All posts by James Clay

vle

Don’t kill off the VLE…

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Don’t kill off the VLE, for many staff it’s their only option. For some if they didn’t have the VLE they wouldn’t use anything else.

Yes wouldn’t it be wonderful if every practitioner, teacher and lecturer was well informed about the wealth of online tools and resources out on the web. The reality is that they’re not. Just ask yourself what percentage of staff in your college are using Twitter?

The problem with saying that the VLE is dead it assumes that both practitioners and learners will move over to free web tools and services. Now some will, some will thrive on that. This is the reason why others may say that the VLE is dead or should be dead. However I disagree as if you kill off the institutional VLE then a substantial proportion of learners and practitioners will not move onto free tools and services.

For many practitioners the VLE is still an alien beast which they are not familiar with and more importantly not making the best use of. Yes you could argue that this is because the VLE is not fit for purpose and that it is a slow clunking tool that no one wants to use. Lets stop though and ask if this is the case. Isn’t it more likely that the reason some staff don’t use the VLE for enhancing and enriching learning is that they don’t know how to? If they think it is tired and clunky, that assumes that they are comparing it to “snazzy” or “clever” Web 2.0 tools which they are using widely. This is a very small number of practitioners and they are probably using those tools already.

I can’t see practitioners who are not using the VLE, or simply skimming the surface of the functionality of the VLE, making an educated, informed and rational decision about using the VLE. How would they know? How can the decide based on what is probably a cursory glance at at a few features of the VLE without having an understanding of the full and potential benefits of the VLE for their learners.

I have had quite a few people comment and say that learning doesn’t happen on a VLE and that it is merely a glorified content repository. Now I am sure in many institutions that this is certainly the case. However to blame the VLE would be like blaming a classroom for being boring. As anyone who is ever in a classroom soon realises, it is not the environment which matters but what and how you use that environment. A VLE or virtual learning environment is merely replacing or supplementing a physical learning environment. I should note that the classroom is not the only physical learning environment that learning can take place in. Physical learning environments can be classrooms, the home, workshops, salons, kitchens, work places or in the field (you know literally in a field).

If we ensure that practitioners have the right skills, experience and understanding then we can start to ensure that learners have a guided, enhanced and enriched learning experience.

Join the debate in Wolverhampton on the 16th December 2009.

vle

So is the VLE dead or not?

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A lot of people out there are talking about how dead the VLE is that you would actually think it was dead. However take a step back, there are lots of people using their VLE, learners are using them to learn, practitioners are using them to enhance and enrich the learning experience.

The VLE is not dead, you could say that the VLE is undead. Now not undead as in zombies or vampires, but undead as in not dead, very much alive and kicking.

Now don’t get me wrong, the wealth of Web 2.0 tools or services out there are fantastic and can be utilised by learners to enhance and enrich their experience. But this needn’t be in exclusion to the institutional VLE, the institutional VLE can be the glue which holds this altogether.

When people often talk about how the VLE is dead, should be dead, or is undead and should be  sorted; they expect learners to utilise the tools of their choice to create their own personal learning environment (PLE). We need to stop confusing the debate over the VLE by implying it is a PLE versus a VLE debate. It isn’t and hasn’t ever been that.

A PLE in my opinion is allowing a learner to choose their own learning environment by utilising tools that are available to the learner. Now where does it say that this specifically excludes institutional tools and services? Why can’t learners decide to use an institutional VLE, an institutional e-mail address, institutional storage?

The key is choice.

We do need to give learners choice about which tools they want to use. We also need to help them make an informed choice.

If all you let learners use is the institutional VLE then you are restricting choice and stopping learners from creating their own personalised learning environment. Services such as XML and RSS allow learners, practitioners and institutions to feed content and communication into whichever environment they choose.

The problem I have with removing the institutional VLE from the equation is that it removes choice and for some learners adds barriers learning.

We know that the so called Google generation and digital natives don’t exist. Some learners are very familiar with Web 2.0 and technology, but many others are not. How do we provide an enhanced and enriched online learning environment to learners that are not confident about entering that environment. The VLE can be that first step, the first port of call for these learners.

The VLE is not dead, that’s what we mean by undead, the VLE can be a tool to enhance and enrich learning and be a portal to a world of Web 2.0 tools and services.

Join the debate in Wolverhampton on the 16th December 2009.

m-learning

MoLeNET Conference 2009

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Today is the MoLeNET Conference, the second conference MoLeNET has had. Last year the conference was at the Emirates Stadium, this year at the Grange Hotel near St Pauls.

