Visual representations

I like this Tag Cloud of terms associated with Education 2.0 from Week 23. Still have to do a little more research to find out what all of them mean. I enjoy visual representations and find them to be a vital part of my learning. I learn best when I am looking at something stimulating and often think in diagrams or pictures. Technology affords us the opportunity to communicate learning in a variety of media - one way that a unique learning environment can be created. We musn't forget this power of visual representation when we are busy trying to replicate paper based teaching techniques!

PS I found out from Wikipedia that a 'haptic device' is one which interfaces with the user via the sense of touch, such as a joystick or steering wheel.

ICTs in Education in Africa: infoDev website

At the end of Weeks 21/22, we were asked to look for documents that address the future of technologies or set out strategy and policy with respect to technology, perhaps for a given context. My immediate thought for the African context was to look at infoDev.org, which is a World Bank co-ordinated website concerning the broad topic of ICTs for development, and dealing with education as one of its topic areas. There is more material in here and things to explore than you could wish for; for example if you follow the link from the Education page, there are details of an ICT in Education Toolkit. In the 'Reference Handbook' of the Toolkit, there is an interesting animated powerpoint presentation dealing with ICTs in Education and development. A list of requirements is included for moving 'from potential to effectiveness', including the crucial need for training and support of personnel which John also highlighted in his recent blog post on this subject. As a trainer and consultant, I can certainly vouch for this requirement, and am interested in whether this can be effectively achieved to disparate and distanced audiences by utilising the technology itself.

More on ownership & learning and teaching approach

I found food for thought in a further two slides in the infoDev ICT in Education presentation that I referred to in the post above. As I continue to reflect on issues of ownership of learning for TMA04, it struck me that another facet of ownership is to what extent the learner's role is passive or active, and the teacher's role provider or facilitator. Almost at the end of the course, I am 'analysing, evaluating and constructing' as we move towards TMA04 and the ECA project. I'm not too interested in passively reading any more papers; the reflection and construction I'm doing here in my blog seems to be far more satisfying.

Working together with Ubuntu / ICTs in Africa

I came across this slideshare presentation last week when I was searching for information relating to current and future uses of ICTs in Africa. Although it's three years ago and the author says that it's very basic, I love its simplicity and design. It gets a couple of good messages across. Slide 8 is a photo collage showing the reliance on cell phone infrastructure and is taken in Joburg - I would recognise it anywhere. There's a lovely definition of Ubuntu from Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the end.

Check it out here.

ClustrMaps and community building

I'm very excited to see my ClustrMap working. Something that worked first time !!! I have an interesting dot in the middle of the States must be somewhere around where our dear friend Johnny is working at the University of Missouri-Columbia (Mizzou). Although America's a big place..... could be right off target. I think ClustrMap is a great visual representation tool for developing and tracking a community. Kind of brings people together when they can see where they are - I love it.

If anyone should happen to make a new dot on my map - please feel welcome to comment about anything. Perhaps you are considering studying H800 for next year. Perhaps you're already on H800 and we haven't met before. Perhaps you're just thinking about studying something with the UK Open University. Feel free to chip in, (comments are open to anyone with a Google account).

New ClustrMap

Just spent an interesting little while adding a ClustrMap to my blog as suggested by fellow course member Sacha. I've seen these in lots of places and wondered how to get one; anyway www.clustrmaps.com has all the details and lovely step by step instructions for Blogger users. A little fiddly but fun. Now I'm looking forward to when it starts updating.

On timing and skimming

Image: www.trcc.commnet.edu

It's official. I'm developing the art of skimming. As a new OU student and returning to formal studies after last graduating with my Masters in 1993, I have often wondered during H800 whether I would acquire this ability. In Week 12, we considered a paper by Richardson (2005) which observed that we can bring about desirable approaches to studying by appropriate course design, teaching methods and forms of assessment. Richardson also found that there is an intimate relationship between students' perceptions of quality, and the approaches to studying that they adopt. Perceptions of quality and learner experience are multi-faceted; important aspects including the course design and structure, mapping against learning outcomes, appropriate workload and assessment tasks. So drawing these threads together, I would say that although the course design and quality of materials is generally excellent, I am at a 'tipping point' where the course workload is affecting my perception of quality (and ownership) and is bringing about a more shallow or superficial approach. Either that, or I am internalising and consolidating the course material to such an extent that I can now adopt more efficient study methods!! In the next few weeks I have no option but to fit the course around ROL (rest of life) rather than fit ROL around the course, which I did seem to be doing in the beginning. TMA04 has to be finished early by at least a week so I'm going to be multi-programming between that and trying to achieve what I can from the remaining weeks of course material.

