Category Archives: jisc

Keynoting in the South-West

This morning myself and David Sugden delivered the keynote for day two at the JISC Regional Support Centre South West Summer Conference.

glitterball

Our keynote was entitled, Cultural Confidence.

We used Activexpression, learner response systems, with the audience to allow them to interact with the keynote.

We also used Ustream to stream a video of the presentation, however flaky wireless meant that we kept losing the stream, however I did also record the presentation using my HD video camera.

I will post the video and the slides later, when I have sufficient bandwidth to upload.

Down the road…

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Over the next two days I am attending the JISC Regional Support Centre South West Summer Conference 2009 which is just down the road for me in Rookery Manor in Somerset, just South of Weston-super-Mare.

I am presenting (with David Sugden) a keynote tomorrow morning and running a workshop later on in the day.

This afternoon I am on an expert panel which will be interesting as I have no idea about what we will be asked!

Today’s keynote is from Derek Law who is going to be running the JISC Services Management company which goes live in August.

Was quite interesting, now onto the workshops.

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #022: The Internet Brick

internetbrick

Online interaction or wasting time? Do services such as Twitter have potential for supporting learning or are they a distraction?

This is the twenty-second e-Learning Stuff Podcast, The Internet Brick.

Download the podcast in mp3 format: The Internet Brick

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

James is joined by Shri Footring, Jane Edwards and David Sugden.

Shownotes

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #021: Goldilocks, what’s that all about then?

So what do you understand by inclusion? Can we use learning technologies to improve inclusivity?

We discuss the ILT Champions Conference at Gloucestershire College, including the unconference format used and the learning spaces seen at the college. Do we need big names at conferences? Do we need keynotes? How do we make conferences financially viable?

We move onto planning. Do you plan your lessons a week, a month or a year in advance? Is planning a good thing or does it hinder creativity?

This is the twenty-first e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Goldilocks, what’s that all about then?

Download the podcast in mp3 format: Goldilocks, what’s that all about then?

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

James is joined by Dave Foord, David Sugden and Nick Jeans.

Shownotes

ewan

Amplified Twittering and Social Reporting

Today I was at the JISC Teaching and Learning Experts Group Meeting in Birmingham.

jiscexperts0409

I always enjoy these meetings as you get a huge wealth of expertise, knowledge and examples to take away with you back to your own institution.

We used Twitter quite a bit today, so much so that the tag #jiscexperts09 became a trending tag on Twitter.

Lots of comments, discussions and conversations. Some went off tag and continued outside the event.

A really useful and interesting back channel to what was happening in front of us.

By the afternoon the stream of Twitter had declined considerably, in the main as we were in smaller groups with a lot more face to face interaction and conversations. We’re not talking about a small drop off, but a considerable drop, about 95%, in use of Twitter.

It’s not as though we weren’t finding Twitter useful, one delegate said to me that he saw me using Twitter as a way of asking a question without needing to put my hand up.

It did make me start thinking about how we use Twitter and the reasons for using Twitter.

In the morning session with presentations from the front, while we were a “passive” audience some of us were using Twitter to communicate what we were seeing to the Twitter community, discussing between ourselves and initiating conversations with other people not at the event.

Now were we doing this because we found the presenters boring? No because they weren’t, their presentations were very interesting. Much more as we were an audience we found the time to engage with Twitter and the Twitter community. Listening means that we can often add commentary and 140 characters means that it doesn’t take long or captures our attention away from the formal presentation at the front.

In the afternoon we split into smaller groups and discussed the three key areas, e-assessment, learning spaces and social software. As we discussed there was very little or no interaction on Twitter. We were “too busy” interacting and discussing.

Now this didn’t mean we didn’t want to share with Twitter, much more we were so busy we didn’t have the time.

What does this mean though when using Twitter at an event?

You do need to consider why you are using Twitter at an event. If using it as a record of the event, then it is a very poor tool for that, need to record an event then use a different tool.

If you are using Twitter to allow the delegates to converse about the event in a kind of back channel then the fact they are not using it, is probably not a bad thing, as they are probably interacting face to face. However the lack of Tweets in the afternoon in our session meant that I had very little idea what happened in the other parallel sessions. As for people outside the event, they had even less idea!

There may be an opportunity here to have (what I am going to call) social reporters in breakout sessions to record thoughts and discussions on Twitter. Downside for this is that Twitter is very much about the here and now and not really suited for looking back over or for engaging and interacting with even 15 minutes after an event. However will be useful for those outside the event.

One of the downsides of Twitter (which is also a plus point) is that it is just text and only 140 characters of just text. If you did use social reporters then they could also use other tools to help capture the event for both the delegates and others. They could be uploading presentations to Slideshare, posting photographs to Flickr, pushing videos to YouTube, broadcasting live using Qik, blogging, recording to Audioboo, etc…

You can often rely on the delegates to amplify a conference or an event through the use of Web 2.0 tools, should you be supporting the process with social reporting?

The usefulness of Flickr

At Gloucestershire College we as part of a Leadership and Management programme a small group of managers have been undertaking research into the workspaces used by staff and learners; to ascertain if there were ways in which we could use the space smarter and more productively.

