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Use of video in elearning (part 7)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 4 Oct 2012, 11:24

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What makes an elearning forum tick?

This is the crux of social learning for me, what John Seely Brown calls 'learning at the periphery' or Cox calls 'vicarious' learning and I have dubbed 'learning through serendipity'. As a result of taking part you acquire knowledge, you develop your thinking and underststanind. It was no different for me learning French. The school way was hopeless, what I required was total immersion, which is what I got in my late teens turning up in France on an exchange, making friends and returning ... then wokring a gap year as far from English speakers as possible. This is how I learn, many of us prefer this informal approach. Its something that corporate elearning companies and corporate learning departments have yet to tap into. Perhaps because it lacks measurement, that there appear to be no parameters.

There are many ways to get content noticed. All the traditional tricks of promotion are required here too. Email databases, events, trade promotions, press advertising and business cards; online is not a panacea, neither is it replacement technology. It is part of the world we live in, a choice, something else, that complements other ways of doing things.

The 'long tail' refers to the way content has a life before, during and after being posted. There is a story to tell in its creation and promotion; its release should factor in for a long shelf life, then there is this 'after life', how once posted content may then be picked up by others and developed into different, better and alternative things. Keep tabs on this and content online becomes more like street theatre, or taling from a soap box on Hyde Park Corner, it is an opportunity to engage with an audience.

I like to blog, use Linkedin and Twitter.

Better to be the master of some platforms than a jack of all  trades.

 

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(some of ...) My favourite blog posts (out of 15,000+)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 27 Feb 2014, 07:41

I've done an inadequate sweep of the 600+ entries here in order to select 7 entries and have it roughly down to these 27: If I do another sweep I'd find another 27 and be none the wiser. I have another blog with 16000+ entries and some 16 blogs. What interests me is what iWriter next.

I work in an Orchard Emotional intelligence means more ...

Email is a snowball

Is education a problem or a business opportunity?

Grayson Perry and Rose Tremain on creativity

Fingerspitzengefuegel How where and when do you learn?

152 blogs I try to keep an eye on

 E-learning is just like Chicken Masala

Life according to Anais Nin, Henry Miller and Samuel Pepys

100 novels personally recommended

12 Metaphors visualised to aid with the brilliance of blogging

Prensky and the concept of the Digital Native deserves to be lampooned

Love your memories in a blog

The Contents of my brain : a screenplay

We can't help to think in metaphors it's what makes us human

Maketh up a quote at ye beginning of thy book

Personal development planning as a thermal

What makes an e-learning forum tick?

Why Flickr on the Great War?

Social Media is knowledge sharing

Making sense of the complexities of e-learning

Social Learn (Like Open Learn but networked)

Twelve books that changed the world

Some thoughts on writing by Norman Mailer

Visualisation of the nurturing nature of education according to Vygotsky

Woe betide the Geordie linguist

Does mobile learning change everything?

The Digital Scholar. Martin Weller

The pain of writing and how the pain feeds the writing too

Digital Housekeeping and the Digital Brain

My heads like a hedgehog with its paws on a Van den Graff generator

Where's education in technical terms compared to the car?

My preference, having created an @random button for my original blog started in 1999 (and the first to do so) is to do exactly that: hit the 'enter@random' button 7 times and see where it takes me.

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Blogging and digital scholarship

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 3 Jun 2014, 15:26

Blogs as thought sharing

Non-linearity

Criticalness and multivariate collision

Shaohui and Lihua (2008)

'Amateurs' often create content which addresses subjects that academics may not and also in a manner which differs from traditional teaching', Weller (2011)

Generating content as a by-product of what is done anyway: Keeping notes working up ideas Weller (2011)

Networking = crowd sourcing

Lazy web = access to experts

Reciprocity is key

The relationship between a blogger and a reader is maintained if the blogger provides interesting and regular updates.

