Personal Blogs

I've long held the view that with so many distractions and alternatives, that without compulsion, however much magic you through at a learning experience, the students will not come. I am a month into a three month 'build' of some 12 VR tours of workshops and facilities at a large, recently merged college. Using a 360 VR camera, as well as stills and video, a series of learning environments are being built in ThingLink.

The 'stage set' as I describe it, the add-ons include induction, health & safety, training and testing. In its simplest form it is a slide show made of 360 images in which the viewer can explore all around the environment. In its more sophisticated form there are sets of well-researched and carefully written learning experiences and activities. The simplest pattern, no different to reading some text and then being asked some questions on it, is to follow up ten minutes of exploring such a world with a quiz.

Marketing have an interest in using these images to show of facilities. In turn I need some marketing in put to promote these kinds of learning experiences. I'd prefer to sell these to students rather than to simply compel them to 'do them' under close supervision of their tutor. 

Are you making use of 360? 

From a test tour of a carpentry workshop I am now well underway to complete similar tours on:

Car Mechanics Workshop and Motor Sport

Aeronautical Engineering

Catering

The End of Year Creative Industries Shows

Construction

Hair Salon & Beauty

While also producing what I call ‘Making an Entrance’ : VR tours into buildings to support autistic children who become anxious when going to new places.

These VR tours are shot on a Ricoh Theta SC. Hotspots, after various trials with available kit are being shot on my own Sony Alpha 7. This gives me mid, close up and extreme close up shots and video.

Along with these tours I am developing a quiz for viewers to undertake to identify certain parts and tools.

Developing the use of 360 images and tours with 'tags' for teaching and training

Everything I learnt completing the MA ODE from 2010-2013 indicated that creating e-learning elements, or as Jilly Salmon quaintly called them 'e-tivities' required time.

My experience is that educators lack this time

The time they have to teach is precious and taken. Therefore there is a role for the Learning Technologist as the enabler, who floats between the tutor or teacher, the course content and its objectives and the students. Compared to such roles in the commercial world, the Learning Designer comes to mind, the Learning Technologist is by and large a solo operator.

The role is evolving, as are the teams and our responses. Whilst invigorated by the chance to turn things around quickly and give them a go, my hope is that as learning technologists become more closely involved in longer term curriculum planning and preparation. Over time these 'e-tivities' will get greater investment in their creation. 

In the above the use of 360 cameras have been used in a number of sports to provide classroom insight to second year BTEC Sports students. By exploring the environment they can both assess the quality and nature of teaching and coaching provision, and also do a risk assessment. 

Delight at finding the OU has activated G Suite for education. I am well through training to be a Google Educator Level 1 (Certified).  Its impact and benefits are huge, not least replacing most the of current platforms used by the OU. 

This is my account - activated 9 days. I have been Google since the start, transferring to Docs, Slides and Sheets to rid my life of hideous Word, PowerPoint and Excel. It has grown gently from a basic and easy to use set of Apps, to a suite of simple to use, intuitive and connected tools that create the most versatile of learning set-ups.

'Sites' the blog platform could see off this environment I am working in now. This would be a mistake. I rave to colleagues about the affordances of this space because as well as being a blog, it is really a threaded conversation too. 

You can always find someone to talk to  

It's generational, but those of us brought up with handwriting competitions at school and handwritten essays and the written examination are judgmental of a generation who apparently have terrible handwriting and can't spell.

Do they need to? They can touch type - can you? Faced with a sheet of paper and a pen to write an essay they may struggle to be legible and make spelling mistakes - but how often do they do that, or will they need to that. 

Isn't it like complaining in the 8th century that scribes would be rubbish with a chisel putting their words in stone.

The goal is everything - clear communication. Doesn't technology deliver this?

An assignment managent tool from inception, through feedback, assessment and grading. 

Rather than retreat, the OU should become a residential, campus based university. Instead of making huge numbers of tutors redundant they should be kept on to work directly with students in blended platforms, directly and at a distance. The OU has the library, has lecture halls and seminar rooms, and the real estate and land. 

Most importantly it has the courage to reinvent itself.

What else can it do when every university and college has attached to it a distance and blended learning component?

This step must be taken before it is too late. 

The first students should be on campus from September 2018.

This is both a reminder to me, and a suggestion to others. I find that far more is achieved by being positive and 'can do' without being overly enthusiastic to the point of being unreasonable. I am prone to say 'yes' to any request I get from people to do a thing. I was brought up where all request were met with a firm 'no' before I had even finished my sentence ... It's taken a few decades to get over that one.

Meanwhile, as I emerge from a temporary 'blank' where I went off radar with viral bronchitis that turned into bacterial bronchitis I am starting to feel refreshed and even re-invigorated.

The world of e-Learning is my future and at last I have a stake in it as a 'Learning Technologist'.

