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Well I think differently!

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I use to think that the “message” of e-learning could be sold to practitioners.

I use to think that once the “message” was sold that these practitioners would then embrace e-learning and use it to enhance and enrich their teaching and their students’ learning.

I use to think, once sold, that these practitioners would continue to use e-learning as e-learning evolved and changed over the years.

I use to think, that these practitioners would sell the “message” to others in their curriculum area and the cycle would continue.

I know others think this way.

I no longer think this way.

Why?

I no longer think this way because I have seen it tried and used in many different institutions, over many educational sectors, across varied curriculum areas and have never seen a holistic success made of this process, it does not work across a whole institution. For example, in FE we had ILT Champions who would “champion” the use of ILT in their curriculum areas.

So what do I think now?

Well I think differently.

We need to think differently if we are to make the best use of e-learning to meet the challenges (and opportunities) over the next few years.

We can’t continue to do what we have always done, just because we have always done it that way.

My methodology now, is more about changing the culture of an organisation so that when new technologies come along, we see it as an opportunity for enrichment, and not a threat to an existing practice. Learning technologies are there to provide solutions to practical, administrative and pedagogical problems, not to be a problem in their own right waiting to be solved.

Practitioners need to be wanting and able to take advantage of the opportunities and solutions that learning technologies can provide, and not see it as something that is annoying, unsuitable, inappropriate or dangerous.

We need to move away from excuses and obstacles, and move towards opportunities and solutions.

It’s not just about “not enough” staff development and training, it’s about practitioner taking responsibility for their own staff development, to seek out a community of practice, to build on their skills, share, collaborate and move forward. It isn’t enough now to rely on a single staff development day, week or event. Staff development is an activity that happens every day.

Community is important, local, regional, national and even international. Sharing practice, ideas and problems is a way of changing culture. Building communities of practice and personal learning networks should be the responsibility of every practitioner, and no they don’t all need to be based around Twitter!

We need to start thinking differently about how we do things, and not do things just because we have always done them that way. Sometimes we will continue to do it that way, but for the right reasons.

Well I think differently!

Do you?

app of the week, ipad

Molecules – iPad App of the Week

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Molecules – iPad App of the Week

Molecules is an application for viewing three-dimensional renderings of molecules and manipulating them using your fingers. You can rotate the molecules by moving your finger across the display, zoom in or out by using two-finger pinch gestures, or pan the molecule by moving two fingers across the screen at once. Double-tapping on the display lets you switch visualization modes.

New molecules can be downloaded from the RCSB Protein Data Bank (http://www.rcsb.org/pdb), an international repository of biological molecules and their 3-D structures. Molecules can be downloaded directly to your iPhone or iPod touch and stored there for later viewing.

Custom molecular structures can also be downloaded to the device from any publicly available web server. The location of these structures can either be manually specified in the application or custom URLs can be clicked on within Safari or Mail on the device. For more details, please visit our website.

Molecules is a BSD-licensed open source project.

This week’s App is Molecules.

Free

I downloaded this app originally for the iPhone and it obviously still works on that, however since they made it an universal app and it now is native to the iPad, I think it is now more useful and interesting.

Now I am no bio-chemist so I have no real idea if it is useful and interesting from a learning perspective. However it is clever use of the iPad interface and I suspect it could be useful and interesting.

altc2010, e-book, podcast

e-Learning Stuff Podcast #058: Do you like books or do you like reading?

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Recording of the Do you like books or do you like reading? symposium from ALT-C 2010.

This is the fifty eighth e-Learning Stuff Podcast,Do you like books or do you like reading?

Download the podcast in mp3 format: Do you like books or do you like reading?

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes

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Fine, so still no wifi still on the train…

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In May I wrote a blog post about internet access on the train. I talked about how in the past I had used various devices to connect to the internet while travelling on the train. A few weeks after writing the article I upgraded my Nexus One to Froyo 2.2 and now that is my main method of connecting my laptop or iPad to the internet while travelling with First Great Western. In the first article I did say:

One thing I have noticed though is that though my 3G connection from Bristol to London is pretty good, travelling on the Voyager trains from Bristol to Birmingham, the signal is really poor.

