There wasn’t a FOTE conference in 2015, which was a pity as it was one of my favourite annual events. I spoke at many of the conferences, most recently in 2014 when I spoke about the conflict between the light and the dark and used a Star Wars theme.
I remember reflecting on the conference on the way home that it would be a lot of fun to do a Back the Future themed talk for 2015.
Alas it was never to be…
However I thought it might be a little fun to explore what might have been…
These are technologies that I actually use, they exclude web tools and services which I do a separate top ten for. They are generally tools that make my life easier, more efficient and more productive. So though I liked Apple Watch, Google Glass and Oculus Rift, these weren’t the types of technologies I used regualarly.
Having changed roles in 2015, this has made the list a little more interesting as the technologies I used over the year did change quite a bit.
The tenth technology is my current workhorse computer is a Dell Latitude E7250 laptop running Windows 7, which is reasonably reliable, has a decent battery life.
For the first half of the year I had an iPad Air 2, and this is number nine in my top ten, and found it a great piece of kit. It’s smaller and lighter than previous models. Certainly much more powerful and has a better camera. The reason it’s dropped from third to tenth place in my top ten, was that having not had an iPad for most of 2015, I am not really missing it and has been generally replaced in terms of functionality by the iPhone 6S Plus.
Number one in 2014, the 11” MacBook Air drops to number eight, leaving my last job in May meant returning the MacBook Air. I really liked that computer and one day hope to get another one. I prefer it over the newer 2015 Macbook, though that one does have a retina screen.
Having spent a fair bit of time in the top ten, and now at number seven is the 2008 era Google Nexus One. I eventually retired this in November.
At number six is the iPhone 5S, having replaced the one I had in 2014, with an iPhone 6 Plus, when I changed roles, I was given an iPhone 5S which I have been using since June. It’s a powerful phone, but having the 16GB model is somewhat restrictive in terms of apps and what you can do with it.
At number five is the Apple TV, this is great for streaming video and showing photographs from my iMac on the family TV. I now have the fourth generation model which has apps and it now has BBC iPlayer, yay!
The tech in fourth place is the Polaroid Pogo Printer. This I bought back in 2009 and at the time didn’t think too much of it and was in many ways slightly disappointed. However trying a new methodology for making notes and planning, using a combination of a notebook, coloured pens and prints from the Pogo, the device has really come into its own this year and I have been using it much more than ever before. I am looking at replacing it though, as the battery is unreliable and I wouldn’t mind something compatiable with iOS.
iMac is my number three technology. A powerful workhorse with a great screen. I really like the design and power of the Apple iMac. I have the 27” model which has a beautiful screen and lots of real estate to do lots of different things.
Interestingly I have placed 4G as my number two technology. I have been using Vodafone 4G since about 2013, but it was only on buying an iPhone 6S Plus and changing contracts from an old grandfathered unlimited 3G T-Mobile contract to a new unlimited data 4G contract with Three that I really started to take advantage of what 4G can offer. It’s faster than my home broadband so I use the phone to stream video and connect it to my TV. Out and about, the speeds are really impressive, making it much easier to access stuff and information. I have been totally impressed with it.
So my top technology is really two things the iPhone 6 Plus and the iPhone 6S Plus. My main work phone for the first half of the year was the iPhone 6 Plus, and I replaced my dependable Google Nexus One with an iPhone 6S Plus in November. This is one big phone, but has replaced much of the functionality of my iPad. Best feature for me is the camera, which is incredible for a phone camera. It’s very powerful phone and combined with the 4G connection I find it perfect for so much of what I need to do.
This is the eighth time I have compiled a list of the top ten web tools I have used during the year. I am finding it interesting looking back over 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 which tools I still use and which have fallen by the wayside.
Out of the top ten are Chrome, Safari and Google+. I still like the positive aspects of Chrome and Safari, I like the fact that I can move between devices and take up where I left off and having a common history regardless of device. Though using a Dell has meant Safari integration is less useful. Google+ probably would have made the top ten, but the community I am part of is using it less and less, so there is less engagement and less conversation.
