Category Archives: stuff

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Missed Opportunities

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Classroom

If there is one word that frustrates me on a regular basis when it comes to supporting the embedding of and utilisation of technologies into education it is the word “appropriate”.

People use it all the time to describe the usage of technology.

“Learning technologies will be embedded into lessons where appropriate”

“The use of technology to support learning will be used when it is appropriate to do so.”

Now I don’t have a problem per se about the use of the word appropriate in this context. I don’t believe technology should be used all the time and every time.

However what has happened is that the word appropriate has been appropriated as an excuse for not using technology.

So I hear practitioners saying, and these are all actual things I have heard people say:

“I won’t use mobile devices in my classroom as they are not appropriate”.

“Using the VLE with my learners is not appropriate.”

“The use of PSPs would not be appropriate with that group”

“Using the Interactive Whiteboard would not be appropriate for this subject.”

So rather than use the word appropriate to define a time or context when and where technology should be used, the word is more often used to describe an entire course or cohort.

Sometimes the appropriate excuse is used for a single technology or in extreme cases any kind of learning technology.

To say that technology is never appropriate for an entire course or an entire cohort, often misses the opportunities that technology can offer to enhance or enrich a session.

I remember talking to one curriculum manager who was adamant that using PSPs with her cohort of HNC students wasn’t appropriate. These were adult students who would not want to “play” with shiny things and didn’t play games in lessons. The thing is, across the corridor another teacher was using PSPs with a group of management students (a fair few who were managers in the college). They weren’t playing games on the PSP, they were using them to watch a video presentation at their own pace and allowing them to review and rewind where appropriate.

So why does it happen?

Sometimes it is more appropriate to use a traditional approach or a traditional technology. For example nothing wrong with using flip chart paper or post it notes. There is noting inappropriate about not using a forum on the VLE and having a live discussion in the classroom.

For me, what is inappropriate, is never using technology using the term appropriate as a blanket reason, more as an excuse rather than an actual reason. This is why it frustrates me.

Next question, is how do we move things forward?

Well one thing I do find working with practitioners, observing sessions is the number of missing opportunities for appropriate use of learning technologies. Why are they getting missed?

Talking with learners and practitioners it is usually down to confidence or not knowing the potential. It certainly is fair to say that not everyone knows everything! However when I say “not knowing the potential” this isn’t about practitioners knowing how everything works, this is about understanding the potential of various learning technologies. Understanding the potential means when an opportunity arises, it isn’t missed, appropriate use of technology is embedded into the learning.

Practitioners need to take a certain responsibility for professional updating at training and development events to understand how different learning technologies can be used to enhance and enrich learning. Staff with responsibility for embedding learning can support this process with case studies, guidance, exemplars and ideas. These could be paper based, e-mail, video, podcasts, or through any various online tools.

Confidence is more difficult to deal with. Experience of using multiple technologies will build confidence in using those technologies. So you have to start using technologies to gain confidence in using technology. That first step though can be very daunting. Often practitioners will talk about the fear of “looking stupid” or “it not working”. Again, staff with responsibility for embedding learning can support this process by motivating staff, but also where appropriate working with practitioners in a session, to ensure that the technology “works”. Likewise IT support teams need to help and ensure that the technology is robust and just “works”. That will help to build confidence.

It is probably not appropriate to use (the same) technology in every lesson, however it is equally inappropriate to miss the opportunities that learning technologies can bring to learning, by never using it.

How do you deal with the problem of missed opportunities?

stuff

aMAZEme

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A vast labyrinth of 250,000 books, entitled aMAZEme, has been installed on The Clore Ballroom in the Royal Festival Hall, London between 31 July – 25 August, as part of Southbank Centre’s Festival of the World.

Visitors will be able to navigate the maze, which has been constructed from 250,000 remaindered, second hand and new books. 150,000 of these books have been loaned by Oxfam, which will be returned to the charity’s shop network at the end of the project. The remaining 100,000 books have been gifted by publishing houses from around the UK.

When the maze is deconstructed at the end of the exhibition, all of the books will be donated to Oxfam to raise funds for their work fighting poverty around the world.

ipad, stuff

Losing the shinyness

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A dead netbook

Why aren’t we talking about netbooks anymore?

It wasn’t that long ago that everyone in the edtech world was talking about cheap netbooks and how they would revolutionise learning and change education forever.

Where are those netbooks now?

