We have been looking at e-Books for a while now, but of course we currently don’t have anything except computers (and mobile devices) to read them with.
Here in the UK we are unable to get Amazon’s Kindle
I have previously mentioned Sony’s e-Book Reader before, Mobile Tech Review have a review of the new PRS-700 model.
I am in the process of ordering some for work, so will let you know how I get on when it arrives.
I do think that the speed of technological change (very much in mobile and Web 2.0 areas) does move very fast. I wonder if we as institutions have the skills and knowledge to determine if something is suitable? Even if we decide it is not suitable, how do we know that it won’t be in a year, or even a few months.
A good example is the iPod touch.
When it first came out, it was basically a media and web device.
You probably would determine it wasn’t suitable.
Then they released firmware 2.0 and you could have applications, lots of applications.
Some of them are quite good and some are even useful.
Other technologies which fit in here are things like Google Docs, Evernote, Twitter…
We as institutions do not need to focus on the technologies, but on the ability as e-enabled institutions to be able to be responsive and flexible as our learners start to use new technologies.
I do think with the ways in which society is changing and embedding technologies, staff are changing as well.
How many people now have a sat-nav for example? I recall the days when I use to get the road atlas out and plan a journey (if I had the time, otherwise it was atlas on the knees and avoid driving into things).
I remember impressing my wife, playing the Matrix on my iPAQ using an IBM Microdrive CF card in the car during a massive traffic jam at night on the M5 back in 2001. People kept staring into the car wondering what the flickering light was. Of course today, the back seats of most cars rival most front rooms with consoles, DVD players, Digital TV, etc…
Staff are now use to using technology and should be more enthusiastic about using it for enhancing and enriching learning. So what’s stopping the enthusiasm, is it curriculum delivery, curriculum structures, assessment, inspection frameworks, etc…
Launch of Great War Archive
Oxford University is marked the 90th anniversary of Armistice Day by launching two new, free to access websites, thanks to funding from the JISC digitisation programme. These resources will allow educators, scholars and the public to view previously unseen memorabilia and poetry from World War I.
The ‘Great War Archive’ and the ‘First World War Poetry Archive’ bring together 13,500 digital images of items mainly of rare primary source material.
Many items submitted to the ‘Great War Archive’ by members of the public are treasured family heirlooms which have never been on public display.
Items include:
The Great War Archive complements Oxford University’s First World War Poetry Digital Archive which will enable online users to view previously unseen materials such as poetry manuscripts and original diary entries from some of the conflict’s most important poets. It builds on Oxford University’s extensive Wilfred Owen Archive.
Oxford University’s Project Leader, Kate Lindsay, said: “The Great War is arguably the most resonant period in modern British history. The memorabilia and poetry archives will provide easy access to an unrivalled collection of material which will be of use to anyone interested in getting closer to this world-changing conflict.”
Author and academic Vivien Noakes, added: “Each of the items submitted to The Great War Archive tells a personal and, often very poignant, story. The archive provides a myriad of windows into the period – the Great War in microcosm. Access to this material can only enhance our understanding of what it was like actually to live through these momentous times.”
The website has been made possible through the JISC Digitisation Programme which will see a wide range of heritage and scholarly resources of national importance shared with new audiences.
Picture source.
The LSN have released the full list of MoLeNET 2 projects.
In the end they have selected 30 projects for phase 2 and the lead colleges are:
Accrington and Rossendale College
Ashton Sixth Form College
Aylesbury College
Bolton Community College
Bridgewater College
Capel Manor College
Chichester College
College of West Anglia
Cornwall College
Ealing Hammersmith and West London College
Exeter College
Gloucestershire College
Grimsby Institute of FHE
Hastings College
Joseph Priestley College
Leeds College of Art & Design
Ludlow College
Manchester College
Moulton College
Redbridge College
Reigate Sixth Form College
Sheffield College
South Thames College
St Helens College
Stoke on Trent College
Tower Hamlets College
Trafford College
Truro College
Walsall College
Wirral Metropolitan College
Though e-Books have been around for a while I found this article from The Register interesting.
A London school’s pencilled in plans to ditch old-style textbooks because it wants pupils to swot up using mobile phones instead.
The Hackney City Academy, which is due to open in September 2009, plans to put PDF copies of its textbooks onto its intranet, from where pupils can access the books directly from their handsets or laptops. Pupils can then save content and read it as and when they wish.
Now though I am an e-learning person I am not an e-learning fanatic!
In less than ten years every book that has ever been published will be available online to borrow for free (probably).
Even if this is the case I know I will still read books.
Books did not kill the spoken word. Radio did not destroy books. Television has not seen the demise of radio. The Web has not crumbled television.
e-Resources won’t replace printed resources they will add and enhance them.
For news for example: I still read newspapers, I still listen to the Today programme on Radio 4, I watch BBC News on the TV, I look at the websites of traditional broadcast media for news, I read and subscribe to blogs, and I also find out about news via Twitter.
I still read books.
Picture source.
Would you believe that three billion photographs have been uploaded to Flickr? And not all by me!
Impressive.
Then you hear that Facebook has had ten billion photographs uploaded.
For me this shows the huge potential of these online sites for finding out about places and stuff.
