I am lucky enough to have had an iPad (a personal one, not a work one) from the beginning and have been using it at home (instead of my home laptop and often instead of my phone), very occasionally for work (I would use it more because of the mobile nature of my job if it was a work device) but also a lot as a learner (Open University, H800 Technology-enhanced-learning: practices and debates). I have resisted blogging about the iPad for a few weeks because I wanted to give myself time to see how I would use it for real  in all of these circumstances, rather than cooing over its loveliness (imo) and then working out what apps were available and how other people might use it. Anyway, here are my thoughts so far (starting with the ‘why nots’) about the iPad:

Why not?

• It’s expensive … especially when you already have tools that do the jobs you need them to.
• Editing online can be difficult / doesn’t happen … which I needed to be able to do via Moodle and GoogleDocs for my Open Uni course.
• It doesn’t play Flash video … which has actually only been annoying when I wanted to watch something on the BBC website.

Why iPad?

• It’s very portable … and less conspicuous than a laptop or netbook when you are using it on the move, for example on a plane or in a coffee shop. I have also literally used it ‘on the move’, taking notes as I walked about a potential venue; I couldn’t have done that with my laptop and it would have been awkward with my phone.
• It has a great battery life … plus the charger is very compact and light to carry too.
• Everything looks great on the screen  … better than a mobile, as good as/better than a netbook.
• More and more apps and support materials are being developed daily …  TeachWithYouriPad is a wiki set up to support teachers, iPads in Education is another such website; iPads are a regular blog  feature of  Gloucester College’s James Clay at the moment too and I’m looking forward to mTouch and  mBook, two Moodle apps that are being developed.
• It is another great tool for supporting mobile learning: accessing online course materials, forums and blog posts (via Moodle for me); carrying and accessing offline course materials (GoodReader app for me); making digital notes (the standard basic notepad is great for simple notes); having online access to all files (Dropbox) and bookmarks (Delicious); staying in touch via Twitter, Facebook and Skype;  listening to course related podcasts and watching videos downloaded via iTunesU or on YouTube.

I am more than happy to say that the iPad isn’t perfect and that (as a learner) there are a few things it doesn’t do well. I also agree with the argument that a laptop or a phone or a mix of both would do the job too. However, having started my working life as a new product development technologist, who was constantly looking for the ‘next thing’, I don’t think that having something that does the job OK already is a good enough reason not to innovate and be creative and think differently. Just because something might not seem to have a place at this moment in time, it doesn’t mean it won’t in the future … how many used to think there was no need for computers in the home, or that mobile phones (and text messaging) would be something for a few? I am not saying that I think everyone will have iPads (or their equivalent) in the future, I just think that when we are talking about personal technology (which I think this is) it is good to remember that it isn’t what the tool can do that is important, it is what the tool can do for you.

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file).

The issue of continuous professional development (CPD) in relation to Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) has recently been raised by Graham Attwell in his Pontydysgu blog. Graham aims to write a literature review around the subject, and is keen to get input from a wide audience. His blog highlights the importance of the role of TEL in  teachers’/lecturers’ CPD , which has perhaps received less attention than the impact of TEL on learners. However, as JISC studies on learners’ experiences of e-learning have shown, learners’ appreciation of TEL is often greatly influenced by the guidance and example given to them by their teachers.

Some teachers are natural innovators, but most follow rather than lead when it comes to using technology in their teaching, and some will be highly resistant to change (the so-called ‘laggards’ in Rogers’ ‘diffusion’  theory ). It makes sense to find  methods of CPD that might bridge the ‘chasm’ (as described by Moore) between the innovative minority and the slower majority. However, there may always be the barriers of insufficient time and money to hurdle!
Significant effort has gone into the development of schemes, frameworks and standards of CPD for TEL, particularly in the Lifelong Learning sector. Up to date guides can also be of great value, and also resources of the sort produced by JISC.  But  perhaps less thought has gone into the actual delivery of training, though TEL practitioners such as Joyce Seitzinger  have ideas. It seems sensible to me to apply similar pedagogic (or andragogic in this context) principles to the delivery of CPD for teachers as they themselves would apply to their students. Hence, the outcomes of CPD should be well-defined and their value and relevance made clear. Training activities should be varied and active, address a range of learning preferences, and incorporate an element of personalisation or self-direction. Positive reinforcement should be used where appropriate, and existing knowledge and skills should be taken into account. It is probably also benefical to provide training in a ‘little and often’ way rather than in large, infrequent chunks. In short, CPD  delivery should be as enjoyable, motivating and informative as the best lessons/lectures, and should avoid too much passive listening or pages of small print . ‘Testing’ scenarios, as in inspections or peer observations,  may also have  limited developmental value.

