All posts by James Clay

gloucestershire college

Developing

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Gloucestershire College

Thursday was our College Development Day, one of two days of the year where we “close” the college and every member of staff takes part in staff development activities. For the first time in a few years we did a “pick and mix” in which staff are provided with a choice of sessions and can pick and mix to create their own personalised day of training and development. There are, as there was this year, a few compulsory sessions, but generally staff are free to pick what else they will do on that day. An example would be that all teaching staff had to attend a session related to our forthcoming inspection, but were free to pick what they wanted from the menu for the rest of the day.

The challenge for me however was that this process means is that staff generally choose what they want to do, rather than what they should or need to do.

So the sessions we planned on Turnitin, LanSchool and Accessibility were either cancelled or cut back, and the sessions on digital imaging and iMovie were oversubscribed. It also is apparent how you need to “sell” sessions to staff to get them to sign up.

I generally spend the day delivering training and this year was no exception, my first session was for my Learning Resources team and looked at the strategy, vision and focus for the next three years as part of a re-positioning of the strategic vision for learning resources which includes the library. It was also an opportunity for the teams from my three libraries to get together as a whole team. It was an interesting session and it was great to see that they could see the importance of a focus and a vision but also the need to revisit what we do and why we do it. I will probably cover this in more detail in a future blog post.

The second session I ran was an introduction to Mac OS X. I planned this session as we have recently recruited new staff into the libraries and as we have Macs in the libraries they asked for an introductory session. I kept it simple, first showing them this video from Apple, before going through Finder, Safari, iMovie, iPhoto and Garageband. I mentioned Keynote and Quicktime too. Overall feedback was positive and many of the session participants realising that OS X isn’t that different than Windows and if you can use Windows you can use OS X.

My afternoon session was much longer, and was a supportive VLE workshop. The session allows participants that time to reflect and build on their courses on the VLE. If they get stuck, need advice or want ideas, then I am around to provide that support. It worked very well with staff having a chance to “play” and try out new things that will enhance their learners’ experience.

As well as the ILT sessions I was delivering we had booked some excellent external trainers, many of whom will be familiar to readers of this blog for their appearances on the e-Learning Stuff podcast. Each of them delivered a range of sessions with a real focus on adding interactivity through ILT into teaching and learning.

These days reinforce the importance of training and development for practitioners, especially in regard to the use of learning technologies. Our focus for the day was less on the technologies themselves, but much more on the actual use, how they can support, enhance and enrich learning.

Over the next few months I will be following up staff who attended not just my sessions, but all the ILT sessions to assess the impact of the training. Experience has shown that not everyone takes on board what they learnt, but most do.

Image from here, created with Paper Camera.

conference

Emerging Technologies

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At the AoC Conference I was part of a presentation that looked at emerging technologies and how FE Colleges need to be preparing for them. As well as myself speaking for the first part of the presentation, Donald Taylor, did the second half.

There then followed a workshop session where the delegates looked at the barriers and opportunities that FE Colleges would face with these emerging technologies.

Here are my notes and references, though they only cover my slides.

Future

So what does the future hold?

VR Glasses

Do you worry about costs?

Do you worry about breakages and theft?

Are your staff resistant or sceptical to technology

Well you’re not alone and concerns and scepticism about new technology is not new.

Lets go back 300 years….

Emerging technologies

Impact

What new technologies will be having an impact on teaching and learning over the next five to ten years?

Potential

How should colleges prepare and utilise the potential that these technologies will bring?

Preparation

We need to prepare and so lets see what is on the horizon….

Electronic Books

Who here has a Kindle or reads books on their iPad?

Amazon have said they sold more e-books than paperback books in the last quarter of 2010. They have sold millions of Kindles.

Apple sold 15 million iPads then they released the iPad 2.

There are numerous academic e-book platforms and collections, including the free JISC Collections e-book collection of 3000 books.

We’re using that a lot,  as are Oldham Sixth Form College who last month accessed the collection and they viewed 50,561 pages. We did 7,882 pages…

Mobiles

So when was the first mobile phone call?

1946

When was the first handheld mobile phone call?

1973

Mobile phones are not a new technology. However the phone as a mobile computer, the smartphone, though about ten years old now, will dominate the phone market.

National Star College, used 3G phones with GPS to enable learners to access information,  guidance and content to support them for independent living. The phones would tell the learners how to catch a bus, where to catch the bus, when to get off, how to get to their workplace.

Augmented Reality

…is the application of a digital information layer over the real world. Hold up your phone to a building and get information on its history and current use. Hold up to a college and see what courses that organisation offers. In an engineering workshop, hold your camerphone up to a piece of equipment and overlaid will be information, on what it is, what it can do and relevant health and safety information.

