Category Archives: news

news

The Emerging Technology Seminar

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Next week I am speaking at The Emerging Technology Seminar in Birmingham.

This one-day event has been specifically designed for leaders and managers and is your chance to gain insights into technologies that are on the learning horizon. There will be input from Google, Microsoft, sector experts and your peers who are already working with these new technologies. You will have plenty of time for discussion and to consider how these technologies may facilitate improvement through efficiencies, innovation and new ways of working.

Myself I am talking about horizon scanning, new technologies and the inevitable cultural resistance that colleges will face .

What new technologies will be having an impact on teaching and learning over the next five to ten years? How should colleges prepare and utilise the potential that these technologies will bring?

How is practice changing within learning providers? How will learning and the delivery of learning change over the next five to ten years? How can technology facilitate changes in practice? How can colleges prepare for the challenges and opportunities new ways of learning bring to education?

This session will provide an opportunity to discover, share and discuss the challenges and new technologies and practice bring to colleges and how they can best prepare for the change that is going to happen.

The Emerging Technology Seminar takes place on the 22nd February 2012 in Birmingham.

mobile, news, stuff, vle

e-Learning Stuff – Top Ten Blog Posts of 2011

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A somewhat quieter year this year with just over 150 blog posts posted to the blog.

As I did in 2010 and 2009 here are the top ten blog posts according to views for this year.

10. Using the VLE more

This posting was very much an opinion piece on how learning technologists could engage teachers in using the VLE more to support learners. The key behind this quite short post was about moving the responsibility of using the VLE to the practitioner, and their continuing personal development in the use of the VLE.

9. Moodle 2 Teacher’s Guide

This post proved popular and it was an opportunity to remember where I had seen this great guide to Moodle 2, but also embed it into the blog using Issuu.

8. 100 ways to use a VLE – #89 Embedding a Comic Strip

The eighth most popular post this year was from my ongoing series of ways in which to use a VLE. This particular posting was about embedding a comic strip into the VLE using free online services such as Strip Creator and Toonlet.

It is quite a lengthy post and goes into some detail about the tools you can use and how comics can be used within the VLE.

The series itself is quite popular and I am glad to see one of my favourite in the series and one of the more in-depth pieces has made it into the top ten.

7. Paper Camera – iPhone App of the Week

This review of Paper Camera as part of my App of the Week series certainly struck a chord with many who thought the app was excellent.

This really nice image manipulation app creates cartoon or sketch like images from either your photographs, or applies the filter in real time so you can see what your image will look like through the live image from the camera.

The review which included images I had created using the app, demonstrated to readers what the app was capable of, but also some of the limitations. For me I only review apps that I use and think can be of value to my readers (well apart from one or two exceptions where I want to tell people not to buy the app).

6. “The Best Moodle Tools You’ve Never Used”

Tools such as Moodle have a range of functions that I know many of our staff are using, but of course not everyone knows everything. I like this presentation from the Columbian MoodleMoot 2011 by Michelle Moore, in which she explains some of the other functions of Moodle that can be used to enhance and enrich course delivery.

I do like that I can embed presentations such as this into my blog using a service such as Slideshare. It means I can easily share things I have found, but also curate them with other finds for sharing with others.

5. So how are students using mobile phones?

A simple infographic on how US students were using their mobile phones proved popular and demonstrate their is real interest out there about mobile learning and the use of mobile phones for learning.

4. Podcast Workflow

This was probably my favourite post of the year and is also the longest blog post I have ever written at nearly 4000 words! The post outlined how I recorded the e-Learning Stuff podcast and went over the planning, the technical techniques for recording, editing and distribution. It was a post that I had been writing for a year or so, but back in July decided to finish it off and get it published.

3. Tintin – iPhone and iPad App of the Week

So my third most popular post on my e-learning blog is of a review of a game for the iPad… It’s not even a very good review, as at the time of writing that blog post I hadn’t even played the game as I wanted to see the film first! The reason why it is popular is that the blog post had quite a high search engine ranking and people clicked to see what it was about… I expect they were slightly disappointed.

2. Ten ways to use QR Codes

This post was a very reactionary post to all the posts I was seeing at the time about how to use QR Codes.

Sorry, this is not a blog post on ten ways to use QR Codes, but it is a blog post about what you actually can do with QR Codes. There are in fact only five ways to use QR Codes! Once you know what you can do with QR Codes then you can build learning activities round those functions.

Got people thinking.

1. The VLE is Dead – The Movie

So the most viewed post this year was from 2009 and is the video of the VLE is Dead symposium that I was part of at ALT-C 2009. Considering this post was originally published in September 2009, the fact it is my most popular posts demonstrates the enduring substance of that debate. Is the VLE dead? Well the debate isn’t, it’s alive and well.

news, stuff

Newspaper Boy

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In the past (over forty years ago) you needed to be a post graduate student to access old newspapers in the newspaper and library archives. They would need to go through the newspapers one by one until they found the articles they needed.

