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Sort out the mess of bookmarks on your three different computers.

Frankly, I find I can lose the lot and repopulate any platform with those 20/30 sites I use often in days. Perhaps it is no loss to lose them.

Indeed, I find the right request in Google will get me there as quick as a click ... including circumventing direct entry to the OU library. It is far quicker to Google it.

'Yes', says the new editor of Prospect Magazine, Bronwen Maddox.

I have much respect for this journalist having read her in Broadcast Magazine, the FT and Times over a couple of decades.

She adds.

'Yes, I see it, and I refuse to be distressed: the good outweighs the bad, and the change is unstoppable.' Maddox, 2010. Prospect January 2010

Two points I'd like to develop here: privacy and the unstoppable nature of advances caused by e-technology.

Exposure, disclosure and loss of privacy has been discussed in the blogosphere for a decade. I recall the debate starting in 1999 when Ellen Levey (now a director of LinkedIn) had herself featured in the Washington Post. She had spent 1998 blogging about every meeting she had, looking for connections and links and pondering the value of such actions. Since then we've had many people exposed for the things they share online. Facebook and Twitter are simply expressions of the same desire to 'share' with blogs, social networking and twitter different expressions of this.

Are people recording and storing Skype conversations?

Probably.

Especially anyone with an Ego or a mischief in mind.

'Unstoppable'.

There is no going back to a world without e-learning. Though e-mail might be transposed by texting. Though MySpace has been flattened by Facebook (and who remembers FriendsReunited?) Though Google has superseded Netscape - and Amazon no longer only sells books. And at any moment something new will wash over this digital ocean like a Tsunami. (Pinterest? Instagram? StumbleUpon?)

In relation to e-learning I think we've barely started to see or fully consider the profound changes it will make to educaton - those who are e-taught could leave others in the wrong century when it comes to learning and developing potential.

REFERENCE

Maddox, B (2010) Foreword. Prospect. January 2011.

This looks good on a flipchart, I even took photos of it. I wish it were more dynamic, on the paper version the reverse side of each catergory has a set of industry related quotes.

How would you jiggle these terms around?

How do I create a classic Venn Diagram with a piece of software?

Is there the means to play with diagrams like this collaboratively in a wiki or Google Docs?

I'll produce a reverse image of this with the references.

I also realise that I have about thirty items that would appear where professional, 'e-' and 'learning' cross. Sometimes a handwritten essay with a hand-drawn diagram is so much easier to produce and correct

How about handwritten essay produced with a stylus on a Wacom board?

Spent the morning walking along Cuckmere River to the Channel where it became remarkably mild in the sun. Chewing over reasons why efforts to raise finances to produce high-end, TV docu-drama programmes linked to interactive 'edutainment' never got off the ground in 2001, despite fullsome praise from the likes of a founding director of Cisco (John Cage) at NABS where he had the keynote speech and we were presenting.

Cost.

We wanted to wow viewers and spend a great deal and thought there was a way for this to make money. The broadcasters, stallwart supporters of Atlantic Productons with whom were were developing product, were at this very time pulling away from the websites as pits of financial loss. Commercialisation is everything.

It is therefore timely that there was an hour long discussion this morning on the rise of Thomas Edison, the inventor of the 'Innovations Lab.' I was in one once myself, the BT Think Tank. If anyone will have me I'll join a new think tank, if not, I'll form my own.

Cost still matters a great deal:

• How to radically cut costs by going down the e-learning route (pure online and blended).
• How to make money creating learning for a global market.

This is how to educate 50% of UK school-leavers. They leave school, but they don't leave home. They take their degree through the OU or some similar while working.

A new generation with a new set of concerns and motivations.

There was a point, certainly when the industry was unionised, when you could only specialise in one function. Production teams, even for something as simple as a 'talking head' interview cutting to a presenter might need six or seven people: producer, production assistant, director, camera, assistant camera, sound, assistant sound and a runner. This doesn't even include the presenter!

With thanks to Neil Anderson for directing me towards the Dia software.

This represents two things, a hierarchical division of roles in TV production, but also as you come towards the base the 'multi-tasking' of the various specialist roles.

When the unions lost influence in the 1980s the technology wasn't there to divide roles too much, but we settled into producer, director, camera, camera assistant and sound as the basic team. Then the producer/director roles merged. With lighter kit with fewer parts the camera assistant or runner would be dropped. Then along came the 'Video Journalist,' basically the self-operating producer/director/camera person with the sound engineer required as a second person and expected to carry kit, set lits etc: too. Meanwhile in post-porduction the editor is gradually taking on the mixing of sound, the creation of title and graphics (one a separate job/function). And then our producer/director/camera person, who can to a basic level edit using software built into the camera, takes on the editing role too - not just what we called 'off-line' editing, but the whole business to finished product. i.e. In broadcast TV, as well as for a wedding video, the production 'team' might be a one man band.

