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Paste as ...

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 3 Nov 2012, 18:03

Someone points out how to cut and paste text across formats with ease and you find it is used as often as the Caps or Enter key.

I take it for granted that I copy, 'paste as unformatted' text all the time.

This allows you to pick text from any source and immediately rid yourself of the HTML coding and formatting; this puts you in control. It is quicker too.

Personally, I find manipulating text in various ways like making up a recipe with ingredients that I want in a way that I understand.

Dull, but Arial font, 12 point, is how EVERYTHING ends up. If think my brain is ready for information expressed in this way and fast-tracks the synapses.

P.S. With a computer in each room of the house, usually on, I find I can tap away, and tap into stuff on a whim.

Currently picking my way through the development history of Spaced-Ed as an interactive spaced education platform for first year medical students at Harvard. I can't fault it. Indeed, I would propose what I am doing as a two week module in the yet to be developed module 'The E-learning Entrepreneur.'

Commercialisation demands professionalism and accountability. Generating income is better that stats, not only are people using something you've invented, but they are willing to pay for it. The cash allows you to develop it further, and in due course fight off or buy up the competition.

Why in the UK are we determined to do it all for free? Is this an excuse?

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Grinning like a child

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 19 Dec 2010, 08:08

I have to confess that I am chuffed at my mark for TMA02.

Whilst the work is mine I feel especially delighted that a result like this is the product of learning with a highly supportive, collaborative group that is expertly nudged, managed and poked by our Tutor. I look forward to 2011 and my final module in the MA in Open and Distance Education.

I'm enjoying this too much to take time off so will blog through Christmas and the New Year. Over the summer I bought a couple of books on e-learning. If I thought they'd be delivered I'd buy in a few more.

Or might Santa bring me an e-reader?

I find some of the best reading I do is in the bath, in bed as I go to sleep ... or sitting on the South Downs looking out to sea. I also find reading away from home is more engaging, somehow my mind engages better when I am somewhere else.

Mixing work and play?

I never thought there should be a difference.

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Storing stuff online

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 18 Dec 2010, 16:15

I have become habitualised to storing what I do in MyStuff.

Everything.

Even if I work offline.

In it goes.

This is where I know I will find things. The laptop stays at home. This way it won't get lost, stolen or broken. If it moves it is around the house - to the garden in summer, in bed with an electric blanket in winter.

When I need to get online I have always found it easy to do so. Everyone is online, right? Guess I haven't ventured very far. Frankly, if I couldn't get a signal it would because I didn't need or want one.

I do not keep my mobile on. I do leave it at home. I let the battery run flat. I leave it in the car. I choose when I wish to be open to calls.

(I get this from working in a five star hotel as a runner/gofer in my gap year. The pager had to be in my pocket on on 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I eventually through it in the hotel swimming pool after a particularly stressful shift).

People can do without me.

WE can do without each other. We respect personal space in the flesh ... how about creating some personal space online too? Like a force-field that rejects all efforts to reach you when you feel so inclined. Or is this called going on holiday?

I hate eating in a restaurant where anyone takes mobile calls. I hate being in a cinema where people are texting. I hate driving with someone who insists on chatting to the world as the drive along

What contribution will this make to the way I do things in the future?

I'm doing a course on Core Anatomy with Spaced Ed

I'm learning new songs with Music Notes.

And I find I'm on Facebook and in LinkedIn most days.

Could an Avatar of me deal with stuff on my behalf?

Or is this what a personal assistance is for in 2010 where a secretary would have been the thing in 1970 and 'the wife' any decade before that?

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Course overlap H807, H808, H800 ...

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 8 Jul 2012, 13:29

I had thought as I did H807 that it would be good to do again, that it was all happening too fast, not just relearning how to study, but knowing how best to function in this online environment.

Frank Coterell-Boyce reflected on what an advantage he gopt doing year 6 over in primary school because he was too young for Secondary School. It is extraordinary how empowering it is to feel on top of a subject.

As it turns out there is overlap between H807 and H808; for the most part I am grateful. On the other hand I wonder if I couldn't have done this MA in a year and done 20-30 hours a week instead.

Still, this is a chance for me to make choices regarding the plethora of tools and platforms available. This is the problem, having hundreds of software packages and apps that may or may not make a contribution to a piece of work I may, or may not, at some stage prepare (probably not) and deliver.

I'm surprised how on a second or third go with Skype, Google Docs and Skype that you can feel at home with them and share what they do with others. I translated a swimming coach's CV on sports credentials from Catalan to English using Google Docs this morning. Extraordinary.

I already upload to Flickr and Facebook, and YouTube. I blog anything between 1,000 and 10,000 words a day. I walk around with the means to photograph anything, video anything or record notes on anything all of which can be easily uploaded to a myriad of mostly free platforms.