I initially thought this was just down to the route, but I have heard that the main issue is the construction of the train and the metallised windows. This basically blocks the 3G signal! So even with a Mifi, nexus one or a dongle it’s difficult to use 3G. One suggestion that I heard from John Popham was to keep the Mifi near the door area and that may mean a better signal.

I did wonder why CrossCountry Trains didn’t put in wifi as you find on the East Coast Main Line services and Virgin Trains Pendolino. Well it appears that providing wifi was part of their Franchise agreement with the Department of Transport. CrossCountry Trains was suppose to have wifi in place by November 11th 2009. They failed to meet this deadline and the revised deadline of the end of January, according to The Telegraph that was published in a recent article.

The service was supposed to be in place by November 11 last year. The company was given until the end of January to install the service, but this date was missed as well.

The response from CrossCountry was

CrossCountry suggested that the growing use of dongles, devices which link computers to the mobile phone network, meant that WiFi was no longer necessary.

Which when you consider the problems of metallised windows is a laughable excuse, more so when CrossCountry also say in that article,

A CrossCountry spokesman said the delay was due to technical difficulties especially on the Voyager trains where the signal needed for WiFi is weakened by the high metallic content in the windows.

Yes it does do that.

However the reason wifi works on other trains is that they put the wifi on the inside of the train and the internet connection on the outside of the train.

CrossCountry said they would provide wifi and so they should provide wifi.

They have now been fined twice and if by September 30th they still haven’t installed wifi then they will be fined again.

My question though is much more, why isn’t there wifi on First Great Western services from the West Country to London and why wasn’t it in their franchise agreement? I travel with First Great Western much more than I do CrossCountry and would really like it if they had wifi.

100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #64 Text

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There are many snazzy ways in which to use a VLE, with video, interactivity, discussion, images, audio and diagrams. Within this wealth of colour and noise we mustn’t forget the impact and power of simple text.

No I am not talking about uploading a Word document either. Most VLEs have the facility to create simple pages with text on them. It is this I am referring to when thinking about using text on the VLE.

A quote.

A poem.

A news article.

The power of the word should never be underestimated and the impact it can have on learners and learning.

altc2008, altc2009, altc2010, altc2011, blog, blogging, conference, twitter

Socially Acceptable

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In a recent blog post I mentioned the impact of Twitter for me at ALT-C.

Overall from my experience, Twitter has really added value to conferences I have attended and made them more joined up and much more a social affair. It has helped to build a real community, especially at ALT-C.

I first went to ALT-C 2003 in Sheffield and to be honest found it quite a souless affair. I didn’t know many people and it was “quite hard” to get to know people without dropping into conversations over coffee, which can be challenging Though there were elements of the conference that were useful and interesting, I decided not to attend ALT-C 2004 even though it was in my own backyard in Exeter.

I did go to Manchester for ALT-C 2005 as we had just done a project for JISC called Fair Enough.

As a result we had a poster and I ran a workshop entitled Copyright Solutions. The workshop was a catalyst for social interaction and as a result I made a fair few new friends. Also having been part of a JISC project and attended programme meetings, events and conferences the circle of people I knew was growing. ALT-C was becoming not just a positive learning experience, but was also becoming a positive social experience too.

Having had a really positive experience of ALT-C I decided I would go to Edinburgh for ALT-C 2006, where I ran a variation of the copyright workshop again and had another poster.

This time, there was an ALT-C Wiki, which sadly due to the demise of jot.com no longer exists. What I do recall of the wiki was that it would allow presenters and delegates to post presentations and discuss them. What was sad was how little it was used by anyone… no one wanted it. With over six hundred delegates only six people contributed. I did put this down to the 1% rule initially. I was also one of the few people blogging the event as well (on my old WCC blog). I was surprised with the fact (and maybe I shouldn’t have been) that six hundred learning technologists were not using the very technology they were presenting on.

