All posts for the month October, 2009

What I’ve heard just this week

Epic recently hosted a debate about eLearning at the Oxford Union. Diana Laurillard was among the speakers for the motion ‘This house believes that the e-learning of today is essential for the important skills of tomorrow’, whilst those against were led by Marc Rosenberg (I’m not sure which one). The motion was defeated on the day by 90:144, but I’m told the debate continues on the Epic site (where the vote is now in favour), via YouTube and on blogs such as those of Clive Shepherd and Stephen Downes. Let me know if you have time to catch up with this one, please.

Some of us saw and heard Martin Bean, the new VC of the Open University, speak at ALT-C. He will be giving a shortened version in Second Life (live, using an avatar) on December 16th at 3:30pm. The session will be chaired by Claudia L’Amoreaux (aka Claudia Linden), Education Programmes Manager for Linden Lab. The inworld audience will be limited to 50, but the session will be recorded and archived online for those unable to attend in person. If you are a confident avatar driver and would like to be in the inworld audience, you can send your name and avatar name to virtualworlds@open.ac.uk, with the subject line VC EVENT. First come, first served. Don’t all rush…

The latest Virtual World Watch report from John Kirriemuir (funded by Eduserv) is now available at http://tinyurl.com/ykscp77 He focuses this time on how institutions are choosing/have chosen their particular environment. Second Life features strongly, but there are references to other worlds and their capabilities and/or limits. I gather that the Open University is analysing in detail what’s needed to support learning and which worlds can best provide for it. This report is one I shall try to read for myself.

David Hawkridge

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by ILI Leicester on October 31, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 31, 2009

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/what-i%e2%80%99ve-heard-just-this-week/

Happy Birthday, Internet!

Yesterday, 29 October 2009, marked forty years since the first pieces of data travelled via a computer connection between the University of California in Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute. The BBC published an insightful account of the fascinating early years of the internet, which by 1971 was already connecting universities on the East and the West Coast of USA. Looking at the two solitary lines on the map illustrating the early net I could not help but feel overwhelmed by the speed of the change which has thrown us into the super-connected super-fast world of today. And I wonder if in 2050 there might be someone, writing a blog or whatever the communication channel of the day is, reviewing technology from 2010 and thinking “If they only knew what was coming at them…”

Following the links on the BBC website I listened to the oldest computer music recording – Baa Baa Black Sheep - played on a Ferranti Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester in 1951. Below is a photo of the “Player” followed by a photo of a music player of today. Can you spot the 7 differences?

 Manchester's Baby

ipod_shuffle3

In coverage of the other astonishing talents of the machine, a BBC reporter breathless with excitement revealed that “the electronic brain” could tell you whether 2 to the power of 127 is a prime number in 25 minutes, compared to the 6 months it would take for the human brain to make the calculation.

Every time that I get reminded of the amazing progress that has been achieved since these early days of computer technology, I ask myself – what could possibly come next? Can a music player become even smaller? Or bigger? Or disappear completely and leave the music streaming through the air? Sometimes I discover I sympathise more than I would have liked with Charles H. Duell, the Commissioner of the US Office of Patents who said in 1899 that “Everything that can be invented has been invented.”

 Any trip down history lane would be wasted if one comes back without a lesson or two for the future. One of the comments in the BBC material on the early net could turn out to be just that. It is about the initial reaction to the idea for a computer network – “A horrible idea” people thought. Larry Roberts, the MIT scientist who was working on the project said that institutions were opposing the concept because they wanted to keep control of their resources. Now that objection suddenly does not come across as outdated and archaic as the Ba Ba Black Sheep music player, does it? Blackboard, anyone? Are there ground-breaking, rule-bending, mind-blowing innovations at the door step of higher education institutions today that are being shunned because people want to keep control of their resources?  What can we do about it?

Sandra Romenska

30/10/2009

BDRA

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by ILI Leicester on October 30, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 30, 2009

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/2009/10/30/happy-birthday-internet/

TESOL and Second Life

In my recent blog, I talked about an e-tivity designed for DUCKLING TESOL students to visit language teaching classes in Second Life (SL), with 4 stages: Preparation, Training, Visiting and observing language teaching classes in SL, Discussion and reflection.

