All posts by James Clay

100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #16 Student college handbook

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One of the things that Ofsted often look for when inspecting a college is a handbook for learners.

The idea behind the handbook is to provide students with all the information they are going to need for college and to provide help and guidance while at college.

In the past this may have (and may still well be) a physical handbook. Today much more likely to be an electronic Word document that may well be uploaded to the VLE. This will probably be referenced once by the learners and possibly ignored for the rest of their time in college, which is a pity.

By using something like the Book module on Moodle, it would be possible for the student to have much more accessible college handbook, one that has live links and could also use audio and video to enhance and enrich the information. Why have a written overview of the college, why not create an audio recording? Instead of pen pictures of where students go after college, why not video recordings of past students? Ensure all relevant staff have a video of who they are and what they do. Make it “live” with the use of RSS to embed news, podcasts and information. A live handbook that changes over the year.

Making it real and more relevant to the learners.

Handbooks often are “ignored” by learners, by making reference to the online version on the VLE, a college can ensure that the help and advice is referred to on a more regular basis. Using logs will ensure that more detailed analysis of use is possible. Also by placing additional content and information on the VLE it may result in an increase in the use of the VLE by learners for learning if they are using it to access information.

stuff

£249 Android Tablet

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Next week, Dixons Currys will start selling a £249 Android Tablet, the Advent Vega, according to Engadget.

The 10″ screen has a 1024 x 600 resolution which is very similar to the iPad’s 9.7″ 1024 x 768 screen. However unlike the iPad, the Vega comes with a 1.3 megapixel camera and a microSD slot. It also has 802.11g wifi, a 3G SIM card slot and 512MB RAM and ROM.

This is an unsubsidised price, so you might even be able to get it free in the future with a 3G contract.

It looks interesting.

However…

Let’s just hope that it performs better than the Next tablet.

conference, jiscel10

Social awkwardness

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I am sure if you ask a lot of people why they attend conferences, in addition to the keynotes and sessions, one aspect that will come out is the networking and social aspects of the conference. Those moments over coffee where you discuss the omissions and errors in the previous presentation; or the conference dinner where you reminisce over past conferences and nostalgically reminding the person sitting opposite that they aren’t like they use to be; pr at the reception where you think there’s going to be something to eat only to find a few nibbles and a cheap white wine, resulting in a desperate attempt to find someone who didn’t eat before they came to the reception so you have a companion for dinner; or at the organised social event, where you turn up to find everyone else has gone off to FAULTY or something like that and there’s just you and that guy who has an ego the size of the Blackpool Tower who you have been avoiding all conference, and now he has you cornered….

Conferences are more than the sum of the presentations, the networking and social side can turn a conference from an interesting experience to an event to remember.

This November, JISC will be running another of their excellent conferences (and yes once more I am the conference blogger) and unlike other conferences this one is online.

So isn’t all this social and networking all lost with an online conference, I hear you cry!

Well in a way, yes! And in a way, no!

As you might expect the social side of an online conference is different from a face to face conference. But it is still there, and it is still possible to socialise and network. At previous JISC Online Conferences we have had a virtual conference dinner in Second Life, there have been lots of discussions over coffee in the social cafe area of the conference and the instant messaging component ensures that networking not only can happen, but does happen.

Just because a conference is online doesn’t automatically mean that it will be an individual isolationary affair. On the contrary it can as a social experience as you want it to be.

If you are a researcher, institutional manager or practitioner involved in technology-enhanced learning and teaching, Innovating e-Learning 2010 will be of interest to you. Delegates from further and higher education and from overseas are welcome. Proceedings take place in an asynchronous virtual environment which can be accessed wherever and whenever is convenient to you.

Find out more about the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference.

app of the week, ipad

Slide by Slide – iPad App of the Week (not really)

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Slide by Slide – iPad App of the Week (not really)


Slide By Slide powered by the SlideShare API allows the user to:

1. Conveniently search for presentations from http://www.slideshare.net
2. Enjoy the presentation ad-free and distraction-free while in landscape mode
3. Also see the description along with the presentation when in portrait mode
4. Keep a history of slideshows visited
5. Easily share presentations using facebook, twitter, or email
6. Change background color while going through a presentation in landscape mode for viewing pleasure

This week’s App is Slide by Slide.

