Assessment isn’t really my thing. That doesn’t mean I do not see it as important. I am interested in learning. Assessment for learning should help teachers and learners alike in developing their learning. But all too often assessment has little to do with learning. Indeed assessment has emerged as a barrier to the development of effective teaching and learning strategies especially collaborative learning using web 2.0 and social software tools.

This presentation by Luis Tinoca follows the present trend of adding 2.0 on the end of everything but is a useful exploration of how we can use technologies to support assessment for learning

In a blog post about the BETT show in London I complained that there was little evidence about using technology for teaching and learning. And that is why I like this presentation by Helen Keegan. Whilst she looks at a whole series of web and social networking tools the whole focus is on real life use. I particularly like her advice on slide 32 – “Leave space in the course to allow space for play, emergent curricula, serendipity and opportunity.”

Luca Agnani :: Showreel 2011 :: Digital lighting, 3d & visual mapping from luca.agnani on Vimeo.

This is a very neat piece of video editing by Luca Agnani highlighting the use of digital lighting and art. A good way to sart the New Year (via Mariarosa di Nublia).

But now there is a remake The 90th Euro Rescue Summit – or Euros for No One by satirist Udo Eling who, according to the Daily Telegraph, “teamed up with state broadcaster ARD to rework the original, putting the French president’s head on butler James’ body, and the German Chancellor’s head onto the body of Miss Sophie.”

Unlike the original which is broadcast in English, the new version is in German. And for those of you whose German is not quite up to scratch the Daily Teegrapgh provides a helpful summary.

“Mrs Merkel follows the original Miss Sophie in assuming that her long-dead friends are there – whose drinks are all supped by the butler – and talks of former Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

She also reprimands an absent British Prime Minister David Cameron that “German will be spoken at the dinner.”

True to the original, Mr Sarkozy, the butler, drinks for all his mistress’ guests and gets increasingly inebriated, prompting Mrs Merkel to say: “Nicolas, think of your credit rating!” – a reference to the downgrades looming over France from international ratings agencies.

At the end he helps her upstairs for what in the original is referred to as “the same procedure as every year” and in the satirical version would be conducted without Eurobonds. The butler says to Miss Sophie he will do his best as ever, promising to give Merkel his “Triple A”.”

FSCONS: YaCy Demo from Michael Christen on Vimeo.

OK….this is a techy video. But it is important. In an age when large software companies are increasingly controlling the internet, YaCy has been developed as a free search engine that anyone can use to build a search portal for their intranet or to help search the public internet. YaCy developers say:  “When contributing to the world-wide peer network, the scale of YaCy is limited only by the number of users in the world and can index billions of web pages. It is fully decentralized, all users of the search engine network are equal, the network does not store user search requests and it is not possible for anyone to censor the content of the shared index. We want to achieve freedom of information through a free, distributed web search which is powered by the world’s users.”

I stumbled on thie excellent Art Threat web site featuring 10 documentary films on capitalism and economics. Art Threat says “With the Occupy Wall Street manifestations taking up much of our social and political imaginations these days, we thought we’d highlight a few great films that bring context to the current uprising and related issues.”

The first to be featured is The American Ruling Class, described as “An imaginative hybrid film (a dramatic documentary musical no less!) that follows the former editor of Harper’s magazine, Louis Lapham, as he encounters and provokes the haves of American society while giving due time to the have-nots and their rascally resistance tactics.”

They have a great programme and its a lot cheaper than most other English universities!

As Geoff Cain says, “I was at the Open Education 2011 conference this week and David Wiley had the good sense to invite Jim Groom in to rattle cages and shake the chains. I have been reading his stuff for sometime. You can follow him on twitter here and his blog is always worth reading, but it is really a whole other experience to meet him in person. As a distance education director, I almost never say that. He is the favorite exuberant uncle who occasionally breaks the furniture. His mind is clear but his soul is mad. and here he is at his Dionysian best.”