The e-tivity was launched on Monday 12 October 2009 on Blackboard and the training stage happened on Monday 26th October.

Phase 1 is now completed. In Phase 1, 12 TESOL students were actively involved in the Blackboard discussion. They introduced themselves and shared resources and links on SL in the first week (12-18 October). In the second week (19-25 Oct), they learned to create a SL account and avatar, and practised basic skills individually by using a SL training guide that we provided. They shared their first experiences in SL, introduced their avatars and bought out technical issues by participating in the discussion on the VLE.

We’re now in Phase 2: Training in SL.  We provided the 1st SL training session to a group of TESOL students on Monday 26 October. The trainer of this training session was my colleague Paul Rudman (PD Alchemy in SL) and Terese Bird (Aallyah Kruyschek in SL) was the helper. Five distance students located in Canada, South Korea and Singapore joined the training in-world.

Building on our training experience from the MOOSE project, we addressed key skills that are important to TESOL students and for this e-tivity and enables participiants to learn, practise and enhance the skills.

The training session was scheduled for 90 minutes, and the following key skills were covered:

  1. Adding people to your friend’s list
  2. Using ‘Contacts’ and ‘Local chat’
  3. Walking and flying
  4. Teleporting
  5. Creating landmarks and using inventory
  6. Sitting down and standing up
  7. Changing environmental settings
  8. Using cameral control and changing views
  9. Testing audio and voice

The training went really well. One of the participants posted her experience on Blackboard after the training session, ‘I enjoyed the experience and I think we had a great group working together’. Another participant said on Blackboard VLE, ‘it was fun learning how to move and fly’.

We reflected on problems, difficulties and issues that happened in the 1st training session. One of these is how to help students sort out basic technical settings on their computers, e.g. setting up audio and voice preferences, before coming to the training. Another is how to manage a group of participants with different technical backgrounds particularly avatars getting ‘stuck’ or ‘lost’. We recommend having a trainer focusing on the technical aspect and a helper ‘rescuing’ the participants and looking after emotional is a good model!

Students need more practice in SL to be able to enjoy the whole learning process, and we propose training in two stages:

  • Stage 1: Tutor and trainer-centred, focusing on practising key technical skills
  • Stage 2: Student-centred, focusing on building confidence, developing identity and a sense of immersion

Stage 2 training can also consist of some asynchronous and synchronous activities, such as asking students either individually or working in a group to find something , e.g. a Media Zoo T-shirt and report the result back to the group.

Our TESOL training activities will continue for another 2-3 weeks. I’ll keep updating the progress in my following blogs.

 

 Ming Nie              28 Oct 2009

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by ILI Leicester on October 29, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 29, 2009

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/tesol-and-second-life/

On assessment and alignment

Last week I sat the final exam of the Open University’s Certificate in Management. The version I did (B615) was a 1-year, 60-credit course, divided into 4 modules. The course has been a major component of my CPD and a most enjoyable experience. As is the case with most exams, no matter how much you’ve enjoyed the course, you’re glad when it’s over. The results will be out in December.

An interesting aspect of the course was precisely its assessment. We had online discussions, peer feedback and electronic submissions of assignments throughout (5 assignments in total)… yet the final summative assessment was a 3-hour, individual, sit-down, closed-book, handwritten exam. I hadn’t done an exam like that for over 20 years.

Is a final exam the most appropriate method of assessing students on this course? If so, is this type of exam the most suitable option? It seems that this is a prime example of misalignment between the final assessment and everything else that all students are required to do throughout the programme. Allowing the use of word-processors would have helped – not least those of us whose handwriting has deteriorated over the years by doing exactly what the previous stages of this course asks of students, i.e. using computers for all their coursework.

I look forward to receiving my result. In the meantime, I’ll continue to reflect on fit-for-purpose curriculum design and assessment choices.

Dr A Armellini
27 October 2009

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by ILI Leicester on October 27, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 27, 2009

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/on-assessment-and-alignment/

CopyRIGHT, CopyLITE or CopyFREE

Creative Commons (CC) licenses have been hailed by the Open Educational Resource (OER) community as an answer to the challenges posed by copyright. As an alternative to the “permission culture” of traditional “all rights reserved” law, CC licences have turned copyRIGHT into “CopyLITE” by providing creators of works the opportunity to relinquish some rights of their work for use and reuse by the wider society. In spite of the advantages CC licences bring to the Open Education movement, the multiplicity of licences available (six in total), and the conditions associated with them (four in total), means that the CC licence is not as straightforward as users would like it to be.