Reference

Weller, M (2011) The Digital Scholar. How technology is transforming scholarly practice. Bloomsbury

Shaohui, W and Lihua, M. (2008) The application of blog in modern education

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Why blog? Why not!

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 20 Mar 2012, 14:10

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As an advocate for and practioner of blogging since 1999 and I couldn't let this pass by (even though I am meant to be writing at TMA that is due today).

Search 'blog' or 'blogging' in my OU Student Blog (here) or click on one of the tags.

The research shows that in the overall active online community of many millions online:

95% read (lurk/observe/consume blogs)

4% will go one step further and engage (i.e. add a comment)

1% actually 'create' (write essentially, though this may now include blogs that are essentially photogalleries or YouTube  uploads)

Neilsen, J (2011).

In the student population (the study was last done in 2009 with undergraduates in Australia), the figure rises to 34% having uploaded content to a blog ... 'in the last 12 months'. (which for my money means they are not blogging at all).

Good luck, enjoy!

They have a multitude of uses and value and I will of course say that this value greatly increases over time.

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My first week at the Open University Business School

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 29 Apr 2011, 06:30

Yammer WK1 DY1

Dutifully and out of habit I have kept a diary, not online. This records who I meet, what I learn, notes on what I am responsible for. So a day diary.

I'd like to think by the end of the week I could, and should reflect on this, even assess how I have got on.

There is a schedule over three to five weeks that I've shared in relation to my first 'cycle' of activity.

Outside work hours I've had an extraordinary week in a guest house with three quasi-permanent PhD student guests with three others at various times popping in for a night or two - all PhDs or PhD students.

Conversations at work, in relation the MAODE are rolled into conversations in relation to collaboration in teaching creativity (PhD thesis), slow moving atomic particles in the Martian atmosphere (Post Doctoral) and mechanical engineering (PhD).

And how to cook (as one guest has never been away from home).

The MAODE has not taken a back seat, indeed I'm in the curious position of it being on the back burner all day as I sit in an open plan office that includes the curriculum and teaching team.

With blogging the MAODE theme I have had plenty of people to practice on (my household want to blog, I've got two as far as Facebook, one chasing recommended urls and putting meta-tags in her blog for the first time) and of course it is a topic of conversation 'over the water-cooler in relation to student participation.

I'm looking for answers in 'Everything is Miscellaneous' David Weinberger and 'Use of Blogs' Axel Bruns and Joanne Jacobs, but could as easily recommend books on how and why to keep a diary ... it is the same, with the added bonus if you want it, of finding yourself in a dialogue with helpful and supportive like-minds.

 

 

(47709)

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How to make educational blogs effective

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 13:47

Simply expressed in a comprehensive report from authors who will be publishing more on the subject after further research.

Blogs work in many ways, not so good for the 95% who only read them, but you've got to work on that. Good PR, Marketing and Promotion would help.

Report flowchart graphic

REFERENCE

Computers and Eduation (2010) Deng, L and Yeun, A.H.K. Towards a frame

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Why comments may skew your blog

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 12 Jan 2011, 05:53

90% of people only read a blog, 9% occasionaly write leaving 1% to do it all.

If you get 1 or 2 comments you may have what, 90-180 readers? With better stats that offered here you can validate this. All skewed by the distinct narrowcasting of an OU Blog, as we are in theory writing to our tutor group or course cohort.

So why might comments skew the content?

Who are this 1%? If they are being negative or abusive (never here of course), they are flaming. In my experience you will never placate or please them, only pour oil on their self-hate, attitude or whatever is going on. They may be cutting and pasting the same nastiness in dozens of blogs.

Other comments I feel are akin to a wave from a friend who I've noticed across the road. I like this. I'll let people know I am reading them, out of politeness, but also to encourage them. If I've read them once, I'd like them to write more and read again.

Comments, if you are chasing the stats, will skew your blog to the extreme views these commentators are expressing, or to the particular parts of the blog they find attractive.

