All posts by James Clay

altc2017, blog, conference, presentation, twitter

Planning your session for #altc

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typing on a laptop

 

So I know you have already planned your session for the ALT conference next week?

No?

Good!

Even if you have planned your session, you might find these tips and advice useful.

Don’t run over time…

This always happens, even with good timekeeping from conference organisers there is nothing more annoying when a session runs over time, or more usually the session is cut short and we miss all the good bits. If you struggle to keep to time, rehearse and practice. Go through your presentation with a friend to check that it is just twenty minutes long.

Focus on the important

With short twenty minute sessions, you don’t have time. So don’t spend the presentation telling us your back story, history of the session, who was involved and the methodology. Get straight to the results, the impact and the outcomes. I have been to a lot of sessions in which most of the session is the background to the work rather than the work itself and the results. When I am attending a session at a conference I want to know what happened and what was the impact of what happened. You may want to consider delivering your planned session backwards, tell us the impact. Then describe the outcomes that enabled this impact. Then deliver us the results of your work. If you have time you can tell us the methodology, but by then you have us hooked. So we can always read the paper for the full story if it interests us, or we can read your blog post on the session, which brings me nicely onto…

session

Amplify your session

Do write a blog post about your session, tell us all about it, provide links, papers and biographies. Do reference this blog post in your talk. Follow up your session with a blog post, one thing that you could do is reference any questions which were asked with a fuller explanation. Use the Twitter to tell people about your session, use the hashtag #altc and describe your session and why it will be interesting. Use a tool such as Tweetdeck to send automated tweets during your presentation, with references, links, blog posts, images, etc… again with the hashtag #altc so that others can pick them up. Going through the ALT Conference website, invite people to your session.

microphone

Presentation

When presenting read your slides out.

Make sure you fill with slides with as much text as possible, just so you can ask people at the back can they read them.

Ensure graphs and diagrams are taken from a document so that the details are unreadable even from the front row.

Cover your presentation with organisational branding, so that everyone knows where you are from and can be distracted from the actual content.

Okay…

Seriously do think about your presentation. Think of the session as a story.

Don’t read your slides out, use the slides to inform and talk to the audience about the stuff you did or are doing. The slides should inform this not be all the talk written down. Despite everyone saying don’t read your slides, people still do it.

Less is more, sometimes more is better. So don’t cover your slides in lots of text. One slide with six bullet points has less impact then six slides with a single piece of information. Use less words (or even just a single word) and expand this when you present.

Images can be very powerful and can replace words.

Don’t use clipart though, go somewhere like Pixabay and find some decent photographic images.

When using graphs and diagrams, don’t just copy them from the paper you published, simplify them. Do they add to the story you are telling?

You may have no choice about the slide branding!

Follow up

People may want to follow up on what you have presented on. Can they contact you easily? You could do this with a slide, or some flyers might be easier. Always useful to follow up your session with a blog post. You can even ask others to do this.

So what are your session preparation tips?

stuff

Survivorship Bias

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In my recent blog post I reflected on the wealth of news articles about highly successful people who failed their A Levels, or how everyone can be a millionaire I was reminded of this great XKCD cartoon.

They say you can't argue with results, but what kind of defeatist attitude is that? If you stick with it, you can argue with ANYTHING.

Every inspirational speech by someone successful should have to start with a disclaimer about survivorship bias.

Survivorship bias or survival bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways.

These stories are designed to bring hope to some people, but I also feel they send a stark message to others that don’t need to worry about working hard for exams, because regardless of the result, you will become a millionaire!

News outlets at this time, never tell the stories of those who failed their A levels and never have financial success, which is the majority of those students who failed to make the grade. Many of these will though have successful and happy lives. They also never tell the stories of those who did succeed and went onto happiness and financial success.

So what’s your failure story?

stuff

You too can be a millionaire!

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millionaires shortbread

Yesterday was A Level results day, for over 800,000 students they got a letter explaining the outcome for most of two years studying. For some it will be an amazing result and they will progress onto the next stage of their lives. For some there will be disappointment, and uncertainty.