Based on the above thoughts, here are some approaches to CPD that I believe are worth exploring:-
• Discuss TEL within regular team/departmental meetings, or in informal gatherings, making reference to subject-specific good practice. It may be useful to look at technology use from different angles (as described in a recent blog post by Paul Richardson), and important to respect differing points of view
• Ask teachers individually about what has gone well in their teaching – ie. appreciative inquiry. Use this to find examples of good practice, and identify situations where TEL could have a positive impact
• Liaise with Education/Initial Teacher Training (ITT) departments to set up projects with teachers to explore particular technologies in the context of their teaching.  Action research and other scholarly approaches could be incorporated.
• link TEL CPD to wider schemes of accreditation and progression.

In addition to these approaches, organisations need to raise awareness of useful technologies (because ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’),  via a range of methods  including bite-size, visual chunks (eg. TeacherTube/YouTube videos on an intranet). Organisations could also make use of ‘champions’ to aid dissemination  and promote good practice, and their managers should aim to provide  leadership in the use of TEL.

What other approaches/factors are should be considered? Conversely, what hasn’t worked? Your experiences and comments are most welcome!

How many times do you hear that in a classroom, lecture hall, workshop, conference …? Increasingly so perhaps as more people start to take advantage of the fact that so many learners, colleagues, delegates, trainees, have a handy piece of communications technology in their pocket.

JISC RSC Wales have had a text wall (a text messaging service where we can receive texts from mobile phones or internet enabled devices and display them on a web page) for over a year now and we have used it as a way of collecting comments or questions during the events, workshops and forums that we run. For us it means we can offer the delegates or participants a way of feeding back to us or asking questions about things as they happen at an event … and they only need to be able to send a text from a mobile phone to do this. It is also great because we can share the feedback or the questions very easily as they come in by displaying the web page they are listed on for everyone to see. At one event we were even able to send the link to the web page (and login details) to Martin Dougiamas, who was presenting to us in Wrexham from his office in Australia, so that he could answer attendees questions as they sent them via text message to the text wall.

This year we also embarked on a series of roadshows, one of which included a session on tools and technologies that can be used to record the learners’ voice. The text wall was one of those tools and as part of the road show we offered any interested delegates the opportunity to borrow a sub account of our text wall in return for some feedback about what they used it for, how the learners (or staff) responded, what they did with the responses and whether they would consider investing in their own text messaging service like this.  A number of people took up our offer (at these and other events) and although a few were unable to actually use the text wall and some are still waiting for the right opportunity to use it, we have had some really interesting feedback as to how organisations have and will be using text walls in the future. The feedback we have had so far shows that this tool has been used in a number of different ways, some of which have worked very well and others that haven’t. Here are some of the uses:

• to gather opinion on how students rated the new library space
• as a method of renewing books in the Learning Zone
• to try and glean some feedback on learning technologies
• as a way of getting feedback about events
• to gain feedback on what residents of the community would like to see offered in the Curriculum
• for feedback on aspects of teaching
• for feedback on a new website
• as an out of school hours revision facility
• to explore possible uses with colleagues

The full feedback can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/textwalluses

Like every technology, tool or resource, text messaging services like this will have disadvantages, as well as advantages. The need to have a mobile phone or access to an internet connected device to participate, the cost of a text message or even the distraction of allowing a mobile phone in a setting where they are usually discouraged may be disadvantage enough for some people BUT we have so many tools available today to be able to communicate with each other, is seems a shame not to take advantage (as these people, who we are very grateful to, have done) of this one to engage with and find out what our learners (and teachers) are thinking.

