I don’t normally post press releases on this blog. But I think the ideas in this preview of the keynote presentation at the forthcoming UK Jisc online conference is important and deserves wider dissemination. The text is based on a podcast which can be found on the Jisc web site.
“We need to re-engage civil society in a debate about educational purpose. These are the powerful words of Professor Keri Facer, keynote speaker at the forthcoming JISC innovating e-learning conference. According to her, we need to stop using qualifications as a proxy for a debate about educational success – “how many people need to get up to Level Two skills, how many people need degrees” – and instead start really thinking about the competencies, skills and attributes students may need to thrive in uncertain times.
In the context of the row over HE funding the UK has neglected the fundamental question about what institutions are for and instead has focused simply on the issue about how to pay for universities as they currently exist. Facer puts this in the context of the uncontested idea of the knowledge economy which has dominated the discussions about the future of socio-technological change. “For me the critical issue is that we have been working with one idea of the future for nearly twenty years. The idea of the knowledge economy seems to imply that if only we make sure everybody is educated enough and ensure that they have enough technological skills then we will have a future where everybody will be economically secure. I think this is contestable when we look at some of the economical and environmental developments that are likely to come about in the next ten years. If we look carefully at the lived reality of a future ‘knowledge economy’, for example, it may be one of radical polarisation, inequality and injustice. This is not necessarily an empowering future. As educators we need to start thinking about the other sorts of futures we may want to support our students to create and inhabit.” Facer encourages the audience to start imagining different futures and to examine the kinds of future lives that are offered by this widespread discourse of the knowledge economy.
She urges universities in their governance to be much more closely tied to the needs and aspirations of their communities and to set in place mechanisms for engagement in real debates about how to build sustainable economies. “If we want to imagine different futures we need to create the right kinds of spaces to be able to debate those, public spaces where people are equipped to get into a serious debate about the sorts of socio-technological trajectories that we will be looking at over the next ten to twenty years.”
I have been in Cardiff for the last three days, attending a workshop organised by the EU funded Politics project. Pontydysgu are a partner in the project which aims to use Web 2.0 and social software tools for people to learn about politics. Although the subject is great there are as ever problems. How can we get young (and not so young) people to communicate between different cultures and different languages. Some of the partners are schools or working in the school and vocational learning sectors. As such the teachers are using the politics resources and (under development) platform to scaffold learning for young people. Other partners, like Pontydysgu, wish to develop the platform and tools for self directed learning by young people. Is it possibel to develop resources, tools and an overall platform which can cater for such different approaches to learning. In some ways it is more difficult to develop the platform for self directed learning, as the resources and platform need to at least assist in scaffolding the learning. And despite progress in such areas as recommender systems and the provision for supporting peer based learning, I think our understanding of how to use technologies for scaffolding learning is still inits early stages.
Anyway, and changing the subject, yesterday morning we moved the workshop to the Wales Assembly, where we met our Regional assembly Member, Leanne Wood and went for a tour of the Assembly. It was a surprisingly good experience in allowing an international group of project partners to relate the work we are doing on education to the broader field of politics as a whole. And I was impressed by the Assembly building. None of that old fashioned privilege and tradition associated with Westminster. Instead it is a modern, energy efficient building (no need for artificial lighting and heated through geo-thermal energy), based on the idea of transparency. Young people were wandering around, interviewing the First Minister for a BBC programme. The sun may have helped to provide a feeling of hope, starkly contrasting to the gloom an despair t5ha Westminster politic engenders today.
Anyway that was the first three days of this week. If you were at the meeting, please feel free to add your comments on what you thought about our work together and the visit to the Wales Assembly.
Where would first look for a picture or song if you wanted to insert it into one of your presentations, blogs, websites or anything done by you? I think most of you would go to google images or download a song from the internet. This could have its consequences though. Many don’t know the rules of copyright on the internet and because of this lack of interest in the rules of copyright many could face severe consequences.
One great way of avoiding copyright issues is Creative Commons(http://creativecommons.org/). Here is one video which is quite self-explanatory (there are 2 and I will show both of them because they give different information but I’ll begin with this one because I think it more fun and it’s easier to understand what Creative Commons has to offer):
The main idea is that Creative Commons can tell you what you CAN and download legally and how you can use it for personal use.