PLEs and ownership: A couple more thoughts

I've been thinking quite a bit about PLEs, the contribution of Mobile 2.0, and the issue of ownership of learning, about which we are being invited to reflect. As John points out in his comment on my previous post, the benefits of Web 2.0 and a PLE extend far beyond the educational world. We have been considering the 'blurring' of boundaries between formal and informal learning, and between work and leisure. It's interesting that I use nearly all of the tools in my PLE both formally and informally (my formal studies being H800 which is controlled by formal assessment criteria and a recognised masters level qualification). It's only the ones down in the bottom right hand corner - TV, Faceboook, cell phone that I don't (yet) use for formal studies.

Do all these new tools in my new PLE change the 'ownership' of my learning? I don't currently think so. I don't even think the boundaries are becoming blurred, but maybe 'jagged' as one of our course readings described it. My experience is that these tools enrich both my formal and informal learning, but in my formal learning I have to conform to set assessment criteria or else I will fail the course. My informal learning about leisure, things that interest me, information that I seek etc, belongs entirely to me. I see this all the time with my son - he conforms to what he must learn at school because he has to - but his informal learning really belongs to him. He is wagging his own tail, so to speak. The formal or informal nature of the learning is always what will control the ownership in my view, and what we pay for when we to go to school or university. There will always be a need for recognised, assessed qualifications for a labour market to function, so I don't believe that educationalists need to worry that the advent of Web 2.0 tools and PLEs is going put their whole function at risk - there will continue be a role for educational institutions as we understand them now.

I believe that institutions will have to maintain their core systems, such as VLEs (LMSs), library systems etc, but that as one of our readings has suggested, there will need to be a greater integration between student PLEs and the institutional systems, with the possibility of students docking into the 'mother ship' every so often to exchange data. As with life it's never going to be black or white, but various shades of grey, that will suit different individuals.

My PLE:how things have changed in 10 years

I'm interrupting my rearward looking introspections to do a bit of up to date posting and consider my PLE (or Personal Learning Environment). This is the acquired collection of tools and services that we use outside the confines of institutional provision. Mostly these tools are freely available on the web, feature rich and easy to use. There can be a contention between PLE's and institutionally controlled systems which may less functional and flexible, but do supply the consistency and uniformity required for collaborative work and assessment purposes.

We are asked to consider how our own practice and use of technologies has changed over the last 10 years or so. The technologies in my PLE above have revolutionised my life whilst I have been in South Africa - when we arrived I had access to email and internet browsers on a dial up modem and that was about it. I was amused to see how complex my PLE is already - and there are still tons of tools I have yet to explore. It has definitely become the richer for joining H800!

I don't know where I would be without the technology any more. It enables me to continously stay in touch with what's going on in the UK, to keep in touch with family and friends, to professionally develop, to network, be a part of online events, and to have fun.

Summary of Block 2 (Part 2)

Week 11 was really brilliant for me. We were at Sabie River Sun near the Kruger Park with family and I was studying whilst listening to the sound of hippos grunting and playing in the river right outside our chalet.

Week 11 was all around debates in e-learning, structured around the 'iron triangle' of accessibility, quality and cost. We looked at a very interesting Economist debate concerning whether or not technology adds to the quality of most education. We dealt with many issues close to my heart (like the digital divide) and when I returned I was posting away like crazy in the forums! As a quality professional, I thought the section on quality did not do justice to the entire debate. We only considered measures of end results such as student pass rates, and not the e-learning production process, or quality from different stakeholder points of view. However the week was great and I really enjoyed it (hippos and crocs did help of course).

Summary of Block 2 (Part 1)

Well here goes for Block 2. Thanks to John and Les for your comments and agreement about Block 1! Reviewing and summarising is biting into my Week 21/22 study time, but it's a double week so a little bit more flexibility. The course is very intense and there is such a lot in each week's worth of activities, that I have come up against a "No more!" moment, until I get this lot off my chest.

