I love lectures

There you go, I said it.

And I can’t believe I’m alone on this. Yet, and forgive the exaggerated simplicity, the message I regularly hear* is that lecture theatres are out-dated and lectures are bad;  small group work and discussions are good.  Now, don’t get me wrong I see a great value in flexible furniture & small group discursive stuff.  But I also love lectures.  Why?

• The biggie – they give me time to think
• They give me time to (independently) find, look at & store related material
• Occasionally they allow me to switch off… of course I’m not actually switching off but thinking about other stuff!

And now, thanks to the wonders of technology and social networking tools such as twitter:

• They provide me with an opportunity to interact (as much or as little as I want to) with others who are keen to do so because they are participating in the same lecture

Let’s not give up on lectures just yet.  Instead, let’s encourage better ‘lectures’,  delivered by engaging teachers who are better supported and willing to push the boundaries in (of) the lecture theatre:

*and where do I hear this? Usually in lecture theatres…

Blog Off?

Last week, following my quick poll on blogging & tweeting, Gráinne Conole started an Is Twitter killing Blogging? discussion on Cloudworks. The excellent discussion has ended now but I’d promised I’d blog and very much wanted to sooner but finding the time… what with all that tweeting…

First, the overall results of my poll, which are based on 53 responses as I have removed the 7 respondents who have never blogged.  Results in full

Interestingly, when I answered the poll I chose about the same but looking at my blog stats I now realise I should have said less!  I wonder if any others made my mistake?

Many of the comments on Cloudworks ring true for me. Like Kate Boardman, Terry Wassall & others I’ve struggled to ‘find time’ to write blog posts. My August contribution to the VLE – PLE debate was one I’d mentally drafted following Graham Attwell’s keynote at April’s Plymouth Elearning Conference! I’m also finding, like Juliette Culver, that since my tweeting has increased I’ve been following feeds less and get to many blog posts via Twitter.  However, as the majority of the bloggers that I follow also tweet this is not a problem for me.  I also agree with John Pallister’s suspicion that many of the bloggers I follow have been blogging less recently which in some cases seems to be Twitter-related.

ALT-C 2009 Preview

Later today I’m heading to Manchester for ALT-C 2009, the UK’s largest educational technology conference. By attending, I’m breaking my don’t-go-to-the-same-conference-twice-in-a-row ‘rule’ but I really enjoyed last year and looking at the list of delegates  and pre-conference chatter: twitter, crowdvine I’m sure I’ll get a lot out of it once gain. Plus the fact that it’s in Manchester where I did my undergraduate degree and became addicted.  If you’re new to ALT-C have a read of last year’s conference review, penned by myself and colleagues, to get an idea of what it’s all about.

Apart from catching up with old friends and meeting online friends face-to-face for the first time, I think there are three topics in particular that are on my mind for up-coming projects.  I’ll be looking for sessions and people where I can learn more about: audio feedback, the use of eportfolios for supporting group work and in a similar vein, the use of wikis for collaborative writing.  In all three cases it’s not the technical tools that I’m interested in hearing about but the successes and the pitfalls that others have experienced.

Conference review to follow on our team blog

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/3762114417/

Whatever

I’ve just finished watching another entertaining & fascinating talk given by Michael Wesch at the Personal Democracy Forum in June. The Machine is (Changing) Us: YouTube and the Politics of Authenticity includes a ‘brief history of whatever’ and is definitely worth 30mins of your time.  If you’ve not come across him before take a look at my earlier post A Portal to Media Literacy for some background & links.

Wesch is one of the keynote speakers at next month’s ALT-C 2009 .  I’m really looking forward to hearing him talk and I’m hoping he’ll be saying more about his innovative approach to teaching; for example see his assessment scheme & collaborative lecture notes for next term.

I also like this quote from one of his students:

Dr Wesch taught me that teaching and learning is about asking really good questions not about finding answers

VL-istically speaking

Yesterday Steve Wheeler raised a two fingered salute to open another chapter in the ongoing VLE-PLE debate  (see VLE vs PLE fight club for an earlier installment).  It’s an excellent post but I’m not wholly convinced.

Firstly, some points that Steve and I probably agree upon:

• Personal Webs have an important & central role in the future of technology enhanced learning
• Wherever appropriate teachers should be given freedom to teach with the web technologies of their choosing
• Students should also be encouraged to use the web technologies of their own choosing to support their learning
• More focus is needed on the teaching activities and not the tools that enable them

However, unlike Steve, I believe that VLEs (institutionally managed webs for teaching & learning) are here to stay and have an important role in the future:

1. Not all teachers are tech-savvy ‘edupunks’.  Many are not interested in developing and teaching with their own personal webs.  Some would need considerable support to do so.  This will undoubtedly change over time but for a good while to come many teachers want to be provided with a single, simple, managed & supported platform.

ICTs in Education in the Future?

Yesterday at a staff development session for teachers I asked the following question both within the room and via Twitter, ‘Describe the Future of ICTs in Education… in one word’

I received several answers in the room and within 10-minutes had 16 from Twitter, which I think impressed the participants! (“Now I get Twitter!”)  All these answers are combined with the ones from my presentation slides in this Wordle.

