This year I taught again on the Comenius / Grundtvig funded course called TACCLE . It is a week long course for teachers who want to learn more about technology.  Teachers can now apply for a grant  to participate in the course with their National Agency. Deadline for grant applications is September 17^th. Jens Veermersch just sent me details and I though I would share them here in case you would like to participate in it.

Urbino, Italy

 Registrations are now open for the 6th edition of the TACCLE course in April 2014.

You might be interested to learn that we are organising a new edition of our TACCLE course in April 2014 in Italy.

With this fifth in-service training, which will run from 6 until 13 April 2013 in Urbino, Italy (reference number: BE-2013-268-001 Session 2 Comenius or BE-2013-267-001 Session 2 Grundtvig) our aim is to help teachers to develop state of the art content for e-learning in general and for learning environments in particular. We try to achieve this by training teachers to create e-learning materials and raising their awareness of e-learning in general. TACCLE will help to establish a culture of innovation in the schools in which they work. The training is geared to the needs of the classroom teachers but teacher trainers, ICT support staff and resource centre staff may find it useful too!

 This course is not aimed at advanced users of ICT.

 The course is organised by GO!, the state education network in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium

Participation fee and how to get a grant to pay it all

1335 Euro (700 Euro for full board en-suite accomodation in single rooms in Hotel**** Mamiani + 635 Euro for tuition and course materials). For both participation fee and travel expenses to Italy you can request a grant from the LLP National Agency in your country, which will cover all costs. You can find the address of your LLP national agency here.

Only participants living in one of the 28 EU member states, a country in the European Economic Area (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) or FYROMacedonia, Switzerland or Turkey can register for the sixth TACCLE course and apply for a grant. Unfortunately Italian participants are not entitled to receive a grant since the course will be organised in Italy.

Deadline for grant applications with your LLP national agency is September 17th 2013!

Pre-registration are possible on-line: http://tinyurl.com/taccle14

Here is one of the slide decks I used this year:

Maybe I’ll see you there!

Jenny Hughes was in Bremen last week and showed me some of her favourite apps on the wonderful Taccle web site. Although the site aims at providing practical ideas for teachers in using technology in the classroom, it is also a great resource for anyone interested in technology for teaching and learning and particularly rich in mobile apps.

We found a number of broken links and looked at installing a WordPress plugin to check for these. In the end we concluded the plugins seemed to have too high a processing load and instead used  free application called Integrity which worked like a charm. We also discovered that the Taccle site has over 2500 external links!

The other technical / design feature which interests me is the metadata / category system. This has undergone a series of revamps and I think gets in pretty much right now.

Anyway here is  one of my current favourite apps featured on the site – Singing Fingers, created at MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten.

Make a sound while moving your finger to record a sound-drawing. Touch the drawing you just made to play the sound back: forward, backward, sideways, or any way. That’s it! Singing Fingers lets you see music, hear colors, and re-see everyday sounds for the beautiful playground that they are. Singing Fingers lowers the floor to let beginners play with sound as if it was finger paint, and raises the roof by letting advanced DJs break out of the grooves of the records into a world where sounds take any shape you give them. Your own fingers are like the needles that play the sounds back. Just like records and tape recorders were breakthroughs in simplicity and power, Singing Fingers has no complex buttons, menus, or rules. One simple medium, one simple touch of the finger, millions of possibilities.How it Works

While you drag your finger across the screen, your voice or any other sounds nearby are turned into colors on the musical canvas. The pitch of the sound is translated into a color, while the loudness of the sound determines the size. If you start on a blank white space you are recording. If you start on a colored space you are replaying. Use up to five fingers to play back many sounds at the same time, forwards, backwards or sideways.

Making Instruments, Telling Stories, Performing, Exploring, and Drawing Pictures

Tap the keys of a piano or sing a scale while dragging your finger on the screen, and you’ll have just drawn your first playable musical instrument. Tell a story while drawing the story on the screen. Explore a sound in the world, like rain or thunder, visually and see what it sounds like forwards and backwards. Use your voice as the “paint” to draw a picture. Laughter and yelling gives dozens of colors, while whistling a note can give you a specific color.

