tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36448769552120688362024-02-07T20:44:11.206-08:00The Unexamined LifeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-12444986588791716292015-10-07T02:10:00.004-07:002015-10-07T02:10:58.607-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">
Student Perceptions of ‘useful’ Digital Technology</h2>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/epublicist/3546059144" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/epublicist/3546059144" title="square-peg-round-hole-21"><img alt="square-peg-round-hole-21" class="aligncenter" data-mce-src="https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3362/3546059144_1b33dfdc0e_o.jpg" height="375" src="https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3362/3546059144_1b33dfdc0e_o.jpg" style="display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="500" /></a></div>
<h5 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;">
</h5>
<h5 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;">
<em>“Now, what I want is, Facts….Facts alone are wanted in life” (Mr Gradgrind)</em></h5>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;">A recent Australian study by Henderson, Selwyn and Aston (2015) found that students use digital technologies to support the logistical aspects of their learning: time-saving; finding out about and fulfilling course requirements; mobile and remote access; researching information; getting organised.</span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;">Where students use technology for ‘learning’ it tends to be at a surface or strategic level. For example, reviewing course materials and revising; completing assignments and learning tasks in the most expedient manner. They use technology for the monotonous and mundane aspects of student life. This is a depressing finding for the learning technology community, who champion the innovative and transformative potential of digital technologies. However, there are lessons here for the way in which we advocate and implement digital technology, and there is a reason why these students use technology in the way they do.</span></div>
<h5 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;">
<em>It’s the context, stupid….</em></h5>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;">The authors suggest that it is the contexts in which students are situated that shapes their use of technologies. What ‘digital technology’ </span><i>is</i><span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;">, is framed by assessment, evaluation, and the design and delivery of content. If the institution offers limited structures and expectations of teaching and learning then why should the uses and types of digital technology be any different?</span></div>
<h5 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;">
<em>Then a miracle occurs….</em></h5>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;"><a data-mce-href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2015/09/miracle.jpg" href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2015/09/miracle.jpg"><img alt="cartoon a miracle occurs" class="wp-image-1958 aligncenter" data-mce-src="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2015/09/miracle-300x287.jpg" height="338" src="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2015/09/miracle-300x287.jpg" style="display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="353" /></a>So while students find technology beneficial, their practices are not the</span></div>
<blockquote style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;"><em>"creative, collaborative, participatory and hyper-connected practices that tend to be foregrounded in discussions of digital education and learning technology"</em>.</span></blockquote>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;">There is a gap between the often rarefied discussions among the learning technology community about ‘technology enhanced learning’, and students’ actual use of technologies. We can’t expect that gap to be filled, and for students to adopt these creative and collaborative uses of technology unless they have a good reason to do so.</span></div>
<h5 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;">
<em>What is to be done?</em></h5>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;">Institutions need to support the logistical and strategic uses of technology. This includes the development of VLEs to make them more user friendly - or providing accessible and reliable alternatives, as well as improving the accessibility of other core systems. But using digital technologies in more creative and empowering ways requires rethinking broader institutional practices, including the culture of teaching and learning. The authors conclude by suggesting that:</span></div>
<blockquote style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<em>“If higher educators wish to see students move beyond the largely ‘safe’, bounded and outcome-focused uses of digital technology reported in this paper, then alternate contexts of teaching and learning need to be legitimized where alternate (perhaps more active, more participatory or more creative) uses of digital technology will be of genuine ‘use’ and ‘help’.”</em></blockquote>
<h4 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b>Reference</b></h4>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;">Henderson, M., Selwyn, N., & Aston, R. (2015). What works and why? Student perceptions of ‘useful’ digital technology in university teaching and learning. </span><i>Studies in Higher Education</i><span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;">, 1–13. </span><a data-mce-href="http://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1007946" href="http://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1007946" target="_blank"><span data-mce-style="font-weight: 400;">http://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2015.1007946</span></a></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-74042367767509884712015-10-07T02:08:00.000-07:002015-10-07T02:08:14.309-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Bitstream Charter, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Using Screencasts for Teaching and Learning</span></span></h2>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2015/03/tveyeglasses.jpg" href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2015/03/tveyeglasses.jpg"><img alt="header image" class=" wp-image-1912 size-full aligncenter" data-mce-src="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2015/03/tveyeglasses.jpg" height="400" src="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2015/03/tveyeglasses.jpg" style="display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="278" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Last week I ran a workshop on Using Screencasts to Enhance Teaching and Learning. This is a summary of what we covered.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b>What is screencasting?</b></div>
<ul style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<li>A screencast is a digital video recording that captures actions taking place on a computer desktop.</li>
</ul>
<ul style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<li>Screencasts, which often contain voice-over narration, are useful for demonstrating how to use specific operating systems, software applications or website features.</li>
</ul>
<h2 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;">
</h2>
<h2 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;">
<b>Examples of screencasting:</b></h2>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Here’s an example of a 'how-to' guide from the university library: <a data-mce-href="http://youtu.be/Vi7l9NO1mZc" href="http://youtu.be/Vi7l9NO1mZc" target="_blank" title="library example">http://youtu.be/Vi7l9NO1mZc</a> which is on their <a data-mce-href="https://www.youtube.com/user/davidwilsonlibrary" href="https://www.youtube.com/user/davidwilsonlibrary" target="_blank" title="david wilson library youtube">YouTube channel</a> along with many others.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
You can also use screencasting to provide summaries of your lectures, such as this example from Dr Paul Reilly of the Department of Media and Communications: <a data-mce-href="http://youtu.be/qZ9jKJ5sXI8" href="http://youtu.be/qZ9jKJ5sXI8" target="_blank" title="paul reilly example">http://youtu.be/qZ9jKJ5sXI8</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Dr Reilly has carried out research into the effectiveness of screencasting, and you can see the details of his research, further research, some examples, and guides to screencasting on the <a data-mce-href="https://screencastsinmediastudies.wordpress.com/about-2/" href="https://screencastsinmediastudies.wordpress.com/about-2/" target="_blank" title="screencasting in media studies">Screencasting in Media Studies project blog</a>.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Screencasting can also be used to provide feedback on assessments to students. Such as in this example from Jodi Whitehurst at Arkansas State University: <a data-mce-href="http://youtu.be/SxqFPmCX-AI" href="http://youtu.be/SxqFPmCX-AI" target="_blank" title="arkansas example">http://youtu.be/SxqFPmCX-AI</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
She describes the process of creating her screencasts here: <a data-mce-href="http://www.ncte.org/cccc/owi-open-resource/screencast-feedback" href="http://www.ncte.org/cccc/owi-open-resource/screencast-feedback" target="_blank" title="screencast process">http://www.ncte.org/cccc/owi-open-resource/screencast-feedback</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<h2 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif;">
<b>Why should you use screencasting?</b></h2>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Because students like it, basically. The research shows that:</div>
<ul style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<li>students think it enhances their learning</li>
<li>they can learn at their own pace</li>
<li>they can catch up on missed classes</li>
<li>summaries of lectures are useful for students for whom English is not their first language.</li>
</ul>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
You can also use it for a ‘flipped classroom’ approach - providing discussion materials before a lecture or seminar so students have already thought about the issues before they arrive.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
One research study found that it leads to improved achievement on assignment marks: <a data-mce-href="http://130.217.226.8/bitstream/handle/10652/1669/Walker-screen%20capture.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y" href="http://130.217.226.8/bitstream/handle/10652/1669/Walker-screen%20capture.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y" target="_blank" title="quantifying benefits of screen capture">Quantifying the benefits of narrated screen capture videos</a>.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b>How do you create screencasts?</b></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
The university provides some software via the Programme Installer:</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/itservices/ithelp/my-computer/programs/captivate" href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/itservices/ithelp/my-computer/programs/captivate" target="_blank" title="captivate">Adobe Captivate</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/itservices/ithelp/my-computer/programs/presenter" href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/itservices/ithelp/my-computer/programs/presenter" target="_blank" title="presenter">Adobe Presenter and Video Creator</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Captivate also enables you to create interactive content such as tests and quizzes, in addition to screencasting.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Presenter works within PowerPoint to create narrated presentations. However, it also comes with Video Creator, which is a stand-alone programme that allows you to record anything on your screen. You can add narration if you wish. It also allows you to create ‘talking head’ style videos via your webcam.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b>Screencasts with Panopto</b></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
You can use the Panopto lecture capture software to do screencasts - it will record whatever is on your screen, not just your PowerPoint presentations and lectures. At the moment the software is limited to those members of staff involved in the pilot study, but you can request access to it via IT services.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b>Free online screencasting tools</b></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/" href="http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/" target="_blank" title="screencastomatic">Screencast-O-Matic</a> is an easy to use free application that records anything on your screen</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
