Educational Development

4am.. yep its another one of those sleepless mornings when counting sheep just won't settle the mind. Its like waiting for santa on christmas eve, or going through your paces before a big game... this time its what I'm going to say in the 10 minutes I've got today to sum up everything I represent in this game of teaching and learning.

I have 10 minutes to give a presentation in the first of 4 workshops as part of a course called Designing for Flexible Learning Practice. The course is part of a new certificate called "Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Learning and Teaching" being run in my place of work. It is a certificate that all teaching academic staff will likely be expected to have in our organisation, a trend of certification I am quite familiar with in Australia.

So anyway, I've decided to talk about the only thing worth teaching. My presentation is the last of 3. The others are talking to case studies in flexible learning design. One is talking about the development of an online learning resource, the other (I think) is talking about the development of an online learning community for a particular occupation area. The thing that has been worrying me (and the reason I'm awake at this hour) is that with a distributed and networked learning design (that's kinda what I want to talk about), it is difficult to find something that shows how it works at a glance.

That's why I love Jay Cross' graphic on informal learning. I intend to use this graphic to talk about what our organisation calls "graduate profile". A graduate profile is what a student will be like when they finish their time with us. It has statements in it about being a life long learner, a self directed learner, and stuff like that. I want to use that profile and combine it with Jay's illustration of informal learning, and set them up side by side and use them as the target learning outcome when designing for flexible learning.

So it might go something like this:

When a student comes to us, it is probably for one of 2 reasons. They are a novice learner and need support in starting out their learning in a particular area (a bus ride as Jay puts it); or they are an already expert learner (a bicycle rider as Jay puts it) and have to be here because some other piece of paper says they need this piece of paper. Not much I can do about the paper bit, and it certainly can be a demotivating distraction for some groups, but at least I can try to make the bus ride learning (designed for novice learners) interesting for bicycle riding self directed learners.

So, we have a group of novice learners in their first year. They are expert bicycle riders in other subject areas, but in ours they are confessing novice status and want to come on a bus ride (the lesson, or course plan). What we want to do as bus drivers is teach these people how to appreciate riding bicycles in our subject area. Make sense? Well it is 4:30am...

In short, we want these learners to be functional self directed learners in the field before they graduate. Our graduate profile is a bicycle rider.

What does this mean in real terms? It might go something like this:

In their first year (assuming we as teachers have the luxury of talking in years with our course plans) we join people to classrooms. These may be real 9 to 5 type classrooms or these may be virtual online classrooms. We start them off with presentations, lectures, our own learning materials, and otherwise passive/delivered information. But sooner than later we are asking them to start reproducing what they are learning and interacting with the subject.

In the second year (or phase) we introduce them to existing learning communities where they can witness a more informal learning process. It is here we start teaching how to learn this way. We wean them out of the classroom learning, building confidence around themselves and their understanding of the subject. We help them manage communications technology and the skills needed to work it to THEIR favour, and give incentives to use that technology in whatever informal learning they may already be involved in.

Finally in the third year or phase we add further incentives to now focus their informal learning processes on the subject. Taking their place in existing subject oriented learning communities, developing a voice within it and/or breaking away and starting a new learning community. The main point is to develop a person to be an expert self directed learner in the field before they walk out that "door" with a funny hat and a rolled up peice of paper.

Now with that seemingly obvious objective out of the way, what are some of the impediments to that happening? Well, the classroom for one. If by the end of the 3rd year or phase, your classroom or learning management system is still full, then the objective is still a long way off. You need to get as many as you can out of your classroom (bus) an on their own journey (bicycle) as you can in the short amount of tiime you have. In more than a few cases some people may take a lot longer to develop confidence in learning the field informally than others, a few of these may come to realise that your field is not what interests them. Other obstacles are in measuring learning or assessment, but these bureaucratic challenges are where the fun begins for a creative and energetic teacher.

So, its 5 am and I think I'll sleep on it for an hour or so now. But at least I have it out now. Its rough, and may not make any sense to anyone but me - I bet there are a bunch of people who are thinking that I have just contradicted myself in all this, but I have that in mind and I don't think I have. When I come to re-reading this, all puffy eyed and at work - we'll see.

