constantly changing ICTs. The report also took me to I’ve never tried it because I don’t like it: enabling technology choices (PDF) by Mike Cushman & Ela Klecun here at the LSE. They advocate a more discursive approach to ICT teaching to enable understanding rather than just skills acquisition and suggest a need to focus on the possibilities not a prescribed set of uses in order to encourage engagement. I think this is something we are quite good at with regard to our learning technology programme but as ever ‘could do better’!

While reading this paper I kept thinking digital divide, beyond, rethinking, divide, digital… where have I come across this recently? Then of course it hit me: ALT-C 2008 ‘Rethinking the Digital Divide’. See you there?

Image: http://flickr.com/photos/oliverlavery/120394577/

Twitter: From Cynic to Addict?

Cynic >>>> Addict? Well maybe not just yet but I’m certainly further to the right than I once was. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about Twitter later so this is a mid-term report if you like, as part of my role as “web2.0 filter” as one colleague recently referred to me!

I started using Twitter about a month ago. For those who are already lost, twitter is blogging on a very small scale (140 characters per post) and you can follow other twitterers of your choice in a single stream of posts like this. The 7 things you need to know about twitter (PDF) from Educause will tell you more.

Now there is a lot of irreverent stuff as you’d expect but I have found it very useful. I’ll give more examples later but for now, a simple one of resource discovery. When I joined Twitter I started following Martin Weller as I read his blog. While browsing those he follows I came across Grainne Conole who I’ve met but don’t really know… we are both ex-Uni of North London. A tweet from Grainne took me to her blog where I then came across this post which I then blogged about. Now of course I might have gotten to the ENTICE guide through another route but it was twitter that brought me there in this case.

As I said more to follow but Martin Weller is already ahead of my game with his Twitter Tales and also thanks to Sonja for this post on filtering the news.

Coincidently, though the medium of actually talking to someone, I came across the following new video from Mike Wesch yesterday. For me it’s not as slick and engaging as his earlier ones but it shows how he has used Twitter in a ‘world simulation’ with his students at Kansas State university.

What do I do?

Matt LingardAt last week’s M25 Learning Technologists‘ meeting we discussed exactly what we do and what we might be doing in the future. We know how to have fun. Seriously, many thanks to Peter Wren & Julie Voce at Imperial for facilitating this session; it’ll be very interesting to see what comes out of the data collected. Inspired by the session I have produced this pretty picture which you can click on to see it proper. I’m new to FreeMind and haven’t quite figured out how to use it so here is my key:

  • Green means I do it – and the dark green is stuff I particularly enjoy
  • Grey means I don’t do it and in all cases have no strong desire to either
  • Internal-External refers to my institution rather than my immediate team

One thing that my mind map doesn’t do is make a reference to technology vs pedagogy which came into last week’s exercise. I recently blogged on the Pedagogy before Technology mantra and when I tried to incorporate them into my mindmap I realised it was unnecessary as nearly all the stuff I do involves both to some extent.

Build your own?

If you’d like to build on what I’ve done or produce your own personal version, you can get FreeMind here and here is my FreeMind file as a starting point.

Following the meeting Martin Oliver flagged up the Learning Technologists’ page on the HEA’s new Research Observatory wiki, which is under development here.

Blended Learning Guide

Educational considerationsI like this!  Educational Considerations for Blended Learning is a short booklet from the ENTICE project at Brunel.  It highlights 8 topics to consider when embedding technology into campus-based teaching.  I really like the simplicity of the structure and it’s accessibility.  It’s an easy read which isn’t always the case for pedagogy-based stuff 😉

Need to think about how best to use it next… oh, I came across this on  the e4innovation blog and Grainne Conole has written a bit more about it than I’ve had time to this morning!

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