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H800:1 A warming introduction (or simply a warm up)

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 18 Oct 2014, 16:10

I've just read the introduction to H800.

This is a gentle, caring, thoughtful 'laying out of the OU stall.' No jargon, clearly written in a reassuring and friendly tone. Even the lay out is more magazine article than academic abstract, I like this. Don't scare new folks on day one. Or me. And old hand now.

Were we gathered in the real world this is the equivalent of tea and cake with the course team and future student colleagues.

Even though this is now my third module towards the MA in Open & Distance Education I begin with trepidation as pressures on my time mount; professionally I am now incorporating the contents of H807 and H808 into my daily life and activities - evangelising about all things to do with e-learning (and the OU), while developing projects and talking to prospective clients and sponsors, employers and potential employees.

Personal Development Planning wrapped up the H808 ECA and is now, along with reflective blogging and use of MyStuff (the OU e-portfolio) very much part of my weekly routine.

I struggled through H807 on an old iBook, succumbing to printing off far too often. With H808 I acquired a new laptop and barely printed off a thing (the ECA and evidence being the exception). Everything went into MyStuff.

(I tried Pebbelpad for several weeks then gave up. Having paid an annual sub of £20 for this I will give it a more thorough try in H800. I sense a need to have an alternative e-portfolio as the OU abandons or replaces MyStuff).

With H800 I feel the need, professionally, for a Smart Phone.

Returning from Learning Technologies 2011 I came away with one conviction - mobile learning and a number of trends (more video, less text; more chunking, easy create software and platforms; the creative/planning/production process being brought inhouse; shake up in higher education; significant investment/development in learning & development departments/functions; thorogh, comprehensive evidence of effectiveness with detailed analytics a key driver ... a list I will continue to develop this week as I finish going through my notes. See below for my take on Learning Technologies 2011)

Going mobile doesn't simply mean learning on the commute, or during a lunch break or riding a chairlift in a ski resort if only), but using the device at a desk, around the house, in corridors. Think of is this way, why do so many of us work from Laptops at a desk, when surely a desktop computer would do a better job. I feel a Smart Phone will simply offer an alternative way to work, as if on a micro-computer ... on a bench overlooking the English Channel. Stuck in traffic (as a passenger) .. even while making supper.

We will see.

Perhaps a Smart Phone and the next peice of business will go hand in hand.

I'll no doubt often using sports related analogies, so I'll treat week one and two as a warm up, rather than a sprint. In previous modules I've been like a pace setter at the start of the four minute mile, dashing off quickly only to retire before the end.

My key thought for H800? Pace.

In any case, I've got a self-assessment tax form to submit, more job interviews, client meetings too - even seeing a Venture Capital organisation. This and some swim coaching and quite a bit of swim club managing/organising (internal training, submission to a national audit, final assessment for the Senior Club Coach certificate). As well as time with family, children, our dog and the guinea-pigs 'E', 'C' & 'A'.

 

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LT2:6 Learning Technologies. Towards e-learning maturity.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 8 Mar 2012, 16:01

Theatre 1

Laura Overton opened by saying she'll try to give Fusion Knowledge a run for their money. She competes for the first ten minutes with Fusion Knowledge whose stand is like a Cuckoo's egg in this corner of Learning Technologies 2011.

This is the third time a speaker has stoically acknowledged the competition (volume, noise of other speakers and from stands).

This is something for Learning Technologies to resolve.

Between my notes, taking this pictures and the distractions of the Fusion stand I now wished I too had opened up a Flip and grabbed the seminar. I struggling with my cryptic notes.

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These THREE STEPS, Review, Compare, Act (i.e. benchmark then act) are a digest from 90 steps indentified that I look forward to reviewing. These 90 are group intoed six main 'work streams' Laura explained:

  1. Defining Need
  2. Learner Context
  3. Work Context
  4. Building Capability
  5. Ensuring Engagement
  6. Demonstrate Value

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Benchmarking is based on comparing many business (was the gigure 1200?). With my sports interest I liken this to how in swimming (UK) every year benchmark standards in all events in all age groups, by gender at County, Regional and National levels are recalibrated.

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And this. Which strikes me as a poor way to show a Bell Curve, the Diffusion of Innovations 'S' curve showing early to late adopters, with laggards here shown as 'novices.'

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and this which desires that business aspire to entire the Top Quartile (though if all businesses did so wouldn't the way in which the scale is measured simply shift i.e. there can only be businesses in the Top Quartile as long as there are others in each of the others. I'm sure someone who is doing a Maths degree will kindly step in and explain this too me. I'll ask Laura Overton too as she was very, very keen for people to fire questions in her direction.

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Here we have the collated findings from a brief survey done with companies that the audience were asksed to do too. I took an inside view of the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) and with only three exceptions gave them a 1 out of 9, suggestions that on this benchmark they are wofuelly behind the rest of the world. I'd can see the value of every company doing this in order to gauge how they compare and therefore how fit they are to compete using advanced learning & development resources.

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Perhaps there is a case for making a digital record of things we experience for later appraisail.

I appreciate entirely the value of benchmarking. This depends on the quailty, scale and currency of the data. I trust that in a market such as this it will be up to date.

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If I can locate those who recorded this even on their Flip cameras, or view it as a podcast courtesy of Learning Technologies I will do so. I'll aslo add here any correspondence I have with Laura Overton.

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Moodle it for £5k

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 09:56

Prices fly, then collapse. Services and products you need to buy in or off the shelf you can suddenly build for yourself. Web design and web sites have gone flat-pack in the simplicity and pricing.

 

Not the first time I've used IKEA as a model.Life has become far easier with the expert made redundant. Now we can all do it. All that's requires is an experience mind.


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LT2:4 Learning Technologies. Telling Storis.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 8 Mar 2012, 05:38

Once upon a time ...

Did you here about ...

Three men went into a bar ...

Stories and humour work.

In the 1980s for a training film that told a story you went to Melrose for humour you went to Video Arts.

Video Arts were at Learning Technologies. I went to their presentation twice. Everything they are doing I applaud. They are reinventing themselves.

Melrose fell 15 years ago (or so). The market couldn't sustain the expense and somehow we always find ways to tell a new story. Whereas comedy never changes. All Video Arts need to do is to re-shoot with fresh actors on a fresh set.

Meanwhile I do Epic No.2 too.

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I don't need convincing that stories work.

Get up to make a presentation and you will hold your audience if you say, 'a funny thing happened to me on the way here ...'

You are about to tell a story (or a bad joke), but hopefully something true, or convincing.