This is a video with a more general explanation of Creative Commons:
It’s really easy to embed a Creative Commons license to your blog, website or to any of your work. I’ll just refer to how you can do this on your blog and give further links to other blogs and sites where you can find more information on how to get a license.
How to get a Creative Commons license on your blog (on wordpress – I will research how to do it on blogspot also in the upcoming days and post about that too)
How to start?
First you have to have your blog ready for use. So you have to have it up and running.
The next step is to visit the Creative Commons site (http://creativecommons.org/). On the right side of the site you will see the word ‘License’ – now click on it.
After you’ve clicked on the button this site will appear:
As you can see for yourselves the steps towards creating your own license are pretty straightforward. There are two main questions asked from you. Do you allow commercial use of your work? If yes, it means that people can sell your work and make money out of it….if they can The other questions is whether you allow people to modify your work or not. If you allow them to do this, they are given permission to use it, cut it, ‘remix’ it (as said by the folks at Creative Commons), share it and so on. However, for further specific information about the different types of licenses watch the first video in the post or if you want something more serious then you should read the information on the following site carefully: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses
After you carefully read the types of licenses go back to the 2 questions, answer them accordingly to your copyright intentions and press ‘Select a License’ button at the bottom of the page:
You can probably see that there are also some optional fields you might want to think of filling in. I filled in all but the last two (I put nothing to ‘Source work URL’ - because I don’t use anyone’s work for the basis of mine and no ‘More permissions URL’ either)
1. At the 1st section (the Format section) choose the type of your creative work. In this case you should choose ‘Text’ because I’m referring here to a blog. If you’re licensing a song, video or anything else…well then just choose that
2. You could also give a title to your work if you haven’t got one yet
3. You might want to enter your name so that the person who uses your blog will attribute the work to your name and not his/her’s. This will appear in your license. This is what appears in my blog under the CC license:
4. You can add the URL to your site and your work will then be attributed to that URL and if you have your name typed in also then both will appear in the license description.
5. Here you can just insert the URL of your work’s source. It means if you used someone’s blog to create your work then you should insert the URL of that blog into this section.
6. This section is quite self explanatory. Just by clicking the information button on the right side of each of these section you will get a short explanation for each of them. This is what it says for this section: ‘A URL where a user can obtain information about clearing rights that are not pre-cleared by your CC license.’
The text for the license
When finished, you should get a text (code) which you will have to copy into your blog. The code will look something like this:
You will get a clear description of the license of your choice. In this case (as an example) you can see that it says ‘Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License’. You can have different types of combination between the licenses…it really depends on how restrictive you want to be (read about the types of combination you can have or watch the first video in the post).
Now go to your blog and press the dashboard button on the top of your screen in your wordpress blog:
When in your dashboard go to your widgets. You can find them under the ‘Appearance’ section:
When you press on the widgets button you should be able to see different types of widgets which you may embed into your blog. Find a Text widget such as this (see picture).
Drag the widget to the right side of your screen and drop it unto your sidebar. When ready, open the widget, type in a title such as ‘Creative Commons License’ and copy the text/code that Creative Commons has generated for you when choosing your license into the text widget.
Copying the text
Just select the text in the Creative Commons site by pressing Ctrl+A (to select all) on your keyboard – or select all the text with your mouse, right click and select Copy – and then go to the Text widget, click on the blank space and press Ctrl+V (to paste the text/code into the blank space) – or click on the blank space, press right click on your mouse and press Paste. When finished, press the Save button on the widget and close it.
This is how you should see the Text widget in the dashboard in the sidebar without text:
And with text:
That’s it!
And this is how you create your own CC license
As you can see it’s easy to make and you can rest more easily from now on knowing that your works can’t be used for any reason you don’t want it to be used.
In case you’re using your blog for educational reasons it is good to know that your work can’t be transformed into a circus show without your permission:) So feel free to experiment on using Creative Commons as a search engine whenever you’re looking for new photos, songs, videos or anything else you want to use legally. You could also share this with your students and make them aware of all the copyright issues they could have if downloading things from the internet illegally.
Last night I spent a hour or so playing with new social software startup, Lanyrd. And I love it. Why?
