OU blog

Personal Blogs

Design Museum

When is an App better than a book?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 19 May 2015, 09:16

Dan Snow. "Clearly an App is better than a book for history."

This is a fascinating insight into the way we learn and educate is changing with students exploring, creating and sharing from an App 'smôrgasbord' of rich, interactive content. 

I picked up this thread in the WW1 Buffs Facebook pages

This conversation will keep me busy for several months. The debate on the guardian site is heated, personal and too often Luddite in tone. Why try to say that a book is better than an eBook is better than an App that is 'book-like?' I'll be pitching in as I believe what he argues is right and applies immediately to Geography too. I've studied online learning, history and geography - all to Masters level. I'm not an historian, geographer or an educator: I'm simply deeply curious and fascinated by the way we learn.

Key to Apps is immediacy, relevancy and motivation.

Put content into a student's hands in a way they appreciate: at their fingertips, multi-sensory and connected. An App can take all that is a book, and add several books and angles; all that is TV or Radio and have the person sit up, create content of their own, form views, share opinions and therefore learn, develop and remember.

Permalink 1 comment (latest comment by Sharon Hartles, Thursday, 21 May 2015, 17:49)
Share post
Design Museum

Antidisestablishmentarianism

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 1 Jun 2014, 06:19

I satisfied a life long itch to use this 24 letter word in an essay and successfully did so in a masters level history essay on the way TV producers tell 'The Great War' story. On closer inspection the markers ought to have deleted it as 'antiestablishmentarianism' would have been correct. Next essay I'll see if I can get 'disconbobulate' in somewhere.

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Amy S, Sunday, 2 Feb 2014, 14:35)
Share post
Design Museum

H818 The networked practitioner

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 21 Oct 2014, 08:00
From Jack Wilson MM

Fig.1. My late grandfather featured in the Consett Gazette in 1917 on receiving the Military Medal.

A few months 'out of the loop' and I feel my knowledge on e-learning draining away - it is such a vibrant and fast moving area that I feel I need to refresh and update at every opportunity, so here I am again with H818 The Networked Practitioner.

There's a practice based element to this which I'll apply to an longheld interest in the First World War.

There'll be a lot of interest, reflection and soul searching over the 100th anniversary from 2014 to 2018. That war is relevant to the Europe and wider Europe we live in today, from Northern Ireland to Syria, via the Balkans and the EU.

I've just read 'The Sleepwalkers. Why Europe went to war in 1914'. By Christopher Clark.

More than any book I have read before on the subject this blows away any myths or propoganda - not least the fact that Germany did not start the war, that award goes to Russia with France's support. I'd have liked to study this period with the OU but the History modules simply don't accommodate this. I'll therefore be going up to the University of Birmingham, in person, once a month for a mamoth day-long series of tutorials and lectures. That's as 'distant' as it gets with very little online support.

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

1913: The year before the storm

Visible to anyone in the world
I am reading the e-Book and following it as it is read on BBC Radio 4. It is interesting from a learning point of view to wonder how I can miss things I pick up later on reading, or miss things on reading that I hear in the broadcast. The experience is something of a car chase - sometimes I am ahead, sometimes behind. And a fascinating prelude to the Great War, how much it was in the air and how the creative arts might respond.
Permalink
Share post

This blog might contain posts that are only visible to logged-in users, or where only logged-in users can comment. If you have an account on the system, please log in for full access.

Total visits to this blog: 11297237