David from Community Health contacted me last week asking about ways to develop Flash Cards for his students. We talked about Peter Mellow's use of sms txt for mLearning flash cards, but David felt it was a bit beyond his needs. I then showed him Bubbleshare in response to his idea of students creating their own flash cards, but he felt it lacked the functionality he was after. So I went on a hunt, asking my network and within no time at all Michael Nelson from Australia passed me FlashCards.

Flashcards are study tools. Think of a small 3×5 index card with a question on one side and an answer on the other side. This web site is an internet application where you can create, study, print and download flashcards. See the introduction for more details.

David's response: "Perfect".

Bronwyn and I have been hammering away at the plan for the Designing for Flexible Learning course. We have done up a course outline and plan using writely - which has been really useful for synchonously editing the document, and I'd say has made this step in the process very efficient.

I am now drafting up a welcome email to be sent out through the egroup. I have also set up a course facilitator's log specifically for the course to help with communication and course promotion. I have also made initial steps towards opening the course for outside participation, such as the blog, open publishing of materials, and public eGroup. I think we will need more people participating in the online discussions to make them effective and engaginig. Offering some of the course freely and openly (up to the point of assessment and creditation) could be a good way to get feedback, promote the course, and potentially increase fee paying participation if RPL processing and mapping to other quals can be achieved and result in assessment and creditation.

Could you have a use for a free, incredibly easy to use, web based and therefore potentially collaborative flow chart/concept mapping tool? Who doesn't have a need for such a thing. I love this tool. Gliffy.com I love you!!

"It is the best of times, it is the worst of times..."

The year is 2014, the New York Times has gone offline. The Forth Estate's fortunes have waned. What happened to the news and what is EPIC?

This 8 minute movie is pretty impressive and in many ways its predictions are already happening. (If the movie stops and starts it means your bandwidth is a bit slow. Let it play through once - no peeking - and replay it when its finished).

If you think you'll be around in 2014, trying to teach in that world, then you should probably watch this. After you've watched it and if you think you'd like to consider more on this topic, have a read of my article on the evolution of Internet communications back in July 2005.

What an interesting era we are in.

You could ask Ninja, he might make sense, he'll certainly crack you up!



Otherwise, you could come to Networked Learning workshops lunch times for the first 2 weeks of every month! ;)

This morning I visited William's class up in the Languages Department, to talk with his students about Wikipedia. I was very pleased to see that his students were quite inspired by the wikipedia, with a few committing themselves towards working with the content and creating pages in their own languages. I'm hoping that they will be attracted to translating the Otago Polytechnic pages, as well as the Dunedin Page.

Here is some information about starting new pages in Wikipedia in different languages, as well as how to edit.

William then invited me to have morning tea with the language Department staff, and I must say how impressed I was by their willingness to talk with me, and the new ideas and practices I bring with me. The staff struck me as having exactly the right qualities needed to develop a truly innovative and useful online component to their classes.

In particular we spoke towards the idea of life long learning, and working towards building student confidence and competence in communicating in English, in the context of their lives. I think we agreed that students using the Internet to enhance their communicative reach and capabilities may not only improve confidence and competence, but may also work towards a more self directed learning ethos, and a student generated content model for the Languages Department.

I left a Notworked Learning booklet with them and explained that I am available to help them understand these new technologies and social communication methods, either at the times indicated on the fliers, or anytime they can arrange a group of 5 our more (students included).

I very much look forward to working with this Department.

Julie came around to see me to ask about ways to get her presentation The Spell of Morpheus online. Personally I am very interested in Julie's topic and think it to be socially significant. Aside from that, it was an opportunity to work with someone confessed to be afraid of computers and creating digital content - although I did find out later that Julie has been a big time user of chat rooms...

Our concept was to record Julie giving her presentation with the transparencies she already had. I would record the audio, and photograph the projections, then we would compile the presentation using flickr for the projections and ourmedia for the audio, then bringing it together in Julie's own blog. Unfortunately the recording of the presentation didn't work. We had limited audio recording resources at the time, and all the projections were not available making the photography idea impossible.