Well I logged in or rather pressed a button saying something like login with Twitter and there I was. No filling in forms or making up passwords. And there straight away was a message for me:
Hi there! we have had a look at conferences your friends on twitter are going to, perhaps you might like to go too.
And indeed, apart from the lack of time I might well want to go. So the site is already personalised for me based on the ideas and knowledge of my friends. Pretty good. But more important is the site is useful to me: it contains information and knowledge and links to people which will and already does form an integral and useful part of my work practice. In other words, it makes my work easier. That is because it is based on the artefacts and practice of my community of practice, of the people like me who work in technology enhanced learning, knowledge development and teaching and learning. This isn’t a friends site for everyone – of you do not go to conferences then Lanyrd offers little to you. But this surely has to be the future of social software.of niche sites based on the practices, concerns and artefacts of particular communities of practice.
Other things I liked. The site is very open. Anyone is free to add and edit on the wikipedia shared knowledge principle. And the FA (not a TOSS( says anyone is free to scrape the site and get information out in any way they wish.
Obviously on a roll, developers Simon Willison and Natalie Downe are rapidly adding more features allowing the use of the site to accumulate the outcomes of conferences, be they papers, videos, presentations or other artefacts. Once more they are building the site around the practices and artefacts of the research community.
And finally the site is simple and intuitive to use and attractively designed. A lot of thought (and code) has gone into making it easy to use – for instance the ability to cut and stick from Open Office (or Office)without inserting any horrible formatting code.
What are the drawbacks? The major weakness is base don its very strength. The site relies on your Twitter friends for its recommendations. And by no means all – or even a majority – of the research community are on Twitter, especially outside technology focused subject areas. Even the Educa Online Berlin conference, for just the kind of people you would think would be attracted to Lanyrd, has only 16 attendees signed up, despite there being some 2000 delegates enrolled for the conference. But it is early days yet. Lanyrd was only launched in August. And I can see that in a few months it will become an essential tool in our community – especially when they launch the API to the site.
This has got me thinking about design – how can we capture the practices of other communities – particularly in relation to work and learning and design social applications around other aspects of their practice. I think one big lesson from Lanyrd is that more is not, always better. Lanyrd does not try to do everything for researchers bu8t takes am (important) part of their practice and does it better.
Interesting blog post by Mark Johnson. The problem I see with Mark’s arguement is that he seems to think institutions exist outside social, political and cultural forces in society – “playing a role not just in the support of fashionable means of production, but in the peaceful development and emergence of new means of production.” I would argue rather that it is the forces of production which drive institutions. And I don’t think you can separate pedagogy from learning in the way Mark does – although I agree learning is a social activity, rather than an individual pschological transaction.
Whatever has happened psychologically is only available for inspection through what Wittgenstein calls ‘skilled performances’ – linguistic and technical. But such performances are necessarily social performances, and so the institutional context that nurtures and supports their development is as important as the individual minds that appear to produce them.
Maybe our adherence to ‘learning’ lies in the traditional definition of ‘learning’, where a person of ‘great learning’ was someone able to communicate in a wide range of registers, with reference to a wide range of reading, and whose analytical linguistic performances bear testimony to this preparation and consequent high social standing.
For all our talk of the technology impacting on the relatively short lives of learners, their economic effectiveness, their ‘purchasing power’, etc… how often do we talk of technology impacting on the much longer lives of institutions and the social life that embraces them?
72.8% of respondents used ICT for both fun and for their studies, and 43.3% preferred to use a combination of both printed and electronic resources for their work.
90.1% agreed that the internet has benefited their studies. As to whether ICT has improved their learning experiences, 77.7% agree versus only 5.2% in disagreement.
ICT skills – 81% agreed that their ICT skills were self-taught, with 88.6% agreeing that they were effective online researchers.
Opinion was divided over whether mobile phones or PDAs should be used to assist learning – 37.3% agree, 35.4% disagree and 27.4% remain neutral.
42.9% would like academics and teachers to use ICT more. There was a common request for more skills training, particularly around how to effectively research and reference reliable online resources.