The relevance to H808 regards professionalism and the 'jack of all trades' syndrome that might see or expect a subject matter expert or tutor to have within a portfolio of skills, a growing number of other technical and craft skills. In other words, might a 'professional' be less so as and if they are expected to take on more tasks. If professionalism requires x hours of experience and y amount of technical proficiency, at what point is a subject matter expert tripped up or denied a 21st dialogue with their students because their skills with HTML are poor or non-existent?

From a TV and Film production point of view, with exception, the more roles the producer takes on the small the budget ... and the potential for amateurism.  At the base is any of us with a webcam and some basic software. In every one of these functions if you have the budget, then hire someone who has the kit, 3-10 years experience and who knows their 'craft.'

The point being that people learn a great deal that improves their knowledge and ability to carry out tasks, however this does not receive formal recognition so is not able to contribute to any professionalisation of their occupation.

Daft. The paradigm must shift. Or be ignored.

I'm spending time with a mate and colleague next week (weather permitting) who has put mobile learning into the Middle East and now has the financing to do more in 3D.

His qualifications?

A great mind and practical delivery of learning as linear, then interactive video and CD, to websites with a good deal of programming in between over the last twenty years.

There is a time to ditch the gaining of a further qualification.

Indeed, when I took up a version of this MA course in February 2001 it was for me nothing more than a piece of CPD on top of another post-graduate course I was doing in the production of cross-platform multimedia, the only person to be doing this through the EU funded programme EAVE ... all of this to feed into a full-time job producing innovative, cutting edge and online learning. I was studying at my expense to improve or tweak my practical application of all of this.

Surely the collobartive exercises of the last two weeks have shown that several people can do more than one person on their own? Why do teachers and educators operate in isolation trying to re-invent the wheel for the thousandth time when a learning experience or product shared is going to deliver something effective and fantastic?

CPD, which is the OU's MAODE, does not turn me into an e-learning professional.

I'm not interested in letters after my name; I have the M.A. and have put a couple of other post-graduate courses under my belt too.

The ONLY thing that counts is how I apply this learning.

The letters or professional tag mean diddly-squat.

All us of should be willing to be judged by our peers as to our professional status ... are we employed in this capacity? Do with have clients to serve or clients to win?

Don't get me wrong, for me this course is invaluable, a treat and indulgence, like grated Truffle on pasta.

I guess my mate and I will be back on Skype if the roads look poor. I'm not going to waste a hour of my life, let alone a day stuck in traffic on the M23, M20 or M40 trying to get to Bath on Tuesday.

My motivation? A good idea, a sponsor ... then do it.

Then pick up from what I've learnt in TV, have 26 ideas on the go with various grants, sponsors and clients supporting further development.

My next course, or refresher course?

Sales

REFERENCE. Professional Development fo Elearning. A Framework for the NEw Zealand Tertiary Education Sector. 2009.

Some of the software is too clever by half. All of it has foibles.

Docx might punch some useful quasi-intuitive tools but it smacks of Apple pixie dust sprinkled over DOS. Failing to share docx word and excel docs with others with older software on PCs, let alone with MACs harks back to the early 1990s when this kind of incompatibility was common and a constant frustration in the 'creative industries' between those who were MAC based and those on a PC.

Up at 3.56am. Potty. But a couple of hours later and if I have been distracted I can only blame myself. The dog is asleep at my feet, the family sleep above me, though my head is full of domestic grief, not ours, but my daughter's boyfriends family starting a messy break-up with him temporarily ejected from his home and seeking sanctuary which we feel unable to offer.

Back to business.

My response too often is quick and emotional, this can apply to domestic life as well as work. I lead with the heart. I am learning to do otherwise, to make the time, to try to be rational, to avoid tipping from radical alternatives of hate and love, yes and no ... there is always a middle way, however hard it may be to negotiate or to my mind however dull 'middle of the road' might feel.

Middle of the road gets things done, with drama, in a professional manner, which may be the point in a module on the 'e-learning professional.'

H808, UNIT 6 A COLLABORATIVE EXERCISE

Having had some successful experiences I know what it takes, what skills, tools, timekeeping and commitment works. Where in the past I have been introduced by others to some simple online tools to share, collaborate and contribute work in an engaging way, both synchronously and asynchronously ... it may be my turn to get out of the passenger seat and take the wheel. Often you find the 'vehicle' drives in automatic, Skype and sync.in for example, Google Docs too, are far easier than you may at first imagine.