Twenty years ago, undergraduates could access newspapers on microfilm in their university libraries. They still needed to go through paper by paper, however microfilm allowed access to a wider range of newspapers and was in many ways faster than leafing through an actual newspaper.

Ten years ago, learners in colleges and schools could access newspaper articles on a CD-ROM using a computer in their classroom or library. The text was searchable and could be easily copied into a different medium.

Today, archives of newspapers from the last two hundred years can be accessed via a web browser on a mobile device or from a computer in the home, workplace or at college.

In the past the process of researching past newspapers was time intensive, expensive (travelling to archives) and exclusive; there was no way newspaper archives and university libraries would allow college students or school pupils access to their collections.

In the past learners would be dependent on text book interpretations of newspaper articles or even the author’s interpretations of events based on other sources. Today primary school children can access a range of newspaper archives covering the last two hundred years and that alone can and should have an impact on the delivery of learning.


news, presentation

SlideShare moves to HTML5

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In an not an unexpected move, SlideShare, the presentation hosting service has moved from Flash to HTML5.

When SlideShare launched it used Flash to create an online slideshow of your presentation slides. It is a service I have been using now for over three years and have found it a useful place to put presentations, but then to also embed them into the blog or the VLE.

However as it was Flash based there were issues when people viewed them on a mobile device such as the iPhone or the iPad. They did fix this for viewing a SlideShare presentation on the SlideShare website and released an API. Last year I reviewed the Slide by Slide app for the iPad and was not impressed. However this wasn’t an official iPad app one that merely used the SlideShare API.

Even though you could view the presentation on the website on the iPad when the SlideShare presentation was embedded into a website, all you got was a blank space.

So it’s interesting to hear that SlideShare are losing the Flash and moving to HTML5.

  • Your slides will display flawlessly on an iPhone, iPad, Android and any other mobile platform. You can send a link to friends and colleagues, and they can view it on the go regardless of what device they are using.
  • Your slides will now load 30% faster. On the web, faster is better.
  • Your slides will be a part of the web. No plugins or downloads are required to view them.

They are certainly convinced that mobile is the way a lot of people will view presentations on the web.

news

Define Success

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Going around the Twitter a week or so back was a video from TEDx London from Goldie about despite dropping out of the school system he has made a success of his life. Given the choice again, he would drop out of school again!

It reminds me of some (most) of the presentations from Handheld Learning 2009 in which Malcolm McLaren, Zenna Atkins and Yvonne Roberts.

Back then I wrote about how they all felt they were failed by the formal education system, but had made a success of their lives.

…next was Zenna Atkins… She felt she had been failed by the formal education system and despite this had a made a success of her life. She recounted tales about her children and their experiences in the education system. I am sure she knows more about the UK education system then someone like me, but you have to ask this question, if the education system is so wrong in the UK, despite the best efforts of organisations like Ofsted which are there to check the quality of the education system, then maybe we need to rethink the whole education system and the quality checking that takes place. I did feel that alienating your audience who are generally all from the formal education system and indicating that they are the problem was an interesting way to present the issues.

With Malcolm McLaren up next… He was also failed by the formal education system but found success, notice a pattern here?

Yvonne Roberts was the third keynote and having alienated the audience with a throwaway remark about dyslexia once more recounted how the formal education system had failed her and here she was speaking as a keynote presenter.

All of these speakers talked about how the formal education system was rubbish and needed a revolution. The pattern behind all their talks was that the school system had failed them and despite that they had made a success of their lives.

What annoys me about giving these people a platform is that it sends completely the wrong message to young people.

“Drop out of school and you will be successful!”

We never hear from those thousands of people who dropped out and didn’t have success in the same way they did. Those thousands who for whom school failed them and they feel they have failed.

Let’s remember that there are many more people that didn’t drop out of school and have led happy successful lives.

I think a key question is how do we define success?

Do we measure success by how many column inches you have in the Daily Mail?

Is success measured by economic success, how much money we have earned? Wealth?

Is success measured by popularity? By the number of Twitter followers you have? How much you are liked on Facebook? How many hit singles you’ve had?

Is success measured by how high you get in an organisation? Are you a Chief Executive? Are you a senior manager?

Is success measured by some weird happiness index that takes into account multiple factors? Do you need to be successful to be happy?

There are issues and problems with the formal education system, however those issues are institutional, cultural, societal and governmental. Changes need to be made at all levels, in government, in government departments, officiating quangos such as Ofsted, examining boards, local authorities, funding bodies as well as schools and colleges.

When an individual is successful despite failing at school, in some ways yes we should celebrate this, but we must also question why they failed within the formal system. Likewise we mustn’t forget those for whom not only did the school system fail, but have not had happy successful lives.