You can save your videos to your PC, or upload them directly to YouTube. The free version places a small ‘screencast-o-matic' logo at the bottom of your video. The Premium version (paid for) removes the logo and gives you some editing tools.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="https://www.screenr.com/" href="https://www.screenr.com/" target="_blank" title="screenr">Screenr</a> is another free web based application. It allows you to create screencasts up to five minutes long.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://www.techsmith.com/snagit-google-chrome.html" href="http://www.techsmith.com/snagit-google-chrome.html" target="_blank" title="snagit chrome">Snagit for Chrome</a> is a free app and extension for the Chrome browser. It's a version of Snagit screen capture software. Download both the app and the extension, and you can create screencasts, capture still images, and create gifs via the Chrome browser.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://discover.techsmith.com/try-snagit/?gclid=Cj0KEQiA1NWnBRDchObfnYrbo78BEiQA-2jqBS917Bi-nA2HlGJYtwuPo1VPiBDMljQPbUir4oKqCpYaAulC8P8HAQ" href="http://discover.techsmith.com/try-snagit/?gclid=Cj0KEQiA1NWnBRDchObfnYrbo78BEiQA-2jqBS917Bi-nA2HlGJYtwuPo1VPiBDMljQPbUir4oKqCpYaAulC8P8HAQ" target="_blank" title="snagit">Snagit</a> is a very good screencasting application. You will have to pay for it, but it’s quite cheap. Try a trial version first. It allows you to create screencapture videos, and images which you can then annotate. A single licence costs about £30. There are volume discounts for educational purposes if you want to buy licences for your department.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Photo credit: James Vaughan 1963 television eyeglasses <a data-mce-href="https://flic.kr/p/7uU8wh" href="https://flic.kr/p/7uU8wh">https://flic.kr/p/7uU8wh </a>(CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-39386496790476833662015-10-07T02:02:00.002-07:002015-10-07T02:02:32.660-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Bitstream Charter, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 24px;">Using Blogs to Promote Writing and Student Interaction</span></span></h2>
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, Bitstream Charter, Times, serif;"><span style="line-height: 24px;"><br /></span></span>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/10/different-viewpointssmall.jpg" href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/10/different-viewpointssmall.jpg"><img alt="blogging" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-1871" data-mce-src="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/10/different-viewpointssmall.jpg" height="384" src="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/10/different-viewpointssmall.jpg" style="display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="500" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
I have had an increase in enquiries from staff in the college recently about using collaborative tools for learning. The fact that people are beginning to see the benefits of these collaborative spaces is a welcome development.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
With that in mind, this is a timely research paper from Miriam Sullivan and Nancy Longnecker from the University of Western Australia:</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://ascilite.org.au/ajet/submission/index.php/AJET/article/view/322" href="http://ascilite.org.au/ajet/submission/index.php/AJET/article/view/322" target="_blank">Class blogs as a teaching tool to promote writing and student interaction</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
The study looked at the use of class blogs in four science communication classes. The students felt that the benefits of blogging to them included:</div>
<ul style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<li>improvements in their writing,</li>
<li>intellectual exchange with other students, and</li>
<li>motivation to write better.</li>
</ul>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
They also benefitted from reading what other students had written. Making a weekly contribution mandatory increased involvement and the students saw the assignment as having greater value. Where blogging counts towards assessment, even if it's only a small percentage, contributions increase (JISC 2009), and if blogs are not integrated with other assessments then they can be ‘underutilized’. Other problems that teachers may find are an increase in marking and large differences in the quality and quantity of posts from students.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Blogging can prepare students for a class, having already thought about the issues and expressed a view. This allows the teacher to move quickly to deeper learning rather than having to coax contributions out of students who are staring at their feet because they haven’t done the reading! It also allows quieter or less confident students the opportunity to compose their contributions and to have their voice heard.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Sullivan and Longnecker believe that group blogging “fits squarely within current pedagogical recommendations for <a data-mce-href="http://authenticlearning.info/AuthenticLearning/Home.html" href="http://authenticlearning.info/AuthenticLearning/Home.html" target="_blank">authentic learning</a> in web 2.0 environments. It provides real-world context; requires sustained activity; allows multiple perspectives; collaboration; and articulation of knowledge.”</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<b>References</b></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
JISC (2009) Engaging Learners in Critical Reflection - University of Edinburgh <i>in</i> Effective Practice in a Digital Age, JISC (2009) <a data-mce-href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2009/effectivepracticedigitalage.aspx#downloads" href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2009/effectivepracticedigitalage.aspx#downloads" target="_blank">http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2009/effectivepracticedigitalage.aspx#downloads</a> retrieved October 2014.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Sullivan, M., & Longnecker, N. (2014). Class blogs as a teaching tool to promote writing and student interaction. <i>Australasian Journal of Educational Technology</i>, <i>30</i>(4).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-49313540313796725392015-10-07T01:59:00.000-07:002015-10-07T01:59:39.749-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; text-align: left;">
Learning from the Early Adopters</h2>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Recent research by Liz Bennett (2014) looks at the drivers that motivate educators to use technology in their teaching. She took a framework (<a data-mce-href="http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/file/40474958/Literacies%20development%20framework.doc" href="http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/file/40474958/Literacies%20development%20framework.doc" target="_blank">Beetham and Sharpe 2011</a>) used to model students’ digital literacies and applied it to lecturers’ digital literacy practices. The intention was to examine the motivations for lecturers in adopting Technology Enhanced Learning.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Bennett found that lecturers were mainly motivated by a desire to achieve pedagogical goals and to support improved outcomes for their students in their learning, rather than by a desire to become digital practitioners and ‘self-actualising as digital pedagogues’.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Bennet’s Digital Practitioner Framework (DPF) has four levels:</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<a data-mce-href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/07/bennett-hierarchy.jpg" href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/07/bennett-hierarchy.jpg"><img alt="the digital practitioner framework" class="aligncenter wp-image-1856 size-full" data-mce-src="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/07/bennett-hierarchy.jpg" height="416" src="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/07/bennett-hierarchy.jpg" style="display: block; height: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 100%;" width="600" /></a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
At the top is the <strong>Attribute</strong> level, which relates to aspects of the lecturer’s personality that enable them to make use of technology. The ways of working with technology become assimilated into their ways of operating, and become normalised ways of doing things. This assimilation is different from merely identifying a skill set, it is ‘embedded into the lecturers’ values and beliefs’.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
At the <strong>Practice</strong> level, lecturers were using technology to address pedagogical needs, not using technology for its own sake.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
At the <strong>Skills</strong> level lecturers reported a detailed knowledge of how technologies operated, but there were some who felt that their level of skill was not up to that of their students. However, this was not a worry because while their skills may have been lacking, their relationship with students could counteract this. The lecturer’s role is one of teacher and researcher, and they have the subject area expertise. This is what the students expected of them for their part of the relationship. Lecturers could admit to students that they have a lack of technical knowledge, because they are not technologists. This allows them the space to explore and try out technologies with their students who understood that it was being done for the enhancement of their learning.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
The deficit model is often used to explain the lack of engagement with technology - it is the lack of skills that is the barrier. However, in this research skills did not seem to be the main barrier to the uptake of technology, rather it was the perceived usefulness of the technology.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
At the <strong>Access</strong> level lecturers acknowledged that there was need to invest time in learning about new technologies, and that it meant new ways of working. There was an acceptance of a blurring of boundaries between between home and work. This was dealt with by strategies to manage the expectations of students about when they would be available online.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
The implication of this research (caveats about the small scale aside) for the way in which digital technologies are promoted and developed in education is that it emphasises the need to concentrate on how technology can enhance teaching and learning rather than on technology for its own sake. The Digital Practitioner Framework provides a way to begin to engage lecturers who are not using technology or who are sceptical - encouraging and supporting practices builds confidence and skills in using technology and develops attributes.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<strong>References</strong></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Beetham, H. & Sharpe, R. (2011) ‘Digital literacies workshop’, Paper presented at the JISC Learning Literacies Workshop, Birmingham [online], Available at: <a data-mce-href="http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/40474566/JISC%20Digital%20Literacy%20Workshop%20materials" href="http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/40474566/JISC%20Digital%20Literacy%20Workshop%20materials" target="_blank">http://jiscdesignstudio.pbworks.com/w/page/40474566/JISC Digital Literacy Workshop materials</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
Bennett, L. (2014). <a data-mce-href="http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/21453" href="http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net/index.php/rlt/article/view/21453" target="_blank">Learning from the early adopters: developing the digital practitioner. Research in Learning Technology, 22.</a></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-60834473855781322542015-10-07T01:51:00.000-07:002015-10-07T01:53:16.518-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
The Problem with plagiarism detection software</h2>
<br />
<a href="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/04/turnitin.jpg"><img alt="turnitin logo" class="alignleft wp-image-1806 size-full" src="http://staffblogs.le.ac.uk/telsocsci/files/2014/04/turnitin.jpg" height="226" width="340" /></a> <br />
<em>photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jiscimages/436454662/">Jisc</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com/">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a></em><br />
<br />
<br />
Here’s a discussion between two students ‘from a prestigious university’, reported by McKenna and Hughes (2013):
<br />
<br />
Don: what is the extent to which we’re allowed to plagiarise, 17% or something?<br />
<br />
Mark: No, it’s just like 20%, but I mean that’s all with just the bibliography or literally a couple of words which they highlight and you just ignore that, but obviously if you’ve got a paragraph then….<br />
<br />
What is the role of plagiarism detection software (PDS) in creating this sort of misunderstanding? McKenna and Hughes suggest that PDS has the following effects:<br />
<br />
<b>1. It potentially changes the relationship between student and teacher, especially in terms of academic trust.</b>
There is already a difficult power relationship to be negotiated between student and teacher, and student and university. PDS has the effect of grounding that relationship in mistrust from the outset. It suggests that students are not to be trusted, that they are not partners in scholarship - their learning is individualised - they are lone dynamic individuals, responsible for their own actions, rather than participants in a cooperative and collaborative exercise. Processing of assignments via PDS “lends an air of objectivity and neutrality to what is actually a system with implicit issues of trust, control and surveillance. PDS is seen as a routine part of assessment with no debate about what values are being communicated to students and indeed teachers.”
