100 ways

100 ways to use a VLE – #69 Access to a Webcam Stream

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Though many may consider a webcam video stream somewhat antiquated, they are still well used for many different purposes. There are many different webcan streams out there that can be used for learning or to enhance a topic of some kind.

Though an easy option is to just add a link to a webcam via the VLE, some streams allow you to embed the video (or image) and this can then be embedded into the VLE.

Running your own webcam and embedding the feed into the VLE is another option. Certainly useful for scientific experiments or for animal care courses.

lwf11, stuff

Learning Without Frontiers, some thoughts

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#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!

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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

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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

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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.

news

Top Ten Blog Posts of 2010

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I did a similar post to this one last year, and two of the posts in that top ten are also in this year’s top ten!

A little more tricky to calculate this year as I changed hosts a few months back. These are the top ten posts from this blog (according to the stats) in terms of views. In reverse order…

10. “VLEs are crap”

This was a bit of a rant about how many practitioners and managers dismiss the institutional VLE and compare it to web tools and services that have “millions” in funding.

This sparked off a bit of a debate with a consensus that how you use the tool is generally considered more important than the functionality of the tool. Comments also recognised that a VLE does not live in isolation and that Web 2.0 tools and services can be used alongside and plugged into the institutional VLE.

9. A five stage model for using the VLE

Often practitioners need guidance on how to use the VLE and this blog posting was a summary of the work I had done with practitioners over the years I have been working with VLE technologies.

It was apparent from the comments that I wasn’t alone in doing this and various other models were referred to and linked to in the comments.

One of the key criticisms of the model was stage one and “LearningTechie” wrote an excellent blog post on this.

8. No more Ning

In April it was announced that Ning was to phase out their free service. I discussed how I thought this was a mistake and offered some other free alternatives.

I don’t have an issue with paying for premium services, I have a Flickr Pro account for example, however a free services does allow you to try and use it and see what you think. Prior to the announcement I was using Ning on an almost daily basis and found it an extremely useful service. Since the summer I have hardly even noticed it been used and haven’t used it myself at all. I suspect unless their business model is working really well, that Ning may at some point disappear.

7. Cheese

This post is a key part of my ILT strategy and direction at Gloucestershire College and explains how we are trying a more holistic approach to the embedding of learning technologies and ensuring that all areas are covered by curriculum teams.

I posted this back in February and ten months later I am seeing that it is having an impact in some areas. So the next stage will be ensuring that all areas take it on board and link it in with their self-assessment.

6. Snow

Back in January 2010 we had the worst snow for forty years and I reflected on how ill-prepared we are in education when weather conditions and transport problems cause the physical closure of an institution and despite often having the technology in place, we still have a culture of closure and won’t (or can’t) use these technologies to overcome the problems of snow.

This resulted in many different comments and one result of this post was a symposium that took place at the Plymouth e-Learning Conference.

5. Ten reasons why Twitter will eventually wither and die…

Back in April 2009 I posted how I thought Twitter would die. The fact that it hasn’t doesn’t mean it won’t. A controversial post that was still popular and resulted it taking its place in my top ten posts in 2010.

Do I still think Twitter will still die? Yes I do!

4. So you were thinking that you wouldn’t buy an iPad!

Posted before the release of the iPad, this video from Penguin books showed them what they thought the iPad would bring to children’s books.

Having now seen what the iPad can actually do, this video shows that the iPad has a lot of potential for the evolvement of the book into a more interactive and engaging experience. Many books and magazines are certainly making the most of some of the potential of the iPad.

3. Will Twitter still eventually wither and die?

This was a follow up piece to Ten reasons why Twitter will eventually wither and die… and I suspect contributed to the popularity of that 2009 post in 2010. I reviewed my top ten reasons and most of them were still a problem and in some cases more of a problem than they were in 2010. However with Twitter keeping on top of them for many, the problems were less of an annoyance and certainly were outweighed by the usefulness of Twitter.

2. The VLE is Dead – The Movie

My second top posting of 2010 was in fact posted to the blog in 2009!

Considering this post was originally published in September 2009, the fact it is still one of my most popular posts demonstrates the enduring substance of that debate.