For another 800,000 young people, September will see the start of their A Level journey whether that be at Sixth Form or at an FE College. I wish them luck and hope they work hard to achieve the success they desire.

One thing that they do need to realise is that despite the BBC News publishing stories like this one, The A-level failure who became a multi-millionaire, you do need to study and work at your A Levels.

The day Giles Fuchs learned he had failed his A-levels, his family gathered around the dining table for dinner as normal.

His father didn’t say a word during the meal, waiting until the plates had been cleared to turn to his son and say: “Giles, I hope you’re good with your hands.”

Hoping to prove his dad wrong despite the dismal results, the next day Mr Fuchs knocked on the door of the biggest estate agent chain in Northamptonshire to ask for a job.

Today a multi-millionaire 52-year-old, and co-founder and boss of UK serviced office business Office Space In Town (OSIT), Mr Fuchs says that the three years he spent working for that estate agency in the East Midlands gave him an invaluable grounding.

I do find that often news outlets, like the BBC News, publish these stories, which I am sure are all published with good intentions about giving “hope” to those learners whose A Level results weren’t as good as they hoped.

I think they also have a negative aspect to them too, which is the impact it has on learners who have yet to start their A Levels (or even their GCSEs). The message appears to be don’t worry about studying, even if you fail to get the results, you will still be a millionaire!

Lots of successful people, such as Richard Branson, Jeremy Clarkson, all messed up their exams, but still found success and became millionaires!

Looking back you can see stories across the news media on how it’s okay to fail, but you can still be a millionaire! Here is a list of just 15 people who succeeded despite exam failure.

News outlets at this time, never tell the stories of those who failed their A levels and never have financial success, which is the majority of those students who failed to make the grade. Many of these will have successful and happy lives.

They also never tell the stories of those who did succeed and went onto happiness and financial success.

Many people for whom GCSEs and A Levels were not the way to academic success may find success later with Access courses and going to University that way, or study through the Open University. Apprenticeships offer another route to success.

We can all be millionaires, but the reality is that most of us won’t be millionaires. Only 1% of the UK population are millionaires and a third of those live in London!

So do you want to be a millionaire?

Let’s not give up hope, but let’s celebrate success, celebrate hard work and effort. Let’s give a realistic hope to those who weren’t successful, show them alternative routes to academic success, or vocational routes into employment.

cilipconf17, learning resources

The Intelligent Library #CILIPConf17

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So what is the intelligent library? What is the future of the library?

library

At the CILIP Conference in Manchester this year, on Thursday 6th July, I am delivering a high level briefing session on technology, specifically looking at the library within the intelligent campus space. The session will explore the potential technologies and the possibilities that can arise from the developments in artificial intelligence and the internet of things.

There has been plenty of hype over artificial intelligence and the internet of things. Is it time to put aside the cynicism that this kind of hype generates and look seriously at how we can take advantage of these emerging technologies to improve the student experience and build an intelligent library?

library

The internet of things makes it possible for us to gather real-time data about the environment and usage of our library spaces. It is easy to imagine using this data to ensure the library is managed effectively, but could we go further and monitor environmental conditions in the library, or even, using facial recognition software, student reactions as they use the library so that we can continually refine the learning experience?

Most smartphones now make use of artificial intelligence to make contextual recommendations based on an individual’s location and interests. Could libraries take advantage of this technology to push information and learning resources to students? If we could, it offers some interesting possibilities. On-campus notifications could nudge students to make best use of the available services such as the library. Off-campus notifications could encourage them to take advantage of the learning opportunities all around them. Could we use approaches like this to turn student’s smartphones into educational coaches, nudging students towards the choices that lead to higher grades and prompting them to expand their learning horizons.