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90% of users are lurkers

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 18:06

The 90-9-1 Rule


90% of users are "lurkers" (i.e. they read or browse but don't contribute)

9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time

1% of users participate very often and account for most of the contributions

From Jakob Nielson


So don't feel bad about. Enjoy lurking. We all lurk, we all contribute from time to time ... and I dare say there are places where we all contribute very often.Just not here.

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Does education need Facebook and Google?

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The clout of these two platforms is so great and so profound that educators ignore them at their peril. If you want to develop a competitive and effective product the shares information and resources how can you do this on anything other than a parochial scale without the might of Google or Facebook? Indeed, is there not a business case to develop a product with a sale to one of these platforms the end game?

Money Talks

Philanthropy and advertising are forms of testosterone that are fuelling the phenomenal shift in the way we learn.

What do we do when every book can be searched by Google and the content of your mind has been taped since the day you were born?

A decade ago a businesswoman featured in an Washington Post article as she had spend a year (1998) blogging on her business meetings and posting photos too; she is a director of Linked IN. I don't necessarily recommend the process as an end in itself, but as a way to see patterns and exploit these, there will further extraordinary changes in the way we do things as a result.

Have calculators stopped us needing or doing mental arithmetic?

If the knowledge of the planet is at your finger-tips why try to recall anything?

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What chance does a book have in 2011? Book 2.0?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 28 Dec 2010, 04:03

The opportunist are even better for the someone with something to say or the skill to tell a good story. Without the support of a publisher your book may take time to find a market, but it will: narrowcasting and micropublishing makes this possible.

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Once a dirty word, 'self-publishing' makes sense; have a website, say something often, build a readership then have a book, CD or T-shirt to sell. i.e. be commercial, sales are better than hits.

Books will be bought in great numbers, but in a plethora of genres and volumes, because on the one hand this micromarket can be winkled out, while on the other, if there is a marketing campaign behind the book which uses the Web successfully, it might attract millions.

I dare say it helps to be writing in this global language which I call 'English English,' that might in time transmogrify into 'global English' or even 'globalish'.

Steven Pressfield is a prime example of an author who has embraced the web.

Screen Grab of Steven Pressfield Online homepage

I'd also recommend his book 'The War of Art', though despite my taking several years out to write I find resistance always gets in the way; blogging is my form.

These words will add to the 1,8 million I've pumped into Cyberspace since 1999.

Perhaps it is about time I put some of the following online:

Escape from Alien Zoo

Kids returning home in the school bus are abducted by aliens and put in a zoo.

Fortune Photobooth

An handful of coins used in a Photoboth take the person back to the time on the coins. I've had them back to 1066, 1914 and 1957 so far.

Get Jack Back

Henrietta Wilson, a nurse on the Western Front, successfully poses as a Machine Gun officer to go in and get her brother Jack Back from a pillbox on the edge of Houthulst Forest, Passchendale.

Airborn

Gustav Hemel a pre-World War 1 aeronaut faces internment, or worse, being shot as a spy soon after the outbreak of war. He fakes his own death and returns a training officer and fighter pilot George Hepple.

The Watersprites

A couple of water-living humanoid creatures are forced out of their sanctuary in a small lake and hole up in a condemned public swimming pool. Befriended they journey from city to the mountains to be reunited with their own kind in deep lake in the Alps.

The Girl in the Garden

Three 10 year old prep school boys find a young girl in their den in the woods. Sworn to keep her hidden from adults and other boys they successfully fend of all 'attacks' and dangers. When she dies they bury her in a their garden plot which wins that summer's 'Gardening Cup.' 1972.

Driving Blind

On a whim a guy takes a bet from an American tycoon to drive a car on public road for 100 miles wearing a blindfold. The prize isn't the $1,000,000 but the technology that is developed, tested and stolen.

Skieasy

The best 1000 ski runs on the planet lovingly analysed!

Perhaps I can do this one, when I've sold a few million of the above sad

Perhaps it is time for me to decide how I am going to survive 2011

 

 

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H808 activity 2.3 reflection and blogging

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 18:10

I read the instructions and tips from our tutor on Core Activity 2.3 H808 - on Reflection and blogging and it had might as well have been an address from the form teacher to a class.