Students seem concerned about a perceived lack of formal research skills instruction, which maybe suggests broader concerns with education and accountability beyond the ICT sphere. Training in specific programs is also commonly desired; however, primarily the skills required are not technological, but academic
From the viewpoint of teaching and learning two findings stand out:
Students are concerned about the ICT competency of lecturers and academic staff – There are varying levels of ICT competence on the part of lecturers and staff and, whilst some are clearly skilled or at least able to function in an IT setting, others lack even the most rudimentary IT skills; 21% of students thought their lecturers needed additional training.
Opinions are fundamentally divided over e-learning, especially taking into consideration course type and exposure to ICT – both significant advantages and disadvantages were raised in all of the qualitative research with the students.
And in terms of the skills and competence of teaching staff the report recommends:
ICT and career development requirements for teaching staff- ICT skills and usage in learning and teaching should be integrated into the UK Professional Standards Framework, institutional promotional criteria and selection for teaching awards. Institutions may also wish to consider whether staff could be paid or given time off to attend ICT training so that it is not seen as an added burden.
At this years Alt-C session I went along to a session presented by James Clay entitled ‘Do you love books or do you love reading?’. James demonstrated several e-book readers and went on to speculate on the potential of e-books in education.
It was the first time I have actually got my hands on an e-book reader and I liked it! So when Amazon updated the Kindle I got myself one. Now the kindle, despite the neat leather covers which try to make it look like a book, is not the same thing. If you like the appearance of your book collection on your shelf it is going to do nothing for you. But if on the other hand you like reading the Kindle is brilliant, especially if you travel a lot.
I can see the e-book revolutionising education. Readers are already relatively cheap and will only fall in price. they are highly portable and e-paper can be read in bright sunlight. e-Books could be another step in taking learning outside the classroom.
If open educatio0nal resources were provided in an e-book format we could provide learners with most of the materials they need to follow a course. However, I have two provisos. The up-market Kindle comes with free G3 connectivity. However, ignoring the rather difficult to use Webkeit browser, Ok if you have nothing else but not really7 a great browsing experience, the only thing the Kindle connects to is the Amazon store. To get other materials onto the kindle you have link it up to a computer. And although it will display PDFs they do not always seem to be formatted right for the Kindle. I am still messing with this and would be grateful to hear from others’ experiences. I also must have a go at converting documents into e-Pub and transferring these ot the Kindle. Amazon will convert PDF, word and Open Office documents and put them on your Kindle, but they charge for that service.
The third issue of course is Digital Rights Management. It is not as easy to give away or share an Amazon e-book as it is a traditional paper copy.
My second reservation is that merely making documents available returns us back to passive consumption of learning materials,. But there seems plenty of potential for more interactive reading, as has been shown by a number of iPad apps.
My feeling is that the e-Book is here to stay. And I also think it may transform education. But we need to think through the pedagogic process and potential of using e-Books and need to experiment with standards and formats.
I love books. But I love reading even more! What do you think?
This should be read in conjunction with the previous entry on Digital literacies. I wonder what is the contribution meaning and understanding – and thus to digital literacy – of providing access to the original versions – including typography and design – of the books?
MORE than 65,000 19th-century works of fiction from the British Library’s collection are to be made available for free downloads by the public from this spring.
Owners of the Amazon Kindle, an ebook reader device, will be able to view well known works by writers such as Charles Dickens, Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy, as well as works by thousands of less famous authors.
While some other services, such as Google Books, offer out-of-copyright works to be downloaded for free, users of the British Library service will be able to read from pages in the original books in the library’s collection.
Thoughtful and incisive essay looking at how communication and thought takes place in ‘continua’ of orality and literacy as well as through visual communication. The author, Marion Walton discusses.the Shuttleworth Foundation’s m4Lit (Mobiles for Literacy) project and the implications for our understandings for literacies and the use of mobile devices.
The notion that there is a causal relationship between literacy and particular thinking patterns may be an old one, but it is far from universally accepted. One famous study of the effects of literacy on cognition (Scribner and Cole, 1981) set out to prove that literacy had cognitive consequences, only to find that actual interactions between thinking, literacies, and schooling were far more complex than the researchers expected. Science and technology studies depict the mutual interdependence between society and technology (e.g. MacKenzie & Wajcman 1985). Studies of oral literature even find it hard to even define what might be distinctively ‘oral’ or ‘literate’ given the huge diversity of cultural forms and human societies.
