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ERCIM: TEL

The latest issue of ERCIM News (#71, Oct 2007) has a special feature on Technology Enhanced Learning with a couple of dozen articles including one on TEL in FP7 (can’t find that one online - you’ll need the full pdf here. It does link to a FP7 website

Next issue (Jan’08) is the ‘Future Web’ with a call here.

ERCIM: TEL

The latest issue of ERCIM News (#71, Oct 2007) has a special feature on Technology Enhanced Learning with a couple of dozen articles including one on TEL in FP7 (can’t find that one online - you’ll need the full pdf here. It does link to a FP7 website

Next issue (Jan’08) is the ‘Future Web’ with a call here.

Mozilla PRISM

Anyone who uses Firefox for specific apps might be interested in this product from Mozilla Labs, PRISM:

http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/11/prism-prototype-now-available-on-mac-and-linux

It enables a single window display of the app (url) you select, saves it as a shortcut so it can be run like any other app and drops all of the screen detritus associated with the browser. I started using it over the weekend for Google Mail, Calendar and Docs and had no problems. Enjoy.

Social-learning mash-up?

I was sent a link this week to an application within Facebook, CourseFeed. This is a small application that integrates your Virtual Learning Environment with Facebook. At the moment it seems to support Blackboard® only, with some limited functionality for others.

The full app when used with Blackboard® allows (using their words not mine):

• Course Wall
• File storage for Course Notes, etc.
• Course feed display of what’s new posted by others.
• Connect with others in the course.
• Profile display to let friends know when you’re in class.
• See everyone in your course – guaranteed accurate course roster.
• View all Blackboard® course materials without leaving Facebook
• Course feed shows when professor posts announcements, files, etc. to Blackboard®.
• View all announcements, new or old, in the announcements area.
• One-click access into Blackboard® and auto-navigation that takes you right to the item. No hunting!

This may be the articulation of something that has always been there in face-to-face education, a nexus between students’ social activity – formal learning – informal learning – peer group exchanges. Potentially a great step forward for electronic environments?

Conversations with students in various surveys over the last few months suggest a different picture. Whilst it is by no means clear-cut, there is a feeling amongst students that they would like ‘private space’, and there as also been some negative publicity around, for example, Facebook, where “university authorities are using the Facebook website to gain evidence about unruly post-exam pranks”.

Kim Carey of Pepperdine University poses the question:

“Does anyone think giving your university id & password to a third party is a good idea?”

Any thoughts or comments? This could be an application that might really help learning, but what about privacy?

7 things to do in Education with Web 2.0

I recently read an article by Laurel Delaney about small businesses marketing within the social software environment. It tells the story of ‘Sidney’ a web designer who reinvigorated her business by using existing social networks and web 2.0 technologies. My immediate thought was how this can be applied to educational projects and individuals (ignoring the teaching aspects – I suspect that will be a much longer post and better done by other people). Taking the approach that I normally abhor I looked first at the tool or technology and sought out an application for it. During the course of doing this I discovered that in each of them there was already someone using it in that way, unsurprisingly! So here’s a short list of five, some of them are platform specific (apologies) some are generic, and if you know of any others please post them in the comments, I’ll post a further list at a later date.

1. Facebook, love it or loathe it, for now it’s here. The premise of Facebook is simple a social network of people interacting for ‘fun’. However, one colleague has used this as a tool for eliciting feedback on a tool he’s been developing. Another example is Edge Hill University who have a closed (private) network on Facebook for their staff with 2,087 members.
2. Instant Messaging (IM). This is one that immediately springs to mind for my practice and this article is a good example. During the writing of it I used my IM client to elicit comments from colleagues; one of them came back and immediately gave me the example of this article! One of things that I understand is effective is the group IM chat where a record of the conversation can be used to create quick action points. One project told me that they often use IM during meetings as a way of clarifying things that were said without interrupting the flow of the meeting.
3. Slideshare.  More than just a presentation tool, this allows for interaction and discussion. The colleague who alerted me to it regularly presents material at a variety of universities and uses Slideshare as a way of providing a ‘copy of the slides’ without wasting paper. It also allows him to use the discussion function to allow questions there was not time for in the session and eliciting comments from peers prior to presentation. It also allows you to provide a simple online resource for anyone to access: do a search for federated access management and you’ll find an excellent presentation (http://www.slideshare.net/rsc_southeast/federated-access-management-jisc-presentation) given to a small audience at a Regional Support Centre Event but which as been now viewed 459 times (at time of writing).
4. Googledocs, “to be honest it could be any interactive writing tool but I like the format” was the comment that stood out. This colleague needed an easy shareable and ‘familiar’ tool that she can share potential research proposals on and refine them with colleagues whilst maintaining a log of what’s been changed. Simple and effective, as an aside I asked if she had got any successful proposals yet – “no comment!”
5. Flickr. A personal repository for storing, sharing and discussing your photos and images. One of my favourite uses is for presentations: instead of using text heavy powerpoints do a search for the keywords or concepts you’re looking for in the advanced search (you can select to search only those images that have an creative commons licence). Try doing a search for web 2.0, community or Emerge in the tags only section.
6. Personalised Homepage (www.google.co.uk/ig or www.netvibes.com). These tools are great if you need to assimilate information. All of the projects within the U&I programme use RSS feeds and report regularly using their blogs etc, I just aggregate them all on to one page using www.google.co.uk/ig and I get a great snapshot of what the projects are up to. I also get my email, calendar and news from other blogs that I’m interested in (I also get news about rare birds and my football team).
7. Meetomatic. For me this is one of the key tools in my job, it’s a way of organising a meeting date – select the dates you need, email the link, identify any ‘must attends’ or ‘VIPs’ and wait for the responses. Simple to use, does one thing and does it well, and it’s free.