At a recent JISC institutional strand meeting on OER, it emerged that existing CC licences are not adequate for application to clinical materials, due to the high proportion of complex images from various sources that need clearance, and calls were made for more sophisticated CC licences to respond to the perceived gap. If such calls are heeded, CC licences will become more complex, and the list of licences will continue to grow in future. However, this complexity is likely to increase the existing confusion around licences and rights. Is there a need for a complete shift in thinking away from the “some rights reserved” philosophy which underpins CC licences?

Some have suggested opting out of the Berne Convention, arguing that CC licences are only watered-down versions of traditional copyright laws. I suggest an alternative solution: instead of copyright laws being automatically in force upon the creation of a work – a new global convention, CopyFREE – where the default position is that there is no need for any form of licence. Under copyFREE, the onus would be on creators of works to make a case for their work to be protected from copying. The copyFREE argument would be similar to the “presumed consent” position put forward by the British Medical Association for organ donation, where persons are deemed to have given their consent to organ donation unless they have registered to opt out.

We need to acknowledge that traditional copyright laws emerged at a time in our collective development history when there were no mash-ups, digital natives or generation Y. We need a 21st century copyright treaty which is more responsive to the needs of a society where openness is a defining feature. Will CopyFREE lead to more creativity, innovation and knowledge sharing for public good as opposed to private profit? Let the debate start.

Samuel Nikoi (26 October 2009)

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by ILI Leicester on October 26, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 26, 2009

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/2009/10/26/copyright-copylit-or-copyfree/

Digital Natives, Digital Assumptions?

Back in 2001, Marc Prensky coined the term “digital natives,” referring to people for whom certain technologies (such as mp3s and internet tools) existed when they were born. Prensky argued that digital natives actually think differently due to frequent exposure to digital tools, and thus radically different educational approaches must be considered for this generation.

 

It is possible, however, to incorrectly infer that simply because someone is of a certain age that s/he is somewhat expert at gadgets and software, or that s/he will naturally imagine efficient uses of new gadgets and software. Dr Chris Jones of The Open University has been principal investigator of “The Net Generation Encountering eLearning at University Project” which looks at the ways “NetGen students” (born after 1983) approach elearning. Preliminary findings indicate that, for example, more than 4 out of 5 surveyed students born in the 1990s use social networking sites, but only 1.5 out of 5 use blogs and slightly more than 2.5 out of 5 use wikis. Another interim finding is that students use a wide range of technologies, but their usage depends on students’ individual circumstances and the context in which the learning occurs.

 

I have seen well-intentioned elearning initiatives fall flat because they began by asking the students, “would you like to use technology x?” and then not knowing what to do when students were less than enthusiastic. Students may need to be helped to understand the context in which technology x can sharpen their learning. Students might not have any personal experience of reading or writing blogs, but that does not mean a moderator with a clearly envisioned pedagogy cannot successfully help students to purposefully read and contribute to blogs in a course.

 

Assumptions about students’ technology use are dangerous simply because tech-use demographics can change fast. For example, while the median age of a Twitter user has been 31 for at least one year, the median age for Facebook is now 33, up from 26 as recently as May 2008. How many predicted the speed of the greying of Facebook?

 

In his 2009 article “H. Sapiens Digital: From Digital Immigrants and Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom.,” Prensky moves from differentiating digital immigrants from natives based on when they born, to a new concept of “digital wisdom”. To quote, “Digital wisdom is a twofold concept, referring both to wisdom arising from the use of digital technology to access cognitive power beyond our innate capacity and to wisdom in the prudent use of technology to enhance our capabilities.” Learning practitioners need to demonstrate and encourage digital wisdom in our students without demographic assumptions.

Terese Bird

Beyond Distance Learning Technologist and Assistant ZooKeeper

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by ILI Leicester on October 23, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 23, 2009

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/2009/10/23/digital-natives-digital-assumptions/

Breaking out of the blog

Why do I want to break out of the blog? Simple reason:  because I can!