Instagram is number ten for 2015, I have found that the community I engaged with has shrunk over the last twelve months. I still like it as a tool and as a community.
Dropbox was my number one technology in 2014 and I used it in a similar way for some of 2015. However when I started using a Dell as my main workhorse, the benefits of working on a single Pages document across multiple Macs disappeared and though I still like Dropbox, I now use it more for remote online storage than as a synced cloud solution for working on files across multiple machines. As a result it drops to ninth place in the top ten.
Evernote in a similar vein to Dropbox was well used in the earlier part of 2015, but less so in the latter half, so drops to number eight. I mainly use Evernote to make notes and planning. One feature I started using extensively in November and December was to use the Evernote app on the iPhone to capture post-its and flipcharts from meetings and workshops. The auto-capture feature was a chance discovery and I found it perfect for quickly capturing hand-written information and sharing it with others.
At number seven is Flickr. I use Flickr to both store and find photographs. I used it a lot to find images for presentations.
At number six is Google Docs (and Google Drive), from a collaboration perspective it is one of the best tools I have used. I like the fact that a team can work on a document all at the same time.
The fifth tool in the top ten is Tweetdeck. Using a consistent hashtag for projects means that Tweetdeck is a faster way to find out who is talking about the project and what they are talking about on the Twitter. I like how I can use it to schedule tweets in advance, this proved particularly useful for a Tweetchat I did for the ALT Winter Conference.
At number four is Yammer, this Enterprise “social network” has allowed me to internally update Jisc on the project work and keep people across the organisation informed on what we are doing and where we are at.
Third place is Skype and Skype for Business. I used Skype for many years for external online conversations, but when I moved jobs in 2013, I stopped using it. Now at Jisc I use it on a daily basis for online meetings, conferences and instant messaging.
Climbing up to number two for 2015 is WordPress. Having not used it much in 2014, it became much more integral to the way I worked. As well as my personal blogs such as this one, I also use it for my work blog and have also been using it to prototype an online delivery platform, as a kind of dynamic connectivist VLE.
Twitter is my number one technology for 2015, after limited use in the first part of 2015, it really became an indispensable tool for me for the rest of 2015. I use it much more for broadcasting, conversations and engagement.
So that’s my top ten web tools for 2015, what were yours?
We often use analogies to explain why something is challenging or difficult.
One analogy that is often used is the iceberg, a good example of this is Schien model of organisational culture.
The problem with icebergs is that the focus of any discussion about the topic often switches to the Titanic, an unsinkable ship that sank after hitting an iceberg. Then discussion moves onto what a terrible or excellent film it was, and it’s not long before someone shouts out “I’m king of the world” with outstretched arms. Before you know it, you have no idea what you were discussing and the important stuff is slowly sinking to the seabed!
Sometimes we make assumptions in our analogies which are just plain wrong. The supertanker in the title of this blog post is a prime example. We compare organisations to supertankers as these huge behemoths that are challenging to steer and keep going in one direction with no way of turning them.
Searching Google on how to turn or steer a supertanker, the only results you seem to get are articles and news items on how something else is like trying to turn a supertanker!
The reality is that steering a supertanker is quite easy and they are in fact highly manoeuvrable, they have to be to dock at refineries and ports across the world.
What is challenging with a supertanker is stopping to avoid hitting something, and most times supertankers don’t stop they turn and move in a different direction.
Maybe the supertanker analogy isn’t so bad after all…
Over the last 12 months I have written 24 blog posts which is two a month. In 2014 I wrote 11 and in 2013 I wrote 64 blog posts and over a hundred in 2012. In 2011 I thought 150 was a quiet year!
