rWorld2 » Emerge

Flourish: PebblePad Technology for professional development #HEAtpd

george — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:01:42 +0000

Sarah Chesney discusses the aims, ethos, key activities and the PS portfolio developed under the Flourish project. Evaluating the use of an eportfolio for CPD for admin and academic staff. Used to ease the admin burden and provide personal learning system (PLE?), within which is an eportfolio.

Academic model practice before students.

Over reliance on email and MSWord.

Duplicating information at:
- PDR
- REA
- VLE

Usability was key. Should I be using PPad for this report? Or consuming my Posterous in my PPad “blog”. PPad allows tagging of artefacts.

Eportfolios were not an instrument of monitoring and control.

PCTHE at Cumbria is done using PPad.

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tonight we suspended the Emerge Elgg service

george — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:30:35 +0000

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.

The site will be suspended, archived, read-only and searchable. Only posts made to the site that were designated “public” will be visible. Participants’ “Pages” and “Profiles” will continue to be visible. All url persistence will be maintained. All Data will be retained and protected under existing data protection and freedom of information policies.

For a thorough discussion of the Emerge Project, please read the Emerge Reports site (http://reports.jiscemerge.org.uk).

One key message from our analysis is that a community has many modes of participation. It would be a mistake to assume that the presence of a website indicates either the presence or absence of a community. There is a network of people who have been very active in creating the Users and Innovation Programme and the Emerge community. This network of people persists. Discussions are ongoing concerning how this network might make its presence visible on the Internet or if a site similar to this one might be required.

If you have any queries or comments contact webmaster@jiscemerge.org.uk.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That was the bald message.

For me it has been a fundamentally transformative project. Exhilerating and I will look back with “affective recall”. It was fun!

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Is there evidence of the use of Web2.0 to do deep learning?

george — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:33:36 +0000

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.

There is some evidence to suggest that contemporary undergraduates in the normal age cohort (not mature learners) are not particularly critical or reflective and are highly strategic in their approach to learning. This is argued in the JISC’s Google generation report:

“… although young people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web”.

For another example, see Pascarella (2008, 251):

“As new literacies flourish, teachers face a group of learners who have already engaged in the remaking, remixing, and renaming of their world in virtual reality and in their everyday one. However, although students may enjoy partial or full membership in a participatory culture facilitated by new media environments (i.e. YouTube, MySpace, Friendster, Facebook, ad infinitum) and digital media devices (cell phones that capture still and video images, play MP3s, read and send e-mails, make online purchases, etc.), many learners lack the abilities of critical analyses and evaluation of the social and institutional rules, regulations, and norms embedded in those environments and cultural practices”.

But, on the other hand there is not no evidence on the other side.

There is evidence in two directions:

that the question of whether learning and learners have changed as a consequence of ICTs may be improperly conceived.
that there is, at least in some places, evidence that new ICTs (Web2.0) are being used to effect deep learning; and, the evidence body is growing.

In respect of the first, e.g. Bawden and Robinson (2009) argue, I think quite wisely, that:

“… new ‘pathologies of information’ will emerge as the information environment changes, primarily under the influence of new technologies: New solutions will always be needed, although it will be vital to be selective in determining which new patterns and modes of information communication and use are truly problems in need of solutions.”

A long way of saying plus ca change…

Also very useful in setting out a definition of critical digital literacy without the anxiety about whether or not young people today are any more or less critical than they ever were is Merchant (2007). Even Prensky seems to be recanting from the Digital Native v Immigrant position.

And, there is some good evidence that learners do use Web2.0 technologies to do deep learning. An example from the undergraduate physics curriculum comes from Higdon and Topaz (2009). Perhaps less weighty, giving they were doing an MA in Information Technology in Education, is Churchill (2009). Less peer reviewed, but I believe credible is the work Alan Cann is doing in biology at Leicester, e.g “Web 2.0 and Information literacy“. There are many good examples from champions that shouldn’t be dismissed just because they are from champions. There does need to be validation of a both the assertions and counter assertions.