QR Codes are another way to add digital information to a physical space, at Gloucestershire College, we use QR Codes in the library on the shelves to provide easy and curriculum relevant access to online resources to learners.

Game-based Learning

Casual and mobile gaming is really big now in the UK. From the Nintendo Wii , the DS to the iPhone and iPad, as well as the Playstation and xBox. Gaming is huge and lots of different people do it.

When we talk about learners having a short attention span, can’t sit still for ten minutes in a lesson, how is it these same learners can play World of Warcraft for four hours…

Using games for learning is not new, as an old economics teacher I use to use paper based business games a lot. However video games now offer so much more and there are lots of ways that gaming can be used to enhance and enrich learning.

Many colleges, including my own, have been using Brain Training on the Nintendo DS to support the teaching of numeracy and encourage learners to enjoy maths.

Gesture-based Computing

The iPad is all about gestures. Microsoft Kinect allows you to play games without needing to use a controller. It won’t be long before we control our devices by waving our hands about!

Henshaw College who were already using the Nintendo Wii, are now using Microsoft Kinect to enable their blind and visually impaired learners to interact with a computer.

University of Portsmouth have already built an audience response system, MARS Motion Based Audience Response system, that can anaylse the hand interactions of the audience for answering questions without the need for the audience to use clickers or voting units.

Learning Analytics

You probably already know a lot about your learners, colleges gather huge amounts of data about each and every learner, about them, their progress, their success and their failure. The question is are you making use of that data to make business decisions? Are you analysing learners on entry, during their course and where they go, in order to make decisions about which courses you are running and importantly which courses you should close.

Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimising learning and the environments in which it occurs.

IBM are able now to sell you a product that does this all for you. Making sure the right learners get on the right course and achieve success.

4G

3G already offers fast wireless speeds, the future though will be 4G which will allow learners to have download speeds in excess of 20 Mbps, or even faster. This means that learners will be able to stream video content, access a range of media using mobile devices where and when they want to.

Of course 4G isn ‘t yet available, however Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education have demonstrated the potential of 3G technologies, by putting 3G wireless routers in their coaches, so that learners can access the internet, the VLE whilst on the bus journey in. Making use of “dead time” for learning.

Connected Televisions

80% of televisions sold today can be connected to the internet, they can be used to access content and resources. Whether they are actually connected is a different question. However popularity of services such as YouTube, BBC iPlayer, 4OD and other content delivery systems, demonstrates that this could be a real way to deliver learning in the home.

The College of West Anglia has developed Springboard TV to create and deliver video content to their learners. Connected TVs will allow learners to access this content from the comfort of the sofa is going to enhance and enrich the learning process.

The key though is are we ready as organisations to make this transition to take advantage that these new technologies offer?

Emerging Practice

It is not just a matter of the technology changing, we also need to change our practice and how we do things to realise the potential that emerging technologies will bring to our colleges.

Social Learning

The internet and networking, means that learners can learn wherever they want to? Of curse they have always done this, what the connectivity means is that they can access a range of different content, communicate and collaborate. Individual learning, becomes social, this means we need to rethink about the social spaces we have in our institutions and how they need to change to support and promote learning.

Blurring informal and formal learning

In the past (and now) students have come to expect to learn formally in formal learning spaces. However new technologies mean that learners can “attend” college without actually being physically at college through remote delivery and webinar technologies. We are blurring the demarcation between informal and formal learning.

Changing Culture

As a result colleges need to change their traditional cultures of resistance and sceptism and embrace a new culture…

Innovation

One that encourages innovation and new ways of working…  A culture that sees new technologies as an opportunity…

Experimentation

A culture that rewards experimentation and innovation and encourages learners and practitioners to utilise new technologies as part of their joint learning journey.

Future

There are other technologies as well: fibre broadband, voice recognition, voice commands, cloud computing to name a few. New ways of working, studying, all these will have an impact.

The future is coming, it always has and it always will, are you ready and will you always be ready for the future?

References

Martin Bean, Keynote at ALT-C 2009

2011 Horizon Report from Educause

Connect to Succeed Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education

QR Codes in the Library

Springboard TV

MARS

Student Analytics for Success

conference, jiscel11

Innovating e-Learning 2011 – Can you afford to miss it?

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The JISC Online Conference, Innovating e-Learning 2011, has opened with a pre-conference Activity Week preparing the way for next week’s main conference programme 22-25 November.

Are you interested in?

  • Technology-mediated learning and teaching
  • Institutional efficiency and curriculum transformation
  • Open educational practice
  • Introducing change in assessment practice
  • Digital literacies
  • Students as agents of change in curriculum enhancement

Do you want to know more about?

