Friday, 29 June 2007
Gordon Brown's changes in Education responsibilities
OK, I'm trying to get my head round the changes that Gordon Brown has wrought in the people and agencies responsible for Education in the Government.
John Denham is now the head of a new department - the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills, responsible for:John Denham left Tony Blair's government in protest over Iraq which is one thing in his favour (although let's not get into the pros and cons of the war - I believe that Tony Blair sincerely believed in the presence of WMD in Iraq). He was born in 1953 and was educated at Woodroffe Comprehensive School, Lyme Regis and Southampton University and has three children. So far so good.
- Universities - teaching and research
- Science (formerly of the DTI)
- Innovation (formerly of the DTI)
- Skills sector
In his ministerial statement to the Commons, Gordon Brown said: "The new department will be responsible for driving forward delivery of the government's long-term vision to make Britain one of the best places in the world for science, research and innovation, and to deliver the ambition of a world-class skills base".
The one thing that puzzles me (and others, apparently) is that FE Colleges will be covered by both departments - 14-19 provision by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and HE courses and skills-based courses by this new Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills.
In another interesting move, Gordon Brown announced that funding for 16-19 education - which includes a range of academic and vocational training - would in future go to schools and colleges via the local authority education budget.
I guess the FE sector will have the most to do to catch up on what this all means for them - and the implications for actual funding levels won't be known for some time.Labels: education sector, FE, Gordon Brown, Government, HE, Innovation, John Denham, lifelong learning, policy, science, skills
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:48 AM
Monday, 25 June 2007
Colour picking
Here's an interesting widget that helps you pick co-ordinating colours - particularly good for designing webpages, but also good for colours of any kind!
Note: it doesn't work in Internet Explorer, so you will need Firefox to use it properly, I'm afraid.Labels: colour, tools, web design
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:39 AM
Friday, 22 June 2007
Embedding?
At a conference I attended recently, there was much discussion about what "embedding" means in the context of e-learning in Higher Education.
I was thinking maybe we should be talking about "Mbedding" because possibly the whole point is to lose the "e"... Technology should be just one of the tools which teachers use to develop, deliver and facilitate learning, no more or less important than any other. To use technology that way, however, there need to be a lot of things in place - infrastructure and support (including availability of IT experts and learning technologists), training and awareness building, piloting of technologies, and research into the pedagogical aspects of using technology (as there should be research into pedagogical aspects of all learning practices).Labels: embedding e-learning, HE, learning futures, learning technologies, universities
posted by Helen Whitehead 11:18 AM
Tuesday, 19 June 2007
A narrative-based approach to designing e-learning
So - how do you make boring subjects interesting when creating e-learning?
Mandatory training can be dry and boring so there needs to be a reason or motivation to undertake it if the learning is to be memorable and considered valuable. In a narrative-based approach, digital storytelling concepts and multimedia elements can be combined to create an innovative narrative learning structure. Extensive use is made of humour, imagination, reward, anticipation or drama; topics and themes are chosen as likely to be relevant and interesting to a clearly identified target audience. An interesting context or scenario into which the activities are placed can engage and stimulate the learner, assist the activity to have meaning and help students to contextualize content.
References
Brown and Voltz "Elements of Effective e-Learning Design" in The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 6, No 1 (2005),
Brodsky, M., May 2003. E-learning Trends, “Today and Beyond. Learning and Training Innovations”. http://www.elearningmag.com/ltimagazine/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=56219
Gee (2003), What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy,
--
In their paper "Elements of Effective e-Learning Design" in The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Vol 6, No 1 (2005), Brown and Voltz suggest Scenarios.
There needs to be a reason or motivation to undertake an educational activity if the learning is to be memorable and considered valuable. An interesting context or scenario can assist the activity to have meaning. In some situations, the context will either be evident or require little explanation, for example, in relevant workplace training situations or in situations where student motivation is known to be high. In other contexts, possibly the majority, where the learning agenda is largely institutional, students are encouraged and assisted by an interesting scenario into which the activities are placed. Scenarios are usually provided by a story, role play, or simulation, within which the activity plays a pivotal role in helping students to contextualize content (Brodsky, M., May 2003. E-learning Trends, Today and Beyond. Learning and Training Innovations. http://www.elearningmag.com/ltimagazine/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=56219).