Okay this is not so much an iPad App of the week, more why does this App actually exist?

Slideshare is a web service that allows you to upload and share a presentation.

I don’t use it that much as my presentations without the actual “presentation” don’t make much sense as the speaking gives the slides (mainly pictures and the odd word) the context.

Slideshare use Flash as the technology behind their service which means it is easy to embed into blogs like this one, or a VLE.

Of course the downside of Flash is that it doesn’t work on the iPad (or is that the downside of the iPad is that Flash doesn’t work on it).

However Slideshare have enabled their technology now to work on the iPad and have released an API to allow others to create Apps to make use of this.

Slide to Slide is one of those Apps. You can search Slideshare and it allows you to then view the presentation.

Advancing slide by slide.

In portrait mode it also shows the notes.

It also stores a history of what presentations you have viewed.

So…

Well most of that is also available from the Slideshare site direct, with the advantage that you can click URLs you have been sent in an e-mail or on Twitter. The interface is virtually the same you wouldn’t at a quick glance realise that you were on the web and not in an App.

This is the Slide by Slide interface.

This is the web interface.

Can you tell the difference?

I actually can’t see the benefit of the App, yes it has your history and notes, but you can’t log in and see your favourites, you can’t follow people and the adverts seem more intrusive than those on the iPad web interface.

For me, an App has to make it easier to view web content, make it easier to engage with and share web content, make it easier to use web content. Apps such as Osfoora HD do this for services like Twitter in that they add functionality and are better than interacting with the web.

Slide to Slide doesn’t.

It’s free so you aren’t wasting money, maybe version 2 will be better, let’s hope so.

mobile, news

Windows Phone 7 Launch

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Today saw Microsoft launch a new attack on the mobile market with Windows Phone 7.

In a market that was at one time dominated by Nokia and RIM, Microsoft are now entering a more crowded market with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android both having a hefty marketshare.

It’s not that Microsoft haven’t been here before, Windows Mobile devices have been available for years. However where Microsoft failed on these devices (same reason they failed on the tablet) was trying to recreate the desktop experience on the mobile device. They thought consumers would prefer an environment they were comfortable with, certainly that on the surface makes sense, so devices had a Start button and looked and felt like Windows XP. However the reality was that the touch interface, the stylus interface did not integrate well with a desktop like experience and as a result you got frustrated and annoyed.

Windows Phone 7 is different and has a touch interface that looks nothing like a Windows desktop.

So what did Rory Cellan-Jones ask Microsoft about the new Windows Phone 7 and what is it capable of?

Note from the video that Windows Phone 7 doesn’t do Flash.

There is also no copy and paste.

Now both of those sound familiar….

One thing that I do agree with Rory about in his blog article is

The other reason this is so important is that Microsoft has realised that all the action, all the innovation, in the world of communications technology has now moved to the mobile. It’s where the next billion consumers are most likely to get their first taste of the internet; it’s where new ideas like app stores or location-based services or augmented reality are being tried out.

I’ve said before that mobile is now and mobile is here now. It’s not that the next big thing is going to be mobile, it already is. Innovation now is in the mobile sector of the market, these are the devices that our learners are buying and using. The age of mobile is now.

It amuses me to see people still saying that mobile is going to be the next big thing in education. Our learners are already mobile and already using mobile devices, we’re playing catch up now, not setting the agenda.

So am I going to buy a Windows Phone 7 device?

Possibly.

e-book, fote10

The future of the e-book

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This is a nice video that echoes much of what I said in my FOTE10 talk.

The Future of the Book from IDEO

The book will evolve in the same way that audio and video have evolved. Not always for the better, but sometimes it will work. Remember that the e-book does not replace or duplicate the physical book, it is a different reading experience.

fote10

So that’s my presentation….

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The other day I did mention my presentation at FOTE10 and said

I still yet to upload my presentation from FOTE10 to the web.

Why?

Well at 250Mb it’s a tiny bit large for the average user.

It’s also in Keynote format, so not very accessible for anyone other than a Mac user.