1. Are you stealing stuff?

So my top posting of 2010 was about copyright. Back in February I asked the question are you stealing stuff?

It raised the issue of copyright and how practitioners often used stuff for teaching and learning in ways that may infringe copyright. The blog entry was inspired by a blog post by Simon Finch.

My thoughts were that as professionals we should be setting an example to our learners and we shouldn’t be infringing copyright regardless of whether it made our life easier or because we feel that we should be able to. My posting did hit a nerve, with fifty comments to that post.

I also did a follow up piece Have you stopped beating your wife? This I hoped clarified some of the issues about using the word “may” and the importance of asking the right question.

What did disappoint me slightly was that in January I asked my readers and the e-learning community if they wanted to discuss this issue at a symposium at ALT-C 2010 in a post entitled Want to join the conversation? In that post many people expressed an interest in having this discussion at ALT-C… Alas the proposal was rejected by ALT and so I discussed e-books instead!

….

So there are my top ten posts of 2010, any of your favourites in that list?

What will 2011 bring to the blog who knows?

app of the week, ipad, iphone

Cat Physics – iPhone App of the Week

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Cat Physics – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone and iPad Apps available. Some of the apps will be useful for those involved in learning technologies, others will be useful in improving the way in which you work, whilst a few will be just plain fun! Some will be free, others will cost a little and one or two will be what some will think is quite expensive.

This week’s App is Cat Physics – Donut Games.

What are cats up to at dawn, when nobody’s around?

Sneaking around the back alleys? Probably!
Going through garbage cans? Not likely!
Playing Donut Games? Most certainly!

Join the cats in their favorite midnight ball game: CAT PHYSICS!

The objective is simple — Pass the ball from one cat to another!

Sounds too simple?
Oh, wait… did we mention flip boards, glass windows, trap doors and other obstacles?

£0.59

I don’t normally mention games in this series, though of course games certainly have their place in learning and to give learners new skills.

However the reason I am bringing Cat Physics to your attention is not that it is the holiday season and therefore an ideal time to play games, but for two reasons.

Firstly it was recommended to me by a senior manager in my college. A year or so ago this manager would be quite open about her lack of learning technology knowledge, but was eager to see the potential. I did lend her one of my MoLeNET iPod touch devices and this year she did go out and buy an iPad. Cat Physics was one of the games she bought, enjoyed and brought to my attention. Bizarre I thought that a senior manager who wasn’t really that much into learning technologies, is now advising the learning technologies manager on what applications he should buy for his iPad!

I do find it really interesting how consumer electronics can have such an impact on society and social change and the resulting impact that these devices have on learning and learners. I am sure that devices such as the iPhone, the iPad, Android phones, the Nintendo DS and Wii, the PSP and other consumer devices have probably had more of an impact on changing the culture of education towards learning technologies than anything learning technologists have done in terms of training or staff development. I have seen many staff totally change their attitudes to the use of technology in the hands of learners as soon as they buy (or have been bought) a device such as the iPod touch or the Nintendo DS.

So what of the second reason?

Well when the iPad first came out, anything designed for the iPhone to be honest looked awful on the iPad, the x2 button though worked, didn’t result in a clear look to the application. The results were often fuzzy or pixellated. However Cat Physics was the first time I didn’t notice any issues. My first thought was that it was in fact an universal app for both iPhone and iPad. However upon close inspection it was certainly an iPhone sized game with the x2 button. The reason it looked so sharp and clear was that the game had been designed for the new “retina” display for the iPhone 4 and as a result the game which was designed for the 960×640 resolution of the iPhone 4 looks fine and dandy on the 1024×768 resolution of the larger iPad. So even if you don’t have an iPhone 4, the new versions of iPhone only applications, designed to work with the “retina” display of the iPhone 4 now look really quite good on the iPad.

So what of Cat Physics itself?

Well I actually really enjoyed the game. It works well as an iPad or iPhone game in that each level can be completed in the few minutes that you find you have for these kinds of casual games. The five minutes before your TV programme starts. Whilst the adverts are on before the film at the cinema. The few minutes waiting for that train or tube. Part of the success of the iPhone has to be down to the casual gaming potential of the device, Angry Birds is a prime example of how people are using their phones.

