The Journey to Information

December 3, 2013 James Clay 1 Comment

One of the benefits of the internet revolution is that is has widened access to information and knowledge, whilst at the same time reduced the time it takes, the journey to get that information.

The newspaper pictured above is available to any learner (or member of staff) across Activate Learning anytime, and anywhere they have an internet connection.

Forty years ago, if you wanted to access a newspaper archive you would probably needed to have been a PhD student or more likely an academic, as the only place you could go was to the newspaper offices and access their archives.

Twenty years ago, newspaper archives were available on microfilm, I remember when I was at university ploughing through the microfilm archives trying to find a series of articles. There was no integrated search with microfilm.

Ten years ago we were all accessing newspaper archives on CD-ROMs. These opened up access to the said archives to schools and colleges. They were searchable by keyword, but could only be accessed inside the institution. It was also restricted, as we only had one CD-ROM to one person at a time. Not all newspapers were on CD-ROM and generally the collections only went back a few years.

Today we have newspapers, digitised, searchable and accessible from any device with an internet connection. We have archives that go back hundreds of years or as recent as yesterday.

This has made it much easier to access newspaper archives, but brings with it the challenge of managing information overload. Learners need different skills to manage the amount and ease by which information can be accessed. The information skills needed today are very different to those of a few years ago.

It also means that we need to rethink assessment, ensuring that it is doing what we need it to do. In many ways the journey to information was in the past a way of assessing learning. However now that the journey is so much shorter, we need to ensure that assessment is based on understanding and not just discovery of information. Using something like Bloom’s Taxonomy ensures that when designing assessment it is more than just discovering knowledge.

The internet and web have ensured that the journey to information and knowledge has got shorter and shorter over time, this is a real opportunity to add depth and breadth to learning.

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Webinaring it

November 27, 2013 James Clay 1 Comment

Webinars are quite popular these days, they allow multiple participants to gather and learn about stuff. They are in many ways a virtual classroom.

Unlike tools such as Moodle which allow for (mostly) asynchronous learning activities, the core of a webinar is that the learning is synchronous; everyone is online at the same time, all doing the same stuff.

It is possible to use other tools such as Google Hangouts or Skype for a small scale experience, but professional webinar tools such as Adobe Connect or Blackboard Collaborate allow many more participants and offer much more functionality, as well as recording facilities.

Webinars allow for:

Live Video
Recorded Video
Video Conferencing
Presentations
Whiteboards
Collaboration
Quizzes
Polls
Breakout Rooms
Simulations
Learning Objects

These tools allow teachers to design their curriculum to be delivered to a range of remote participants on a device of their choosing, regardless of connection or location. I have seen people use iPads, Android phones, as well as laptops and PCs, to access webinars.

In many ways a webinar should not be seen as a replacement for a classroom session, though it in many ways does replicate such sessions virtually, it should really be seen as a solution to not having a session.

Webinars can be used occasionally, useful for guest speakers or across campuses. They can also be used as a core part of the delivery of a blended delivery programme. From a curriculum design perspective, webinar tools (alongside tools such as Moodle and Google+) allow you to deliver a blended curriculum to learners who may not be able to access a traditional learning environment on a regular basis. For example imagine a course where the learners attend once a month at the campus, but meet weekly in a webinar, and have additional support and materials delivered through the VLE (Moodle), whilst using a closed Google+ community for collaborative activities, sharing, discussion and peer support.

Webinars are a great tool for widening participation, inclusion and increasing accessibility.

I have been delivering webinars for many years, sometime to small groups or individuals, and also to over a hundred delegates at an online conference. I have used a range of different webinar technologies, and understand the advantages and challenges of the different tools, both from the perspective of a presenter (host) and a participant.

stuff

It’s not just about the rules…

November 19, 2013 James Clay 1 Comment

At lunchtime today I was at my desk eating a very nice bold cassoulet soup from EAT reading e-mails from the various mailing lists I subscribe to. There was an interesting discussion on one of the lists about how different colleges deal with food and drink in their libraries.

I know from experience and walking around that most staff eat their lunches in their workrooms. I also know when writing or working that I quite like having a cup of coffee or a cake (or two). What this tells us is that most people may want to at some point eat or drink while they work and write. It is not too difficult to understand why learners may want to eat and drink as they study. Of course you may not always be able to accommodate eating and drinking; not everyone likes the smell of food, there is the issue of rubbish and there may be an overarching policy that says no food or drink in learning areas. So it may not be that easy to allow food and drink and that rule has to be in place.