And if people want me on a mobile device that easy for them to set up.

But what is the contents of my mind worth?

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Interactive Spaced Education that works

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 4 Feb 2013, 11:43

Serendipity took me to Space Ed when I had just started H807 ‘Innovations in E-learning.’

Dr Price Kerfoot is an alumni of Balliol College and he was featured in the College Magazine. This Balliol and Harvard trained doctor had considered ways to improve the way in which medical students learn. A great deal must be learnt rote, you have to know your anatomy (to start with). This means dissecting a cadaver, making the information stick, then testing yourself relentlessly so that exams can be passed.

Here is a professional educator using e-technology to solve a problem.

As an innovation in e-learning nothing compares. It may not use second life or 3D animation, but is addresses a learning problem and offers an effective solution – good-bye factoids on Rolodex cards, hello 21st century email and text alerts probing you to answer multi-choice questions correctly. If you get it wrong, you receive the right answer and an explanation. This question will be resent in due course and sent repeatedly until it is self-evident that you now know the correct answer.

I’m signed up for Core Anatomy.

I haven’t a clue but using Google and go into research mode. It is staggering the wealth of visual materials to support learning, beautifully rendered images of the human body, podcasts from doctors, definitions of the terminology with audio so you learn how to pronounce these things. I still get the first couple of questions wrong, but never mind. I understand what the right answer is, I am building a corpus of knowledge that will in time enable me to answer 100 questions rather than only 25.

Give it a go.

Better still, build your own Space Ed programme. The platform is free to use and you are free to offer the results of your endeavour for free … or for a fee.

REFERENCE

TESTING NEW INSTRUCTIONAL METHODS

Interactive Spaced-Education to Teach the Physical Examination:

A Randomized Controlled Trial

B. Price Kerfoot, MD EdM1,2,3, Elizabeth G. Armstrong, PhD2,3, and Patricia N. O’Sullivan, MD3,4

 

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Podcasting - flick record any old time and see what you get?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 8 Jul 2012, 13:46

It seems counter-intuitive to drive 160 miles to record a Podcast but I will reflect in due course on why this was better than recording a Skype conversation. We recorded onto a Netbook through the mic on a headset while cooking dinner.

This produced audio that was remarkably satisfactory to my professional ear. (I did six months as a sound engineer with a broadacast TV crew once upon a time).

Ian (a director and e-learning 'guru') and I last worked together in 1998 on the launch of the European Stock Exchange EASDAQ and were 're-united' by LinkedIn about five weeks ago.

I need to recognise after thirty years in 'the media' that even recording good sound has been reduced to pressing a button. All the effort we used to make to get 'clean' sound is now redundant. The microchip has given recording devices a brain that filters out the extraneous sound.

We recorded onto Audacity; I will clean up the 'noise' as I would a photograph using Adobe Photoshop.

I'll also edit down as we covered four or five topics ... in as many hours.

We discussed collaboration online, e-learning, video production, podcasting and his intentions to compete in an Iron man in Abu Dabi next March, also his e-lerning work in Abu Dabi.

My visit was in part to spend an hour coaching him in the pool. So we do a podcast my fixing the Front Crawl in a reasonably competent adult swimmer who will have to swim for about 90 minutes in the Gulf waters before doing the mega-cyle and a marathon run.

We've known each other since our teens and have made 30+ videos together and a few short films too.

Would this exercise have been better had I prepared questions?

For us to have jotted down some possible responses?

For the recording to have been done more formerly in a quieter setting?

Should all audio tracks be supported by text? Which may make the audio redundant?

I recall the audio we listened to in week 1 of Robin Goodfellow et al, and having transcribed what they had to say would quite frankly have preferred a Twitter from each instead of a few minutes of audio waffle.

Do we afford waffle credibility by recording it and posting it online for comment and for posterity?

My concluding thoughts?

Forget polish, only content matters.

Somewhere in this podcast (to follow eventually) we dicuss the 8mm footage from 'the hill' shot by Zapruder. He had no skill at all with the kit, or any craft as a camerman, but the event he caught on camera was the shooting of JFK. The 'Zapruder Effect' describes film (or audio) that may be of poor quality, but the content of such importance it doesn't matter.

I think we've reached the stage where audience and listeners don't give a monkeys for 'professional production standards' so long as the content is of interest.

A role for Podcasts in E-learning? Absolutely.

The three hours I recorded of a machine gunner from the First World War can now be made available for everyone to enjoy. Forever?

Or will his voice become lost in the several hundred (or thousand) recordings of other veterans?

On verra.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thomas Edison and innovation

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 12 Dec 2010, 05:07

For anyone embarking on H807 'Innovation in E-learning,' although it isn't part of the course work (yet), I'd recommend listening to the following discussion on Thomas Edison.