I did go ahead and upload what pictures I did get, just to demonstrate the workability. Julie downloaded Audacity and recorded her voice, and uploaded the PowerPoint and the audio to her own ourmedia account.

We will complete the experiment when Julie gets back.

Nancy White reports her favourable impression of free web based white board service Vyew.

Here is another tool to play with, Vyew.com - Free Web-Based Collaboration. A few of us have used it a couple of times during our regular teleconference calls. (We normally use the phone and a Skype chat room). It was easy to use and useful for sketching visual ideas. We wished for a shared write board as well as a whiteboard because using the text tool was a bit clumsy. But overall, I like it. Useufl for a quick, free shared visualization space. Free for up to 20 users at a time. Includes a chat panel (right side) and list of users (upper right side.) You can save screens and email them to yourself or others.

Take a look at this project getting launched tonight. If you're interested in learning a lot more about networked learning, then watch that space. I hope to get Otago Poly staff involved in the mentoring network.

A Community of Practice (CoP) with the purpose of exploring Web 2.0 technologies in education and related learning theories, such as Connectivism and Networked Learning.

Based on peer-to-peer learning principles, the network will provide an opportunity for members to share skills and knowledge and mentor each other in new tools, practices and concepts.

The network will be built on the open web using Web 2.0 tools, modelling the process of creating networked learning communities based on personalised learning environments, thereby reflecting the underlying philosophy of learner-centred, self-organising, egalitarian networks.

Merrolee popped around the other day to talk about ways in which she can record audio using her standard issue mobile phone, and how to email that audio off her phone and onto a computer for editing and reformating.



If the streaming video above does not work for you, download the movie file here: 9 Meg.

In an email discussion with Terry Morris today, we talked about the enablement principle in teaching. We are devising a way to integrate the Networked Learning workshops into other teaching technology workshops, starting with the ones Terry is offering.

I really admire Terry's concept of starting off with what the participants generally already know well - that being traditional teaching methods. He then takes those methods and relates them to a particular communication technology - such as Internet broadcasting...

The introductory discussion of current teaching practices and a broad conceptual view of ICTs such as "Internet broadcasting" sits well with me. But even in the Networked Learning workshops, I have difficulty when it comes down to a specific technology. My difficulty is mostly to do with enablement. I want to find a way where participants feel enabled to choose their own technology and not be limited by what we or our employer says we should use. Is there an in between step that "should" be taken before we endorse by teaching Elluminate, Blogger, or MS Producer?

In a way enabling participants of the NetLearning workshops to choose their own technology is easy, because the criteria for the technologies are that they have to be free, web based and easy to use applications. Being free and web based obviously means that the participants can try out and swap around before settliing on the one for them.. easy to use is more subjective of course. The goal is to become fluent and confident in trying things out.

So for example:

eMail lists: We look at the history of their use, relate it to current teaching practices, then look at what free and web based serices are available. It is about here that I have trouble. It is hard not to just say "I think Google Groups is the best, so we should us it". Especially when it is clear that the younger ones probably prefer MSN groups, Yahoo groups, or MySpaces, not to mention the others who would prefer to host their own email list software!

Terry and I went along to the Friday arvo design staff meeting this week to discuss online and flexible learning. I was particularly looking forward to this meeting as it was mt third, Terry's second with the team and at the previous meetings the staff had expressed interest in hearing more about open networked learning methods such as blogs, wikis and open courseware.

Unfortunately I was a little late for the meeting due to being held up recording a very worth while presentation on mobile learning by Peter Mellow. A few of the design staff were also at that presentation and were impressed enough by it to bring it up at the design staff meeting afterwards.

When I arrived, Terry was full flight into talking about Black Board. He spent a while going over the various benefits of Black Board and basically rehashing what we had talked about in the previous 2 meetings. He then showed 2 examples of Polytech Black Board courses, demonstrating examples of simple animated resources within them. He talked a little about the use of Course Genie to generate well ordered text base resources from word documents, and how Black Board automatically unpacks Zip files.