Web2.0 in education is a relatively novel phenomenon and only now are research results beginning to appear. There is not much evidence either way regarding participatory media use in education, but some of it is encouraging regarding deep learning.

References

David Bawden and Lyn Robinson (2009) “The dark side of information: overload, anxiety and other paradoxes and pathologies”. Journal of Information Science, 35 (2): 180-191
A J Cann Using Web 2.0 to Cultivate Information Literacy via Construction of Personal Learning Environments: Final Project Report
Daniel Churchill (2009)”Educational applications of Web 2.0: Using blogs to support teaching and learning”. British Journal of Educational Technology, 40 (1): 179–183
Jude Higdon and Guy Topaz (2009), “Blogs and Wikis as Instructional Tools: A Social Software Adaptation of Just-in-Time Teaching”. College Teaching; 57 (2): 105-110
Guy Merchant (2007), “Writing the future in the digital age”. Literacy 41 (3): 118-128
John Pascarella (2008) “Confronting the Challenges of Critical Digital Literacy: An Essay Review”. Educational Studies, 43: 246–255

An Ada Lovelace legacy: women in (learning) techonolgy

george — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:00:35 +0000

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.
Joanna Bull shaped the practice of computer aided assessment in the UK. Without the “sisters of CETIS” learning technology standards would be far less accessible. With each name that comes to mind, two more follow it and four more behind them. And, I haven’t even stepped across the North Sea, where in the Netherlands and Germany the picture is replicated. And, in learning technology it is not just on the so-called soft side (what on earth is soft about changing pedagogical practice?) but in application development: coding, and systems integration girl geeks abound. One more: Wendy Hall (OK she’s only head of the British Computer Society, not a proper learning technologist;-). Step over to the US, where the Mozilla Foundation is headed by Mitchell Baker. The leading thinkers of the sociology of the Internet are women. And, all of a sudden I understand the poignancy and power of Ada Lovelace and her contribution to the world: the abstractable instruction set that could be applied to a machine in order to carry out calculations: a program. I am no longer fool enough to think that without so and so something would never have happened. Charles Babbage created the Difference Engine. But, Ada Lovelace showed even him that it could work. Babbage and Lovelace’s work directly underlies the work of Turing and von Neumann. It is not as if men weren’t involved. But there is something about computing: abstracting the universal-virtual essence that removes incidentals. I wouldn’t say sex is incidental in all cases – far from it! But, in most fields of practice, and certainly in the knowledge economy there is, or should be, an incidentality to one’s gendered body when it comes to recognising ability and achievement. It was popular ten or twenty years ago to engage in identity play online: on the internet no one knew you were a dog. Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto defined the richly gendered – and sexualised yet transcendent-of-sex reality of the chimeric creatures of a “post-gender world”. Like the science fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin and Doris Lessing incidentals are stripped away by computing leaving us not free but very differently bounded from a world where it is still necessary to legislate for equality and diversity. Step up Kisa Naumova and Sian Bayne two very different women: both “real” one “virtual”, whose understanding of embodyment: its power and fragility is anything but mere jelly. As I sit writing on the eve of the JISC conference I think of the women who direct and manage its development programmes, people who have as much influence over my professional life as anyone. I reflect on the pleasure of this field and I know that it is because learning technology with all its ambiguities is Ada Lovelace’s legacy.

#NGTiP09 embedding institutional change guidelines from @Gwenvdv

george — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:28:39 +0000

Embedding needs building. Building needs scaffolding.

Gwen van der Velden recognises that change agents operate in networks of influence.

To make change you need:
- buy-in
- user engagement
- institutional solutions
- patronage
- a user-friendly pitch
- reputation-awareness.

Barriers to change include: student data systems, middle managers, staff learning needs.

Drivers for embracing technology: students, resource constraints, employers.

So answer these questions:
- What is your strap-line?
- Why would I support you?
- What problem, which I have, will you solve?
- Tell me what difference it makes.