However we mustn’t forget those for whom the school system did work and who have also led successful lives. Let’s also celebrate when it works, but not be complacent when it doesn’t.

news

Mobile Learning Challenge

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The International Association for Mobile Learning (IAMLearn, www.iamlearn.org), in collaboration with Epic (www.epic.co.uk), is proud to announce the Mobile Learning Challenge.

The Mobile Learning Challenge is searching for innovative and visionary solutions for learning using mobile technologies.
Practitioners, students, and young researchers are particularly encouraged to contribute their inspiring and visionary concepts. Specific technical skills are not required for participating!

Full details here.
 
The first prize

The winner of the Challenge will receive £1000. The winning solution will be presented to the mLearn 2011 conference audience either by the winner (if present at the conference) or by the President of IAmLearn.

This prize is co-sponsored by IAmLearn and Epic.

The second prize

The runner-up will receive a prize of 5 years’ free membership of IAmLearn.
 
Deadline for Submissions is Wednesday, 14 September 2011 24:00 GMT.

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Skitching

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I have been using Skitch for a while now and more so more recently for making screengrabs, annotating screengrabs and for sharing them.

In this example I used it to show a member of staff how to backup their course without the user data so then been able to create a fresh version of their course. This makes it much easier for the member of staff to see what I mean.

The advantage of Skitch over using the built-in screen grabbing tools in OS X is that you can edit the screengrab, add comments, highlight areas or even redact sensitive user information if required.

You can of course do all this with an image editing programme such as Photoshop Elements, however the advantage of Skitch is threefold, firstly it does the grabbing as well as the editing and has a bundle of editing tools. Secondly you can grab the entire window, a snapshot of part of the screen, or a delayed screengrab. Thirdly it comes with image hosting, so it’s very easy to upload and share the screengrab.

I have had the free version since it came out and due to my increased usage was considering buying the $20 plus version that has a few more features. Well as of today, Skitch has been bought by Evernote and as a result the plus version is now free.

The plus version has a few more features, the main one is that it can grab entire webpages and not just the part that is viewable in the browser.

So if you have been sharing screengrabs and want more than just the built in version that you get in OS X then get Skitch.

Get Skitch now in the Mac App Store.

news

Some more Screencasting

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I have written and spoken before on this blog about screencasting. Three years ago I went through some of the possible applications that you can use on the Mac for screencasting. This is a bit of an update to that post and added ideas on screencasting for Windows.

Last year I posted a video on how to use the free online service Screenr. Screenr is a very clever free service that I use a lot for demos and training. However it is limited to five minutes, you need to ensure you get a perfect “take” as you can’t edit the resulting screencast and one further downside is that it is public, though it is possible to “quickly” download the Screenr recording as an MP4 file and then then delete the online screencast!

JISC Digital Media have a lot of resources on screencasting including tips and advice. I embedded their 6 Quick Wins presentation into the blog a few weeks back.

I also recorded a podcast with Gavin and Zak from JISC Digital Media in which we discussed what is screencasting, what can you do with screencasting, what tools are there for screencasting, top tips on making screencasts and delivery of your screencasts.

In Snow Leopard and Lion it is now possible to record screencasts using the built in Quicktime tool.

However as with Screenr you need to ensure you get it in one take, or stitch smaller videos together.

For a little more flexibility than the whole screen you get with Quicktime, another application IShowU gives you a few capture options, such as ½ or ¼ size. It also allows you to capture part of the screen, whereas Quicktime captures the whole screen.

iMovie on the Mac, which is usually used for video editing can be used to edit screencasts from recordings made from Screenr or Quicktime (or any of the other tools too).

One tool that I know a lot of people use for Windows is CamStudio.

CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)

CamStudio can also add high-quality, anti-aliased (no jagged edges) screen captions to your recordings in seconds and with the unique Video Annotation feature you can even personalise your videos by including a webcam movie of yourself “picture-in-picture” over your desktop.

It’s open source and free to download.

One tool I do use for Windows is Captivate. This is very powerful software from Adobe that allows you to not only capture what is on the screen, but also edit the capture afterwards, add further audio, more screen capture and add captions. The main difference I feel with Captivate is that it is less reliant on making the screencast as a pure video file. You can add interactions and even quizzes to turn a simple screencast into a learning tool.

For the Mac I use Screenflow and this has been recently updated to version 3.

Get your video on the web with Telestream ScreenFlow screencasting software. With ScreenFlow you can record the contents of your entire monitor while also capturing your video camera, microphone and (with optional components) your computer audio. The easy-to-use editing interface lets you creatively edit your video; add additional images, text, or music; and add transitions for a truly professional-looking video. The finished result is a QuickTime or Windows Media movie, ready for publishing to your Web site, blog or directly to YouTube or Vimeo.