Cross-Sensory Creative Thinking

When you holler out and move your finger around on the screen, Singing Fingers turns the sounds into a concrete visual object. By transforming the pitch of the sound to a color and smearing it across the screen, people can learn to “see music” and “hear colors.” What is sometimes referred to as “synesthesia” or “cross sensory thinking” becomes an everyday part of playing with sounds. One of the goals of the people behind Singing Fingers is to help people to see the invisible and re-see the everyday world as the beautiful playground that life is.The Next Evolution of Sound Recording and Remixing

A long time ago, only advanced technicians with handmade machines could record sounds. Exciting advancements like record players and tape recorders meant more people could play and record sounds, while cultural revolutions like scratching records and making summer mix tapes meant more people were mixing and remixing music. Computers have opened up many new ways to play with sounds, but none have been as huge a leap for people’s expressiveness as we would hope for: iPods let you play music, complex software lets you mix it together, and simple programs let you record sounds, but where is the big leap forward? We see Singing Fingers as a step toward the next big cultural transformation, putting all the power of recording, playing back, and remixing, literally at the tip of the finger for the most improvisational, fluid, sound interface we could come up with. Singing Fingers lowers the floor to let children play with sound as if it was finger paint, and raises the roof by letting advanced DJs break out of the grooves of the records into a world where sounds take any shape you give them and your fingers are like the needles that play the sounds back, with as fine control as your hand will allow. The scratching of records, the recording of tapes, the visualization of the graphics equalizer, and the remixing power of computers, in one little app that takes seconds to learn and years to master.

Interface Simplicity 
Just like record players and tape recorders were simple and powerful new ways to work with sounds, Singing Fingers simply gives you a blank page. To manipulate sounds you only need your fingers to smear them onto the page and to play them back. No complex buttons, menus, or rules. In fact, to record, play back, and remix sounds there are zero buttons or menus (the buttons are only for file manipulation: saving, loading, and getting a new one). One simple medium, one simple touch of the finger, millions of possibilities.

I was asked this question the other day and I thought it was a good one to explore in a blogpost.

For some people my constant tweeting, facebooking, skyping, emailing…. must be a bit overwhelming! And I know for a fact that the colleagues with whom I share an office think I’m a bit mad and waste all my time in these social networks. Well, (maybe) true – I’m a bit hyperactive, but I don’t see my activity online as “wasting” time. It’s actually really valuable to me, and it is only a reflection of how it has progressed. It was not always like that … it rather evolved to become what it is today!

At first it’s unfamiliar, then it strikes root – Fernando Pessoa about Coca-cola

As many people I know, I didn’t immediately see the value of twitter, I resisted to get on to facebook, and I only signed up to skype because I needed to join a group meeting online. For me these things need to make sense, add something to what I am already doing, and be easy to use. But ultimately, I need to try it for myself to see how it makes a difference in my work flow. Hence,  I had to stick to it for sometime until it started to make sense. Needless to say, it took me a long time (Internet  time, that is) to get to the super active stage I am currently at.

… OK, enough rambling… how do I do it?

First, I think it’s important to remember that working and participating online requires you to change the way you work… or at least, to acknowledge that the way you work is not the way your mother imagines you work. Working from 9 to 5 in academia is just unrealistic. Concentrating for long periods of time just doesn’t work for me. [To be honest, it never has, but, you see, now these networks “betray me” in that way as they make it visible though my participation. Do I care? Not really!]

When I am at my desk I work in 20-30 minutes chunks. That’s how much I can handle. In between those sometimes rather productive sessions I check my networks. If there is something I think it is worth a mention, I’ll re-tweet it, re-post it or like it. And then I go back to what I was doing. And I repeat this as many times as I lose my concentration. It helps me re-focus [strangely enough!]