As part of this research James Clay, the ILT & Learning Resources Manager put together a small presentation on learning and office spaces from across the UK. Within this presentation he used a range of images from the JISC Infonet Flickr photostream.

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This presentation was placed on the college VLE so that other managers could access the work of the research group.

The Director of Estates in discussion with another director showed the presentation and one image caught her attention.

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It was of pods used by Durham University, the image was one of a series placed on Flickr by JISC Infonet.

Coincidentally the Director of Estates’ daughter is at Durham and a quick phone call later and he had confirmation of how they were used and how they enhanced learning.

As a result a capital bid has gone to the college SMT to build some pods in the college. This would not have happened without access to the JISC Infonet photographs in Flickr.

Using Twitter

I enjoyed reading Frances Bell’s recent blog post on how people use Twitter.

She discusses the community of Twitter and the reasons why she follows certain people.

…follow if interesting friend already known to me else read the profile, follow personal link, read the last few tweets, follow if interesting!

Made me think about why I follow people, so I decided to reflect on the last ten people I followed and tried to remember the reasons why I followed them.

Helen Beetham – I have known Helen for many years through the work she has done for the JISC, and we even presented an online session together at the JISC Online Conference in 2007. I recently found (through someone else I follow) that she was on Twitter and decided to follow her.

Duncan Greenhill – was the 500th person to follow me, so I followed him back. I don’t automatically follow everyone who follows me, but will look at what they tweet before clicking the follow button. More recently I have been more reserved in following people who follow me, as I follow quite a few people now, 234 at the time of writing and like to be in control of my Twitter stream. The number of people is irrelevant it’s much more about how often they tweet that impacts on my Twitter stream.

Doug Belshaw – I found his tweets interesting, and “discovered” him via Josie Fraser in this tweet. In his stream he mentioned the Macheist deal which I had just purchased so I decided to reply and follow.

David Kernohan – is a JISC programme manager and was interested in what he had to say and was doing.

Neil Williams – was found via Steph Gray in this tweet. Neil was asking the following question:

What web 2.0 apps have you paid for and why? I’m writing a short blog post about it, and will blog the results.

I replied as follows:

Paid for Flickr, RTM (for iPhone), WordPress (for video), Gabcast.

Neil later blogged about paying for Web 2.0 apps. This follow demonstrates how what people do outside Twitter is important to my decision if I follow or not follow them.

Danny Nicholson – I followed as he replied direct to one of my Twitpics. I believe he was already following me, but as he had started a conversation, I decided to follow him. This is quite a key decision for me if I am to follow someone, do they want to talk and discuss.

John Cook – is someone I have worked with in the past and enjoy talking to at conferences about e-learning and stuff. When I found out he was on Twitter and following me,  I chose to follow him back.

Chuggington – Chuggington is a children’s TV series about trains, I mentioned it in a tweet, as a result Chuggington started to follow me. I followed them back as they are tweeting news about the programme and I know my son would be interested in what’s new.

chuggers

John KirriemuirShri Footring amongst others were often in conversation with John so he got followed just because of their recommendation.

Ron Mitchell – I usually micro-blog with Ron on Jaiku, but with the ongoing issues on there, as soon as I noticed that he was following me on Twitter I followed him back.

There are many reasons that I follow people on Twitter, why do you follow people on Twitter?

“This is James Clay live on the internet….”

Yesterday at the JISC Conference 2009 I decided during the Web 2.0 and Legal Issues session to ask my question on the use of Qik and as I did at the MoLeNET Conference I broadcast my question live on the internet…

[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.801022&w=425&h=350&fv=rssURL%3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fqik.com%2Fvideo%2F3d097652e0ac426e868960680bb0b414.rss%26autoPlay%3Dfalse]

more about “Qik | Live on the internet at JISC Co…“, posted with vodpod

I do think that institutions do need to be aware of the power of these technologies and ensure that they and their staff and learners have an awareness of the implications of such applications and devices.

JISC Conference Ramblings

So here I am at the JISC Conference 2009 up in Edinburgh in Scotland.

So far we’ve only had the keynotes, well two introductions and a keynote really.

Though we are not in Telford, the wifi is not perfect, and I am getting intermittent dropped connections and slow loading times, but to be honest I was expecting that.

Lizbeth Goodman’s keynote is interesting and demonstrates a range of technologies being used in a vastly different areas and groups.

jisc0901

Covering more than just HE and FE, covering a lot of work being done in schools across the world.

More later….

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #014: Half-Term Meanderings

James, Ron and Lilian just chat about a range of different stuff, basically they meander…

This is the fourteenth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Half-Term Meanderings.

Download the podcast in mp3 format: Half-Term Meanderings

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.

James is joined by Lilian Soon and Ron Mitchell.

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #014: Half-Term Meanderings

Shownotes

  • Geoff Minshull runs DirectLearn and uses WebEx for running online conferences. At the last JISC Conference they also used Elluminate for live presentations.
  • Gabbly can be used to discuss a website.
  • Feedburner from Google allows you to create a better RSS feed.
  • Feeder allows you a lot more control over your RSS Feed.