Back in the autumn of 2007, Asus launched their Asus EeePC. I managed to get my hands on one in February 2008; a small form factor PC running Xandros (Linux) with a 7″ screen. There had been small laptops before, but they were usually around £2000, the Asus EeePC was less than £200!

In 2008 everyone was talking about how wonderful the netbooks were and that finally here was a device that would revolutionise the use of learning technologies in the classroom.

It wasn’t long though before the “issues” started to arise. Screen size and keyboard size meant that before long the 7” netbook started to grow and today when we look at netbooks in most computer retailers, they have 10” screens and almost full size keboards. In a similar manner, the “free” operating system wasn’t liked by users or consumers and now virtually all netbooks come with Windows 7. The Linux revolution touted by some never happened. Also the storage limitations, the original EeePC only came with 2GB of storage, meant that the robust flash memory was replaced by more delicate hard drives so that users could have the storage needed to do what they wanted on the device. Another big issue was battery life, for some netbooks, 90 minutes was the norm, this meant that the portability of the device was sacrificed as you needed to be connected to the wall by the power cable.

The final nail in the coffin though has to be the MacBook Air and the Ultrabooks, which take us full circle back to the £1000 sub-notebooks that the netbooks were suppose to replace. These devices with their solid state drives, full size(ish) keyboards and high res screens.

Perhaps another nail in the coffin came from the release of the iPad in 2010, we suddenly realised that we didn’t want a cheap netbook, what we actually wanted was a tablet.

Market research firm ABI Research reports that Q2 2011 global tablet shipments rose to 13.6 million units, compared to just 7.3 million netbooks.  (Pinola 2011)

It’s not to say that netbooks are dead just yet, they are still for sale but we’re not talking about them in the same way that we are talking about iPads and tablets.

Are people using netbooks? Yes they are, people I know who have one, really like it.

Are they embedded into our educational institutions? No.

Have they revolutionised education as predicted in 2008? No.

Have we stopped talking about them? Yes.

Have they lost their shinyness? Yes!

Pinola, M 2011, Tablet Sales Overtook Netbook Sales in Q2 2011, accessed 20th July 2012.

altc2009, stuff

What do you mean, someone made them up…

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Anyone who has attended one of my keynote or conference presentations recently will know I have made use of a series of quotes that I first encountered at an ALT-C Keynote by Martin Bean in 2009.

I have used the quotes to remind the audience that scepticism and concerns about the introduction of new technologies or new ways of thinking are not new and that it is “normal” to be concerned about change.

Now I’ve always had my doubts on the validity or authenticity of the quotes as my brief internet research showed that lots of people used the quotes, but there was very little real “evidence” on their authenticity. However in terms of the message I was getting across the essence of the message was much more important than the content of the message. Audiences related to the essence of the message and the scepticism that they had encountered. In more recent messages I have used actual quotes and newspaper headlines about the “dangers” of technology to reinforce the essence of the message.

Recently I used the quotes in a presentation at an ebooks event at UWE. I posted the slides online and I’ve had a couple of comments plus a really useful link that once and for all casts doubts on the quotes and pretty much says that someone in the 1970s made them up!

This set of statements was printed in the Fall 1978 issue of “The MATYC Journal”, a publication that focused on mathematics education. The quotes were assigned the dates: 1703, 1815, 1907, 1929, 1941, and 1950. But they may actually have been created in 1978. Copies of these quotes have been widely distributed and posted on many websites. They also have been published in multiple books and periodicals.

Ah well…. I knew it was too good to be true.

Though of course if you have listened to my presentations you will realise that the quotes were a theatrical device to make the audience to stop and think about change and people’s reactions to change. This is still valid, the quotes merely add a bit of dramatic licence!

So willI use the quotes again?

Probably not, but then I could do and point out that they were “made up” and use that point to make people think.

stuff

Blurred

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Are your reading this on Sunday, over a cup of coffee, or are you at your desk on Monday morning?

For many the distinction between working and leisure is getting very blurred. When does work end and when does home begin?

Can you “switch off” at the end of the day or are you checking the Twitter, e-mail, the VLE or other online services from home, on the sofa, whilst eating your tea, in bed just before your turn out the light, or if you have an iPad after the lights go out! Is checking the Twitter actually work anyway?

Technology can blur the demarcation that exists in the work-life balance, making it very easy to do work stuff outside the core hours of your institution.