I also try to share things I read – like newspaper articles. And sometimes I engage in conversation. I answer people’s questions, make a comment on someone’s tweet/post or try to crack a joke [not really great at it, but there you go!] The chatting is important. It’s the glue of any networked experience. It brings people together. And sometimes I also tweet/ post silly stuff cause life ain’t always serious. I give you access to a more social me in that way. [If you like it, it's altogether another story; I enjoy it!]

* I don’t distinguish between professional and private networks. They are all socio-professional to me. If I don’t want people to know something about me/ what I am doing, I just don’t publish it online. That is my rule of thumb, but that would be another post.

Build your networks
Building your personal learning network doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time to build confidence to post “your own stuff”. And it takes equal effort to build your network. It’s important to choose the people you follow because they will be the ones providing critical content. Collective intelligence is the hook to your participation and existence in these networks [in my humble opinion, that is]; the social interaction what brings it all together.

My network is very important to me because it provides me with an alternative platform to test my ideas, to build new ideas, and to learn from other people’s ideas. And their distributed location just means that they travel well … anywhere I go! Having recently moved to a new institution, new city, and for that matter, a new country, has meant that my then local professional and social networks are no longer within my reach. Being active online has somehow given me a sense of continuity  that has eased my settling in.  Moreover, as it often happens, I work in a section of the Institution that deals with a variety of knowledge areas, not all of them technological minded. This is great because it challenges my perceptions and balances my views. Yet, the online networks keep me updated about my own field and enable me to feed that back into my work.

Anyway, in short:

• Acknowledge that people’s working patterns are different and that their use of social networks during working hours is not merely a form of distraction. For me, it’s a form of breaking up a working routine, especially when I reach a point where “I am stuck”. Then I need a network break!
• Build up your network with people who can contribute to your knowledge from different perspectives. You can also follow people who you don’t know face to face. You’ll be surprised at how much they can contribute to your knowledge.
• Don’t judge it before you try it. Allow some time for it to start making sense.
• Have fun. Don’t take yourself too seriously, because no one else will. So post whatever, whenever  it’s important to you. Sharing is a way to show you care!

Anything else you would like to add re: how you manage your networks and how important they are for you?

just developed an infographic on my experience using easel.ly

It doesn’t look as great as I’d like – need to improve my design skills!! – but this was pretty easy to create. A great way to illustrate one’s experience.

easel.ly

The New Media Consortium (NMC) and the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD), with the support of Dell Inc. and Intel, have jointly released the Technology Outlook for Community, Technical, and Junior Colleges 2013-2018: An NMC Horizon Project Sector Analysis . This report applies the process developed for the NMC Horizon Project, with a focus on identifying and describing emerging technologies likely to have an impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in two-year higher education institutions around the world. Twelve emerging technologies are recognized across three adoption horizons over the next one to five years, as well as key trends and challenges expected to continue over the same period, giving campus leaders and practitioners a valuable guide for strategic technology planning.

The Technology Outlook for Community, Technical, and Junior Colleges 2013-2018 identifies BYOD, flipped classroom, online learning, and social media as technologies expected to enter mainstream use at community, technical, and junior colleges in the first horizon of one year or less. Badges, games and gamification, learning analytics, and next generation LMS are seen in the second horizon of two to three years; the Internet of Things, natural user interfaces, virtual assistants, and virtual and remote laboratories are seen emerging in the third horizon of four to five years.

One of the things I am working on in the Learning layers project is user engagement.

Learning Layers is based on user centred design model, involving end users and organisations in developing solutions to promote both formal and informal learning using technology in clusters consisting of:

• Small and Medium Enterprises.
• Regional Education and research institutions; typically upper secondary level and tertiary level)
• regional authorities, national and European – policymakers responsible for incentive systems for regional growth and innovation, and for developing policies and initiatives for initial and continuing vocational education and training
• Investors, banks, investment funds, business angels, public bodies- funding and supporting innovation.