However in 2007, things were very different, again not huge numbers, but certainly very different to the year before. ALT-C 2007 in Nottingham was a real sea change for the online interaction and was for me and others the year that blogging changed the way in which we engaged with the conference.

Steve Wheeler it was the first time I really met him was at this conference said

It’s a strange world. The entire ALT-C conference it seems is filled with bloggers. Not only are they blogging about the conference, they are blogging about blogging. The bloggers are even blogging about being blogged about, and blogging about bloggers blogging. Here am I, like an absolute idiot, blogging about the bloggers blogging about bloggers blogging about each other.

Haydn Blackey also said

I know I’m not finished yet, but so far I can reflect that blogging live from conference makes me pay much more attention to speakers than is my common practice.

This is something we might want to think about in regard to Twittering at a conference.

But it was David Bryson who really caught the blogging atmosphere in his blog post and his slideshow.

…wandering around it was interesting to see how glued or involved folks are when working with a computer the common phrase “Do you mind if I use my computer when you are at a table” which we can interpret as something along the lines of “I don’t want to be rude but I am not going to talk to you but commune with my computer” or words to that effect.

The main reason for this I believe was not that people weren’t blogging before, but it was the first time that we had an RSS feed of all the blogs in one feed. This made it much easier to find blog articles on the conference and as a result the bloggers. It did not mean people were hiding behind their laptops, on the contray it resulted in a more social conference.

Importantly and this is why I think ALT-C 2007 was a sea change (and especially a sea change for me) was that these social relationships continued beyond the conference. We continued to blog, talk and meet well after everyone had flown from Edinburgh and were back home.

So when ALT-C 2008 convened in Leeds there was an expectation that there would be more blogging, but it would be more social.

There were though two big key differences between 2007 and 2008, one was the Fringe, F-ALT and the other was Twitter. I had used Twitter at ALT-C 2007 and I think I was probably the only person to do so…

F-ALT added a wonderful new dimension to ALT-C by enhancing and enriching the social side of ALT-C and adding a somewhat serious side to conversations in the bar. It allowed people to engage with others in a way that wasn’t really possible at previous ALT-Cs.

It should be noted that it was at a F-ALT event at ALT-C 2008 that I proclaimed Twitter was dead… well what do I know!

Now just to compare at ALT-C 2010 there were 6697 tweets, in 2008 we had just over 300 tweets! There were only about 40-50 people using Twitter. But it was an influential 40-50 people. As it happens most people at ALT-C 2008 were using either Facebook or the then newly provided Crowdvine service.

Like F-ALT, Twitter allowed people to engage in conversations that otherwise may have happened, but more likely wouldn’t have. Both F-ALT and Twitter allowed ALT-C to become more social, more engaging and more interactive.

ALT-C 2009 in Manchester really gave an opportunity for Twitter to shine and this was apparent in that nearly five thousand Tweets were sent during the conference. Twitter was for ALT-C 2009 what blogs were for ALT-C 2007. At the time 633 people on Twitter used the #altc2009 tag, more than ten times the number of people at ALT-C 2008 and more than the number of delegates. Twitter was starting to allow ALT-C to go beyond the university conference venue and engage the wider community. This use of social networking was not just about enhancing the social and community side of ALT-C but also about social learning. The success of the VLE is Dead debate can be placed fairly at the door of social media in engaging delegates through Twitter, blog posts and YouTube videos.

ALT-C 2010 in Nottingham for me was as much about the formal learning as it was about the social learning. An opportunity to learn both in formal and informal social settings. I was concerned slightly that the use of Twitter by certain people and FALT would be slightly cliquey. However no matter how cliquey people think it is, it is a relatively open clique. This year it was very easy to join in conversations using Twitter and then meet up socially, quite a few people I know has never been part of the ALT-C family (first time at the conference) and are now probably part of the clique.

As Dave White said in his invited talk (let’s just call it a keynote) talked about the eventedness of the physical congregation of people at a lecture or a conference. It is more than just what is been presented it is the fact that we are all together physically in the same place. I suspect a fair few of us could recreate that kind of social aspect online and I have seen this at the JISC Online Conferences (another one this autumn) but for many delegates it is way too challenging.