Use ScreenFlow to create high-quality software demos, tutorials, app demos, training, presentations and more!

Again one of the reasons for using Screenflow is that you can go in and edit the screencast, add more screen capture if needed, annotations, captions, subtitles. You can add audio, stills and video to enhance the screencast. You can also capture video at the same time, to add a picture in picture to your screencast.

If you rarely make screencasts then spending £70 on Screenflow is probably not good value for money. However if making screencasts is something you do on a regular basis and you have a Mac then I can recommend Screenflow as a useful and powerful tool.

Camtasia is another tool that is available for both Windows and Mac. Though for some reason the Mac version is much cheaper than the Windows version!

Create eye-catching training, presentation, and demo videos…the easy way. Camtasia for Mac screen recording software is streamlined, intuitive, and makes you look like a pro.

Easily record onscreen activity, Keynote slides, camera video, microphone or system audio—all with sparkling clarity. Record in front of a live audience or at your desk. Edit to perfection. Turn it into a stunning, HD-quality video at the perfect size to share on popular video sites, Apple devices, your website, blog, or anywhere you like.

A very similar tool to Screenflow and one that I know is used by a lot of people, especially on the Windows platform.

There are many ways in which screencasting can be be used to support learning and having covered some of the tools in this blog post, I hope to cover some of the ways in which it can be used in a future blog post.

news

Comic Life 2 for Mac

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I am a great fan of the Comic Life application and have used it quite a few times at work to create comics for handouts, flyers and pages in our staff newsletter.

Comic Life 2 for Mac has been out for a while but the special introduction price of £13.99 ends on the 1st August. So if you like the idea of creating comics and have a Mac then Comic Life 2 is a great piece of software that makes it easy and fun.

Turn your photos into comic layouts (even entire books!) with Comic Life. Speech balloons, fonts and filters give you all the tools you need to make the perfect photo comic.

Check it out in the Mac App Store. For Windows users version 1 is available.

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Ten ways to use QR Codes

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Sorry, this is not a blog post on ten ways to use QR Codes, but it is a blog post about what you actually can do with QR Codes. Once you know what you can do with QR Codes then you can build learning activities round those functions.

So what can you do with QR Codes?

QR Codes can be used to:

  • Display text to the user.
  • Add contact details to the user’s device, a vCard.
  • Open an Uniform Resource Identifier URI (most usually a web address of some kind).
  • Compose an e-mail address with the correct address.
  • Compose an SMS text message with the correct SMS number.

So there are five ways to use a QR Code. From those five ways, you can take an individual function and expand on how it can be used for teaching and learning, so for example taking the “open an URI” function, there are many ways that can be used to support learning.

Knowing what the five functions are, you can then be sure that QR Codes are the correct solution to solve a particular problem.

For example, you can use a QR Code to display text to a user. It has to be asked why would you display a QR Code to a user for text, when the text might as well be displayed, or given on paper! One reason you might for example is if you want the user to then take text move to a different location and then act on instructions in the text. With some large QR codes allowing up to 1852 characters you could provide users with some instructions or rules or something that they need to keep close. With text to speech, a user could read a QR Code and then the phone could read the text to the user. So there are reasons for using the text function of QR Codes, especially as the user won’t need any connectivity to read the text. However if displaying the text would be just as effective, why then use a QR Code?

Adding contact details is useful, for example providing details of the Library support phone number and e-mail address. QR Codes provide a quick and easy to add those details to a user’s address book on their device.

Opening an URI (for example a web address) is an often used function of QR Codes, we use it ourselves in the Gloucestershire College libraries. The best way though to think of QR Codes is as an URL shortener, like TinyURL, bitly or is.gd taking a long URL and providing learners with a shortened version. One mistake that people make is forgetting that when using QR Codes, the web page will 99.9% of the time be then displayed on a mobile device, probably using 3G. So there is little point in pushing out web content that won’t work on mobile devices or is huge etc…. Remembering that QR Codes are merely a way of shortening URIs for mobile devices means that users will get a better experience. Don’t just use a QR Code because you can, use it because it makes a difference, makes it easier for learners and makes it faster to access “the something else” that the learners need.

Using QR Codes to enable a user to send an e-mail or an SMS I think is a really useful way of using the technology. Do you want more information? Do you need help? Vote for this awful singer on X-Factor! Sign up for a newsletter. Of course it implies that either their device can send e-mails or they want to pay to send a text.

So sorry there aren’t ten ways of using a QR Code in this blog post, but I hope it clarifies what QR Codes actually do, the five actual ways to use a QR Code.

I don’t think there is anything wrong with using QR Codes, because they are QR Codes. We once did a QR Code treasure hunt, the reason though was not because we wanted to use something “awesome” no it was because we wanted to promote the use of QR Codes in the library that were been used to help students find e-resources and online content.