The tenth most popular post on the blog in 2015, dropping one place from 2014, was written back in 2009 when Twitter was (at the time) looked like the height of the Twitter’s popularity. In the post Ten reasons why Twitter will eventually wither and die… I talked about how Twitter would, like so many other earlier social networks such as Friendster, Bebo, MySpace, would eventually wither and die… well I got that one right didn’t I? Still there are aspects in the post that may, at some point in the future ring true!
My opinion piece on Area Based Reviews for FE was a new entry and the ninth most popular post, I can do that… What does “embrace technology” mean? This was written in 2015 and looked at what we mean when we ask FE Colleges to “embrace technology” and how they could in fact do that. Embracing technology is easy to say, easy to write down. Ensuring that you actually holistically embrace technology across the whole organisation, as part of a wider review is challenging and difficult. We haven’t really done this before, so I don’t think we can assume it will just happen now.
One of my many posts on Moodle was a re-entry at number eight Is the Scroll of Death Inevitable? This post was the ninth most popular post in 2013. One of the common themes that comes out when people discuss how to use Moodle, is the inevitable scroll of death. My response was that due to a lack of planning (even forward planning) that the end result more often than not would be a long scroll of death in a Moodle course.
Another new entry at number seven in 2015 was written and posted in December 2015 and was about time and why I don’t have a dog. I don’t have a dog #altc was a discussion piece was written for the ALT Winter Conference and looks at the over used excuse for not doing something, which is not having the time to do it. The real reason though, more often then not, is that the person concerned does not see it as a priority.
CC BY 2.0 FaceMePLS https://flic.kr/p/a7RLz7The sixth post was from the App of the Week series and was called VideoScribe HD – iPad App of the Week I talked about this app in July 2013 and was impressed with the power and versatility of the app for creating animated presentations. This has dropped four places, but one problem, is that the app isn’t available any more for the iPad.
The fifth post, dropping two places, of 2015 was another one from that series. Comic Life – iPad App of the Week. Though I have been using Comic Life on the Mac for a few years now I realised I hadn’t written much about the iPad app that I had bought back when the iPad was released. It’s a great app for creating comics and works really well with the touch interface and iPad camera.
Climbing one place, the fourth most popular post was from my other series on 100 ways to use a VLE. This one was #89 Embedding a Comic Strip. This was a post from July 2011, that looked at the different comic tools out there on the web, which can be used to create comic strips that can then be embedded into the VLE. It included information on the many free online services such as Strip Creator and Toonlet out there. It is quite a long post and goes into some detail about the tools you can use and how comics can be used within the VLE.
Climbing four places, at number three was a copyright post entitled, Can I legally download a movie trailer? One of the many copyright articles that I posted some years back, this one was in 2008, I am a little behind in much of what is happening within copyright and education, one of things I do need to update myself on, as things have changed.
The second most popular post in 2015 was Frame Magic – iPhone App of the Week. This has risen two places and even I am not sure why this one is so popular!
Once again, for the third year running, the number one post for 2015 was the The iPad Pedagogy Wheel. I re-posted the iPad Pedagogy Wheel as I was getting asked a fair bit, “how can I use this nice shiny iPad that you have given me to support teaching and learning?”.
It’s a really simple nice graphic that explores the different apps available and where they fit within Bloom’s Taxonomy. What I like about it is that you can start where you like, if you have an iPad app you like you can see how it fits into the pedagogy. Or you can work out which iPads apps fit into a pedagogical problem.
So there we have it, the top ten posts of 2015, of which two were from 2015!
Dogs can be wonderful pets, or so I have been told.
So ask me do I have a dog?
The answer is no.
Now ask me why I don’t have a dog?
I don’t have the time!
CC BY-NC 2.0 Gerard Stolk
Over the last twenty years or so when learning technologists and others interested in embedding the use of digital technology to enhance and enrich teaching, learning and assessment, the one “problem” that arises again and again is that people don’t have the time.
I have been supporting staff for many years in the use of learning technologies, all the time when I run training sessions though I hear the following comments:
“I don’t have the time.” “When am I suppose to find time to do all this?” “I am going to need more time.”
