Oooh! Another Paper From Last Year!

Having seen the email about the JSIC eLearning publication when I logged on from home I arrived in work later in the morning to find a package for me. It was another set of conference proceedings and again I had a mention in it. Part of a joint paper with colleagues from the Social Work and Social Policy (SWAP) Subject Centre.

SWAP

Interestingly we are all attributed to the University of Southampton (location of the subject centre) which I don't mind but NTU might. Anyway it was a joint paper reflecting upon how a group of us had developed the role of e-Learning Champions as a method of disseminating e-learning knowledge into the discipline areas covered by SWAP.

The main point about this post and the last one is that it still surprises me how long it sometimes take things to roll through the system in academia (though it shouldn’t by now) but on the plus side you can suddenly get a couple of nice things out of the blue.

Oooh A Publication! - JISC eLearning Conference

innovating e-learning conference 2006Innovating e-Learning 2006: Transforming Learning Experiences
27 - 31 March 2006

Yesterday morning I checked my email and found one from Geof Minshull, who amongst other things, helped to organise an online e-learning conference for JIC last March (2006). They’ve just published the final set of e-books (actually nicely formatted PDFs) containing the proceedings from the conference.

This includes a paper I presented (online) about the use of interactive crosswords (pages 48-51), which of course I used as the basis for my first presentation to the PGCHE course. Since it has just been published it can go into my PGCHE portfolio.

You can say my paper, and more importantly, loads of other really good ones in the PDF collection located at

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/elp_conference06.html

Second Strife!

I saw a great article in The Guardian on Saturday about the current strife in Second Life as people (in the guise of their avatars) protested against the new SL HQ of the French far right. Protests escalated as avatars began fighting with stun guns, exploding pigs, and even a holographic Thomas the Tank Engine.

Who couldn’t be excited by this? Beneath the bizarre facades is a serious battle but the list of protagonists, and their weapons, reads like a scene from an unpublished Michael Moorcock novel. Fantastic and fantastical stuff!

See extensive coverage here (which is where credit for the Thomas image is also due)

http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/01/stronger_than_h.html

NTU Staff Web Pages - Still Banned

This afternoon I noticed an NTU eNews email about the latest version of the computer use regulations. Staff viewing this should have a copy but you can also read the regulations .here.

The one that annoys/irks/saddens me most is this one:





Just in case the image doesn't load it says this:

14. Guidlines for personal websites and webpages

14.1 The University does not allow personal websites and webpages. If you require further information, please contact Information Services.

BTW The typo "Guidlines" is in the original text (see image).

We used to have staff “personal” web pages (by which they do not just mean photos of people with their pets but people’s teaching and research interests, professional affiliations and all kinds of things) but now we don’t.

Probably one of the few universities in the developed world that doesn’t have them.

But no matter because all people do of course is migrate to services like Blogger, or set up their own websites, MySpace profiles and so on. When that happens the institution has actually ceded all control to the academic staff because we are beyond their walls. Not that there aren’t wider legal issues, and of course, you might be foolish to tell it just how you see it on an attributable blog like this one, but nonetheless banning so-called personal web sites is pointless.

Something that also makes academics chortle is that we spend a fortune on promoting the university but by banning personal web sites as they did some time ago (the latest regulations merely confirm the continuation of it) lots of staff have disappeared from the databases of major search engines so when journalists etc search for experts NTU academics may well not appear. A good Google profile is something that cannot easily be bought. And our institution threw lots of them away.

Given what I've read of his work I’m sure the “father of the web” Tim Berners-Lee would not approve of such actions. And he, in my opinion, is a better judge of such things than the mandarins at NTU.

Trial Module Blog

I've just set up a blog for my third year module, which is called "The Internet, Computers & Society". I'm trying this out as an addition to materials on the VLP and I've given all the module students (about 40 this year - not bad for an optional module) the requisite permissions to post things on the blog. I've just set up a couple of exercises via email and given them a chance to register with Blogger (completely free) if they haven't already done so since they need to register to post contributions to the blog.