Gloucestershire College will be there in force today. Last year I did a ten minute slot on the Glossy Project. This year, Alan Graham will be presenting in the research strand on what we did in the Shiny project in terms of research. Whilst Rob Whitehouse will be doing the ten minute slot on the use of video assessment and the impact on learning. Rob Allen, who has done some fantastic work on mobile learning in plumbing and heating will be on our stand. And…. myself and Greg Smith, the college Principal, will be delivering one of the keynotes.

Glossy and Shiny have had a real cultural impact in the college and I hope to share how we achieved this in the college.

In case you were wondering, our third MoLeNET project is called Sparkly and is about sharing what we do with two partners, Stroud College and Royal Forest of Dead College Royal Forest of Dean College.

Update: Oops that should be Royal Forest of Dean College, must have dead on the brain!

e-book

So do you like books, or do you like reading?

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I am still of the opinion that e-Books and e-Book Readers are going to be big! Both Apple and Microsoft are working on devices which can be used to read e-Books.

I know that some people like books, well I like reading and e-Book Readers offer the reader a lot more than a traditional book.

With an e-Book Reader I can carry more than one book, I can carry a lot more than one book. I can carry documents too. The screen is reasonably large enough too so that it is easy to read. The battery life is pretty good too, much better than a laptop or a phone.

So why would you read a book on a phone?

Well Kevin Tofel from jkOnTheRun makes a very good point:

Think about it this way — if you’re always carrying your phone and an unplanned short opportunity arises to read a book, you don’t want to whip out a computer, do you? In a situation like this, you’re not limited to how much space you have. You can read with just one hand. You don’t need great lighting. It’s simply a win-win, all around.

This I agree with this view, there are times when you want to read and if you have your phone on you, then being able to quickly do some reading

e-Books are not about replacing books, in the same way that online news sites don’t totally replace physical newspapers, or YouTube replaces TV.

Likewise e-Book Readers don’t replace computers; what both e-Books and e-Book Readers do is allow reading to happen at a time and place to suit the reader.

So do you like books, or do you like reading?

twitter

To Retweet or not to Retweet

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So what do I mean by “retweeting”. Well if you don’t use Twitter or don’t like Twitter, time to move on to the next blog post or the next thing in your newsfeed.

Twitter for me is becoming more and more a useful tool to support me in my day to day job. It is my community of practice. From Twitter I gain useful links, advice, ideas, events; I build relationships which allow for collaboration, projects, conferences and more.

Twitter is slowly replacing a lot of my e-mail communication as it is faster and more useful.




One of the strengths of Twitter has been the RT or re-tweet, the way in which you “forward” tweets from someone in your network to others who follow you. Not everyone who follows you follows all whom you follow. Make sense? Well look at it this way, at the time of writing David Sugden @dsugden follows me. He follows 74 people. I follow 421 people.

So I see something that I think is worth sharing from one of the 421 people I follow, so I retweet it, this way David sees it as there is a good chance he won’t have seen it. Likewise the 1309 people (minus spammers) who follow me will also see it.

So why do people do it? What content do they want to share?

Well I do it and I do it for a variety of reasons.

Here’s one…

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RT @josiefraser The VLE: Dead Again? Come to the debate 16 Dec with @grahamattwell @timbuckteeth @jamesclay @nicksharratt http://u.nu/8smt3

I RT’d this Tweet as I thought my followers would be interested in knowing that there was to be another dead VLE debate. Not everyone who follows me follows Josie Fraser.

I also RT stuff I have posted, as a way of re-broadcasting a Tweet, because though people follow me, I know (as I do) don’t read every Tweet I post all the time.

One of the attractions of Twitter for me has been the simplicity of the interface and concept. Despite numerous tools available for Twitter, on my desktop I have stuck with the web interface.

One of the (many) reasons I don’t like (and as a result don’t use) Facebook is the complicated interface and features – well that and all those annoying bits like poking, zombies and farming…

Twitter though has started to add extra functionality and features to the service.

Some of these have come from the community, for example using @ to reply to someone was something the community brought to Twitter and was added to the system, as was the # hashtag to allow users to easily search for tweets about events, places, conferences, coffee, etc…

Now something new has arrived from Twitter, they have integrated retweeting into the web interface.

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Unlike the simple RT @name and then quote they have used a very different system. What happens is if I retweet somebody’s tweet, that tweet in it’s entirety appears in my followers Twitter stream with a little note that says that I retweeted it.

Now I know some may get confused with this, thinking I don’t follow that person why has their tweet appeared in my stream… Twitter have come up with a pop up box that may allay that confusion.

