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H800: 45 Week 8 Activity 2 (Parts 1, 2 and 3) Tools for Learning Design

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 5 Oct 2012, 23:18

PART ONE

This is how I develop a Creative Brief ... this happens to be an MAODE exercise on Learning Design.

As a video producer this is the idea I'd sell to the client.

I'd then work with a coach and group of swimmers to set the scene and milk it.

This is the kind of thing corporate clients use to teams of 10,000 employees. This is also how I go about writing scripts, sometimes adding drawings, cut-outs from magazines and photos. Nothing hi-tech at the thinking stage ... which gives people more freedom to contribute.

A whiteboard marker pen on unforgiving wallpaper backing paper (30p a roll in from the reduced bin!). Stuck to the kitchen door.

PART TWO

The Forum Thread deserves as Swim lane of its own with as much activity into it and Elluminate as I have put here into a blog/microblog.

How%20much%20changed%20when%20printed%20arrived%20COMPENDIUM.jpg

Often I find a dedicated thread such as e-Learning Professionals is more likely to guarantee a response to something I say; the reason for this is simple, they have thousands of active members.

There are reliable statistics to say what tiny per centage of people are happy to write, read, comment and contribute. 1% to write, about 4% to comment. This has to be reflected in forum activity too, however much it is required by the course. I've missed out blogs other students keep, and the links back and forth to these.

You'd be surprised how much goes on in the background.

I've found myself working things through with people in different tutor groups, who did the module a year ago ... or who have nothing to do with MAODE but have an answer. Which reminds me of the fantastic diagram drawing tool dia. How does Naughton’s journalistic point of view compare to those of an academic?

I worked through it alone, blogged about it and offered thoughts and replied in the tutor forum.

The degree or blogging I’ve put forward reflects what I consider an invaluable addition to taking part in Forum Threads. You express what you think, ‘stream of consciousness’ into your own blog, edited to140 character for Twitter than take part in a Forum where some back and forth discussion should come about.

The other invaluable form of participation is through a conference call – as Jonathan Swift said, ‘I don’t know what I mean until I have heard myself speak.’

This is akin to a treatment outline for a video. The script in our case is the ad-libs and verbatim responses of student and input from the tutor. I like the idea of swim-lines and can imagine the Tutor online as a coach, rather than a subject matter expert, as a guide and mentor.

The reality is that such rapport develops with fellow students.

It is a shame that there isn’t more continuity through your original cohort. I have used the Compendium to share projects, using the layers to attach documents and have another contribute. For a simple mind map I like bubbl.us, otherwise I’m as likely to do a sketch and photograph it to share … or draw directly into a paint/draw package such as ArtPad using a stylus and Wacom board. Like all tools you need to have a clear use for it, rather than playing in a sandpit. To be able to collaborate in a team people need to be familiar with and using the same software/platforms.

Compendium can be used as a basic mind-map or flow chart and with experience be used for much more, as an e-portfolio of sorts.

It is overly prescriptive. Tools need to be intuitive and follow common practices regarding buttons and outcomes. For a first draft I prefer marker pen on paper, followed by bubbl.us.

As Beetham’s Chapter 2 (Activity 2) points out learners will find their own way through a task regardless. We understand things differently, draw on different experiences and come up with our own metaphors.

Whilst I go with the ‘Swim Lanes’ analogy, I often think the reality is like a Catherine-wheel nailed to a post in the rain.

Should an exercise such as this be addressed in a way that has so scientific connotations? It is surprising how easy it is to share the narrative of a linear activity in a multitude of ways. A simple set of numbered bullet points, perhaps worked up as a presentation. As a board game, one step taken at a time. Or a set of activity cards. You can talk it through by counting five activities off on your fingers. I'll do one of these in the truly, joyful, brilliant www.bubbl.us and post it to my ou blog and extracurricular blog' 'My Mind Bursts' which in turn is fed to Twitter 'jj27vv.'

Make one of these mind maps, then change your mind and be tickled with the way the 'node' or 'bubbl' behaves . Go see! This and a list of wonderful tools from an H808 student who is a primary school teacher in Thailand. Work should be fun, especially learning design. After all, if you don't enjoy it, how do you expect your future students to behave?

