After a long deliberation we decided that the Emerge Elgg site should not continue to operate in its current form.

From midnight 31 March/1 April 2009 we discontinued log-in to the Emerge Elgg site and suspended all feeds into the site.

I would like to thank all who have been instrumental in creating a vision a community of practice, supported by Web 2.0 technologies.

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It is sometimes asserted that while students are using web 2 tools extensively there is no evidence that they are using them to do deep learning. I believe this assertion should be questioned.

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There are many women in technology I admire. My field: learning technology is characterised, in part, by many female leaders. I think of Diana Laurillard, Grainne Conole (jfg them); colleagues: Rhona Sharpe, Patsy Clarke, Frances Deepwell, Judy Lyons in OCSLD; there’s Helen Beetham, Helen Barrett, Rose Luckin, Diana Oblinger; Robin Mason, who defined a practice through Mindweave and the Open University’s H8xx series of courses in the Institute of Educational Technology; my PhD supervisor Jane Seale: all people who have either shaped the field, shaped my view of it, or both. In writing this I realise the risk of naming more than one person; why have I not named every woman who has influenced the development of learning technology and my participation in it? How much have I got wrong already? Who have I forgotten? I won’t go on. You know who you are! Except perhaps a few more.
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I was talking with our Head of Elearning at Brookes about why I find Twitter a-good-thing. He worked for many years in Italy. I described Twitter as the passaggiato of the Internet. I have also heard it described as the virtual office corridor or the space around the water cooler. But, this led me to a wider reflection about public and private spheres, the work-life balance and third spaces.

The work-life balance discourse takes the work space and sets it apart from all the others that might operate in a person’s life. This move, however, privileges work and might be seen as a oppressively structuring move, which in third space theory, anyway, gives work an equal weight to at least two other spaces: the domestic and the individual/transgressive third space.

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[this is a reposting of a piece I wrote for Seb Schmoller's Fortnightly Mailing.]

OK, I don’t think you can call it a “Mac netbook” but this is how I got Mac OS X 10.5.6 to run on a Dell mini 9. It was easier than I thought.

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Graham Attwell makes an important point here, which resonates with work done on university students’ use of the Internet for learning by colleagues at Brookes.

The locus of work or study: the context in which the person engages in online activity is far more important than other more accidental attributes of the individual such as their year of birth or their sex. Yes, year cohorts will have different contexts available, but there are adept and critical users of the internet of all ages, just as there are digitally illiterate “digital natives”.

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I am writing a series of pages about blogging for http://brookesblogs.net.

The audience is

1. Teachers of undergraduates,
2. Undergraduates at Oxford Brookes
3. Other students and staff who might use the service,
4. Other stakeholders and policy makers

The first wave of university blogging services has long since flowed. The BBC covered it in 2005 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4194669.stm)

The list below is only a quick sample of some of the more significant, or visible of UK universities’ blogging services or directories.
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I spent much of today reading how to Mac-ify a Dell Mini 9. It seems to be a popular hobby. In a later post I’ll go through the technical how-to with a lot of links.

I have ordered a Mini 9 in its Vostro A90 livery, on special offer from Dell at £199 (£221 with VAT & shipping). I also ordered OSX10.5.6 shrink-wrapped operating system (£76). A 32GB Run Core ssd will replace the 8GB one which comes as stock. 4 screws to swap the drive; add another £121. All in: £418. Remember when 512K of RAM cost £500? I suspect these are going to be available with 250GB for under £100 in a year.

So why am I doing this?

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Greg Benfield argues that JISC Learner Experience synthesis work shows that the institution is an extremely powerful influence in shaping student behaviours with technologies. Students expect this guidance. Students do not necessarily have sophisticated or critical information handling skills, even with the technologies that they are so proficient at using. They come to university expecting to learn and, largely, do.

Posted via email from George’s posterous

nbsp;brookesblogs.net was set up by Phil Whitehead and Jim Hyndman about three years ago at Westminster Institute using the Edublogs WordPress platform.
 
Meanwhile, Brookes has been running several JISC funded support and synthesis projects.
 
One of these, Emerge, is using social networking to provide community-based support for a large national R&D programme (the JISC Users and Innovation Programme).
 
brookesblogs.net needed a new hosting environment and updating. As we were using a range of similar tools, and because Brookes provides some matching funds to the programme, it seemed right to host it on our support and synthesis platform.
 
brookesblogs.net uses the WordPress Multi User (WPMU) platform.
 
It will be supported at least until the end of March 2011.

Posted via email from George’s posterous