Category Archives: stuff

lwf11, stuff

Learning Without Frontiers, some thoughts

3 Comments

#lwf11 @Jimmy_Wales

Well that’s the end of day three of Learning without Frontiers. I really enjoyed the conference and in my opinion was probably one of the best conferences that I have been to that Graham Brown-Martin has organised.

There was a great community of delegates and it was nice to meet and chat with old friends, meet some of my Twitter community of practice in real life and make some new friends.

I found there was a really good mix of speakers, workshops and discussions. Lots of choice from which to choose a track of sessions that stimulated, inspired and made you question your practice. For me what makes a good conference programme is a set of sessions that means you are forced to make choices and get ever so slightly disappointed that you have to make that choice and miss some really good stuff. That’s certainly how I felt about the different sessions and workshops.

The thing that you have to recognise about Graham’s conferences is that these are not a traditional academic conference, no this a polished theatrical series of performances. This is no bad thing, but even with all the bright lights and sparkly glitter balls doesn’t mean that all the presentations are lightweight, on the contrary, with some big names with big ideas there was lots to be inspired by and lots to make you think.

Some of the highlights for me were listening to Tony Vincent about mobile film making, I also enjoyed Tony’s App sharing session. I really enjoyed listening to Saul Nassé’s presentation about the value of the BBC and how it inspires. Yes it was me that asked the difficult question about Tomorrow’s World and BBC Jam! Evan Roth’s presentation was both entertaining and inspiring. The Apps for Good workshop was a useful session on planning apps, wish I had the imagination and skills to write a good app. The serious debate and discussion on e-safety with Josie Fraser and David White at the heart of this was both useful and informative, this will feed into my own institution’s e-safety strategies and policies. Keri Facer, who did a great presentation at the JISC Online Conference also gave a great presentation that reflected much of what the audience were thinking and reminded us that it is important that when making difficult decisions that we should base these decisions on evidence and facts and not just on what we believe. Stephen Heppell, who I have heard many times once more made us think and reflect on what we do. I loved David McCandless, it was nice to hear the voice behind many of the wonderful infographics that I have seen many times on the web. I also found Jimmy Wales talking about Wikipedia and where he sees Wikia moving forward really interesting and alongside Lord David Puttnam a great end to the conference. I was particularly pleased to see that Jimmy was there at the venue and not presenting over a video feed, which is what I had been expecting. I managed to have a few words with Jimmy and wished I could have had a few more, seemed like a really nice and genuine guy. It was funny to hear from him when he did present he understood the impact of his “personal appeal” for Wikipedia had had on the internet community. But it did work, raising $16m.

Finally a thank you to Graham Brown-Martin for a great conference and a inspiring set of speakers and sessions. I left the conference with new thoughts, ideas, new thinking, inspiration and so much more. I hope to post on these over the next week or so.

lwf11, stuff

Traditional Learning without Frontiers!

2 Comments

I have attended and presented at quite a few Handheld Learning Conferences. Last year Handheld Learning 2010 was re-scheduled and evolved into Learning Without Frontiers 2011 Festival.

This is a large conference and for a conference with a focus on disruptive technologies and new ways of learning, it in many ways is a very traditional conference with the majority of the sessions been what can only be really described as lectures!

Now is this a bad thing?

Well if you ever talk to Donald Clark then he would say yes!

However if you have ever listened to David White then you’ll probably say no!

Inspirational talks and the whole “eventedness” of these talks can be a useful and engaging learning experience.

As with any kind of learning experience, the process is not always the important bit, it is what you learn from it, is what counts.

So for many professionals a “lecture” can be an inspiring, stimulating learning experience, but not necessarily for all.

So is this the same for learners?

Well I would say no and that means no as in not all the time.

Most conferences only last a couple of days, as a result a few inspiring talks is not the same as a year of lectures for a learners. Inspirational lectures are a key part of any learning experience, however as with too much of anything, just giving lectures all the time will result in staleness and boredom in your learners.

lwf11, stuff

LWF11

2 Comments

I have attended and presented at quite a few Handheld Learning Conferences. Last year Handheld Learning 2010 was re-scheduled and evolved into Learning Without Frontiers 2011.

This is a large conference with over 2000 delegates expected on the free first day and a 1000 delegates for the other two days.