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file).

A month ago today the JISC RSC Wales event ‘Learning in a Digital Wales – Dysgu mewn Cymru Digidol’ was in full swing in the All Nations Centre in Cardiff … my, how time flies! Since then I have had a 2 week holiday and now that I am back I am taking a moment to reflect on the day (having recovered from helping with all of the behind the scenes work that went into putting it together). From the outset, the aims of the day were to bring together learning providers from across all sectors within Wales to:

• share good practice and experiences in new and existing technologies from across the sectors
• focus on key questions about the transformation agenda and the role of technology enhanced learning
• look at the reasons for change in 21st Century education.

… and I think that on the whole those aims were achieved, through the keynote from Dougald Hind, the opportunity for all attendees from across the education sectors within Wales to discuss the transformation agenda during the Knowledge Cafe and the wide range of sessions led by those who are actually using digital technologies to support learning and teaching across Wales.

Being involved in organising and supporting an event on the day you often miss out on the detail, which is why the information and resources area with presentations, videos, photos and comments from the event has been a great way of reminding myself what happened. The ‘Learning in a Digital Wales’ online information and resources area is available to anyone at: http://moodle.rsc-wales.ac.uk/learninginadigitalwales.  If you would like just a snapshot of the day I would recommend the Flickr photo and delegate comment slideshow … or if you prefer video then how about the YouTube hosted video of attendees’ thoughts, shot (with a Flip camera) by our roving reporter Lis or the compilation of keynote and Moodle videos created by Richard Wenner.

On reflection, a good day … and, now I have had a holiday, I think I’m looking forward to the next one!

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file).

Last week I had the opportunity to use a virtual tool that I have been using for some time in a number of different ways. It is a tool that many, many people use, that quite a few use for education but that many, many more are sceptical about with regard to it’s relevance to teaching and learning. Have you guessed which tool I am talking about yet? Second Life of course!

I have blogged about Second Life before (Virtually convinced about 3D virtual teaching and learning) and the JISC RSC Wales team have had a virtual office (on the University of Wales, School of Health and Social Sciences Second Life island) for some months now. We have used our virtual office as a place for our geographically distributed team to meet and collaborate as well as a place to introduce those new to Second Life to some of its potential.

But last week I had the chance to spread my wings and explore this virtual tool in other ways:

As a virtual conference delegate at the University of Wales Newport  NEXUS Conference. This was an interesting experience in that half of my expectations were met but the other half weren’t! I expected to access and view the conference (live webstream, Twitter feed) easily … and I did … but I also expected to interact with the other virtual delegates (much as you would at a real conference) but found that this didn’t happen. It could have been to do with there only being a handful of virtual attendees because of the last minute announcement of the opportunity to attend virtually; it could have been to do with everyone (like me) being new to virtual attendance and not being sure of how to interact virtually; it could have been because there was no-one encouraging interaction either during or after the live broadcast; or it could have been another reason that I have yet to figure out. I wonder what the conference organisers thought and whether they would do it differently (if at all) next time.

On a virtual field trip to a world where everything was so much bigger than the virtual me. I visited Greenies Island (which from this blog looks set to be no more on Second Life after this week – what a shame) with several of my other JISC RSC UK colleagues. It was a chance for us to explore a new virtual place together; to see how Second Life can make the impossible virtually possible; to practise our navigation and flying skills (around the oversized house and the indoor race track); as well as to meet a giant cat, climb inside a large handbag, safe and fridge (there was more but that was all I managed this trip) and to ride a rocket. Having stayed on fairly safe (similar to real life) virtual ground until this point in my virtual worlds journey I found this a great experience for gently showing me the possibilties of the impossible and I look forward to exploring more ‘impossible’ places like this on later virtual field trips.