Got a favourite tool? – tell us about it! 

Technology and language: a plea for calm…

Over the past 18 months I’ve been immersed in activities with staff across the UK higher education sector looking at technology that is characterised as web 2.0. Purely from anecdotal evidence it is, to me, becoming apparent that some of us are not speaking the same language as the practitioners that we seek to influence.

In the past there have been barriers up to technology through the use of jargon, in my early days of going to e-learning conferences I would sit and listen and wonder in awe at the intense technical discussions, wishing that I was part of the group that was trading the jokes about lines of code. Then the same people would stand in front of a room of practitioners and make the same joke, and watch as only 2 or 3 people laughed. We see it in other communities - the staff and educational developers can be an imposing community with their discussions, throwing knowing looks and muttering “kolb”, “metacognition” or “constructivism”.  And when this community meets the technology community we end up with “m-learning” and “e-tivities” and other invented terms.

With the advent of the technologies characterised by web 2.0, we have a new subset of terms being applied. But this time we are not only providing a barrier by the use of the terms but in the nature of the terms. Glynis Cousin recently suggested that commercial companies in learning and teaching understood this and used logos and metaphors for technology in teaching to make practitioners feel comfortable, for example WebCT’s little character in a mortar board resonates with a teacher, making them feel that it is technology but grounded in their experience.

But there are some of us that have applied the language and metaphors in ways which challenge practitioners in a, perhaps, negative way. These range from the simple assertion that ‘you’ as a practitioner had better do it because you will have to at some point anyway, such as “Dave Cormier’s “Blogging: not ‘if’ but when and where”, to the application of terms that are wholly inappropriate such as ‘disruptive’ technologies. The latter term implies that the application of the technology will enforce disruption on practice, having pushed the term, we then try and retrofit a learning activity into it.

So why do we do this? Is it because we seek to change and challenge practice through the application of pressure through language? Or is because we like the idea of cool and radical new terms? Certainly ‘disruptive technologies’ sounds cooler than “using technology to enhance real-time collaboration in a classroom”, or “e-tivities” rather than “activities that are carried out online”.

Working with the diverse U&I community (a group that includes teachers, researchers, librarians, learning technologists, administrators and people in a range of other roles) it became apparent that we as the U&I community needed to communicate exactly what we meant, not only from a technical perspective but also from a (sub)community context (such as library or research). One of the things that I identified people NOT doing was using language as a weapon, a way of forming cliques or to confuse people. The language used was, largely, inclusive and simple and this seemed to enable ad hoc communities to develop quickly and easily.  

Have a view – post a comment

Web 2.0 Briefing Paper

For the Association for Learning Technology conference 2007 I was asked to prepare a short Web 2.0 briefing paper. Limited to 2 pages this has not been an easy task, the paper can be found at http://www.jisc.org.uk/publications/publications/web2socialsoftwarev1.aspx. However below is a longer version with live links.

The terms Web 2.0 and social software are now used widely in the education sector. While often difficult to determine an exact definition, with
many new tools and applications released on a regular basis, most commentators agree that these terms apply to a set of characteristics in the context of the internet and applications served over it.

Web 2.0 and social software in education
As broadband becomes more affordable and widely available, and the relative price of hardware calls, many more people are finding it easier
to access rich content and interaction on the internet. Whilst there is currently limited research into the level of use by students and potential
students, anecdotal evidence suggests that not only is it being used widely, but the perception of it is also shifting. Many students seem to see
the use of the tools in their workflow not as an additional overhead, but as an integral part of ‘their world’.