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Likewise the system doesn’t allow you to edit or add a comment. However though Twitter have added this functionality, you don’t need to use it, you can as I am sure I will continue to add RT and edit the retweeted post.

This though has some issues, especially in the way in which some people edit the post or add extra content.

Back on the 22nd October I posted the following tweet about the Windows 7 Burger.

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OMG! http://bit.ly/2o317H oh dear….

I got retweeted by Stephen Hodge.

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RT @jamesclay OMG! http://bit.ly/2o317H oh dear…. I really really want a BurgerKing now!

Now it would appear that I said I really really want a BurgerKing but I didn’t, I don’t even go to Burger King!

I did think about correcting Stephen, but didn’t really think it would change anything, so just left it. But I am guessing some people may have thought I wanted a burger!

The new way of RTing from Twitter will stop that happening, but also means that things like this won’t happen!

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People use Twitter in many different ways and that’s always going to be a part of the issue of whether to RT or not to RT. You may want to have a look at my previous blog post on Ten things people say about using Twitter, but really they shouldn’t that looks at the way in which many people tell you how to use Twitter.

The problem with RTs is that yes you may see the same thing a few times, but remember the one time you see something once and then you will value the RT. Don’t ask people not to RT, if you don’t like what they’re doing, don’t follow them, others may value their RTs.

coffee, jisc, jiscel09

A conference with a difference

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Those of you who know me will know that I quite like online conferences and have participated in a fair few over the years. JISC are running another of their innovating e-learning conferences this November.

The JISC Online e-Learning Conference 2009 takes place between the 24 and 27th November.

Innovating e-Learning 2009 is just around the corner

Book now for the fourth JISC online conference ‘Thriving, not just surviving’ 24-27thNovember!

What are the challenges facing 21stcentury institutions? What opportunities does technology offer to help overcome those challenges? You can contribute to these debates in the company of leading thinkers, broadcasters and academics.

The 2009 programme features keynotes from:

Charles Leadbeater, (leading authority on innovation and strategy); Nigel Paine(writer, broadcaster, organisational learning specialist and former Head of People Development at the BBC); Rhona Sharpe(Oxford Brookes University) and Helen Beetham(JISC Learners’ Experiences of e-Learning theme); Peter Bradwell(Demos) on The Edgeless University.

Sessions include Brian Lamb(University of British Columbia) on opening up educational content, Graham Attwell, Martin Weller(The Open University), Rob Howe, (University of Northampton) debating the demise (or otherwise) of educational institutions, Becka Currantand colleagues (University of Bradford) on using new technologies to engage and retain students, Alan Staley (Birmingham City University) on acquiring workplace skills while on course, John Kirriemuirand Kathryn Trinder(Glasgow Caledonian University) on making the most of virtual worlds in teaching and learning, Mike Neary(University of Lincoln) onengaging key stakeholders in the design of physical learning spaces.

Looking for something else? You can also follow new work by JISC projects on transforming delivery of learning with mobile and web 2.0 technologies, and engaging employers and professional bodies in the design of the curriculum. James Clay(Gloucestershire College) returns as the conference blogger, guided tours of Second Life and opportunities for hands-on experience of innovative learning environments and resources in the Have-a-Go area complete a rich and innovative conference programme.

Innovating e-Learning 2009welcomes delegates from further and higher education in the UK and overseas. Proceedings take place in an asynchronous virtual environment so can be accessed wherever and whenever is convenient to you. Keynotes will be delivered live in Elluminate, a collaborative web conferencing platform (recordings will be available post-session).

Innovating e-Learning 2009 is a simply unmissable conference experience. Find out more and register now at www.jisc.ac.uk/elpconference09

Delegate fee: £50

There are a few advantages of online conferences over traditional face to face conferences, feel free to add to them in the comments.

With an online conference it is feasible to go to all the presentations and workshops even if they are at the *same time*.

If you are a reflective person, then like me the question you actually want to ask the presenter is thought of as you travel home on the train, with an online conference you have a chance to reflect and ask that question.

You can attend a meeting at the same time as attending the conference.

You can teach a lesson at the same time as attending the conference.

You can watch Doctor Who at the same time as attending the conference.

You can attend the conference at 2am, useful for insomniacs and those with small children.

Having said all that it is useful too to make time for the conference, shut the office door, work from home for a bit, wear headphones, move to a different office, work in the coffee spaces in the college.

You can see presentations again, you can pause them, you can ignore them and (virtually) walk out without feeling you may be offending someone as their talk doesn’t relate to you as you thought it did.

The coffee is usually better.