There is something very social about meeting up for something like ALT-C and even in these difficult times I hope we can continue to do so. Here’s to ALT-C 2011.

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New Twitter

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Twitter is going to change….

Will be interesting to see if it makes a difference to how I use Twitter. Unlike many others when off my iPhone or iPad I do use the web interface. Though using the iPad more and more now means Osfoora is probably my main method of accessing Twitter.

alt, altc2010, conference, twitter

Twittering at the conference

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ALT-C this year once more brought the use of Twitter at conferences to the fore again and discussions on the value of the back channel.

Last year in November danah boyd delivered a speech at the Web 2.0 Expo and according to her own words:

From my perspective, I did a dreadful job at delivering my message.

If you read the rest of her blog entry you realise that she was having a bad day.

So that happens to us all. However what marked out danah’s bad day was how the Twitter back channel pushed the front channel out of the way, as danah says in her blog:

The Twitter stream had become the center of attention, not the speaker. Not me.

The internal audience started to use Twitter to not just comment on the speech, but also to attack the way in which danah was presenting, these attacks then became personal. Where this process was exacerbated was there was a live Twitter stream on a screen in the room.

You can see for yourself how she did in this video.

Having heard danah speak before I didn’t think it was that bad and certainly not as bad as the back channel decided it was.

So you can imagine my hesitation when a few weeks later I was delivering a keynote at ASCILITE 09 in Auckland. I had planned to use a Twitterwall and use KeynoteTweet, an Applescript which in conjunction with Keynote will automatically send tweets as slides appear.

In the auditorium there were two projectors, one would have my slides upon them, whilst the other would have Twitterfall showing all the #ascilite09 tweets. Twitterfall worked well, with a fair few people in the UK and elsewhere following the tweets from my keynote.

Of course having read about danah’s experiences I was concerned about having a live Twitter feed in your presentation, especially when it is behind you. However looking over the stream of Tweets it would appear everything went fine. This year I have given more presentations and where there is room I do try and have a live Twitter stream available.

Lets fast forward to the first week in September, when I walked into the main auditorium at ALT-C 2010 I was pleasantly surprised to see Twitterfall live on a side screen to the main screen. So when Donald Clark walked onto the stage I was looking forward to the keynote and the back channel discussion on Twitter. So I was equally surprised when as the keynote started, the Twitterfall screen “disappeared”. I noted my disappointment in a tweet.


In hindsight some may think it was probably wise of ALT not to have the live Twitterwall behind Donald considering what the back channel was saying about his keynote. Though we must remember that though the back channel is not on display, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. During the final plenary session at ALT-C we did have the Twitterwall on display and as we listened to the panels of speakers we could see what the audience thought floating down behind them.

During this session, @AJCann asked

OK, who in the room finds the Twitterfall distracting and would like it turned off? Vote now.


It was pointed out that this tweet would only reach the Twitter audience… so a vote was asked for in the hall.

Great to see overwhelming vote for Twitterfall ON from the hall

In the end it was felt by the delegates in the room that the Twitterfall added value to the session.

Now not everyone thinks that is the case all the time:

Seb Schmoller in a blog post says:

My experience at this year’s ALT conference has been that the value of the back-channel has varied widely: sometimes it seems to work like a bad feedback loop on a sound system; sometimes it seems to add focus and clarity to a discussion, and to induce productive involvement.

He also said

I’ve got mixed views about the way that Twitter works in these situations. I’m incapable of following a line of argument whilst i) trying to write pithy observations on it, and ii) keeping an eye on what other people using Twitter are writing.

Seb also links to some research and asks whether

…this kind of research evidence show that those who think they can multi-task are, like phone-using drivers, deluding themselves?

I do wonder though if twittering during a keynote or presentation is in fact mult-tasking as eluded in this research.