Engaging with users and involving them in design of new solutions is also part of the research strategy. Layers researchers obtain research data from the interaction with users in the design based research model.

I am basing the strategy on a model of open innovation and will publish more about our ideas on this over the next few days. One of the things is to move away from the traditional project approach of dissemination of the end results to potential users and stakeholders to a model based on active participation – and on an architecture of participation. We have produced a table of different stakeholders in the project and are trying to understand from what direction their interest might come, what they want to get out of the project and what active contribution they might make.

Based on this we are putting forward a number of concrete initiatives the project can take over the next three and a half years.

One such idea is Layers PBL, standing for Layers Problem Based Learning, Practice Based Learning or Project Based learning depending in your way of looking at it (I see it as all three). This involves connecting outwards to engage with student groups, who in computing or business ICT are often required to undertake a one semester programme undertaking a real project in conjunction with companies.

We have piloted this approach with a team of students from HsKA, the Technical University of Karlsruhe. They are working on an idea for an app based on talks we had with a doctor at a Layers meeting held in Bradford earlier this year. The idea is that in their limited free time (in the car between appointments and meetings) users can reply to a series of questions on their phone. They can move between questions through a voice command and the app will communicate with a webs interface to produce a transcript of their answers which can then be edited and downloaded. The web interface also allows people to build their own (scaffolded) sequence of questions – which we call a stack – and to share them with other users if they wish. They can also rate different stacks.

So far it is going pretty well. The web interface is pretty much finished and they are now developing the mobile interface. The students are using SCRUM programming with weekly sprints. We usually meet online for about 20 minutes a week for them to present their progress and for us to provide feedback.

Last week I talked with Chris Whitehead who ia programmer with Tribal, another partner in the Layers project. Chris has helped develop m-learning. a content development tool for mobiles. And he suggested that we could link the app being developed by the Karlsruhe students (code named Reflect) to the m-learning application. I talked about this to Andreas Vratny, one of the Karlsruhe lead developers, on Friday. And hey presto, by Sunday we had an API and an OAuth system to allow single log in to the two systems.

The present version of the app is being developed for the Android operating system. We will release it on the Pontydysgu site as soon as it is ready, as well as on the Android store. If it catches on we will try to port it to iOS. And we are thinking about extending our development activities to further universities with a the development of a Layers Design Library to support developers. If anyone is interested please get in touch.

The last few weeks have been really enriching at a personal level in the sense I have participated in several different events. Some as a speaker/trainer; others simply as a delegate. These days, it is hard for someone to go to an event and not have an active role. Usually we go to present our work; and not solely to absorb the experiences others have to share. In a way, this is unfortunate because I think sometimes I spend more time stressing  over  my presentation  than I do concentrating on other people’s contributions. Yet, sharing our work is also important as it enables us to establish new contacts, talk to people who might have similar experiences, etc. In short I can’t decide which one is better, the stress of presenting or the comfort of being a delegate. I think both are important.

A couple weeks ago I went to Southampton to attend the Digital Literacies conference organised by CITE (Hugh Davis, Lisa Harris, and Fiona Harvey). It was a magnificent event. I loved the fact that they are developing really innovative initiatives that really put the learners at the centre. It’s nice to see this happening in Higher Education and having the support of the people above (the management team). The Digital Champions initiative is a proof of that. I wish (or better, I hope) that in the future we are able to develop a similar approach in my own institution.

As part of the event students enrolled on to another really impressive initiative – the multi-disciplinary module on Living and Working on the Web – presented their experiences in developing digital literacies and what it means to their present and future careers.