When a couple of the staff started expressing concern that their students would not engage with, or even get much out of the Black Board LMS, I took the opportunity to show examples of open networked learning resources. I showed Michael Nelson's Web Design course in Wikiversity and explained how the resource is constantly being updated and modified by Michael, his students and outside collaborators. Wikiversity generated discussion in the group with Product Design lecturer Mike Wilson bringing up MIT Open Courseware as an interesting model for him. We looked at the Open Courseware finder and discussed the benefits and issues with OP Design adopting such a model, and using other organisation's courseware.

The discussion then moved to how the Design Department needed a website, and how they had been waiting for quite some time to see that through. Given that we had been talking about wikiversity, I brought up the Wikipedia entry for Otago Polytechnic and showed them how they could use that entry to start building a website for the Department. This again generated an energetic discussion, with agreement that students would find such a collaborative environment engaging. While the wikipedia entry may not be suitable for the main Design Department website, everyone agreed that it would be a good tool in which to build up content to copy into a more formal website when it is available to them.

Over all I get the impression at all three meetings so far that the Design staff are considering using Black Board to administer and manage their courses, but are very interested in exploring open networked learning strategies in their courses.

Met Peter Mellows for dinner tonight. He is talking tomorrow about his StudyTXT project. Basically its a simple service in which students txt a course or subject code and get txt back a 100 or so character message with facts and figures. Here's a video of Peter demonstrating the service.

Here's a recording of Peter's inspiring 1 hour presentation made to Otago Polytechnic the day after. Starts off with the Dalai Lama talking about non violent action - which I found curiously though provoking, and in many ways caused me to think about my own work and the way I go about agitating for change in my own organisation...

Otago Polytechnic had a little student open day on campus day before yesterday. I took the opportunity to orientate myself a bit more with what courses are on offer and the faces behind them, by running around with my pocket camera and video recording short vox pops of the people at the stands. Sadly I lost a few of the recordings because I saved the videos to my desktop and left them over night. Turns out large files get wiped from the desktop in a rather strange backup process. Sadly I lost the originals, so am left with only the compressed versions... oh well, leassons learned...

Anyway, I was able to salvage a few of the videos and have them uploaded to YouTube for free streaming and public networking/promotion. I'm still in the process of uploading the movies to OurMedia for free file serving so you can get a copy for yourself. To learn how easy it is to do this for your classes, come along to the Digital Video Recording and Editing workshops, 2nd Wednesday of every month, 12 - 1pm. In the mean time, here they all are copied below:

(If you have recieved this message in your email, you'll have to go to the original post "educational development" linked below. Also - you will need Flash and Java enabled on your computer to watch these movies, and if your bandwidth is too slow to stream them in, press pause and let them load ahead)


Rene Smit on IT Courses at Otago Polytechnic


Pete and Gary take us through the courses on offer at the Sports Institute at Otago Polytechnic


Kirsty Miller takes us through Technology Science courses offered at the Otago Polytechnic

Annetta Cowie talks about business admin courses offered at the Otago Polytechnic's open day

Mike Wilson talks us throughthe courses on offer in Design at Otago Polytechnic

Caroline McIntosh talks us through the Midwifery course offered at Otago Polytechnic

Since the podcast about podcasting session, there's been an increase in the number of people at Otago Polytechnic interested in audio recording and publishing. We had a few people at the Digital Video Recording and Editing workshop yesteray. Merrolee wanted to find out how to make her mobile phone recordings available online. Julia is interested in how she can AV record her presentations and make them available online. Rachel is interested in current trends in video for use in her photography classes. Phil turned up to get ideas. Bronwyn was there as well. Ken couldn't make it because of a meeting, but her is interested in audio recording and podcasting lectures.

Seeing as this was the first workshop on digital video, I kinda held the floor for the hour going over all the different things involved, and explaining what it doesn't involve - for me.

I started off explaining how this workshop fits in the series of workshops in networked learning, and how there is an eMail list for the participants to continue discussion before and after workshops. I showed how everyone is a manager in that eMail list and urged everyone to invite and add others. I also demonstrated how to RSVP a time for workshops from the workshop calendar.

Then I moved into what the session is about. I pulled out my little pocket camera and explained my perspective on these camera's video recording capabilities. For the most part these cameras do a good enough job in terms of quality for use on today's internet. The fact that they can only record short lengths of video is a blessing in my view. Like the expense of film, storage issues for digital cameras means we are more careful and thoughtful in how we shoot video. This naturally leads us into a practice of in camera editing, which in the long run is a very good practice to get in to.

