High Tech Hiatus

There's been a break in posting partly because I'm simply knackered at the moment and have dropped a gear for the so called Easter break and my laptop still has no wireless card at the moment. Think I mentioned that the old one broke recently so I bought a new one last week from Tesco in Barrow in Furness (while visiting relatives) but that worked in Barrow but not since I've got back here.

Instant Polls without Polling Technology

I'm going to share a useful trick with colleagues.

Many of you will have seen these instant polling systems where people in a room use little "remotes" to select answers or vote and the results come up on a big screen.

These systems are great and indeed NTU is about to purchase one. But what if you haven’t got access to such a system? Well something I’ve done for a few years is to use SurveyMonkey as an instant polling system. It is really (just) a well thought out, free, web based survey service. It is great for surveys and I would recommend it.

But if you are teaching in a classroom equipped with networked computers you can use it to gather instant feedback – and then use that feedback in your actual session

So yesterday I had a class where I showed video clips to students (and they could also access them independently via their PCs) and then got them to complete a short questionnaire on SurveyMonkey. I made the (very short) survey just before the class and emailed the URL to the students. A survey is really just a collection of questions so a short survey is simply a way of asking some questions and collecting the feedback. I then call up the feedback in class and we then discuss the results. It works well since the students get to have an individual and collective say; this gives me natural teaching material of relevance to the topic (since I author the survey) and the students (since they have just given anonymised answers).

Yesterday I asked students to give me feedback on the video clips (key part of the session and an excellent response rate) and later on I showed them a clip of the new iPhone and asked for some feedback on that (again using a pre-prepared SurveyMonky survey). Must do a video clip demo of this or write a short paper on this and other useful tricks… will add it to my job list!

A First Class Ticket to Dottingham?

(The title of this post and first paragraph also appear on the Internet, Computers & Society module blog but I didn't think the second paragraph was relevant to the students.)

There used to be an advert for Tunes (I think) where a man with a heavy cold cannot make himself heard to the person at the railway ticket counter. If anyone is watching these demo clips then you'll hopefully realise that I made one batch while I was full of cold. So I sound a bit odd but it also means I wasn't very focussed on the materials. So they're a little waffly but they're only demos so that's okay.

All part of the process of being a reflective practitioner. You plod along at times, soar along at others, try things out, get feedback, consider it (accept/reject the feedback?)and repeat the process... Is this the wheel of progress or the treadmill of despair? Some days it can seem like both!

NTU-Tube Anyone?

Just booked my placed at the Annual Learning and Teaching Conference.

NTU ALT-C

Looks like a couple of good sessions though I've missed out on some of the more popular ones. I had thought about doing a presentation this year but at the time the notification came around I was just so busy that I didn't want to commit myself to yet another thing. As it happens I would have been able to put some together.

What? Well I would have done a short presentation on using services like YouTube to communicate with students whether they're attending NTU full-time, out on placement or full distance learners. Here's an example of the sort of thing I've been doing with one of my modules. I use a blog and embed video clips hosted by YouTube into it.

The Internet, Computers & Society

Some clips are ones I've found elsewhere and linked to (so no copyright worries - don't even mention proscribing deep linking to me!) and others are ones I've created. Some of the current ones are short clips produced in a range of styles. I then demonstrated these to the students and used SurveyMonkey to collect feedback on their preferences. All part of my normal reflective practitioner good practice and in this particular instance it will make a contribution to my PGCHE course.

Wireless Connectivity and Internet Use

Some new research suggests a strong link between the use of wireless networking and patterns of internet usage. If you have wireless you use the web a lot more.

The fact that the wireless card on my laptop got broken a few days ago, and the lack of blog postings since then, may offer further proof to this idea.

I'm currently typing this entry in the dark, in a cold conservatory, on my desktop machine. Whereas I might normally have done it on the laptop from anywhere in the house. Probably a nice warm room with a TV in it. So there may well be something in this new report...

UCU?

Today I learnt that Sally Hunt has won the election for top job at UCU (the trade union of university lecturers) which is bitterly disappointing.

If half the reports I have read about the tactical ill-preparedness of her former union (thus herself and colleagues) in the recent national pay dispute are true then we are all screwed. Perhaps I could encourage colleagues from history, military studies, politics etc, to donote some texts on the tactics of conflict to Sally?

Oh the joys of democracy. Whatever we are now paying her it is too much (to bear).

Star Cops

The image is one of "box", a rather special computer, from Star Cops. If you click on the image you will see the animated version.


While off ill I had that rare chance to catch up on some "Phil" viewing.

So I took the chance to watch some episodes of Star Cops. A recent BBC4 documentary has reminded me about this oft overlooked series and I'd forgotten just how good it was. Really well written and very clever in how it observed the relationship between people and technology. I could go on for hours on this topic but you'll be pleased to hear that I won't. Besides I've that backlog of work to plough through...

Two Days Two Hundred Mails

I've just been off for two days and in that time received about 200 emails. Many were junk, some were actual spam, and others were just of no interest but from legitimate sources, and finally there was the not inconsiderable number of mails that required some kind of reply or action on my part. It just never lets up...