Tools for co-ordinating availability between people on opposite sides of the globe anyone? Personally I operate as if in three places ... spending a few hours on the Indian subcontinent, a few hours in the UK .... then reappearing on the West Coast of the US!

The 24 hour economy should not mean that you work for 24 hours. Or does it? Perhaps we'll reach the stage where we keep links with people permanently open wherever we go, as if they are sitting on our shoulders, forever at our side, omnipresent and god like (in the Greek sense).

‘If all you have in your toolbox is a hammer, the problem tends to look like a nail.’

Are Liveski and Joyce (2003) saying, with a sideways swipe at Salmon’s (2002) Five-stage model of e-moderation, that these approaches, pre-assembled, or pre-set course production guidelines or online tools, are somehow pre-empting and therefore skewing courses that may be designed with them, that the parameters are limiting, not freeing and allowing for innovation?

What Liveski and Joyce fail to envisage in 2003 is that we are not talking hammers and nails, with the Salmon Five stage model the hammer to crack all online learning nuts. We are talking instead of a multitude of seeds of e-learning possibility scattered across rich or poor ground ... some flourish, some do not. The authors fail to recognise the wealth of interactive learning development and computer based learning that was being produced long before Salmon came along and offered some practioners and simple approach to adopt.

REFERENCE

Salmon, G. (2002). E-tivities: the key to active online learning.

Liveski, B and Joyce, P (2003) Examining the five-stage e-moderating model: Designed and emergent practice in the learning technology profession

How can you create and store evidence of your engagement with different media in the following types of activity on H808?

Contributions to online discussion

• Select and export to MyStuff
• Screen Grab. Date and name.
• Export to word, cut and paste. Store on hard drive.
• Note any references, when accessed and URL
• Cut and paste into PebblePad
• Title and tag for easy search at a later date

Personal blog postings or comments on others’ blogs

• As above
• Or leave them where they are with links to the page(s) concerned.

Contributions to the course wiki

• Link to course wiki where current content, history and edit history can be viewed.
• Screen-grab of edit page
• If not self-evident highlighter tool of contributions made (though this is hardly the point, its a collaborative effort, what your left with on the screen may be minimal if your contribution was to edit) i.e. the history of participation is more important than words you may 'claim' as your own (which you can’t and shouldn't - you wouldn't have written them if you hadn't been prompted by others ... and ohters might have written it if you hadn't) by the end of the thing,

Notes and informal reflections written by hand

• Scan, label, store and back-up (as above)
• Turn hand-drawn mind maps into bubbl-us or Compendium documents.

But why on earth keep all of this stuff?! At what point deos the storing and collating of assets become a neurosis or obsession? What matters is the end result (though not apparently in learning). Once was a time you teacher or tutor knew you were doing the work a) you turned up b) you wrote the essays c) you could talk intelligently on the topic in class and tutorials d) you passed exams e) you submitted a thesis. Do we know need a webcam grab to prove we are sitting at the coputer? An image of us in a library taking out a book?

Examples of formal writing (TMAs, reports, etc.)

• Copy and paste into MyStuff
• Upload into MyStuff as a file
• Put in a file on hard drive.
• Back up specific folder and/or hard drive

Extracts from PowerPoint presentations

• Screen grab, date and label.
• Note any references.
• Cut and paste selected slides, content and notes.
• Download the entire PowerPoint presentation and flag the slides/notes that are of interest
• Store as above. (hard drive, zip, url link, as animation/movie in YouTube)

Extracts from audio presentations

• download as MP3 files
• transcribe and store as text
• store online or offline as a podcast
• Store or link in podcast host such as Podbean

Extracts or screen dumps from websites or video presentations

• download to desktop
• store in any of a variety of video playback tools

Link to YouTube favourites

• link or add to Flickr
• Cut and paste URL with dashboard into your blog or elsewhere online.

Comments from peers and tutors

• Attached to the saved document where the comment(s) occur as a file or cut and paste into MyStuff
• Downloaded onto hard-drive and saved/backed-up to zip drive.
• Save/export selection into MyStuff, label, include access date and tag.

Extracts from published sources (images, newspaper/magazine stories etc.).

• Linked or flagged in proprietary webpage
• downloaded as text or saved as HTML
• Scan and load as JPEG in any photo gallery (Kodak Easy Share, Picasa, Flickr, Tumblr etc

I'm reaching the stage where I feel I may have to type entries such as this in Word and then paste them in. Why? Too often it closes before I save or finish and everything is lost. My loss, not yours.