The sound quality is sometimes a bit ropey but don’t let that put you off. Watch it all!

This is interesting stuff from Nancy White taken from a presentation on the #Change11 Massive Open Online Course. The Contents are well worth a watch. But why I have linked to it is the process. I guess this presentation was using Elluminate. And most presenters in Elluminate – or for that matter other online conferencing applications – struggle to involve participants. Nancy has no such problems!

Tent City Uni teach-in outside Bank of England from Jon Cheetham on Vimeo.

The wave of protests against the failure of the world capitalist system and the banking collapse are throwing up all kinds of alternative education events and movements. The #OccupyLondon protest has set up TentCityUniversity and this video reports on one of their seminars.

Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education from sam seidel on Vimeo.

I had the pleasure to present alongside Mike Neary and Joss Winn at the Mobility Shifts conference in New York. They are working on the idea of students as producers. This theme is also taken up in this excellent video, which looks at the theme of students as producers within hip hop culture.

This vid has got absolutely nothing to do with the fact that WALES ARE NOW IN THE SEMI FINALS OF THE WORLD CUP (ac mae’r tim Saesneg wedi mynd adre). It is a learning object and I’m using it to illustrate an article I read today about a BBC Wales project, targeting ‘hard to reach’ teenagers, that used rugby as a vehicle for informal learning.

By the way, the title of this post translates (possibly) as “Informal Learning through the Internet: a learning journey through the world of rugby.” ; ) – which is actually the title of a report on the project by an old friend of mine, Danny Saunders from the University of Glamorgan and his co-authors Jocelyn Andrews and Eleri Wyn-Lewis from BBC Wales.

What follows is an edited extract from the report describing what happened.

Scrum V: A case study in informal learning

The Scrum V project formed a unique partnership with a popular weekly BBC Wales television programme (called Scrum V)that gave commentary and analysis on rugby games and issues. It established a parallel website which picked up on issues and interests covered by Scrum V and explored them further.

The Scrum V learning journey was designed to widen participation, introduce flexible learning opportunities and engage teenage boys and young adults in learning process.

Design

The Scrum V website involved a team of education and software experts located in the BBC Wales Education Department. It culminated in a total of 135 web pages which were clustered into eight content categories at the design stage:

• People behind Scrum V (17 pages)
• Sport related commentary (9 pages)
• The Referee’ s Room (5 pages)
• Interaction (16 pages)
• Learning pages (10 pages)
• Employment links (20 pages)
• Travel and country information (46 pages)
• Journalist interviews and competitions (12 pages)

The first two were linked with commentary on specific rugby matches and teams, plus competitions, weather forecasts, coaching issues and league tables. The remainder focused on more eclectic learning interests that can be illustrated by the following six examples.

First, the Referees Room included discussion about the rules of rugby as well as decision making by match officials during a specific game. There were also human interest stories about becoming a referee, the most difficult situations and conflicts that have been managed by referees, and the reasoning behind the laws of the game. There was also a unique feature story on refereeing by women resulting in one 16 year old girl securing a work experience placement with a referee, completing all the training, gaining the qualifications and going on to referee women’s rugby.

Second, the interaction category made full use of web based communications via message boards, email, chat rooms and quizzes. It encouraged creative writing through sending in sports reports on televised as well as local rugby games. The site housed match reports from fans, pundit columns by sports journalists, live chat, and user stories.

Third, the learning pages category interpreted numerous curriculum areas (such as history, mathematics, technology and biology) through the medium of rugby. This included, for example, tracing the history of the sport within a range of societies, including the identification of its cultural and political roots. Mathematical information was interpreted and analysed at critical levels through the compilation of statistics and league tables, including the calculation of try:conversion ratios. Technology included the use of equipment and graphic design in the industry of rugby, as well as an introduction to sports photography. Biology was explored through themes of fitness and injury and this also extended to horticulture through detailing the skills and craft of ground keeping.

