Delicious Links

Jun 1 2008

Frog Leaping Ahead and a gRSShopper…

Having seen so many presentations already from vendors/suppliers of MIS/VLE style education webtools it becomes more and more obvious that most of them are producing out-of-the-box solutions that fulfill the legal needs of state schools owning and running learning platforms in the UK.

But when looking at these options from a more flexible and creative point of view it often feels that any of these systems will initially help those and support those teachers that have not embraced the use of webtools and blended learning techniques but in the longer term constrain both students and teachers within a very corporate and rigid framework. However interestingly enough the Frog platform through the use of webparts and so called Frog Bricks might give the flexibility needed for a truly creative system open enough to allow teachers and students to be able to shape their own learning platform.

Interesting to be meeting John Mell regarding the development of the Ultranet, and will be interesting to hear his ideas about the use of Web 2.0 within corporations. How his ideas will align with Siemens thoughts about Learning Management Systems which aim to control the learner and how they collaborate compared to the very Web 2.0 notion of many pieces loosely joined together informally can make a much better networked learning environment? Does having a blog, link to a wiki, link to a streaming video space like Magnify, link via RSS feeds to mailboxes and aggregators, linked back to a delicious set of social bookmarks enable greater learning – or in fact lead to a more elitist and specialised way of learning for the few. Becta and specifically Charless Crook at Nottigham University has been doing a great deal of research on this topic, and initial findings are published over at the Becta site.

Obviously my mind is not made up, so until then I will continue to wander aimlessly learning with a variety of tools, of which a new one that has entered the realm is called Grasshopper. Stehen Downes new tool which enables the managing of your RSS feeds in a new more community driven way? I have not used it yet, so pop back to CICT at a later date for a review.

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Frog Leaping Ahead and a gRSShopper…

May 18 2008

Ultranet – School Management Vs E-learning Platforms…

Well my current school is currently fully involved in the selection process of buying/developing a learning platform. It is interesting after so many years running my own class/department based learning platforms how different and complex the process is for most often obvious reasons due to scale and number of stakeholders involved.

It does beg Siemens questions whether a whole Learner Management System could inhibit learning and flexibility. But it must also be questioned how technology enthusiasts do not bring equality of access to these types of learner systems. So even if I am providing social networks, blogs, wikis, video streaming/ sharing websites, moodle courses that this is only for a specific set of students within specific subject areas.

There are so many systems out there I wonder what views anyone has as to their ability to deliver a good learning platform for a school. I know all the Moodle arguments and discussions, but I wonder past Open Source envangelists what system might be best. Below are some that the school might be viewing for tender to see how their systems can fulfill the schools requirements.

If anyone has any experience of any of these systems, please leave a comment. After initial viewing and consultation I hope to get students involved in the process so I am specifically interested in student interaction with the above learning platforms.

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Ultranet – School Management Vs E-learning Platforms…

May 3 2008

OLPC/XO – Review Part 2

After my initial review, I decided as a few other bloggers have done to place the XO laptop in the hands of some students to see what there views were. Some initial comments from students were from two viewpoints. Those that had seen or heard me discussing this laptop as one for third world children and so were able to see that this was not a laptop to be viewed in competition with for example a MacBook. And those that did not really understand the principles behind the laptop and so asked questions such as how big is the hard-drive, or where is the DVD drive to play movies.

The lower school IT teacher, very much a Linux Guru, loved playing with the XO however he had many reservations as to its security and features. The Firefox browser that is embedded within the OS of the laptop, does confuse and still however we tried we were unable to alter the proxy settings which is inhibiting our ability to connect to the network at school.

Hopefully as part of a review of the curriculum especially at IB level I will be able to include areas related to the Digital Divide and maybe its importance within world development today.