Many teachers ask themselves why they should use twitter. Even some of my students asked me why they should use twitter if they already have a facebook, yahoo messenger account. Frankly, you don’t HAVE TO use it if you don’t want to. No one will oblige you to create an account on it.
However, there are some advantages of using twitter for both teachers and students, despite the whole skepticism about it.
For those who don’t know it yet, twitter is a micro-blogging site where you can post any time what you are doing and if you follow someone such as your friends, family members or colleagues you will also know what they’re doing.
Here is the official explanation by twitter:
Why is it called a micro-blog? Well, first of all, you are not allowed to write more than 140 characters in one tweet (entry). This can be very refreshing for many but also kind of annoying for some of us.
When I want to read about something on a blog then I prefer not having to read the entire post because I’m probably not interested in everything the person has to say about a topic (of course it depends on the topic) so I’m just going to skim for the most important pieces of information. On the other hand, when you are on twitter you don’t have to read thousands of words or skim through the entire text just to find something useful. You can read the entire entry because it’s that short
Therefore, it’s more motivating to read short pieces of information thus finding out about many things in shorter time than reading for hours about one certain topic.
Nevertheless, many are still skeptical about twitter because of its quick flow of information and its, sometimes, overwhelming tweets. However, this might occur only if you have hundreds or thousands of followers – which is not easy to accomplish. And even if, by any chance, you get bored of getting the tweets of someone you’re following, you can easily get rid of them by clicking ‘Unfollow’ and henceforth you won’t get any tweets from that person again – if you change your mind you can always follow that person again.
Despite this skepticism about this rush of information, I think that this is something positive. Nowadays, you have to try to stay up-to-date with everything new that’s going on in the world. Why? Because your students are doing the same thing and you might find yourself not knowing what they are talking about or what students are into these days thus lowering your chances of making your lessons interesting. And if you can’t motivate students nowadays they will get bored of your lessons or, even worse, of you or your lack of interest. But this is almost a different topic that I might talk about another time. Let’s get back to twitter:) The main idea here is that, the more information you get on twitter the better. Of course this depends on what kind of tweets your receiving and this depends on who you’re following. Now these are all your choices to make. Who to follow, what to read and what not to read. You can have two separate accounts: one for work and another for personal stuff. However, I personally think this is unnecessary…it’s just one too many passwords to remember but as I said it’s a personal choice.
Outside the classroom
Lately, I’ve been hearing teachers talk a lot about twitter and how to use it to their advantage in their professional lives. I’ve been hearing about what a great way twitter is if you want to make new professional acquaintances and find out about new activities, links, conferences and many more and this is true, however if people are looking for conversations on twitter then it’s the last place to go. Yes, IF you follow the right person on twitter then you can see who that person is following and follow maybe some of them and then look at some of the people that person has as his/her followers and follow some of them and so on and so forth. After a while you will start getting lots of tweets about different stuff relating from day-to-day activities to professional ones. Then you can start filtering out the ones which are important for you and use them in your field of expertise.
you can stay in touch with some of your colleagues in a different country or continent and post new websites, software or activities that you have used or see what they are currently using. This is a fast and easy way of sharing experiences and different ways of approaching teaching.
I also found on Digg.com some interesting ways of using Twitter. Here are some of them:
A fine use of Twitter which helps us learn a new word each day and replace the colorful adjectives we normally use at traffic snarls. Follow @artwiculate on Twitter and use the word they broadcast in one of your tweets. The more ‘likes’ or retweets each reply gets, pushes it up the popularity charts on Artwiculate. The prize: An enriched vocabulary which we can use to sound more intelligent than we actually are.
Solve user created puzzles via Twitter or create your own. The fun is in the off the cuff bizarre answers that get generated. The site could do with a boost as the responses seem to be flagging off. If you have a sense of humor, play this Twitter game which is short and funny.
Outwit.me has a lineup of seven games based on Twitter. You can join and play anytime once one game is over and another begins. For instance, in Tweet Hangman you have to guess a secret word or phrase by replying with letters. Tweet Quiz is about guessing all the multiple answers that may exist for the quiz asked. Each correct guess that matches the majority earns a point.
This Twitter game is the equivalent of the classic game of Bricks, except that the bricks come from Tweets. Stack up your Tweets as they fall down with the arrow keys. You can choose to play with your own Tweets, with other users, friends or followers, with your mentions, or with all Tweets posted with a Hash tag.