<br />
<br />
<b>2. It increases the sense of writing as a product.</b>
In routinely processing assignments through third party PDS the students are further removed from the connection they have with their departments. Assignments become digital artefacts, uploaded to the PDS which becomes the sole arbiter of of what is ‘allowable’ when it comes to plagiarism. Instead of using drafts and ‘process-oriented’ writing, which encourages peer- and self-review, process and drafts are subjugated to the technology. Students are creating a product - a commodity to be judged.
<br />
<br />
<b>3. A loss of the understanding of plagiarism</b>
With PDS ‘plagiarism’ becomes simply about copying text, and about percentages. This is not helped by, for example, the colour coding system in Turnitin. The ‘similarity index’’ is either blue (no matching words); green (up to 24% similarity); yellow (25-49%); orange (50-74%); or red (75-100%).
So, you can plagiarise up to 24% and you get a green light! And green means good to go, right?
Discussions of plagiarism are fraught at the best of times, but PDS adds more weight to the discourse of plagiarism as ‘fraud, transgression, control, immorality, and dishonesty’. It ignores the complexities that are involved when people are novices, when they are writing in a new language, or educational context, or subject. It ignores the nuances of scholarly discussion, or of different disciplinary and linguistic contexts.
<br />
<br />
<b>4. It promotes a view of writing which demonstrates little awareness of the potential of digital technology for multimodality, and new ways of presenting academic texts.</b>
PDS are premised on an increasingly outmoded ‘print literacy paradigm’. This fails to acknowledge the potential for digital technology to be used for multimodal and hyperlinked texts. PDS is based on matching text (it is actually text matching software, not plagiarism detection software), so cannot assess ‘images, animation, colour, or other modes of meaning-making’. PDS may have the effect of discouraging such novel forms of scholarship and expression.
<br />
<br />
<b>What can be done?</b>
It’s not all bad. In an age of massive amounts of online material, PDS obviously helps to spot potential plagiarism quickly and efficiently.
Simple practical measures to address misunderstanding plagiarism would include teaching students what the ‘similarity index’ in Turnitin actually means, and how the index can be interpreted.
Turnitin has a feature which allows drafts. The similarity index can then be used as an aid to teaching about plagiarism before the final draft is submitted - that it’s not just about copying and percentages, or how much plagiarism is ‘allowed’.
Encourage students to reflect on the processes of their own learning by discussing the sorts of political and moral arguments about educational technology that McKenna and Hughes have highlighted. Each social science subject area should be able to contextualise the arguments about the uses of educational technology in this way.<br />
<br />
<b>Reference</b>
McKenna, C, Hughes, J. (2013) Values, digital texts, and open practices - a changing scholarly landscape in higher education In <i>Literacy in the Digital University. Critical Perspectives on Learning, Scholarship, and Technology </i>R. Goodfellow and M. Lea<i> (eds)</i> (pp. 173–184). London: Routledge.
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-31967098974222237972013-11-21T04:08:00.000-08:002013-11-21T04:28:32.044-08:00Lecture Capture and Data Capture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbBelKR4GTF8vPmdhYSIaMBhE_f0ghL_Kgk7C0uorBrwDK6-3Y45H4RiuG7FUtJSA4RlZuZ97_eUcLYmdoBxqhXNir-NZgSOTRWPIEVSlhoYlnd4sUSujP4SGmfNrN5iTYnm7k26-1i6Zr/s1600/schoolhouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbBelKR4GTF8vPmdhYSIaMBhE_f0ghL_Kgk7C0uorBrwDK6-3Y45H4RiuG7FUtJSA4RlZuZ97_eUcLYmdoBxqhXNir-NZgSOTRWPIEVSlhoYlnd4sUSujP4SGmfNrN5iTYnm7k26-1i6Zr/s1600/schoolhouse.jpg" height="221" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I attended an excellent debate on lecture capture yesterday, held as part of the University of Leicester’s IT Focus week. There were good arguments for the use of lecture capture, and the arguments against were not anti-lecture capture per se, but rather its possible detrimental effect on the learning and teaching experience. However, as is usually the case at this sort of event I was disappointed by the lack of discussion and, seemingly, awareness of the wider political and ethical issues of learning technology, in particular issues surrounding the use of learning technologies for the gathering of metadata. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-23f6cf61-7a7a-8019-bc42-7859f48ac6f1" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Neil Selwyn and Keri Facer (2013) have said the study of educational technology remains “stuck stubbornly in its ways - dominated, at best, by an optimistic desire to understand how to make an immediate difference in classrooms and, at worst, in thrall to technicist concepts of ‘effectiveness,’ ‘best practice,’ and ‘what works’.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The discussion of any learning technology will understandably concentrate on teaching and learning. However, I feel that academics, learning technologists and students have a restricted view of learning technology when they ignore the actual use of technology to gather data for performance management and ‘learning analytics’. And while this data gathering can be used to enhance learning and teaching it can also be used for disciplinary and surveillance purposes.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We are seeing the increasing marketisation of Higher Education (and education in general) with governments and private companies seeing universities as sites for the extraction of profit. Maximising profit requires (among other things) analysis of business performance to enhance efficiencies. Digital technology provides the data required for that analysis, and in education that includes metadata from various content and learning management systems - lecture capture and VLEs are two such systems. It is naive to think that university managers won’t at the very least have an interest in exploring the analytical potential of these systems. There doesn’t seem to be any possibility for a change of direction any time soon in the view of universities as an economic good, so such investigations of the potential and actual use of metadata will happen - </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">it has to because that’s how the system works</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. It forms part of what Jenny Ozga (2009) describes as the ‘governance turn’ in education - “the shift from centralised and vertical hierarchical forms of regulation to decentralised, horizontal, networked forms”. Such a way of thinking “is a reflection of a constant search for more complete state knowledge, for a ‘bridge’, that allows panoptic visions and strategies while ensuring compliance.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was pleased to hear yesterday at the debate that one senior member of staff was adamant that he would not work at university which uses data in an unethical manner, and that the university has ethical guidelines in place to guard against the use of data in such a way. As a senior member of staff he will be in a position to influence the debate, unlike a mere VLE monkey like me! </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, If we are to guard against the use of data for surveillance and performance management to create efficiencies for the extraction of profit then it requires a wider debate across universities, and not the odd, lone voice.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a learning technologist I appreciate how the use of digital technology can provide fantastic opportunities for the enhancement of learning when it’s used appropriately and creatively. It’s what I do for a living, so I’m certainly not anti-technology. Lecture capture can be a valuable tool for students with accessibility issues, or those with learning difficulties, those who have English as a second language, and non-traditional learners. Nor am I opposed to the gathering and analysis of data from digital systems, it can be used to enhance learning and teaching. What I am ‘anti-’ is any top-down, technodeterminist, solutionist approach to the implementation of learning technologies, and the view of the university as an economic good rather than a public good. Learning technologists, and those researching learning technology have been too quiet about its use in supporting a data-driven managerialist audit culture. It’s time we started to shout a bit louder about it.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ozga, J. (2009). </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Governing education through data in England: From regulation to self‐evaluation.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Journal of Education Policy, 24(2), 149-162.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Selwyn, N., & Facer, K. (Eds.). (2013). </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Politics of Education and Technology: Conflicts, Controversies, and Connections</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Palgrave Macmillan.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Photo credit: <a href="https://www.blogger.com/%3Ca%20href=%22http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/5986221011/%22%20title=%221931%20...%20round%20and%20glassy!%20by%20x-ray%20delta%20one,%20on%20Flickr%22%3E%3Cimg%20src=%22http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6137/5986221011_ac98cc1439.jpg%22%20width=%22500%22%20height=%22277%22%20alt=%221931%20...%20round%20and%20glassy!%22%3E%3C/a%3E" target="_blank">James Vaughan</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en_GB" target="_blank">CC: BY-NC-SA</a></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-59752295023452156332013-10-10T04:32:00.000-07:002013-11-21T04:17:06.068-08:00The Hidden Curriculum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28653536@N07/5033806460/" title="inf by elsamuko, on Flickr"><img alt="inf" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4092/5033806460_a14bf22b97_z.jpg" height="305" width="400" /></a></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>MSc Reading Notes</b></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Based on:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01596306.2012.692963#.UlaNFlCshcY" target="_blank">Edwards and Carmichael</a></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01596306.2012.692963#.UlaNFlCshcY" target="_blank">Secret Codes: the hidden curriculum of semantic web technologies</a></span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-6b68c949-a216-6fff-9ecd-c191c4b3d821" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Santo: <a href="http://www.digitalcultureandeducation.com/cms/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/DCE_1063_Santo.pdf" target="_blank">Towards hacker literacies: What Facebook’s privacy snafus can teach us aboutempowered technological practices</a></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a history of the examination of the ‘hidden curriculum’ in education. It refers to those elements that are implicit or tacit to the formal goals of education. The hidden curriculum has been criticised for its role in reproducing the unequal relations of power in the social order. Students become socialised into a particular social order because they are hidden messages about what is available to them and what their education is for.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is also a hidden curriculum in the coding of educational technologies that makes assumptions about learners and knowledge. The view is taken that this coding should be seen as an actor in the educational process, in the way that it enables and constrains learning. The coding and linking of data, and the way that decision making and reasoning are articulated in computer code makes things like search engines and e-assessment systems perform in particular ways, and makes them actors in the pedagogic process.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Educational technology cannot be seen as simply a tool by which the curriculum is delivered. Forms of classification and standardisation are important. We need to look at the standards and coding and their effects on the representation of information and knowledge, and the forms of teaching and learning that are made possible. This relates to the use of ed tech in the commodification of education, and the discourses of ‘efficiencies’ and standardisation, measurement etc. The semantic web means that data can be reused, shared and aggregated- as this happens the ‘pre-history’ of the data and the application of rules and standards applied to that classification disappears. Assumptions are coded into applications, including educational technology.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This emphasises the view that technology is never neutral. Quote from Rushkoff (Rushkoff, D. (2011). Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. New York: O/R Books.) - </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“...as technologies come to characterise the way that we live and work, so the people programming them become increasingly important in shaping our world and how it works.”</span></blockquote>
