OU blog

Personal Blogs

Design Museum

The Changing Landscape: The Future of ELearning

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 19 Nov 2020, 08:19



This an industry series of presentation and panel discussions hosted by Kineo showing how far ahead the world outside education has advance in terms of online training, developing its staff and solving business problems. 

The Changing Landscape 

Keen to include what industry is doing with elearning to compare this to learning. This is the from the Kineo website. Digital First 

  • Increased agility – ability to respond to ever changing needs at great pace.

  • Learner-centric UX – content and delivery are in a medium that suit and engage the learner.

  • Self-service approach – access to content, where and when learners need it.  

  • Enhanced collaboration – facilitate better learning, knowledge sharing and problem solving.

  • Improved impact – better results for business and employee performance.

  • Increased satisfaction – higher levels of engagement through improved experience.

  • Innovation – continuous improvement, adding value faster with less disruption.

  • Reduced costs – a shift to just in time delivery and learning in the flow of work.

ELearning in industry is not produced and delivered by a teacher; it is designer, producer and managed by a team within a business


Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Where did you join the throng and what's missing?

Visible to anyone in the world

LYT%25205.JPG

Fig. 1. The Video Arts development journey from linear storytelling on film to multisourced, chunked, networked and open learning.

Professionally I came in with VHS - shot on Umatic then Betacam, edited on 1" tape then digitally. In 1986 Abbey National still distributed staff news on an AV slide carousel - there has always been inertia, though today change, new versions and upgrades are built into the system - or an accepted way of life. Visiting a regional BBC TV Station in 1989 I thought it was behind the production processes used in Soho and Covent Garden - the advertising industry, events and training business were all quicker to develop.

DVD are missing, as are intranets. Computer based learning in house, in a learning lab, then dispersed on internal systems developed in the mid 1990s.  You can put the Philips Laser Disc in there too - mid to late 1980s before the CD-ROM took over.

Streamling and downloads needs to be expressed very differently too - I'd give it a very thin wedge to start with. Great expectations of bandwidth from 2000 for the next decade meant that the DVD quality of 3D animationa, video and so on was impossible - yet the DVD market died. Someone the ease of distribution and ease of response on the network was considered more important.

Production values remain the thing that set Video Arts apart - and humour. If you are not paying suitable attention to the messages then it is fun to spoke the likes of Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant playing bank branch managers or other actors whose names immediately escape you but you recall from a period drama or a sit come, pops up with their arm in a sling with a health and safety story or as a junior manager with autocratic behaviours.

The laptop, after the desk top, was our first 'mobile computer' of course and today as well as the tablet Smartphones are a devise that plays a role in learning - for a start, everything I can do and read here I can manage on a Smarphone.

You do find new ways to learn - my favourite, a genuine creative problem solving technique according to an Open University MBA module I took - is to express some ideas such as this, or have a first swing at answering part of an assignment - then nod of. A ten minute sleep will do it. Either sinking into unconsciousness or coming back to consciousness I will be aware that I am dwelling on some condundrum and I just may have figured something out. Just don't do this a few hours before an assignment is due and decide as a result of your 'dream spirits' that you are going to rewrite from the top.

 

 

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 30 Dec 2012, 19:46)
Share post
Design Museum

Who are the leading learning theorists and schools of thought?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 28 Nov 2012, 05:15

LEADERS  IN LEARNING:

Donald Clark offers a list of 50 learning theorists

I've been +adding to it. Who are we missing?

GREEKS
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
RELIGIOUS LEADERS
Jesus
Mohammed
+ Confucius
ENLIGHTENMENT
Locke
+Hobbes
Rousseau
Wollstonecraft
+ Hagel
+ Machiavelli
PRAGMATISTS
James
Dewey
MARXISTS
Marx
Gramsci
Althusser
BEHAVIOURISTS
Pavlov
Skinner
Bandura
CONSTRUCTIVISTS
Piaget
Bruner
Vygotsky
+Engestrom
HUMANISTS
Maslow
Rogers
Illich
Gardener
SCHOOLS
Montessori
Friere
Steiner
John Seely Brown
+ Christopher Alexander
+ Donald Schon
+ Rogers
INSTRUCTIONALISTS
Ebbinghaus
Harris
Mazur
Black & William
E-LEARNING
Jay Cross
Martin Weller
Grainne Conole
Agnes Kukulska-Hulme
Jilly Salmon
Helen Beetham
Rhona Sharpe
Chris Pegler
Jane Seale

TECHNOLOGY ANALYSTS
McLuhan
Postman
Schank
Kelly
Shirky
GAMES
Prensky (NO!)
Gee
USABILITY &EVALUATION
Norman
Nielsen
Krug
MEDIA & DESIGN
Mayer & Clark
Reeves & Nass
INFORMAL LEARNING
Csikszentmihalyi
Cross
Zuckerburg ?!
INTERNET LEARNING
Page & Brin
Bezos ?!
Hurley & Chen
INTERNET CONTENT
Sperling
Wales
Khan
OPEN SOURCE
Torvalds
Moodle guy
+ Wiki
+ MOOC
+ WordPress
TRAINING
Bloom
Biggs
Bateson
Belbin
Mager
Gagne
Kolb
Kirkpatrick

Please offer suggestions to add or delete ...

Permalink 4 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 28 Nov 2012, 19:52)
Share post
Design Museum

What happens when you ask an author to sign your copy of their eBook?