I suspect a bit like Gilly Salmon and her e-moderating exercises I'll have to do a few things to get them going. Anyway you can see the module blog here

http://phil-wane-ics.blogspot.com/index.html

Part of my rationale for trying this out is that I think this is a much more user friendly interface than the current VLP, the students can post comments, add images and embed video clips (something they cannot easily do on the VLP) and it should encourage those who haven't considered blogs to check them out.

I'll post updates in due course reflecting upon the success or otherwise of this move. On a related note (since I've had no feedback on this yet) I thought that an easy (convenient/efficient) way for me to contribute to the material that needs to go into my Personal Development Portfolio was to set up this blog. It’s a quick and easy way to keep short notes or observations (all dated by the blog system) and I can then add additional materials later. But it at least gives me a skeleton outline of just one part of my portfolio… What do fellow PGHE students think? Would it help you? Do you want me to show you how to set up a blog like this? It really is easy!

Plagiarism Paranoia

I came up with one of those nice sounding sentences (the sort that don't bear great critical scrutiny) for the start of one of my assignments. Here it is:

If we are thinking about learning are we learning about thinking?

But then I wondered if it sound a little too familiar so I Googled it (how naughty using Google as an adjective) as a phrase with, and without, the question mark. Both times the phrase could not be found. I'm still a little paranoid but is the "not on Google" defence a reliable one for accidental plagiarists?

Welcome to Nothingham?

Welcome to Nothingham? A virtual Nottingham in the E-Midlands?

If I were a city looking to improve my international brand I would also advocate using Second Life or something similar? Yes. Applying the same 3-6 months – you should have done it already and 12-18 months rules as for universities –see previous posting.

But we are rapidly reaching the point where simply doing something, however feebly realised, is soon no longer going to be better than simply doing nothing. But an imaginative rendition of the “best of” the iconic images you wish to portray might work nicely. So welcome to the Second Life island of Nottingham where Kevin Costner in full Robin Hood mode greets visitors and shows them the Castle, Market Square and so on.

Naturally the inward investment teams would want to portray more than the tourist aspects of our island as they want to attract investors as well as visitors. So inside the Castle lurks a TARDIS like transformation where a combined campus form the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University offers taster courses and the chance for prospectus students to ask questions of the (doubtless carefully screened) current students lolling about on the campus grounds like so many Adams and Eves in an electronic Eden. Almost dominating our cyber campus is a tower that echoes the double helix in its structure (representing the advanced bio-tech aspects of Nottingham) but this too is eclipsed by a levitated metallic hoop, Stargate like in dimensions, in honour of the Nobel Prize winning Magnetic Resonance Imaging work done at the University of Nottingham.

Great opportunities too for other local organisations such as the Salvation Army (if ever a place needed some salvation it is some of the residents of Second Life – at least according to some observers), cultural centres like the Broadway Cinema and maybe an innovative local company like Games Workshop. I fancy seeing some of their creations brought to being in Second Life – if they don’t have an island they should get one.

Of course we could have a lot of fun deconstructing (or simply destructing) the scenario outlined above but you get the picture…

Second Life - Second Chance?

Just been looking through my Google Alerts including one I have for Second Life.

This led me to an article about the growing number of colleges who have a presence in the Second Life metaverse. People sometimes ask me about the potential of Second Life and I think it has one but as with all things in life you don’t get something for nothing. I’m sure that if you put effort and resources into Second Life you can get some great educational returns.

If I were a university would I invest in a Second Life island? Yes.

Compared to overall marketing spend (brochures, corporate websites , adverts in the press and so) it costs nothing. The real cost is in being prepared to put something of educational value on your island. That’s the more difficult part. But if you do then there will be both educational and promotional benefits way beyond the actual financial cost.

But we have to remember that time on the Web, including the various metaverses (Second Life is not unique) is running at dog years.

If I were going to invest in Second Life with the hope of gaining promotional (marketing) benefits as well as exploit the pedagogic potential over the longer term I would do it within the next 3-6 months (it should have been done already) as, a bit like in the early days of the web when merely setting up a website might get you on the national news, as the window for doing virtually nothing but getting publicity anyway, will probably last 12-18 months. After that you’ll have to do something genuinely useful and innovative (even within Second Life) to get peer approval but probably without lots of free publicity as things will have moved on.