</div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The coding and standardisation of the information infrastructures required by semantic web and ed tech also has an effect on the way in which people work - their work also becomes standardised to fit the applications that they are using to do their work and the way in which they teach and learn. Adopting particular standards for technology represents a statement on the part of the manufacturer. It could be argued that it is not the tech or the semantic web that is influencing the way that we do things, it is actually the coding and the standards behind it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There is a strong rhetoric about computer software leading to efficiencies, institutional change, and professional competency. Teachers are expected to see the tech as a natural part of their work and that its use in the classroom should be seen as unremarkable. The dominant metaphor is technology as a ‘tool’. Computers are seen as a kind of prosthesis, rather than as more complex assemblages within which the software is one element, and which involve users in a wide range of socio-material relationships. They preclude certain kinds of social and spatial relationships, they reconfigure absence-presence - see the stuff on movement and mobilities.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The standardisation required for data to be open, and for certain platforms (OERs etc) to be open means that data often ends up fitting into ‘flattened’ hegemonic categories. Content reuse and interoperability requires standards - this means that information is affected by both human and non-human actants. There are multiple hidden translations that are incorporated into ed tech applications through codes, ontologies and metadata - it is layers upon layers of tacit assumptions about the way in which ed tech should work, and the way in which people and institutions should work. The problem is that trying to change this, and make different assumptions creates layers of a different kind. But perhaps layers that are predicated on what it actually means to be a learner, and on how people learn best, rather than trying to fit them into systems that see learning as commodified and individualistic. There is also the issue that even with ‘open’ and cooperative movements, there is still ‘benevolent concealment’ of of complexity by coders who have to balance the complexity of coding with usability. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But won’t this always be the case? There is no way to get around this unless everyone is a maker and coder, providing their own custom-built applications and software. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
</div>
photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28653536@N07/5033806460/">elsamuko</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com/">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">cc</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-966469177952398722013-10-02T08:38:00.002-07:002013-11-21T04:17:14.497-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Minor Urbanism and Mobilities</span></h2>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mugley/2459056932/" title="gelatin war by mugley, on Flickr"><img alt="gelatin war" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2365/2459056932_48b9c3e241_z.jpg?zz=1" height="265" width="400" /></a>
<br />
<div id="docs-internal-guid-150255ea-79c6-a897-7445-f2d8e64d5834" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
</div>
<br />
<div id="docs-internal-guid-150255ea-79c6-a897-7445-f2d8e64d5834" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">MSc Reading Notes</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Based on:</span></span></div>
<div class="gs_citr" id="gs_cit1" tabindex="0">
<a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10304312.2013.803299#.Ukw94xArYdk" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Shepard, M. (2013). Minor urbanism: everyday entanglements of technology and urban life. <i>Continuum</i>, (ahead-of-print), 1-12.</span></a></div>
<div id="docs-internal-guid-150255ea-79c6-a897-7445-f2d8e64d5834" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Shepard points out that we think of the entanglement of life with ‘a range of mobile, embedded, networked and distributed media, communications and information technologies’ in terms of an overlay of data onto material fabric. This sees a duality, between information and physical fabric - or online and offline. </span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This leads us to view the technology in terms of the interface between the two, rather than the entanglement as a whole. The result is an ontology that retains the maintenance of the dichotomy. It presents a good argument against digital dualism.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I think that this has relevance for the mobilities paradigm of mobile and e-learning outlined by Enriquez. In her view there is a breakdown of defined spaces, the lines become blurred, they are created and interact with the people who use and inhabit them. There is a breakdown of the duality of spatial and social activity.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Cloud and UbiComp as ‘messy’</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">‘The Cloud’ has become the dominant metaphor for describing the infrastructure that allows ubiquitous computing. The impression given is of a seamless interaction. The truth is that it is much more messy, with a ‘heterogeneous assembly of technologies’. This idea of seamlessness ignores the many social and cultural, political and economic forces at play. The ‘real world’ is composed of human and nonhuman actors, and has situations that are recursively performed and enacted. Again, there is a link here with the mobilities paradigm, as well as the obvious reference to ANT.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Minor Urbanism and its relevance to e-learning</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Shepard uses the example of parkour - a form of movement through an urban space using athleticism and gymnastics. They move through the city using paths that are outside of those designated by urban planners. In doing so they disrupt the patterns of movement within an urban space. Shepard points out that these types of movements - seen metaphorically as well as physically via parkour - reside ‘beneath and between the smooth and seamless landscapes of the neoliberal city’. If we substitute ‘city’ for ‘space’ we can see how such an approach to learning can undermine the neoliberal discourse prevalent in education. Acts that slip beneath the surface, and between the gaps and can shape a different collective experience of learning. They could reconfigure, recircuit and redirect normative systems and infrastructures ‘and open them up to alternate social and political dynamics’.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">What type of learning are we looking at though? What types of activity? I think that an educational/technological version of ‘minor urbanism’ would be a useful way of envisioning an alternative to the pervasive discourses around education at the moment.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This type of minor urbanism can move us towards an alternate ontology than that ‘posited by the cloud for describing the relations between people, technology and space’. It puts actors - human and nonhuman into the foreground of the production of space and data. Again, another link with the mobilities paradigm and the creation of spaces.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Final point - futurology</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Shepard, talking about ‘design fiction’, says that ‘designing implications involves imagining not just new products but also the social and cultural contexts within which they are situated.’ While this enables us to look at things (or technology) in terms of how it interacts social and cultural conditions, it also makes the point that futurology needs to be able to look at future social and economic conditions when making predictions about technology, if it is to be a useful practice. Otherwise it is simply the description of ‘cool stuff’ that might exist in the future.</span></span></div>
<br />
photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mugley/2463217928/">mugley</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com/">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">cc</a>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-63198409729147071672013-10-02T07:02:00.001-07:002013-11-21T03:39:41.166-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What mobilities means for mobile and e-learning</span></h2>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinothchandar/5714935459/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title="Love Is On The Move by VinothChandar, on Flickr"><img alt="Love Is On The Move" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2520/5714935459_80f44fd523_n.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a> <b>MSc Reading Notes</b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><br />
<div class="gs_citr" id="gs_cit1" tabindex="0">
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinothchandar/5714935459/" title="Love Is On The Move by VinothChandar, on Flickr"></a> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439884.2010.531022#.UkwksRArYdk" target="_blank">Enriquez, J. G. (2011). Tug‐o‐where: situating mobilities of learning (t) here. <i>Learning, Media and Technology</i>, <i>36</i>(1), 39-53.</a></span></div>
<div class="gs_citr" id="gs_cit1" tabindex="0">
</div>
<div class="gs_citr" id="gs_cit1" tabindex="0">
<br />
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-13d7a574-7970-8d80-03ca-3843895c1fa7" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Would a focus on bodies change how you currently think about e-learning? Why or why not?</span></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How do I currently think about e-learning? I think of it as learning traditional topics/courses/content etc but mediated by technology. So the technology allows different ways to interact with the material, and with each other. It allows the use of different modalities to present material. The tech allows the building of communities outside of the formal community of the classroom/course.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I think that e-learning, as an online activity shifts the sense of identity and self (even if unknowingly). It disembodies the self, and enables it to shift around different places and spaces, and allows the forging new new aspects of the self. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So, I have thought about e-learning in the traditional sense of minds meeting minds - in the sense of an ‘encounter of intellects mediated by tools’.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The focus on bodies as inhabiting created spaces changes that view. The use of mobile tech to access learning materials also means that the space of learning changes depending on the place the learner is at physically - this space may have to be negotiated with others, differently to the negotiation of space that takes place in a traditional lecture theatre or classroom. There isn’t the segregation of space and social interaction, but the lines are blurred, and the space can be reinterpreted or recreated - the flow of information is altered in online spaces. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">‘Learning is not just an encounter of intellects mediated by tools, but is a bumping into of bodies in spaces as part of ways of knowing in motion.’</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This enables a more ontological relationship with technology, rather than one that considers learning from an epistemological point of view. Learning becomes intrinsically linked with the space of learning, the mobile device that is being used, or the computer that is being used. The sense of self and identity of the learner is therefore re-written contextually - their identity is one of a learner in a particular space or set of spaces, interacting with other learners, and course content. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">‘</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The self is made mobile as a series of traces in mediated spaces.’ </span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In this sense the standpoint of mobilities is a phenomenological one - it considers learning and the relationships of learners from the point of view of how they see and interact with the world, their emotions and feelings. This phenomenology is different to that of the student in the classroom or the lecture theatre. It is a different type of relationship to learning.</span><br />