Time appears to be a critical issue.
Even more recently running a workshop I asked people to identify the main barriers to embedding learning technologies and the answer everyone came back was, time!
I have written and spoken about this issue time and time again.
A long time ago, back in 2004 I presented at the Becta Post-16 e-Learning Practitioners Conference on the Myths of Time.
In 2007 I managed to find the time to spend some time talking about time on the blog and wrote a post about time.
Now ask me again why I don’t have a dog?
I don’t have the time!
CC BY 2.0 FaceMePLS https://flic.kr/p/a7RLz7
I am aware that there are quite a few people out there who have a dog, and they seem to find the time to have a dog.
It certainly takes time to have a dog, time to walk it, time to stroke it, time to bath it, time to walk it again. When I am out and about see people walking their dogs and I believe that you have to walk a dog everyday. Where do people find the time for that?
Correct me if I am wrong, but dog owners have the the same amount of time as everyone else. They don’t live in some kind of timey-wimey temporal reality that gives them more time than anyone else.
So if they don’t have more time than anyone else, how do they find the time to have a dog? I don’t have the time to have a dog, why do they have the time?
And don’t get me started on the resources and costs of having a dog….
We know people who have dogs don’t have more time, but they like to spend time to have a dog. Therefore they must prioritise having a dog over other things they could spend time on. For them having a dog is a priority.
Now ask me again why I don’t have a dog?
It’s not a priority for me, I have other priorities that take up my time.
CC BY 2.0 FaceMePLS https://flic.kr/p/9G1Ttf
So when you talk to teaching staff about learning technologies, and they say they don’t have the time, or they need time; what they are actually saying and meaning is…
It’s not a priority for me, I have other priorities that take up my time.
This also explains why some other staff find the time to engage with learning technologies, they find the time, as they see it as a priority.
So how do you make the teaching staff prioritise or raise the importance of something that they see as a low priority or unimportant so that they feel they can’t spend time on it.
One thing that does get forgotten, is that everyday we use technology to make our lives easier and to save time. Often learning technologies can be used to make our lives easier and importantly save time.
Often we are so busy being busy that we don’t take the time to think about those tools and processes which could save us time.
So another question ask me why having a dog is not a priority for me?
Well that depends on who sets the priorities in my home, looks at his wife and children…. Even if I was the person setting the priorities, what I would be doing would be looking at everything else I was doing, prioritise them and spend time on those things. I may do that in a planned manner, the reality is that this is probably a more sub-conscious activity.
However if the household decided that we should get a dog and my objections about the lack of time were ignored, then we would get a dog and I would need to find the time, prioritising the dog over other things I considered to be a priority. Now I am sure a few dog owners out there would tell me how wonderful having a dog is, and maybe this would be something I would discover by having a dog. This can be an issue, I may hate having a dog!
You can take analogies only so far…
If people are concerned about the issue of time when it comes to using and embedding learning technologies then they are probably more likely concerned about how this will fit into their other priorities. So ask the question, who is responsible for setting the priorities of the teaching staff in your institution? Is it the teaching staff? Is it the executive team? Is it the teaching managers? Unlikely I would have thought to be the learning technologists
So if you are facing the real issue when talking to teaching staff of them responding that they don’t have the time, maybe you are talking to the wrong people! Or the wrong people are talking to the teaching staff.
Priorities in theory are set by the line manager, who is operationalising the strategic direction and vision of the institution. If digital is not a strategic priority can we be surprised that staff within that institution don’t consider it a personal priority.
How do you make digital a strategic priority? Well that;s another blog post, which I don’t have the time for at the moment, I have to walk the dog.
Playful Learning is pitched at the intersection of learning and play for adults. Playful in approach and outlook, yet underpinned by robust research and working practices, we’ll be providing a space where teachers, researchers and students can play, learn and think together. A space to meet other playful people and be inspired by talks, workshops, activities and events. Based in the heart of Manchester, we’ll also be exploring some of the city’s playful spaces with evening activities to continue the fun and conversations after the formal programme ends.