With a child 'once upon a time ... ' can lead to anything you like. As a parent you make up bedtime stories and you find a way to keep them awake.

(Which is why my wife long ago banned me from bedtime stories. Too exciting, too long ... kept them awake).

So to the value of Storytelling.

I love the way Epic handled the BBC Guidelines challenge.

I have a copy.

How would I describe this fat, pack A5 arch-lever file manual of don't and don'ts and more don'ts?

(I'll dig it out and take a picture)

It's about as engaging as a brick wrapped in last week's Sunday Newspapers.

Trainspotting for creatives?

Coming from advertising you see that a story can be told in 30 seconds.

I was on Kit-Kat. 'Have a break. Have a Kit-kat.' This was the era of epics in microcosm, classic adds such as 'Middle of the road.'

Ask. Do ask.

'Like all good learning we're going to be interacting.' Said Naomi Norman.

And we did, to a degree.

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I love the science. I cannot get enough on how the mind retains and uses information.

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is not rocket science, it is obvious. Human kind have spent far longer sitting around fires telling tales than watching TV.

Academics in education recommend the use of narrative.

‘Stories are the method by which people impose order and reason upon the world.’ Fisher. (1987)

‘By framing events in a story it permits individuals to interpret their environment, and importantly it provides a framework for making decisions about actions and their likely outcomes.’ Weller. (2009:45)

‘Narrative … is a useful means of imposing order and causality on an otherwise unstructured and unconnected set of events, but it also means that some detail is omitted in order to fit into the narrative, and other factors are only considered in the limited sense in which they can be accommodated with the narrative.’ Weller (2009:48)

* spontaneous inclination to engage in a dialogue with material

* to improve some form of organisation upon it

* to make comparison with it

Bruner (1996.97)

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But what I look forward to is the story.

 

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As I boy I was sent to boarding prep school.

The 'dormitory captain' an older boy who supervised Ihe younger ones (i was eight) would tell a ghost story.

I could still tell 'the Monkey's Paw,' or 'The Mist,' or the 'Broken Stair.'

 

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I've been telling stories every since.

 

REFERENCE

Bruner, J.S. (1996) ‘Frames of thinking: ways of making meaning.’ In Olson, D and Torrance, N (eds) Modes of thought. Explorations in culture and cognition, pp. 93-105.

Fisher, W.R. (1987) Human communication as Narration: toward philosophy of reason, value and action.

Weller, M. (2007) Virtual Learning Environment. using, choosing and developing your VLE.

P.S.

More on Epic in due course. I've found a second page of notes. In the meant time yo can contact them yourselves:

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LT1.1 Learning Technologies. Day One. Snack from the eLearning Smorgasbord of Learning Technologies 2011

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 8 Mar 2012, 16:05

Olympia is like the interior of some vast World War II Normandy Gun Emplacement – all exposed blocks of concrete, exposed pipes, clattering stairwells and distant skylights.

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The catering is marginally better than that at Conference League game of football.

The layout of stands (or should I call them stalls) reminds me of an East European Department store in the early 1990s.

On registration you are handed a fat catalogue worthy of IKEA, sadly your journey around the show is anything like as smooth or as comprehensive – more like shuffling through a multi-story car-park full of baldy parked 4x4s.

The lecture ‘theatres’ are open plan and back to back; they conflict for attention. The combination of two speakers at it, never mind music from surrounding stands, obliges a ‘sit-forward and concentrate’ mentality. Imagine two noisy street shows in action simultaneously on the cobles of Covent Garden.

Stalls, not stands, was the behaviour too of some selling their services, with leaflets thrust into your hands and conversations started that you didn’t want whether eye contact was made or not); the inclination is to make a blunt response; the danger is that you soon find yourselves burdened with the equivalent of every Sunday newspaper in one go.

There was a hint of desperation about some of it.

None of this is conducive to enjoyment or appropriate for a showcase of e-learning technology 2011.

Despite this I’m preparing to return for a second day.

_______________________________________

I attended with a producer from E-Learning Productions. I go wearing three hats: producer of content, learning manager wannabe and Open University MA student in his 'second year' of Open and Distance Education - starting H800 around now (I think the virtual gates to the module open on the 27th).

The quality of the Learning Technologies presentations (with one exception) and the stands that we chose, rather than chose us, was impressive.

Much of it rings true, reinforcing our views on where we feel the market is going, this was especially the case with the Video Arts presentation ‘Video learning: anywhere, anytime and just in time.’

Blog entries below indicate where and why I think video will take over from print; this was demonstrated by Video Arts.


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Drawing on a back catalogue of high quality, humour and drama-based learning Video Arts have created a digital platform that allows users to pick ‘n mix clips to assemble a learning programme of their own.

These ‘chunks’ of ‘stuff’ make a bespoke learning programme.

I question how ‘right way, wrong way’ illustrated with humour always works, wondering if the humour and the performance is recalled, but the message lost. Which is why I’d expect all learning to be measured for effectiveness, the brutal answers of success or failure being the test of a good learning programme.

Emerging challenges in learning: proving the business value answered any concerns or interest I might have in gauging effectiveness.

Though competing with presentation immediately behind in Theatre 2, Jeff Berk delivered an insightful, packed, brutally stark means to measure the effectiveness of training.

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Jeff's background as an auditor showed, but my creative head said that whatever ways or means of communicating ideas, of sharing knowledge and experience, of teaching, of learning, that I may devise or select ‘off-the-shelf’ or from one of these ‘stalls,’ www.Knowledgeadvisors.com will tell me if it worked or not, if not why not, if so where so, and what to change and how.

An invaluable service that must form the part of any learning and training programme budget.

The thread of the presentation, that felt like an attempt to run through the contents of Wikipedia in 30 minutes, was that Training Managers should ‘replace the smile sheet, with the smart sheet.’

I buy that.

Jeff spoke of ‘improving human capital performance.'

I like the idea of ‘sensitivity analysis’ and ‘action metrics’ helping the learning consultant in a business discussion identifying actual rather than perceived problems to get a fix.

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I take away too the idea of ‘Scrap Learning’ and ‘Pointers for Change,’ as well as ‘Actionable Metrics,’ a ‘dashboard of summarised information for senior managers.

Had I been to Learning Technologies the week before rather than a week before a job interview I wonder if the outcome would have been different?

This stuff matters, and now I know it.

Jeffrey Berk is quotable; it is corporate speak at its best. ‘Leverage methodology into the spirit of the technology,’ he said.