Case studies indicate that whilst content is accessed on virtual learning environments (VLE), courses and modules are also discussed in a
variety of other media, such as instant messaging tools (MSN and Skype) and social networks (Facebook). In addition there is also a growth
in the use of these tools to support distributed research groups, including online research
groups in biomedical, cancer, physics and many other disciplines.

Many of these tools can bring benefits in a range of ways:

• Using instant messaging to conduct tutorials at a distance with a distributed group
• Providing easier opportunities for students to collaborate, and make word of mouth recommendations about sites including, or
  related to, course content
• Allowing students to create their own interest groups allied to their studies
• Allowing students to interact with students from different universities and countries
• Providing researchers with ways to share results faster and with opportunities for instant
  feedback
• Allowing the formation of ad hoc research groups
• Providing a way of having material peer reviewed by a broad audience before publication

There’s always a but…

However, when using these types of tools for their practice, staff should be aware and beware of some of the key issues.

Intellectual property rights and copyright

Intellectual property rights (IPR) are core to many of the issues around content.

• Material that is placed on most sites will be accessible to a wide audience: are you happy that everyone can see it, access it and potentially use it without your permission?
  Make sure you are entitled to place the material on the site: for example do you own the copyright? Do you have a licence to use the
  content and place it on a public website?
• Check the terms and conditions; one popular application states:

‘All content on the Site and available through the Service, including but not limited to designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement (the ‘Site Content’), are the proprietary property of the Company, its users or its licensors with all rights reserved.’

System stability

With literally hundreds of sites and applications being released it is difficult to know which to use and what will persist; consider:

• How reliable is the service?
• How often has the site been unavailable?
• What happens to your material if the site ceases to exist?
• Can all students gain access, or does the site require high specification machines or have a cost associated with it?

Branding

Design, look and feel play a big part of the Web 2.0 movement. Consider:

• Some sites, such as Flickr and YouTube, allow you to embed images and videos into your own pages as long as they link back to the host site,
  meaning that students clicking on the video will be taken to the host site
• The use of some of the tools allows users to create their own look and feel; if the site is being used as a teaching enhancement or
  supplement, the person who has developed the site may deviate from guidance given at an institutional level, diluting the corporate brand
• Some sites are prone to extreme views or may attract inappropriate attention; users should monitor the site carefully, especially where comments can be left, such as blogs (these can be used for spam postings to various sites including those of an adult nature)

Interoperability

What if you have content in YouTube, Slideshare and Facebook? Can you cross-search it, use it in various ways coherently to support whatever task you’re engaged in, or build it into managed activities?

Preservation

If you want to keep this material, Web 2.0 services may not be the best option. Data backup is
important, but it needs to go deeper than this: if this content is to be managed and retained over time, then serious planning needs to go into the
environment in which that happens.

You, Web 2.0 and students

We are most often alerted to the tools and sites associated with Web 2.0 by students themselves. However, that doesn’t mean they are ubiquitous in student circles. Before using such tools consider:

• Can the tools you are using be accessed by all students, for example can a blind, deaf or dyslexic student access content appropriately?
• Is it appropriate for a member of staff to have access to the site, or is it a site that is aimed at ‘students only’?
• Do the students want you there? Would you follow them to the student’s union and listen to their conversations?

You and Web 2.0: next steps

Before applying a Web 2.0 or social software solution to your practice you should ask yourself the following questions:

• Does my institution already have a solution for what I want to do? It’s worth not only talking to IT support or staff and educational development units, but also asking your colleagues whether they have needed the same facility. A supported, resourced internal
  solution will probably serve you better than an unresourced, unsupported, beta version of something in the Web 2.0 community.
• Are there solutions at other institutions? JISC have funded many innovative technologies and approaches that have been deployed across
  the education sector - would one of these technologies fit your need?
• What are the risks? Do these risks put you, your work or your students in difficult situations? Take each of the situations and write down a risk assessment. Think about privacy, data protection and copyright conditions, and provide students with advice also.

Finally, if you decide to use a Web 2.0 technology make sure that you back up all of your data in a safe place.

Further Information and Resources

JISC Users and Innovations programme Looking at a range of new and emerging technologies and the issues that surround them, including IPR, accessibility and good practice models.

TechWatch Social Software briefing paper

Web 2.0 for Content for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education report

Secure personal institutional and inter-institutional repository environment (SPIRE)

Personal Repositories Online: WIKI Environment (PROWE)

Supporting Document for Circular 02/07

In appendix F of Circular 02/07 reference is made to the Users and Innovation Development Model (UIDM) Guide. The document is attached to this post.