As we start to use a range of tracking technologies, smart cards, beacons, sensors we are facing a deluge of data in the use of buildings, spaces and equipment across a college or university campus. We are faced with a breadth and depth of data which can be challenging to use effectively and have greatest impact. These tracking technologies are already widespread in environments such as airports and retail. Often using wifi tracking to track users via their wifi enabled devices and smartphones. In addition sensors are used to track space utilisation and occupancy. Interpreting the data is fraught with challenges and difficulties, as well as potential ethical and legal issues. However this wealth of data does offer the potential to deliver more satisfying experiences for students and staff as well as ensuring the library is used as effectively as possible.

books

Looking in more detail we can outline some potential use cases for the intelligent library, and we may want to think which of these are desirable, but also which are possible with the current state of technology.

We can imagine an intelligent library which not only knows what seats and PCs are free, but can learn from history and predict when the library will be busy and when it will be emptier. The library then provides this information to students via an app, pushing the library when there is more availability of places and computers.

Having a deeper understanding of the utilisation of the library, will allow for more effective and efficient use of space. Could this also mean we have a flexible library that expands and contracts as demand for space in the library changes over the day or over the year?

Could we use wireless technologies, such as RFID, not just for issue and return, but also track those resources as they are used within the library itself? Could we also use the same technologies to track resources across campus to identify areas where they are being used or stored (or even lost)? Could we then enhance those spaces to improve learning?

Could we use facial recognition to monitor regular users of the library and provide insight and data into learning analytics? Could we go one step further and use facial recognition technology to discover when students are “troubled” or “in need of help” and then make appropriate interventions to support them in their studies?

books

If the library is getting full, could we identify those students who have been in there a long time, and push a notification, incentivising them to take a break with a free coffee from the library coffee shop? Could we go one step further, and promote wellbeing, by doing the same, but with a free coffee on the other side of campus, so they have to go outside and get some air and exercise?

using a mobile phone and a laptop

Is there any benefit in providing a platform to help gather this data from a range of systems in a standard format that makes it easier to analyse and act upon? Would it be useful to have a national view over this data? Would that enable us to find new patterns that could help us discover the story behind the data, to make appropriate interventions and improve the use of our libraries? Could we build the tools and practices an institution would need to use to gather, organise and push this data to student’s smartphones as well as exploring novel user interfaces such as chatbots?

Of course all this tracking and data collection has huge implications from an ethical perspective. We already gather large amounts of data in the library, sometimes this is anonymised, but sometimes it relates to individuals. At a basic level, we have seen physical counters to determine the number of users in the library, as well as using library management systems to gather data about the usage of resources and the borrowing behaviour of library users. The intelligent library as outlined above takes all this initial tracking of users one step further.

library

As the technology in the intelligent library space grows, we need to consider various questions on why we want to use these technologies, how we use them and if we should. We already use a range of systems to collect data, do we want to put in new systems to gather even more data? Some data we need to collect regardless of our concerns, a library management system by definition will collect and store huge amounts of data about resources and users. What happens less often now, but may increase in the future is the processing of that data. This is the analysis of that data and displaying that data in a way that shows a picture. The next step is taking action about what that data shows. It could be an organisational action, but could equally be action related to an individual user. How do we ensure that we have consent to collect data (sometimes this is implicit by using the library), how do we ensure we have consent for us to process that data and finally do we have constant to take action on that data?

What is the future of the library? This session at the CILIP Conference will explore the potential technologies and the possibilities that can arise from the developments in artificial intelligence and the internet of things. Can we build an intelligent library? Do we want to?

blog, stuff

It’s not what you say you do, it’s the way that you do it!

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language

I was thinking the other day that I don’t have enough readers of the blog and insufficient engagement.

So the solution has to be that the name of the blog isn’t right. First idea would be change the name from “elearning stuff” to “blended learning stuff”.

Then again maybe I could choose “e-pedagogy stuff” or what a about “threaded learning stuff”. How about “hybrid pedagogy stuff”?

Do you think that changing the name will significantly increase readership and engagement on the blog?

No.

If I want more readers and more engagement, then maybe, just maybe I should think more about the content I write, the style, the questions I ask, the quality of the writing, the frequency of posting and so on…

So when we start thinking that the problem with the embedding of digital and learning technologies, is the name that we use, such as blended learning or e-learning the problem, then we probably have a bigger issue.