Even if there are rules, these are often ignored so as a result the library staff are spending too much time “policing” the library rather than helping learners. Another strategy is to attempt to change behaviour by putting up signs, but experience says that doesn’t work.

One way that I have been looking at this problem, is by asking why is it a problem in the first place. Rather than ask how to stop students eating and drinking in the library, ask why are they eating and drinking in the first place?

Most colleges are providing some kind of area for eating (where do they buy the food from), why aren’t they staying in those areas to eat or drink, what’s making them move from those areas to the library.

On one campus of my current college, the eating establishments only provide food in takeaway containers, partly I guess to save on washing up and partly I guess to encourage students not to stay (as the spaces are quite small). So guess where the learners go when it is cold (as it is today) a nice warm place, the library. On another campus they use proper “china” and the library doesn’t have the same issue with food and drink. Sometimes the issue is outside the control of the Library and a more holistic approach needs to be thought through.

Conversely why aren’t they using the eating spaces for learning, why do they feel they need to move from the canteen to the library? Why not turn the canteens into libraries? Make them environments for learning.

When I was at my last College our (final) policy was to allow bottled drinks only. We had NO signs about food or drink and to be honest it wasn’t really a problem. I remember when we merged with another college, their library was full of “no food” signs and the library was full of half-eaten food. By changing the culture and the respect that the learners had for the environment, the food issue became a non-issue. The main way it became a non-issue was the respect the students had for the space and the staff. Build relationships with the learners and most issues such as rubbish disappear. I also ensured that the team went around and picked up any rubbish, regardless of the fact that there were bins about. The key was ensuring the environment was tidy and nice, not about getting the students to throw away their rubbish. If the learners see a nice environment they generally like to keep it that way.

Of course there will always be exceptions, but I see food and drink in libraries is more about external factors and respect than just what happens in the library and signs.

flickr

Flickering

November 7, 2013 James Clay 2 Comments

Over the past few years I have delivered many keynotes and presentations. One constant, well apart from the fact I prefer to use Keynote on the Mac, is my use of images. Some of these are mine, but many are creative commons licensed images from Flickr. I like Flickr, not just for a place to upload my photographs, but also as a place to find photographs.

It’s very easy to search for creative commons licensed images on Flickr, but getting to the advanced search is not the easiest route (or if it is I haven’t found it). So I usually add the direct URL as a bookmark or a favourite.

http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/

Make sure you tick the box “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content”.

As you can see from the blog post it is also very easy to embed images from Flickr into Sharepoint, webpages, Moodle pages or Google sites.

There are lots of images on Flickr, this one was used by a Law Lecturer teaching about theft.

I like this one for when I want a group to ask questions.

This one I use for Turnitin and Plagarism.

How are you and your learners using images for learning?

stuff

So do signs work?

October 7, 2013 James Clay Leave a comment

So do signs work? Well yes they do, but often they don’t.

A simple question, what signs work and what ones don’t? On my way to work I often encounter advertising billboards extolling the benefits of cars, soft drinks and others that to be honest I don’t recall. Can you remember all the billboards you saw this morning? Are you the type of person who buys everything you see advertised? No, of course not, advertising is about influence and persuasion, but not enforcement.

Enforcement is different, if you look at speeding enforcement and how speed limits are done, the red circle indicates that the sign needs to be “obeyed”. Ask yourself have you ever exceeded the speed limit, either through a lapse of concentration or because you were in a “hurry”? Or have you ever seen others exceeding the speed limit ignoring the signs.

As a bit of a generalisation, people who read signs prohibiting a kind of behaviour are generally those people who don’t need to read them…

This sign is from a shelter on the promenade in Weston-super-Mare, not sure of the age, but if I was to guess I would say from the 1950s.

I would ask the question, did this sign stop people spitting? It’s not just the assumption that the sign would stop people spitting, but there’s the language and what you can’t see from the photograph is that it was ten feet up, as a result not at eye level. If you think logically about it, if you want to stop people spitting to the ground, why not put the sign on the ground, though I doubt that would work either.

One of the problems with signs that prohibit behaviour is that where do you stop and when do you stop putting up signs. I recall when I asked a learner to stop eating in the library, he asked where was the sign prohibiting food and drink in the library? Now you may think he had a fair point, how would he know what the rules are if they are not displayed?