The participants are right to suggest that in establishing a lab for inventions Edision create a model that has been followed by others. This may be particularly pertinent when you look at Facebook and Google, also the history of Apple - possibly also of Dyson. Indeed anyone who wishes to be engaged in successful innovative practice.

It would make an interesting discusion point for units on collaboration and leadership.

What delivers success?

How do you thrive on change?

Why is commercialisation vital to success?

 

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eLP - letters after your name?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 4 Feb 2013, 12:59

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

How would you jiggle these terms around?

 

eLP Venn Diagram


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

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

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

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

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

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

Cost.

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

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

Cost still matters a great deal:

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

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

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

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Retrofitting prose with references, name dropping and blog stats

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 3 May 2014, 08:24

I consider it to be an expression of the progress that I am making that the first part of the TMA I have just written I completed in a straight three hour run with nothing more than a treatment in the form of a Venn Diagram doodled on a sheet of A3 to draw upon and the assignment title and defining outline pasted onto the top of the page on which I have been typing.

There are notes and figures and grabs all over the place.

I immersed myself in the topic last night when I keyed in 'learning' to MyStuff and found I had 463 assets to ponder. Though nearly discombobulated by the sluggishness of MyStuff I just about had enough in the titles and tags of the saved pieces to know if something was or was not worth reviewing. It was an interesting journey, not least that for me H808 is very much the second module, with H807 feeling like a foundation course before the real thing. And yet for some people I appreciate H808 is their first or even their last module towards the MA.

Talking of which, I registered for H800 in February 2011.

I feel I'm on a roll and don't want to take a break.

Between getting the kids into school and making a fresh pot of coffee the thought I had wanted to share here was the problem I potentially face with the essay I've just written. Previously I have used a list of referenced ideas and strung them together like fairy-lights to produce an essay that may not flow, or wrap well around itself well, but does the business. I fear if I now try to retrofit references and quotes that I may spoil it. On the other hand, this is the difference between writing a letter home and an academic paper.

My belief is that I know to whom I am referring when I use their ideas and dropping in their names and correcting any misquotes and incorrect expressions of their ideas will do the job.

On verra.

Another figure that I spied ... I've hit 10000 hits in my OU blog, which translates as 1000 per month. As we have no way to read the stats that underly these figures I can only make a conservative guess that 50-75% of all of this action is me. On the other hand, I do notice that I've been getting 25, then 50 and possibly 100 'hits' a day even when I've not blogged at all. Vanity or curiosity, or both.

Do emerge from the electronic woodwork please.

A comment is part of the collaborative process that is the essence of the full e-learning experience.

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The 'professional' TV 'production team

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 12:30

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

Tvprodution role pyramid

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

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

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

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

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

 

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A variety of e-learning journeys

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 13:43

6e9399373764315ab877e7689d27a708.JPG

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

Daft. The paradigm must shift. Or be ignored.

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

His qualifications?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The letters or professional tag mean diddly-squat.

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

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

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

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

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

My next course, or refresher course?

Sales

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

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H808 activity 7.2 Anyone played Twister?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 18:42

Anyone played Twister

This is how I see ca7.2 in H808.

Twister

Table 7.1


Learning requires something from each of the quartiles (if I can call them that).

To study something you are familiar with in comfortable surroundings is one thing, but to study something with which you are not familiar in an unfamiliar setting has its values too because you have to make more effort, you gain insights, you may make mistakes and learn from them, or achieve something unexpected and feel rewarded for that. All of this can be planned for by your tutor. Why else the school-trip? Why else the brain-storming trip of business managers? How else did a team of advertising creatives come up with the line 'Refreshers the parts other beers cannot touch?'

 

Table 7.1

Depending on the group and the course, or the desired outcome I see the value in putting a task or unit in any or each one of these


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Is this more Microsoft Encarta CD than a Brave New world of learning and education?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 30 May 2014, 09:22

When you take a set of encyclopedias and ask, 'how do I make this digital?' you get a Microsoft Encarta CD. When you take the philosophy of an encyclopedia and ask, 'how does digital change our engagement with this?' you get Wikipedia.

How does this relate to e-learning?

It strikes me that much of that learning online has a considerable distance to go in terms of realising the potential of 'electronically enhanced' learning, that we are 'reading' for subjects and supervised by the institution and tutors very much in the style of a Microsoft Encarta CD.

Perhaps a virtual world is the way forward?

Perhaps just as people job share, you could share your learning too?

Perhaps there is more to educational social networking through the likes of Facebook than institutions are willing to accept.

And if you have an e-portfolio of work why not flit from one supplier to another, accumulating micromodules of a unit at a time from wherever you choose and have your aggregated qualification assessed by a third party?