This boy is at the back of the room doing an observational sketch; every so often I jot down the teacher's words. On getting home I look at my home work. There is one word 'reflect.' I look in the mirror. I look at the guy staring back, figure out that this isn't a piece of art home-work so write something.

Thirty years on and initially I only saw the word 'reflection.'

I skim read, a block of text in one eyeful. I come away with impressions. I make assumptions. I am not good with clear instructions. I probably expect to have the school or university Sergeant Major forever on my back - indeed when I had an agent or a sales director exploiting what I could do this was the only way to extract something from my head that could be sold. I'm fine with clients too: succinct brief; tight schedule ... payment.

On reflection, therefore, I function better as a team of two or three.

Slowing down, writing it out, breaking it into its component parts I see that the request is multi-layered, that the end result will need to be composed within certain parameters: Moon and Creme, reflection in the specific academic context of H808 and the 'e-learning professional.' I have the 1990s OU Book 'How to study.' All of this is explained. I could take me an hour to dissect Trevor's instructions. Perhaps I have to until I can train my brain to do it this way.

Keying in 'creme', 'moon', 'reflection' and 'blog' in my My Stuff I come away with in turn 7, 14, 71 and 116 entries.

I have the articles downloaded somewhere (note to self to put online so that I can draw on them from whichever computer I'm at).

Keying in 'creme', 'moon', 'reflection' and 'blog' into my OU Blog I come away with in turn 6, 12, 46 and 68 entries.

These entries have been compiled since February. If I can tag all searches with H808 -  then some of these search findings would be reduced. I don't believe that either the Blog or My Stuff operate with an advanced search such as this. All the more reason for me to put everything into Fillemaker Pro (a task I began in week one of H807 in February, but dropped when I learnt I needed to spend £200 or more to replace my version of Filemaker that was now too old to upgrade sad

I cannot read and review 340 Blog and MyStuff entries.

Without spending much time with any, I must get the gist of what they contain, bearing in mind the criteria for this task.

The problem is one of how I tag this data. As it goes in I need to -self-review. to rate it with a star system, somehow, to add several filters. But how?

In any case, would this not all be better off in my head where my brain will do a more successful job of drawing to the surface the answers I need?

Filemaker Pro. A relational database I love. I could search by multiple tags, include a number-based scoring system, by date, or weight, or reference ... by word count. The list goes on. The trick is to do this early on. With Filemaker it is easy to take a template such as this one and re-arrange it to create a multiplicity of templates that all draw down the same information. This is where I need to be. It's software I can make 'sing'; I find the OU Blog and MyStuff plodding by comparison.

Beyond these walls there are nearly 2,000 blog entries containing 1.6 million words. On paper there are I estimate there are 3.5 million.

Habit? Obsession? More akin to a bodily function than either writing or reflection?

Is reflection useful? What about blogging?

Most of H808 is about getting students to do it. I might be a case of doing it less. Or putting on a totally different head when I do it here. Context is everything. But I don't want several blogs, one is fine. I don't want to twist this 'Voice' into words to get marks. Why don't others come round to my way of thinking, my way of doing things? This to me is learner-centred.

This amount of content might be exceptional, but are we saying that people should keep learning journals for life?

In their forties they are going to have several hundred thousand words. 500 words a day for twenty years? It doesn't take much.

Perhaps if I were compiling a book of 50,000 words. Otherwise I know that to write 500 words it will require a locked door, a blank sheet of paper, an ink pen and a clock. Thirty minutes max, twenty minutes may work better. This is how exams work, they bring it to the surface, they excite your body and mind and if you've been guided correctly the right ideas will emerge, first as a treatment, then as the 'essay.'