There are two key issues here, there wasn’t a sign saying “No Cycling” however I think most people that having learners cycling around the library isn’t conducive to others studying in the library. Yes that is a bit of a silly example, no one would cycle in the library, but the key question when you prohibit behaviours where do you draw the line. No drawing or highlighting in the books please. Please do not put chewing gum on the underside of the tables and desks. Should there be a sign saying “No Fighting” as you don’t want learners fighting in the library. Well would such a sign work anyhow?

The issue with having prohibition signs, is where do you draw the line, and where do you stop. You start to have a large number of signs, with an end result of lots of visual clutter and little impact on the behaviour, which you were trying to change in the first place. The problem is exacerbated when you allow different kinds of behaviour in different areas of the library and the only thing demarcating those areas are signs. Suddenly the library becomes a plethora of signage, which has little impact on behaviour, but can have an impact on learning. Visual clutter has a very negative impact on learning, it creates distraction and has a compounded impact on those with visual disorders.

The second key issue was that the learner who was complaining about the sign, had in fact signed a student code of conduct in which it was quite clear that eating or drinking in classrooms and libraries was not allowed. The learner probably either had forgotten, or not taken notice of what they were signing. Ask yourself how many times have you read an EULA for a web service or a piece of software. Even if you do, how much do you remember?

Relying on signage to change behaviour, is a flawed premise. So the important question is how do you change behaviours if you don’t use signs? Well that’s going to be another blog post.

vle

What do we want? Where do we want it?

September 27, 2013 James Clay Leave a comment

It was interesting to hear at a recent meeting that learners were requesting that more resources were available on the VLE. It was apparent that they appreciated that their teachers were placing the resources on the VLE, making them available at a time and place to suit the learner.

This doesn’t surprise me, the lack of activities and resources on an institutional VLE is one area that often comes up in learner feedback. I remember a (fair) few years ago talking to the e-learning people at a large university and they said that 80% of their support calls were from students unable to find their course or resources on the VLE; the reason they couldn’t find them was that they didn’t exist, their lecturer either didn’t have a course on the VLE or hadn’t uploaded any resources.

It’s a simple thing to have a course on the VLE and upload all the resources you use to it, it also supports learners to add extra resources, links to ebooks for example, links to useful websites, RSS feeds from relevant news sites. You could embed YouTube videos, presentations from Slideshare, Prezis and so on.

It’s also an opportunity to add further resources, to inspire learners, stretch them, add challenges, embed maths and English

Of course there is a “danger” that if you only upload resources to the VLE that it becomes just a repository of files, and the inevitable scroll of death. I do think that you should think of this “stage of VLE development” as the initial stage, the first stage, the start of the journey that will end with a VLE course that is engaging, interactive and a really useful tool for learning.

news

So long and thanks for all the fish…

September 6, 2013 James Clay 10 Comments

After nearly seven years at Gloucestershire College as their ILT and Learning Resources Manager I have now left and started a new job on Monday this week.

Back in 2006 I was Director of the Western Colleges Consortium (WCC); it was being wound up as the partner colleges were merging and moving away from a shared VLE platform to individual institutional VLEs.

I was pleased to be appointed at Gloucestershire College and when I started in November 2006. Over the last seven years the college has had a new build, merged, refurbished and restructured.

We have been through two Ofsted Inspections, coming out Good each time, with some positive comments about ILT and the libraries in the reports. We did a lot of learning technology projects, including ones for MoLeNET, Becta, LSIS, AoC and JISC.

I enjoyed my time at Gloucestershire, according to many staff who took the time to speak to me, I made a difference.

Across the college many staff and learners are using a range of learning technologies to enhance and enrich learning. From the VLE, to interactive whiteboards, mobile technologies, video, audio, learning objects, e-portfolios, social media, web tools, and other learning technologies.

The libraries are well used and liked by learners and I. My opinion are fantastic learning environments.

So where am I now?

I am the Group Director of ILT for what will be Activate Learning, which encompasses Banbury & Bicester College, City of Oxford College and Reading College. Activate Learning is the new name for what is currently the Oxford & Cherwell Valley College group. My responsibilities include ILT, IT, Learning Resources (which includes the libraries) and Business Systems.

It is going to be an exciting and challenging opportunity.