After some initial comments one student volunteered to review the laptop in more detail, so read his viewpoints below (note name of student has been deleted for internet saftey reasons):-

My name is (*********) and I am doing a review on the XO laptop. I am 13 years old and go to ACS Egham International School. The XO laptop was created for the poor people of Africa to be used as a communicational device for them to contact people of the World. It is also an educational device for children in 3rd world countries and schools in remote places where they have no electricity as it can run on a crank or Solar panel. It is able to run on simple Solar panels as this laptop runs on approximately 1 watt of electricity and this makes it very ‘green’ for the environment. Typical laptops use much more energy in order to run.

When I did the review on the XO laptop I found that it was easy to open the laptop and start it as the ‘On’ button is clearly marked. I found it confusing to navigate as the symbols were not as clearly marked or distinguishable as on most modern laptops. This may have been because it is different to the Windows Operating system in layout and the XO has several basic screens. The XO laptop has good WiFi communication ability as it can pick up almost all Wireless networks in my experience.

The XO laptop was designed to be very tough and robust physically as it is intended for use in dusty, hot climates where it may be dropped or damaged easily. Some of the features on this laptop are quite good as the screen can turn around whilst running and it even has a camera. The ports are protected by extra plastic. I was requested to test the Paint software and found this easy to follow and understand.

I tested opening a Pdf document and found this to be hard and complicated. Exactly the right formats were required in order to open the Pdf file for reading and use. When I created a piece of music in Tam Tam, I found it fun and inventive but confusing because I am not used to the software. I have however, previously created music on a Mac so am used to the concept of creating music if not the Tam Tam approach.

I think the ‘XO’ is a nice idea as it is a laptop available to all and for every purchase, a laptop is sent to places in Africa where communication is currently limited, ie schools etc,. The principle of distributing laptops in Africa opens up the World to the people in more remote places of the Globe. I believe the XO laptop could be a good learning aid for underprivileged children and adults.

More →

By drtech • Delicious Links, Wiki • Comments Off on OLPC/XO – Review Part 2

Apr 28 2008

Woopra + Theme Update to TMA with Widgets

The world of free tools and especially analytical tools just got a whole lot richer with the introduction of Woopra. After the initial wow factor of Google Analytics over a period of time I found the tool, difficult to use and limited in what it was telling me. This is not the case with Woopra which gives so many options and actually enables you to view live readings of who is visiting your site. You can even instant message that person through the browser.

It did take a while to get approved for the Woopra Beta, but definitely worth it. There were a few problems with using the client on a Mac without the beta Java download, but thanks to Metaphoric Labs its pretty easy to set up so it works.

The time has come to also improve this weblogs theme, as there has been an update to This Morning After. There is not alot of difference apart from the addition of using widgets, but whatever the purists say this is a much easier way of editing the look and feel of your weblog. As always this transition will happen over the next week, so expect a few issues as I update the theme – but hopefully not too many!

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Woopra + Theme Update to TMA with Widgets

Apr 25 2008

John Abbott’s Talk – Action Now?

John Abbott president of the 21st Century Learning Initiative and Director of the Education 2000 Trust, came my school recently to lecture both the students and also all teachers. I was fortunate to be able to go to both lectures/discussions one that was for Grade 9 students and obviously the one for teachers at the end of a long school day.

The most immediate feeling that came from him related to the urgency that was needed for the younger generation of today to take action against many of the larger issues that are happening today. Weirdly relfecting in some ways the latest TED talk I have discussed recently by Al Gore. John however focused on how Education in many ways is failing our students and not giving the freedom to become creative and thoughtful problem solvers. The quotation he led on was “Battery Hens or Free Range Chickens? What Kind of Education for What Kind of World?” and led onto the definition of ‘learning as a consequence of thinking’.

In some ways obvious but interesting statements as often as an Information Technology /Design Technology teacher the aim is always for students to explore problems and through a process/ method come up with creative and thoughtful solutions. That is what our subject is about, but often when given the time constraints of a curriculum the problems become artificial and the solutions very similar and regulated. The way a secondary school works that a student goes from class to class, ruled by a bell not allowing for flexibility almost impinges on how a student can develop these skills.

As suggested thoug maybe the ideals of a more flexible more generous education are easiest to discuss, than to actually put into practice within any regimented school? Anyway enough from me I have included a link to the John Abbott Slides he has published from the talk, and I recommend you check out his website for further information – 21st Century Learning.