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Looking at the body rather than just the technology, or the outputs of technology forces us to consider people as placed in a culture and society - they have their own history and narratives, and memory, and bring that to their learning. It is a more holistic approach, and less deterministic. They are not simply led by technology, or applications or software, or content, but form a part of the learning experience - they become signified by the technology, as well as having their activity mediated by it. </span></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Currently when we talk about mobile learning, what we talk about is devices - it is very device-centric. There is discussion of mobile pedagogy, and of design for mobile learning, but even then it is in terms of the devices and how they work, and where they can be used. They are still thought of in terms of ‘the encounter of intellects mediated by tools’ rather than bodies in spaces.</span></div>
</div>
photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinothchandar/5714935459/">VinothChandar</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com/">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-53790086882149383282013-09-23T07:27:00.000-07:002013-11-21T04:17:42.986-08:00Futurology is really 'presentology'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikethemountain/4288574142/" title="Hinterland by MikeLawton, on Flickr"><img alt="Hinterland" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4068/4288574142_bbc8ff3114_z.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Bigum Chapter looks at the issue of computers in schools
using ANT. It also has some insight into futurology, and predictions about technology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Bigum, C. (2012). </span><a href="https://www.moodle.is.ed.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/11644/mod_folder/content/0/Week%201/bigum%202012.pdf?forcedownload=1"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #6a2b40; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">Edges, Exponentials and Education:
Disenthralling the Digital</span></a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;">. In L. Rowan & C. Bigum (Eds.), <i>Transformative Approaches to New Technologies
and Student Diversity in Futures Oriented Classrooms: Future Proofing Education.</i> London: Springer</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 9pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The idea behind ANT is that everything is treated as a
continuously generated effect of the webs of relations in which they are
located. Nothing has reality or form outside of the enactment of those
relations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the use of computers in schools is based upon the network
built up over time of computers/software/teachers etc, and their practices. John Law describes this
as resulting from a ‘hinterland’, which comprises the persistent patterns of
relations performed – the routine realities and the statements about those
realities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For computers to be ‘real’ in schools they need to draw upon
an appropriate hinterland. This means fitting in with the patterns of school
practices – classrooms, timetables, curricula etc. So the impact of past ways
of doing things influences the way we image what can be done. In other words
thinking about the future is really thinking about the present – using our
present narratives, and the ‘hinterland’ we inhabit or draw upon to make
predictions about what could or should happen in the future. We need to look to
an alternative hinterland to make alternative futures.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The problem with trying to look to an alternative hinterland, or to predict a future dominant discourse is that it's very difficult, if not impossible, to do. Most futurology uses contemporary dominant discourses, so it is really describing an alternative present rather than a future. In the same way that science fiction isn't really about the future - it's about contemporary morals, politics, and economics transposed onto an alternative world where ideas can be extrapolated and developed as 'what if...' scenarios. Because futurologists are using contemporary discourses, rather than predicting what discourses might exist, then it is very easy to say things like '<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24174535" target="_blank">in the future all exams will be marked by computers</a>'. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If the dominant narrative is of commodification, competition,
efficiencies etc – i.e. the narrative of neoliberalism, then that is how new technology
will be embedded in the school/university.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
</div>
photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikethemountain/4288574142/">MikeLawton</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com/">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/">cc</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-63236540275205117092013-06-27T08:05:00.000-07:002013-11-21T03:44:16.948-08:00Some thoughts about academic publishing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/cMmhDKbDFW8" width="480"></iframe>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
Some thoughts on the future of academic writing - written in March as part of an assignment for my MSc in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh.<br />
<blockquote>
I am writing this in Vienna - doing a bit of culture for a few days. So, in my attempt to create a multi-modal artefect for IDEL I am about to get all pretentious and arty-farty on your ass. As with a lot of my thinking and writing about stuff, I’m making this up as I go along, so if it doesn’t hang together as coherent then feel free to say so - after all, this is a networked digital artefact - recursive and open-ended - process not product (<a href="http://www.culturemachine.net/index.php/cm/article/viewDownloadInterstitial/433/466" title="digital future of authorship">Fitzpatrick 2011</a>).<br />
<br />
One of the exhibitions I went to see was Austrian artist <a href="http://www.mumok.at/program/exhibitions/franz-west/?L=1" title="Franz West">Franz West at the Museum of Modern Art (MUMOK)</a>.<br />
<br />
<img alt="franz west" src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7rslxwBXo1qgxeopo1_400.jpg" /><br />
<br />
<img alt="mumok" src="http://blog.best-bookings.com/en/files/2012/02/VIENNA-MUMOK.jpg" /><br />
<br />
As with a lot of modern conceptual art I spent a bit of time wondering what I was doing wasting my time looking at this stuff. However, one idea that West had - his ‘Adaptives’ produced a bit of clarity and understanding. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_West" title="adaptives">Adaptives are abstract objects, made from plaster and metal.</a><br />
<br />
<img alt="adaptive" src="http://www.artsconnected.org/media/86/4b/eba93d1a23447d75cdddb85f06ac/1024/768/21248.jpg" height="400" width="400" /><br />
<br />
The idea is that you pick these items up and play with them.<br />
<br />
<img alt="adaptives" src="http://www.museum-joanneum.at/upload/image/content/14352.jpg" /><br />
<br />
The video at the start of this blog is of Hungarian performance artist <a href="http://www.ivodimchev.com/" title="ivo dimchev">Ivo Dimchev</a> using some of West’s Adaptives.<i> Note that one of the ‘uses’ to which Dimchev puts his Adaptive is ‘Not Safe For Work’. If you’ve already found this out to your cost - sorry!</i><br />
<br />
In the traditional view of art, the artist was central, authoritative.<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/LfKYg0kUevA" width="480"></iframe><br />
<br />
The artist would engage in discrete projects that would result in an end product - the painting, or sculpture, before moving on to the next discrete project.<br />
<br />
<img alt="artist" src="https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSLJ1w33mmZ9eCO7cgTVdMKgCya9l7OFWHwGAJiSoiKv_8K0jCJaQ" /><br />
<br />
What West wanted to show was that art only becomes art when people interact with it. For West a work of art is not an autonomous object - it is a process, not a discrete project with a start and end point. ‘Art’ in whatever form requires interaction from the viewer, it only exists as art because of our relationship with it. When I read this on one of the ‘idiot boards’ next to the work I immediately ‘got it’ (maybe I’ll have such a moment with Pinterest one day…). I shifted from my original view of West’s work, which was “WTF!" to understanding, and thought that there was a useful metaphor here that I could use in relation to this week’s IDEL task. There is also one other aspect of the display that is important in this metaphor - but I’ll save that until the end.<br />
<br />
So, what does this have to do with the future of academic writing? Well, writing too requires interaction - it needs us to give it meaning by reading it, and relating it to what we already know - the notion of intertextuality suggests that all texts are ‘rife with references to other texts and that it is impossible for a reader to approach any given text without reference to everything she has previously read or seen.’ (Fitzpatrick 2011). Fitzpatrick quotes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes" title="Barthes">Barthes</a>, <img alt="barthes" src="http://laforge66.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Roland-Barthes-620x230.jpg" height="148" width="400" />who says that any text is a collection of quotes - it is built upon the cultural knowledge and the words of every writer that has gone before it. The general idea is that reading and writing are shared social and cultural experiences, rather than the discrete work of a lone God-Like author who produces a text which most people won’t read, before moving on to the next one.<br />
<br />
In current academic practice the writer is central, she produces an academic paper as the result of a discrete project, before moving on to the next.<br />
<br />
Networked digital writing disrupts this conception of writing. It allows interaction for example via comments in a blog. The writer moves from the centre to the margin. The writing is given meaning by the people who read it , but they then take part in its development, by commenting. The writing is in a constant state of development, its meaning changes with each comment. Just as West’s Adaptives change with each use.<br />
<br />
<b>A sting in the tail</b><br />
<br />
<b><img alt="do not touch" src="http://stephenw63.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/cdfe0-do-not-touch-art.jpg" /></b><br />
<br />
In the Mumok gallery we weren’t allowed to use West’s Adaptives. They were displayed as in any other gallery with notices not to touch ‘due to reasons of conservation’- despite descriptions of each piece telling us how they were meant to be touched in order to have any meaning as art! Maybe West would have appreciated the irony. The old way of presenting art had taken over - back to the the art as autonomous object and artist as God-like creator. The whole point of West’s art reduced to a one-way object-to-person relationship.<br />
<br />
My view at the moment is that the old ways of academic writing will remain, because they are more easily quantifiable, and measurable. In the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40342886?uid=3737528&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102029850447" title="neoliberal university">neo-liberal marketised university</a> the shareholders will need to know what they’re getting for their money, and it’s more difficult to monetise a process than a discernible product.<br />