As a learner on my Open University course, H800 ‘Technology Enhanced Learning: practices and debates‘. As the course title suggests, we explore, discuss and use many technologies but Second Life isn’t introduced for another few weeks. I knew about the Open University’s island and have been keen to have a proper excuse to go there for some time, so when a few of my fellow H800ers decided to meet up there to chat about the course, as an alternative to Elluminate, the suggested web conferencing tool, I was more than happy to join in. Maybe it is because I am already familiar with Second Life and find it quite comfortable to be in and interact within this kind of virtual environment that I found this to be the best meeting as a H800 learner I have had. The visual, 3D nature of Second Life and the fact that I can ’see’ who I am talking too helps me to engage. I haven’t had a chance to ask the others what they thought and this week we are meeting via Elluminate again but I really hope we continue to meet using Second Life because it definitley enhanced my learning experience this time

In amongst all of this virtual conferencing, meeting and learning I also read John Kirriemuir’s (Virtual World Watch) ‘Zen and the Art of Avatar Maintenance‘, which is a great read for Second Life fans and sceptics alike.

If you would like to know more about our SLOffice and our activity in Second Life or if you would even like to take your first steps (as Barry College are doing at the moment) then please get in touch …

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file).

… an eLearning Advisor (Learning Technologies). Taking my lead from my colleague Karl’s recent post  ‘A month in the life of … an eLearning Advisor (Learning Resources), I thought it might be an interesting experience to do the same thing, for myself but also for anyone who reads this and is interested to know what a month in the life of a JISC RSC Wales eLearning Advisor (Learning Technologies) can look like. The first thing to say is that every day/week/month is different but that ultimately I am here to provide a service to our supported post 16 learning providers in Wales. Karl’s blog post focussed on the wide range of queries he and Sam deal with, so to make this different from his great blog I’m going to give an example of a selection of the activities I have been involved in over the last month, starting with the queries.

Queries
These are just a few of the queries (received in person, via email or Skype or over the phone) I have delt with this month:

Text Wall - we use a text wall to collect comments and questions from delegates who attend our events. During our recent ‘Learner Voice, Learner Choice’ roadshow we also suggested it might be one of the many tools that could be used to record the learner voice. A number of the organisations who attended the event had borrowed the text wall for a short period (in return for some feedback on how it goes) to try it out with their learners (Learning Centre suggestion box, opinions of Moodle, during Adult Learners Week, for feedback on lessons …) and one contacted me to ask for more details of the service (options for different walls, cost) because it was proving to be successful and she was interested in having their own wall. One follow up job for this week is to contact all of those who have borrowed a wall to find out how they got on. I’ll share the results via this blog.

Legal advice – at the last of our roadshows ‘Small Steps … Great Strides‘ I had a query from a college about whether there were any legal requirements or implications regarding allowing parent’s access to learners eILPs. JISC Legal, one of the JISC Advance services are almost always my first port of call for education related legal advice, so I contacted them and received a response within days which I passed on. Rather than attempt to summarise the response here the legal information regarding eILPs and parental access received can be found on a GoogleDoc.

Moodle – there have been a few Moodle queries this month but 3 of the most common ones are asking for a recommendation, asking for a way of doing something and asking for a solution.

• The recommendation was for someone who had experience of networking a number of Moodle’s together … I recommended the North Wales 14-19 Network;
• The way of doing something was for how to embed a web page in a Moodle page … I suggested using a handy piece of code (with the relevant web address inserted) given to me a few years ago that has been very useful: <iframe width=”100%” height=”500″ align=”middle” frameborder=”0″ src=”http://www.rsc-wales.ac.uk” border=”0″></iframe>
• The solution was for a problem a Learning Centre were having regarding how to push news out to their students, rather than expect them to go looking for it … and I recommended the RSS feed for Moodle forums that anyone could then subscribe to.