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on John Abbott’s Talk – Action Now?

Mar 27 2008

Turnitin -Does anyone use it as a Learning Tool?

I am just about to embark on using Turnitin with some of my ITGS IB Diploma students. I do so with some trepidation; although I have also introduced the many privacy, trust and other social and ethical issues which the students will come across using such a tool. I have used this tool before in my Masters studies and found it both interesting and informative, even if the Masters tutor did not discuss or even inform me that it was going to be used with my work!

I have directed my students to sites for them to find out how it works, including the following. I have also introduced that the tool is not just a tool that I use because I do not trust them but that it will be used as a learning tool and hopefully one that by the end of the two years they will see how it works, what its limitations are.

I believe as a teacher this is something that will enable a students understanding and digital literacies of how such tools work, and in the end prepare them for what they will undoubtedly come across within their University courses. I have also directed them to discussions on the issues related to copyright and privacy including this article on Copyright Issues with turnitin or this paper about the legal opposition that was attempted.

I would be interested to know if there are many other teachers within secondary schools using Turnitin, and what their experiences and students experiences have been. Look back in a month or so, to see what my students think of the tool and whether we will continue to use it?


By drtech • Delicious Links, Education Theory • Comments Off on Turnitin -Does anyone use it as a Learning Tool?

Mar 2 2008

‘How To’ Videos Come of Age…

So is YouTube all there is? Even though it has only been three years since YouTube led the streaming video world into the new millennium, time does not stand still and over those three years there has been a diversification in new websites showing and displaying a much more specific variety of videos for your viewing. Educationally these sites allow great opportunities in a variety of ways including the ability for students to understand the complexity of multimedia and its advantages and disadvantages in learning along with the ability for them to learn almost anything independently.

Not only can it be a learning tool to pick up how to tween within Flash MX but also it now allows students an ability to create something that can effect people throughout the world. The moving image as suggested was once a medium that only those with expensive equipment and expert know how could do, but now with the democratisation of the medium due to the price of hardware needed and easy ways to publish any one can be a film maker including your students. Below are some of the video sites that are now available for students to peruse and find videos showing how-to solve problems both serious and silly.

Linking these videos to other areas than independant learning and the silliness and fun of How To Spin a Penny…might seem a long one. But there are now many sites that also enable students to take the use of video in more serious and collaborative ways. Pangea day showed this with a wonderful site and competition to produce videos which highlight issues around the world. The BigAsk has taken this idea a little further with the idea of a virtual march of videos….sounds complicated well go and check their website to find out (note I will post mine when I get around to it.)

These video streaming sites, begin to show the power of being able to see and also create videos in which those watching might with such powerful moving images change their ideas and views. Another great site can do similar in a much wider subject area such as ‘Can Technology Make Us Happy?’– the site needs a bit of development but again gives students food for thought and an ability to discuss important issues of today.All these examples along with recent experiences of my own with using videos in modern languages, along with the ongoing How-To video project over at Techbribe suggest the use of video can create many great learning opportunities in the classroom today.

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on ‘How To’ Videos Come of Age…

Feb 16 2008

The Tethered Self…..a Student/Teacher Quandary?

It is strange sometimes how you keep back some articles for reading for such a long while, that when you finally sit down for a supposed skim through you suddenly realise what an interesting piece you have been missing. This was true of Sherry Turkle’s article entitled – ‘Always-on/Always-on-you: The Tethered Self’ – which I believe is a chapter from a book called Handbook of Mobile Communications and Social Change. The article deals with more than the any studies into ubiquitous and embedded technologies that we can now carry and wear, by seeing how these technologies are affecting simply who we are.