Well to be more detailed about the reason and to explain in more detail might be useful and might assure you that I haven’t lost it completely.  It came to me when I was sat in a meeting yesterday where we were talking about the use of technology to design and delivery curriculum. There was nothing wrong with the meeting, there were some very useful ideas that I picked up, but the use of the technology in the meeting was limited to a laptop and projector and you were invited to twitter if you had the technology.

It gave me the idea that maybe a text based blog might not always be the best way of communicating and that there are other web based applications that might be more beneficial to communicate my thoughts.  So in order to break out of the confines of the blog I’m inviting you to view the following:

What I’ve been thinking about this week – Flickr stream

My recent bookmarks – Delicious

Follow me on Twitter (yes I’ve finally taken the plunge!)

If you choose not to view any of the above that is your preference.  I just want to know whether the ideas we produce in this blog are presented in the most beneficial way to communicate the ideas or whether the ideas suffer from the constraints of the blog. Can I, and you, break out of the blog?

Emma Davies
Learning Technologist

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by ILI Leicester on October 22, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 22, 2009

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/2009/10/22/breaking-out-of-the-blog/

Clouds and trees and micropipettes

Yesterday, I spent some time in the countryside. It was a beautiful, sunny day and I was sitting in a lovely country garden. I could feel the grass beneath my feet, see the blue sky and white wispy clouds, smell the flowers growing all around. What a wonderful way to relax.

I was also sitting in a darkened meeting room in Oxford.

This ability to engage in two experiences at once has been explored throughout history, from cavemen painting their hunting exploits on stone walls, though the early travelling story tellers and court entertainers, to classic novels like Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and now today’s sophisticated entertainment industry. Watching a great movie, for example, brings us experiences sufficiently real to use in everyday life – to vicariously experience the world in ways not readily available and use that as a learning experience.

It’s not the technology. It is an innate ability of the human mind to imagine other possibilities, other realities. To experience without the actual. In a technological age we of course use our technology to assist us, but the concept – the fundamental idea of escaping from the immediate – is, and has always been, within us.

And so it was that we needed no clever technology in our darkened meeting room last night. The guided meditation that I ran saw twenty people each transported to their own personal country retreat, to relax, to still the immediacy of the chattering conscious mind and to seek an inner wisdom easily ignored in the rush of everyday busyness.

The previous time I ran this guided meditation, things were a little more complex. Again, I was in a country garden; again I was in a darkened room, but I was also in a third place – a Buddhist temple, with incense, rare orchids and singing bowls. The temple was in Second Life.

It’s a testament to the power of the human imagination that it can adapt so easily from two simultaneous experiences to three. Yet it can, and it works well. A child can build a fort from a cardboard box; an adult can expand their social life into a few web pages; a great movie can feel like a lifetime on another world, and technology you will find in museums in 10 years’ time can invoke experiences real enough to be seriously useful.

That’s why the Beyond Distance Research Alliance has several projects investigating the effectiveness of virtual world technology in providing a learning experience. One such project – SWIFT – will use this technology, in the form of Second Life, to transport students to a genetics laboratory, in which they will collaboratively conduct experiments and solve problems. Some of this is not possible in a real-life lab, because each experiment may take hours and use a great deal of (expensively supervised) lab space and equipment.

It’s a long way from that idyllic country garden, but should be no less real, and previous work investigating learning within these computer-generated virtual worlds suggests that, if done properly, time in the virtual world can translate to real, measurable learning and expand the student experience beyond that which is currently possible.

They don’t even need to be in a darkened room.

 

Dr. Paul Rudman

Beyond Distance Research Alliance

 

SWIFT is a collaboration with GENIE, the Centre for Excellence within the Department of Genetics here at the University of Leicester.

 

Visit the Media Zoo in Second Life:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Media%20Zoo/170/150/17

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by ILI Leicester on October 21, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 21, 2009

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/clouds-and-trees-and-micropipettes/

Learning by apeing the experts. And why not…

Enthused by the brilliant Guitar Hero/Doritos TV commercial currently doing the rounds (“Alan was a rock star/At least in his own mind” – replace ‘Alan’ with ‘Simon’ and you’ll know where I’m coming from), I’ve been thinking about the possibilities offered to learning by the clutch of musical rhythm-based console games.