This or I need a) to get everything into Filemaker Pro and b) look for some kind of Artificial Intelligence add-on. But is that me? Letting the software make my choices? Or does it learn to make the choices I would by following my previous decisions (Another conversation, for another place)

Two hours of this and all I've done is think about answering the question ... I have read two items from My Stuff and one from my the Blog. And on these alone I have generated 300 words (not including these).

I got up in the middle of the night in order to do the task, not think about doing the task thoughtful

Maybe I'm not cut out for this. Or this is an example of where reflection and blogging can be counter-productive (or over productive?) Same problem, job not done.

I jam at a QWERTY keyboard where something more regimented is required.

And then I sleep, no doubt to dream. So there's no escape from it.

As I've suggested before, if I could provide evidence of a dream that showed I was thinking about reflection and bloggind in H808 would this count as evidence? If I could shove a web cam in my ear.

Now that's silly.

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Eleven years ago I had a dream ...

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 29 May 2010, 06:15

Wednesday 1st December 1999

Had a ridiculous dream in which I found I was making observations about people in a queue, several of whom were doing an Ellen Levey, they were taking notes on palm top computers and had digital cameras slung around their necks.

Came across this browsing a blog I started in September 1999.

Now people have smartphones, heads stuck in their hand held gadets rather than interacting with the world around them. Ellen Levey had just featured in the Washington Post as she had spent a year keeping a photo journal and blog.

Eleven years ago this was a novelty.

if you want to get noticed in 2010 I suggest publishing a book, hardback.

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A decade in Diaryland

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 26 Nov 2011, 16:43

I have stubbornly kept with a clunky, bare coded blog site whilst around me new wonders have formed.

Diaryland has been around since Sept 1999. The format's hardly changed,. It feels like using a slate while flying through space to Mars.

There was a period, around 2002/2003 when too many new blog sites were forming. I tried one or two, then fell back on a basic format in Diarlyland which gives the user considerable control to create a bespoke layout. I tied my head in knots with HTML ... then left it to a nascent web designed ... only to attempt some crafty alterations (innovations/experiments) to it myself and nearly bring the roof down.

I didn't care. I had become tired of some of the weirdest layouts where the text was virtually impossible to read. Style over matter. The content never king.

It's ideas that appeal to me. Ideas and how they form.

Despite this and given my desire to climb a mountain that has grown beneath my feet, I will be working in WordPress ... though this evening getting in was proving difficult.

At the autumn of 1999 Ellen Levy was featured in the Washington Times. She had just completed a 'web log' - an entry for every day, for a year. Someone thought it was a first. She had included 800 photographs. The journalist thought there might be some 40,000 blogs by then.

I wonder what's happened to Ellen Levy?

Did blogs catch on?

She thought her 'online diary' might chart her professional relationships and so help her with her work.

My mind has needed the break; I can feel it getting back into gear. The excitement is still there. Its been well fed - writing, reading & consuming so much - doing things that would have never crossed my mind during the headiest days of working at a Web Agency. The habit of keeping a journal has meant that while periods I may not of been online, plenty was being typed up and filed. No return to a traditional pen in a notebook 'journal' has been possible

Chasing 'readers' was ridiculous. It transformed things. It does. Then you havea a few fans and you pander to the things they enjoy to read. It is no longer a blog. No longer the contents of my brain.

What patterns might I find in 1,600 entries & some 1.5 million words? How long would it take me to transfer the text, edit it (yet again) & tag it? Why do activities of no apparent value appeal to me so much? From this is invention born? Who cares? My brain's done nothing interesting.

My favourite button in all of 'that' is nothing sophisticated at all. It is the 'random entry' button - sometimes chaos is more interesting than order.

Think about it, I was. Whilst we attempt to order nad box and tag and list and group our thoughts ... don't we find inspiration and fluke insights in the oddest of random places? The smell of the screenwash on the windscreen bring up recollections of a journey through France? A dream that visually had nothing to do with any of this, but from the feelings it engendered at everything to do with a sense of 'missing the boat; and then trying to catch up by taking a plane ... and then missing this too.

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