To know how to use the web smartly is becoming more and more important. And this not only applies to young generations, but to people from all ages, different sectors and backgrounds. The problem here is to convince not only such target audiences, but also those who are managing lifelong learning programmes for their communities. There is still a lot of prejudice about offering such opportunities to older, more experienced generations under the pretext they aren’t really into it. Yet, if this is the way forward aren’t we letting down those who want to up skill or re-skill in a market that is increasingly digital? I still don’t have a lot of answers, but recent talks with peers in and outside my own institution tells me this is becoming an issue as our own perception of who should be using social media is the first real obstacle.

I started a MOOC this week… well I started a week late because I was reliant on a notification from the course leader that either never arrived or landed in my spam box. Anyway, after experiencing the pre-MOOCs via the Webheads in Action (to whom I owe all my enthusiasm for social forms of learning and the media that can support it) I did have a go at the first MOOCs in 2008 and 2009… but I was never really convinced by them simply because they were rather overwhelming, not only in terms of the number of people they attracted but  also, and mostly, because of the cliques it managed to generate. Learning technologist learning about learning technologies is a bit of a biased practice. It can become a vicious cycle of reporting about the same experiences all over again, without much of a challenge.

When Coursera and other similar initiates came along, I resisted it! Or better put, I signed up to some of the course simply to observe how they were being conducted… I did not engage.
A couple of weeks ago I made the conscious decision of enrolling to a course I know very little about. I chose the History of Rock – Part I because it is a topic that appeals to me (not that I can play or sing any kind of music. I can hardly dance too, but I like a good gig!). As I mentioned before I arrived late to the course… in week 2! But I have now started using the resources. I like the videos. They are short and concise in the message they aim to convey, and Professor John Covach is an eloquent speaker. [The teacher as a performer is content for another post though ...] The quizzes are also OK as a mini challenge… as a form of testing myself. But that is just for me.  There are also discussion fora but I haven’t yet had any patience for those. The threads either don’t interest me or have grown too long for me to plough trough. My fault, I know. …

As far as this MOOC goes, I like it. I like it for its subject area. Yet, I don’t think there is anything there that is new or radically different from other forms of enabling learning in the classroom. And maybe that is not the purpose. Yet, I’d  like to see more of the idea of “students as creators” in MOOCs …but then we would have a problem of support! [having said that, I do like watching the videos. It's like watching youtube videos, something I have grown quite fond of as part of my learning strategy...]

This week Professor Martin Weller wrote a very thought provoking post about the role of MOOCs if education is/were free. I think that is a very good point. I don’t see MOOCs as replacing Higher Education. They are not inclusive at all. And in most cases, they are used as a marketing tool, thus, in my opinion, defeating that philanthropic purpose of “openness” . The way I see it, the value of Universities offering open courses is in providing opportunities for people to learn subjects they would probably not formally enroll to or pay for … as in my case with the “history of the Rock”!!  I’m simply curious. I have no potential of becoming an artist or even a music historian. I like the fact that I can do it without the pressure of formal assessment. So I see MOOCs as a way of HEIs, as publicly funded institution, proving a service to the wider community. Yet, I fear that MOOCs are mainly serving those who are already highly educated and see this as an opportunity to enhance their skills. Moreover, what I miss in MOOCs is the familiarity of smaller networked learning initiatives where people really develop learning interrelationships based on the affinities they share. I am sorry to say this, but nothing tops the Webheads in Action on this matter. Yet, I recognise that things have moved on. The “web population” has increased dramatically since their first course in 2002… but I feel we need more human touch in the way we deploy these technologies for learning. As  Ursula Franklin so rightly puts it, Technology is not only an artifact, but a system of social practices!

*Apologies for the ramblings. It has been extremely difficult for me to write in the last few weeks. I’m going through yet another “writer’s block”, I guess.

The German educations ystem can be slow to change. But when initiatives are taken they are taken seriously! And Germany is now moving into the world of MOOCs.

The Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft and iversity, has launched a “MOOC Production Fellowship” contest.

Their web site explains:

The contest seeks to identify ten innovative concepts for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Fellows will receive funding as well as assistance with course production. Stifterverband and iversity hope to raise awareness for the tremendous potential of digital technology in education and seek to activate a process of creative adaptation within the academic community.

