100 ways, vle

100 ways to use a VLE – #20 Providing library information

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One of the more traditional ways of providing information about the library is in the course handbook, via a poster or on the college website.

The VLE is one more way of providing learners with information on the library. Though with the extra tools and functionality that the VLE brings, the learners won’t only be able to access information on the library, but also engage with the library and library staff.

It’s not just about having information about when the library opens, services available, computer bookings, rules and regulations…

It’s not just about having lists of e-resources and links available…

Nor an electronic guide to the books, journals and newspapers that learners can borrow and read.

It’s not just about embedding library systems such as Heritage (or similar) so that learners can check their loans or reserve books.

A VLE has a lot more functionality, and library teams should really make use of that to ensure that the

Remember with a VLE that information can be video, or audio, or a virtual tour!

A VLE can have a discussion forum, a place for learners to seek help and ask questions.

A VLE can have quizzes; an induction quiz for example, or a questionnaire to solicit feedback from learners on how they are (or are not) using the library.

A VLE can be used for virtual inductions, reader development progammes, study skills, information skills, reading skills and other short courses or workshop sessions.

Curriculum teams will also be able to embed or links from the library into their courses, ensuring that the library and its wealth of resources are easily available to the learners on the course. Generally if learners use resources from the library (guided by their teacher) in addition to teacher provided resources they are not only more like to achieve on their course of study, but will gain higher grades or marks.

The VLE is not an obvious place for many library staff, but it makes sense to use it to support the core library function. In the same way that the VLE is often used as a supplement to the physical learning environment, the librar,y which is often a key area in the physical learning environment, to not have a similar area on the VLE would be depriving learners of an effective resource to enhance their learning.

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Microsoft’s Android App

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The BBC News reports on Microsoft’s Android App.

Microsoft has made an application that works with Google’s Android phone.

Called Tag, the free software uses a handset’s camera to turn it into a mobile barcode reader.

You can read more about this on the Microsoft Tag Blog.

Last year in January I wrote a blog post about Microsoft Tag.

Back then I said…

Yes Microsoft have developed their own version of mobile phone barcodes, which require their reader and require you to register in order to create them.

It’s all very typical Microsoft.

I concluded back then

Overall I am not sure about this, not sure if it will catch on or whether we should stick with QR Codes.

Nah, stick with QR Codes.

Since then I think I have seen one instance of a Microsoft Tag.

However having said that I haven’t seen many QR Codes in the wild either…

Question is, do mobile phone barcodes have a future, or is augmented reality the real future of mobile phones?

It is interesting that Microsoft have made an App for Android, though they also have readers for Windows Mobile, J2ME, iPhone, Blackberry and Symbian S60 phones, so maybe it isn’t too much of a surprise.

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When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

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This was an interesting article from Wired about the development and start of the humble Flip camera. I am not a great fan of the Flip camera; I much prefer more sophisticated video cameras. As it says in the Wired article:

The stripped-down camcorder had lots of downsides. It captured relatively low-quality 640 x 480 footage at a time when Sony, Panasonic, and Canon were launching camcorders capable of recording in 1080 hi-def. It had a minuscule viewing screen, no color-adjustment features, and only the most rudimentary controls. It didn’t even have an optical zoom.

You would have thought such a “rubbish” specifcation would mean that this camera wouldn’t sell.

Within a few months, Pure Digital (the makers of Flip) could barely keep up with orders. Customers found that the Flip was the perfect way to get homebrew videos onto the suddenly flourishing YouTube, and the camera became a megahit, selling more than 1 million units in its first year.

Just shows that though I might like decent high quality gear, the market prefers what Wired calls good enough technology.

This same preference is probably what also accounted for the growth of the netbook, another good enough technology.

Now having said I want a decent camera and a decent laptop, when it comes to software… well I don’t need Microsoft Office, for most things good enough Google Docs is just fine for me. I have noticed over the last couple of years that I am using more and more web tools. Why?

Web tools are succeeding because they’re Good Enough.

Yes I can use Photoshop or Fireworks for image editing (and I do) but for some image editing I have been using Picnik for some simple photo editing, as it is good enough. I use it in the main for images taken with my phone, which are good enough!

Wired says that the reason why I and others are happy with good enough is for the following:

The attributes that now matter most all fall under the rubric of accessibility. Thanks to the speed and connectivity of the digital age, we’ve stopped fussing over pixel counts, sample rates, and feature lists. Instead, we’re now focused on three things: ease of use, continuous availability, and low price.

You have to wonder if education will now follow a similar path?

Will our learners no longer worry about many of the best features of educational institutions, but start to look at learning experiences that fit in with their busy social and online lives, is available at a time and place to suit the learner and will be cost effective?