The scenario will most likely be fictional; however, there is an assumption that the learning or skill gained through the activity will be transferred to future real world situations. This transfer is assisted if the learning scenario raises issues and problems similar to those in the real world; scenarios with this real world correspondence are often referred to as being ‘authentic.’ An interesting scenario will make extensive use of humor, imagination, reward, anticipation, or drama to enhance the activity. It will have topics and themes likely to be relevant and interesting to the target audience. It will make the learning activity seem like an obvious or necessary thing to undertake, given the situation presented by the scenario. Designers of entertainment products have long understood this requirement, and the study of their techniques is of increasing interest to educators such as Gee. In his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, Gee (2003) suggests that “learners participate in extended engagement (lots of effort and practice) ... in relation to a virtual world that they find compelling” (p. 67). For the effective design of e-learning materials, the target audience must be clearly identified in order to develop scenarios that are likely to engage and stimulate the learning.
[One caveat:] ... if a resource is too much like a game with rules unrelated to real world contexts, then teachers would avoid using it. From this feedback, it is clear that authenticity and interest are highly valued aspects of e-learning design scenarios.Labels: e-learning, instructional design, learning design, online learning, scenarios
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:45 AM
Monday, 18 June 2007
A mosaic of some of Flickr's images tagged "learning technology"
1. SmartBoard - saved Flickr favorites in a mosaic, 2. Wireless world, 3. montage, 4. kid_camera_rwanda photography workshop 2006, 5. Pioneer's" Hologram, 6. Ballroon Dancing Robot, 7. Nasa Exhibit, 8. Da Weeg (is nerdcurious), 9. The Techno TwoLabels: e-learning, images, learning, photographs, technology
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:13 AM
Thursday, 14 June 2007
That email mountain...
Debbie Weil writes in the Guardian about one way to deal with an overload of email. Well, we all face it to some extent, don't we?
Two bloggers in the US have declared themselves 'email bankrupt.' Fred Wilson declared: 'I am so far behind on email that I am declaring bankruptcy. If you've sent me an email (and you aren't my wife, partner, or colleague), you might want to send it again. I am starting over.' This received a lot of sympathetic comments and it is instructive to read the number of suggestions on how to manage becoming 'email bankrupt'. Jeff Nolan then declared bankruptcy as well, saying 'I am going back to voice communication as my primary mechanism for interacting with people.'
Personally, I am an advocate of speed reading. It's fairly clear very quickly whether an email is important or not. After dealing with email for 10 years, I also have a sixth sense for spam from just the title.
I also filter all my regular newsletters into dedicated folders to read when I have time, and have a labyrinthine system of email folders in which everything gets stored, regularly. Oh - and I archive my email. With Outlook it's quite easy to load and search your email archive on a CD. I'll let you know whether it works with other email programs..
I would like to invite you to comment on your top tip for surviving the email avalanche. Your good deed for the day - share with those of us in dreadful 'email debt'.
Meanwhile if anyone has a way to resist checking your email every time you pass your computer, I'd love to hear it!Labels: email, organisation, time management
posted by Helen Whitehead 1:07 PM
Tuesday, 12 June 2007
Google pitching to Higher Education
According to this story on the BBC today, Google is expanding its empire into universities - with entire campus e-mail networks switching over to using Google's e-mail service. Apparently Trinity College Dublin has switched over entirely to Google's e-mail.
The new Google-based e-mail addresses (which can still be applied to a university domain name, but which can be accessed from any online computer) can be kept by students when they leave. I'm not sure this is a good idea. There are all sorts of reasons (e.g., authenticity and identity) why a university email address should be limited to those actually studying or working in them. Surely it would be better if university email accounts simply automatically redirected once a student leaves, with a notification that "this student has left".