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

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 14 Nov 2010, 07:51


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


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

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

 

REFERENCE

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

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

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Limitations to the use of an eportfolio

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 27 Feb 2019, 14:59

What were the limitations to its implementation?

·Need to be tailored.

·Doesn’t suit all curricula.

A cultural shift and challenge.

·The role of the teacher changes to coach and facilitator of learning processes.

·The need for management to change – ‘a form of change management in which the university can work out its specific form of ‘Folio Thinking’.

·Teachers and students need to buy into it.

·A new, IT, commercial, business-like approach required. An approach requiring a blueprint for a study - an approach that is common practice in the IT world but not so much at this university.

·Teamwork and stakeholder involvement.

·Support by management is crucial.

·Different partners in the educational sector in the Netherlands establish links and develop initiatives beyond educational boundaries.

IT infrastructure must work unnoticed and without fail.

·Not an easy to implement. A technical challenge: how to create functional workflows in an integrated technical infrastructure?

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E-learning tools for e-learning professionals

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Just when we thought we could rest comfortably at night, I would come across a compilation of what a group of some 600 e-learners consider to be the current 'Top 100 e-learning tools.' mixed

 

100 e-learning tools 2009

 

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/

 

Like all lists it's reassuring to see ones you use and like, of interest to find something new, worrying if something you swear by isn't on the list at all.

 

 

 

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Using a bog(s)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Wednesday, 20 Oct 2010, 04:54

For the last hour I've been drilling deeper into the layers of Compendium in order to collate and compose and collect evidence for H808 TMA01 which requires reflection on the first FOUR units of 'The E-learning professional.'

I noticed this typo and a rye smile forms. The temptation is to leave it. For some this is the attitude to blogs and bloggers, that it all might as well be flushed away.

As we know, this writer thinks differently.

I think there is value in the flotsam and jetsam of one's mind being backed-up in some way, whether privately in a diary-like blog that is private for you only to read, or a mind-opening memoire, a personal internal-debate or simply a record of what you do and who you meet and what is said ... that you expose and disclose to others, selectively or otherwise, to make friends, or not, to find like-minds ... on a blogging platform that suites you or in/or your own website.

This here isn't for the purposes of social networking.

This is just one thing that sets the OU Blog patform apart from others. I like this scroll or honour, the vicarious way in which entries you would otherwise never read are placed before yor eyes.

Having blogged for 11 years and 3 weeks it is the relationship with only one or two people that comes to matter. You get into each other's heads, or at least that part you are willing to share. Their voice becomes familiar, their views respected and valued.

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H808 Core activity 4.1: Multimedia as evidence

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 12:34

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

Contributions to online discussion

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


Personal blog postings or comments on others’ blogs

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


Contributions to the course wiki

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


Notes and informal reflections written by hand

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

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

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

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

Extracts from PowerPoint presentations

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

Extracts from audio presentations

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

Extracts or screen dumps from websites or video presentations

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

Link to YouTube favourites

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

Comments from peers and tutors

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


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

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




 

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H808 e-portfolios. Life Logging and e-folios

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 6 Nov 2011, 15:26

E-portfolios, good or bad thing?

Could they not become unduly burdensome? I have this image of us turning into snails with this vast aggregations of information on our backs (even if it is digital).

Are they for everyone?

New Scientist this week (16 OCT 2010, vol 208. No. 2782) puts 'Life Logging' into its '50 Ideas that will change science forever'list.

It all started with Vannevar Bursh in 1945 with something he called 'an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.' Fifty years on Bill Gates is quites as saying 'someday computer will store everything a person has ever seen and heard.' Somewhat over ambitiouisly (especially as it went nowhere), in 2000 I registered domain names 'The Contents of My Brain' and 'TMCB' thinking that there could be a place for an electronic diary, scrap-book, journal, album thingey.

I lacked the wherewithal or ambition to develop this further, in any case, I recall meeting the folk from Digitalbrain who seemed to be doing a good job of it.

Does there need to be a market leader?

Using a variety of platforms are not e-portfolios being achieved?

Some people look forwards, some look back.

Which kind person succeeds? A sparsely filled e-portfolio might be a good sign - they are getting on with doing.

And whilst I'm a fervent Futurist, is there not a place for real portfolios (artwork), albums (photos, including those framed and on the wall in a real gallery), books on shelves and files in trunks.

I recently found my H801 file, March 2001. Course work printed out, the few articles sourced online printed off, even a painfully thin listserve thread forum message thingey. And an assignment on DCode a CD-rom for schools that won national and international awards including a Palm D'or for Multimedia at Canne in 1998).