There are (at the time of writing) eighty levels of varying complexity in Cat Physics, each requires a modicum of skill in working out both the puzzle behind each level, but also the physics of how the ball will travel on the screen.

It’s an enjoyable game and at 59p is certainly worth buying, check it out.

facebook, flickr, twitter

Top Ten Web Tools of 2010

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This is the third time I have posted my top ten web tools, I did the same in 2008 and 2009.

So what else did I use, but didn’t make the list.

Feedburner is a great tool for keeping track of my podcast feed, but that’s all I use it for and not much else.

Twitterfeed is another good service for taking RSS feeds and feeding them into Twitter and Facebook, reliable and effective, once configured you rarely need to touch it again.

I do look into Facebook and LinkedIn, but don’t really engage with them, so they aren’t in the list either. I still like Prezi, but still haven’t used it for a live presentation yet….

Though I used Cloudworks a lot in 2009, I actually used it less in 2010 so that didn’t make the top ten again this year.

I am still unsure about the value of Foursquare (and other similar services) so likewise though I am “checking in” a fair bit on Foursquare it isn’t in my top ten.

I use to have strong reservations about Wikipedia, until I realised I used it on almost daily basis. No it’s not my only source, nor is it really an authoritative source, however it is a useful, quick and easy source of information.

Some key services that were in my 2009 list didn’t make the list this year.

I did use Ning a lot in 2010, on an almost daily basis and found it an extremely useful service. Since the summer, when the free version disappeared, I have hardly even noticed it been used and haven’t used it myself at all.

Ustream was another service in the 2009 list, however due to sheer quantity of advertising on the free service, I have stopped using it. I can understand the need for advertising on a free service, but not to the point where people stop using it!

Audioboo would probably have been in the list if I had used it as I planned to for 2010, however I didn’t. Most of my Audioboo recordings were about what Audioboo was and how it could be used. Maybe something to think about for 2011 perhaps?

Shozu was number five in 2008 and number eight in 2009, and it’s not in this year’s list, in the main as I “replaced” my Nokia N95 with a Google Nexus One.

Etherpad is not in this year’s list either, despite the original site going offline, I haven’t again used it that much in comparison to the other tools and services in the list. The fact that Google Docs now encompasses live collaborative editing, also means I am using Etherpad less.

This is an e-learning blog and I should really mention Moodle, I use Moodle everyday as part of my day job, however I see this more as an institutional service rather than a web tool.

Anyway onto the top ten for 2010.

10. Slideshare

I did use Slideshare a lot more in 2010, not just for uploading my own presentations, but also for viewing other people’s. It was this dual purpose that took Slideshare into my top ten tools.

9. Delicious

Though I have used Delicious for years, in 2010 I used it a lot more for both storing and sharing links.

One of the reasons for using it more was integrating the feed into my GCILT Twitter account via Twitterfeed. As a result not only was I saving my bookmarks I was also sharing them via Twitter. I did consider adding one of the many Twitter tools that allow you to share links you find on Twitter automatically to Delicious, but as yet have not made that leap.

Despite the possibility that Delicious will be no more in 2011, the export function has allowed me to both back up my links but also import them into Diijo.

8. TinyGrab

For sharing screengrabs on Twitter or Facebook, I have found TinyGrab to be a great tool. Press a couple of keypresses and the app captures and uploads the screengrab to a server before passing over the URL to your clipboard. I have found this a great app for sharing what I am seeing, dialogue boxes, etc…

7. Evernote

Despite using Google Docs a lot, I still find a need and room to use Evernote. The reasons are varied, but the main ones I can think of are the mobile applications on the iPhone and the iPad and the organisation of my notes on the Evernote platform. I like the fact I can take photographs and make audio recordings as notes too.

6. Instagram

I did wonder about Instagram when I first used it, though the more I use it the more I like it. This interesting iPhone App and service allows you to take photographs with your iPhone (or use a photo in your library), apply a filter and then upload them to a website. It can also post links to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Foursquare and other sites..