Google says its higher education tools, hosted by them, allow students to work on files from any internet-connected computer, to engage in collaborative work - working together in real-time on the same document - and to use online timetables and calendars.
What's next - the Google VLE?
I would have serious doubts about privacy and security of data by entrusting all to Google - but it's certainly true that Universities can no longer ignore the rise of Web 2.0 applications.
As Michael Nowlan, director of information systems services at Trinity College Dublin, is quoted as saying, "The digital natives will find their own way, make their own discoveries."Labels: collaborative working, email, Google, HE, learning futures, universities
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:56 AM
Sunday, 10 June 2007
Meg Pickard at Women, Business and Blogging
The first speaker at the Women Business & Blogging conference at DMU on Friday (8th June) was Meg Pickard, Head of Communities and User Experience for Guardian Unlimited. She spoke about "Whose Web is it anyway".
Meg introduced us to the levels of a user's interactions with the internet starting with the easiest:
consumption: users now can consume content without even visiting the site it comes from
interaction: basic interaction involves comments & conversation hosted by the creator - when it comes to commenting and interaction it's "not always polite and genteel – can be rowdy but is still your turf, i.e. 'my gaff, my rules'." Then people start responding to your content in their own spaces can't control it - may not eve know about it! Invisible interaction includes - attention data - using a feed reader - user/view count
curation: a new way of people being creative by involvement in creation and aggregation like feed readers. New technologies make it easier to do this - e.g., folksonomy, delicious, recommendations like digg. Squidoo - people creating lenses about things - bring in sites etc. - adding metadata. Other people can be creative with your content! Examples : Mashups - eg Yahoo pipes, remixing feeds and open data sources across the web for new purposes
creation: Content creation - contribution - e.g., photos on BBC website, youtube, flickr - user-generated content: the user has the control.
Meg went on to look at what makes a community.
Communities are good for users because they:
- increase relevancy
- increase emotional connection to the online experience
- increase social connection to each other
- add depth to conversations
Communities are useful to publishers and businesses because they:
- make experiences more relevant and human
- improve the quality of content
- increase usage
- increase revenue
Meg's "Holy Trinity" of community management include:
- Human solutions - moderators, policies, processes, consistency of approach
- Technical solutions - moderation platform, profiles, user management tools, ratings, etc.
- Editorial solutions (the one people forget) - proposition, framing of debate, tone of voice, reward, interaction
Personally I'd put the human and editorial solutions in together as all those things in editorial solutions are, for me, part of moderating, but it's true that many who start communities think of the technical aspects, sometimes think of the human aspects but miss out on the editorial aspects and the resources that need to be put into it.
Meg pointed out that the user engagement cycle of
casual - > connected - > committed - > catalyst
visiting registering engaging identifying/evangelist
could be mapped on the user engagement cycle.
Labels: blogging, interaction, Meg Pickard, nlabwomen, nlabwomen07, online communities, Web 2.0
posted by Helen Whitehead 3:18 PM
Technorati
I can't believe I never joined Technorati before...
Technorati ProfileLabels: blogging, technorati
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:44 PM
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Online friends have problems just the same...
As you might expect, I am a daily user of forums. My favourites are a private board for a group of about a dozen e-learning consultants (we used to work together) and a hobby board, where I am in a "team" of 10. Breaking up a community into groups of about this size makes it much more manageable and personal to interact.
This week though, there have been a variety of crises striking my forum-mates, with serious health issues striking at all ages from brand new babies to elderly grandparents. We offer one another support, and I guess it's not that much different in effectiveness from getting on the phone to a friend.
I have tutored courses with students from around the world and run comunities with members worldwide and it seemed like whenever there was a major world incident I know someone caught up in it. From the serious - 9/11 and the Bali bombings spring to mind, to the silly - a fellow member of a forum is a relative of one of the current Big Brother contestants! (I don't watch it!)Labels: crises, friends, online community
posted by Helen Whitehead 10:39 PM