Enhanced learning experience using a range of technologies, online services and third party Web 2.0 tools and services can improve the learner experience, but does it need to be complicated and expensive? Sometimes cheap and simple is just fine.

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Becta Technology Exemplar Network Mini-Network Event

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Today is our Becta Technology Exemplar Network Mini-Network Event (that’s a bit of a mouthful).

So what does that mean in English?

Well…

Gloucestershire College is one of sixteen education and skills providers from across England to have been granted Technology Exemplar Network status

The Technology Exemplar Network is designed to help colleges and other learning providers use technology more effectively.

The Technology Exemplar Network was launched in 2008 with ten members and is jointly led by government technology agency Becta and the Learning and Skills Council. It works to share best practice for using technology between different learning providers across the country.

Gloucestershire College was chosen because of our work in mobile learning (the MoLeNET projects for example) and Stars and Stripes, a record system we use with our learners to improve retention and achievement.

There are nine other FE Colleges in our mini-network who are termed participating providers.

The concept of the network is to cascading that experience and expertise to their colleagues in the network.

During this event the Exemplar should ensure that mini-network members discuss their requirements for participation. This will enable the Exemplar to develop a suitable programme of network engagement activities going forwards.  These may include on-line collaboration opportunities, on-line conferences/events, provider site visits and further face to face meetings and events. This programme of activity will take place from January 2010 to July 2010.

I personally think it is a little more than just Gloucestershire College saying “this is how good we are and this is how it’s done”. For me the mini-network is an opportunity for FE providers to work together to share and collaborate to ensure that they use technology more effectively.

We will be using an unconference open format for the event, this is to maximise discussion and networking and minimise didactic transmission of information.

Should be interesting.

Twitter tag is #bectaten

app of the week, iphone

Comic Touch – iPhone App of the Week

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Comic Touch – iPhone App of the Week

This is a regular feature of the blog looking at the various iPhone 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 also work on the iPod touch.

This week’s App is Comic Touch.

Update: App has been updated to Comic Touch 2, which is free.

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Make your photos come alive by giving them the Comic Touch. Add balloons to give your subjects thoughts and words. Add captions to describe the scene or give the photo a title.

Use the PhotoBooth-style warping effects to add some fun. Turn people into caricatures of themselves or give them bizarre expressions. Endless fun!

Share your creations via email or save them back to the Photo Library for even more sharing options.

£1.79 and a free Lite version

To be honest the iPhone is not really the best tool for working with images and graphics (no mouse or pen) however there are plenty of image manipulation and graphical applications in the App store.

I am a fan of Comic Life from Plasq and have used it quite a few times to create comics to support training. Plasq have produced an app for the iPhone that does something similar but for images (or photographs) on the iPhone.

You can take an existing image or even better take a photograph, and then comicfy it!

You can add a caption, speech bubbles, enhance the image and then save the image, e-mail it, or upload it.

What makes this work over some other comic apps on the App Store is that it is a simple app, there are other comic apps available with more features, and I will cover some of these in a later posting.

One of the advantages of this App is that you can create comics on the fly on the phone. You don’t need to worry about booting up a computer or having the right app on the right computer, etc… you can take the image with the camera, comicfy it, and then share it. This is what makes Comic Touch (and other similar apps) such a powerful tool.

So you don’t want to pay £1.79 then there is a lite version that is free Comic Touch Lite.

The main difference is in the free version all the comics you make have a Comic Touch watermark.

So why would you use comics to enhance learning?

Comics can be used in many different ways to enhance and enrich learning activites, as well as other processes in the college. Think of it as just another medium to get a message across to learners.

  • Rather than have a written list of instructions for a particular activity, create a comic that as well as text has images that support the explanation of the instructions.
  • Create a comic of how to find help and support in the Library or Learning Resources Centre.
  • Add captions and speech balloons to a photograph to make a informative poster.

Basically to add variety to learning resources and handouts. To catch the interest of learners, engage them with what may be considered boring material. Learners can use the App to create stuff, storyboard videos, posters, etc….

Update: App has been updated to Comic Touch 2, which is free.

e-book, ipad, m-learning, social networking, web 2.0

So what of the future?

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Can you predict the future?

Do you know what life will be like next year, in five years, in ten years?

Over the last year or so I have been doing a few keynotes and presentations entitled the future of learning. I do start with a caveat that I don’t know the future for sure and that no one can really predict the future…

Though as a reflective person I do look back at the work I have been doing on mobile learning and I think there are lessons to be learned about the journey I have travelled.

This is me in 2006 based on work I was doing in 2004 and 2005.


This work came from mobile stuff I was doing back in the late 1990s. Back then I worked for an organisation called at-Bristol, a hands-on science centre in the middle of Bristol.