Much like the critic who slams a film he hasn’t seen, I haven’t played any of these games. So – obviously – I’m more than qualified to talk about them…

Former Rolling Stones guitarist Bill Wyman claimed not long ago that these games encourage kids “not to learn” real musical instruments, while Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason argued in the same piece that “if [the kids] spent as much time practising the guitar as learning how to press the buttons they’d be damn good by now”.

I’m not convinced by this argument, although I do agree that taking a contrary position can seem counter-intuitive. (I also need to say that I’m a huge fan of both bands.)

Intuitive reasoning: because kids are simplistically apeing someone talented playing a musical instrument, they are not using those hours practising to play one for real.

Counter-intuitive reasoning: playing a musical instrument well is very hard (the best musicians make it look easy, but it isn’t) and requires dedication. A console game such as The Beatles: Rock Band allows people to try an instrument, to truly engage with the music and have fun. In short, it offers immersive qualities not often available in the first stages of traditional music learning.

It seems intuitive to me that the opposite of what Bill and Nick are saying will be the case: that many ‘kids’ will be inspired to take up a musical instrument such as the guitar because of the fun and the experience they’ve had with these console games.

Also, while they may not learn how to play the instrument itself, they will learn, whether they realise it or not, about melody structure, rhythm, beat and harmony.

Now I’m not saying everyone who tries one of these games will do this. Let’s face it, some people should remain like Alan – true virtuosos of the air guitar. But to dismiss these rhythm-based games – and games consoles generally – as being irrelevant to learning in the twenty-first century seems like a huge missed opportunity.

Finally, in the ‘intuitive reasoning’ argument above, one statement of logic does not follow the other. They are, in fact, completely unrelated. I bet Wayne Rooney plays football console games, and he’s still quite useful on a football pitch.

But in fairness to educational discourse and research, I think I should support my conjectures by purchasing one of these games for my Wii. Rock on!

Simon Kear

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by ILI Leicester on October 19, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 19, 2009

http://beyonddistance.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/learning-by-apeing-the-experts-and-why-not/

Visiting language teaching classes in Second Life – an e-tivity for MA TESOL students

An e-tivity designed for DUCKLING MA TESOL students was officially launched on Monday 12 October 2009 on Blackboard.

The e-tivity was designed by my colleague Gabi based on Salmon’s 5-stage model. Although the e-tivity is designed for students to participate in and contribute to mainly on the Blackboard discussion board, activities in SL including in-world training, visiting language teaching classes, reporting, discussing and sharing SL experiences are key elements of this e-tivity. An outline of this e-tivity was reported in Gabi’s blog.

There are four phases in this e-tivity, and each phase contains one or two mini-e-tivities.

Phase 1: Preparation

  • Mini-e-tivity 1: Introduce yourself on the Blackboard discussion board (Where are you located? What do you do? Why are you interested in Second Life?)
  • Mini-e-tivity 2: Sharing links and useful resources on Second Life on the Blackboard discussion board.
  • Mini-e-tivity 3: Getting started in Second Life (learning how to use SL individually, using a SL training guide).

Phase 2: Training in Second Life

  • Mini-e-tivity 4: In-world training for groups of participants, led by a BDRA learning technologist.

Phase 3: Visiting and observing language teaching classes in Second Life

  • Mini-e-tivity 5: Participants visit language teaching classes in Second Life and each reports back on the Blackboard discussion board to the group what class he/she visited and what he/she observed.

Phase 4: Discussion/reflection

  • Mini-e-tivity 6: Participants share thoughts and feelings on the use of Second Life for EFL teaching, reflecting on the implications for their own teaching contexts, and discussing what’s next.

The TESOL students responded enthusiastically to this e-tivity. So far, 13 participants including one tutor on the distance learning programme have registered their interest. The participants have already started sharing comments and useful resources on the Blackboard discussion board.

The evidence will be collected in several ways including a personal interview with each participant at the end of this e-tivity, students’ comments and feedback on the Blackboard discussion board, transcripts of student discussion in Second Life, and observations in Second Life. I will update my research findings in my later blogs.

 

Ming Nie

14 October 2009

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by ILI Leicester on October 14, 2009  •  Permalink
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Posted by ILI Leicester on October 14, 2009

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