If staff aren’t engaging with digital and learning technologies as part of their continuing professional development, then changing the term we use will have some impact, but not significant. It may encourage some to participate, but it may confuse others. However the language we use, though can be powerful in some contexts, is not the reason why people decide not to engage with digital.

It’s like the reason that people often say about lack of time, when the solution is not about providing more time, but is about setting and managing priorities. It really comes back to the reasons why people choose to engage or not and the reasons they give.

If you are having challenges in engaging staff in the use of digital and learning technologies and thinking that changing the “name” we use is the solution, i would suggest you may actually want to spend the time and effort thinking about your approaches and the methodology you are using.

Of course the real reason people choose to change the language, is that it is much easier to do that, then actually deal with people!

What do you think, we now language is important, but is the problem the terms we use or is it something else?

alt

Get involved with ALT #altc

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ALT  have issued an open call to get involved with the association.

The Association for Learning Technology (ALT) represents individual and organisational Members from all sectors and parts of the UK. Our Membership includes practitioners, researchers and policy makers with an interest in Learning Technology. Our community grows more diverse as Learning Technology has become recognised as a fundamental part of learning, teaching and assessment.

Our charitable objective is “to advance education through increasing, exploring and disseminating knowledge in the field of Learning Technology for the benefit of the general public”. We have led professionalisation in Learning Technology since 1993.

They are seeking expressions of interest from:

  • all sectors of education and training including schools, vocational education, Higher Education and work-based learning
  • people in research, practitioner, management, technical and policy roles as well as learners who have a special interest in Learning Technology
  • the private and public sectors
  • within and outside the UK (subject to reaching agreement on an effective method of participation).

They are looking for new member of the Editorial Board as well as reviewers for Research in Learning Technology.

There are also vacancies on the main operational committees:

  • Committee for Membership Development – seeking two new members
  • Committee for Further Education and cross-sector engagement – seeking two new members
  • Committee for Communication and Publications – seeking two new members

They are also looking for new editors for the #altc blog editorial team.

There’s also the opportunity to get involved in the 2017 Online Winter Conference. With a focus on the work of Special Interest and Members Groups from across the community, and run over two days, the conference will include live online sessions and other online activities. Visit the 2016 Winter Conference online platform for reference.

We also still have places available on the OER18 conference planning committee. OER18 presents an opportunity for open practitioners, activists, educators and policy makers to come together as a community to reflect on the theme ‘Open to All’. Here is more information about joining the conference planning team for OER18.

You can find more information on any of these opportunities here: http://go.alt.ac.uk/2st4rJS.

Those interested to get involved can complete this short form: http://go.alt.ac.uk/2rEx9GM by 25 August 2017.

m-learning, mobile

Forty Four Years Ago

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using a mobile phone and a laptop

The first handheld mobile phone call was made forty four years ago, on the 3rd of April 1973. There had been mobile phone before, in cars and lorries, but forty years ago saw the first phone call from a handheld cellular mobile phone. Well you also needed to carry a bag too (for the battery).

I suspect most (it not all) the people reading this blog post have a mobile phone, or if they don’t they did at one time.

It’s interesting that a technology, which has reached such a milestone, is still seen by many teachers and practitioners as disruptive, and should be banned in classrooms.

Six years after this first experiment, we saw on Tomorrow’s World how they were being introduced to the UK, with some barriers and problems coming from the Post Office (of which the telephony was eventually spun off and sold off as British Telecom).

Even then, you could see the usefulness of the device as a way of making phone calls on the move, and whilst mobile. What was less apparent was the potential of the device as a mobile portable computer, even in 1979, personal computing was very much in its infancy. Even the first few pocket and portable computers didn’t have connectivity.