Had I put this online would I have referred to it over the last decade? Instead serendipty leads me to finding in in a box in the garage. Does an eportfolio facilitate serendipty, or is the process of loading it with 'stuff' going to be too prescriptive so that ultimately it narrows minds, rather than opens them up?

Old news keeps like fish.

Where does this expression come from?

Does it apply to course work too?

Even if I had an e-portfolio of what value would my old History, Geography and English A' levels essays be? Do they have more value digitised and online than in a file in a box in garage by the sea?

The brain does something e-portfolios are yet able to do well, which is to forget stuff, to abandon content yet be prepared to re-link if required to do so.

Time to quiz the neuroscientist me thinks.

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An embedded e-portfolio

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 12:00

A decade ago creating a commercial website generally required you to buy in the services of a specialist agency; this was certainly the case 15 years ago. Gradually however businesses found they could do it themselves, indeed the development of internal and external communications was so integral to a company's activities that it had to be in some cases. An internationally successful TV production company used outside suppliers initially to build its website. However, as the creative drive for this site needed to be part of the business and as the site become a TV channel of sorts, it was necessary to bring control in-house.

1999-2002 was an interesting period as some organisations let their IT department go, not considering it one of their 'core activities,' while others brought the process in-house, sometimes buying up their web-agency for the purpose.

Creating a website, developing software, communications and business function merged. Specialist functions developed internally may have found a market elsewhere and products could be bought in 'off the shelf.'

If the functionality of the software and web-pages are integral to an institution's competitiveness and development it is understandable if some things they develop in-house, while others they buy in.

ITC is highly fluid, progressive, aggressive and organic. You want control of the beast. Do you have the personnel and department as part of your institution, or do you hire in the specialists? Or do you split your loyalties and commitments across several suppliers, buying products off the shelf? How do you achieve your goals? How do you control costs? How do you differentiate yourself from others if you're all shopping from the same place? And in education, where there is a political, ethical and moral inclination to want to do it all for free - how is it paid for?

In relation to recommending an e-portfolio set-up or package or system to an institution there are a myriad of deciding factors which could result in the valid choice being any one of:

  • develop our own using our thinking and skills
  • buy in the services of an agency to create a platform for us
  • purchase a ready-made product off the shelf
  • use Open Source and tailor it to our purposes
  • none of these - students, staff and any other potential e-portoflios bring their own, on their laptops or in their own space in the 'cloud.'

The latter happens whatever you provide.

As a result of using the OU's MyStuff and trying PebblePad, as well as reviewing the reviews of several other packages, whilst it is possible to recommend what a particular client's e-portfolio should be able to do - it is less easy without understanding the institution's financial position, commercial requirements, staff and student development, professional and academic needs and ambitions.

To what degree are people storing and collating material in a loose collection of files and platforms, some online, some off, some linked in to several folios, each with a different outlook.

Once we lived in a more linear world and we would logically take in then draw from the academic institutions where we studied and the places where we worked. To a significant degree, even if we possessed portfolios as physical entities containing art work or assignments, our achievements and potential were locked in our being ... our experiences, accreditations, behaviours and potential were entirely contained in our heads and enabled by our bodies. Increasingly it is the case that the sum total of our achievements, our record, our actions, can be collated, shared and given an existence beyond us. If we think of the ultimate eportfolio as 'the contents of our brains' in a cloud, like a geostationary satellite, forever 'out there' do we not begin to mutate and duplicate, especially if some, or many parts or all of this is shared?

Will we not, in a cyber-world of hundreds of millions, not only find like minds, but aggregate to think alike in some instances? Where then is the copyright and plagiarism? And here's a dilemma for the inventive or creative mind. Do you pool you thinking for others to exploit, share the process by which you draw your conclusions which may fast track another to a similar, different or better result?

I appreciate that I am drifting into la-la-land and the realms of science-fiction, that I am feeling my way, that I am letting my own stream of consciousness take me wherever it will. If this finds resonance with others, if others comment and build on this ... or reflect it, then it is as if those collection of neurones and synapses that are creating this are connecting beyond my being.

If there is commercial worth in 'the contents of my brain,' an e-portfolio that might contain everything I have ever done, who benefits if they use this to create something original?

In conclusion

1) The e-literate will already, whether they know it or not, have the makings of an eportfolio through content they have generated about themselves, their ambitions and friends, the work they would like to do and the work they have done. A link to discrete parts of this can quickly generate a number of e-portfolios, just as it could generate a number of bespoke CVs. The less e-literate by dint of their presence at the doors of an institution, enrolement or employment, or if freelance, their contract or engagement, will have wittingly shared components of a potential eportfolio it only paper through letters, CVs and evidence.