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using eportfolio for HE staff CPD and Professional Review – with a Flourish

george — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:34:48 +0000

The Flourish project:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/usersandinnovation/flourish.aspx

Flourish, funded by the JISC, looked at eportfolio for HE staff in annual appraisal, accredited PGCert in Teaching in HE course, and CPD/Training. They used PebblePad in a “low-risk” environment running workshops, elearning retreats, staff information sharing channels, and using it with students.

The key message is if you want to use an eP for students you need to use it with staff first.

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Emerge team writing retreat

george — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 08:39:13 +0000

I have set up a place to post our stuff from the writing retreat (I know, I know, another b***** site). Bear with me

We do not have a projector but most of us have machines, I thought this might work as a whiteboard. I have not made the site private – yet. But we can.

http://emerge.posterous.com

Suggested schedule
0900-0930 Review: task briefing

1030-1100 coffee: Task 1 feedback

1230-1300 Task 2 feedback

1300-1330 Lunch:

1330-1400 Review balance in light of Tasks 1 & 2

1530-1600 Task 3 feedback

1600-1800 Walk in country

1800-1930 at ease/continue working

1930-late dinner

Task 1
a. Working title of your article

b. What is the central question that your article will pose?

c. Name 3 or 4 intended readers (no profiling) and say why they might be interested in this question.

d. Specific features of specific U&I projects that illustrate or support or otherwise illuminate your central question

e. If you had only one sentence to summarize your paper for your readers (above), what should it be? Focus on the outcomes from the work, not the inputs.

To post to the site email:

post@emerge.posterous.com

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Posterous has closed the camera, phone, Flickr loop for me

george — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 19:42:05 +0000

I was mildly annoyed (a usual state for me) a year or three ago when Ericsson bundled Blogger in the firmware of their good camera phones. I didn’t want to set up a Blogger ID, all I wanted to do was post to Flickr. For a while I tried to use Shozu (http://www.shozu.com/portal/index.do), but its Java applet crashed my phone. Repeatedly. I expect things are better these days. Now, of course, Flickr has email uploader addresses and phones pretty much come with mail accounts nnn@telco.com but I never really got my head around them. Then, I stumbled on Posterous via Iain Dodsworth’s TweetDeck blog (http://tweetdeck.posterous.com/). Posterous has about the easiest sign-up facility of any site, ever, and an “autopost to everywhere” service (http://posterous.com/autopost) that lets you send mails to e.g. flickr@posterous.com. So, I activated my dormant 3-mail account told posterous that it was mine and, snap. Take a pic and email to flickr@posterous.com. It just works. I like services like that. My posterous is here.

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A digital identity question for parents

george — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 06:00:03 +0000

An interesting question is raised by a Design Pattern problem, Others First, identified by Yishay Mor in the Pattern Language Network wiki:

Parents who create an online identity for themselves that includes any images of and text about their children inevitably create an online identity for those children. The children have no control over how they are presented or who they are presented to.

I include images of my child in online repositories, some open some private. So this led me to ask whether the problem identified, for it is a problem, was expressed to address a narrow and particular issue or a broad and general issue.

The particular issue:

a) incorporating children in a primary signifiers of online identity, e.g. having a username and log in something like “babynameDad” with an image of a child in the avatar; or

a broad and general issue:

b) uploading images and writings about children to various online portfolios (Flickr, LiveJournal, Facebook, etc).

And on reflection, is there a difference between the incorporation of children into a Facebook identity, and the inclusion of family snaps in the Flickr album? Is it only a matter of degree, or is the explicitly intended, overt act of self-conscious identity development different from the accretion of items (on and offline) to our habitus as we navigate our lifecourse, with or without children?

Immersive interfaces for learning

george — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:36:42 +0000

Another very useful Berkman talk on Immersive Interfaces by Chris Dede, Timothy E Wirth professor of Learning Technologies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dede develops a typology of immersive interfaces and illustrates their application in US middle schools. Even more usefully he presents a simple analytical framework for discussing immersive environments for learning: is it an environment or is it an interface? And, as frosting on the cake he gives sound cultural and pedagogical arguments for the use of immersive technologies in education.