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 15 Nov 2012, 20:49

20121115-134727.jpg

Fig.1 hard copy and e-book 'The New Learning Architect'

I hadn't meant to acquire a paper back copy of the New Learning Architect, it was more a question to an author. How do you sign an eBook? I had thought a screen-grab, import into Brushes then offer the stylus. I'll try that one next time.

Instead Clive offered me a copy of the book - he insisted. I may struggle with paper.

Launching into my second read I can perhaps tackle this differently - physically writing in the notes from the e-version?

Plenty from the presentation to value and not the time to develop a conversation other than reflecting on how the industry has shifted over the last decade or two, only now finally realising our great hopes of the past.

It's still learning, even if training is now called 'Learning and Development'.

An insightful, timely and valuable morning. Much to build on. The right place to be to get your head around learning on a globa scale for a global audience.

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 16 Nov 2012, 00:04)
Share post
Design Museum

Exploring the World of Social Learning

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 19 Nov 2013, 11:04



20121007-063532.jpg

Find it here: Smashwords

There can be no better recommendation to read a book than when its author spots you as a like-mind and invites you to read.

I am halfway through Julian Stodd's 'Exploring the World of Social Learning' and am keen to spread the word to those like me who are studying for a Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) - particularly in H807, H808 and H800 we are asked to learn collaboratively and go understand the dynamics of shared learning spaces online from this blog-cum-bulletin board platform, to student tutors groups and break-out cafes. You may even have made it over to the Open University Linkedin group (go see).

I not only find myself nodding in agreement but better still in Web 2.0 terms I find I keep wanting to pause to explore a thought or theme further, the subject matter embracing learning, social learning and e-learning - while drawing on a professional corporate learning and development background, which makes a valuable change from an academic perspective on social learning in tertiary education.

To do this I return to this my open to all e-portfolio-cum-blog to search for what I have thus far picked up on social learning, learning theories, forums and so on. And to do the same in other people's blogs as hearing these familiar voices helps make better sense of it all.

I should add a grab here of the couple of dozen books I have read in, on and around 'social learning' - I put 'Exploring the World of Social Learning' alongside:

'The Digital Scholar' Martin Weller

'A New Culture of Learning' Douglas Thomson and John Seely Brown

'From Teams to Knots' Yrjö Engeström

'The Now Revolution' Jay Baer and Amber Naslund

via a solid grounding in educational theory that you'd get from Vygotsky's 'Educational Psycology'.

An alternative to, or addition to reading about social learning in an academic papers, that are by definition are several years out of date, rate MySpace above Facebook and fail to mention iPads or Smartphones in the mix.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

H810 - Disability and access

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 19 Sept 2012, 21:29

BBC%2520Accessibility%2520Graphic.JPG

BBC WEB ACCESS

As I am studying H810: Accessibility for disabled students I have naturally become tuned into my environment in a more sensitive way - there is a good deal on the Radio (especially coming through the Paralympics).

I am engaged with disabled swimmers at various times during the week, both those who are able to train in the mainstream groups (physical disability, cerebral palsy, MS - some 'lesser' learning impairment) and swimmers who come along to specialist sessions, split between two major and minor categories, though it is immiediately apparent, were you to use say the Disability Categories used in the Olympics that the individual differences are often so great that one would ideally have as many sessions as there are swimmers - we try to have as many coaches and helpers poolside as can be found. Ratios are adjusted according to needs from at most 6:1 but often 2:1 or 1:1. There are always people, guardians, parents and helpers to increase the ratio to 1:2 or 1:3.

The facilities meet accessibility criteria in relation to changing facilities, toilets, hoists and so on. However, I wonder if the pool operator, or the staff on duty, realise how insensitive in how they responded to someone using the disabled lavatory (which has access poolside) when they pulled the emergency cord. A light flashed poolside visible to all swimmers and anyone on the balcony - and then an announcement went out on the tannoy to the entire leisure complex.

'Assistance required at the disabled toilet. Someone is stuck in'.

Do anyone of us want a dozen or more heads to turn as we are then 'rescued'.

I bring this up as an indication of the sensitivity required, for anyone. What I have learned so far and know from experience is that people with a disability want access to be in place and obvious so that they can join the mainstream without fuss or favour. The last thing they want is to have a spotlight put on them.

The second issue is with labels and categorises, how with sport and education, depending on the disability, a person is 'lumped in with all the other disabled swimmers'.

To create access takes time, consideration and the right people - with some training and experience. As a coach I find it is the disabled swimmer who arrives in good time and will listen to 'notes' after the swim. It should be considered normal that disabled swimmers take part in 'mainstream' training sessions.

THE ROLE PARENTS PLAY

The parents, for the most part (siblings too, both brother and sisters) form the larger part of qualified swimming teachers or helpers working with disabled swimmers - all CRB checked, members of the club, often Level 1 or Level 2 assistant or full swimming teachers who have attended an ASA workshop 'Swimming for disabled athletes'. I know too from family experience the extraordinary lengths a parent will go to in order to press for what they know is right - ensuring a child with aspergers did NOT get put into mainstream school.

A final observation here, because behaviours in public have to be taught, rather than 'picked up' I find the swimmers with learning difficulties extraordinarily polite - with introductions, introducing other swimmers, making conversation and thanking me after the swim. It's as if in 'mainstream' teachers have given up on such things as teaching good manners.