Facilitating the Moodle-Wales group
As the vice chair of the Moodle-Wales Steering Group, I have the honour of facilitating meetings. Usually the Steering Group meet face to face after one of the Moodle-Wales User Group meetings or via video conference but this time we decided to try something a bit different and we chose to use Skype (the latest beta version that allows up to 5 videos). This meant that we could all meet from our desks rather than having to book and travel to VC studios. It worked surprisingly well for a tool that is in beta.  After the meetings I compile and publish the minutes online and then get on with my actions!

Visits to providers
We try to visit all of our supported learning providers at least once a year to find out what they are up to and how we can help but we also do follow up visits too. The following are some of the real (and virtual) follow up visits I’ve done in the last month:

• Coleg Elidyr to show staff the potential of some of the free, open source applications available via Edu-Apps.
• Coleg Glan Hafren to collect the Turning Point interactive response system set we loaned them, along with feedback about its use.
• Barry College to take them on a virtual tour of our Second Life Office, followed on another day by a face to face session to show them the basics of building in Second Life so that they could borrow some space on the University of Wales Newport, School of Health and Social Sciences island (where our SLOffice is based) to try and engage with learners who won’t engage face to face.
• Coleg Gwent to take a virtual tour of our Second Life Office and the island and later to test (virtually) the Skype (Beta) multi video setup for a session they want to run.

Events
Organising and facilitating events is also another part of my role as an eLearning Advisor (Learning Technologies). This month I supported colleagues at the Cardiff  ‘Small Steps … Great Strides‘ roadshow, which was the last of the series of three roadshows, the other two of which I was much more involved in (’Barrier Busters, Accessibility and Inclusion‘ and ‘Learner Voice Learner Choice‘). For the last few months I have also been working on organising the one big, cross sector event that we are running in Cardiff on 30th June this year – ‘Learning in a Digital Wales – Dysgu mewn Cymru Digidol‘. There are still some places available on this FREE event so if you are interested then you’ll have to be quick and book now!

Virtual communication
We communicate with our learning providers in many different ways but 2 areas I have responsibility for contributing to (as do most of the team) are:

• Twitter – I tweet as@HelenHRSC on a very regular basis but also as @rscwales when it is my turn. As a learning technologist I am constantly on the lookout for news ideas and examples of effective practise and I find that Twitter is an excellent way of sharing what I find quickly … as well as also finding out what others are doing and sharing that too.

• Our teaching and learning (and technology) blog – I managed to blog 3 times last month (twice about Moodle and once about digital communication) but this varies depending on how much I am at my desk and whether I have been inspired to blog and feel I have something worth saying!

Twitter is my first virtual port of call for sharing stuff, followed by our blog and also the news pages on our website.

Keeping up to date and sharing with the team
I use a whole variety of ways to keep up to date with what is happening in the world of education and technology (RSS feeds, Twitter, mailing lists, newsletters, attending events, taking courses,  talking to people … ) and as well as sharing all of this with our supported learning providers I also make sure I share with the team too. A couple of tools that I have come across and shared recently are Twiddla (a bit like Etherpad(as was) but allows images and password protection) and Wallwisher (a web page for sharing ideas and comments that can been used in many ways).

As I said at the beginining, each day is different and this is just a flavour of the things that I am involved with as an eLearning Advisor (Learning Technologies). I guess the job is like both education and technology … always something to learn and share … but also ever changing!

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file).

Bridgend College was the winner of the Outstanding Use of Technology Award at ColegauCymru’s prize-giving ceremony last Thursday (27th May). Their submission, BRAVO  (Bridgend College Risk Assessment and Value-added Outcomes), was deemed to best match judging criteria that included having an impact on quality, using a strategic approach, and having a direct benefit for the college community, in particular learners. However, there were other excellent entries for this award, and it was not an easy task to choose one prize-winner from the short-list.

