Here are the slides from my EdTech 2010 Keynote.
I hope to be able to link to the recording later.
Category Archives: stuff
Cultural Shifts
This morning I delivered my keynote at EdTech 2010.
It went down very well and I hope to have the Slideshare and video up soon. It appears to be taking a very long time for Slideshare to convert my presentation, might need to convert it myself first to PowerPoint from Keynote before uploading.
I am enjoying EdTEch 2010, lots of useful presentations and discussions. Making some useful contacts and found some great resources; such as these bricklaying videos.
Travelling
Today I spent most of the day travelling to Athlone in Ireland for EdTech 2010 where I am delivering the opening keynote. Travelling to a different country shows how reliant we are (well how reliant I am) on connectivity and communication.
Arriving at Dublin Airport, though my iPhone connected easily to the O2 phone network and I am on O2 in the UK, I got a nice little text message from O2 to tell me how expensive it is to use the phone and data whilst in Ireland.
At £3 per MB this is very expensive for “normal” usage of the iPhone for e-mail, web browsing and using services such as Twitter and Flickr. I did consider buying a data bundle in advanced from O2 but at £50 for 50MB I decided no way.
I also did consider buying a SIM for my unlocked Nexus One, but as I am only here for a few days I didn’t think it was worth it, and what I really wanted from a local SIM was data not calls and texts.
In the end I decided that I could live without connectivity for the time I am in Ireland. Where and when I needed to use the internet I would use WiFi.
What I did quite like in Dublin was the availability of free WiFi in cafes and restaurants. I could buy a coffee and use the WiFi, whereas in the UK it is more likely these days to find that the WiFi is a BT Openzone or other costly wireless hotspot.
Computeraid and elearning in Africa
Post from Peter Kilcoyne
ILT Director
Worcester College of Technology
Thanks very much to James for asking me to write a few posts about Computeraid and their support for elearning in Africa.
Computeraid (www.computeraid.com) is a great organisation that collects, refurbishes, wipes hard drives for PCs in the UK and ships them out to Schools, Hospitals, Universities and other community organisations.
This picture shows a container of refurbished PCs being unpacked by one of their African partner organisations.
Over the last fe years Computeraid have been working with Universities in a number of African countries supporting them in implementing e-learning.
Online learning has great potential to open up educational opportunities to many Africans. Compared to the UK, HE provision is much more limited and is beyond the reach of many due to the cost of fees, limited numbers of scholarships and the physical distance that many people live from Universities.
A great example of how an institution that Computeraid is working with is planning to use elearning to increase access to HE is the Zambian Open University.
ZAOU at present has a population of around 5000 distance students who study through an entirely paper based system. They aim though to increase that to around 50 000 students through adopting elearning. Compared to using paper based system staff and students will get great benefits in efficiencies, speed of delivery, use of communication and collaborative learning tools and e-assessment.
Computeraid are supporting this project in a number of ways. They are shipping out containers of PCs for use by staff and students.They are also supporting development of provision of small learning centres around Zambia and the development of e-learning and technical skills amongst staff at ZAOU.
An example of the innovative solutions that computeraid have developed to provide access to the Internet and ICT is this solar powered cybercafe which is built in a shipping container.
Computeraid have also helped ZAOUs development of elearning skills amongst its staff through funding two visits by myself to Zambia to run e-learning training sessions and a reciprocal visit from five ZAOU staff to Worcester College of Technology.
Pictures of Moodle Training in Lusaka
Pictures of ZAOU visit to Worcester College of Technology
Dust clouds permitting I’ ll flying back to Lusaka on Wednesday to do some more Moodle training with staff from ZAOU and a number of other universities.
I hope to do one or two more posts on James’s blog to let you all know how it’s going.
Finally please find out what happens to your organisations old computers and consider donating them to Computeraid.
Learning with AR
Learning with Augmented Reality.
LearnAR is a new learning tool that brings investigative, interactive and independent learning to life using Augmented Reality. It is a pack of ten curriculum resources for teachers and students to explore by combining the real world with virtual content using a web cam. The resource pack consists of interactive learning activities across English, maths, science, RE, physical education and languages that bring a wow-factor to the curriculum.
As noted on my Twitter community of practice some of these things work and some less so.
eLearning with AR. Hmm…I think the anatomy elements have potential but not convinced by the multi-choice quizzes as surely it would be much simpler to set that up in a browser and engage with it through a more traditional ICT way…?
I have to agree, some of the concepts need a little more work to be innovative, some are too much like replicating pen and paper!
What do you think? Does this have potential?
iTunes U
I have been thinking about iTunes U for a while now.
My main issue at the moment is why?
I am not concerned about the application process, as other colleges have undertaken the process.
Nor am I concerened about doing all the design work for the front end. Apple has useful guides and we have the resources to do this too.
I am slightly concerned about the following line from Apple’s website:
At a minimum, your institution should have 150 audio and video files of acceptable quality ready to go on day one, with a plan for posting updated content on a regular basis.
It’s not that we don’t have this level of content, nor am I concerned about whether it is to an acceptable quality, my slight concern is whether any of the content contains third party content that we may be licensed to use within college or on the VLE, but won’t have the rights to re-distribute those third party materials.
