With the publication today of JISC’s new ‘Getting started with Second Life‘ guide and the recent blog post from my colleague Paul (The Meaning of Second Life) I felt that this was finally the time for me to hold my hand up and declare that I am one of the people who has become virtually convinced that there is a place for virtual teaching and learning in virtual 3D environments, like Second Life. I think the thing that has finally convinced me to make my declaration are the points listed below from the new ‘Getting started with Second Life’ guide, that made me chuckle, as I recognised myself when I first entered the virtual world:

… and yet despite feeling like this initially I refused to give up and after reading a range of publications and reports about teaching and learning in a virtual way and being able to have first hand experience of participating in and leading sessions in Second Life (thanks to the help and support of the University of Wales Newport’s School of Health and Social Sciences and my fellow RSC Wales team) I now wish that these tools had been around when I was both a learner and a teacher!

I could continue to share my thoughts about the potential of this tool for isolated or distance learners or for those who find it hard to engage with the ‘real’ world but flourish in this kind of virtual environment … and say this is all despite the potential barriers and issues that there undoubtedly are with an unfamiliar/relatively new tool like this … but I won’t. I will however (in the words of my colleague Paul) encourage those who haven’t tried to ‘give it a go’ and those who have but gave up (maybe because of some of the things listed above) to ‘give it another go’ … and remember that for those organisations who we support you can always call on us for some virtual help!

No, this post is not about criticising vociferously (!), but about the use of ‘Audiboo’. According to the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones, this is the ‘next big thing’, almost the equivalent of ‘YouTube’ (he discusses this in his ‘dot.life’ technology blog). AudiBoo involves recording & uploading (on iPhones – a similar application called PhoneBoo does the same for most other phones), and needs wifi/3G. A related application  -‘Ipadio’ – is a ” live streaming phone reporting tool” that generates ‘phlogs’ (again, available now on iPhones and being developed for any phone; a ‘record & publish’ version should be available in due course, also). The likes of Stephen Fry have been ‘booing’ (not like him to be left out!), and Boris Johnson has been ‘phlogging’ (yes, well he did go to Eton, didn’t he?!).
There could be many educational uses for these tools, eg. recording observations on fieldwork, commentaries on experiments. Rory Cellan-Jones makes reference to a specific project run by the BBC World Service called ‘Save Our Sounds’, the aim of which is to gather sounds from around the world which might otherwise be lost.

Have you used AudiBoo? How did you find it, and how useful do you think it might be in education?

A Level examinations often come in for criticism (especially each August when the results come out!), but I was particularly intrigued by a recent comment that they have now become ‘too much like sat-nav’. The comment was made by Professor Bailey, Queen Mary College London, in a report by the Reform Group, and it implies that A-Levels are getting easier in the sense that using a sat-nav is easier than reading a map, ie. that students are given too much guidance. The report went on to say that recent changes in A levels such as modularisation and the use of  ‘quiz or puzzle’-style questions favour ‘shallow’ learning and do not encourage ‘independent inquiry’.
 These comments pose several questions, not least about the merits of modularisation, but the ‘sat-nav’ reference has really got me thinking. Are the Reform Group suggesting that we shouldn’t use technology to make life easier? Is there the implication that any novel form of assessment, including onscreen assessment, lacks depth? Do they favour A Level examinations that consist only of hand-written essays?
Perhaps curriculum leaders, A Level examiners and University admissions tutors need to get together to decide what purpose A Level examinations actually serve, and what the learning and assessment outcomes of A Level courses should be. If and when they do, I hope they’ll remember that students have different learning and assessment preferences, that learning should be enjoyable whatever the level, and that learners need to know as much about educational technology as all the other technologies that are an increasingly essential part of today’s world.

Many newspapers and web-sites are using the headline above to summarise a recent announcement by Arnold Schwarzenegger, formerly the ‘Terminator’ and now Governor of California (no, not a film role – the real thing!).  Arnie believes that textbooks should be phased out in favour of online/digital materials, mainly on the basis of cost. He also thinks that textbooks are out of date, and today’s children may be more comfortable with electronic devices. He plans to start his textbook ‘termination’ this August with Maths and Science in the first instance.
Some people will think this is a brilliant idea, but at the other end of the spectrum , others will  see this as an act of violence by an unthinking cyborg!  However, in some subjects, the move might make a lot of sense. In sciences, for example, online materials could be easily updated to take account of new developments. They could also contain video and audio to show real organisms/events in real environments, and demonstrate processes that are very difficult to describe in words. Online materials might also be very useful for subjects like Maths where you only need small chunks of information at a time (I seem to recall Maths textbooks not being very readable anyway!). In all subjects, online content also gives scope for interactivity and formative assessment.