BRAVO, though based on best practice from the FE sector in England and Wales, is unique to Bridgend College. Three online learner questionnaires form the heart of the system: an essential skills test employing the college intranet, a student support questionnaire, and a prior qualifications questionnaire, both of which are accessed via Moodle. The results of the three assessments are fed into a calculation which is used to band students according to risk, and this information is made available on the staff portal. The risk band informs learners’ ILP (Individual Learning Plan) discussions; predicted grades, based on the average GCSE score, are also used to estimate risk. These data, along with final grades, can be used to calculate ‘Value Added’ when courses have been completed. BRAVO is considered to have made a significant impact in the college: completion and attainment have both risen; learners’ feedback indicates that they valued reviews based on BRAVO data; Estyn awarded excellent grades in the college’s 2009 inspection, and identified BRAVO as an example of ‘outstanding practice’.

The other short-listed entries for the award all had outstanding aspects: Swansea College’s French-language podcasts were highly commended by judges of the 2009 Beacon awards, and are much appreciated by language-learners in the college; Pembrokeshire College’s use of thin client technology for virtual desktops has major implications for savings of energy and cost; Coleg Llandrillo’s e-planning tool has proved invaluable for managing courses and costings. Congratulations to all of them, and also to Yale College for winning the ColegauCymru Digital Learning Resources Award.

Moodle and how it can be used effectivley to support learning and teaching is just one of the many things that JISC RSC Wales offer advice and guidance on. I am very conscious that over the last month or so I have been tweeting lots of really interesting stuff that I have seen about Moodle BUT that as not everyone is a Twitter fan (or follower) it might be an idea to collect all of the Moodle stuff I have seen in one place … so here goes:

Moodle 2.0 is due any day now (I think) and there have been a few good introductory videos including this one on You Tube from @moodlefairy: ‘A brief tour of Moodle 2.0′ . There is also a Moodle 2.0 demo site if you are interested in fnding out more for yourself at: http://qa.moodle.net/

A new Moodle Educational demo site is in the process of being put together and details about how it is progressing can be found on Tomaz Lasic’s website.

The recent Moodle ‘Cool Course’ competition winners were announced a few weeks ago. All of the winning courses can be found and downloaded on the competition site

2 Moodle plugins that have come to my attention recently are:

• Moodle plugin for Microsoft Office 2007. I have plugged in and tried this one and after a bit of help from this blog it worked well. I can see how useful it would be for anyone who has Word documents that they want to update in Moodle or who wants an easy way to upload new documents … although I have to admit that I won’t be using it very often myself because I rarely upload Word docs to our Moodle, preferring to go for a more accessible pdf version, a Google Doc or other potentially more accesible and flexible alternatives. More about the tool can be found here on Moodle Monthly
• Easy Voter for Moodle, from Solihull College. I discovered this when I was looking for (free) alternatives to the audience response systems/voting sytems, like Turning Point and Qwizdom. It is a free plugin that basically enable you to create an interactive quiz to use in real time with learners BUT the learners need to have access to computers in order to participate. Here is more information about how Solihull College (the developers) use Easy Voter as well as  a case study from Cumbernauld College about how they are using it too.

Moodle use seems to be growing and growing, not just within the education sector but also within industry. Tesco, Subaru and Cisco are just some of the big names in industry that I have heard of recently who are using Moodle to support workplace learning. This article in the Western Mail (Wales Online) from Dr Geoff Elliot, Pembrokeshire College, also highlights the Moodle situation in Wales.

Moodle events are happening worldwide all of the time but closer to home the recent MoodleMootUK 2010 appears to have been a success, with more information available on their website. In the wake of MoodleMoot UK 2010, the first UK TeachMeetMoodle has also been organised for 3rd July in London. Closer to home again (for JISC RSC Wales) we helped to organise another of the very well attended ‘Moodle Meets’ for the Moodle-Wales users and videos and resources from the ‘Prepare to share’ event can be found online in our Moodle. Moodle also features in a number of the sessions in our forthcoming ‘Learning in a Digital Wales – Dysgu mewn Cymr Digidol’ event on 30th June in Cardiff.

I shall end this post on that final note of blatant promotion for our annual big event … but will no doubt be tweeting oodles more Moodle stuff over the coming months.