I would agree if I was watching an episode of the West Wing during an ALT-C keynote then no I would not be able to give my full attention to either. I know I am not paying attention to what is happening during a presentation if I am checking my e-mail or Facebook. However I see twittering during a keynote presentation as a single activity and not multi-tasking. It is in my opinion akin to note taking during a lecture or checking on something said by the presenter in a text book (or online). I will agree it is going to have some kind of impact, but would like to see if the positive outweighs the negative.

You are engaged with the process and engaging with others. The nice thing of course during a keynote is you have the choice if you want to engage, no one is going to mind.

Overall from my experience, Twitter has really added value to conferences I have attended and made them more joined up and much more a social affair. It has helped to build a real community, especially at ALT-C.

app of the week, ipad, iphone, ipod touch

Merck PSE HD – iPhone App of the Week

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Merck PSE HD – 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. Though called iPhone App of the Week, most of these apps will work on the iPod touch or the iPad, some will be iPad only apps.

This week’s App is Merck PSE HD

The “Merck PSE HD” iPad/iPhone application provides detailed information, state-of-the-art functions and an appealing presentation. It offers high-school and university students as well as teachers or professors the opportunity to learn more about the chemical elements – from classification to element features to their history of discovery. The powerful multi-lingual app renders complex contents intuitively comprehensible: the well-structured and concise arrangement of groups and periods, details for every element, intelligent controls, and numerous selection options provide quick access to needed information.

The periodic table of the elements is one of the most important references in chemistry. Here you will find data such as relative atomic mass, melting point and boiling point, density, appearance and additional properties for each individual element.

FREE

If you have the money and the bandwidth then The Elements App is certainly a wonderful example of the potential of the iPad. However it is for the iPad, it costs £9.99 and weighs in at a hefty 1.71GB.

If you are studying chemistry and want quick and easy access to the perodic table then there are other apps in the iTunes Store that fit the bill.

Merck PSE HD is one such App that is only 6.4MB in size, is free and is universal so will work on the iPhone, the iPod touch and the iPad.

It is what you would expect from such an app. It has the full perodic table, information on each of the elements and images of the elements.

These kinds of simple apps in my opinion is what makes the iPod touch work with learners, quickly and easily access information without needing to boot up the computer, open the laptop or find that specific site using a browser.

alt, altc2010, altc2011

Conference Formatting

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So I have spent a week in Nottingham at ALT-C that is in many ways a traditional academic style conference. We had keynotes and invited speakers, papers short and long, symposia with panels and workshops.

The focus of ALT-C as I see it is very much about bringing together a community to share practice, network and move one’s own learning forward. I do enjoy the conference and learn a lot from it. It’s great to network, discuss, debate and share with other learning technologists from around the country (and the rest of the world).

I have never seen ALT-C as the type of innovating conference that will “call for change” or move the whole learning technology agenda forward. The format as it stands just doesn’t allow for that. For example ALT-C 2011 is just under a year away, however we already know the theme, who the keynote speakers are and who the chairs of the conference will be. The process of speaking at ALT-C 2011 will be finalised in about five months time on the 14th of February when the deadline for proposals for inclusion is closed.

In the past or for other areas this is probably fine and dandy, but for ALT-C it does mean that newer technologies are not even mentioned.

For example nowhere at the conference was a huge deal made of Apple’s new iPad or any of the forthcoming Android tablets. Then again you could say why should there be, they haven’t been used for any length of time and therefore there are no results or research done yet.

Once you understand that ALT-C is not about innovation or new shiny things, but is about practice, research and outcomes the less disappointed you will be about what you see at the conference.

Though this is no excuse for poor presentation skills. I know that the ALT team try really hard to get presenters to be more effective, they produce excellent guides, tips and advice; but still now and again with people’s lack of confidence in themselves we see slides and slides of bullet points. I do think presenters sometimes forget that the idea of a short paper presentation is to either inspire people to read the short paper in more detail or to undertake further reading, or as an opportunity to allow questions to be asked of the short paper. The presentation is not there to provide your audience with lots of bullet points, explanatory notes on methodology or the inside leg measurement of the lead researcher.

If you want innovation, ideas, cutting edge, then to be honest you are not going to find them at ALT-C. So where do you go?