I am presenting a LAWRF session on the first day, which is a fringe session, in other words we have full control over what happens and is presented in that session. Last year (well 2009) we did a fringe event called HHECKL in which we did a Top Gear Cool Wall type session.

How this year’s session will work will depend on how many people we have attending! With it running alongside Jason Bradbury’s Dot Robot Show I suspect that we may have very few attendees, hoping to be proved wrong.

Following our session is Steve Wheeler’s EduPunk, hacking education session. Also that afternoon is Tony Vincent’s App Pecha Kucha.

The final session I will probably attend will be the TeachMeet, though probably not going to present.

There is more to the programme than what I have described, but these are the sessions I will probably attend. The next two days of the conference (or is it a festival) are packed and there looks like some interesting speakers.

Monday starts bright and early at 9.30…

stuff

Posterous Groups

2 Comments

I have always liked Posterous, I like how it is based around e-mail, how easy it is to send rich media to my Posterous blog. How it handles images and YouTube links and so much more.

So I was very intrigued by Posterous Groups.

Today we’re announcing Posterous Groups, a new service for communicating privately with your friends, family and colleagues.

Sharing privately with groups is broken right now – the default option remains the same as it was 10 years ago: Multi-attachment, inbox-cluttering emails. Other groups services have cropped up, but they are too complicated to set-up, handle rich media poorly and fall way short in the privacy department.

Posterous Groups is the simplest way to communicate with your group.

I am thinking this could be an alternative to Ning type groups that I have been members of for a while. It could also be used for learning groups across multiple institutions. I can also see a use for it for fringe events such as F-ALT or the Pelican Fringe.

Creating a group is as simple as sending an email.  Just send an email to newgroup@posterous.com and you are off and running

No account sign up required.  This means no more waiting for Mom to complete the signup process; instead, just add her email address and she’s in your group.  Every time you post to the group, she’ll receive the full content as an email.  She can reply directly to your email and everyone in the group gets her update.

Brilliant handling of rich media.  To share photos, a video or audio file, just attach it to your email.  All photos are displayed in your emails without attachments and the group’s threaded web view will automatically host and embed videos, audio files  . . . any file that you send.  Just send it to Posterous Groups and it will do the right thing.

Private is the default option.  You have full control over who sees your photos and who participates in your group.

So with the ease of use of Posterous with the capable media capabilities I think that Posterous Groups could be really useful for educational institutions.

stuff

Stephen Fry: The Internet and Me

1 Comment

Stephen Fry

I quite enjoyed reading this article by Stephen Fry on the BBC News website (even though it is 18 months old) when I found it for the first time.

Stephen Fry – wit, writer, raconteur, actor and quiz show host – is also a self-confessed dweeb and meistergeek. As he confesses “If I added up all the hours I’ve sat watching a progress bar fill up, I could live another life.”

One of the main reasons I like it is one particular quote that I have used time and time again in meetings.

This is an early thing I said about the internet at the time things like AOL were still huge. I said it’s Milton Keynes, that’s the problem with it. It’s got all these nice, safe cycle paths and child-friendly parks and all the rest of it.

But the internet is a city and, like any great city, it has monumental libraries and theatres and museums and places in which you can learn and pick up information and there are facilities for you that are astounding – specialised museums, not just general ones.

But there are also slums and there are red light districts and there are really sleazy areas where you wouldn’t want your children wandering alone.

And you say, “But how do I know which shops are selling good gear in the city and how do I know which are bad? How do I know which streets are safe and how do I know which aren’t?” Well you find out.

What you don’t need is a huge authority or a series of identity cards and police escorts to take you round the city because you can’t be trusted to do it yourself or for your children to do it.

And I think people must understand that about the internet – it is a new city, it’s a virtual city and there will be parts of it of course that they dislike, but you don’t pull down London because it’s got a red light district.

For me this is a nice analogy of how institutions should look at the internet when thinking about their learners. It’s not about closing off the city to our learners. It’s much more about informing and making learners aware not just of the benefits of the city and the wonderful places that can be seen, but also that there are places in the city they may want to avoid.

When I was teaching European Studies many years ago, we took a group of students to Amsterdam to look at European culture. There are some wonderful things to see in Amsterdam, however myself and my colleagues made sure we were just as aware of the “not so nice” places to ensure that we could provide the right information and advice to our learners.