Many years ago I opted to get into TV from the bottom, not as a trainee producer. I got to make coffee, type up scripts, prepare budgets, organise presenters and actors ... and in time to liase with agents, to edit, to write scripts and direct.

I would have loved an apprenticeship, even an old fashioned 'Technical College' to my academic training at Oxford, even, to some degree to the mixed academic/hands on experience of the Open University MA in Open and Distance Education. 'Getting Your Hands' dirty as soon as possible matters. 

Think of working online as more like learning to cook or garden. You will never learn to garden or cook simply by reading books, attending lectures and seminars, researching and writing essays: you must do.

I would also hope and encourage people who study part-time to be 'in the business' they are studying - I was too tangential to it and so lacked the insight of a practising teacher (in primary, tertiary, or secondary).

Meanwhile, good luck Open University in a world where every university is rapidly offering distance learning online ala OU.

As I expressed here six years ago, one day every university will be like the OU, but will the OU ever be like other universities and have 10,000 campus based undergraduates and post-graduates on site? 

I wanted to write something about Active Learning.

I gave it 20 minutes of thought, writing it here. But the platform repeatedly failed to save it once I added tags and I lost it.

I've rather lost the will to have another go.

Another time.

Active learning is important.

Engage with you work.

Take notes through the filter of your own mind when reading or sitting through a lecture. Do not cut and paste or write down what is said verbatim. 

It is never too late to get this right. In my case I am completing my second MA and working on a dissertation. I have a habit of indulging unnecessarily a tortuous process of reading, note taking and refining when I could get to the point sooner simply by committing my ideas to paper right away. 

It is these moments that I will lace together into an essay, not a serious of highlighted chunks from the book. 

There is an abundance of material online regarding 'how to take notes'. 

What is the best. most effective way to take notes? 

The OU used to produce an excellent book on how to be a student or some such. 

This all began in May 2016 so I've been tinkering around with Veganism for a while. My daughter would argue that I am 'Plant Based' ... and lack the willpower or evangelism to be truly Vegan. I wear a leather belt and have sheepskin slippers on as I write.

Once in a blue moon, or to be more exact, once in a full moon I may succumb to something with egg, or even ham in it. This is invariably when I am away from home. In the A&E of the regional hospital for the best part of 5 hours I went on a quest for a Vegan sandwich and had to make do with the 'Vegetarian' Salmon and soft cheese sandwich. 

Why go vegan? Take you pick:

1) It tastes fantastic: fresh pesto and pasta, Siam soup, dips and chutneys, risottos and a wide range of burgers and falafels and of course salads and fruit raw. 

2) It's cheaper. This lot cost under £60. Meat, fish, milk and cheese would push this up considerably.

3) It's healthier. We've checked and between the variety of nuts and range of foods we lack no vitamins. Our gut isn't suited to take quantities milk we have become used to. It helps to cut out sugar too. Vegan's can be unhealthy and overweight by living on fizzy drinks and crisps. 

4) It's ethical. If you think this way. I didn't for 18 months. 'Nothing with a face on it' has been raised and killed.

5) It'll feed the planet. It will feed more people and reduce degredation of the natural environment.

6) I'll save the environment. Farm raised meat, poultry and fish, especially if it is on an industrial scale, damages the environment. 

7) It's less messy in the kitchen. No fat and grease on pans, kitchen surfaces or blocking the drain and sink. 

8) Less waste. Waste can be composted.

9) Less packaging. Fruit and veg can be bought lose and put in paper bags. 

10) Grow your own. For taste and convenience. You can grow a good deal of it yourself.

11) Saves energy. Less cooking. 

12) Greater karma. Relax. Love life. 

13) Be part of the movement. The 'early adopters' got there first so taking this on now you become part of the peak uptake. 

Some essentials for the Vegan Kitchen: 

A cookbook that has recipes with cultural relevance i.e. typically every day foods from India, Asia, Africa and some Mediterranean. 

Food blender

Spice Grinder. Great for nuts, pesto and chuntney blending too. 

Ginger

Red Onions

Garlic

Garam Masala

Tumeric

Chick Peas (buy dry and soak overnight)

Nuts: Pine nuts, cashew, pistachio, walnuts ...

Seeds: Sesame, mixed.

Soya Milk

And so much more ... 

I'm still doing MindMaps and still using SimpleMind. Having compiled, builty on and grouped ideas, authors, bullet points and quotes the entire thing can be exported as a Text File. A bit of shuffling about, a few added notes and links and you have a coherent and detailed article, piece or chapter.

In my case this is part I of a three part dissertation on the opening weeks of the First World War in Great Britain. 

As the fog clears and belatedly the history dissertation I have been working on for ten months starts to ’show itself’ to me I find I am using insights gained from degrees in geography and in education and from the one OU MBA module I completed on ‘Creativity and Change’. 

I am applying the theory of the diffusion of Innovations to the enlistment of civilian volunteers into Kitchener’s New Army in the first weeks of the First World War.