2) Institutions, academic or business, may offer portfolios that are wedded to that organisation's culture. If designed, to look and function within this context it will be easier to compile, share, access and assess while there. No longer, if ever it were necessary, to print off, duplicate or photocopy reams of paper to have back-ups, let alone to apply simultaneously to more than one place. However, is not these ease of sharing problematic? Could not a multitude of people claim something to be their’s ? Or is that the point. We become a name on one of those credit lists that runs and runs after a CGI-rich film plays out.

3) There is no definitive answer, no panacea, when it comes to an eportfolio: create your own, buy off the shelf or let staff and students bring along what they have or don’t have. As a consultant e-professional (sounds far grander than it is), it is the requirements of the organisation you are working for that dictates the answer. Is the problem financial? Is it retention? Is it attracting students in the first place? Or holding on to staff? Is it assessement? Is it learning? Is it departmental? Is it a cohort or a group? Is is driven by your trustees? Government? Or a current fashion in pedagogy? Is it political? Does it put the student first, at the centre of things? If they have 20 years to pay off their student loan, do they carry the same e-portfolio with them for the duration, Sage accounting an add-on to whatever other functions their e-portfolio offers?

Do you want the way my mind works, or the conclusion? Is there one? If one thing defines e-technology it is that it is always in a state of flux, indeed like Macbeth clutching at that dagger before his eyes, you can never quite get your hands on it. An IT specialise shared her thinking with me in Linked In. A thought I have come across before. Whilst her role is to ‘speed things up’ for businesses, she can never say what it is that will speed up ... or that what is achieved was predictable. The important thing is to move on, progress, don’t stagnate, don’t over think a thing ... nor over-commit.

My recommendation to an institution questioning its use of eportfolios would be to be in all camps simultaneously, to have an inhouse eportfolio, to engage with external suppliers and permit individuals to have their own. What matters is the required functionality and outcomes. My recommendation to an individual is to have in their control anything they are placing elsewhere.

Is not the choice, when it comes down to it, one of selecting this handbag over that one? This satchel over that one? However it functions, whatever it looks like, only the contents matter. If you drop your one and only portfolio of photographs or drawings on the way to an interview, you can pick up the pieces and make do with cardboard and a roll of duct-tape. If your one and only eportfolio fails you lose the lot. Or do you? These assets, this ‘stuff’ what is it anyway? Text, images, programming (which is text) ... If you are digitally-savvy and have an online presence how easy is it to reassemble such a portfolio? Very, I’d suggest.

So, yes, as I suggest, you have a version for work, a version where you are studying, a version embedded in your website or Facebook page, a version on the hard-drive or you computer, and one on a zip or flash driver.

Ho hum.

I shall go and sleep on it. Always the right approach after this middle-of-the-night brainstorm.

What kind of e-portfolio would you recommend to the following?

  • Use in a prison by inmates serving at least three years.
  • Use for advertising and marketing creatives at a ‘school of communication arts.’
  • Use by trainee gymnastics coach who is a volunteer with a local club working with young children.
  • Use by a trainee solicitor.
  • Use by an actor hoping to get into RADA
  • Use by someone returning to work after a six year career break.
  • Use by Leonardo da Vinci, Douglas Adams or Stephen Hawking
  • Use by a politician

Why not come up with your own. The trickier the better.

  • Use by someone who is losing their eyesight
  • Use by someone who has terminal cancer
  • Use by a child at primary school
  • Use by someone in a retirement home
  • Use by someone with depression
  • Use by someone with ambitions to be a professional footballer, or designer for Apple, or ... TV producer, or ... happy.

Is an e-portfolio the next web page?

You've got to have one, even if you don't know why? At least you don't have to by a domain name.

And what brought this on?

Other than the requirements of H808 ...

The launch of a platform for swimming teachers and coaches across competitive swimming, water polo, diving and synchro.

The new Institute of Swimming (www.theiosonline.com) website not only streamlines the course booking process and offers some courses online, but embedded in the new platform in a way that is even more integrated the the OU's add-on MyStuff, is an eportfolio.

You complete your details and find in so doing that you have begun your profile in something called My IoS.

It will contain a CV, evidence of qualifications, assets that can specifically include video ... and the word 'e-portfolio' is not mentioned anywhere. Yet this is what is. And as for interoperability and transfer ... all of that is just a cut and paste, or link away is it not, as ever? And being a 'portfolio worker' in any case, the last thing I want to do is to merge one of my two (or is is three) other lives with this or any of the others.

It simply is.

 

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E-portfolios and the OU

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 4 Feb 2013, 13:07

Enjoyed an hour long Skype and Sync-in discussion with three other members of our H808 Tutor Group.

Having raced back from watching my son playing rugby in Brighton I was minutes late, but had least gone through Weller again this morning and had his report and my notes on the desktop.

The material we discusses was valuable, but only one part to this valuable learning experience.