There’s a White Paper ‘Standard Reports of the Future’ that you can request by email Jeff the COO of Knowledge Advisors on jberk@knowledgeadvisors.com.

Leadership for the 21st Century and how to achieve it was a dreary, ill-considered Slide Show read out by a presenter who I sensed hadn’t seen the slides until the moment they appeared on the wall behind him. He read, verbatim from notes, his head buried in the lectern.

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No introduction, just started reading as if someone had put 50p in a Juke Box.

The best demonstration of how to present badly I have ever witnessed and after two minutes I was desperate to escape.

Mercifully what was billed as 30 minute presentation barely lasted 10.

The clichéd jigsaw piece analogy, the lengthy self-quoting of the long dead American who devised the programmed smacked of an attempt to sell 1970s fashioned Moon Boots at a desert oasis.

Fusion Learning have a theatre-cum-stand.

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They compete successfully with the hubbub and take the idea of the market stall to its obvious corporate conclusion. It would be unfair to say that Steve Dineen was selling product out the back of a lorry, but the simple lay-out of stand as platform, replete with headset and microphone suggested something of this ilk. Though no visitor to a street market is going to be sitting in front of a laptop, watching an interactive presentation and receiving a back massage.

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Quotes can be scattered around a presentation like baubles on an over-decorated Christmas tree, but this one from Einstein worked in this context.

‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’ Albert Einstein.

Fusion Universal take an idea that is a decade old and do it better.

How to animation on Microsoft Product delivered via a searchable ‘just in time format.’

For example, I can’t get my head around the plethora of choices regarding headers and footers in the new word package. Type, search, click and I get a voiced animation of how to do it. A decade ago I bought this kind of thing on a CD-ROM for £75, today I take out an annual subscription, select from a multitude of bite-size ‘info drops’ and may even contribute my own ‘how to ‘ clips should I think I have a fix, a better fix, or an alternative fix or just fancy myself as a presenter, voice over artists and director/writer of video-based assets.

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Like Steve, I too change into ‘soft shoes’ when faced with being on my feet all day.

Had I a budget this alone would have had me signing up to their services.

He wore sheepskin moccasins. I think if all delegates left their shoes at registration and padded around in slippers or socks it would be conducive to a far more chilled atmosphere.

walk around the lanes in Brighton and you will come across many of the organisations presenting here; Epic, Kineo, Edvantage and Brightwave are four that come to mind. Perhaps these organisations should band together to bring customers to them on the Brighton Seafront; or does Wired Sussex does this already? __________________________________________________________________________________

Naomi Norman introduced Epic beginning with a reminder of their impactful, PR coup, the annual e-learning debate in the Oxford Union.

This is a non-Oxford event, despite the implied cache, that uses the debating chamber ahead of the academic year.

It attracts interest, not least to Epic’s LinkedIn E-learning forum that I find a constant stream of intelligent, current thinking, or as Naomi put it, ‘good, memorable, engaging interactions.’

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The presentation in relation to mobile learning is succinctly expressed as:

‘Learning in the moment, Learning across space and learning across time.’

We saw highly simplified 2d animations that mixed a bit of silent movie text and Captain Pugwash paper-cut outs to give gobbets of information on First Aid. More at www.firstaid.co.k (free download).

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Also some of the 20 hours of materials, 4 hours of it video, for Collins for whom Epic have turned an entire two years GCSE Maths Curriculum into a smart phone App.

My colleague and I debated some of the more confusing visuals for this course on the way home and reckoned our children would only engage with the content if they had to, and would probably try to cram it all in the day before an exam. i.e. parents become tutors and facilitators, somehow having to cajole some interest in engagement early on, with rewards for completion of modules.

The idea that a book will teach a 13 year old something, let alone a game like platform, ignores the fact that in isolation this kind of self-directed learning doesn’t happen without the outside influence of schools, parents and most especially peer pressure.

Marcus Boyes clicked through a mobile learning website developed by Epic.

It was a convincing demonstration of how rapidly a complex task that may have taken many months, can be compressed into a few weeks, leaving content creators to compose. I liken it to an conductor having an assembled brass band with players who can play and instruments that work, rather than finding you have to first make the instruments and then learn how to play them.

Go compose.

Far from farting about (as he put it) I found Marcus informed, engaged, practical and agile. He is the perfect tech savvy person, passionate about what he does and mindful of the need to make things easy. I want to go home and 'make an App' myself. In fact, with a shelf of 4,000 charts, 400 photos and about 10,000 words the Skieasy Books I took to Collins in 1991 may yet find their way into publication.

I can see virtue in going straight to Mobile application.

If it works in this format then you’ve got something write, as Einstein desires, you’ve made it simple. Then you get all the gains of being mobile, engaging the learning any moment in the day when they have downtime.

There’s a White Paper. Stand 54. Or from Epic’s website.Or from me now that I'vedownloaded it.

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Go register. They're worth it.

And this App for LinkedIn from EIPC looks useful.

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I like these papers, but sometimes question their academic validity.

A white paper pre-supposes peer review and scrutiny in an academic setting. Has this happened? I let my OU colleagues take a view. If published in a reputable journal I'd buy it.

Go see.

Much more on Video Arts to follow.


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Text Volume Control Slider Thingey

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 4 Feb 2013, 14:20

 

Once you have the definitive response to a fact, something composed as a wiki that has been thoroughly reviewed I'd then like to see this thinking, initially just in words, animated via a slider, the kind of volume control we're used to seeing, only this, instead of increasing the volume of sound, increases the number of words.

 

Text Volume Control drawn in Dia

 

In this way you choose your moment to read a bit, a bit more, or a lot, the whole thing, and or everything (in theory) that went through the author's mind when they wrote their chapter/boo/report in the first place by having not just the links, but the references open and ready to read in an instance.

Indulgent?

The expert mind does this anyway. By the time you've read so extensively on a subject that you hear its authors speaking, you tap into a form of this. You could at any moment offer a summary, or talk for hours on 'your' subject.

I would like this opportunity from the start, from the point of ignorance, to nudge back and forth, to 'rock n roll' as a soundengineer would put it, finding the point to cut a sound track, the 'sweet point' for where I was at, where enough was being said to engage me ... or, were I about to alight from a train, a bitsize thought on which I could chew 'til the opportunity arose to indulge and nudge this 'text volume control' along the scale.

Now think of this as a slice in a pie.

 

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From Drop Box


Open it out and you migrate away from text alone to include stills, video and sound. For example, the image-based expression of this concept, and a particular issue/idea/fact/report, begins with a single image, like a book cover, or TV title sequence ... as you run along our 'volume control' the number and range of images expands.