Institutions who are serious about exploiting metaverses (and universities certainly should be) should also think how they can develop resources that also have a local equivalent so that if Second Life goes belly up for any reason your carefully crafted artefacts and relationships can have a Second chance somewhere else. Certain things will be of course be lost where they are brought into being by the unique code of a particular service but prepare to salvage what you can.

RSS Feed Test

Just what it says!

Web Free.0 Anyone?

Lots of fuss over Web 2.0 and what it really means but most people are agreed that it means something big. People are also speculating about Web 3.0. While listening to a recent CNET BuzzOutLoud podcast one of the guests mantioned that he'd even registered the domain name "Web 3.0.com" though quite what he registered I'm not sure but it couln'dt have been what I've just typed. But I'm going off topic...

I was think about Web 3.0 and wondered if Web Free.0 might actually the next big step? The reason being my suggestion of "Free" rather than "3" is that this would signify not another wave of services (which seems to be epitomising Web 2.0) but that the actual web (really underlying Internet) would be freely available in two senses. It would be freely available geographically - anyplace anytime access - and that it would be freely available as in no cost. Wouldn't that be great? There are some little pockets of this already (at a price) but imagine a truly pervasive, free to access, network, for all those services to ride on and for end users to maximise their use of the services.

Lots of Web 2.0 (and other older services) are free to use but they are not free to access. If we are to prevent a widening digital divide then we need to make *access to* the services free and not just the services themselves.

So three cheers for Web Free.0?

p.s. A quick Google search turned up several instances of the term all fro mthe smae person Howard Lindzon at http://howardlindzon.com/?cat=90 but he takes a narrow perspective that seeks to "monetize" this term. In his blog he is talking about a commission free stock trading service rather the grander global vision I'm soap boxing about. I suspect many others have also come up with variations, especially pseudo puns, on this phrase. Ah the joys of the web - any version!

PGCHE Learning Styles

Several weeks ago we had a session on the issue of different learning styles.

I've been thinking about this on and off since then but while writing up my assignment today (when I kept seeing the term in literature search results) I determined that I would finally make a quick comment on the blog.

The issue of individual learning styles and how educators should perhaps cope with them is a valid question. But at the time I wondered how much use knowing about learning styles actually was? This is because we increasingly teach in large groups and so during any particular session we may be faced with individuals with different learning styles. So how do you deal with that? Stick to one learning style and you disadvantage all but one group equally, or do you try to rotate through a number of learning styles over the course of a session or module, and try to advantage/disadvantage everyone equally? Of course there may be spaces where we can create opportunities for people to employ their preferred learning style (assuming they themselves know what it is). Do we have a reliable test for learning styles?

Student self reporting of even fairly testable knowledge (can you reference; send an email, attach a file to an email, make a PowerPoint show etc) is notoriously unreliable so something as nebulous as learning styles would be tentative at best.

Even if there was a reliable test for learning styles, again where would that leave us in the age of large group teaching?

So far so negative but then I thought a little more about it and the use of technology to aid teaching. Assuming we cold identify people's preferred learning styles we could then do something really quite useful about it. Imagine being able to produce a set of information in one format, along with a selection of alternative questions, exercises or diagrams, designed to cater for different learning styles. This then gives you the ability to squirt the kernel of the information you are trying to convey, along with some appropriate formatting and accompanying materials into user specific outputs. For example, I produce materials on the advantages and disadvantages of computer mediated communication (CMC) in organisations, and Student A gets a document from the system that contains the core information plus lots of flow diagrams explaining how information now flows in various ways etc. Student B (different learning style) gets a document from the system that essentially contains the same information but this student doesn't get flow charts but a number of real world examples to illustrate the key points.

One probably couldn't accommodate every learning style this way but if you knew that certain styles dominated (possibly in certain groups - artists and engineers to use some stereotypes in a hopefully productive way) then you might be able to provide a much better learning experience for the majority of the students.

I’m sure that this isn't a difficult thing to solve from a technical point of view. Given the wide use of things like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and eXtensible Markup Language (XML) for separating content from formatting on the web this is possibly a relatively simple problem for someone who is technically minded (not me I'm afraid).

I'm sure lots of work has been done on this somewhere, and as with many of the fascinating topics covered on the PGCHE course, I only regret that I like the time to follow them up.