Of course for learners the very technologies that blur the lines between home and work, can blur the demarcation between study and everything else. For many learners there is no demarcation, they can will study where and when they want to, in the past they may have used books and paper, now they use mobile browsers and e-book readers. The informal learning of the past was constrained, often to an individual activity, today informal learning can be, thanks to technology, an asynchronous or synchronous, collaborative, group experience. Many learning activities that would have been considered formal before, can now, through technology, be part of the informal learning that happens. Think about lectures, which are considered structured and formal, with YouTube, other video services, lecture capture, can now be accessed when and where the learner wants them, so blurring the formal and the informal. Discussion forums on the VLE allow seminar style activities to happen without the constraints of geography or time.

So is learning getting blurred in your institution?

What are the implications for teachers and learners?

stuff

Running Pilots

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Pilots running for their planes

So are you thinking about running a pilot or a trial?

How many pilots do we need? Or is it more a question that we need to run a pilot at our institution before we think about “rolling” it out across all curriculum areas. I am also aware of successful pilots in one curriculum area which have been followed by virtually identical pilots in a second curriculum area… Why? Well the learners are different! Really! How different, they have two heads or something? That actually raises a question on any pilot, well successful pilots have resulted in a roll out across the whole institution?

We do see institutions that use tools such as Powerpoint across the institution, similarly we see some institutions have embedded the use of the VLE. However was this via projects and pilots? Or was it something different?

Do pilots actually help institutions move forward in using learning technologies or are they causing problems rather than solutions?

Do you read about pilots and projects from other organisations? Do you follow their advice when implementing new technologies or do you decide to run your own pilot? If we don’t learn from pilots that others do, is there any point in doing or talking about pilots?

I also had a recent conversation where the institution was going to do a pilot as it couldn’t afford a mainstream rollout of the technology. Now this I really didn’t understand, you already know from the research undertaken that the technology works and has a positive impact, however rather than buy enough for the institution you’re only going to buy enough to repeat the pilot already done. Why couldn’t they buy enough? Well they weren’t given the funding.

So….

Maybe the question is, why aren’t the people who are making the financial decisions reading the research and project outcomes?

Hmmm….

Personally my view is that if there is only enough money for a pilot, it’s probably not worth doing and you would be better off spending the money on reinforcing and enhancing the use of a technology you already have. However many might see that as boring.

I thought I would mention some of things I have done at my institution in relation to the introduction of new technologies and the impact they have had.

e-Books

When the JISC Collections e-Books for FE announcement was made, I immediately signed the college up. I recall talking to a colleague who said “so which group of students should we pilot this with”. I thought for a minute and wondered why we needed to do a pilot or a trial. Hadn’t JISC Collections already done that, seen the need to provide the collection and given us an opportunity. So I replied, “no we’re not going to do a pilot, we’re going to launch it for all learners and tell everyone about it, the pilot projects have already been done by JISC, e-books do work, they support, enhance and enrich learning, why on earth would we want to repeat that work, to get the same results, oh and get no funding to do it?” As a result of the mainstream launch of the e-books into the college, we now have learners and practitioners using e-books to support their learning. No need to do a pilot, we knew it worked elsewhere, so why wouldn’t it work at our college?

Video Cameras

I could go on about Flip’ping Pilots, but when an opportunity came to purchase some SD card based video cameras, rather than buy a set of 15 and see how they worked out with groups, we purchased over 300 cameras. The result was just what I expected. More practitioners creating and using video in their teaching. Learners using video for assessment and reflection. Availability of the cameras was the real issue, having lots of them meant that whenever someone wanted to use one, either they had one in their pocket or could get hold a class set really easily. Was I concerned about spending that amount of money on cameras that wouldn’t be used? Well probably slightly, however pilots and projects done elsewhere had demonstrated again and again that video had had a really positive impact on teaching and learning, so why wouldn’t it work at our college?

Clickers

I remember seeing a demonstration of Activexpression by Promethean at my college and been very impressed, the main reason I liked the system over other “clicker” systems including the Promethean Activote was that you could use the system without needing to spend ages preparing the questions in advance.