Working with swimmers with educational difficulties

Short Description

An introduction and overview of commonly seen barriers to learning when teaching children.  This presentation explains the conditions, syndromes and disorders and gives strategies for managing the behaviour in a swimming teaching environment. To help non-specialist swimming teachers work with a class containing one or two  children with special needs.  It is intended to assist teachers to recognise some  conditions they may encounter and offers some coping strategies which may enable  the teacher to meet the needs of all the children in the class.

Intergrating disabled swimmers into a mainstream coaching environment

Short Description

To give  coaches a better understanding of coaching disabled swimmers, whose disabilities fir disability swimming and highlight ways that coaching practices can be adapted to ensure that disabled swimmers get the best from training in mainstream clubs.

Integrating Swimmers with a Physical & Sensory Impairment into Mainstream Swimming Lessons

Short Description

To give L1 and L2 teachers an understanding of integrating disabled  swimmers into mainstream swimming lessons and highlight ways that  teaching practices can be adapted to ensure that disabled swimmers get  the best from the learn to swim or school swimming environment.

We all benefit from 1 to 1 coaching -is this what we get from a parent or grandparent?

Who taught you to read, to swim, to ride a bike or cut a branch off a tree? To make an omlette or a cake.

Learning a musical instrument gets the ratios down, so does private tuition. At times I wonder if e-learning instead of aspiring to mimic this one to one relationship is nothing better than an interactive leaflet. Somehow the learner needs to be profiled before they start and the learning tailored, with student analytics an outcome. The e-learning needs to be smart and integrated.

 

 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Preparing for blended learning - notes and reflection

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 May 2014, 14:35

 

Fig 1.1 Exponential growth in PC memory

From 'Preparing for blended e-learning' Littlejohn and Pegler, 2007

By 2012 shoulld we show the Amazon Rainforest or the biosphere of the entire planet?

 

Writing before 2007, the authors Alison Littlejohn and Chris Pegler make the concept of blended e-learning sound like anathema to Tertiary Education ywt this is how learning beyond Tertiary Education has always occured - not formal teaching, but learning through participation, through a mixture of books, workshops, and formal or informal passing on of knowledge from those who know to those who don't. From lawyers to accountants, management consultants to marketing managers, further applied career learning and training occurs through professional associations and certification, internal training departments and HR and working with external suppliers - external whether they provide 'external' courses at a bespoke conference centre or because they provide modules or courses online.

'Students are motivated by solving problems based on real-world activities that may be carried out non-sequentially and interactively. Such problems contrast with the sequential orchestration of tasks frequently planned as 'formal' education'. (Littlejohn and Pegler, 2007 Kindle Location 6%)

See Chapter 8 for 'Information Literacy'

The locus of control shifts from the teacher to the learner.

We can achieve this through student analytics. The issue is how to start the process as there are restrictions on just how much, at least in tertiary education, you are allowed to know about your students. In business it should start with thorough, creditable psychometric testing with tailoring of continual professional development to the individual, within the context of their job specification and department.

Towards 'tailored content based on preferences, performance and permissions' (Littlejohn and Pegler, Kindle Location 8%) However, if the learning is tailored, how do you tailor assessment and make it equitable? This sounds like supervision of a D.Phil student.

Chapter 1 What is blended e-learning?

  • choice/access
  • online synchronicity/ or with a tutor, tutor group, cohort or institution - and beyond.
  • downloaded and mobile

NOT the immersion in games that in 1999/2000 companies such as JWM Creative (Worth Media) were creating - bespoke, specialist and expensive one offs.

DIAGRAM

  • Add slider from simple to complex
  • Just in time
  • Blogs
  • in touch with 'study buddies'

 

 

 

 

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

H810 Activity 1.3 : My role and context - accessibility and e-learning

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 6 Sept 2012, 14:59

H810 Activity 1.3

My role and context in education.

Without knowing it or going into teaching I have always found myself inclined to teach – an inclination towards being an educator. (I enjoy being a lifelong learner, always a student of something whether sport, writing, history, drawing and even performance. An interest in video production took me into corporate training, carrying kit around Windscale in my teens, shooting video at university, and learning from a BBC producer and members of the trade association the IVCA until I established myself as a professional director and writer. I have worked on every kind of training video production: health and safety in the nuclear power industry, legal training, driving a 4x4, induction in the Crown Prosecution Service, Asthma Awareness for patients and GPs, IT security and 'Green' driving for the Post Office, careers and education choices for 14 year olds, management training and so on. These were usually facilitated and often supported with workbooks. In due course they became interactive and eventually (a backwards step for a decade) migrated to the Web. However, I had no formal understanding of the theory of education, of learning design or of interactive and online learning in particular until starting with the OU.

How these relate to accessibility and online learning.

In many cases creating accessible content is a requirement which in the past meant either the inclusion of subtitles or a signer in vision for those with a hearing impairment or disability. For computer based learning, which in its broadest sense takes in desktops, laptops, tablet and smartphones, with increasing sophistication are we at times restricting access to some if not many disabled people?

What would I like to achieve from the module (H810).

Concluding module to gain the Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) with graduation in 2013.

