Way back in November 2008 we discussed how to pronounce Asus .
So this is the way to pronounce Asus.
Hmmm.
At the end of the day a more important question is are you still using your Asus EeePC on a regular basis?
Category Archives: stuff
Stephen Fry: The Internet and Me
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.
Snow problem there then…
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?
Snow more problems!
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.
McDegree, would you like fries with that?
A running joke for many years has been the McDonald’s Degree.
Well what was a joke for many is now going to become a reality.
McDonald’s is introducing its own degree course in business management for its restaurant bosses in the UK.
The foundation degree, which will be accredited by Manchester Metropolitan University, marks the fast-food company’s latest move into education.
Read more on BBC News.
True it’s not about getting a degree from McDonald’s it’s about how a company wants their staff to get a degree without needing to leave their jobs.
It will be taught by a combination of classroom study, e-learning and training in the workplace.
This is also not unique, many other companies offer similar schemes.
Of course the “joke” only really works if McDonald’s starts to offer degrees to their customers….
McDonald’s is not the first company to do this kind of thing, it was recently announced that the supermarket chain, Morrisons, was in partnership with Bradford University’s management school under which Morrisons will fund 20 undergraduates through a three-year degree course in food manufacturing, paying them a salary.
What is interesting is how this kind of offering will impact on universities who, like Manchester Metropolitan University with McDonald’s, will be accrediting the degrees and very likely uninvolved in the delivery of the degree, even if they are involved in the design.
So is this the thin end of the wedge? A corporatisation of education that is one step too far? Or a logical step for learners and business?
Screenr Presentations
One thing that I have been doing for years is using Keynote on the Mac to create videos of presentations that I have given. What I do is use Keynote to present, and record that presentation. Keynote then allows me to export my presentation (complete with transitions, animations and videos) with my recorded narration as a complete video file. I can then take this video and export it for any other device that I need to use it on.
I did this initially at the first JISC Online Conference back in 2006, I have since then used it with various presentations, such as this presentation at the MIMAS Mobile Learning Event.
I haven’t really promoted this process in the college as it really does require that you use a Mac and use Keynote. As with most FE Colleges we use in our classrooms, Windows PCs and Microsoft PowerPoint.
Though I have found and see many applications which convert PowerPoint presentations into Flash animations, they were difficult to use with a live presentation, you needed to record individual audio files for each slide, or time each slide accurately to a recorded narration for the whole presentation. It was a bit of a challenge and not really a practical proposition for a typical classroom teacher.
So though Keynote could do it, I hadn’t really seen a possibility that could work until Ron Mitchell made a comment at a MoLeNET meeting about doing all the above using Screenr.
So what is Screenr?
Screenr is a web service that allows you to make screencasts quickly and easily, then have them posted to the web.
Once on the web, you can either share the URL, put it in an e-mail for example, or on Twitter.
You can embed the video into a webpage on a website or on a VLE. This is in the Flash format. What about if you have a smartphone or an iPhone, well Screenr ensures that the video is available in an MP4 format which will play on the iPhone, other smartphones and internet capable video devices.
Screenr also allows you to share your video on YouTube.
Finally one useful aspect is that you can download the video as an MP4 file. This can then be embedded into a PowerPoint presentation. You can also import this video file into iMovie and edit it, add titles, other video, to create a new video. If you have the appropriate MP4 codec on your Windows PC you can import it into Windows Movie Maker and do something similar.
So what you would do is as follows:
- Start Screenr capturing your screen (full size screen).
- Start your PowerPoint presentation.
- Deliver your presentation.
- Stop Screenr.
Screenr will then take the video of the presentation, combine it with a recording of the presentation and convert it into a video file, before posting it on the web.
You can then do as I said above, embed it in the VLE, share the URL via e-mail, allow learners to see it on an iPhone, or download the video in MP4 format to do other stuff with it.
One note though is that the service works basically with a Twitter account. You don’t need to use the Twitter account, but just thought I would point it out. For an alternative look at ScreenToaster which doesn’t require Twitter and has a 20MB limit (as opposed to a time limit).
Five minute limit
Yes there is one big problem with Screenr and that is the five minute limit!
The only real solution (apart from using other tools) would be to create lots of five minute presentations instead.
What I like about Screenr over other similar tools (like Jing) is that it doesn’t require you to download an application or install anything. Go to the website, click create screencast and then everything is simple after that. That means it is practical to use it in a classroom situation to record a presentation, as you don’t need to install an application on every computer in every classroom. One note though, if you want decent audio, then you may want to consider how you will capture that audio in the classroom.
I recently discussed screencasting on an e-Learning Stuff podcast.
Augmented Reality, now here’s an idea…
I saw this augmented reality video earlier today about using a “kinect” style setup with Lego.
Reflecting on watching it, though it’s about Lego, it certainly started to make me think about AR scenarios for education using a similar setup.
Science experiments that you couldn’t normally do at a desk as too dangerous could suddenly become possible.
Electrical circuits without needing batteries or fused components.
Economic models with cards to represent different parts of the economy.
Not sure at this time how you would configure a classroom to contain this technology, but certainly it has potential.
So do you have ideas how this technology could be used?
Heading down Dawlish way
Travelling down to Plymouth today by train made me realise that despite living in the South West now for nearly twenty years, this was the first time I had gone south of Weston-super-Mare by train (well except for once travelling to Bridgwater by train, but certainly no further south than that).
It’s not that I don’t go to places like Taunton, Exeter or Plymouth (even Cornwall) it’s just that I have usually driven down the M5.
Often the reason for using the car was convenience, time and speed. Many of the places I needed to visit were not in close proximity to the railway station and that would have meant getting a taxi. Other times I was carrying a lot of stuff, you would be surprised by how much stuff you need when demonstrating mobile learning! Other times it was time. When I looked at going by train to Exeter or Plymouth, the only “available” tickets were on the very slow trains that stopped at every station, and as a result it would take anything up to twice as long as going by car. I was quite surprised though this time checking the train that I could change at Taunton and catch the “faster” train making the journey time about the same as going by car.
Perhaps I should make it clear that I actually prefer going by train, especially like today when the train is not very busy and I have a table. If I am going to London I will nearly always go by train and going north (unless I fly) I will usually go by train.
I am not entirely sure if every journey in the past I have taken it was necessary to take the car, but what I will say is that the train route this way is spectacular especially as it passes through Dawlish.
So though this is my first time by train to Plymouth I don’t think it will be the last time.
Windows Phone 7 Series
I am quite intrigued by the new Windows Phone 7 Series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdDAeyy1H0A&feature=player_embedded
I am not sure I will get one (I have way too many phones as it is) and I think it probably would appeal to a very social person (and I am one unsociable person).
What do you think? Are you going to get one?
e-Learning Tech Stuff #005 – Screenr
This week’s e-Learning Tech Stuff is a guide to using Screenr.
Screenr – Instant screencasts for Twitter. Now you can create screencasts for your followers as easily as you tweet. Just click the record button and you’ll have your ready-to-tweet screencast in seconds.
I really like the simplicity of Screenr.
Dave Foord has used it to create some excellent guides.