Playful learning will run over three days, from lunchtime on Wed 13 July 2016 to lunchtime on Friday 15 July 2016.
One presentation which really reflected my thinking back then was the one I delivered at Handheld Learning 2009, which equated the use of the Twitter with drinking coffee. Both reinforcing my views on the value of the Twitter, but also perpetuating the myth that I only tweet about coffee on the Twitter.
What this presentation really spoke about was how that teams that work together in the same building usually get together informally to chat, usually when making or drinking coffee. Those informal conversations that cover a range of topics, some related to work and projects, others about everyday life issues and problems. There are similar conversations during breaks at conferences, events and staff development activities.
Following from last year’s first Winter Conference in Edinburgh this year ALT are moving online, in the week commencing 7th December to showcase some of the best Learning Technology from ALT Members, individuals and organisations from across sectors.
The format of the event is designed to be multimodal combining both asynchronous and synchronous communication and to cross boundaries sharing the work and expertise across ALT SIGs and Members’ Groups and the community.
It’s free to participate, but you can also make a financial contribution to support the event and help us continue to run open events for the community.
The FE sector is going through some difficult and challenging times at the moment. One of the key aspects they need to work on are the Area Based Reviews.
One aspect of the area based reviews is that they must “embrace technology”.
Great, let’s embrace technology…
I can do that…
I can embrace technology…
Well, I think I know how to embrace technology…
Well, what does that actually mean, I am sure it means more than just hugging your laptop.
Okay let’s delve a little deeper into this.
The actual line from the government document says:
A willingness to embrace the possibilities provided by technology via blended, independent and online delivery and assessment, which can increase the quality and scope of provision and improve efficiency.
Hopefully embrace means more than just a passing hug…
What would an FE College (or whatever comes out of the Area Based Reviews) look like once it had embraced technology?
How could you describe an FE College that has embraced technology?
What would the learner experience be like from the learner’s perspective? From a member of the teaching staff and their perspective? From the perspective of someone from learner support or business support?
Most use of learning technologies that I have seen, read about in conference papers, news items, listened to at events, and personally experiences when working in FE, is less about embracing technology, much more about holding hands or giving a peck on the cheek to technology. Not much holistic embracing of technology by the whole organisation.
Part of this is because we really don’t know what is meant by “embrace technology” and we have no real idea of what it could look like.
A vision of how the learner experience should be, with references to how this experience would embrace technology is a good place to start.
The entire learner journey from where they are interested in undertaking a programme of study, from enquiry, enrolment to induction. The programme of study, schemes of work, lesson planning, resources, content, activities. How technology would be used to enhance and enrich the formal and informal learning. How will the learner use technology to find information, media and manipulate data? How will the learner use digital creation tools to support their learning? How will technology impact on research and scholarship? What role does innovation play in embracing technology? As part of their learning journey, what digital tools will a learner use for group and peer communication, how will they work together using online collaborative tools? What will be the role of digital social networking tools?
What will be the role of technology in supporting that learner experience? The use of data, analytics, online resources, digital content all need to be considered and integrated into the learner experience. The learner experience does not exist in isolation, the business support processes that lie behind that experience also need to be sure they don’t frustrate or block the use of technology that is being used to enhance and enrich.
How will the use of technology support the learner once the course has been finished?
The next stage will be look a potentially different experiences, ones that would not be possible without technology, or ones that take advantage of the affordances of digital technology. This is where online learning comes into play, flipped learning and providing a more personalised and flexible approach.
Embracing technology is easy to say, easy to write down. Ensuring that you actually holistically embrace technology across the whole organisation, as part of a wider review is challenging and difficult. We haven’t really done this before, so I don’t think we can assume it will just happen now.
news and views on e-learning, TEL and learning stuff in general…