In subjects such as English literature, though, it would be useful – preferable?- to have actual books to hand, and whilst some textbooks may be cumbersome, others are easily portable and provide convenient, organised sources of information. ‘ebooks’ could be a helpful compromise, though not in terms of cost reduction. And what happens re. online resources if you haven’t got a reliable broadband connection, or no internet access at all? ‘Hasta la vista, baby’ !

As a Learning Technologist I am constantly looking for technologies that will enhance learning but that are also easy to use, engaging and free … and my latest find (thanks to Helen Davies) meets all of these criteria (IMHO).

Prezi.com is an alternative to the much used in education PowerPoint. It is web based BUT the final ‘presentation’ can be downloaded and used offline. In it’s own words, Prezi lets you ‘create zooming presentations … to talk about the big picture … and those devilish details’  and if you watch the introductory prezi about Prezi on their websites homepage you will see what I mean. For me, learning how to use it was a bit like moving from Office 2003 to 2007. I ‘got’ it but I had to think a bit before I got into the swing of using it.

Unlike a lot of ‘tools’ I look at, this is one I will definitely be coming back to again … to use as an alternative to PowerPoint when making a face to face presentation but also to use as another way of presenting information to an audience who can’t see me but who I want to interact with what I am presenting them with … like this example prezi I created to promote a forthcoming event … http://prezi.com/91941

(Hint:        and you’ll need Flash Player 9)

As always, all comments gratefully received

Web 2.0 is a term that has been around for sometime now and is one I hear being used more and more in education in particular. One of the queries I have had and have read about several times over the last few weeks has been about Web 2.0 guidelines or policies for use in a teaching and learning context.

In true RSC Wales fashion, when I was asked for some help on this I immediately turned to (a) the web and (b) my UK wide RSC colleagues. Both were very informative but also made me aware that although quite a few organisations are thinking about whether we need guidelines or policies, quite a few aren’t. Now is this because they don’t think they need them …or because they really don’t?

In many cases I think that having guidelines or policies is a good idea, with how they are written being one of the keys as to whether they are effective. I will always remember the valuable lesson I learnt when teaching … to instruct the children in what you wanted them to do, not what you didn’t want them to because you were only putting ideas into their head … so ‘please walk’, rather than ‘don’t run’ was much more effective, as was ‘remember to use start, shutdown to switch your computer off’, rather than ‘don’t just press the button to switch the computer off’.

So ‘Web 2.0 guidelines or no Web 2.0 guidelines?’ is the question I leave you with today … along with a link to the Web 2.0 technologies for learning information and resources area I have created as a result of my ponderings.

P.S. I know lots of people are now talking about Web 3.0 … but lets just stick with Web 2.0 for now, if that is OK!

One of our partner regional support centres, RSC Scotland North & East, has been hard at work following the success of AccessApps and has now made EduApps available for anyone to access and use. But what are EduApps? They are a large collection of free, portable applications that can be used to support teaching and learning. EduApps is the collective term for three smaller collections of applications. These three collections are:

• LearnApps – free software that learners can use straightaway to support their learning
• TeachApps – includes software from LearnApps but also has free software specifically for teachers
• AccessApps -includes software from the other 2 Apps collections but also has specialist software to improve access or enable inclusion

For more information about EduApps, including a full list of the software that is available to download (and then carry with you on a portable USB stick wherever you go), visit the RSC Scotland N&E EduApps website www.eduapps.org

This is something I have been mulling over for a few months … since the RSC Wales ACL conference in March when I heard Alan Clarke, Associate Director of ICT and Learning at NIACE, speak about independent learners and the elearning skills they need. I hold my hands up and say that until that point I really had not made a clear, conscious distinction between the skills needed by learners in order to learn in a technology infused environment and the skills needed by teachers to teach in the same environment. Having had my brain cells prodded by what Alan said I realise that elearning and eteaching are two different (but related things) and that when we generally talk about elearning we are doing neither the learner or the teacher any favours by lumping the skills required altogether. A teacher may need to know how the technology works (a wiki) but they then need to be skilled in identifying how it can be used to enhance their teaching (a collaborative learning experience where this will replace or supplement face to face work). A learner may also need to know how to use a piece of technology (a search engine like Google) but they too need skills in using the technology effectively to support their learning (refining a search, identifying reliable sources from search results).

I have also just read Steven Wheeler’s, Faculty of Education, University of Plymouth, blog about ‘7 skills for the successful e’tutor’, which is what actually prompted me to put my thoughts down in words. Comparing the skills he lists for e-Tutors to those listed by Alan Clarke (on the 7th slide of his presentation) for independent learners the two that sit together are the confidence of the learner which can be developed by the support and encouragement of the teacher and the communication skills that both require.

Even after writing my thoughts down I am still not sure where I am going with this one. I think I was just pleased to see from Steven’s blog post today that it has been identified (by some) that the skills need for eteaching are different to those needed for teaching and that just because you can teach it doesn’t mean that you can eteach without a bit of help … as we can’t expect learners to elearn without support too.

All comments and thoughts welcomed!