It is the smartphone’s connection to the internet and the web, which makes it a very different device to those early handheld mobile phones. The mobile phone today is a transformative and enabling device and in many ways a different concept to the one we saw back in 1973. The mobile phone today is much more than just a voice communication device, it can do so much more. I have done this exercise at many mobile learning workshops, I ask the participants to list all the different things they do on their phones. Interestingly, making phone calls is either not mentioned or very low on the list. The sorts of things that people today do on their phone includes (and is certainly not limited to) texting, social networking, photography, film making, audio recording, playing games, reading books, looking at magazines, listening to music and other recordings, watching video, streaming video, doing quizzes, creating content, and so much more…

It is this functionality that makes the mobile phone so much more than what was first seen back in 1973, and it is this functionality that teachers see as disruptive and challenging to manage.

using a mobile phone

The reality is that learners don’t use mobile phones in classrooms in the way they were envisaged, for making actual phone calls! The problem many practitioners have with mobile phones is not with the phones themselves, neither with learners making phone calls in lessons, the problem is a very different issue.

Banning mobile phones or asking students to turn them off, is not a real solution, at most conferences and events when delegates are asked to turn off their phones, most will turn them to silent mode. So much so that conference organisers seem to ask people now to turn them to silent mode rather than turn them off. I am sure many learners in a classroom situation will do something similar.

The question you have to ask is why are learners switching off in lessons and using their mobile phones? Yes there will be the odd learner who is addicted to their phones and can’t help themselves using it. However these learners are in a very small minority. Think about if this was the case for all learners, then in all lessons, all learners would be disengaged and using their mobile phones; now that doesn’t happen.

Rather than blame the learners, the key is to think about why they are disengaging in your lessons. Why are they switching off from learning and switching on their phones?

Another possible solution is to embrace the use of the mobile phone and make it part of the learning process, as well as making the learning engaging and interesting. The very functionality that can be so disruptive or attractive to learners, can also be effective in supporting learning and assessment.

Engaging doesn’t always mean interactive and doesn’t mean that it can’t be hard or difficult. Thinking about challenging problems is an effective learning process.

using a mobile phone

The mobile phone is forty four years old, in many ways the disruptive nature of mobile phones is new, but only because the mobile phone has evolved into something very different from a device used to make mobile phone calls.

A version of this article was first published in 2013 when the handheld mobile phone call was forty years old.

twitter

Ten Years on the Twitter

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I have now been on the Twitter for ten years…

Five years ago, I wrote a post about five years on Twitter.

Twitter actually started eleven years ago and probably like most people joined when it became “big” after SXSW in 2007.

I didn’t use it much in the first year, partly as there were very few people on it, more so because I was using Jaiku a similar service available back then.

In the ten years of using the service I have posted nearly 43,000 tweets and have nearly 5000 followers. I currently follow just under 700 people and in the past I tried and keep it to under 500 otherwise I feel that the stream becomes too quick and loaded. I probably need to cull a few followers…

Back in 2012 I said about the Twitter,

In the main looking at Twitter I usually use it to post links about my blogs, links to news and sites I have found interesting, photographs (usually via Instagram) and importantly conversations.

I still post links to my blog, interesting news and other links. I went through a phase of not posting photographs via Instagram, until I re-discovered IFTTT and created a “recipe” that posts my Instagram images as proper pictures to my Twitter stream.

My tweeting patterns haven’t changed too much, when I am travelling or at an event the amount of postings I make really increases. At events I will tweet about the presentations, discuss and also post links related to the sessions I am in. However I do appear to be tweeting more when at work.

My favourite conversation was singing Spandau Ballet’s Gold with BBC iPlayer.

I have a reputation for tweeting about coffee and in reality it only accounts for 3% of my tweets! Though a day after joining Twitter I did post a tweet about coffee!

I did once say Twitter would die…

Ten reasons why Twitter will eventually wither and die…

Well I certainly was wrong on that one.

Though twitter is mainly now about mainstream and traditional media accounts who in the main use Twitter for broadcasting, I still think there is a community there that use it for conversations and sharing.

We are seeing many more competitors out there, stuff like Snapchat, WhatsApp and even services such as Slack.