Just a thought.

 

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My head's like a hedge-hog with its paws on a Van de Graff generator

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 6 Nov 2011, 17:54

Or a guinea-pig chewing an electric cable behind the TV.

Same thing

Strange things are going on with my head.

The synapses are snapping.

This is the state of my mind.

It's exciting. It's exploitable.

The internal goings on of my cerebellum have gone from guinea-pig to hedgehog via a Frankenstein-like jolt of the old juice.

Last like this?

Undergraduate 1983.

(And most of yesterday, and the day before of course).

This is what studying does to my mind. It's taken eleven months in OU Land. The buzz began ... a few weeks ago.

It is like going from clueless first year undergraduate to the second year. Even online, you need to get the lay of the land. Even now that are vast swaves of OU activities, e-tivites, buttons, bolt-holes and affordances to discover, chew over, toy with and adopt, or adapt and move on, or stay with, or who knows what.

Funny. I never use the OU library anymore.

Once signed I just Google. Same thing? Instance ... rather than the time it takes to make a coffee.

Web-entrepreneur 2000. I was buzzing then too, mind and on two postgraduate courses - the OU (a somewhat earlier version of Open and Distance Learning) that in technology terms was like using a hand-pushed lawnmower to cut a path through a waterlogged meadow full of cattle. The mismatch between cutting-edge practice with a leading web agency and the course was the difference between reading an e-book or going into the Bodleian and thumbing through a vast, leather-bound index.

The best place to sthink on the planet. At a desk surrounded by ancient books ... with a lap-top. It's as if you are sitting inside the minds of everyone who has ever thought there before. Now we can get an inkling of this when you feel like minds are listening. Are they?

I feel the desire once more to spill the content of my mind ... to empty every moment I have sought to catch. Why? Not just because I can (although I appreciate there are plenty of people who keep diaries all there lives. But because of the way it wakens up your mind to a version of a moment in your past. These moments flip and change perspective as you revist them. Most odd.

"It's a matter of love; the more you love a memory the stronger that memory becomes."

Nabakov.

Note the time. I have slept in the last 24 hours.

About four hours between 15h30 and midnight in two or three chunks.

Actually I've buzzed a lot over the years. It's who I am, when I'm being me at my best.

Skieasy was an interesting idea.

I still have the chess set I made out of a selection of bottled-waters. Dasani, that Coca-cola flop, is the King of the Black Pieces. I cheated a bit, Copella with their squared off bottles are the Castles and I had to use Fabreze for the Horses.

INSERT PIC HERE

There are currently several voices in my head, people from the past, smiling and asking questions.

I'm being emotive and passionate about some new fangled way to do use video and they're listening. I feel this way about the Internet. My head is firmly back in 2000, with the electricity of an undergraduate and the knowledge of a PhD. (I could have one if the various courses I've done had been or could be validated and LinkedIn). Eventually.

I intend to study for life, life-long learning - literally.

I'm planning a module beyond the MA in Open and Distance Education that I'll complete in October 2011.

Foundations in research probably rather than a different subject, though in good time Modern History (yet again), and Geography (yet again).

E-learning enables this

Fine Art can never happen; I can't hunker down like that. (Unless I can do Fine Art via an A3 sized tablet? If it's good enough for Hockney, it's good enough for art students. Fine Art as a e-learning course. (Now there's a challenge. And an opportunity.)

Never say never when it comes to e-learning. Someone will be running an e-learning Fine Art MA within the year. You could use a Kinex to draw onto a tablet rolled like a piece of Clingfilm onto a pane of glass. Observed at work by your tutor a million miles away (or a few hundred at least). You see it is possible.

Never say never when it comes to e-learning, which is why I propose a new module for the MA in Open and Distance Education. It's called 'The E-learning Entrepreneur.' Any one listening? (Not at 2h05). I'll linkIn with it and see what bubbles up from the digtal hyrdrosphere.

I don't care if it takes six years for each one of these courses, I'll be around for a long while yet.

My grandfather made it to 97 and never lost his marbles. Bless. He died with some thoughts on Newcastle United and a swig of Newcastle Brown Ale (he'd worked in brewing from the age of 14 to retirement).

My mind wanders. Good. It should. So should yours.

New thinking doesn't idle around in one pocket of your subconscious, it dances like a Minx feeding on your the maelstrom of your mind.

And I'm yet to say what I sat down to write. Right.

Doodles on backs of envelopes. I have a lot of envelopes. I must have invested in a large supply a decade ago. Stick down the back and use them for notes. Light, a soft write with a gel-pen. Takes a doodle. A gem. An idea.

This process started 48 hours ago.

One image. A second. (The PDP thermal idea). And since then I've been revisited by an idea I had in .... 1998, I suppose.

ADD SKETCH HERE ... currently on

a) the back of an envelope

b) on a piece of scrap wallpaper (very good for doodles as you can spread wide)

and c) in my head (which should be in bed)

Title, Synopsis, Abstract, Review, Précis, Student Notes, Book, Book + References.

This is a volume control for 'volume' of words rather than sound.

Depending the time you have to engaged with the contents of the author's (or authors' heads) you skate or roll this slider back and forth until you hit on a what you're prepared to take in. You can always expand, if the mind takes you there ... you can always roll into the synopsis if your train comes in or you see an email you're prepared to answer.

(Email, I'm starting to treat it like the old postal service - two deliveries a day, at a time to suit me. So before breakfast and after lunch. If you want me otherwise phone.)

Where was I? So, text volume control thingy.

I was just learning Dreamweaver, on a Mac, probably an LCII or something c.1998.

Maybe or earlier. TBT hadn't been born I was sleeping where he'd shortly be sleeping (actually I was sitting where he was born a few weeks later, at home, caught by me some time before the Midwife made it over from Cheltenham. Another story.)

I won't have a record of it, I was months away from blogging. Unless, which is likely, I was keeping a diary off-line. Would that be 'logging?It'll be just as lost though as it'll be a floppy disc. Or were there CDs by then? Or possibly an IOMEGA Zip drive?

And now we have LCD TVs the size and thickness of a postage stamp.

Re-reading 'Contemporary perspective in E-Learning Research' can't help my sleeplessness.

Far from boring me to sleep, which it did six months ago, I find single words are scorched into my forehead and sentences are like liquid gold being poured down my ear. Oh dear. I think I understand it.

I commit a book crime.

Historically I have always read a book and taken notes at the same time. This goes back to Oxbridge Entrance exam reading lists and beyond.