Unlike other photo apps on the iPhone though, Instagram is also a kind of photo social network too. Within the app you can follow other people and see their photos, you can be followed. You can view a feed of photographs, you can comment and “like” photographs. There is a feed of popular photographs and some of these are really good.

The fact that is an iPhone centric social network has both its upsides and downsides.

5. Posterous

Though WordPress is my main blogging platform, there is something I do like about Posterous. The fact that I can just e-mail updates andall the hard work is done by Posterous is so nice.

I can attach images, audio recordings or video files and Posterous will very nicely encode and add them as Flash playable objects in my blog posts.

Posterous also added some really nice new themes this year making my blog much more personalised and individual.

From a learning perspective it has a lot of potential and everyone I demonstrated it too, could also see that potential.

If I wasn’t using WordPress I would use Posterous.

4. Google Docs

The main way I use Google Docs is to write a document that I know I will be working from on multiple computers. Now I know I could use a USB stick, but it assumes I have the same application on all machines, which is not always the case. For example my work machines have Office 2003, fine, but my Mac has Office 2008 (the newer version), my home Mac only has Pages, my Samsung Q1 only has Open Office as does the Asus EeePC. Sometimes the PC is running Office 2007. Using Google Docs allows me to have a single copy of a document, share that document and export or print in variety of formats. For example I can download my document as a PDF. I have used Google Docs many times throughout 2010 to work on documents with other people from across the world and that has proved how useful this service is to me. This collaborative way of working with documents is so much better and easier than sending multiple versions of Word documents about by e-mail.

Learners will find that using Google Docs as the service to use in writing their assignments (especially group assignments) will avoid the headaches of different versions of Word, losing USB sticks, inability to access network drives from outside college, etc, etc…

3. Flickr

I have over 3500 photographs on Flickr covering a range of topics and events. From an events perspective I think Flickr adds so much more to an event. It can capture the event in ways that can’t be caught in any other way. Flickr is not only a great way of storing photographs, also a great place to find photographs, and many images on this blog are from photos from Flickr which are creative commons licensed to allow me to use them on the blog.

2. WordPress

This blog is powered by WordPress and this year I moved from WordPress.com to a self-hosted version of WordPress. However I still have a WordPress account that I pay for ugprades for allowing me to use video on Videopress and domain mapping so links on the old blog map to the new one.

I like Videopress for the ease of use, ability to use HD, unlimited length (within upload limit) and the quality of encoding. The VLE is Dead is one such movie, I don’t think could have worked on any other video hosting service without incurring either lots of costs or lots of adverts.

For blogging there is a combination of familiarity and ease of use that makes WordPress my number two web tool of 2010.

1. Twitter

For the second year running, Twitter is my number one top web tool.

I usually access Twitter via Osfoora on the iPhone and the HD version of Osfoora for the iPad. On my computer I will generally use the web interface.

I am not really a Facebook user even though I do have an account, the same can be said for LinkedIn. These two social networks are very popular with people in my community, however I find Twitter is my preferred tool for engaging with them.

So what do I get from Twitter?

Well the key thing is a community of practice from which I can get curated and useful information from. I can ask them questions and offer points of discussion to see what they think. I also find it a useful source of news and links, much easier in some respects than RSS feeds, a more personalised approach.

So why do I use Twitter?

I post lots of stuff to Twitter, yes I do feed into Twitter posts from my blog, photos from Instagram and other stuff. This is stuff I do want to share with my community and my view is that if you don’t like this then don’t follow me. However I do try and keep my posting of links to my stuff to a minimum, I try whenever possible to only post links to my blog only once to my Twitter stream. I know that this means people may miss that link, but I also know that clicking on links to blog posts I have already read are annoying. One of the key points

I made this year was that it isn’t necessary to read all the tweets I post, nor everyone else’s. It’s the same with RSS feeds.

But Twitter is not just a broadcast medium, a key part of Twitter is the conversation and I have discussed this many times before, I do think Twitter is about the coffee.

Twitter is a key tool for me with the conversations I have with my fellow learning technologists, e-learning specialists and library professionals.

So that’s my top ten tools of 2010. Are your favourite tools in my top ten? What am I missing?

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