I am surprised that not only is Twitter still going after eleven years, but I am still engaging with it. Will I still be on it after another five or ten years… I have no idea!

learning

Encouraging informal learning

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So how do we encourage students to learn outside the formal structures and processes we put in place across our institutions?

Informal learning in my opinion is learning that happens outside the “control” of the institution, but is part of the learning towards a qualification that a learner will undertake. This learning may happen within the institution, but will also happen outside at home, at work or in a coffee shop. This definition of informal learning differs from non-formal learning in that the activity of learning is still tied to the institution and the qualification, but is not a proscribed or set activity as set down by a practitioner or an academic.

So can you design informal learning?

No!

There we go that was easy wasn’t it.

You see when you design informal learning, you formalise it and as a result it becomes formal learning.

So if you can’t design informal learning, then how do you design informal learning?

It’s not about designing informal learning, it’s about institutions facilitating and encouraging informal learning. If this happens then, with encouragement from practitioners (rather than setting activities) we should see more learners learning informally.

So how should institutions encourage informal learning?

Well the key really is to think about what actually facilitates and encourages informal learning.

It’s a combination of factors and can include design of learning spaces and the learning activities undertaken by the learners.

Creating the right contexts and environments for informal learning, will ensure that the concept of learn anywhere and anytime is encouraged and enhanced.

Don’t forget the coffee, well of course that could be tea, soft drinks, even cakes and chocolate. Having refreshments can aid the learning process, but also encourages people to be within an informal learning space.

So where is it written that learning has to be uncomfortable?

After I put some sofas into the libraries when I worked in a college, I was asked a few times why do I have sofas in the library when the library is a learning environment?

I would ask then, where is it written down that learning has to be uncomfortable? Where is the rulebook that states learners should sit at desks on hard chairs? Is it not possible for a learner to learn whilst sitting on a sofa? Why can’t a learning environment be enticing, comfortable and even a little bit social?

Sometimes you want to take learners out of their comfort zone, but I am not sure that means making them sit on hard benches! Providing spaces that learners like to be in, ones they will spend time in, combined with other factors could encourage informal learning. If all other factors were implemented, why would you spoil it all, by having an uncomfortable environment?

With dependency on the internet and connectivity for learning these days, it is critical when wanting to encourage learning to have ubiquitous, fast and dependable wifi. Any spaces will need to have the capacity for multiple connections, many learners will have two or more devices that use wifi.

Dropped connections, insufficient bandwidth can result in learners going elsewhere or doing something other than learning.

Another factor that often gets ignored is the impact building construction can have on 3G and 4G signals. If learners are using their own connections, then building construction should be considered in respect to that issue.

When creating spaces that will encourage informal learning, then it needs to provide different furniture for different activities.

Sofas for calm individual reflective thinking, tables and chairs for small group work. Quiet secluded places for focused work. Use appropriate furniture for small groups discussion.

As well as the physical aspects of the space, it is also useful to
think about the temperature, the lighting and ambient noise.
Use furniture, walls and plants to create quiet and less quiet spaces for example. Having the same kind of lighting across a space may be efficient, but using different kinds of lighting for different spaces can both encourage different kinds of activities.

As well as physical spaces, it is also useful when encouraging informal learning, to provide access to virtual collaborative spaces. This could be the vLE, but other options are available such as Slack, WhatsApp or even a Facebook group. It’s not just about providing access (through the firewall) but also about providing guidance and best practice so that learners have a better understanding of the benefits (and limitations) of these virtual collaborative tools. It would also make sense to check that the organisation has a sensible Social Media policy that reflects the use of social media tools for learning.

Think about any non-formal activity and ensure that student has access to appropriate resources (digital and non-digital). Is access to those resources mobile friendly? Will they work on the kinds of devices those learners are using when learning?

One thing to ensure is you have an appropriate Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy to facilitate informal learning.

So how are you creating spaces for and facilitating informal learning?

This blog post is inspired by a blog post on informal learning, that I wrote in 2010, and a cookery book activity from the ALT Winter Conference 2016.