  • Using Facebook in learning and teaching
  • Using Web 2.0 technologies to create online communities for non-traditional learners
  • Using mobile devices in the classroom
  • A range of freely available online tools and resources to enhance your practice

Can’t afford to take time off work?

You can still register for this big conference experience with a low carbon footprint. But don’t delay. The main conference programme commences Tuesday 22 November.

Follow the conference on Twitter @jiscel2011
Contribute your views on Twitter using #jiscel11
Programme and booking at www.jisc.ac.uk/elpconference11

app of the week, iphone

The Amazing Type-Writer – iPhone App of the Week

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The Amazing Type-Writer – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at various Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive.

This week’s App is The Amazing Type-Writer.

A type-writer of finest manufacture, at a special introductory price!

– Record your thoughts & textual doodles for posterity on high-quality cardstock!
– Post your cards to the prestigious Typewritten Gallery!
– View the works of others, and unabashedly type on their cards!

The engineers at Doormouse Mfg. have at last combined the latest in mobile pneumatic tubes technology with the highest-quality typewriter swing-arms available—and for a fraction of the price of the competition.

Only a limited number of the Doormouse Mfg. Amazing Type-Writers will be produced. Don’t miss your chance to own the highest-quality pocket-sized type-writer currently available!

£1.49

This is just a fun app with one purpose…

To create typewritten index cards, nothing more, nothing less. You can then share the creations.

Get it from the iTunes App Store.

podcast

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #080: We’re back…

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Good news. The e-Learning Stuff podcast returns with a brand new episode after our summer break. James, David and Lilian discuss various news items, what they’ve been doing, sharing practice, collaboration and they have their tips and picks of the week.

With James Clay, Lilian Soon and David Sugden.

This is the eightieth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, We’re back….

Download the podcast in mp3 format: We’re back….

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes

100 ways, flickr, vle

100 ways to use a VLE -#50 Showing a photo album

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A photo album is merely a collection of photographs (or images). They may be connected they may not. A series of photographs is a useful way of displaying how to undertake a particular activity or as a way of showing instructions.

For example showing learners the techniques for a recipe can be enhanced with a series of photographs that shows the different stages within the process.

The learner can then click an image to see an enlarged version.

This example made use of the Lightbox Gallery plugin.

By placing a photo album on the VLE it makes it very easy for the learners to find and see them, but also unlike an online photo service such as (the free version of) Flickr won’t have restrictions on the number of albums (sets) you can have and therefore could potentially confuse the learners about which images they should be looking at.

Having said that if you have a Pro Flickr account or are using another service such as Picasa then embedding a collection of images into the VLE can be done easily using the provided embed codes that these services provide. This is a set of images I have on Flickr that makes use of the iPhone Paper Camera App.

The disadvantage is that, of course clicking the images takes the learner away from the VLE, but they could probably find their way back.

iphone, ipod touch

ToonPAINT – Free this weekend

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I have reviewed ToonPAINT – Toon-FX before here.

ToonPAINT allows you to easily create awesome looking cartoon-paintings with your own photos.

Simply import a photo, create an “automagic” sketch of the photo, color-in at your leisure, and you’re done!

This weekend the app is free, so you might want to go and get it!

I have said a few times in the past that I sometimes think the best Apps for the iPhone are the simple ones, the ones that do one thing well.

ToonPAINT does exactly what you think it does, convert photographs (from the camera or the library) and convert it into a comic format. The key is that it does it very well and the end results do look like hand drawn comics.

The process in ToonPAINT is very simple, take a photograph, either with the camera or from your image library, the app converts it into a comic format, you then save it!

You can also colourise the resulting comic using a built in palette to create coloured comics. There are two extra in-app purchase tools, ToonColor and Photo Brush both are 59p each. I think ToonColor is worth buying, didn’t find Photo Brush as useful.

Overall I like ToonPAINT, it does what it does well and as a one trick pony, it does what I want it to do and it’s free this weekend.

gloucestershire college

Why do you have sofas in the Library?

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One of the features of the libraries at Gloucestershire College (well the Gloucester and Royal Forest of Dean campuses) is that we have sofas in the library.

Reflection Zone

GC Library Refurbishment Week 6c

I have been 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?

What myself and the Learning Resources team have created in the Library space is a learning environment that will encourage a range of learning activities, from group work, individual activity on a computer, individual study and importantly places for reflection and for reading. The sofas are part of the environment that recognises that individuals do different things for their learning, they learn in different ways at different times, and as a result we need to provide an environment that meets these different needs.

Sofas in the library is not about turning the library into a social area, it’s about creating an environment for learning that meets the diverse needs of our learners who will want to learn in different ways at different times; the end result is learners who achieve their qualificational goal.