She describes that we are ending up with a new sense of self which is not anymore simply a ‘separate world, plugged and unplugged.’  As Turkle describes it:- ‘The self, now attached to its devices, occupies a liminal space between the physical real and its lives on the screen. It participates in  both realms and the same time.’ As such as she describes with ubiquitous technologies like the mobile phone even if we are half way around the world, emotionally and socially because of this always on connection means we are really as much at home as away. When I traveled many years ago backpacking through such areas of the world as Kashmir I was completely along, only able through some convoluted way in the largest cities to phone home if necessary. I even remember sending letters home telling my parents where I would be in a few months so that they could send things via Post Restante to that country or city.

Still I do not have the connections with technology, that the students I teach feel. As Turkle says: – ‘Whether or not our devices are in use, without them we feel adrift.’ Social networks have taken this a step further, forcing you to always check in – being the mediator to many friendships and communications. How does this feeling of having to be always connected with technology mediating that affect our abilities to be alone. Turkle goes even further to suggest that we are not only tethered to technology for communication, we are now ‘…tethered to the gratifications offered by our online selves.’ 

So how does this al affect the world of education, well I guess most of it is pretty obvious. But how many meetings as an IT teacher have I been involved with parents discussing this very problem of being tethered to a technology, which leads to students trying to multitask entertainment, communication and work activities at the same time. We all do it – at the moment while writing this blog post, I am listenign to the football on the internet streamed radio, making a CD, browsing my bloglines account – in fact I have two computers on the go…but let’s not go there. As Turkle says :- ‘The pressure to be always on can be a burden. Teenagers who need uninterrupted time for schoolwork resort to using their parents’ account to hide from their buddies.’ The answer to the problem of ‘continual partial attention’ is a difficult one to which I have seen no real answers.

When I ask students how they cope, they often say they simply have to rely on will power. But what of those that cannot stop chatting to their friends via MSN, checking their Facebook account – especially if you take it in terms of being part of ones self, ones tethered self rather than as an addiction as some would say? Although as Katie Coleman suggests, this maybe is not all bad as the ability to work with in so many disparate communities holds many promises.

As a teacher that always shares with my students that I am not the ‘font of all knowledge’ but am in fact a facilitator able to guide all students in the right direction, maybe to the right communities to be able to learn and understand if not as such remember then maybe the tethered self will become a necessity to live and work in this century. The abilities to live and survive and depend on ones self and ones knowledge will become less and less valued.

Well as I said an interesting article that links in with many ideas, that at this moment I do not think anyone has any answers to. If anyone has the answers to give to parents about multitasking and practical ways to help their chile concentrate, please comment! The worries that Turkle brings up are however I believe a little overstated, as a final quotation from her might suggest:- ‘ These questions ask what we will be like, what kind of people are we becoming as we develop increasingly intimate relationships with machines.’

By drtech • Delicious Links, Education Theory, Social Networks, Technology • Comments Off on The Tethered Self…..a Student/Teacher Quandary?

Jan 29 2008

LISA conference – International Schools Conference 2008 at TASIS London

Another training day, but with so much to do was it worth it? Well yes in many ways these days can seem less that useful, but in terms of meeting and discussing with other teachers about what they are doing; it either gives you a few new ideas or makes you wonder why so many teachers are so inadequately trained. More about the workshops I went to a little later, but first to the keynote.

The keynote was by Dr Robert Evans, a psychologist specialising in school change and reform. A fantastic speaker who from obvious extensive experience discussed the issues with which schools no longer face problems they can solve but dilemmas they can only cope with in the long term. He described many funny anecdotes of the expectations of our teaching profession often likening it to the work of monks or other religious based employment. His book – The Human Side of School Change, was the obvious starting point to discussing how society has changed so much that its expectations of a school are now much more while at the same time the difficulties for children to leave school with adequate qualifications get more and more difficult. As such he suggested that school communities almost are representing a counter culture of values compared to everyday family life, and often are expected to instill these morals and values with little backing. I would suggest for more information you read around hid ideas, a good starting point would be Kathleem Cushman’s article.

So to the workshops, which were ran well by both leaders:-

Research Methods Using the Internet – was an interesting workshop with may ideas to resources, of which a great deal I had heard of. However the most interesting point, came from the ideas of how swamped teachers are with resources and websites these days. How do we cope, and if I ask that question how do students cope? Often I am swamped even though I use techniques including del.icio.us bookmarking, and reading websites via bloglines clipping all essential posts.