<br />
<img alt="edufactory" src="http://www.trybooking.com/UserData/2012/5/25226_EduFactoryNoTextLoFiNEW.jpg" /></blockquote>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-60941197750712493772012-10-09T03:39:00.000-07:002013-11-21T03:44:47.268-08:00Traditional Assessment vs Authentic Assessment<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/7815007@N07/7464620182/" title="The heart of teaching is AfL by Ken Whytock, on Flickr"><img alt="The heart of teaching is AfL" class="alignleft" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8012/7464620182_36f4367d28.jpg" height="350" title="Assessment" width="247" /></a>Based on <a href="http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/whatisit.htm" target="_blank" title="What is authentic assessment?">an article by John Mueller</a>.<br />
<br />
Authentic Assessment is defined as<br />
<blockquote>
"a form of assessment in which students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills"</blockquote>
<br />
<em><strong>Traditional Assessment (TA)</strong></em> includes things such as multiple-choice tests, true-false, matching and so forth. The idea behind this is that students must possess a certain body of knowledge and skills, courses must teach this body of knowledge and skills, students must then be tested to see if the course is successful. So, the curriculum drives assessment - the body of knowledge comes first, that becomes the curriculum, and the tests see if students acquired the curriculum.<br />
<br />
<em><strong>Authentic Assessment (AA)</strong></em> is built on the assumption that students should be able to perform tasks in the real world, courses must help students become proficient in those tasks. So, to determine the success of the course students perform meaningful tasks that replicate real world challenges. In this case assessment drives the curriculum - first determine what the tasks are that need to be performed, then develop a curriculum that enables students to perform the task well including the acquisition of essential skills and knowledge.<br />
<br />
How does this work in subjects that are not practical, or do not require performance? For example how do we use AA in History, or Sociology for example? We ask students to perform tasks that replicate the challenges faced by people doing history, or conducting social research. In sociology the rubric may make reference to, for example, Sociological knowledge, Sociological thinking, and Sociological research skills.<br />
<br />
It seems that TA is more useful for formative assessment, while AA is used for summative assessment. Students should be able to perform well in both types of test - TA provides a good complement to authentic assessment.<br />
<h3>
What are the attributes of TA and AA?</h3>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: left;">
<strong>Traditional --------------------------------------------- Authentic</strong></div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: left;">
Selecting a Response ------------------------------------Performing a Task</div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: left;">
Contrived -------------------------------------------------Real-life</div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: left;">
Recall/Recognition ------------------------------- ------Construction/Application</div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: left;">
Teacher-structured --------------------------------------Student-structured</div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: left;">
Indirect Evidence ----------------------------------------Direct Evidence</div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: left;">
AA will use verbs that are towards the top of Bloom's taxonomy - students will be asked to 'analyse', 'synthesise' and apply their learning. AA allows students more choice in what to focus on and what to present as evidence of their learning. TA is more prescriptive. There are often multiple routes to a good answer.</div>
<br />
<div align="center" style="text-align: left;">
I'm not sure I like the term 'Authentic Assessment'. It suggests that TA is not authentic, which is wrong. TA has its uses in formative assessment. I'd prefer to use one of the alternative titles suggested at the bottom of the article - Alternative Assessment, or Performance Assessment.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-91499056332133291952012-10-04T09:36:00.000-07:002013-06-27T08:06:54.046-07:00Writing Effective Online Discussion Questions<a title="Question mark made of puzzle pieces by Horia Varlan, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/horiavarlan/4273168957/"><img class="alignleft" title="Question Mark" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4020/4273168957_840369fe48.jpg" alt="Question mark made of puzzle pieces" width="266" height="400" /></a>This is based on the CREST+ model outlined by <a title="CREST+ Model" href="http://jolt.merlot.org/vol3no2/akin.htm" target="_blank">Lynn Akin and Diane Neal</a>.<br/><br/>The ability to participate in group tasks is an important variable in the success of an online course. It encourages a sense of community and is more likely to improve engagement. Discussion forums provide a good way to encourage participation, but it requires skill in asking the right sort of questions. Akin and Neal argue that the CREST+ model provides a framework for creating effective questions which lead to greater participation and a higher level processing of the course material.<br/><br/>The CREST+ model looks at the <strong>C</strong>ognitive nature of question, the <strong>R</strong>eading basis, the <strong>E</strong>xperiential possibilities and the <strong>S</strong>tyle and<strong> T</strong>ype of question.<br/><h2>Cognitive Nature</h2><br/>There are a range of learning theories and models on which to base questions, such as Constructivism, Androgogy, Bloom's taxonomy. With a a Constructivist approach the students builds meaning based upon the course content. Questions can be structured to reflect increasing complexity. Gilly Salmon's Five Stage model of online learning uses this approach, increasing the student's interactivity and collaboration via carefully constructed questions at the different stages to facilitate the process. Knowles's Androgogy looks at how adults learn and proposes that they want to know why they are learning, need self-direction and want to be responsible for their own decisions, and they bring their life experiences to the course with them. Questions should be constructed that address these needs and help them to learn what will help them in their lives. Bloom's taxonomy, updated by Anderson, ranks enquiry types into a hierarchy. Each level builds upon the other and the student moves to complex understanding and knowledge. The types of question that could be asked would be based on the different levels and where the student was at on the hierarchy. The hierarchy is shown below, with its updated version.<br/><br/><a href="http://stephenw63.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/bloom.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-260" title="Bloom's Taxonomy" src="http://stephenw63.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/bloom.gif" alt="Bloom's taxonomy" width="324" height="232" /></a><a href="http://stephenw63.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/blooms_revised_model_method.gif"><img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-261" title="blooms_revised_model_method" src="http://stephenw63.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/blooms_revised_model_method.gif" alt="Bllom's revised taxonomy" width="281" height="243" /></a><br/><br/>Each level has a set of terms that can be used to build questions, which are available from a wide range of sources online.<br/><br/>In summary the first step in building questions is for the tutor to decide the best type of question based upon the cognitive needs of the students and the desired learning outcomes. The aim is to encourage participation and engagement from the outset. Higher participation and engagement leads to increased cognitive presence, which enables students to construct meaning through sustained communication, and to engage in critical reflective thinking.<br/><h2></h2><br/><h2></h2><br/><h2></h2><br/><h2></h2><br/><h2></h2><br/><h2>Reading</h2><br/>Many courses will have a text book which is a shared resource for the students. Initial questioning can be based upon the shared textbook. It is important to scaffold the questions so that student, online at least, can arrive at more complex understanding together. So for example the forums would be separated, first would be one which concentrates on more basic understanding, before moving on to another forum which requires more complex thinking and critical reflection. Students can learn from each other about how they came to their conclusions, and can learn why others might not be arriving at the same answer.<br/><br/>Questions can also be based on a wider reading of relevant literature. Students would be instructed to find alternative viewpoints and arguments, to share their findings, and resources and citations. It also encourages participation and collaboration, and engages students in finding our about current ideas and research in their field of study.<br/><br/>You should also try to incorporate questions that do not rely on a text. Use videos or podcasts and sound recordings, graphics and images, webquest, scenarios provided by the tutor.<br/><h2>Experiential Element</h2><br/>This is based on Knowles's Androgogy, and constructivist views. Adult students bring a lifetime of experience with them (well, all students do, naturally, but this refers to more mature and varied experience that is often not there in younger students). The tutor should tap into this by providing discussion forums which are based upon the experiences of students and where they can share those experiences, and ask each other questions. They will create their own meanings based upon their prior experiences and peer generated questions can help to build new knowledge. It also increases the sense of community, and builds the students' social presence.<br/><h2>Style and Type of Question</h2><br/>In this case the 'style' of question refers to the students answering questions in pairs or groups. Then changing pairs or groups to discuss the question further. One advantage of this is that it reduces the number of posts in a forum. It also involves collaboration which again will enhance the feeling of community.<br/><br/>Different types of question could include: <em>Metacognitive questions</em>, in which students question their own knowledge, make connections between former and current problems, and reflect on the process of solving problems. <em>Follow-up questions</em> in which students consider different perspectives, provide clarification of thoughts, identify outcomes and answer the 'so what' question within the discussion. <em>Student-created questions</em> can provide thought provoking questions, and puts the student in charge of their own learning. <em>Evaluation and Reflection questions</em> allow students to reflect on the course so far, or any section of the course. For example the 'one-minute' assessment in which students write something they learned form the session and one thing they struggled with. This can then form the basis of a discussion. The tutor may want to allow anonymous contributions.<br/><h2>Finally</h2><br/>The discussion forum should be structured. Students need to know when the discussion is open and when it closes. They should know etiquette and protocols expected in an online discussion. In summary, the tutor should decide the cognitive value of the question, then whether it should be literature based or not. Once this is established, decide whether it should be an experience-based question, then design the style and type of the question, before deciding the parameters for the structure of the question within the discussion forum.<br/><br/>photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/horiavarlan/4273168957/">Horia Varlan</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/">cc</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-6760969295105264712012-10-03T08:04:00.000-07:002013-11-21T03:41:42.521-08:00Lecture Capture<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/apoptotic/1445409547/" title="50 minutes at a time by I, Timmy, on Flickr"><img alt="lecture theatre" class="alignleft" src="http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1239/1445409547_dc1ef468bc.jpg" height="266" title="lecture theatre" width="400" /></a>There are moves here at Leicester Uni to use lecture capture. A blog post by <a href="http://www.masmithers.com/2011/03/11/is-lecture-capture-the-worst-educational-technology/" target="_blank" title="Lecture Capture">Mark Smithers</a> suggests why this might be a bad idea. First, a couple of plus points for lecture capture:<br />