However another thing I knew, from reading about projects that had implemented clickers in other institutions was that staff didn’t use their sets of clickers very much because they weren’t sure if they would be available, but when they did use them they really thought they worked effectively. The lesson was simple, ensure you have enough clickers available. We also had a need to make assessment more engaging and “fun”, clickers or voting units seemed like an ideal solution based on the work done elsewhere. So once more when some funding was available, we purchased 1500 Activexpression handsets, nearly enough for a hundred classes! They were made available in a range of departments. The result? Well most of the sets were used and used on a regular basis to the point where they are embedded into practice. However I should say not all departments engaged with the technology and some were left in cupboards. However after a period of implementation and relection we relocated the sets not been used. The result was across many curriculum areas the clickers were been actively used to enhance and enrich learning. I had seen the results of many pilots and projects that had used clickers and voting units, so why wouldn’t it work at our college?

iPads

When the iPad first came out, I didn’t think it was going to be the radical device for me that it has eventually come to be. In the end I was really impressed with the device and how it improved my efficiency and workflows for my job. As a result I bought every member of the management team in my centre an iPad. As well as the Libraries and e-Learning, my centre includes Construction, Engineering and Schools Liaison. I certainly didn’t see this as a pilot or a project, much more about them benefiting from the lessons I had learnt. I have had quite a few people in the college come and ask me to provide them with iPads (like I have the budget for that) or have asked to “pilot” them with a group of their learners. As far as I am concerned there have been lots of iPad pilots and projects elsewhere in the world and my college doesn’t need to repeat those experiences, the lessons have been published, the problems identified and many of the issues resolved. For me the question is now, now are iPads useful or will they enhance and enrich learning, no the question for me is, will iPads solve a specific problem we have in the college, will they increase retention and achievement for a particular cohort? If I can answer those questions I can then ask the question will the cost of the iPads be outweighed by the benefit they will bring? We don’t have that many iPads at my college, those that do have them, find they are really useful and have had quite an impact on their work. Elsewhere other iPad projects have demonstrated the value they can bring to learning, so why wouldn’t it work at our college?

Thinking differently

So with all the wonderful stuff that has been discussed at various conferences and events, I wonder how many of you are thinking about your next project, your next pilot, your next research grant bid… Do I only want to do a pilot because a) everyone else is doing a pilot and b) it means I get an exciting new gadget to play with c) I need to be seen to be doing new and innovative stuff. Pilots are fun, aren’t they?

Or are you thinking differently, thinking about why wouldn’t this work at my place? Why can’t I do a mainstream roll out of this new technology.

Are you thinking differently?

stuff

Technical Hitches

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Things can go wrong. I am sure you have probably attended a conference where the technology has “failed” for the presenter. The thing is these things happen, sometimes the technology fails and stuff that is planned either can’t happen or needs to be postponed. These technical hitches or failures can also happen in the classroom.

The sad thing is I know for practitioners this is the reason why they won’t engage with using learning technologies or see the potential problems as a good reason for not using them.

Of course it is important that learning technologies that are in classrooms are reliable and work when needed. However as with everything sometimes things do go wrong and stuff doesn’t work.

However this is not a justification for not using learning technologies.

Traditional teaching and learning technologies fail too. Got chalk, but can’t find a board rubber perhaps? Got a traditional whiteboard and someone has used a permanent marker on it? The photocopier is jammed or run out of paper? No more ink for the bander machine? For those of us of a certain age will remember these technical hitches happening on a regular basis in our institutions.

Many of us will also have experienced the pain of double-booking. You go to your classroom or lecture theatre, only to find that someone else is already in there.

Similarly in 2009 we had the worst snow for twenty years and less than a year later we had the worst snow for forty years.

What happened institutions were “forced” to close. You could say that the transport infrastructure and the physical buildings had “failed” and didn’t work.

The question is what did we do when traditional stuff didn’t work? What we did, as teaching professionals, was use our experience and skills to re-jig what we had planned, we may have even rescheduled. Instead of using the blackboard, we would have used paper. With a marked whiteboard, we may have changed rooms. When rooms are double booked we move rooms. With snow, we catch up later.

Rarely would people say, that’s it, as the college was closed, I am never going to use a classroom again as it’s unreliable. Just because the whiteboard wasn’t available to the permanent marker, I can’t see teachers or lecturers deciding that in future it wouldn’t worth the risk in using it, just in case it happens again.

There is something about confidence in using technologies (old or new) and it is also the confidence in knowing what to do when things don’t go as planned. The thing is, million to one chances happen nine times out of ten. As a result we change our plans, work around the problems, but we shouldn’t just stop using a technology because it didn’t work once!