For any other all other questions please contact the person name in the appropriate circular.

UIDM Guide

ThinkPlace

I wonder if this would work for Emerge as a place for people/teams to share ideas and coalesce into proposals:

alphaWorks Services | ThinkPlace | Overview

ThinkPlace is a Web application for facilitating innovation through idea generation, collaboration, and refinement. ThinkPlace is unlike a suggestion box; when used within a company, it shares ideas within the entire company. By providing a common place for sharing, refining, and recognizing ideas, ThinkPlace encourages all employees to innovate and to collaborate on further improvement of the ideas. Even if employees don’t have an idea to post, they can look around, collaborate, rate others’ ideas, or find ideas for their own use. ThinkPlace also invites suggestions for improvements.

ThinkPlace provides customization options, including the ability to tie into existing LDAP-based mechanisms for identifying users as they log in to the application.

ThinkPlace

I wonder if this would work for Emerge as a place for people/teams to share ideas and coalesce into proposals:

alphaWorks Services | ThinkPlace | Overview

ThinkPlace is a Web application for facilitating innovation through idea generation, collaboration, and refinement. ThinkPlace is unlike a suggestion box; when used within a company, it shares ideas within the entire company. By providing a common place for sharing, refining, and recognizing ideas, ThinkPlace encourages all employees to innovate and to collaborate on further improvement of the ideas. Even if employees don’t have an idea to post, they can look around, collaborate, rate others’ ideas, or find ideas for their own use. ThinkPlace also invites suggestions for improvements.

ThinkPlace provides customization options, including the ability to tie into existing LDAP-based mechanisms for identifying users as they log in to the application.

Weblogs and Social Media 2008

Be nice to get some papers into this from the Emerge project (advance website)…

Second International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

Call For Papers

The rapid creation and consumption of social media content continues to drive the evolution of the Internet and the Web. Social media content now accounts for the majority of content published daily on the web.

As the space evolves, researcher and industrial practitioners find themselves at a key point for collaborating on research, implementation and deployment of a wide range of analyses and applications. The International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media invites researchers in the broad field of social media analysis to submit papers for its second meeting. Following in the tradition of earlier workshops and the first meeting in Boulder, USA in 2007, we anticipate an exciting, high quality event which will bring together academic and industrial practitioners to present and to discuss new research, applications, thoughts and ideas that are shaping the future of social media analysis.

Weblogs and Social Media 2008

Be nice to get some papers into this from the Emerge project (advance website)…

Second International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

Call For Papers

The rapid creation and consumption of social media content continues to drive the evolution of the Internet and the Web. Social media content now accounts for the majority of content published daily on the web.

As the space evolves, researcher and industrial practitioners find themselves at a key point for collaborating on research, implementation and deployment of a wide range of analyses and applications. The International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media invites researchers in the broad field of social media analysis to submit papers for its second meeting. Following in the tradition of earlier workshops and the first meeting in Boulder, USA in 2007, we anticipate an exciting, high quality event which will bring together academic and industrial practitioners to present and to discuss new research, applications, thoughts and ideas that are shaping the future of social media analysis.

the Depot

Supporting scholarship in the digital age - the Depot launched : JISC

A major JISC conference being held in Manchester this week will mark an important milestone in establishing institutional repositories across UK education and research.

The conference, which begins today at ManchesterUniversity, sees the launch of the Depot, a national JISC-funded repository based at EDINA in the University of Edinburgh. This will enable all UK researchers to deposit their academic papers and other outputs under terms of Open Access, including those whose institution does not yet have a repository. The new service, with its simple message and advice to “put it in the Depot”, represents an important step in the development of a scholarly communications environment for UK education and research.

the Depot

Supporting scholarship in the digital age - the Depot launched : JISC

A major JISC conference being held in Manchester this week will mark an important milestone in establishing institutional repositories across UK education and research.

The conference, which begins today at ManchesterUniversity, sees the launch of the Depot, a national JISC-funded repository based at EDINA in the University of Edinburgh. This will enable all UK researchers to deposit their academic papers and other outputs under terms of Open Access, including those whose institution does not yet have a repository. The new service, with its simple message and advice to “put it in the Depot”, represents an important step in the development of a scholarly communications environment for UK education and research.

SimTeach

This looks interesting:

SimTeach: Information and Community for Educators using M.U.V.E.’s

SimTeach is a place for university instructional designers, faculty and administrators to find information and to share their own experiences designing, teaching and administering classes in immersive environments.

