Pontydysgu – Bridge to Learning

I figured that keeping a research journal hidden away on my desktop was no use to anyone, not even me. So here it is in all its lovely researcheryness.

I found this nice series of videos on YouTube: “Why do people laugh at creationists?”. Another of my favourites on YouTube about this topic you find here: Robin Ince on Creationism.

I greatly enjoyed myself at the Plymouth e-learning conference a couple of weeks ago. Firstly because it was organised by Steve Wheeler who I greatly respect. And Steve had kindly let me off the leash and said I could be as controversial as I wished. Also because I had a few new ideas to explore – in trying to talk about open education and informal learning to an audience of skilled and dedicated professionals including teachers and student teachers. The issue of institutional change is high on the agenda at the moment – not so much driven by the institutions, but more by the impact of the use of new technologies both by young people but increasingly by teachers in the class room. But all too often I am asked by frustrated teachers how they can persuade their managers to allow them more creative approaches to teaching and learning. I am not sure I have any good answers (one thing I wonder is if Web 2.0 changes the dynamic of institutional change, form a top down process to a bottom up one?). All these issues came up – not just in my talk but in the very lively discussion which follows.

I am afraid it is quite a long video (about an hour) . But if you can keep going the last 20 minutes of dicussion is probably the best part.

NB Video quality is a bit fuzzy – but the sound is not too bad.

Sorry, the quality is a bit low but that was the source material we could get.

The reviews have been released for the Alt-C2009 conference. I has two proposals for the conference. I was slightly irritated by the rejection of the workshop proposal I submitted along with Steven Warburton on Digital Identities. It was not, clear, said the reviewer, what would be the outcome for the participant. Hm…seemed clear enough to me. The workshop would allow them to explore their own digital identity and to consider the implications for tecahing and learning. Does that sound clear enough to you? One of the problems, I feel, is that workshops are very different to conference paper or symposium presentations. Or they should be. And all to often standard confernce submission forms do not take this into account, neither do reviewers. And do reviewers really understand how to structure a workshop? Anyway enough of the moaning.

I am very happy that the sceond proposal, submitted by James Clay along with Steve Wheeler (hi Steve – good to see you are up and twottering again) was successful. This one is entiltled “The VLE is Dead”.

The abstract goes like this. The future success of e-learning depends on appropriate selection o
tools and services. This symposium will propose that the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) as an institutional tool is dead, no more, defunct, expired.

The first panel member will argue that many VLEs are not fit for purpose, and masquerade as solutions for the management of online learning. Some are little more than glorified e-mail systems. Others are overpriced aggregations of web tools that can be obtained for
free on the web.

The second member of the panel believes that the VLE is dead and that the Personal Learning Environment (PLE) is the solution to the needs of diverse learners. PLEs provide opportunities that go beyond the VLE, offering users the ability to develop their own spaces in which to reflect on their learning.?

The third panel member, an advocate of web 2.0, however believes that the VLE is not yet dead as a concept, but can be the starting point of a learning journey involving multiple tools.

The fourth panel member argues for the concept of the institutional VLE as essentially sound. His position is that VLEs provide a stable, reliable, self-contained and safe environment in which all teaching and learning activities can be conducted.

Should be lots of fun.

And of course along with AltC goes FAlt09 – the Alt conference fringe. As last year FAlt will be organising a particpatory, open and creative fringe to the conference. If you have ideas just mosey along to the FAlt wiki and no doubt something will start happening there soon.

Yesterday afternoon I blogged about our forthcoming handbook about the use of Web 2.0 and social software in the classroom. The handbook is being produced by the EU Taccle project. I asked people to email me if they were interested in receiving free copies. Little did I anticipate the response. When I returned from a quick trip to the shops I already had received some 15 emails. Panic!

I produced a very quick Google form (whatever you think about Google, their forms application is awesome, embedded it in a WordPress page on this site and edited the blog to point to the form.

By now, some 75 people have requested copies of the book from about 15 countries. If nothing else, Web 2.0 and social software make dissemination easy. On the form I asked if anyone was interested in translating the handbook into other languages, given that it is to be published under a Creative Commons liscence. And to date I have had expressions of interest in translating the handbook into Greek, Icelandic, Portuguese, Arabic, Welsh and Catalan. Many thanks to you all – it just shows the power of Social software and Creative Commons working together.

Over the last eight months Pontydysgu (well mainly Jenny Hughes) has been working on editing a handbook for teachers on the use of social software and web 2.0 in the classroom. The handbook, produced by the European Commission Comenius programme funded Taccle project will be published in June in English, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch and, we hope, Greek.

It will be available free for download on the internet and as a 150 page printed handbook. If you would like to pre-order copies, please fill in the order form here, telling me the number of copies you would like and the language version. The following text, taken from the draft of the preface, tells more about the purpose and content of the handbook.

“Information and Communication Technologies are being increasingly used to create richer learning environments. In all sectors of education from primary schools to adult education, in schools for pupils with special education needs and in colleges and universities, technologies are being used across the curriculum to enhance students’ experiences.

However, technology is not enough. The creation of high quality content is essential if the potential of ‘e-learning’ is to be realised in a way that stimulates and fosters Life Long Learning. It is important to train teachers how to design and develop their own content and generate learning materials that can help their own students and
can also be freely exchanged with others.

The European Commission Comenius programme funded Taccle project  aims through  training teachers to create e-learning materials and raising their awareness of e-learning in general, to help establish a culture of innovation in the schools in which they work.

This handbook has been produced by the Taccle project partners in five different European countries. It has been written by teachers for teachers and caters for those with only basic computer skills and limited technical support.

The handbook is geared to the needs of the classroom teacher but teacher trainers, ICT support staff and resource centre staff may find it useful too! It provides both practical support for
teachers who want a ‘hands on experience and also help and information for teachers who just want to find out about e-learning.

The handbook is designed to provide practical support for teachers to:

• create content for electronic learning environments in the context of an e-learning course
• identify and decide which ICT tools and content are most useful for particular purposes.
• create learning objects taking into account information design, web standards, usability criteria and reusability (text, images, animations, audio, video) and which enable active, interactive and cooperative learning processes.
• use learning environments effectively in order enhance quality and create resources to help them do so.
• share the developed content with their peers using existing repositories.

If you do not understand some of these terms do not worry. The handbook provides friendly step by step guidance about how to do it and explains the different terms along the way.

Of course it might seem a little strange and old fashioned producing a printed handbook about the use of new technologies. But, as Jenny Hughes says in her introduction to the handbook, we felt that the very teachers for whom this book is written are probably the group least likely to use or feel confident about using web-based materials. A book is comfortable and familiar and that is exactly how we would like teachers to feel about e-learning.

Technologies are changing very fast. When we originally applied for a grant from the European Commission, we anticipated the main focus of the handbook would be the use of Learning Management Systems – systems that help to organize  and administer learning programs for students and store and organize learning materials. At the time, this seemed to be the most important technology for creating and managing content. But since then , we have seen an explosion in the use of social networking applications like blogs and wikis, as part of what has been called Web 2.0. These are tools which make it very easy for people to create and publish their own content in different forms – text, pictures, audio and video.

These technologies make it easy not just for teachers, but for students to produce materials themselves and are increasingly being used in the classroom mixing traditional teaching methods with some e-learning methods in what is called Blended Learning.

Therefore, we have shifted the main focus of the handbook to provide a hands on guide to the use of such tools in the classroom.”