Tuesday, 11 December 2007
E-learning Advent Calendar
I've been writing less in the blog at the moment - lots of effort is going into the ELKS "Advent of Technology" Calendar, full of people's favourite tools for teaching and learning with technologies.
You don't even have to be a member to see the calendar :)
DIRECT LINK to calendar
Today's entry (December 11th): Google and Google ScholarA good search engine has to be among the “best tools”. And can I be controversial and recommend Google Scholar too? Although it’s nothing like as good as the databases and services your institutional library undoubtedly offers, I find it’s a great place to start my literature search to get a bit of a feel for the subject and its primary exponents.
It’s surprising how many students don’t know how to use a search engine properly, or how to evaluate the results when they get them. It’s something that a group of us at ELKS have started creating guidelines for. Hopefully the guidelines can be used by any tutor for any class where students need to search the web (there’ll be a section on Wikipedia as well… but that’s a ‘whole other story’ !).
Labels: advent calendar, e-learning, elearning, Google, learning technologies
posted by Helen Whitehead 8:34 AM
Monday, 24 September 2007
Final reflections on the ALT-C conference #2
Marion Miller, Manager, JISC Regional Support Centre for Yorkshire and Humber, University of Leeds, summed up the contributions to the theme: Learning technology for the social network generation.
She made an interesting suggestion that the VLE "has had its day". The focus is moving away from VLEs towards social networks - but we were talking at ALT-C as experimenters - and I doubt that Universities are really ready to junk their VLEs.
Once conclusion from the conference was that staff need to experience these technologies in order to use them effectively for their learners - to take small steps.
Another challenge is that of learners not being ready for Web 2.0 - not willing to reflect publicly in a blog, not comfortable with editing one another's texts, not even comfortable with technology at all in the case of the growing numbers of mature and work-based students.
Our own wiki-tivities workshop went really well. I made copious notes on other sessions about wikis, to see if their experiences supported our model, and indeed they did. Some examples:
Phil Cheeseman from Roehampton talked about the need to
* provide structure and scaffolding, and
* design activities that provide explicit opportunities for collaboration
Richard Walker and Wayne Britcliffe from York spoke about 6 projects - a major and helpful study. These included the points that:
* students made class presentations about their work on the wiki
* there was a need to acknowledge and summarise online contributions
* it was essential to make explicit the learning outcomes
Some of their case studies are available on the York VLESupport website
Attendees at our workshop had generally favourable opinions. More on the wiki-tivities model elsewhere (see, e.g, our presentation on the ALT-C website) and the abstract of the workshop
Some of the conclusions of our participant groups during the workshop:
* wikis can be used for icebreaker activities
* staff need to experience exemplary use of wikis in order to apply them for learning
* there needs to be a "gentle" introduction to having someone edit your text (perhaps a pairs exercise)
* when designing a wiki-tivity it is easy to "start big" and may help to redesign in a "smaller" way - perhaps a series of wiki-tivities in the same wiki rather than just one
* moderating/facilitation is just as important as in other online collaborative spaces
Comments:"I like something definite that students can work with."
"Although I hadn't come this afternoon intending to go back with anything, I have lots of ideas for the staff development course I run."
"The best session I've been to so far."
Oh, and Peter Norvig of Google in his keynote told us Google have partnered with Creative Commons to index all opencourseware which might be useful.Labels: ALT-C2007, altc2007, Google, wiki-tivities, wikis
posted by Helen Whitehead 11:11 AM
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