The idea to play chess with a remote opponent is nothing new. Chess Tweets just takes the idea onto Twitter. You don’t need to register separately. You can play against one or against the entire community by moving the set pieces and sending chess moves via your Twitter account. Depending on the responses, this game can be slow at times.
As you can see there are some ways to use these outside your classes with your students by motivating them to use twitter not only to say that they are washing the dishes or watching their favourtite TV series but also to use it as a useful tool.
Inside the classroom
Now, this is depends very much on whether your students have a mobile device (such as a smart phone or tablet/pad or a laptop) that supports a twitter application. If not or they don’t like carrying it with themselves into classes then you pretty much can’t use it when teaching in the classroom. If they do have these gadgets and are happy to use them in class you might use twitter to:
receive feedback from your students on the lesson. They just have to hash tag (which is this sign #) the topic of discussion and send you a tweet on the lesson. They can then start a discussion on why they liked certain aspects of the lesson and why not. Students can vote on which part they thought was the most useful in the lesson by tweeting and retweeting each other.
you can ask them to give examples of sentences where they use some of the newly learned vocabulary. They could use one new word they’ve learned during the lesson in their tweets.
you can ask them to drill some grammar points. They could tweet a question using a particular tense and ask the others to answer the question using the same tense. In order to make it a bit more interesting you could tell them to tweet about a personal experience so they have an incentive to start with. You can always reply to their tweets adding some feedback on their tweets.
An advance copy of the the NMC Horizon Report 2012 K-12 Edition, due to be launched on June 14, identifies mobile devices and apps and tablet computing as technologies expected to enter mainstream use in the first horizon of one year or less. Game-based learning and personal learning environments are seen in the second horizon of two to three years; and augmented reality and natural user interfaces emerged in the third horizon of four to five years.
OER Quality
A new project is attempting to define quality standards for open educational resources in higher education; this is part of the OER Quality Project, a joint research between the universities of Barcelona, Santiago de Chile and the University of London.
The researchers for this project are lecturers and academic librarians and aim to define a set of quality standards and develop a good practices guide both for content design and for indexing open educational resources in institutional repositories.
They are looking for university lecturers, readers or professors (distance learning lecturers welcome too) willing to answer 2 surveys (20 minutes each) and to evaluate a set of OERs, according to certain guidelines and criteria, which will take 30 minutes to answer. To participate, please register here.
Hangouts on Air
Personally I am not a great fan of Google+, although as Google increasingly integrates its different services it is hard to avoid. But, as Stephen Downes points out in the ever valuable Oldaily, citing an original blog post by David Andrade, “by far and away the best thing about Google+ is the Hangout feature, essentially a way to have a videoconference with ten of your friends. This latest upgrade allows you to broadcast your Hangouts to as large an audience as you want. “With Hangouts on Air, you will be able to broadcast yourself publicly to the entire world, see how many viewers you have, and even record and reshare your broadcast. The public recording will be uploaded to your YouTube channel and to your original Google+ post.”
With free skype video calls limited to two people and the increasing cost of proprietary synchronous elearning platforms like Blackboard Collaborate, Hangouts could become the system of choice for open online courses.
Gadgets and widgets
The Dutch SURFnet have announced the ‘Edu-Socializing Seminar’, to be held in Utrecht, the Netherlands, on June 12th and 13th. They say “Gadget and widget technology is gaining momentum in the Research and Educational community. Projects like the Role Project, Apache Rave, Sakai OAE and OpenConext implement and deploy these technologies, showcasing the possibilities and benefits of such loosely coupled and distributed environments. The projects address a wide variety of needs from within the community like, among others, personalized learning environments, mashing web and social content, distributed learning and online collaborations.
The event seeks to explore trends and foster these developments internationally, by bringing together experts from different fields into one event and joining them in a community. With interactive sessions the workshop wants to enable sharing of ideas and knowledge. At the same time the event wants to trigger new developments. With dedicated breakout sessions, common challenges can be addressed and solutions can be targeted.”
The other questions is whether you allow people to modify your work or not. If you allow them to do this, they are given permission to use it, cut it, ‘remix’ it (as said by the folks at 