Get it while it's hot on the first shot.

I did this with Conole et al in August.

I could even read those notes, but those notes WERE WRITTEN BY SOMEONE ELSE.

So I have to start over, this is TAKE TWO.

Anyway.

The sacrilege is the use of coloured Marker Stabilo Market pens on the pages of the book. This is because I'm treating the book as if it isn't there, as if it is in an iPad (I don't have one, I'll give me my address if you feel I should have one).

Yes, I am using a highlighter pen on the paper-based text because I've got so used to doing this in e-journals exported into Word.

Of course, this Stabilo Pen should DOUBLE as a TEXT READER so that said highlighted words could be drawn straight into my laptop and quoted here ... with the link and correct Harvard Reference put in place for me too. Pretty please. Tech person reading.

(Do tech people read? I suspect they call it something else. Scan?)

Oh heck. Not another idea. It's only 1h36. (or was when I started. That was nearly an hour ago. I don't edit, I know not how, I ellaborate.)

I have this fear that having an idea is pointless, because whatever you can think of someone has done it before.

Which makes this a race, catching wave after wave after wave of information as it comes in on the digital ocean, hoping, believing, that from time to time it'll be a big wave, my wave and I'll ride it like a pro-surfer. Enough. I need a coffee. That'll send me to sleep.

Anything's possible.

I look at this, my invention, my interpretation of how Personal Development Planning can lift a life, raise your spirits, send your career into a controled cycle of advancement and I want to sing about it. I want to be on this ride and bringing others along with me.

What can go wrong?

Coffee poisoning.

So, this Microsoft guy who is recording every moment of his day (and night? and ablusions?). You have to be at the head of the team, not the pond fodder. I gave this a momentary go voice recording three one hour swim coaching sessions. I am yet to listen over. Perhaps I'll do it once to see what lessons I learn.

On the other hand, someone interested in coaching swimmers may listen to the lot of it. And with nothing in vision there are no Safeguarding Children issues ... I consciously only used swimmer's names once I had hit pause.

My coffee's cold.

Do I warm it up? I'll not sleep. I haven't exhausted the possibilities.

A swimming pool beacons.

Once was the time I swam every day. I'll do so again. I can subdue my mind only if I sink the body around it.

 

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H808 ECA away!

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 19:53

ECA AWAY three times this morning, only and hopefully correcting some typos and sentences in the last few paragraphs as the minutes ran away.

Here's a pretty view

End Grab H808 ECA

I'd prefer to set a false deadline, like a day ago, to have pushed to the final version then, given it the 'over night' treatment and revised it. This is often what clients do with their creative suppliers ... very wise. Gives you a day or two safety, and a little time to reflect and make something better still.

Problem was, because of how I had developed my thinking yesterday I had to rewrite from the top. That ran beautifully but I had to ditch half the evidence I was going to use, though I only replaced it with a couple of more fitting items. This was easy, the problem was diddling around with the loading process. I'm sure for H807 I ended up submitting version 6 when I meant to submit version 16. This can of course be disastrous if not corrected, so I'd recommend submitting a least a day before and then verifying that only what you wanted to be sent in is there.

Debrief anyone?

Now's the time to do it.

Then a visit to the PDP. the real one.

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Buzzing

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 3 Nov 2012, 06:10

I'm not tired, which is the worry; it'll catch up with me. When I wake up with a clear, original thought I've learnt to run with it. Time was I could have put on a light, scribbled a bit then drifted off again. 17 years of marriage (and 20 years together) I've learnt to get up. And once I'm up, then I know it'll be a while before I can sleep again.

(I'll sleep on the train into London; at least I can't overshoot. I once got on the train at Oxford on the way into town and woke up in Cardiff).

I have the thought nailed, or rather sketched out, literally, with a Faber-Castell Artist Pen onto an A5 sheet of cartridge paper in Derwent hardback sketch book. This seems like a waste of good paper (and a good pen), but this doodle, more of a diagram, almost says it all. My vision, my argument, my persuasive thought. My revolution?

Almost enough, because I then show how I'll animate my expression of this idea by drawing it out in a storyboard. I can do it in seven images (I thought it would take more). I hear myself presenting this without needing to do so, though, believing myself quite capable of forgetting this entire episode I'll write it out too.

I once though of myself as an innovator, even an entrepreneur. I had some modest success too. Enough to think such ideas could make me. I realise at this moment that such ideas are the product of intense mental stimulation. To say that H808 has been stimulating would be to under value how it has tickled my synapses. The last time I felt I didn't need to sleep I was an undergraduate; I won't make that mistake. We bodies have needs. So, to write, then to bed.

(This undergraduate thing though, or graduate as I now am ... however mature. There has to be something about the culture and context of studying that tips certain people into this mode).

You may get the full, animated, voice over podcast of the thing later in the week. I'll create the animation myself using a magic drawing tool called ArtPad and do so using a stylus onto a Wacom board.

(Never before, using a plastic stylus on an a plastic ice-rink of a tablet have I had the sensation that I am using a drawing or painting tool using real ink or paint. I can't wait 'til I can afford an A3 sized Wacom board ... drawing comes from the shoulder, not the wrist and certainly not the finger tips. You need scale. Which reminds me, where is the book I have on Quentin Blake?)

Now where's a Venture Capitalist when you need one at 04.07am. That and a plumber, the contents of the upstairs bathroom (loo, bath and sink) are flooding out underneath the downstairs loo. Pleasant. A venture capitalist who is a plumber. Now there's something I doubt that can even be found if you search in Ga-Ga Googleland.

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Deep thoughts on e-portfolios, the meaning of life, minds, like-minds and Avatar, via Nottingham university and GCSE hydrology.

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 21 Nov 2013, 10:58

Does your e-portfolio get in the way or support what you do?

Whoever you are?

Whoever has a stake in it.

Thinking out loud, started on 12th October 2010, picked up again and rolled around my mind on 13th January 2011.

Wherein lies the beauty of a blog, or in this case an ECA that requires reflection on the mind games of the past four months.

There’s a picture in the New Scientist of how ants, in their hunger for a sweet that has been dropped in the gutter have gathered in, or moved away some forty or more leaves which now form a circle around the fallen sweet.

This is what I am doing as I reflect on the activities of H808, each e-tivity, each note, paper, report, forum entry, blog or e-portfolio asset is a leaf that until now has been scattered somewhere, online, offline, some in a heap, some laid out, some yet to blow down from a tree.