  1. Practical understanding of the issues.
  2. To help plan how the e–learning we produce meets the requirements of the DDA especially where this is a client request.
  3. Helping to ensure that consideration is given to accessibility at the briefing and design stages and that such efforts are costed then applied as scripts are written and learning designs developed.
  4. Provide support to colleagues when making accessibility a point in e–learning proposal documents.
  5. Informed discussions with disabled people I know (colleagues, friends and swimmers) and what they make of accessibility online provision.
  6. The 'Montessori' effect – by thinking how to improve access and communicate more clearly all learners will benefit – the confident e–learning designer may be the one who leaves out the bells and whistles.
Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

E-learning design and development process @ Brightwave

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 24 May 2012, 12:49

Brightwave%2520E-Learning%2520Process%2520SNIP.JPG

Brightwave's e-learning production process

 

Great to have a few months between modules as it gives me the opportunity to look beyond the MAODE modules at what interests me most: learnign and development in a corporate setting, the practicalities of enhancing the skills and building on the motivations and interests of people in their daily working lives.

The above chart adds detail to a familiar productoin process.

The benefit of turning to an outside supplier for such services (and for the the supplier to call upon the specialist skills of freelancers), is the accountability, the clarity of the stages, the parameters set by budgets and schedules and the lack of politics, as well as the engagement with a diversity of cultures, experiences and background which you simply do no get when everything is carried out in-house, the biggest bugbear of most providers in the the tertiary sector who insist on doing it all themselves.

Watch some of their videos

Particularly impressed with Laura Overton who I have heard speak at Learning Technologies in the past.

Laura%2520Overton%2520%2540%2520Brightwave.JPG

Laura Overton

Brightwave, quite rightly, include a transcript with these face paced, tightly edited, packed interviews.

This doesn't preclude the benefit of taking notes. I also cut and paste the transcript then go through highlighting, re-arranging the text and doing what Jakob Neilsen would call making it 'web friendly'.

Even if I don't share this online, the act of doing this is a vital way to engage and memorise the information.

I've come to understand in the last few days (B822 End of Module Exam) that a 'mnemonic' is any devise or technique that aids memory, so reading this start the mylenations process, comment and those tracks become established. Cut and paste, doing something of your own with the content, go follow the links, add links of your own, cut and paste into a blog (here or externally), then share it into Facebook or Twitter and pick up others who know more or less and can contribute.

All of this is a very human way og aggregating and securing knowledge.

Ideally everyone would be milling around my garden right now, we'd pick up the conversation, then drift away to other things.

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Use of video in elearning (part 5)

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 26 Mar 2012, 06:17

Corporate%2520Video%2520CREATIVE%2520BRIEF%2520SNIP%25206.JPG

Anyone in advertising or marketing will be familiar with the Creative Brief; it is an industry standard. I see this run to two or three pages. The copy going to the creative team (copywriter and art director) was meant to be kept to a single page of A4 (this was a JWT). I go along with this. Didn't Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty send away a lengthy document wanting it back as a single page? I like to quote Jonathan Swift who apologised for writing someone a lengthy letter as he hadn't the time to write a short one. Like this 'stream of consciousness' of mine, it pays to edit, to think through and prioritise your thoughts.

In the context of elearning (indeed everything online), I felt it necessary to add the 'delivery' approach as an important creative consideration. I wonder if this team of two: words and visualiser ought to be a team of three that includes the programmer?

All things being equal what makes a piece of learning stand out? Who brings it alive? Who makes it memorable? I think an idea will stick if it hits the proverbial nail on the head, though it risks isolating some. Controversy works too, bland learning like bland advertising is forgetable. Inspirational educators count. There are those whose lectures you want to attend and those who you avoid.

Why not the professional presenter?

In corporate training we hire the likes of Carol Vorderman, Nick Ross and others to present our story; they know how to get a point across. Why can't the academic stand back and accept the role of author? They still get the credit even if someone else speaks the words.

Ideas Endure

  • They make the learning stick.
  • Produce multiple ideas and present them.
  • Let the audience create and present their own.

 

 

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Gamesmaker Training

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 22 Feb 2012, 11:12

It's invaluable to be doing some e-training as compared to e-learning.

The Olympics lend themselves to actions and activities; learning goes on in your head whilst training involves your body as well as your mind.

It worked.

I know stuff about the Olympics and Paralympics that I did not know before. I have got my head around the role of Gamesmakers and have bought into the positive, inclusive, inspirational approach.

A workbook, a CD and links to a website is standard training fair. Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them, then tell them what you told them would sum it up.

But why change a format that works?

Seb Coe introduces then a series of vignettes and activities take you through loads of stuff, from background to specifics, using video here, click and view there as well as deeper engagement with a few Q&As too or typing up some ideas. It took me 90 minutes.

Already I have some of this knowledge effortlessly embedded.

Could you teach a degree or postgraduate degree in this way? Why do I imagine that learning design should be any more complicated?

Good execution, simple design, not too flash, or cheesy.

Done for the right price with a practical feel to it. In the past my involvement in such things was to go out and shoot the video, often with green screens and actors, helicopters and composed music, 3d graphics and interenational travel.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

MAODE? E-Learning? Imagine designing or project managing delivery of face-to-face, online and in print to 200,000

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 Nov 2012, 23:58

IMG_1128.JPG

This is what I became part of today picking up my Gamesmaker training pack and attending one of a series of morning or afternoon Jamborees at Wembley Arena.

Imagine getting this brief?

Imagine writing a course knowing that in one go, with one event in mind, 200,000 will read and digest. We've come awat with some key guiding points wrapped up in a mnenomic delivered by Eddie Izzard.