PART THREE

Bubbl.us has gone from toy to a grown up tool with layers and the opportunity to add sound, images (stills and moving) and no doubt much more, none of which I have had time to try.

The old bubbl.us was like playing with kid's party balloons and when you deleted a balloon (or node) it blew up and burst into flames. This new version still does some magic to the eye, fading away like a mist, also when you save melting into the background like a rainbow of ice melting.

An extraordinary delight to the senses and apparently of far more practicle use than I credited it with a few months ago.

 

33pxxlo_New-Sheet.jpg

 

Click on this and it takes you to Picassa Dropbox. You can then enlarge it, save the code and help yourself. I think all the images I've put into this OU identify album is 'open to the public.'

Seeing this all again I am reminded of my inspiration David McCandless.

By working on this a few more times an art director or designer would turn it into a thing of beauty; it is this level of inspiration that sells ideas to committees, colleagues and others.

People buy into ideas. People like to be inspired.

The pedagogy must of course be sound, the right offering of activities, outcomes and learner flexibility and support is the OU magic mix.

P.S. Don't imagine I was familiar with any of these tools until I started the MAODE in Feb 2010, most of everything I now use I was introduced to by someone here.

PART FOUR

Add the role of the Tutor.

Get in a designer and make it a thing of information beauty.

Sell it internally and externally.

Schedule, produce.

Watch what happens and adjust accordingly.

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H800:11 WK1 Activity 3 How we perceive and write about innovations as they hit

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 31 Jan 2013, 05:47

Every innovation is perceived as siesmic, like a Tsunami it washes over everything. I like the digital ocean metaphor ...

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In relation to H800 and the Week 1 activities the introduction and final chapter of Stephen Lax's book covers the communications innovations of the last century + enough to inform.

 

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And whilst this is the topic for H807 'Innovations in E-learning' I recommend this. I like him so much I bought copies to give to friends; I don't know if they were grateful.

Is it available on Kindle?

 

 

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H800:10 WK1 Activity 3 The way of the web and all technology? We just don't know what's going to happen next ...

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 31 Jan 2013, 05:58

I have in John Naughton’s own words, spent the best part of two hours 'bouncing' about Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web in search of a vital fact relating to this H800 task (no.3) concerning the Gutenberg, books and libraries; I failed, though I had a joyous time first in my own blog (started 1999, has the information I require, not tagged, poor archiving, couldn't find it, read loads of other stuff I'd forgotten about), then via Google and too often in Wikipedia, all to find out something on the Bodliean Library that is in a file in the shed and in my head (somewhere).

On visiting the Bodliean in the early 17th century I believe this person said that if he read all the books then held he'd know everything or some such. Do we suppose that the 3 million+ entries in Wikipedia are the sum total of world knowledge?

Never mind

Any answers?

Blogging for me ended 25 years of keeping a journal in a hard back book. The complete undoing of my life with books will be further undone with the purchase of an e-Reader (a Kindle, I get one tomorrow).

There could be no libraries without books and people to read them, nor universities that gather around the library’s finite resource. With the digital ‘liberation’ of books will traditional libraries and universities go the way of the OU too?

Hyperbole is symptomatic of invention

Prof. Gilly Salmon and Martin Weller, who have authored modules of the MAODE, are guilty of it. (Give me another two hours and I'll quote them and add references. I’ll do so in my OU BLOG).

I could in time drill through a year of reflection on great innovations from the book to the telegraph, courtesy of H807 ‘Innovations in E-learning’ and some extra reading I did over the summer on radio, film and TV, Edison and the phonograph and light bull.

Exaggeration reflects a human quest from improvement, and good sales talk.

It may distract thinkers from considering the wider consequences of technology change – though I suppose we are no better able to stop the future as Luddites exactly 200 years ago.

I won’t go along with some 'Law of Technology' unless there is some scientific and statistical evidence proof attached to it. It’s hardly Newton’s Law of Motion. I do buy the bell-curve elaborated fully in Roger’s seminal ‘Diffusion of Innovations.’

Nor do I buy Naughton’s idea that childhood ever ended at seven or twelve or fourteen.

