What a distance travelled: reminiscing about H800

Hi everyone

If you are reading this, you may have found it as a prospective or existing student of H800. It feels emotional reflecting on our distance travelled as a family since I completed this course. We have been back home in England for 5 years now. Our lovely determined son has just sat his GCSE exams (16+ exams in the UK), and I have finally embarked on my Masters in Research Skills and PhD, in the Institute of Educational Technology at the OU.

I was thinking back to my H800 learner experience in 2009.  Of course some of the technology has changed now. Elluminate video-conferencing has been replaced by OU Live, and the discussion forums used to run in something called 'First Class'. But here is the mind map of my learning experience that I did at the time; I think it pretty much sums it up. Hard work; wondering sometimes how I would ever keep up and fit it in with the rest of life; having a few 'critical moments' and eventually prevailing and reaching the final goal posts. Seven years later, I look back and see what a turning point it was.

The best Christmas present

Just been watching the classic Snowman on DVD, and pleased to be returning to my old friend, my blog. I've missed you. Today our H800 ECA results came out, a few days earlier than expected. I'm really pleased with my result, especially since I ended up doing the whole thing inside two weeks. The best Christmas present ever though, is that we have climbed the highest mountain, flown in the clouds and still not back down to earth; my intelligent 10 year old son is for the first time able to read out from a book fluently, without stumbling and hesitating; finding it so difficult without either of us knowing why. Since early September I have finally got everyone on our side to realise that intelligence, 'coping' in the classroom and trying so very hard can mask a learning difficulty in a child. As a result of the Cellfield intervention from Australia, my son's specific difficulties have been vastly eased. I have learned such a lot about about the mechanics of reading and how we need to have the correct neurological pathways in place before we can read successfully. We are not out of the woods yet; but certainly in a much more hopeful space for the future. It's like him suddenly being able to swim beautiful front crawl after doggy paddle had to do.

So we feel deserving of our holidays, and looking forward to the new year with renewed optimism and hope. We have decided to stay in South Africa for the time being, and I am going to try and progress my research studies somehow with the OU from afar, maybe by next tackling H809 Practice Based Research in Educational Technology. I have a few weeks to decide.

Making connections

Three of us had a great time at the weekend making collaborative connections on Twitter to arrange an impromptu Elluminate session. Alan in Leeds, UK; Philip in Adelaide, Australia, and myself in Joburg, SA. We all came together within a couple of hours and had a good session, even with Alan's mike problems. (Technical glitches can be very frustrating in Elluminate).

I've been reading a paper for my ECA which talks about mechanisms for reducing the 'distance' in distance learning and boy, did we do it then. I've written about this before; I find student-led Elluminate sessions really rewarding and there is actually no distance between us as we grapple with the ECA and share our different approaches. For me it was indispensable as I really needed that connection to get the adrenaline running again. I'm now in Base Camp 2, which feels a bit easier. I will be working for two weeks flat out now, as much as I can.

The other wonderful connection I made yesterday was with a lady in the OU Library, who helped me with access for a paper and signed it 'from a fellow South African'. We have struck up email contact and it's fabulous to talk to someone who knows MK and South Africa as well. We can share the joys and challenges of each country. We love SA, it's spacey, and as she said has sun and big blue skies, lots of them. We as a family are considering moving back to England and to MK, for me to apply to do a PhD at the OU. But what to do for the best? There are three of us in the family, and each has their own opinion. It's like having two cakes, each with nice things and not-so-nice things on top. Of course one wants one cake with all the nice things, and it's just not possible. It's very rewarding to make a connection with someone who understands both.

Using Elluminate for student support

We had a really great informal session on Elluminate last night. My new laptop was the business, the audio worked a treat and nothing was going slowly. As I said on Twitter, the session actually changed my perception of Elluminate. It's a really valuable tool for getting together with fellow students and sharing experiences, concerns, laughs and giggles informally. I also loved us discussing possible dimensions of 'ownership' and drawing diagrams on the whiteboard at the same time - that's so powerful.

Keeping up in H800

I mentioned in my 'Visual representations' post that I am a visual learner and often think in diagrams. We have just read a paper at the end of Week 24 that mentions the 'collaboration, creativity and enjoyment' involved in online learning. Here's a diagram I made just to relax and get creative, about the time pressure issues I felt last week, and that I believe we have all been feeling to some extent. It's about keeping up as the H800 train rumbles on.

Each week we have to read, watch, or listen to materials or carry out other activity instructions. The prescribed time for the activities is 16-20 hours per week. Many of us find it difficult to keep pace with the activities, let alone share with the rest of the group, consolidate and apply to our own individual contexts. Every so often there is a double week, with two weeks of activities packaged together, and that can afford us some more spacious working and reflection time, as the diagram illustrates.

I particularly have been finding insufficient time to pause, review and consolidate, as I have commented here before. My earlier attempts at summaries were very rewarding and I would like to be able to complete those. The weekly cycle depicted here is how I organise my learning, but it is being compromised by what is, in my view, too many activities, especially at the end of the course when most people need a breather before ploughing into the final TMA. The learner's affective (emotional) response is another important aspect of learning ownership that we have been discussing, and I am sifting out the various dimensions of ownership here in my blog, before writing about it for the TMA.