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100 ways to use a VLE – #59 Uploading a Powerpoint Presentation

August 9, 2013 James Clay Leave a comment

Probably one of the tools that teachers use “too much” is Powerpoint. As a result I would suspect that there are many VLE courses out there that mainly consist of uploaded Powerpoint presentations.

I do find it interesting how embedded the use of Powerpoint is in education. In the late 1990s I was delivering lots of training sessions on how to use Powerpoint to lots of curriculum staff at the college where I worked. Back then I heard many of the “reasons” (and in many cases the excuses) why the curriculum staff couldn’t use the software, how their learners were different, how it wouldn’t work in their subject. However I did persevere in outlining the potential, the possible benefits and the longer term impact that using a tool such as Powerpoint could bring to teaching and learning.

It was nice a few years later (after I had left the college) to find that the training had had an impact and Powerpoint was well used by the curriculum teams. I was particularly impressed with Hair and Beauty who were not only creating innovative presentations, but were sharing them across the department.

Jump forward ten years and Powerpoint is extremely embedded into most colleges and often not only overused, but badly used. Though of course there are lots of positive and innovative uses of Powerpoint, so mustn’t be too negative about it. It is also often an useful starting point in getting staff to move on in their use of learning technologies.

If you do need to upload a presentation to the VLE, then my preference is to use a service such as Slideshare or Speakerdeck, this converts the presentation, and then allows you to embed the presentation into a label or page on the VLE. Slideshare even allows you to add an mp3 audio soundtrack file to run alongside the presentation. This of course implies that you are using a traditional linear presentation, if you’re not then this is not the road to travel down, as these services break any form of interactivity in a Powerpoint presentation. If you are using an interactive Powerpoint presentation, then it makes much more sense to upload the Powerpoint file, rather than convert it. You are making an assumption that the learner has access to the Powerpoint software. This, in a world of iPads, tablets and Chromebooks isn’t always a given.

Uploading Powerpoint files to a VLE, is most certainly not cutting edge in terms of using learning technologies, many of the people reading this blog probably were doing this back in the early 2000s or even earlier. However experience shows that there are still plenty of curriculum staff out there who don’t have that background or experience and for them uploading of Powerpoint files to the VLE is at the beginning of their journey into using note just the VLE, but learning technologies as well, more effectively to support and enhance learning.

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iPad Off

August 5, 2013 James Clay Leave a comment

iPads

I read this article in the Guardian about schools asking parents to buy their children iPads to support their learning.

It’s quite a negative article, but in many ways I do agree with the sentiments behind it.

Back in January I wrote an article, “I need a truck” in which I noted:

The Essa Academy in Bolton has decided that the best way forward for them is to issue every learner and every teacher with an iPad. Now I am sure that they thought long and hard about it before making this choice, but I do wonder if they missed a trick?

The first questions I would ask are: Is every learner the same? Do they all have the same needs and do they all learn in the same way in different contexts?

I then went on to explain what I meant using a transport analogy. Read more…

This echoes some of the sentiment in the Guardian article, but a lot less sensational! By the way don’t read the comments on the Guardian article, for a moment as I persued them I thought I was reading the Daily Mail or the Telegraph.

If the parental comments are to be believed then the schools undertaking these kinds of iPad implementations haven’t really explained the “what” and the “why” they are doing this. I would suspect that this is because they may not actually know the “what” and the “why” and have seen other institutions, like the Essa Academy, are doing and believe that they should be doing the same.

This paragraph astounded me

Providing tablets is not an unquestioned money saver for schools. Honywood community science school in Essex gave all its 1,200 pupils a tablet computer for free, although it did ask for a £50 contribution towards insurance. The cost was estimated at around £500,000. But 489 tablets had to be replaced after a year, while four out of 10 needed to be sent for repairs.

What on earth was happening in that school where 41% of the tablets had to be replaced and another 40% needed to be repaired. So 81% of the tablets were broken, or broke down in a year. Would be interesting to know which tablet they were using. Were the problems with the tablet itself, the way it was used, or was it because it was given to the learners for “free” they didn’t look after them. Probably a combination of all three, however still 81% is an incredible statistic.

The problem with every learner having an iPad is that it many ways it can be restrictive. A lot of things can be done on an iPad, but in some ways other devices or tools may be better, faster or more efficient.

eLearning Stuff