Look at the search results for Gloucester for example. Want to find out what a place looks like? Need to know about a piece of technology? With three billion photographs you will probably find it. As photographs are tagged, it is possible to find images very quickly as unlike putting photographs into a single category, tagging allows it to be placed in multiple categories. These images have been tagged with Gloucester.
Flickr also has the potential to be faster than news sites for images.
I saw pictures of a gas explosion in Bath on Flickr, before the news had even made the BBC. The pier fire in Weston-super-Mare was also captured on Flickr.
Also what is nice with Flickr is that a lot of people (including me) licence our photographs under Creative Commons which means that you and your learners can use them (legally) in presentations and teaching and learning. Now unlike Google Image Search which (though indexes Flickr) most of the images found there, are either copyrighted or too small. A lot of images on Flickr are at full resolution, which work well not just in PowerPoint but also for printing.
Another feature of Flickr is the community and social networking side. You can comment on people’s photographs and in some cases add notes.
If you haven’t checked Flickr out, have a look.
This is the sixth e-Learning Stuff Podcast, You say Asus and I say Asus…
[audio:http://elearningstuff.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/elearningstuff006.mp3]Download the podcast in mp3 format: You say Asus and I say Asus…
Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes.
In this show, James is joined by Nick Jeans, Kev Hickey, Dave Foord, David Sugden and Lisa Valentine.
The discussion starts off looking at the role of the Asus EeePC and other netbooks on e-learning on colleges across the UK. The discussion also looks at the variety of presentation software now available from PowerPoint to Keynote, Open Office to Google Docs. Then there is other stuff as well…
Shownotes
Photo source.
Well the number of visits to the blog has gone past 50,000.
Yay!
I have to admit I was expecting to pass the 50,000 mark back in September, but after a quiet summer the number of visits dropped off quite fast and it’s only now that I am getting the traffic levels back up.
Since the blog started (again, well I did have a WCC blog) I have started to add a lot more video and audio.
Over the next few months, the podcasting should become a regular feature and after my experiences doing the JISC e-Learning Online Conference I hope to do a lot more video.
So that’s 50,000 visits, here’s to the next 50,0000.
This week I am blogging at the JISC Online Conference. At an online conference it’s almost given that you will be using a computer, maybe even a laptop!
What about at a non-online conference? Do you now pack your laptop, extra battery, power cable? Or do you use a PDA, an iPod touch to make notes? Or do you still prefer to use that trusty old pen and paper?
I remember the first time I took a wireless laptop to a conference (a JISC programmes meeting as it happens) and the hotel had wireless access and I had a wireless laptop. Some of the older people out there may remember a time when laptops did not come with wifi cards as standard.
It was a real enabler.
When a link was shown, I could there and then check the site out, add it to my bookmarks, or ignore it.
Whereas before I would scribble it down and try and remember to check it out later which would take up time – and there is never enough time. Often I would forget to check it out, or lose the piece of paper.
If someone said something I didn’t understand or couldn’t remember, a quick internet search saved me having to ask a question. I could remind myself of previous projects, previous presentations.
Today I will use Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter or Jaiku to correspond with remote colleagues and ask them the questions the presenters are asking me. Sometimes with interesting results. I will also blog about the keynote or presentation too.
Having said all that, I will also admit that at some conferences I will with my laptop check out my e-mail or check a few websites, usually during a conference keynote. Though I will also take notes or scribble actions.
This is more down to the conference speech being either not applicable or totally boring! You will know what I mean, some keynotes deserve to be ignored. I remember going to one keynote at a conference and they had a minister speaking who was so obviously reading a prepared speech he pronounced JISC, J I S C (spelling out the letters), rather than JISC (as rhymes with disc). Rather then walk out, I could get on with other things using my laptop.
I think part of the issue is that a lot of conferences are very passive experiences, and we are now all more active learners then we may have been in the past.
At the ALT conference back in 2006, most of the workshops I went to were 90% listening and 10% activity. The conference had a wiki and I think six of us contributed. It didn’t help that there was no wifi and very few places to charge a laptop.
In 2007, ALT-C had good wifi and a good preponderance of bloggers and this was the medium of choice, lots of blogging and lots of contacts made.
This year, Crowdvine (which I had first used at the JISC Conference) was the conference success story (though Twitter had its place too I think).
I am making an assumption that in this year’s online conference we will see a similar level of discussion and debate that has happened in previous years. The depth and breadth of discussion is something that you never really see at a non-online conference, well not during the presentation or workshop itself.
What I would like to see during a non-online conference, is an online area to enable further discussion and questions relating to the conference speech or workshop. Just to get a little of the depth of discussion we will see next week.
I tried this out myself at ALT-C at the two workshops I ran, I used a blog and got the workshop participants to blog their experiences and thoughts, it seemed to work quite well. Made life easier for me as in my Web 2.0 workshop there were about seventy delegates…
I have read that this hasn’t always worked when tried, but if there was full and proper wireless access and online delegates as well as attending delegates this could enable more discussion and debate.
Finally at any e-learning or learning technology conference would you believe that there are still people who object to delegates using their laptops during keynotes and presentations? The main complaint that was given was lack of attention and the noise of typing. At any other conference I would expect that kind of attitude, at an e-learning conference I expect everyone to be connected, either via their laptop or mobile device.
What do you think?
This article from the Guardian made me smile.
There are many good reasons for not having your boss as a Facebook friend, and Sydney call centre worker Kyle Doyle has just discovered the most convincing of them all.