My mind, its little and large pathways, the synapses that run between the left and the right hemispheres, are busy with a thousand ants moving these leaves aside, while gathering some of them up to make a pattern.

From Essay Style Visualised

And then, for a moment I saw that six petalled flower I have drawn before, the shape of the A’ Level essay, but somehow I see also a podcast and the analogy fails and without even the politeness of animated transformation my flower becomes a Christmas Tree.

From Essay Style Visualised

On this tree, the structure of the ECA, I will hand 10 or more ‘things.’ No good my just thinking about it though.

Time to move on.

I recommend the use of eportfolios, whether or not they are packaged as such. Often the affordances are there anyway. I’d like digital building blogs as simple and as versatile as Lego bricks so that I could have a button away, on my homepage, depositories and repositories, that do the jobs of blogs, wikis and eportfolios without any need to feel they are separate entities, rather the words I think, and images I take or draw, or recordings I make are like a rain shower (with the occasional deluge or drought) that is taken care by the system, MySystem.

Is this a homepage? All those toolbars? Mine's a mess. I dream of a computer screen A1 size, two of them preferably and a homepage as busy as a photomosaic coverpop.

Currently it looks like this. Could someone offer some advice on how to get my head around this before my entire home page is a Venetian Blind of unwanted toolbars and browsers?

From Drop Box

MySystem would be an assemblage of tools and services to store, collate, elaborate upon, develop, select and share all that can be digitised. Text for the most part, but images too, still and moving. And numbers, as stats or formulae. Assets in polite society, 'stuff’; for a Saxon word and something in Latin for anyone trying to pull rank.

Whatever definition we come up with for ‘e-portfolios’, someone else has another one.

And why not, this is but functional flotsam-and-jetsam on the Digital Ocean?

My first blog in September 1999 covered this. Perhaps I should shift my thinking and take in ideas of both oceans and clouds, the binary code the water molecules the form the water cycle? Now there’s an idea: the Internet as something fluid, changing, responsive ... predictable to a degree ... its shifting patterns advancing relentlessly rather than recycling, the apocryphal butterfly in one part of the system beating its wings and having a profound effect elsewhere, the Twitter-effect. This analogy of oceans and clouds hasn’t changed in a decade, perhaps it is the Geographer in me?

 

From Drop Box

 

I am still looking at a year 8 geography exercise book featuring the water cycle.

‘Analogies taught man to think.’

Now who said this?

I have it on a sheet of motivational quotes given out at the School of Communication Arts by John Gillard. This sheet and some other papers, a portfolio of ideas, is in a portfolio (the physical kind). There’s a storyboard for a couple of commercials: I could shoot these on my phone. Indeed, given that one takes place up a cliff face the phone might be the best camera for the job. No amount of Googling has located it for me. Proust perhaps? Shakespeare … or a commentator on Shakespeare?

All e-portfolios are squirts of ink into this ocean.

All content is drips, drops and an occasional multi-coloured deluge. Though pre-empting bespoke consultative decision making on behalf of a client, real or imaginary, my simple advice regarding e-portfolios is - do it all.

1) Your own - that does the business and ought to be the final repository for e-materials that are being shared or assessed, that is easy-peasy to link or upload for those who are expert in these things or have a system that they play well and with which they can 'sing.'

2) A smorgasbord of off the shelf e-portfolios that people may get free, or as part of their trade or other association, or be happy to subscribe for (after all, there's a good deal that can be done with them that is personal, off-campus and away from work).

3) Their own. The end result, the content and where and how it is finally presented is all that matters. In any case, there is every chance that your students are more e-literate than you are, speak the code like their Mother Tongue and will do what so many students have done before them and re-invent the digital wheel. The content is its own subject matter expert – it is out there being freely exchanged and wikified to the ‘nth’ degree of finality.

4) With institutional, administrative, management and support from academics and tutors that also encourages peer support and so enables 1, 2 & 3.

Everyone will have their own idea of what an e-portfolio is … if it ‘is’ anything at all in the physical sense, because of course it isn’t until you print it off, or play the asset. It isn’t a trunk, it isn’t a filing system.

Perhaps in truth it would look as bland as the grey matter of your brain?

Why and how does this help anyone?

By visualising something you give it powers.

The problem lies where your visualisation doesn’t match with mine, but as the designer it is my world that you have to live within in. I suppose we each of us require a bespoke website and a team of people working on it to forge this link between what enters and leaves our heads.

So why do I hear the voice of Dr Angela Smallwood?

It was the JISC conference at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Hall of Parliament Square.

It was a workshop on e-portfolios. ‘I was a baby’ (quoting Neytiri from Avatar talking to Jake).

But I bought into the idea of ‘deeper thinking’ and how it is achieved. Wasn’t the computer in Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy called ‘Deep Thought’ ?

Food for thought?

Breakfast.

Bacon, toast and a fried-egg.

Only blog for the day, I promise.

Work to do!

 

 

 

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Where we'll be in 2025 from the perspective of someone in 1975

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 9 Jan 2011, 09:02

For the introduction of my H808 ECA I've visualised a Movie Poster.

Man 2025 from 1975 Sunday Colour Supplement

 

This comes from a Sunday Newspaper, in 1975.

This image, along with some shots of the diary went into a blog in 2003. In 2006 I tried to establish which paper this image came from and failed. You'd imagine something right wing like the Sunday Telegraph, though it is more like to have been the Observer, or even the Radio Times? Strikingly there was no view taken on this pose looking for all intense and purposes like one of Hitler's Aryan few. The thinking behind it was that by 2025 we'd all be mixed raced, bald (for no apparent reason) and semi-naked due to our ability to control the climate.

The only reason I chose this as my personal movie poster for now is a desire to reconnect to my youth and a sense that I had a future, another 14 years at least! I wouldn't mind getting fit again too, overweight at 90kg and doing no exercise for several years has me far, far, far from this absurd image. Though age 19, with hair, this was me courtesy of swimming every day for an hour or more and sailing/windsurfing in the summer and skiing in the winter. Heady days.

Politically I should mention here that I swing between green, yellow, blue and red ... ocasionally even purple. I blend my vote too, rarely voting for the same lot between local and national elections and often preferring the independent choice. At uni I was a member of both the Conservative and the Labour parties sad

Who cares? I do. I can keep them all at arms length, especially the two parties that keep asking me to stand ... oh yes! My busy body considered an asset in local refuse collection, building, transport and various pollution issues. I should keep my mouth shut, but as you can see, I don't and it isn't difficult to point content like this (editted) to a person that matters.