All to be discussed elsewhere perhaps? The H800 cafe or OU Blog. My wife used to think I'd never grew up; I think I have in the last few months. I'm 50 in September. My late grand-father told me to 'enjoy it while you're young.' He's not around to see that I stretched his advice by a couple of decades. He left school at started work on his 14th birthday; did his childhood end that day? I've just been reading about Lady Anne Clifford. When her father died she was 15. Her battle and wishes to secure her inheritance started that day. This is 1605. She'd had a governess and tutor. Did she grow up that day or age 13 years 2 months when she joined the court of Queen Elizabeth? Journalist are generalists. They don't need to stick to facts, or cite sources or even stand up to peer review.

Is this the dumbing down of the OU or education's necesary slide into informality?

A product of the age, where we Twitter and network, forum thread, then use the same style to write assignments.

Innovators do it because they see a need and feel a desire to come up with an answer

For some it makes money (Bill Gates, Thomas Eddison) for others it does not (Tim Berners-Lee). Academicsdo it for reputation, and status (and indirectly salaries/stipends pension), whereas entrepreneurs do it to generate wealth.

The problem they solve both is a turning point at least, where one story ends and another begins.

H.G.Wells thought we’d all be flying around in lighter than air dirigibles rather than aeroplanes – predictions are fraught.

He got it right plenty of times though.

We may think that social networking has exploded upon us all of a suddent with Facebook. A BBC radio series on the history of Social Networking took as back to the 1970s. It reminded me of Minitel in France. There was (and still is) MySpace, remember. And Friends Reunited? Are you there yet? More like Friends Disjointed now.

To develop and maintain relationships in a fractured world but it is the personal relationship that we want with those who govern us that is having radical consequences for people in nations like Tunisia, Iran, China and Egypt in this linked in world.

Are you Linked In? Will it work so well with 300 million signed up, as it does with 90 million? Does it work? What is it for?  What are the unknown consequences? I'd better not say it, that would spoil the next decade.

Remember all that talk of the leisure time we'd had? Longer holidays and three day weeks because our lives would be so much easier to manage? Instead of working 9-5 we work through our sleep (indeed if you've read my early entries you'll realise that I rate rather highly my mind does for me once I am asleep).

Enough

Sleep

(Which will be a new challenge with a Kindle on the pillow)

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H800 SuppActs. Unit 3.3: 2nd -15th Oct 2011

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 09:11

SuppActs. Unit 3.3: 2nd -15th Oct

Hi all!

This is a really great activity as Open Source has passionate advocates for and against, and a driving market reality which seems unstoppable.

I wonder, in addition to the course questions, what we have between us in the way of experience on this. It would dbe good to bring that in too. What is 'our' expereince for and against of working with Open source in education?

Discuss here, and  build resource and summaries in Wiki?

Helen

H808 Course Guide: Supplementary activity 3.3: Understanding open source

This is a collaborative activity [..]You may be able to present the output from this activity as evidence of exceptional proactivity.

Download Martin Weller’s paper on eportfolio products from the resources below, which was presented to the OU VLE project as part of its discussion on developing an eportfolio system in 2005, and do a ‘Find’ search through it for the keywords ‘open source’.

How well do you think Martin justifies his recommendation to the OU to consider an open source solution for its eportfolio system?

Do you agree with him? Join a discussion in (the H808 SA Forum &wiki ) with (others) who are interested in this topic and find out what the general opinion of open source software development initiatives is.

Resources

EduTools (2007) Product Listinghttp://eportfolio.edutools.info/item_list.jsp?pj=16 (accessed 25 May 2010).

Dr Helen Barrett’s Bookmarks (2007) Commercial E-portfolio Vendorshttp://electronicportfolios.com/portfolios/bookmarks.html#vendors(accessed 25 May 2010).

Himpsl, K., Baumgartner, P.(2009) ‘Evaluation of e-portfolio software’, International Journal: Emerging Technologies in Learning, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 16–22: http://online-journals.org/i-jet/issue/view/51 (accessed 25 May 2010).

Martin Weller eportfolio report

Martin Weller's 2005 report for the OU on eportfolio products and strategic options for a university-wide system.
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