And on the Jubilee Line from Willesden, to Kilburn, to Finchley Road, to St John's Wood, even down to Green Park memories came back of, in turn: 1985, 1987, 1982, 1992-1996 and 1984. Undergraduate and graduate, husband and parent to be. With heartache at one end and a move to the Cotswolds with the birth of our first child at the other.

I've missed London; I shouldn't shy away from picking up my career here.

Follow up: http://www.london2012.com/videos/2012/london-2012-games-maker-training-begins.php
Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

Wembley Arena, Gamesmaker Training!

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 19 Feb 2012, 08:55

The most massive blended learning experience ever.

IMG_1137.JPG

A gamesmaker pack, the website and however many thousands (6,000) are in Wembley Arena this afternoon for the next three hours. Training as a rock concert? Sounds cheesy but as I got on the train this morning I thought to myself 'doing my bit for the Nation'. Not just e-learning, but mega-learning, enormous and extraordinary learning.

Permalink Add your comment
Share post
Design Museum

B822 TMA01 Another 4.00 am start

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 19 Dec 2011, 06:25

 

Orchards.JPG

 

See below for my explanation regarding the orchard, an idea I develop as a metaphor in relation to tertiary education.

I have a Tutor Marked Assignment (TMA) to complete

These early mornings are me, I feel like an undergrad with an essay crisis. But I'm not, and there is no crisis.

I'm on the home straight

The word count at 5,000 is way over but I'm confident that if I treat the entire thing like an exercise in Tweeting that I can make all the same points, and more while being succinct.

I will resort to bullet points

How easy is that to mark?

The frustration for someone who shares so much of his thinking is that I won't share the TMA. I may post notes, mind-maps, charts and images along the way but I'm not about to give others the chance to commit plagiarism, which I understand is a major problem.

Creativity, Innovation and Change (B822) has the potential, for me, of letting me figure out how to apply what I have gained from the Masters in Open and Distance Education (MAODE) in an innovative way i.e. how do you get ideas through. My context might be tertiary education, but could also be corporate learning, skills or training where there are bigger budgets, tighter briefs and close measurement of effectiveness.

As often is the case with these TMAs it frustrates me that I cannot demonstrate a fraction of what I have read, watched or listened to. That the block may have had 30 activities, but I can perhaps share four of these. I guess the tutor has to conclude that I could not express my thoughts, with the evidence provided, had I not done the work?

I'd prefer to submit an essay every week, or take part in an activity with the group every week, to know that through interaction I am being nudged along the right path.

Other reasons to get this out of the way: we pack to go on holiday tomorrow and last night I had to be rescued by the AA ten miles from home sad The battery has to be replaced. This, fortuitously, happens before we leave, I wouldn't like to be stuck in a motorway service station with kids, dog and clobber. Thumbs up to the AA who got to us in twenty minutes and fixed the problem in ten.

An orchard is my metaphor for the Open University

I started with a tree, which seemed apt as in 'The Tree of Knowledge' but from a business organisational stance I needed a metaphor that could translate. Metaphors do not have to be overly scrutinised to have the desired effect, but if an individual tree is a module then an orchard is a qualification and the fruit on these trees are the products that students pick. Each season a new presentation. Taking this thinking into the real world I have been spending time at a local Orchard in East Sussex that has had to diversify over the last twenty years and has done so successfully.

What do you think?

a) about the value of metaphor (big in H800)

b) about the metaphor I have chosen about the institution we all love?

Permalink 6 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 19 Dec 2011, 23:41)
Share post
Design Museum

H800 Reflection on e-learning

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 21 May 2011, 14:29

A rare moment to stop and take stock.

Does learning something new enter a phase of such frenzy that the formal aspect of the process is irrelevant.

To say I live, breathe and eat e-learning would be an exaggeration, but the mix of social media (my professional responsibility) and e-learning (my passion as an educator) on top of a foundation of 32 years of 'educational inclinations' means that I find myself in a self-constructed maelstrom of activity.

32 years ago, a 17 year old, we lived 'above the shop,' as it were, a training centre for a PLC in Cumbria. I listened eagerly to the Training Director and I was allowed to use first 1 inch reel to reel black and white Sony kit used for interview training ... and then a hefty VHS camera. I created my first 'training film' - ironically titled 'How to give a slide presentation.

A desire to taken in, and then share, what I think and understand, with others has informed my career.

Meanwhile, whilst reliving and reinventing and/or returning to my video production roots, my current interest is mobile learning - not that it is should be called 'm-learning,' just that it is 'stuff' with a learning twist, that you can have with you, connect with and use, wherever, whenever and whatever you are.

With a bit of skiing, sailing and swimming

Each in various ways as an educator, and participant: guided skiing, but never the BASI qualification, Offshore Sailing RYA qualification while instructing at RYA Level II and swimming a few weeks of effort of the most senior ASA Certification that is current (Senior Club Coach).

Everything can be taught

My turn around moment on this was a presentation I was linked to when Max Clifford, self-taught PR guru, spoke lucidly and with enthusiasm for students studying PR.

Why?

If nothing else, it showed they were passionate about the subject to study it for three years.

(Note to Max, the passionate ones might be 20% of the cohort).

And cooking?

Greek Fish Soup.

I'm yet to reach the position that I can call myself a professional academic, but is it the case the some academics (or is it just mathematicians and philosophers) are also very good cooks?.