Working live, contributing to a live wiki and being able to both chat and send message in real time proved highly successful. The process expects some give and take, polite suggestions, some 'taking it in turns' and for me some brief interludes to introduce me to a set up that is largely new to me.

We came away with some fresh insights on Weller's OU Report (2005) on the development of an e-portfolio system for the OU VLE. While using his report as the basis for our discussion some broader insights were gained in relation to the potential of Open Source, the context, culture and validity of a system for the broadest range of users ... or for a niche group. The OU's remit to widen participation and to enroll and engage with students without necessarily the prior academic record for an undergraduate or graduate place. My thinking continues to develop along the lines of branding, I like Mark Collin's point on the culture of an institution. I'm also coming back to the value of students running with whichever platform their institution provides, not just for e-portfolios, but as Lesley Morrell has pointed out elsewhere, all being in the same blogging environment helps - it is seamless. Even if a blog on a different site is only a click-away, it is only this close if someone has bookmarked it.

Much learnt, and verbalising ideas like this had me believing I could make a presentation on the subject of eportfolios too. How many points am I going to make? Four key issues with an introduction and conclusion. 100 words be key point with an intro and conclusion of 50 words each?

'Don't give me a creative brief, give me your problems.' Said Robin White on the Bottom Line the other evening. (See below) Ad-talk, marketing speak, music to my ears of a lifetime ago. But it works. If your client has a communications problem that you can fix,m you have a client. If your client doesn't have a problem, then they don't need you. If interviewing a client I would ask 'who are you?' (To establish their culture and intentions ... and funding?) I would want to know 'who are your students.' I believe that medical students are different to economists, those in the creative arts different to historians and lawyers. I wouldn't be happy with some catch-all. The OU (though this year's intake we are being told is different with a 36% increase in undergraduates turning away from a 'traditional university degree) is a broad church. Ravensbourne College, Falmer and Bournemouth and one of my recently revived alma maters 'The School of Communication Arts who serve the creative industries would want something different, enabling innovation.

One final thought, which those talking this afternoon will have picked up on, is how attractive software can be when it is simple and easy to use. Sync.in and Skype are easy. Google is easy. MyStuff is remarkably straightforward. I could share some gems of my own, software I love.

Ideally I'd be perched in front of a bank of screens for this, like an investment banker ... or an e-j. A screen for each, the sync.in and Skype, the Weller Report and my notes on it. Instead, and possibly better for it, I had to go with what I had in my head and what by careful listening-in was sparked off. A pencil and a pad of paper proved useful.

The kids and dog kindly kept out of my way, though a coffee would have been nice. Sunday Lunch was waiting and they were chilled enough to let us finish. Whether or not I can escape to another part of the house is another matter! I prefer the expanse of the uncluttered dining room table.

Had my 12 year old's Xbox headset on. Felt like a twenty something in a call centre. To deal with the time-lag and occasional delays should we be using Walkie-Talkie or CB talk? As 'Out.' To let others know you've said you piece?

 

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E-portfolios (the Government perspective)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 8 Oct 2010, 11:35

The drivers and issues regarding e-portfolios from a Government perspective is all about creative the life-long tax-paying, contributing 'Citizen.'

 

Bubbl.us Government drivers for e-portfolios

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E-portfolios from the student p.o.v. H808.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 16:19

E-portfolios from the student point of view.

 

Bubbl.us learner-centred e-portfolios

 

 

 

I like what bubbl.us can do. Without fuss and with a sense of fun a few ideas on the back of the proverbial fag-packet (in my case in an A5 drawing pad) becomes something semi-permanent and easy to share. Commpendium takes this one step further, allowing each 'node' to contain layers of details as documents or attachments.

Here, after some weeks of this, I try to cover every corner, literally, on the topic of 'e-portfolios for learners.'

I read somewhere a hint of why students baulk at this - their perspective, for the most part, is short-lived. Several years working in the communication of graduate opportunities it was surprising how few could look beyond 'Day One' at their place of work, to their completing their first year ... unless, as in accountancy, law and some industries there was a longer-term career training period.

It isn't just as matter of context, it's a matter of perspective.

Anything 'sticky' can as easily become unstuck.

Remember how stuck we were on FriendsReunited, before MySpace and then Facebook came along?

On the one hand a software developer makes their platform 'interoperable,' but then you open the door to users switching platforms.

What is the commercial value of free software? What is the cost? Pop-up adverts inside your' virtual head.'

If someone can exploit it, they will.

Aalderink and Veugelers.