First Robotics Competition Workshop – was a wonderful presentation into participating in the First Robotics student robot building competition. Looks like an excellent opportunity, but very difficult to run with such a small Design and Technology department at my current school.The American School in London ran the workshop who have been entered in the competition for the last few years, they even have a website called the Griffins. Over the next few months hopefully we will research into the idea, and maybe with a few keen students branch out into the world of First.

So an interesting day in all, and great to be able to look around another private American school in the shape of TASIS. Which has a wonderful campus, but most useful was to meet the IT staff and chat through their experiences of areas including laptop program, VLE’s and much more. It is unfortunate they do not run the ITGS course at Diploma level as this might have been the perfect opportunity to collaborate with their students.

By drtech • Delicious Links, Education Theory, Egham • Comments Off on LISA conference – International Schools Conference 2008 at TASIS London

Jan 15 2008

OLPC/XO – Dr Tech’s Review Pt 1

Well it arrived, and it works. But is all the hype or the degradation of this laptop worth the amount of posts and print that have been published? Is there not a grey area in the middle as often it has seemed the XO laptop has polarised views either against or for the programme that it is only one part of.

My immediate and probably everyone’s first reaction is ‘blimey it is small’ but considering I tend to opt for laptops of the 17″ screen size variety is probably not a very good comparison. As many other reviewers have pointed out the feel of the XO laptop is pleasing almost rough and dimply compared to the slickness and metallic of so many laptops around. BUT can you get into it without being told….hmm…only one out of five people managed it. Weirdly it makes sense however straight after the first time you do open up the laptop see the screen, and realise the consummate skill that has led to a design which is robust and will obviously stand up to the dusty surrounds it was meant for. Trust me after living in Cairo for three years, changing laptop fans and cleaning keyboards was a nightmare.

Once booted, you are met with the Sugar interface and cover for the Linux OS under the hood. I have been lucky enough to try the emulator for this and can say that it again does take a bit of getting used too, but the premise almost Expose like is a good one whereby moving your mouse to the edge of the screen will bring up icons that move onto or off of the screen. The buttons to link to the different main areas of neighbourhood and so on, are an excellent and quick way to navigate around the environment. This laptop is though very difficult to review, as you can come up with many niggles, including that the mouse movement with pad can be very niggly and lead to a sometimes tetchy navigation experience..however remember it will eventually only be 100$.

I love the way that you connect to nodes, the internet through a visual interface and it it is that easy as to choose a wi-fi point (or other node of the mesh, although no other XO’s around Egham I think :(~) Connecting to my wireless connection at home was a breeze but at school a major problem was trying to connect through to the proxy server. And yes with firefox if you do goto about:config you should be able to change the proxy but for some reason I am unable to modify this setting whatever I try. Any help would be much appreciated.

I was very much taken with photographs of the way the XO can be turned into a simple ebook reader, and the manipulation and design of both the screen into position and the way you can with one button click and change the direction the screen is being read is ingenious. As is when you pop in your USB with said PDF, go to the activities page and then with a click are able to read the PDF. BUT is that all that I have done, well I have to admit time has not allowed me to play with any of the inbuilt tools and I will leave that to a helpful student this Friday to review those for me. Although I could not help but install DOOM and have a go...and yes it works if a little slowly.

So initial impressions are very good, as long as you fully understand the principles that this is not a laptop built for the western market to play with, not even for geeks like myself, but as a tool for third world children to use and enjoy for many hours. With a few updates and improvements it should enable these children to have their first adventures into the world of communication and computing and who knows where that can lead them.

Part Two Coming Soon – hopefully with a review from a younger student…

By drtech • Delicious Links, Digital Divide, Technology • Comments Off on OLPC/XO – Dr Tech’s Review Pt 1

Jan 5 2008

OLPC More Problems but Still Anticipation…

Well the new term is a coupe of days away and this weblog is now finally beginning to take shape after changing themes from my old but now quite redundant Kiwi theme to the Morning After theme by Arun. Is it any good, well yes but a little tricky to setup and I am still unsure about the Internet Explorer compatibility. Over the net month or so I will begin to add to the site to get it as feature rich as under the old theme, but mainly I hope it has simplified the reading of the content.