My theory is, that they use the period of cooking, to be engaged with one activity ... while thinking of something else entirely???

 

Permalink 4 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 22 May 2011, 14:38)
Share post
Design Museum

E-learning 2001-2011: A perspective

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 27 Feb 2013, 23:03

Have we dumbed down in the last decade?

I was on H804 BR227 Block 2-A1 on the 19th March 2001. I was in Barbara's Tutor Group.

The block reading was extensive; it had arrived in a large cardboard box, along with CD-roms. Books galore. I've numbered the 33 items from which I need to read x paper or chapters. Have we dumbed down in the last decade?

Is reading, if only on a Kindle, no so valid?

Has quantity of content provided been replaced by the quantity of content we generated between each other? If so, it makes contribution the peer group and module cohort all the more important.

We are meant to browse through these and select one. Skim reading as a ‘good study technique’ of the 1990s at the OU. Is this no longer so? I fancy an Amazon reviewing approach to all required reading. I’d then pick one five star, one three star and one that hadn’t received a rating. It’s about as good as my old technique – alphabetical order. Skim read 33 items then choose one? Never. Read all of them, then choose surely. In business if I had to review products, or interview new candidates would I do the job properly, or just give them a cursory glance? ‘If you find something on ODl course design in the set books, or in H80X Resources, which is not currently listed in the Reading guide, just email me with the details. Ill add it to the list. John (John Pettit).

Interestingly a article we then read from Cisco does something similar to the review suggestions above, not as basic as a start rating but ‘Sounding Off’ in which the first few words of comment and listed from sixteen or so commentators.

I then turn to printed off pages, marked up with a highlighter pen. (I can’t find myself stumbling across such paperwork with such Serendipity in ten years time should I care to reconsider the contents of MAODE 2010-2011. It will be buried in, by then, 10,000 assets in my e-portfolio. As I call it, like looking for a needle in a stack of needles. Something no string of tags can save you from … because every item has a similar set of tags. Where is ‘serendipity’ 2021? Years ago I put an ‘Enter@Random’ button in my blog., I’m yet to think of a more sophisticated way to tap into my mind).

In this article John Chambers CEO of CISCO says

‘The next big killer application for the Internet is going to be education.’

This is too often misquoted outside the realm of corporate training – what he has in mind here is how to keep 4,000 Cisco sales people up to speed and better able to sell, not how to educate classroom based school kids.

Is the next step the Open School?

To home educate? It would make better use of what the Internet offers. I do wonder how or why I’ve ended up nailed first to the locally primary school and then an affordable private school within walking distance. My wife and I are both freelance, who cares where we could be in the world as we do everything online.

Remind me to go to the estate agents. We’re selling up!

Meanwhile, I’m glad to see ‘e-learning’ used here; I was convinced it was a term coined recently. ‘Ultimately, Tom Kelly says, e-learning will be most effective when it no longer feels like learning – when it’s simply a natural part of how people work.’ If you do things in small chunks, she continues, they become just another part of your job. And what I like most of all, ‘E-learning will be successful when it doesn’t have its own name.’

My children wouldn’t call it e-learning

It’s just homework, whether in a text book or using a computer, which may or may not go online. Do we different where our TV feed comes from anymore? It’s just more TV. It is has taken me exactly one week, courtesy of a Kindle, to drop any idea of e-readers, e-books or e-reading … these are books, this is reading – the means of distribution is different, that’s all, it’s as if I have an electronic butler handing me one sheet of the book at a time. Bliss.

I’m still some way off why I’m reading this and writing about, just picking up echoes from the past as I go through it. Kelly had some insights on e-learning (which he defines as Web-based education):

  • Small is beautiful
  • Blends are powerful
  • Measure what matters
  • New technologies require new leaders

Was I listening back then?

I think we were too busy trying to reinvent the world.

These four points are understood today as:

Chunking Participation across platforms The business of measuring outcomes. Simply put ‘If technology adoption occurs faster because the sales force is better-trained, we have real business impact that’s measurable.’

And then the punch line

“One real; problem with e-learning is that traditional training people are in charge of it. No wonder it doesn’t work! Can you imagine if the post office was in charge of email?”

Does this apply to libraries?

Think of a book as a parcel, a report as a letter. Do we want it delivered by the Post … or by email? Are librarians best equipped to migrate digitised content to the e-brain?

There is then a paper, I guess the equivalent of a lecture, a piece of content purpose-written for the course. It is good to see Vygotsky, Piaget and Papert in here .. but what of Prensky from ‘The Power of Digital Game based Learning' and this suggestion by Prensky via research done by cognitive psychologists ‘such as Bruer and Tapscott in the late nineties who speculated that the young people’s minds have been literally ‘altered by the effect of a key set of digital formative experiences'. Prensky then, no better than a salesman links a truism with an unproven (and unfounded) suggestion. ‘Tapscott’s research indicated that young people are living, playing, communicating, working in and creating communities very differently than their parents (truism) and that the ‘hard wiring’ of young people’s brains has been effectively altered by digitally based learning experiences in the last decade.’ (unfounded, 'effectively altered' is what alerts me).

Let me see what I can find, where all just a click away from Google

So I buy this to feast on:

Marc%20Prensky%20Teaching%20Digital%20Natives%20GRAB.JPG

I’m going to have to go through these notes.

Courtesy of Kindle I can highlight and take notes.