There is of course those learners who will ignore you and go where they shouldn’t (and this also happened on our trip to Amsterdam) and the key here is to ensure that those learners know what to do and to whom they should seek help and support if they do decide to ignore the advice and venture into the sleazy areas.

The internet has many wonderful sites, tools and services. In my opinion an institution needs to provide the right guidance and advice (digital literacy and information literacy) to our learners to make sure that they can make the most of and find the best of what the internet has to offer. They also have a duty of care to inform learners about the less desirable areas of the internet and how to deal with those parts too.

stuff

Snow problem there then…

1 Comment

Any regular reader will know I have this thing about snow and snow closing down educational institutions despite having the technology in place to continue even if bad weather disrupts travel and transport.

Nice to read on the Microsoft UK Schools Blog of Monkseation school making the most of their “IT system”.

As the school website itself says

We want to thank all staff, students and parents who have all worked together to ensure that students could continue their learning at home during the closure of the school. The school’s electronic communication system, website and Learning Platform enabled us to get messages out promptly and set work for all students.

A good thing though that the leaking roof didn’t disrupt the server room!

Now I would say that though the IT system certainly helped, it has to be more than that, the culture of the organisation must support the setting of work via the learning platform. The teachers and learners have to be aware that if snow (or a leaking roof) means that the physical site is closed then they need to go to the learning platform for their learning. It would be something that was organised and prepared for in advance. There was an expectation that this is what was needed and not just done at the last minute. I would also suspect that learners and staff were able to easily use their learning platform as they were already using it when there wasn’t snow.

Could your learners use your learning platform or VLE? I would guess so if you’re reading this, but what about other learners in your institution?

stuff

Snow more problems!

5 Comments

Sometimes I wonder if we are ever able to learn from the past.

Some things never seem to change….

Back in February 2009 we had the worst snow for twenty years. Many colleges closed, most publishing similar notices to the ones above to their websites.

At the time myself and few others recorded a podcast about the role that learning technologies and communication tools can have in supporting colleges and schools that get closed because of the snow.

I remember discussing the issue with colleagues once the snow had melted that we as a college did not make much more use of our VLE during the time we were closed. The result of the discussion was that closing for three days every twenty years was not something we really needed to spend resources and time planning for. There is a point, when there is an “out of the ordinary” event, contingency planning probably isn’t required in any great depth. Much easier just to deal with the problems resulting from the closure than try and plan just in case (which at the time) for a remote chance of closing.

However back in January 2010… the snow came back, this time the worse snow for forty years!

Once more lots of colleges and schools closed.

I discussed this at the time in my blog post on snow. My main point was:

Yes snow makes it dangerous to travel, but with the internet and mobile technologies, does it mean that learners need to stop learning just because the decision is taken to close the physical location?

So what if this snow is unprecedented? What if we are now not going to have bad snow for another twenty years?

Closures happen a lot, time to start thinking about how an educational institution can make best use of the fantastic tools that are available to it for learning. Though the first thing to do will be to change the culture. It’s not just about contingency planning, it’s about changing the way people work when there isn’t snow and changing the way people think when there is.

So here we are less than twelve months later and once more snow seems to have a massive disruptive effect. It’s not that it wasn’t even expected.

The BBC reported on the 24th November that:

The UK is entering a prolonged cold snap which could bring one of the earliest significant snowfalls since 1993, according to weather forecasters.

So more snow and we have snow closing institutions… despite the fact that we currently have the technology to enable institutions to remain “open” virtually, whilst keeping the physical site closed.

So how should educational institutions be responding? How should they prepare? John Popham back in January wrote an excellent blog post on this issue too and how we could make use of local learning centres.

So have things changed since earlier this year?

Well they had the time, they had the warning, and this is now happening on a regular basis. However we are still seeing this notices on college websites!

We do need to change the language of snow closures so that it’s not about closing, but about safety and that where possible learners should if possible be able to study and learn at home. Don’t say we’re closed, say the physical location may not be accessible (closed) but learning can continue via the VLE, online, social software, phone, SMS, local libraries, local learning centres.

Personally I think that it is not about preparation, but having the staff and learners in the right frame of mind about using online and digital tools before any more snow appears.

Changing the culture is going to take time, having access to the right tools can help, but attitude towards those tools is just as important. Culturally we have some way to go I think before snow or any other “disaster” only closes the physical location and doesn’t close the institution.