One of the projects we started working on was with HP looking at how we could use an HP Jornada on our then fledgingly wireless network to allow visitors additional and enhanced information on webpages about the exhibits. One of the key questions at the time was how we got the URLs into the devices at the right place. Then we decided to use HP’s Jetsend IR technology to “squirt” the URL to the Jornada. Of course since then the technologies have moved on and importantly so have the public. Today you would probably let the visitors use their own devices and smartphones. You would use QR codes, Bluetooth or more probably in the future RFID to find out where the visitor was before sending them the information (or letting them access the information via QR codes). If the attraction was outside then GPS could be used. The key though was not the technology but the concept of enhancing a visitor’s experience with additional content through a mobile device.

After leaving at-Bristol and joining the Western Colleges Consortium, I continued to work on mobile learning; at that time there was no funding available.

When I was working on mobile learning all those years ago, the reason was that mobile phones and mobile devices were becoming more sophisticated and more useful to consumers and business. I knew then it would only be a matter of time before they become useful to education and importantly a focus for policy and funding.

And in 2007 along came MoLeNET, millions of pounds of capital funding with a focus on mobile learning in FE.

There is no way that I would call myself a futureologist, but from an FE perspective I am looking at how new technologies can enhance and enrich everyday life, as before long these technologies will enter education.

So the big question is what am I working on now? What do I think will have a real impact in education, not just for learners, but also for funding and projects.

Well I am not working on Second Life or MUVEs. These do have some great application to learning, however until consumers start to use these technologies a lot more, than we won’t see a big change in their use in education.

Social networking and Web 2.0 are very big in the consumer field at the moment, Facebook is everywhere and corporate and entertainment use of these tools is now much more widespread than it was just a year or two ago.

As a result policymakers will start to think about how these tools and services can be used in education. And where thinking starts, funding usually follows…

So what about next year or the year after?

Well for me the “next big thing” is e-Books and e-Book Readers. These will hit the consumer market big time over the next three years. We will see many more people reading books, magazines and newspapers via devices such as the Apple iPad, Microsoft Courier and other devices not yet on the market. More publishers and broadcasters will start to think about how they are going to use these devices and start offering content on them, think of BBC iPlayer and its availability on the iPhone.

As a result policymakers will start to think about how these new technologies can be used in education. And where thinking starts, funding usually follows…

You see at the end of the day, it will not be how these products are used by educators, it’s how they are taken up and used by consumers and business. Whether that is right or wrong, is not really the case, as more often this is how it happens now, and has happened over the last twenty to thirty years, with most technologies.

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Start off using interactive whiteboards

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An Interactive Whiteboard used at even a simple level can mean that you can both save time and enhance learning for learners.

Using the Interactive Whiteboard as you would a normal whiteboard, but adding pages rather than wiping them, and then saving the Interactive Whiteboard session (known as a flipchart for those that use Activboards) before exporting as a PDF and uploading to the VLE, will save time and make it easier for learners.

Learners who wish to go over the lesson again, can very easily comparing what was on the whiteboard with what was on their notes, likewise if they missed a lesson the saved flipchart gives them a good starting point, so if they do come and see you, you don’t need to spend long amounts of time repeating the lesson. From a planning perspective, if the whiteboard session is printed off and placed in the course file then next year it will aid the lesson planning process.

Obviously there is more to Interactive Whiteboards than just this, but this is a useful starting point. Interactive Whiteboards can enable active learning, give more engagement with learners and make for a better session. Try one out soon.

podcast

#036 e-Learning Stuff Podcast: Cultural Change

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With James Clay, Mick Mullane and David Sugden.

It’s not just about the technology, it’s also about the culture of the organisation when it comes to embedding learning technologies and e-learning. Cultural change often needs to happen if there is to be transformation within an educational institutiuon.

This is the thirty sixth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, Cultural Change

Download the podcast in mp3 format: Cultural Change

Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes

Shownotes

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Clipart, bin it, you know it makes sense

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Clipart is often used to allegedly “enhance” learning resources and presentations. You’ve all seen it used somewhere. Clipart is often downloaded from the web or used via Microsoft Office.

I would describe clipart as cliched, stereotypical, ghastly, offensive and just plain bad…. and that’s been nice about it!

So should you be using clipart? Personally speaking and in my opinion, I say no!

I have a preference for photographs and photographic images. I would use a digital camera and take some photographs rather than use some awful clipart. I would prefer to use a photographic image from an image collection rather than use some jokey style clipart.

You can see I don’t really like clipart!

Check the last magazine you purchased, how many articles or adverts used photographs and how many used clipart?

Clipart, bin it, you know it makes sense.

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