(If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file)

Hands up who doesn’t use email to communicate? Hands up who is finding that more and more of the communication they are engaged with is digital (email, SMS texts, blogs, wikis, Facebook, Skype, web conferencing, virtual worlds …)? Hands up who had noticed?

I have to say that until today I hadn’t noticed quite how much non face to face communication I do compared to a few years ago, for my job, with my family and friends and now as a learner. I have recently started a completely online Open University course and as a distance learner, who relies totally on digital tools to enable communication,this idea of communicating more via digital means is on my mind … and now two communications that dropped into my inbox this morning have spurred me to comment here. One of the messages was about the Spring 2010 snapshot of virtual world activity in UK universities and colleges (we have a small mention on p31) and the other was an invitation to an online session (from Wimba) about how this type of online conferencing can save you money. The virtual world snapshot also mentions money in its summary (p2): “In these economically stringent times … this makes virtual world a more attractive option to academics.”  My immediate reaction to this was that it was such a shame that it came down to finance to be the ‘hook’ to engage people in something like virtual worlds for supporting learners. What about it being an engaging, flexible and immersive medium that (once you had the right equipment, the time and the skills) has proved to be a virtually digital way of communicating and interacting that many find effective?

This brought me then to the question … is education about saving money or is it about supporting learners in the most effective way possible? My rational response is that it is a mixture of both, that is, supporting learners in the most effective way possible within the constraints that we live with today? And if money, or rather saving it, is the ‘hook’ that will engage people with using technology, is that really such a bad thing anyway?

OK, off to do some more digital communication …  meeting a couple of interested college volunteers in our virtual Second Life Office (mentioned in the report) and later to engage with some digital communications as a learner, via a Moodle forum and blog

If you would like this blog post as an audio file please click this link or right click the link and choose to save the mp3 file. Please note: the audio file was created quite simply by pasting the text into Balabolka (one of the tools available as part of My Study Bar/EduApps) and saving as an mp3 audio file.

…no, not the humped variety, but the ‘Collaborative Approach to the Management of E-learning’ model put forward by JISC Infonet in 2006 (in conjunction with JISC, ALT, HEFCE, HEA). The Celtic RSCs have recently been using this model to help organise some exchange visits between providers in their regions, and we feel that there is much to gain from seeing ILT applied in new ways and new places.

A recent visit of Learning Resource Centre Managers from two Welsh FE colleges to a college in Northern Ireland was certainly deemed to be beneficial. The rationale of the visit was based on the Transformation Agenda in FE in Wales: the two colleges involved – Swansea and Gorseinon - are embarking on merger, and it was hoped that lessons could be learnt from the experience of Belfast Metropolitan College (BMC), a very large and successful college formed from two successive merger processes.
The organisational aspects of BMC’s Learning Resources Service (LRS) proved interesting. It is located within the Directorate of Student and Learning Services, which gives a clear learner focus. This is further enhanced by the use of ‘e-mentors’ who facilitate independent learning and advise on the use of associated technologies. The LRS also works in synergy with The Technology Enhanced Learning unit and IT Services, which aids a  flexible and creative approach to the use of new technologies. The teamwork shown by these groups was of critical importance in the success of the LRS on the different BMC sites.
Some good examples of effective ILT practice were seen at BMC during the visit. The student VLE – called ‘Mybelfastmet’ – was very popular with students, partly because of its highly graphical content with an icon-based page for LRS resources and datasets. E-books were prominent in the LRS provision, and there were also interesting initiatives such as the use of Skype and Google Earth for international students.

Overall, the Learning Resource Centre Managers of Swansea and Gorseinon Colleges found their visit to be enjoyable and stimulating, and came away with definite ideas to help them move forward in a seamless way in their own merger situation. They also have advice for those who might be contemplating their own CAMEL trail: have a clear plan of action, and prepare well beforehand, having set up key contacts in advance who know the information you need.
If you are working within the FE, ACL or WBL sectors and are interested in learning more about the use of technology from learning providers in Scotland or Northern Ireland, please get in touch with us. More information is available on the RSC Wales web-site.