I am still waiting for the delivery of my OLPC or XO laptop. How did I manage to order one from the UK, well luckily through a parent I was able to order from here and when they return from Alabama in the New Year they will bring the laptop with them. It is disappointing the continuing problems and negative feelings that the OLPC program is engendering. A recent article from May Wong brings up the probably inevitable news that the Intel chip maker has split from the program. All over the web is the other news that might begin to spell the end of the XO laptop program, is from Nigeria where a keyboard manufacturer is sueing the program for supposedly reverse engineering the keyboard drivers. Is everyone forgetting this is a non for profit organisation? Anyway I hope that I will enjoy playing with the XO laptop when it arrives, and use it within my classes to discuss and widen understanding of the digital divide.

Apart from waiting for the OLPC program I am anticipating introducing WIKI’s back into my classes after a long break. Last year when I used TikiWiki within a GCSE class, it was a resounding success and led to ideas that this sort of collaborative e-learning tool could be very effective and maybe even more effective than my extensive use of weblogs within the classroom. I have decided to go away from TikiWiki not due to its functionality but simply it was too erratic to control, almost lockingout all users at one stage due to a strange php error. I have recently setup MediaWiki on my server at ConstructICT but have again decided that apart from the fact that MediaWiki is much more robust it will not offer all the features that some other Web 2.0 solutions offer. So at the moment with the new ad free offers from wetpaint wiki I have opted to use this provider. There is a fabulous example of the use of Wetpaint from Shanghai American School called Wikinomics. However it is very much used as a class portal, rather than a bringing together of students to collaborate on activities. Anyway much more to come, will have to check it gets throught the school filter though?

By drtech • Delicious Links, Education Theory, Wiki • Comments Off on OLPC More Problems but Still Anticipation…

Dec 12 2007

Delicious links for 2007-12-12

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Delicious links for 2007-12-12

Dec 8 2007

Social Networking in Education is beginning to Boom?

So is Social Networking finally catching on within secondary schools as a valid means of communication and collaboration between students? Probably not, but there is definitely many more projects that seems to be underway even if most of the writing and research is about what might happen rather than actual what is practically happening.

EdublogThe Edublog Awards has now began to include a section related to the Best Educational Use of A Social Networking Service, although of the five nominees none are actually using as a learning tool with students. I do not mean that remark to denigrate the work and the innovation of using the NING social networking tool as a way to bring teachers together to share resources but it almost seems like yet more missed opportunities.

However it is interesting to see that the Kingswear Primary School is trying to bring both teachers, students and parents together along with the fact that obviously NING is the application tool of choice due to its flexibility and ease of setup. It seems that NING has also made the decision to allow any network created within their application that is educationally based to go advert free.

But you ask, what of my recent endeavours to begin the use of social networking as a teaching and learning tool at my recent school. Well after the usual time to convince and get the filters turned off for such a website, I have found that after technical resistance follows teacher resistance. As usual a teachers’ role is often so busy that the idea of using a new fangled social networking tool that might take away from what is happening, a particular subjects coverage, is a shall we say a very adventurous one. Ideas of continuing in using a social network as a L2 support tool, seem to be disappearing although an idea has come up to support the IB Theory of Knowledge element of the course through a social network? Might be an interesting idea as the ToK element of the IB can often leave students cold, and it is all about conversation and being able to critical think their ways around particular issues? An idea anyway, to play around with.

So is social networking beginning to take route and boom within secondary schools well obviously no – and even if as said above there does seem to be significant moves towards beginning to use and discuss their use. While the educational world is still more concerned and probably rightly with the dangers of social networking it will not be able to embrace such a technology.

By drtech • Critical Study, Delicious Links, Featured, Social Networks • Comments Off on Social Networking in Education is beginning to Boom?