For the conclusion I've visualised a Film Review.

I've also done a cartoon of one of the course authors as a weightlifter with the words RESEARCH on one end of the bar and the word PRACTICE on the other; the idea being that you get mentally fit by doing a work out that balances research and practice.

Where I come unstuck is with the PDP matrix.

 

1%20Your%20PDP%20pan%20for%20H808ECA.JPG
From Drop Box

 

I look at this and I see a train station message board on some concourse such as Crewe with few destinations of interest. I'll have to work on this.

The least  I want is the Message Board at St. Pancras International with Paris, Lille and Brussels written up, though my most inspired train message board will always be Gar du Nord, Paris. As a teenage my jaw always dropped to see destinations like Berlin, Moscow and Turin, where across the channel pre Eurotunnel you were supposed to get excited about Ore, Doncaster and Birmigham International sad

Any ideas? Perhaps if I visualised it as an Advent Calender? Or a box of chocolates (life, is after all, life a box of chocolates according to Forrest Gump).

Ideas on a plate please.

P.S. A reminder to myself to dig out a collection of scrapbooks from 1987-88 when I was at London's, School of Communication Arts and perhaps a reminder to start doing this again. Or do I? I'm getting into the habit of photographing things that catch my eye, uploading, cropping and fixing, then tagging and putting them online. Perhaps I'm a candidate after all for the e-diary, a record of everything, all day.

 

 

 

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Signed up for H800!!!

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 7 Jan 2011, 15:15

Why I thought I'd need to delay this 'til 2013 I don't know. I'll press on no matter how busy I get. I'll be busy doing what the course teaches which makes it somewhat easier.

Have I ever written such a short entry? Not often.

The rule us 'serious' bloggers established in 2002 was 1,000 words per entry. Crackers. Even more crazy were the 24 hour writing marathons we did. 1,000 new words, on the hour every hour for 24 hours while messaging each other to make sure no one cheated (as I did) by writing 2,000 words in an hour then catching some sleep (which is exactly what I did).

Under 500 words sounds about right, 350 possibly optimum for one of these.

And on your own blogsite so that you don't nark the locals.

If I organised another Blogathon it would be 350 words an hour I think based on wanting to and being expected to read and respond to other people's entries.

If there is a theme it is suprising what this kind of effort produces, it captures some of the exam fever you get sitting in an examination hall, where a few neat sentences come from nowhere as the cut off is reached. When you've exhausted the possibilities it is surprising what gems the mind then throws up.

OU 'til October 2011 then.

wide eyes

Now, what's this about a Unit 10 task for H808 on wikis to write and an ECA to submit????

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H808 Interview with Dr Z A Pelczynski on teaching, essay style and leadership

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Friday, 24 Feb 2012, 05:24

ZAP

Interview with Dr Z.A.Pelczynski

How does teaching differ between school and university?

What do you look for in an essay?

Can leadership be taught?

Could leadership be taught online?

 

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Balliol College Record and late Christmas Cards

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 8 Oct 2011, 14:52

The Balliol Annual Record 2010, and some late Christmas Cards, arrived on our doorstep this morning.

The Balliol Annual Record, the print version of LinkedIN or even Facebook, has had its day; it was a few months late, which hints at its demise. The news is thin, I'm in touch with College Alumni through LinkedIN in particular, Facebook a little bit  - even Friends Reunited.

Every word that I read here should be online, I dare say it is.

I shall therefore vacuum pack this issue in the belief that it has to be the last.

Not even my father in law has a word and he's been contributing for the best part of 60 years. I'll see him in a few hours time and ask about this. I'm inclined to podcast him too, I have some questions regarding the migration of his School for Leaders to an online course - or at least modules that can be enjoyed largely when and where you wish. At 85 it is staggering how engaged he is with the new technology and what it can achieve.

Looking forward to how the OU reinvents itself on 2011; I know things are afoot.

If anyone reading this has a foot in the door I'd love to come in and do what I do best - stand back, observe, contemplate, then offer ideas from a rich and variegated career.

P.S. a spellcheck that doesn't recognise Facebook as a word is due for the scrap heap. Surely the OU can tie in to the OED??

Collating evidence for H808 ECA. Interestingly, in a parallele existence, I'd say that all the criteria I meet for H08 I have duplicated in Plenck and the LinkedIN Oxford Alumni E-learning group.

What I learn from engagement with like-minded enthusiasts is already outweighing what I am learning from this course; is this par for the course?

How come I know people who will be or are more qualified than the MA ODE can offer without ever having gone through these hoops?

Meanwhile, for reasons only known to her, I have read and chewed on a book from a psychoanalyst on the dilemma and trauma of the English School boarding school boy. I was packed off age 7 years 11 months and after a few aborted Colditz-like escapes got out age 16 years and 9 months.

I've been dealing with the fallout these last 18 months. My wish?

That I'd never, never, ever been sent away to boarding school.

Forty years on I am trying to undo the damage the places did to me.

'Sausage machine' is a good term for it ... the brutal bullying without anyone to turn to is something else. And yes, I had to fag and got out because I had no desire to be put in the position as a Public School Prefect (and for a variety of other reasons, including being told I could not take Art, would have to play rugger over swimming, could play the lead in Macbeth if I cuddled the new English Teacher and would not have a girlfriend until I got to my gap year or university).

Oh, and I hated the House Master and his assistant who were clueless dimwits who could never have held down a job outside the system.

These places in the 70s still expected to churn out obedient servants for the Armed Services, or the Civil Service or the Colonial Service ... to feed the public school need for staff.

This or your Pater & Mater owned most of Northumberland or Sunderland so education would be the only little bit of suffering you needed to endure before you could be ejected as a Prefect ready to be prefectorial over your minions.

My mission for 2011? Campaign to close all public schools; the current scam whereby they retain Charitable Status if the most laughable abuse of power, quite as bad as MP's expenses as a challenge to 'the way things are done.'

Quote me.

 

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Learning on the go. Mobile learning changes everything?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Thursday, 3 Nov 2011, 16:44

Mobile Learning

Discussing this with Ian Singleton of icanplayit.com two weeks ago, I was Linked In to the author from JISC Doug Belshaw a few days later.

This conversation could soon link to a myriad of people cited and listed in the JISC report on Mobile and Wireless Technologies. This smorgasbord of a review will take a few weeks to consume; I'll want the recipe and I'll be back for more, repeatedly. It is a module in its own right.

It requires the early morning to take a three hour stab at this. Kukulska-Hulme (2010) says “Mobile learning is here to stay, even if in a few years' time it may no longer be distinguishable from 'just learning'."