Well ULCC’s FOTE 10 one day conference this year does allow for this kind of radical thought, innovative ideas and inspiring new practices.

So does ALT-C need to change?

Paul Lowe in his recent blog post says

But the overriding feeling for me at my first ALT-C was a sense of nagging disappointment that despite being populated with over 400 of the best practitioners of learning technology around today, what did we actually achieve in concrete terms, what artefact, statement, decision, conclusion or prediction did we build?

Though I agree with Paul in the essence of what he says, we need to remember that the focus of ALT-C in my opinion is not (despite even what it says on the advertising literature) that. It is about Learning Technologists reporting on what they are doing in their institutions, probably based on work they started planning two or even three years ago! ALT-C is not about the future it’s about the past.

Also with the date of ALT-C the same time as one of the busiest weeks of the year for FE we saw FE under-represented at the conference and much of the energy and innovation we do see in FE wasn’t going to be discovered at this year’s ALT-C. The other aspect of that is the proposal submission process does not allow or reflect the actual work and stuff that happens in FE.

Paul continues…

I had expected something much more creative and collaborative, along the lines of the unconference idea or barcamp for example.

I would like to see an unconference stream at ALT-C, the challenge is to get people to attend that stream. At one of the Handheld Learning conferences, they did try that, but it was surprising how few people wanted to be involved in those sessions. It’s not to say there isn’t the demand for ad hoc stuff, at this year’s ALT-C I discussed with various people the merits of Elgato’s EyeTV and Apple’s iPad as well as cultural change in expanding the use of learning technologies in institutions. All interesting subjects that would fit into a barcamp type stream.

However one of the problems with running a non-traditional conference is that it is then challenging for people to get the funding to attend.

ALT-C works in one sense that people will get the funding to go if they present a paper at the conference, if they can’t present a paper then they can’t get the funding. ALT-C isn’t viable unless it has lots of delegates attending. So the format of the conference is dictated by the fact that in order for it to run, it needs lots of delegates to attend, they will only attend if they are presenting and as a result the conference has to consist of lots of papers and presentations. This is why you get lots of short papers and workshops that are only 60 minutes long.

An unconference stream would be really interesting and useful if run well, however I can’t see people getting the funding to attend to facilitate sessions in that stream as it would not be related to particular projects, research or institutional objectives.

I have run various unconferences in my time and I have had lots of correspondence from people who wanted to attend, but couldn’t because staff development funds weren’t available for travel (the events were free) as there was no concrete objectives or outcomes for the event. Well there were, it was just that in order to secure funding it is easier if they can show a programme of keynotes and presentations!

At the end of the day I do think we let ALT-C be ALT-C and try not to change it. To change it to something that is that different probably would result in it not working at all.

The only way to change things, is to instigate that process of change yourself. If we want to see different kinds of innovative events then we need to create these events that produce the results we want to see. We can of course involve ALT, or ALT could even lead that process. I would like ALT to add two more events to their calendar in addition to ALT-C.

Firstly would like to see a conference with an FE focus, one that was less about research on FE practice, but more a showcase of existing FE practice. With the demise of Becta there is now a real vacuum for FE in sharing what they do.

The second conference would be on that focuses on the issues Paul talks about in his blog, on innovation, predictions, new stuff, future stuff. This could be a TED type conference but could instead have an unstructured unconference format. We could have a series of bar camp events that lead into the conference. One of the issues however with the unconference format was mentioned by me on an article I wrote for ALT on the Second ILT Champions informal conference in which I said

I did consider that such an informal approach this may have a possible downside, since what we want to see and discuss might not always correlate with what we need to see and discuss. This is not so much about dictating what should happen, but ensuring that delegates are informed about issues and subjects which they may have not have previously considered fully or dismissed as irrelevant.

So it is important that we not only have an open format, but we consider all the issues. Though who decides on these issues is an important question.

I do expect that ALT-C 2011 will take place in Leeds next September. I am hoping to attend, though with the budget cuts expected this year that is no certainty. Will there be an ALT-C 2012? I hope so.

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