In addition, there were also learning objectives about using the site itself because this developed key skills in information and communication technology.

The fourth category of employment links covered such interests as becoming a journalist, the skills of being an editor, career pathways in horticulture and ground-keeping, stadium management, employment within marketing and advertising. These pages also extended to explaining the advantages of speaking the Welsh language within work environments. Many of these pages involved extensive links with others sites developed by careers guidance and counselling experts as well as colleges and corporate training department.

The fifth category of travel and country information focused especially on tourism, weather and transport. The geographical features of the home countries of famous players and teams were introduced, including an analysis of demography and an introduction to meteorology and climatology. It provided information about the culture and history of visiting rugby teams, as well as information for learners who were interested in planning rugby tours or holidays abroad. When international matches were covered by the site, a range of vocabulary in the other languages was introduced and communication customs were explored, one example being the haka ritual as performed by some of the Pacific teams.

Finally, the journalist interviews and competitions category involved communication with famous commentators, players and celebrities. There were also competitions which necessitated searching out of information and the use of general knowledge.

In all of these examples active learning was encouraged through web-based interactivity through the use of message boards, i-bar links with televised rugby programmes, email access to journalists and players and competitions.

User Interface

The design details covered the above eight categories because they made sense to educationalists, webpage designers and media experts. The users themselves encountered a more simple interface containing three sub-sites with catch-all titles. The first was labelled Hooker’s Arms and housed the rugby writing and match reports by users. It also contained stories about culture and language, such as international rugby songs, rituals, and biographies. The second was called Commentary Box because there was engagement with more detailed interpretation of facts and news items, with expert judgements from journalists and players. The third was entitled Training Camp because of interests in education, training and employment opportunities.

Outcomes

The number of hits averaged 78,000 a month during the 6-month rugby season, fluctuating according to how well the national team was performing and peaking to 92,000 at the height of the Six-Nations championship. There were also marked differences between the three content categories. The Training Camp pages revealed a decline over time, the Commentary Box showed marked fluctuations, whilst the Hookers Arms content became more and more popular. Many of these hits were from repeat users and these patterns reflect a growth in learning over time.

The Training Camp pages presented unchanging information and contact details for follow-up information. Once accessed these pages would not usually be returned to on future visits. The Hookers Arms information was however constantly being updated and modified, with a sensitivity to the latest stories and issues and queries from users. Furthermore, this section of the site housed the major informal learning content and  built on previous interactive learning in earlier months so that momentum increased over time. The Commentary Box depended on an analysis of controversial issues and technical details concerning coaching, injuries and team news. This was typified by busy and quiet times based on the progress of various competitions and leagues;

The message board, like the trend in Hookers Arms usage,  grew in popularity over time. Again, an increase in messaging activity by users was escalated further usage because of the number of replies to questions and queries. Users first of all had to discover the existence of the message board and this explains the relatively low numbers (albeit approximately 8000 per week during the first two months of operation) in the earlier part of the project.

The full report can be downloaded by clicking here

The ideas are great but I’m not convinced they are ‘new’. The remarkable thing is that unlike most of the academics who have been advocating similar ideas, they have actually delivered them – demonstrable proof that they work in practice.

I am not sure that I agree with Jon Dron’s idea of  ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ technologies. But there are many ideas worth thinking about in this presentation. Terry Anderson comments “We had a bit of discussion if holist isn’t just a term for appropriate use of all three pedagogical generations, which we argue for in the paper, thus making the need for a fourth term redundant - just as modern distance education uses multiple generations of communications technologies (print, video, web etc.)”

We are always on the look out for great multi media presentations to feature on the front page of the Pontydysgu site. So I don’t know how we missed this excellent contribution by our very own associate and friend, Cristina Costa.

By the way it is nice to see a serious debate about education that is not a TED talk. TED is getting horribly formulaic.

Sorry for the bad hair day!