 

 

· Focus on competence-oriented education

· Emphasis on student development

· Fostering academic maturity

·Net generation oriented


REFERENCE

Aalderinck, W. and Veugelers, M. (2005) ‘E-portfolio’s [sic] in The Netherlands: stimulus for educational change and life long learning’ (online), paper presented at the EDEN 2005 conference in Helsinki, Finland, Portfolio Themasite. Available from http://www.icto.ic.uva.nl/surf/nl_portfolio/Publicaties/Downloads/aalderink_veugelers_2005.pdf- FOR ANALYSIS

 

 

 

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Taking steps to migrate MyStuff content to PebblePad

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

So a busy day.

Risotto done, Mushroom soup to make.

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Reflection in H.E. Creme. Bubbl.us. H808

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 21 Nov 2011, 23:59

EFFORT COUNTS (Creme)

Assessment of learning journals and the value of reflective writing for undergraduates and graduates using Bubbl.us to construct the knowledge map from an initial sketch on a fag packet.

With special thanks to fellow student Lesley Morrell who shared this software with us in the first place. I like it as a draft before Compendium, where I will take it next.

Available as a dowload on request ... or to share through bubbl.us.

 

Effort that 'doesn't count' in a learning journal kept for purposes of assessment.

Resource Guided

In which the author does their directed reading, as per the brief. Scanning a few reports, choosing the few than can be covered in the allocated time and drawing their conclusions from these alone.

Tutor Guided

In which the author first follows, then seeks clarification and support for the route to take. This may have at its heart the concern or interest in 'how do I get the marks' for anything that may be required for assessment. (The balanced approach is to draw upon the tutor as an additional guide to all the others in blue)

Course Guided

In which the author aims to do as the institution course moderator), awarding body requires. Previous knowledge of this, or other such like institutions will help. With the caveat: ‘A collaboration of strangers’. In which a forced grouping (of convenience, without bias/favour) is constructed and required to perform as if they have come together naturally.

Self-guided

In which the author draws more fully on their own experience of this kind of thing, through reading and practice, as a student, employee, child/sibling or parent ...

Misguided

In which the author through choice or influence takes the wrong path. If working in isolation, not seeking or receiving tutor or peer group feed-back they either go off on the wrong path, or they wander aimlessly like a boat without a rudder. A certain way to disillusionment, delusion and/or depression.

Collaboration as peer guidance

In which one or two fellow students take on a mentoring or partnering or even a paternalistic/maternalistic role. They become a more trusted and understanding friend whose shared journey, experience, intelligence and way of putting things keeps you straight, or puts you back on track. Perhaps more effective where the group that collaborates is self-forming. In which an informal, larger grouping of people support one, several or each other through the process. Perhaps as effective, if not more so, where someone takes a leadership role. Either way symbiosis or reciprocity may (or may not) be expected or required.

Self-forming Collaborative

In which an informal, larger grouping of people support one, several or each other through the process.

Serendipity

In which the author, through following up references within references finds a meaning and 'truth' that is deeper and more meaningful to them. It is therefore given greater weight (whether or not this will be respect or followed up in the course of assessment).

Libertine

The idea that the author does as they please. They express or 'perform' a typed-up, written-out 'stream of consciousness' - 'free thinking' if you like.

Indulgent

In which the author goes off in a world of their own. Dropping in thoughts and ideas from any old place, even if referenced, they are drawing on their entire life experience, anything they are reading at the time, or may have picked up from the internet, TV or radio in the last hour.

Thorough

The idea that the author does a comprehensive job, though this may be descriptive, rather than reflective or thoughtful. The ground is covered in a systematic, probably linear way - which in effect resulted in Dewey 19933) first thinking about a better approach.

Resourceful

In which the author play Huck Finn (in which he gets friends to paint a fence for him). This might be considered more devious, than resourceful as it implies building on, though hopefully not plagiarising the thinking of others. It may include reading all the suggested resources, but may also imply seeking out something more current that may very well answer the exact question for which they are seeking the answer.

The next step, even if the word count has been exceed, is to put it through Compendium to add underlying reports and references.

I've already had a great experience of producing a project briefing document in Compendium, sharing this withou someone several hundred miles away and then discussing it on Skype. Compendium meant that he got what is clearly a draft, a working document, the way my mind has thus far thought the project through. He could then indulge where necessary his greater curiosity by reading the attached notes, documents or reports.

The trick with this continued reflection on reflection, beyond due dates, word counts or reading lists, will be to wrap it all up at some stage, editing along the way, and if it is going to be submissable, reducing it to a 500 word count.

This has to be the eighth or ninth effort at this, forays that have yet to benefit from the kind of academic rigour and effort that will no doubt deliver an end result.

The fear is that this is like shooting an arrow at the moon, when the target is 60 yards away - clear as dandy. But this is who I am, and how I approach things. The trick is to pay me on a fixed-fee basis, because you may pay for 20 hours effort, but you'll get 60.

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