From that I showed YouTube. One of many free DIY video publishing web sites that offers free streaming for your videos. I showed some of my uses of YouTube and demonstrated the extra benefits of using socially networked services like YouTube - especially how when you upload a video of your own, it automatically relates your video with other videos like it, based on how you describe yours. This can be a valuable feature that will save we teachers from "reinventing wheels", and networking us with other video creators with similar interests.

I showed how I am largely using YouTube for screencasting. I use the free and open source screen recorder CamStudio to record demonstrations of using particular websites and software. I then upload the demos to YouTube and copy the code offered by YouTube and past it in this blog to display the video in context, as such:



If you are reading this post in your email, then it is likely that you cannot see the video. The email has been forwarded from the original blog post. Click the "educational development" link at the bottom of the email to see this post in its original context.

I then talked about the limitations of YouTube only really being usable to people who have access to broad band Internet. Unfortunately, YouTube does not yet offer a feature of being able to download the video to play offline. What we need is a service that will at least allow people to set their computers to download a video file so that they can walk away and come back next morning and have a video file to play.

So I showed OurMedia. OurMedia offers unlimited file storage, non commercially. It is the contemporary media capture arm of the Internet Archive, an impressive project working towards the goal of offering universal access to all human knowledge.

But before uploading video to OurMedia, it is a good idea to process our orginal video into a size and format that is optimized for the Internet. I use the free video converter Videora. Videora processes videos into the MPEG4 format which is playable in the Quicktime player, as well as the iPod video player. It is generally accepted to be the most widely used and playable format.

Once original video has been processed into MPEG4, it can be uploaded to OurMedia, and then the Universal Resource Locator (URL or Link) is offered by OurMedia for you to copy and use in your online communications. That is the link that people on slower connection can use to save the video to their computer for viewing later.

We talked about a whole bunch of other issues and potentials in the workshop, but hopefully these notes cover the core elements.

Bronwyn and Terry attended a Flexible Learning Committee meeting last week. The need for a survey to gauge where the Poly is at and where it might need to go in relation to flexible learning was actioned. The plan for the survey is due tomorrow, so Bronwyn, Terry and I have been working on a document in Writely.

At the moment we are working up 10 example questions for each of the following big picture areas:

These are the big picture questions which will be answered by the data to be gathered in the project.

1. What is the understanding of staff, students and other stakeholders about flexible learning?
2. What is happening now around flexible learning and teaching at the institution?
3. How can flexible methods further assist learning and teaching?
4. What is needed by staff and students to encourage and support them?
5. Where do the staff and students and other stakeholders see flexible learning and teaching taking the institution in the future?
6. Where does the institution fit nationally and internationally?
7. What is the best way to review flexibility in learning and teaching?

On another note, working in Writely has been very useful. Writely is a web based office suite where we can upload documents and collaborativley work on them without ending up with versions left, right and centre. A bit like a wiki but it has all the office formating tools. Now that Terry is on board with us in it, we should be able to get a lot more done asychronously, and not have to rely so much on meetings and then one person transcribing what we agreed.

Terry Marler and myself went to Cromwell Campus to talk with a small group of teachers there about flexible and online teaching and learning. Terry and I drove up the night before so we could get an early start there, and stayed to 3pm the next day.

In the session we talked about the future of teaching and learning in a networked world, online pedagogy, quite a bit of hands on with Black Board 6, using AFLF Toolboxes, Wikis, Blogs, image and video sharing and socially networked software.

Apart from some minor issues with filters Terry or I knew nothing about blocking some of the things we needed to show and talk about, It was quite a good day, overviewing quite a number of practices and issues in education. The group is very friendly, has a good moral, and over all seem keen to proceed with developing more flexible learning options for their courses.

Myself, Merrolee Penman, Ken Wysocki, Terry Marler and Bronwyn Hegarty got together this morning to talk about podcasting. I used my little pocket recorder, but the mic picked up a far bit of background noise which converts into a pretty loud digital distortion when the MP3 compression was finished with it :( But its audible. Badly need a good mic. Please have a listen and if there is something you think is important to link to from this audio, add it to the audio log wiki.