The capture can be broken down into smaller chunks, so that it's not just simply a re-run of the lecture. It can also have subtitles added, and questions can be provided to engage the student in some active participation rather than simply passively watching.<br />
<br />
It is useful for recording guest lecturers and visiting subject matter experts.<br />
<br />
So, on to the bad points made by Smithers in his blog. Lecture capture perpetuates a passive and outdated mode of teaching. It is using 21st century technology to present 1000 year old pedagogy.<br />
<br />
Lectures are a certain length often to suit the timetabling requirements of a particular building, rather than for any pedagogical reason - is there any need for example for lectures to be 1 or 2 hours long? Furthermore no meaningful learning can occur in a lecture.<br />
<br />
What's the alternative? Use video technology to record short desktop pieces that are about 10 minutes long, and which develop a particular point. Or any sort of content that gets across information and ideas efficiently. This fits with the attention span of students, and enables them to study in their own time. Research at Bath University, where they have used lecture capture, suggests that the students spend around 10 minutes looking at the capture. This suggests they are skimming for particular content, and it ties in with evidence for people's attention span when learning. However, Bath uses the Panopto software which has good searching and note taking facilities.<br />
<br />
Overall - I suppose it's like any technology in education, it can be used badly, and it can be used well. Perhaps money could be better spent on staff development that encourages different methods of delivery, and more engaging ways to deliver lectures.<br />
<br />
photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/apoptotic/1445409547/">I, Timmy</a> via <a href="http://photopin.com/">photopin</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-46744289999029183032012-07-02T03:32:00.000-07:002013-06-27T08:06:54.037-07:00Audio Feedback Workshop<a title="Groove Salad by seanomatopoeia, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seanomalone/109538354/"><img class="alignleft" title="listening" src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/50/109538354_dfeba31d46.jpg" alt="Groove Salad" width="350" height="233" /></a><br/><br/>On Friday I attended an audio feedback workshop here at the University of Leicester. The general aim was to look at good practice in the use of audio feedback. We started by writing limericks about the Olympics (surprisingly tricky) and drawing a cartoon to ilustrate our limerick (unsurprisingly tricky). We then gave written feedback to each others' efforts and discussed our feelings about the feedback. We then repeated the excercise, based on our feedback, and this time used a variety of recording devices to give audio feedback.<br/><br/>The general view was that it is much more difficult to get started with audio feedback, as many felt inhibited by the 'performance' aspect of it. However, it was felt that this sort of anxiety could reduce with time and practice.<br/><br/>The plus points about audio feedback are:<br/><ul><br/> <li>It is more personal, and feels more like a conversation. Even though it is a monologue, the person listening acts as if they were in a two-way conversation (i.e. they nod, that sort of thing).</li><br/> <li>It is easier to get across more difficult feedback such as criticism - it is explained better.</li><br/> <li>Audio feedback is like a mini lecture, there is more detail and information. And you can say much more in two minutes of speaking than you could do if you spent just two minutes trying to write.</li><br/></ul><br/>Negative points about audio feedback:<br/><ul><br/> <li>It could be time consuming, especially if, as suggested, students would prefer written feedback too.</li><br/> <li>It requires an element of 'performance' which some people may not be able to manage - i.e. it could be monotonous.</li><br/> <li>There was a worry that people's recordings could end up on YouTube.</li><br/></ul><br/>I think that the worry about workload is obviously a valid one, but I wonder whether this desire for audio and written feedback from students is because they are used to written feedback, and expect it. Perhaps they will become used to audio feedback and the desire for written feedback will drop off. So maybe given the positive elements of audio feedback it is worth persevering initially with this extra workload as a kind of 'loss leader'.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-74206431174237293852012-05-02T02:58:00.000-07:002013-06-27T08:06:54.032-07:00Blocking Pirate Bay - The Continuing Assault on the Internet<a title=",,,^..^,,, RETURN OF PiRATE KOGA by aJ GAZMEN ツ GucciBeaR, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/guccibear2005/2084627079/"><img class="alignleft" title="Pirate Cat" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2061/2084627079_25c0995cfe.jpg" alt=",,,^..^,,, RETURN OF PiRATE KOGA" width="300" height="225" /></a>I shouldn't listen to radio 4 first thing in the morning. John Humphrys often puts me in a bad mood before I even get out of bed - although I suppose I only dislike his questioning when he's giving someone I support a bad time :o) Anyway...yesterday was no exception. He was doing his usual aggressive questioning, not allowing the responder to get a word in on the subject of the judgement that may force ISPs to block Pirate Bay. This time it was a person representing the ISPs who was arguing that it is not their remit to police what people do on the internet. A perfectly reasonable and correct standpoint. Humphrys however, was having none of it - he thought that they were 'assisting' people in downloading illegal material and pornography by providing a service. That's like saying the Highways agency are complicit in bank robberies by providing decent roads for the robbers to escape on. Ridiculous. What came out of the interview from Humphrys (and a Conservative MP, also interviewed), is that they simply don't understand how file sharing works, or how the internet works. <a title="This article for the Guardian" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/may/01/pirate-bay-copyright-crackdown?CMP=twt_gu" target="_blank">This article fron the Guardian</a> sets out the resons why a block won't work.<br/><br/>This is simply another skirmish in the battle for the control of the internet - Big Business wants to turn it into a one-way vehicle for pushing content at people, government and bureaurocrats want to crush the ability to organise and protest - doing so in the name of 'combating terrorism'. It's a battle that must be fought and won by anyone who values freedom of expression and the right of dissenting voices to be heardAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-89140528336221675502012-03-30T07:07:00.000-07:002013-06-27T08:06:54.028-07:00The Reluctant Pragmatist<a title="Father Ted by WordShore, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/silversprite/3403863039/"><img class="alignleft" title="Down with this sort of thing" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3550/3403863039_48b7346cc9.jpg" alt="Father Ted banner" width="350" height="263" /></a>When it comes to rapacious corporations trampling over innovation and diversity in pursuit of a monopoly, you'll always find me in the crowd chucking rotten vegetables at them. That's why I was as angry as anyone else at Blackboard's <a title="BB patent" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc.#Legal_matters" target="_blank">disgraceful pursuit a patent</a> for their proprietary software. I'm also, in my own small, quiet, almost imperceptible way a part of the background noise grumbling at their recent acquisition of <a title="BB acquisition" href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/27/blackboard-buys-moodlerooms-creates-open-source-division" target="_blank">Moodlerooms and Netspot</a>.<br/><br/>Their acquisition of these two Moodle support services seems to be, according to people more savvy than me on these issues, an attempt to diversify their activities so that they become an all-round IT and educational services provider. They also have an advantage over their competitors because they already have access to data that is useful for educational analytics, and that's where their attraction to institutions lies, in addition to being an 'end-to-end' provider for the student learning experience, and that's why they won't be disappearing any time soon (<a title="BB name change" href="http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/3-reasons-why-blackboard-will-change-its-name" target="_blank">although they might change their name</a>). Essentially, their product will be <a title="BB and data" href="http://hackeducation.com/2012/03/29/you-are-the-new-lms-product/" target="_blank">the people who use their VLE, and the data they can provide</a>.<br/><br/>Which brings me to the fact that I have just got a job as a Learning Technology Assistant, with my main function being to work on Blackboard. I'm not going to refuse to work on it due to my ethical or political objections, I have to get on with it and earn a living, and provide a service for the people who use Blackboard. Whether I think a mashup of free and open source products would be pedagogically better than Blackboard is irrelevant - the university uses Blackboard, and probably aren't going to get rid any time soon (they've just upgraded to the latest version).<br/><br/>So, does this leave me as a hapless, forlorn hypocrite - tossed aside and disregarded by yet another corporate behemoth as it trundles on relentlessly in pursuit of increased shareholder value? I don't think so, I have to be pragmatic, I have a mortgage to pay, and I want two foreign holidays a year :-) I will continue to make a small contribution to the background noise and, as the saying goes, it's better to be on the inside of the tent pissing out, than on the outside pissing in, even if I'd rather not be doing either.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-90313507053418373642012-02-20T06:59:00.000-08:002013-06-27T08:06:54.020-07:00The death of the VLE?<a title="Go into the light by T Hall, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tmh9/85411624/"><img class="alignleft" src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/9/85411624_1c492fad99.jpg" alt="Go into the light" width="400" height="266" /></a><br/><br/>There has been a debate for a few years now about the future of the VLE. It seems that reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated, although the fact that there is a discussion is of interest to me, as someone whose job is to develop an institutional VLE, and to support staff in its use.<br/><br/>The argument against VLEs is that they are owned by the institution, and are there to <a href="http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/08/two-fingered-salute.html" target="_blank">restrict and control the activity of its users</a>, and that they promote traditional approaches to pedagogy that do not reflect the age of digital collaboration and the new tools available to students and teachers. They are bloated and cumbersome, and are slow to adapt to the needs of their users.<br/><br/>Compare that to the flexibility of 'web 2.0' applications, that adapt according to the needs of users, are owned by users and reflect the way that many students use digital media and applications. They are cheap, adaptable and support learning far better than VLEs.