I find myself rattled by everything Prensky says and how it is presented, from the glowing recommendations, to his extensive biography, to the unqualified, uncited, unresearched 'hear say' that considers itself to be serious study. He mentions the 'popular writer Malcolm Bradbury' but falls into the same trap of conjuring up presumptions that have no foundation in fact. This is less than journalism. It is invention. It may be what he thinks, but no one gets a word in edge ways to say whether he is right or wrong.

As I read I felt as if I was at best listening to an after dinner speech, at worst a stand-up comic

Prensky preaches to the converted, a certain group of secondary and primary school teachers who I can see nodding along to every platitude that Prensky offers.

That's my summary; the report will follow

Book by book, blow by blow.

Seeing Prensky so often quoted in the OU files, in 2001 and still, surprises me.

I feel like the little boy in the crowd pointing out that the King is wearing no clothes.

I may eat my words, I often do

But for now, this is my stance, which I prefer to sitting on the fence.

 

REFERENCE

Cisco’s Quick Study by Ann Muoio. From FC issue 39, page 286. http://www.fastcompany.com/online/39/quickstudy.html

Prensky M (2001) Digital Game based learning, McGraw Hill.

 

 

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

Kindle 3 JV Unwell and Kindling

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 28 Jan 2012, 16:06

When your 14 year old daughter is in bed with flu, and running a temperature, you relent when she pops her head up from under the duvet and wants to use your laptop to watch a movie and get in touch with friends.

I think, because I use a keyboard extension that the chances that I will pick up her germs are reduced; I forget that we both use the same mouse. She blows her nose, uses the mouse, goes to sleep for three hours. I pick up the laptop, go online, do stuff like making a sandwhich  ...

That's four out of four now down with the bug, only the dog and the guinea-pigs seem fine (so far).

It doesn't take long before I wind down

An odd sensation, like your battery has gone flat.

If only it were as simply as plugging yourself into the wall or changing a battery sad

I am just grisly and very tired

I had a flu jab in October so I should be avoiding the worst of it.

Sit back from this screen ... you just can't tell how infectious these things can be !

Kindle%20Ad%20GRAB.JPG

If it is one bonus it is the Kindle

It can be read in bed, your head on a pillow, operated with one finger, one thumb ... and as my brain is mush I can make the text huge and read three words across like a TV autocue. When I fall asleep, so does it. When I wake up it is picks up where I left off. In fact, it will read the book to me ... however, will it tell when I am asleep? That would be clever.

I've gone from one book to several

Kind%20GRABS%20x12%2012FEB11.JPG

 

Between them Amazon and Kindle have their fingers in my wallet.

I'm 46% the way through the Rhona Sharpe book. Here's a new concept ... no pages.

In addition I have samples of six other books, two blogs and a magazine on a 14 day free trial (I will cancel these 7 days in or earlier to be sure I don't continue with anything I don't want)

And new books, and old books.

In the 1990s I bought CDs to get back or replace LPs of my youth. Over the last five years I've got rid of most of these and run with iTunes.

Books, due to lack of storage space, are in really useful Really Useful boxes in a lock up garage we rented to help with a house move ... three years ago. Is there any point of a book in a box? I have over the decades taken a car load of books Haye on Wye and sold them in bulk. A shame. I miss my collection of Anais Nin and Henry Miller; I miss also my collection on movie directors and screenwriters. Was I saying that this part of my life had ended? Or I needed the space (or money). I fear, courtesy of my Kindle and lists of books I have made since I was 13 that I could easily repopulate my mind with the content of these books. Indeed there is no better place to have them, at my finger tips on a device a tasty as a piece of hot toast covered in butter and blueberry jam.

Page Views

I do nothing and the page views I receive doubles to 500. What does this mean? I am saying too much? That the optimum blog is one per day? Or have folks found they can drill through here for H807 and H808? Who knows, I don't the stats provided by the OU are somewhat limited. I'd like the works. Which pages do people enter on, which are most viewed, where do they exit, what's the average pages viewed by an individual and so on. In my experience 500 page views means three people reading 100/150 each with a few others dipping in and out.

How Kindle has changed me in 24 hours

My bedtime reading for anyone following this is 'The Isles' Norman Davies.

I read this in the 1990s when it came out. I felt it deserved a second reading. It is heavier then the Yellow Pages and almost as big. Because of its bulk I may have it open on a pillow as I read; no wonder I fall asleep. (Works for me). Having downloaded it to the Kindle last night in 60 seconds and for less than £9 I may now read more than a couple of pages at a time. I can also annotate and highlight the Kindle version. I have an aversion to doing this to the physical thing ... I am used to selling on my old books. Not something I can do with a Kindle version. Which makes me think, should these digital versions not be far, far, far cheaper? Take 'The Isles.' The dust cover is in perfect nick, I took it off and boxed it rather than get it torn. The damp in the lock-up garage hasn't caused too much harm. I could get £8 for it, maybe £5.

What else?

More on E-learning:

  • Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age. (Rhona Sharpe)
  • Creating with wordpress (blog)
  • Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. (2010) Will Richardson
  • E-Learning by Design (William Horton)
  • How to change the world (blog)
  • SEO Book (Blog)
  • Digitial Strategies for Powerful Corporate Communications (2009) Paul Argenti and Courtney Barnes
  • The Online Learning Idea Book (Patti Shank)
  • Using Moodle (Jason Cole and Helen Foster)

Some bought, some simply samples. The blogs on a 14-day free trial. Neither worth £0.99 a month.