Here's the file: 8 megs.

Unfortunately Rachel and Kevin couldn't make it to the wiki workshop today, but Phil (bless him) he made it - we talked about many things apart from wikis.. such as the use of the picture sharing service flickr and the video sharing service youtube in class settings.

If you intended to come, or are intending to get along to a wikis workshop, perhaps spend 20 minutes with these 3 videos:

A really interesting look at Wikipedia the free encyclopaedia
A look wikispaces, the free web based wiki service
A very quick look at PB wiki, a free web based wiki that offers login options

To book a place in any of the networked learning workshops just click the "calendar" link at the top of this website.

I've almost finished printing the info booklet and fliers for the workshops too, so keep an eye out for them in the next week.

Tomorrow's workshop is on web feeds. 12 - 1pm H523.

So Helen turned up today to look at blogs. We got side tracked quite a bit talking about ideas for OP to save money, and general discussion on working at OP. But now we're into blogs and have also looked at the news reader Bloglines and the email list service Google Groups.

Electronic tools make it too easy to make mistakes. If you're trying to tow the line and use you electronic calendar, but keep missing appointments because you forget to look at the darn thing, then you need an alarm notifier. This demo will show you how to do that with the email and calendar client GroupWise. While you watch this, I'm out looking for a way to get the thing to send a message to your mobile phone as well!

Watch the streaming video on YouTube.
or
download the mpeg video - 2 meg from Internet Archive

Audio file - 45 meg

Brewster Kahle initiated the Internet Archive, an amazing library archive, succeeding in its incredibly ambitious vision - to provide universal access to ALL human knowledge and information.

If you're a librarian, or someone who works with information and knowledge production, publishing, storage, archive, retrieval and reuse... that's everyone! Then you would be neglecting your post by not listening to this recording of Brewster presenting his arguments and vision at IT Conversations archives of the SDForum Distinguished Speaker Series.

Bill Kerr went to the trouble of transcribing Brewsters final word in the recording:

When I grew up I felt that life was happening to me - I got to watch TV, I heard from teachers, I read textbooks ... the newspapers were written by someone other ... it felt like things happened to me

It was only when I got to a technical college that I found people in the front end of a field ... it was very exciting, invigorating ... people answering questions that hadn't been answered, rather than, "Do it right kid, or you'll get a B"

It was exciting when I was in a crypto class and the teacher said, "In this class you're going to learn all these things ... and then we have a bunch of unanswered questions ... if you have any ideas on these unanswered questions, here's my home number" ... that's exciting!

The opportunity we have with the net and it's already happening is making it so that more people feel like they're at the front edge, that they're seeing primary materials, that they can talk and interact with the real guys, that they're building and making something new, that they have something to say that matters ... that the world is theirs to play with and build on.

The key thing for us is to make it Read / Write. You can read or comment or make something new. You deserve to be in the library too.

The key to happiness for me is satisfaction and being satisfied comes from doing things for others, that I could tell what their reaction was. One of the cool things about this WAIS system was you put up these things and you started to see the usage logs ... people were coming in from other countries ... they cared about me ... it was like that ham radio experience ... where are you?

We started to share things, making it so more people are on the front edge ... they are able to draw from the past and make new things

The downside, the evil, awful, how could it go wrong is cable television or DRM, where it's all locked up. You're allowed to experience it ... entertainment and being a consumer ... this is SICK, I don't want to be a consumer, I don't want to be entertained. That's happening to me. I want to be able to build on and show off to my friends ... and that requires easing up and being able to play with stuff.

I think ideas come from the commons. They're exploited successfully by Companies as Marx said ... but I'm a card carrying capitalist and I've been fairly successful. But I do know the limitations of what we can do in the private sphere.

The public sphere is something we really have to nurture. When I was first at an internet conference after coming out with WAIS in 1991, I remember putting up my hand and saying, "I'm the token dot com in the room, I'm here to help people make money on the net". But NOW, I'm the token dot org in the room! It's gone so far the other way that we've forgotten that it really requires the commons ...

That's my dream and hope that my kids have a better life than I have