Month: February 2009

Storing Stuff

Not quite sure where I’m going with this one but the issue of storing stuff has cropped up a few times in the last week.

  • Eportfolios – a place to store stuff and make it available to different audiences – yourself, your peers, your teacher, your employer, the world. At work we’re looking at Mahara & Pebblepad
  • Repositories – see my earlier post on Language Box, a place for teachers to store, organise, share  teaching material
  • A course team needing to share material for developing a new module – we’ve been looking at delicious, Google sites & our VLE, Moodle

So lots of people with similar requirements, storing and sharing stuff online…. still no idea where this is going so will need to return to it…

A Future of E-learning

This morning I delivered a talk on the future of e-learning!   I was unusually apprehensive before I started – no familiar faces in the audience, a sector I have limited knowledge of (schools) and a topic that took me slightly out of my comfort zone.  I felt it went well though and received some complementary feedback and one offer of work, so not all bad!

My slides are below and along with the presentation links you’ll get a flavour of my themes: open education, participation (communication, collaboration & creation), mobile learning and personalisation. Of course you are missing the real meat, mine & the participants’ voices – but you’ll get the idea.  And you can ignore the govt strategy stuff… paid it lip service!

The technology in the room looked state of the art but unfortunately failed to deliver… my attempt to show the Google video below was prevented (I think) by a slow Internet connection, youtube was blocked completely! The room layout, presenter podium and the dual-projection interactive whiteboard were a big let down:

  • Dual-projection – absolute overkill for a room the size of double garage.
  • Interactive whiteboard – I have little time for them so didn’t go there but as the next presenter discovered it wasn’t configured/orientated correctly so ultimately unusable.
  • Podium – too small for the keyboard & mouse to sit side-by-side. No monitor on it, making it impossible to face my audience while doing the demonstration bits and because of the dual projection / room layout I couldn’t actually see the right-hand side of the screen.

It’s such a shame when the technology gets in the way but today it really didn’t need to… a simple PC / data projector with decent, un-filtered Internet access was all I wanted.  Oh well, take some inspiration from Buckingham Primary School…

Digital Natives a myth?

I’ve just finished reading Are digital natives a myth or reality?: Students’ use of technologies for learning (PDF) by Anoush Margaryan & Alison Littlejohn.

I’ve written before about my scepticism of the whole ‘digital natives’ idea:  a new generation of students who having grown up with ICT, “have sophisticated technology skills and a whole new set of cognitive capacities”. The findings of this study show that:

…many young students are far from being the epitomic global, connected, socially-networked technologically-fluent digital native who has little patience for passive and linear forms of learning…

…The majority of students use a limited range of technologies for formal and informal learning as well as
socialising. These are mainly established ICTs – institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones…

…As students look to their lecturers for clues as to how to use technology tools for learning, many lecturers are unaware of the potential of these tools, since they themselves are not using emergent technologies for their own learning and work…

I was slightly suprised to read that poor access to technology, in both classrooms & at home was still an issue for staff and students.  Further barriers to staff use of technology included the old chestnut time,  as well as a reluctance to change and issues around IT Skills.  Interestingly not solely a lack of skills but, for some, a belief that quite advanced IT skills are needed to incorporate technology into teaching.

css.php