Best on Kindle

The big surprise, the book that is so beautifully transmogrified by Kindle, lifted by it, is 'The Swimming Drills Book' (2006) Ruben Guzman.

Swim%20Drill%20Book%20Dead%20Swimmer%20GRAB.JPG

No! This isn't what happens if your swimmer gets it wrong. This is a drill called 'dead swimmer' in which they float head down, then slowly extended into a streamlined position, kick away and then swim full stroke.

'The Swim Drill Book' is a mixture of text, almost in bullet point form, and line drawings of swimmers in various stages of effort to perform a stroke or drill or exercise.

If an author needs advice on how to write for a Kindle, or for a tablet, I'd point them at this book. This is NOT how it was conceived, but it is how it works on this alternative platform.

You can try it for free

Download Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac then find 'The Swimming Drills Book.' You can then view a sample which takes you beyond the acknowledgements, contents and introduction into the first chapter.

A thing of beauty

By tweaking the layout, text size and orientation, you can place the diagram/drawing full screen. It simply works, just as the stunning black and white engravings and photographs that your Kindle will feature (at random) when 'sleeping.'

Here's an thought: if you're not reading a book it is gathering dust, a dead thing, whereas with a Kindle your books are simply asleep.

 

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 12 Feb 2011, 17:25)
Share post
Design Museum

This convinces me that increasingly prodution process, like basic web creation before, will increasingly be in-house

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 2 Nov 2012, 14:19

This clip serves two purposes.

1) It convinces me that companies want e-learning production skills in house. Only the exceptional project, because of its scale and desired impact, will go to specialists with superior craft and technical skills. Everything else will be in house.

Of the 135 training videos that I've produced or directed I believe that all the magazine programme from employees/stakeholders, probably those for shareholders too, as well as most 'how to' training can be done in house.

This leaves the 'wow' factor impactful, persuasive, big budget, commercial and conference opener to the external supplier or the corporate or government department with deep pockets.

2) This clip also convinces me the the OU needs to update H807 'Innovations in E-learning.' If the material being viewed doesn't demonstrate what is currently possibly it can hardly claim to be illustrating anything innovative.

Adobe e-learning suite used by Toshiba Learning & Development

Permalink
Share post
Design Museum

PDP as an ascending thermal. Come glide with me!

Visible to anyone in the world
Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 28 Sept 2012, 12:28

Love this. My PDP thermal. It works.

PDP Cycle Close Up

It works because everything hangs onto the concept without being shoe-horned.

I want to run with is as my philosophy for PDP and do someting whizzy with it as a video, animation, conference opener or something. I'd like to think it could capture peoples' imaginations, which is just what you want if you are going to motivate them to be the best they can be, so that their team can be the best they can be ... and in turn the business can be the best that it can be too.

If this is clearer try it in the long-shot.

PDP in situ

The upwards rotation, like a glider riding a thermal, is akin to a person's PDP ascendency.

What drives this, the enery as it were, is their motivation.

Tap into this and everything else will follow.

Though the timings for PDP to occur, or for self-assessment and needs analysis should be varied and applied as required, rather than becoming onorous and regular, it should nonetheless happen. This is in effect when our 'glide' banks and turns (yaws?). If following a glider in action then there varied loop/cycle sizes would be easily accommodate within the idea.

Around this mistral I have added various standard e-learning tools, which I would rank in importance. Such ranking would/will vary by person, by platform, by subject matter, but I'm certain that blogging and forums are up there as far more important than anything else in terms of engagement, collaboration and effectiveness.

BloggingAs you can see I've put in:

  • Forums
  • Eportfolios
  • Wikis

I've wrapped 'motivation' around the edges like those 'go faster' agitation marks you use in cartoons. I'll redraw it all now that I have some time to beautify and develop it further.

Around each of the above e-learning tools there are micro-loops (loop the loops even), where I've added (all colour coded by the way), things such as reflect, skill, communication, technology, reseach, analyse and so on.

Collaboration and communication are ever present as continual themes (or thermals) currents that should be ever present.

What else?

PDP%20thermal%20Midshot%20Cycles.JPG

  • Share
  • Lead
  • Inform
  • Critique
  • Assessment

I can work with the logic, keep it simple, and adjust accordingly.

Podcasts are a form of blogging, whether audio or video, as well as resources/assets in their own right.

Skype, email, TXT, Messaging ... and even 'face-to-face' communication (what's that?!) have been included.

This, in an image, is what I do.

PDP%20thermal%20Motivation.JPG

Files of research and work, days of debate and deliberation, playing around with ideas then the pressure to sum it as succinctly as possible.

This, turned into animation, or video ... i.e. rich media, is what I do to.

I hear Michael Nyman. He's permited me to use his muix before. It has pace, it is querky and challenging, and exciting ... and repetive, and driven and motivating.

And for a voice?

  • Female
  • On verra.

No one's offered me a budget yet.

£40k for a ten minute jaw-dropping conference opening extravaganza.

£500 and you get me in front of Sony Cybershot stills camera, my son's collection of Sharpies in one hand, a sheet of wall-paper backing paper taped to the kitchen door.

 

 

 

 

Permalink 2 comments (latest comment by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 21 Jan 2011, 15:59)
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: 12936275