As a student of e-learning the value of Doug Belshaw's JISC review is broad. Whilst mobile learning is the main theme, there is a suitable warming up to the topic via the development of e-learning and a broad acknowledgement of the key thinkers of pedagogy which touches on innovations in learning and the debunking of Prensky and his idea of digital natives.

It makes a good read for anyone studying Open and Distance Education with the Open University.

The theme that the author may not have seen that is pervasive throughout, is the idea of the e-learning entrepreneur; this seems inevitable with a device and technology that puts learning into the pocket of the learner.

Laptops and smartphones become a learn as I please, when and where I want, device. I wonder too, when cameras will become phones?

Reflecting on the devices that got unwrapped this Christmas some of us might prefer the Canon or Sony camera that uploads directly to Facebook, Kodak or Picasa without the interface of phone and laptop, or even a memory card.

If ou can think of it, it has been done.

This is one of those documents that will takes weeks of consideration as I wish to read all the references too, not that I doubt the author, but because often I find thinking such as this is like a digital conversation caught in the wind and there are a dozen other voices speaking at the same time. I've not come across Traxler before, for example. He’s cited 12 times in this review.

Though, just because someone else has already done it, does not mean that I might not do it better?

JISC Spotlight The presentation. “Students no longer need to engage with information and discussion at the expense of real life but can do so as part of real life as they move about the world, using their own devices to connect them to people and ideas, ideas and information of their own choosing, perhaps using their own devices to generate and produce content and conversation as well as store and consume them.” (Traxler, 2009, p.70)

Why therefore bother with a traditional university education at all?

Better to go straight to work and learn on the job, not simply as a trainee or apprentice, but by tapping into institutional and corporate learning. This is important The wider mobility of society has led to ‘approx-meetings’ and ‘socially negotiated time’ (2009:73) which, although mobile devices have not been designed specifically for educational purposes, has a knock-on effect upon formal education.

This disruptive effect has both a strong and a weak element, argues Traxler.

The ‘weak’ element of the disruption due to mobile devices in formal education is at the level of nuisance - such as ‘cheating’ during examinations, inappropriate photographs, devices beeping during class time. The ‘strong’ element of disruption, on the other hand, “challenge[s] the authority of the curriculum and the institutions of formal learning” (2009, p.77); students can effectively become gatekeepers and organisers of learning for other students in a way institutions have only been able to do previously.

Given the fragmented nature of the current mobile learning environment, there are multiple definitions of mobile learning; however, most of these definitions recognise the importance of

• context,

• access

• and conversation.

"[Mobile learning involves the] exploitation of ubiquitous handheld hardware, wireless networking and mobile telephony to facilitate, support enhance and extend the reach of teaching and learning”

(www.molenet.org.uk/about)

Due to funding arrangements, which sector is involved, and country-specific contexts, mobile learning means different things to different communities.

 

• On the go

• Every day

• Between classes and home (and work)

• Conflicts of complements formal learning

• More interactive

 

Woodill (2010:53) identifies seven main affordances of mobile learning:

1. Mobility

2. Ubiquity

3. Accessibility

4. Connectivity

5. Context sensitivity

6. Individuality

7. Creativity

 

REFERENCE

Belshaw (201) Mobile and Wireless Technologies Review 2010 Doug Belshaw, JISC infoNet

Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Learning in a Mobile Age’ (International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning, 1(1), 1-12, January-March 2009)

Traxler, J. (2009) ‘Students and mobile devices: choosing which dream’ (in ALT-C 2009 "In dreams begins responsibility" - choice, evidence and change, Traxler, John (Professor of Mobile Learning, University of Wolverhampton)

 

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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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Web usability or pimping up my OU experience

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Saturday, 27 Aug 2011, 13:23

Out of habit now I cut and paste all the course notes from H807 and H808 into word and reconfigure using techniques I have followed for a decade as a web editor based on the principles of Jakob Nielsen.

I got his book in 2000 and was using it when I started the MA in Open and Distance Learning with the OU in 2001.

Is the OU nervous about being so radical?

Is it note reasonable for us to expect them to keep uptodate? With a unit such as 'Inovations in E-learning' could an attempt at being innovative at least be made?

Some one is going to come along and create and manage platforms that are more suited to the next generation. I watch my son playing World of Warcraft, watching a downloaded movie AND texting friends and more than capable of keeping such a frenetic amount of activity going.

No wonder traditional classroom education bores him to tears. I'd home educated if I thought it wouldn't seriously compromise my ability to earn a living ... but then we wouldn't have school fees to pay?

The recent upgrading with colours and graded shading and a few clear icons and hugely welcome but compared to corporate sites the OU is at least four years behind.

This isn't 'sexy' presentation, but the lessons you pick up from Jacob Nielsen make text like this more suited to online reading. As I now NEVER print of, only diddle about with text and images in some kind of digital form I simply don't require text to be expressed as if it needs to be printed off or has been scanned in out of a book

Come on OU this is 2010, not 2002.

Perhaps when I've done my Web Editor bit on all the course content I could post it back in here?

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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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All change!

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The OU will change this VLE and MyStuff in July 2011.

Having blogged about implied and/or necessary improvements to some of the key tools it amused me to read that the OU are doing exactly this.

I embrace change so can't wait. I'll have another year to go of the MA.

Evidence?

A job ad in the Guardian for a couple of Project Managers to handle/manage 'business change' at the Open University.

'Would you enjoy leading on the development of new ways of working with Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) software, content management systems and eLearning projects?'

Curiouser, and curiouser.

I trust a way to transfer assets out of MyStuff will be produced.

Is it an in-house job, or has Cisco Systems, Google or Facebook come in?

We'll have to wait and see, though for someone fascinated by e-learning it will be interesting to observe as it occurs.

Perhaps the two roles could be roled into a number of collaborative exercises in H807 'Innovations in e-Learning,' with contributions from H808 'The elearning Professional' not forgetting H810 and the importance, particularly for the OU to be the King of Accessibility.

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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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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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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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UK Government Drivers for eportfolios

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 29 Aug 2011, 16:22

The Government's e-strategy anticipates that schools, colleges and universities "will want to develop eventually an e-portfolio where learners can store their own work, record their achievements" (Dfes, 2005).

The e-learning strategy for higher education also has as an objective "encouraging e-based systems of describing learning achievement and personal development planning" (HEFCE, 2005).

COMMENT life over death, growing rather than frozen, developing rather than not, moving over static, dynamic over passive,
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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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