We started in Block 2 with Weeks 8/9, our first double week with activities linked together as an integrated whole over two weeks. I found these two weeks very tough, but at the end very rewarding as I could apply it to my professional understandings. We were firstly introduced to the ideas of learning activities and learning design. Learning design is the means of guiding the creation of learning activities, and representing them so that they can be shared between the different role players involved. This scaffolds the process and provides a way of promoting and sharing good practice. These ideas are immediately relevant to me in my practice of process-based quality management and the project that we did at the University of Pretoria for example, where we scaffolded the instructional design process by implementing an online quality management system, which enabled the instructional designers to review, evaluate and share the best way to carry out the steps of the design process in their local context.

I plan to use my blog to say more about pro-active improvement based approaches to quality management (now being referred to as quality enhancement in the UK); in contrast to the checking and inspecting approaches which have been used under the name of quality assurance in education for some time. For now off the soap box and back on the summary.

Weeks 8/9 showed us lots of different design tools and we got a chance to experiment with some of them. We used Compendium LD for example, and took a look at Cloudworks, a new social networking site developed by the OU for sharing learning design ideas. For me, there were too many tools to try out, I would have preferred to concentrate on one or two, especially since our forums were very quiet after the TMA. I would have preferred to be led through these vital two weeks with lots of examples and assistance, and did feel rather isolated at this time.

In Week 10 things really started to come back together again. We looked at lots of different sources for learning which are 'out there' now, beyond the confines of formal education. We considered the ins and outs of Wikipedia and Citizendium, opened up a Delicious account and did an exercise on searching for journals in the OU library. Finally we were encouraged to start blogging, which is when I experimented and set up this blog. I wish I had done it before!!!

The final activity in Week 10 was to look at re-purposing OERs on the OU OpenLearn website. I have to admit I never got as far as this one, despite how interested I am in the topic, and it's still on my to-do list to go back to.

Now I am in Block 3, I can see that we were starting to establish elements of our own personal toolkit - or PLE (Personal Learning Environment). I particularly enjoyed starting to blog, and making this blogger interface rather than using the rather pedestrian OU provided one. We return this personal / institutionally provided debate in Block 3.

Summary of Block 1

I've been wanting to do this for a while now. The feeling came after the end of Block 2, doing the TMA and just wanting to go back and review what we have done so far, to consolidate it in my head and enable me to feel that I have a instant-recall mental map of what we covered. I sometimes see comments in the general forums that the time pressure on the course is such that we don't often go back and review - and also that summarising and reviewing is a useful learning activity. Of course it is. So here goes for Block 1, my own take on what we did.

We started out in Week 1 with an introduction to some different learning technologies and a review of our own learning experiences. We were also starting the process of getting to know each other in the tutor group forums. We began to consider global technology developments and how the the different generations are relating to them - is there really a Google Generation?

Then in Week 2 we looked at different examples of technology enhanced learning from various countries, including a lovely interactive radio case study from South Africa, where I am based. There was an introduction to social views of learning and participation with John Seely Brown, who is one of the key authors for this course.

Week 3 continued with the theme - What it means to learn. We read about and discussed the foundational paper by Sfard on acquisition and participation metaphors, an introduction to activity theory, how people behave online, and vicarious learning - learning from the learning experiences of others.

Week 4 continued with the social dimensions of learning and two papers which form important pillars of the course - Brown et al. on the the situated nature of learning in its context, and Engestom's seminal paper on activity theory.

Then a bit of a change of direction in Week 5 to look at different forms of new media and how these relate to the acquisition and participation metaphors - do the new media suggest a new more social form of learning? We began to look at what Web 2.0 really is, and its implications for learning.

Week 6 was TMA01. It was highly reflective, asking us to explain how our chosen course activities helped us to understand aspects of our own or others' use of technology in learning, and to what extent we found the ideas of acquisition and participation useful. It was a big challenge to put together a piece of work like this after returning to formal study since last graduating 16 years ago, but I did enjoy it (in hindsight!!). I was thrilled with my mark for TMA01 and had managed to put together what the assignment was asking for, whilst relating it very much to my own professional interests.

Week 7 was a quiet week, we considered our experience so far in the course forums, and read about the whole idea of handling multiple perspectives, and promoting inclusive, collaborative discussion rather than competitive debate.

Recording this summary really gives me a good sense of what I have achieved and the distance travelled, both by myself and with my tutor group colleagues. It also helps prevent H800 indigestion!!

Getting back to blogging?

Well the news was that it took another two weeks for my son to get well....another week off school and then half term. Desperation sinking in that we just couldn't control his nasty cough. We've now covered absolutely all the angles with the doc and he's been back at school two days....only four more weeks til the August holidays. So good to see him back on form.