Up to ten instructors or teams of instructors will be awarded a fellowship for their innovative Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) concepts. Fellows will receive a 25,000 Euro stipend to pay for the production of their courses. The aim is to have at least five courses online in the fall of 2013. Up to five courses may go online in the spring of 2014. The courses will run on the iversity platform and will be available to the public free of charge.

Fellows will receive 25,000 Euros to implement their MOOC concepts. There will be a public award ceremony, and fellows with receive ongoing support during both the production and marketing phases of the project.

The grant will enable the fellows to manifest their course concept vision. ….

Ulitmately, fellows are free how they want to produce the course: whether all by themselves, alongside other fellows, with outside service providers, or in collaboration with development partners we recommend. The fellowship funds can be used for production costs, research and/or student assistants, equipment or a teaching buyout.

The winners of the competition will be decided based on votes on a public web site and on the considerations of a jury.

In best German fashion the web site provides guidance on the ‘didactic’ design of a MOOC including:

• Course structure
• Video
• Feedback and assessment
• Peer to Peer learning

And in best German fashion there are strict entry requirements: only assistant, associate or full professors are eligible.

The section on peer to peer learning is somewhat curious. It starts off by explaining “A third element of open course instruction is peer-to-peer learning. Students can post, browse and respond to other students’ questions in the context of a course forum. They can vote for questions, bringing the most pressing queries to the instructor’s attention.” Not so much peer to peer learning but a forum for asking the ;instructor questions. And it ends even more curiously by insisting “These online courses are supposed to be xMOOCs rather than cMOOCs.”

Perhaps this is something to do with the organisations behind the competition. According to TechCrunch, Iversity is a Berlin-based startup, founded in 2011 to offer online collaboration tools for learning management, which has relaunched itself as a platform for massive open online courses. Iversity’s existing investors, says TechCrunch,  include BFB Frühphasenfonds Brandenburg, bmp media investors AG and the Business Angel Masoud Kamali.

Course content will be provided by universities and individual professors. It remains open as to what business model is seen as appropriate for the still publicly funded German education system, but it seems it may include certification fees for students.

We are really excited about the Taccle 2 project – 5 hard copy handbooks and a website bursting with practical ideas on how to use web 2.0 apps and other e-learning tools in your classroom.

The project has reached its half way mark and we are so far on target. The E-learning handbook for Primary Teachers has just come back from the layout artist and is in its final proof reading stage. (There is a temporary version available if you want to take a look)

The E-learning handbook for STEM teachers is waiting for the layout artist to make it look pretty and the E-learning for Humanities is in its draft version. This will be available on the site within the next week.

The next book, E-learning for Creative and Performing Arts has just been started – we are still at the stage of collecting ideas but they are coming in thick and fast. The final book, E-learnig for Core Skills 14-19 is at the planning stage. All books will be ready for printing by April 2014.

Meanwhile, check out Taccle2 website It has 280 posts at the moment and our rough estimate is that there are well over a thousand ideas that can be navigated by subject, age, software, language, format and more. Even better, judging from the number of visitors who return and the number of contributions and comments, there is a growing community around the Taccle2 site which will expand rapidly once the Taccle2 training starts next month.

Please come and join us and spread the word – tried and tested ideas for using technology in the classroom, created by teachers for teachers. No theory, no research just inspiration!

PS you can also follow us on Twitter #taccle or on the Taccle2  Diigo group or on Scoop.it – so no excuses!!

The last few weeks have been extremely hectic but also rather exciting with participation in some EC projects, the writing of a new module for our Masters in Education and participation in events both in and outside my institution. I promise to translate those experiences in blogpost during the weekend [There you go. I've declared my intentions in writing, now I have to do it!]

Meanwhile I want to share the diagram below from mentoringminds.com  because I think it’s a very useful one to have in mind for my future courses.