Anything you’d like to add?  It was a very interesting exercise both in terms of how well it worked as a twitter demonstration but also in terms of the answers.

Microsoft Surface

My presentation was followed by a very interesting one by Gordon Rimmer from the education arm of Microsoft.  I may say more about this later but for now a video that took me by suprise as one of the teachers in it is a school friend!  So absolutely must be embedded below!  And also gives me a great excuse to share the Microsoft Surface parody video too!

D is for Dongle

Vodafone PAYG Dongle

My mobile technology adventure continues.  Today was my first day using my new pay-as-you-go Vodafone Dongle, bought yesterday after extensive (ahem!) research.  I plumped for Vodafone over O2, as data usage rather than time seemed to be best suited to my occasional out-of-office-at-some-event use.

I paid £35 which includes 1GB (£15 worth) of data use.  According to Vodafone 1GB will give me 30-hours of browsing.  Today I was online for most of the Futurelab Research Day from 10am to 4pm.  I was mainly twittering, browsing,  making notes in a wiki and sending (web) emails so nothing too heavy.  However, it appears to have only cost me 84p which even allowing for lunch & coffee seems pretty good to me.  The time-based O2 PAYG would have cost me £2 (for 24-hours use).  One of the other things I like about the Vodafone deal is that there is no time limit on using up credit which seems to be common in other deals.

Today I was in London, so as I’d hoped the connection was reliable.  My next Dongle test will probably be on the move, bound for Sheffield,  in a couple of weeks.  As you can see my ‘mobile adventure’ is a slow burner.

Staff, Students & Social Web

A report into “the impact on higher education of students’ widespread use of Web 2.0 technologies”, Higher Education in a Web2.0 World was published last week.

Both staff and students, according to the report, are struggling to see how social web technologies can be applied to learning.  It also highlights that face-to-face teaching really matters to students and I’m pretty certain this is true of teachers too!

However, the report suggests that there is a digital divide between students and teaching staff in terms of more general usage of social technologies.  While this is undoubtedly true to a certain extent, there is also a danger of overstating it.  It’s like the digital native – digital immigrant labelling, it just isn’t that simple.  Many students don’t engage with digital technologies and many teachers do.

Anyway, there is a need, as the report indicates, for staff to:

1. be technically proficient, i.e. capable of using social web technologies
2. make effective use of these technologies for teaching/learning (effective e-pedagogies)
3. keep up-to-date with ongoing developments as web-based ‘resources’ continue to grow

The report goes on to suggest that students could help with this.  There is some mileage in this, particularly for 1).  But in terms of e-pedagogies it seems more likely that for a while to come  students will continue to look to teachers for this?

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leighblackall/65030029/

Would be nice if…

I’m writing this as I listen to an interesting talk by Martin Weller,  How digital technologies are impacting higher education which is part of the From Courses to Dis / Course event.  As you can tell I’m multi-tasking…  a few minutes ago I dipped out and when I dropped back in I really wanted to flick back thru’ Martin’s presentation slides but wasn’t able to.

The session is in Elluminate and for all I know it may be possible but I don’t think so.  Nor is it possible with the equivalent tool that we use Wimba Classroom.  What I’d like is the ability for participants to be able to control which slides they see with a one-click option to jump back to the presenter’s current slide.  Perhaps Elluminate allows this or perhaps other web conferencing tools do?  Now, back to viewing as well as listening to the discussion…

Finding People to Follow

I’ve been preparing for another Twitter workshop this morning and spent part of the time looking for examples of people who Twitter.  As Twitter is all about your network,  if you don’t build one then you are unlikely to see the benefits and stick with it.  My last Twitter workshop was at the Plymouth E-Learning conference (pictured) and ’selling’ Twitter to elearning folk is fairly straight-forward as there are lots of educational technology types to follow  (BTW – There are over 1000 Twitter updates related to the Plymouth conference!).

My workshop on Wednesday is for staff at the LSE who are not educational technologists so I wanted to have a list of ‘people’ to follow that might be more relevant to them.  Finding people is quite difficult when you are looking beyond your own network so below are a few starting point I’ll be highlighting on Wednesday.  If you’ve any more social science related twitterers, let me know!

For politics there’s a lot of potential, Tweetminster is a good site bringing together the feeds of MPs who Twitter, as well as @DowningStreet, @UKParliament and @guidofawkes to keep you in touch with goings-on in Westminster. According to sourcewatch there are 19 Senators and 50 Representatives in the US Congress twittering away.  Other examples i’ll be highlighting are @intuteeconomics,@IntutePsychUK, @policynetwork, @HEFCE, @GuardianEdu, as well as a handful at LSE @lsepublicevents, @lsecareers, @lsesummerschool & @charliebeckett

And I’ll be encouraging the use of searching via both Find People & Twitter Advanced Search.  I’ll also highlight sites such as wefollow.com which have lists such as academics who Twitter.  Once you have a small network it gets easier and I found browsing friends of my followers the best way to widen my network.

Slides from my Plymouth workshop:

My annotated Twitter handouts are also on slideshare.