Just owning up to buying an annual subscription to PebblePad. All the pointers say it is the right step to take, I can see that it will absorb everything I've put into MyStuff these last seven months about (700 pages) and allow me to do much, much more with it.

The movies that run you through how things work are clear. The buttons and actions seem intuitive and desirable. For example, when it comes to reflect I can follow the prompts. Even I can do this. And in relation to building evidence, once again, I will follow this H.E. inspired creation to perform as a graduate should.

Otherwise I'm finding Filemaker Pro as easy as when it first came out in Clarisworks in the 1990s and the various versions I've used since. It's just a pain and a shame that I'll have to buy a new version once the 30 day trial is over and a greater pain that details of 800 swimmers and 44 teachers/coaches will have to be added manually. (I may be able to get around this only if I very carefully ensure that most of the many fields I use match. Though refreshing my memory with the swimmers and deleting out of date records might be worth the effort as poolside all this stuff has to be in your head).

Today I've had fun with Bubbl.us and have been introduced a a slide-sharing tool - both courtesy of fellow student Lesley Morrell. Always one to want first hand experience of a tool before I can recommend it, I plan to take the Bubble I created on Reflection (see below) and work it through with Compendium, seeking out and adding reports and references as I go along. Whether the end result can be written up as a 500 word report is quite another matter.

This and plans to have a professional crew video a number of swimmers above and below water to then put through a broadcast post-produciton house come to fruition. The plan is then to generate material for a substantial 'reusable learning object' or what Salmon (2002) wants us to call an 'e-tivity.'

So a busy day.

Risotto done, Mushroom soup to make.

Reflection is ‘cognitive housekeeping.’ Moon (2005). OU Student Jane Barret (2010) doubts that Moon supplies evidence, feels that ‘critical thinking’ is a better term and that Moon (and others) are trying to make something abstract concrete. I prefer to think of reflection in an academic setting as ‘guided consideration and compartmentalisation of the material you’re working with.’

Reflection in the context of studying requires the student to hold a mirror up to their student-selves. Efforts to get things straight in your head, to generate your own take on the topic being studied may go awry on take one, shape up in take two, and, one would hope, comes together by take three. Reflection on this process helps establish the final thoughts. In the OU context where is take one and take two? Some of it is undertaken in the forum, some of it in the blog. Either way, feedback, comment and critique as well as marking is the way to pass through these cognitive stages. Nothing obliges one to reflect more than success or failure, a hearty slap on the back, or a slap across the face. You do well, you want to do better; you do badly, you want to put it right. You reflect on this and find a better way forward. Wherein lies the importance, in e-learning, of comment and collaboration, using what the Internet affords, those around you whose different take and experience can add colour and understanding to your efforts.

Reflection is like making a buerre blanc, which is made by reducing white wine vinegar with stock, a shallot and then carefully adding cubes of unsalted butter. In other words, reflection is at first a gathering in of the correct resources and then a reduction of these resources.

Drawing on what Dewey says, that reflection is ‘a kind of thinking that consists in turning a subject over in the mind and giving it serious thought’ makes me think of composting. You put all kinds of bits and pieces in that over time, reduces down to plant food and fibre, or in the case of reflection, a sentence or two that sum up your thinking.

Dewey defined reflective thought as 'active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusions to which it tends' (Dewey 1933: 118)

Both of these ideas imply a ‘deep approach’ to learning, wherein lies the value of reflection. You take the experience of reading and interacting with others, and draw some tentative conclusions; you achieve more than simply itemising what others have already expressed ‘surface learning’.

Reflection is a process that both reduces and gathers in. The end result ought to be something potent and memorable.

REFERENCE

Barret, J c2.4 Reflection and learning (2) my views. OU. (Accessed 28 SEPT 2010)

Dewey, J. (1933/1998) How we think (Rev. ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Moon, J. (2001) ‘PDP working paper 4: reflection in higher education learning’ (online), The Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/resourcedatabase/id72_Reflection_in_Higher_Education_Learning.rtf (accessed 25 Sept 2010).

Moon, J. (2005) ‘Guide for busy academics no. 4: learning through reflection’ (online), The Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/resourcedatabase/id69_guide_for_busy_academics_no4.doc (accessed 28 Sept 2010).

I've joined the first and believe I get the second free as a result?

If this works then the contents of my MyStuff will be exported to PebblePad.

In terms of my journey towards credibility as an 'e-learning professional' this marks a step outside the confines of the OU.

Volunteering my thinking to three e-learning projects marks a step towards 'professionalism' in the sense of being paid.