<br/><br/>It is clear that in the longer term these collaborative tools will become ubiquitous, and that the days of the VLE are numbered - however, that is still some way off. The reason is that the use of web 2.0 tools by students and teachers alike is exaggerated. Most are limited in their ability to use these tools, and the argument that there are 'Digital Natives' <a href="http://www.openeducation.net/2008/09/26/though-net-generation-concerns-overhyped-integrating-technology-the-right-step/" target="_blank">isn't backed up by evidence </a>. The fact is that most teachers, and even learning technologists, <a href="http://elearningstuff.net/2009/08/10/its-not-dead-yet/" target="_blank">don't use these tools on a regular basis, and neither do students</a>. Many are unsure about how to use web 2.0 tools, and social networking applications in education - the VLE offers them a safe starting point, and a route into digital tools in education. There is also the issue of data protection, and ownership of the material that is written and posted to internet tools, and these tools do not provide the institution with the sort of user data sets and usage statistics that institutions increasingly need as part of new funding regimes. The data sets are available from a VLE as a part of a wider managed Learning Environment.<br/><br/>These tools can, however, be embedded into VLEs - the major VLEs have the ability to stream Twitter feeds and RSS feeds. They allow videos from YouTube and blogs to be embedded, and they have chat, discussion forums, wikis and blogs built-in.<br/><br/>The 'personal web' - the aggregation of tools adaptable by users to their individual needs, will win in the end, but for the moment the VLE is alive and kicking. The main question isn't whether the VLE is dead, but how institutions are going to manage the integration of increasing user-choice tools, and their VLE.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-62945403453094848132012-02-06T12:42:00.000-08:002013-06-27T08:06:54.015-07:00The Real Motive Behind SOPA, PIPA and ACTA<a title="Occupy the Internet - Stop SOPA and PIPA by DonkeyHotey, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/donkeyhotey/6720673741/"><img class="alignleft" src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7006/6720673741_16a9a8a1ac.jpg" alt="Occupy the Internet - Stop SOPA and PIPA" width="214" height="300" /></a><br/><br/><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/06/google-facebook-india">Google and Facebook block content in India after court warns of crackdown | World news | The Guardian</a><br/><br/>There's a quote near the end of this article: <span style="background-color:#ffffff;font-family:arial, sans-serif;line-height:normal;"> </span><br/><blockquote><span style="background-color:#ffffff;font-family:arial, sans-serif;line-height:normal;">But, like many other governments around the world, India has become increasingly nervous about the power of social media.</span></blockquote><br/>which indicates the real motives behind the recent attempts to introduce legislation on copyright and internet piracy. Ostensibly aimed at protecting the interests of copyright holders, their effect would be turn the internet into a delivery portal for content from media corporations, and enable governments to crack down on what they would view as inflammatory material. Governments have seen the role that social media played in the 'Arab Spring' and, despite praising the liberating role the internet at the time, they can see the danger it presents to them and their ability to control information, and the people they supposedly serve.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-54999763647871376472012-01-26T08:22:00.000-08:002013-06-27T08:06:54.010-07:00Apples iPad Textbooks: Everything You Need to Know About iBooks 2<a title="iPad & Friends by Yutaka Tsutano, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ivyfield/4486938721/"><img class="alignleft" src="http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4040/4486938721_9f2b236514.jpg" alt="iPad & Friends" width="300" height="200" /></a><br/><br/><a href="http://gizmodo.com/5877500/apples-ipad-textbooks-everything-you-need-to-know-updating-live">Apples iPad Textbooks: Everything You Need to Know About iBooks 2</a>.<br/><br/>When I first heard of the iPad and the digital readers such as Kindle, I could see the possibilities for both fiction and non-fiction.<br/><br/>The possibilities for non-fiction and text books are obvious - more interactive content, rich with multimedia, and links to other resources and possibilities for annotation and collaboration offering a better learning experience.<br/><br/>The possibilities for fiction are also interesting. It won't be too long before more interactive fiction appears, with multimedia content and links to external resources and material. I was thinking it might be analogous to video games - such as Grand Theft Auto IV. You have the main storyline, but alongside that runs other 'missions' and side stories which introduce a range of other characters and broadens the profile of the main character. I can see fiction including such references to the back story of characters, and side stories, as well as ambient sounds, news footage, metadata and so forth.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-60509243118499474742012-01-16T04:03:00.000-08:002013-06-27T08:06:54.006-07:00Do Learning Styles Really Exist? | doug woods<a title="Amsterdam by josef.stuefer, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/josefstuefer/57293163/"><img class="alignleft" src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/25/57293163_d539f520c5.jpg" alt="Amsterdam" width="300" height="225" /></a><br/><a href="http://dougwoods.co.uk/blog/do-learning-styles-really-exist/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter">Do Learning Styles Really Exist? | doug woods</a>.<br/><br/>I get the impression that Doug is conflating 'Learning Styles' and 'individual differences' here. We all have individual differences in the way we learn, but as far as I can see no one has yet defined what a Learning Style is - genetic predisposition? Preference? Aptitude? Attitude? If you can't define what it actually is how can you measure its effect - it can have no reliability or validity.<br/><br/>I suppose there might be some confusion about 'learning styles' and 'Learning Styles'. It's easy to conflate 'learning styles' and individual differences, but I think many of the proponents of learning styles are actually thinking of them as 'Learning Styles' (with capitals) denoting them as actual entities that exist, which can therefore be objectified, packaged, and sold in training courses and books. These people have a vested interest in the existence of 'Learning Styles' so can't be trusted to have an objective view.<br/><br/>I disagree that rejecting learning styles will lead to regressive teaching - a teacher can reject Learning Styles while acknowledging individual differences, and provide a rich learning environment that calls on different modalities. The material provided should suit the content, not an ill-defined abstract notion about how an individual learns.<br/><br/>What we need in teaching is evidence based practice, and so far there is no evidence to support the view that presenting, for example, visual material to your 'visual learners' is more effective and leads to better learning than other ways of presenting the material.<br/><br/>My view is that 'Learning Styles' inhibit good teaching, because it narrows the focus of the teacher and can lead to labelling and self-fulfilling prophesies (I can't learn this because I'm a visual learner'). It can also lead to the production of content that is inappropriate for the subject matter.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-64984961499025260732012-01-10T05:39:00.000-08:002013-06-27T08:06:54.001-07:00BBC News - Children 'switching from TV to mobile internet'<a title="IMG_2692 by Scott's View of the World, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/scottgould/2055558381/"><img class="alignleft" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2334/2055558381_c9a6a4e5ca.jpg" alt="IMG_2692" width="350" height="233" /></a><br/><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16475278">BBC News - Children 'switching from TV to mobile internet'</a>.<br/><br/>More reasons why schools and colleges need to embrace mobile learning and the use of mobile devices as learning tools. Rather than banning them.<br/><br/>There is an issue, outlined in the comments section to this story, that children are becoming socially isolated and failing to develop social skills. I'd suggest that they are simply developing new types of social skills and ways of communicating with each other. People still socialise, they still talk to each other. Those who lack social skills would probably have been the sort of people who lacked social skills in any age.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-76944745752764958862012-01-05T08:57:00.000-08:002013-06-27T08:06:53.994-07:00Creating Online Learning<a title="The Wonder of Online Social Networking by Emilie Ogez, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/eogez/3994880288/"><img class="alignleft" src="http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2439/3994880288_19fc719895.jpg" alt="The Wonder of Online Social Networking" width="213" height="300" /></a><br/><br/>I'm creating the first online learning course in my new job. It is to teach people how to create good discussion forums in an online course - so we based it upon the <a title="Five Stage Model" href="http://www.atimod.com/e-moderating/5stage.shtml" target="_blank">Five Stage Model</a>, put forward by Gilly Salmon. To structure our course we too are using the Five Stage model. So it feels like it's all a bit self-referential - using the model to describe the model.<br/><br/>One thing about online learning is that it takes a lot longer to put together than a face to face session. All of the materials have to be there in advance and on the VLE, or wherever it is being held. It is 'scripted' much more than a face to face session, and there isn't much scope to 'wing it', or think of ad-hoc activities if anything goes wrong. The learners need a clear path through the course, and this needs careful planning.<br/><br/>There are also lots of revisions as I try to put myself in the shoes of a learner and think about the course from their point of view. There is also the difficulty in trying to make sure that the activities we plan fit the model that we are using.<br/><br/>This is a learning process for everyone involved. I'm sure the course will go OK, and I look forward to the feedback - surely it won't all be bad :o)Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-29690227613524283782012-01-04T02:47:00.000-08:002013-06-27T08:06:53.991-07:00Flipped Learning<a title="upside down by moreno, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/moreno/364844125/"><img class="alignleft" src="http://farm1.staticflickr.com/152/364844125_bd5e6b11a5.jpg" alt="upside down" width="210" height="158" /></a> I like this idea of <a title="flipped learning" href="http://theelearningcoach.com/elearning2-0/learning-technology-trends-for-2012/" target="_blank">flipped learning</a>, and <a title="flipped seminars" href="http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/2011/12/09/the-flipped-webinar/" target="_blank">flipped seminars</a>. There is so much time in training and teaching dedicated to exposition by the teacher - this could be better used by getting the learners to do stuff. It's a good constructivist model for education too - the learner builds their knowledge through collaboration with their peers, and with facilitation from the teacher. It's a good use of classroom time.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3644876955212068836.post-18772573300647576282011-12-29T04:12:00.000-08:002013-06-27T08:06:53.987-07:00"...a good teacher who does not use technology is not a good teacher."<a href="http://dougwoods.co.uk/blog/the-purpose-of-technology-in-education-is-not-to-enhance-extend-or-support-teaching/">The Purpose of Technology in Education is Not to Enhance, Extend or Support Teaching | doug woods</a>.<br/><br/><a title="it goes everywhere (18.18.6) by e_walk, on Flickr" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/walker_ep/3209837106/"><img class="alignleft" src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3374/3209837106_88f75f7c61.jpg" alt="it goes everywhere (18.18.6)" width="234" height="350" /></a><br/><br/>Technology is not there just to 'enhance, support, and extend teaching'. It is now an integral part of education, so much so that it has become a delivery system. Woods argues that the danger in seeing technology as enhancing, supporting, or extending means that teachers won't use it unless they can make it fit one of those categories. What is required of teachers is to experiment with technology to see how it can be made to work.<br/><br/>Teachers in HE, being for the most part researchers, ought to be embracing such an approach to their teaching - try it out and see what happens.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00544270697476276228noreply@blogger.com0