SimTeach

This looks interesting:

SimTeach: Information and Community for Educators using M.U.V.E.’s

SimTeach is a place for university instructional designers, faculty and administrators to find information and to share their own experiences designing, teaching and administering classes in immersive environments.

Exploring Podcasting as Part of Campus-Based Teaching

An article by Stephen Draper at Glasgow:

Exploring Podcasting as Part of Campus-Based Teaching

Abstract

The possibility of using the technologies associated with podcasting and MP3 players to augment campus based HE teaching is explored. A study demonstrating its use in five courses, and eliciting favourable learner attitude responses, is briefly reported. A range of educational applications, including and going beyond those demonstrated in the study, are suggested. The different functions entailed are identified: recording, distribution, and playback. The acceptability for each stakeholder group separately is discussed: learners, teachers, IT support. The technology’s characteristics are assessed with respect to essential factors for widespread adoption: cost, ease of use (i.e. personal effort and learning costs for users), and educational benefit. The underlying technologies are briefly described, partly to indicate what the fundamental advantages are based on (independently of currently available products) and partly to allow likely longevity to be assessed. Finally some underlying principles from the viewpoint of educational research are proposed and discussed.

Exploring Podcasting as Part of Campus-Based Teaching

An article by Stephen Draper at Glasgow:

Exploring Podcasting as Part of Campus-Based Teaching

Abstract

The possibility of using the technologies associated with podcasting and MP3 players to augment campus based HE teaching is explored. A study demonstrating its use in five courses, and eliciting favourable learner attitude responses, is briefly reported. A range of educational applications, including and going beyond those demonstrated in the study, are suggested. The different functions entailed are identified: recording, distribution, and playback. The acceptability for each stakeholder group separately is discussed: learners, teachers, IT support. The technology’s characteristics are assessed with respect to essential factors for widespread adoption: cost, ease of use (i.e. personal effort and learning costs for users), and educational benefit. The underlying technologies are briefly described, partly to indicate what the fundamental advantages are based on (independently of currently available products) and partly to allow likely longevity to be assessed. Finally some underlying principles from the viewpoint of educational research are proposed and discussed.

Art of Illusion

Art of Illusion

Art of Illusion is a free, open source 3D modelling and rendering studio. It is written entirely in Java, and should be usable on any Java Virtual Machine which is compatible with J2SE 1.4 or later.

Version Control with Subversion

Free book on Subversion:

Version Control with Subversion

ThinkPlace

alphaWorks Services | ThinkPlace

ThinkPlace is a Web application for facilitating innovation through idea generation, collaboration, and refinement. ThinkPlace is unlike a suggestion box; when used within a company, it shares ideas within the entire company. By providing a common place for sharing, refining, and recognizing ideas, ThinkPlace encourages all employees to innovate and to collaborate on further improvement of the ideas. Even if employees don’t have an idea to post, they can look around, collaborate, rate others’ ideas, or find ideas for their own use. ThinkPlace also invites suggestions for improvements.

ThinkPlace

alphaWorks Services | ThinkPlace

ThinkPlace is a Web application for facilitating innovation through idea generation, collaboration, and refinement. ThinkPlace is unlike a suggestion box; when used within a company, it shares ideas within the entire company. By providing a common place for sharing, refining, and recognizing ideas, ThinkPlace encourages all employees to innovate and to collaborate on further improvement of the ideas. Even if employees don’t have an idea to post, they can look around, collaborate, rate others’ ideas, or find ideas for their own use. ThinkPlace also invites suggestions for improvements.

Lifelong Kindergarten

Now this is a group I want to belong to…

Lifelong Kindergarten :: MIT Media Lab

We develop new technologies that, in the spirit of the blocks and fingerpaint of kindergarten, expand the range of what people can design, create, and learn.

Lifelong Kindergarten

Now this is a group I want to belong to…

Lifelong Kindergarten :: MIT Media Lab

We develop new technologies that, in the spirit of the blocks and fingerpaint of kindergarten, expand the range of what people can design, create, and learn.

Web 2.0: Content Sharing for L&T in HE

Draft Web 2.0 report for community comment

This draft is for community comment prior to submission to the JISC.

The report covers:

• A brief discussion of what Web 2.0 is, together with some discussion of Web 2.0 systems that are commonly used in education.
• A survey of four universities’ work in implementing Web 2.0 systems at an institutional level.
• Issues in the creation and use of content that is produced or shared via Web 2.0 systems.
• The implications of Web 2.0 for learning and teaching.
• Policy and strategy issues.