Nov 27 2007

The MAC arriveth…Digalo and E-Facilitation…

Well a big cardboard box popped through the school letterbox today with a shiny new mac inside it. So the revolution has continued although my first step was to use BootCamp to install Windows XP on the Mac as well – it felt a little rebellious in a sad geeky way. As I am sure I have said before there are pluses and minuses to both systems, but when you mix them together if you are not careful if it can get into a right mess. Although maybe that will teach me, to so early set up BootCamp and then Vmware and then start altering the boot setup until I could not boot in either Windows or OSX. Lol….well you live and learn.

Eventually with a bit of Linux on board it should be the perfect setup, although after one failed try have put the idea of Ubuntu on my Mac on hold for the time being. I must say however that Leopard has won me over to some degree with its ease of use; their are still the old niggles including the lack of a maximize window and that media player wise the Mac suffers dreadfully in comparison to XP’s surfeit of media players with every codec known to man.

Over at the Thinking Stick Jeff, has created a really interesting series of articles on the issue of school wide information systems, that do it all from assessment, reporting, course management, parent involvement, teachers websites and weblogs and much more. The article is interesting as ACS-Egham is about to begin a review to incorporate a school wide system called Ultranet. Ultranet being a new word in my vocabulary but generally meaning that the Intranet and external websites are connected in one whole management system, so as not to duplicate information and to give access to wll stakeholders in the system. A search on the word shows up a few Ultranets the most interesting being in New Zealand. I think these developments will be extremely interesting as I am almost pessimistic that all that a total system do is restrict the users and different stakeholders too much and so ends up not being used, along with the fact that it is often management centred rather learning/student centred. This could be a route I take for my Critical study, especially as setting up Social Networking for the language department is going to take a long period of time due to issues of time within departments for such initiatives and developments.

Finally in this rare round up the web facilitation course at Exeter University is beginning to take shape, however discussion are often stilted within WebCT although maybe my inability to follow threaded discussions is to blame. The introduction of a guest lecturer is interesting – Professor Robin Mason of the Open University. Some interesting discussions have begun, and the ideas about whether online learning communities can be as effective in a face-to-face classroom environment as much as a distance learning environment is an interesting one. As I have mentioned if I remember correctly I have been using multi author weblogs (with students as the authors) in an IT IB course, which works effectively as the discussion through both posts and comments is often different and adds to the discussion held in class. Also the course is meant to focus on global issues, and finally we have begun to find that other students from IT IB courses around the world are looking into our weblog and we are now looking into theirs. Students are now beginning to get the idea of what is all about, and love the idea that typing into google will come up with their article or discussion, or embedded slideshow…etc

The issue of assessment raised in the paper discussed by Mason is a crucial one, as on the recent Masters distance learning I have done. It was obvious that the discussions were interesting but never assessed, and also any collaborative activities were never assessed – so as a consequence it was noticeable that most collaborative activities which take so much time and motivation soon shattered and that discussions were often used by a certain style of student while others popped by on occasion. And as said for a Masters course with adults 100% participation is not needed but for school and sixth form students it is – which can raise issues unless areas such as assessment are addressed. The comments raised about a course being problematic if their are too many messages, was interesting. Maybe is it not to do with how these messages are shown e.g. these threaded forum messages are a nightmare in WebCT (and why do they give you such a small box to see your message in as you are writing…lol) – I find it desperately hard to follow and might indicate why my messages often seem a little incoherent.

My final thought is in agreement about the “the value of building up working relationship” within a distance based learning environment rather than trying to mix everyone around. A facilitator’s role to judge this is crucial as otherwise a student who maybe is contributing well through knowledge of his co-students can end up back at the start of Gilly Salmon’s model…

By drtech • Assignment, Delicious Links, Egham, ExeterUniversity, Featured • Comments Off on The MAC arriveth…Digalo and E-Facilitation…

Oct 19 2007

Delicious links for 2007-10-19

By drtech • Delicious Links • Comments Off on Delicious links for 2007-10-19

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