Well not to disappoint, here is the presentation using Slideshare, thanks to ULCC in uploading it.  It was removed, so I uploaded it to my Slideshare account.

I can imagine that this in isolation is not really going to explain why I think the iPad is the future of reading. Also none of the videos work from Slideshare…

The video of my presentation is now online on the main FOTE10 website. This is probably a nice way to see and hear what I said.

Update here is the video from Youtube.

I have also recorded my presentation using an mp3 recorder and that means you can listen to it here if you want to listen to it on an iPod (click the link) or from your computer.

So there is now a few ways to see and hear what I said.

conference, jiscel10

Not quite free

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Last week I attended two conferences, both in London and both “free”. Great conferences and certainly useful and interesting to attend. I got a lot out of them and will be bringing what I gained back into my work. However they weren’t exactly free, they had costs, costs that in these economic times may not always be possible to secure funding for those costs.

In order to attend the conferences I needed to travel to London, which if you want attend the start of the conference is often not cheap. Though I can travel to London and back off peak for about £55, to travel at peak times can cost £168! In addition there are tube costs and coffee to buy. And if you are going to buy a coffee, you will probably want to buy a cake too.

The other cost is travel time, about three hours each way for me, so I am spending a good part of the day (and evening) travelling. Yes it is possible to do some kind of work on the train, but generally it is not the ideal environment. Now these were just one day events, imagine the additional costs in terms of time and money if this was a four day conference.

So when you look at the £50 cost for the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference you can see that this is not just good value, but is much cheaper than many “free” conferences. This makes it much easier to justify to your institution.

There are advantages to attending the conference, but reduced travel and accommodation costs, no travel time and no need to leave the office, is a key advantage.

Of course the real value of the online conference is the programme, one that will inspire and challenge you. It has variety and interest.

So if it is proving difficult to attend all the conferences you want to, one you shouldn’t miss is the JISC Innovating e-Learning 2010 Online Conference.

Find out more.

altc2010

Podcast lectures “better” than real lectures

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In recent weeks I have written about lectures following Donald Clark’s keynote on the end of the lecture at ALT-C 2010.

As well as reflecting on Donald’s keynote I also posted the video Dave White’s invited talk where he talks about eventedness.

However if the results of a slightly unconvincing study are to be believed then giving students a recording of the lecture would be better for the learners than them attending live!

The New Scientist reports on the study that was undertaken at State University of New York in Fredonia.

New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person.

Why do I say unconvincing?

To find out how much students really can learn from podcast lectures alone – mimicking a missed class – McKinney’s team presented 64 students with a single lecture on visual perception, from an introductory psychology course.

This is a very small sample set and only covers one subject.

Now before we completely dismiss this study, there was also a recent article of interest in The Telegraph about Flip-thinking.

The article implies that education hasn’t changed much over the last hundred years…

Since it’s 2010, many of these students will see smartboards instead of chalkboards and they’ll turn in their assignments online rather than on paper. But the rhythm of their actual days will be much the same as when their parents and grandparents sat in those same uncomfortable seats back in the 20th century.

During class time, the teacher will stand at the front of the room and hold forth on the day’s topic. Then, as the period ends, he or she will give students a clutch of work to do at home. Lectures in the day, homework at night. It was ever thus and ever shall be.

However the article then goes onto describe the work of Karl Fisch

…instead of lecturing about polynomials and exponents during class time – and then giving his young charges 30 problems to work on at home – Fisch has flipped the sequence. He’s recorded his lectures on video and uploaded them to YouTube for his 28 students to watch at home. Then, in class, he works with students as they solve problems and experiment with the concepts.

Now though that article talks about flipping publishing and movies, there is a connection between the two articles on the students watching and listening to stuff and then using lesson time to ask questions, undertake exercises and do more practical things.

I don’t know about you, but there is a kind of logic there, isn’t there?

Some I know will say that learners won’t be motivated to watch or listen to the videos and podcasts. But are they going to be any more motivated to undertake questions and assessments for which they may not understand the underpinning theory.

Also it is a lot more difficult to get someone else to do your “homework” if the “homework” is done in college rather than outside.

You could also use additional materials and resources to extend the topic for those learners that need it.

The more I think about this, the more I think it has potential.

What do you think?