My main concern or worry is why!
Why would we use iTunes U?
We still need to host the materials.
We need to apply.
We need to sort out RSS.
We need to plan for regular content.
But why would we use iTunes U?
Apple say:
With an open iTunes U presence, your school can gain recognition — not to mention a competitive edge — as you reach out and share your knowledge.
I think I can see this from a University perspective competing for learners who may look at things like iTunes U. I am not so sure that our learners will be looking at or persuaded by us being on iTunes U.
I like the concept of iTunes U, but I can’t see why I should be using it.
How to use Screenr
I created the following screencast on how to use the screencasting service Screenr.
So what is Screenr?
It’s 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.
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.
Ashen
Was it only a couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post entitled “million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten” in that I wrote about the impact of snow closures on educational institutions. I did write…
Even if it doesn’t snow really badly next year, other things may happen that result in the physical closure of the educational institution. It could be floods, high winds (remember 1987), flu or similar viral infections, transport strikes, fuel crisis, anything…
Over the last week we have seen not so much closures, but certainly some disruption due to the volcanic ash from Iceland and its impact on air travel.
Hitting the UK as it did at the end of the Easter break, many learners and staff were stranded overseas with no way of getting home.
As with the snow, little mention has been made of using technology to mediate the impact of the closure of UK airspace. One exception, BBC News reports on one teacher who is using a webcam to continue teaching despite been stranded in Spain.
A teacher from Oxfordshire stranded in Spain because of air restrictions is using an internet cafe to take lessons. He is using a webcam to make sure that his business studies A-Level students do not miss out on lessons.
Interestingly in the same article…
Meanwhile, 16 teaching staff from King Alfred’s School in Wantage have been left stranded because of the ban on flights. The school said it on its website that it would face “severe staffing shortages” and would only open for certain year groups during the week.
So it would appear that not everyone is coping with the disruption.
In the comments on the recording of our debate on this issue at the Plymouth e-Learning Conference was the following comment:
Irony time: In my mailbox this morning “Technology Enhanced Learning Workshop cancelled due to speaker unable to get a flight”. Missed opportunity for some “Technology Enhanced Learning” me thinks? The Sky is broken so use Skype?
I am aware of a few people who are stranded overseas, but are in fact continuing to work using e-mail and VPN to maintain contact and communication with colleagues back home. Time zone differences are causing a few issues, and I also know that many people rather than stay and work are travelling and trying to get home.
As far as I am aware no schools or colleges have closed because of the ash, but certainly some classes have been cancelled or disrupted due to the ongoing ash cloud issue.
Learning technologists have to be careful to ensure that they don’t appear smug about the role technology can play when we have issues such as snow and ash, but we as a community need to work with colleagues to ensure that when disruption happens we don’t worry so much, we keep calm and carry on…
The Hierarchy Of Digital Distractions
I was introduced to the amusing diagram by Dave White during his excellent keynote at the Plymouth e-Learning Conference.
See the full version.
Have a look and see whether it fits your life, not sure about the linking to video of kitten frolicking. Is that distracting? Possibly!
Privacy has gone…
Do we have privacy anymore, do we have privacy with the internet now being so much part of our lives?
The opening keynote at the Plymouth e-Learning Conference 2010 was by Josie Fraser. She delivered an inspiring thought provoking keynote covering many different issues including digital identity, digital communities and communities of practice.
One of the key discussions was on privacy and the ability to control what I put online on services such as Twitter, this blog, Flickr or even (now and again) Facebook.
I can do lots to protect my identity.
I can decide what photographs I post to Flickr.
I can decide whether to include geo-data when I post to Twitter or use Audioboo.
What about the issue of other people infringing my privacy and putting details of my life online.
I can’t stop other people from broadcasting what I am doing…
I can’t stop them taking and posting photographs on me online.
I can’t stop them writing about what I am doing on services like Twitter and Facebook.
I can’t stop them uploading videos of me to YouTube.
I won’t be able to stop them adding geo-data to images or videos of me.
These services that people have used have take down policies, but unless the images, video or text are “not nice” then would the services taken them down because I don’t like them?
Of course I can ask, but they don’t need to say yes!
We seem to be at a stage where privacy is almost impossible to maintain if you go anywhere that others will be using cameras, online services such as Twitter or Facebook; even if I don’t use any of these things myself.
Josie in her keynote showed us the Ungooglable Man.
Does he exist? Probably?
Does he exist online? More than likely!
Even if he doesn’t use Myspace or Facebook, it is likely that friends and family do. They may place photographs of him online, they may talk about him, they may have videos of him. As a result he may be found online despite the fact that he is not online himself.
There are implications for those who have concerns about their own online identities that they may well have no power to stop others posting “stuff” about them online.
At the moment, many colleges are looking to work with learners on the concept of e-safety, part of which is digital identity. Colleges need to remind individuals that they are not the only person who needs to be concerned about what they post online, but that their friends and family need to be aware of the issues too.
Do you worry about what is posted about you online?
Do you know what others have posted about you online?
Should we care?