Using Elluminate for learning

Saturday was the last scheduled Elluminate (audio-conferencing) session and more challenges. My audio disappeared and Elluminate always seems to work slowly for me and sometimes freezes up. Is this due to low bandwidth - Elluminate is supposed to be tolerant of such conditions? We sometimes record 1/10 of our promised access speeds on speed tests.

Later that afternoon however the audio disappeared completely from all applications on my laptop. Everything was set up fine and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. I made a decision, raided a hoard of nuts as it were, and invested in a brand new laptop. I'm sitting writing on it now and it's really great so far. We'll preserve the old one as the family games machine....

Overall technical problems and slow access speeds have been quite a serious issue for me on H800. Tuesday is our next informal chat on Elluminate so I'm keen to see how things behave then.

Meanwhile fellow tutor group member Tracey comments that 'sometimes I'm not sure what the objective of the session is or what outcome if any has been achieved by the end of it'. I personally question the practice of pasting extracts or summaries into text boxes on the whiteboard - my own whiteboard jumps around remorsely when this is being done, so much so that it's very difficult to look at. The whole session for me then becomes dominated by what the technology is doing rather than what I'm supposed to be learning. The best Elluminate session that I attended was when Julie made a record of what we were saying in a separate word doc and posted it in the forum afterwards. We didn't have to worry about what the whiteboard was getting up to and just spoke freely.

I will be researching use of Elluminate for low bandwidth conditions for my ECA, and also how to use it for the most productive and enjoyable learning experiences. It's a great tool with loads of potential.

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).

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).

TMA02 Reflections

It's the week after I completed TMA02, the second assignment. This one carries twice the weighting of the previous one, ie 40% of the continuous assessment mark. I found it challenging, creative and tough all at the same time. I love being creative and put in three diagrams. I love illustrating my work and now hope that it's recognised as adding to my textual explanations - after all a picture speaks a thousand words and we are meant to be multi-media, are we not. Even thought about making a video to describe what I understand by learning experience, but that will have to come in the goodness of time!

After we have done the TMA, we are supposed to have an Elluminate session to discuss what we would change about it and what ideas we have about being assessed. Personally, after getting to the end of the Everest challenge I would rather not ponder about different ways I could have made it to the summit - this way was just fine thank you! All my chosen activities allowed me to investigate / express my understanding of a particular aspect of technology enhanced learning and its application to my specific context. I also brought in lots of connections to quality management which is my professional area.

I did write about blogging, about being inspired by fellow tutor group members John and Tracey, and about how rewarding I am finding this blogging thing. I regard it as a fun 'scrapbooking space' within which to privately reflect and share with others if they are interested. I am am also inspired by Martin Weller's blog (http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk) where he explains that that blogging provides an alternative forum for academic discourse – liberating academics from the need to write journal or conference papers if they wish to put forward an argument or discuss a point of view. By being able to self-publish in a blog, it is possible to establish an online academic identity. Much food for thought....

Too much of a good thing?

I realise with some sense of responsibility that if one does a google search on 'OU H800' then all our reflective blogs are listed, for the world to read about our experiences on this first iteration of the course. Plus someone might pop in and point out that with my Road to Hell lyrics, I just used a pic of the A34. Wasn't that supposed to be the M25? Well the pic communicated my feelings about bandwidth problems, and yes the A34 does happen to be pretty high up on my list of roads to hell.

We have been discussing in our forums the Michael Wesch video 'A Vision of Students Today' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o

Students spending hours and hours online each day? Dis-engaged, facebooking through most of their classes, bringing their laptops but not working on class stuff? Isn't that because they have abundant, cheap bandwidth available? Perhaps too much of a good thing. Maybe being on the wrong side of a bandwidth issue does have some merits for our kids .....

Technological breakdown

This ain't no technological breakdown

Oh no, this is the road to hell....

You may have spotted I haven't been very reflective lately. When one does a completely online course, one has to rely on one's technology. It's critical to the course. If it doesn't want to play, then it truly is the road to hell. My poor PC has been going slower and slower and s-l-o-w-e-r and s--l--o--w--e----------r. On top of that, the international bandwidth from SA is really not what it should be. We have started doing speed tests and generally get a fraction of what we pay for. When it takes 40 minutes to load a 5 minute video you feel like you are in a monstrous traffic jam. And we have the highest bandwidth available in SA. I don't regret the experience though. It just brings into such sharp relief the bandwidth problems faced by most of Africa - not enough and too expensive.

Enter Alan, my trusty tutor group member on Twitter, suggesting Google Chrome as a faster browser and helping me out with it. Wow, what a speed difference. Our speed tests tell us we are generally getting about 3 times faster access, which is an enormous help. Same videos loaded in 3 minutes - felt like someone had opened up a new highway lane just for us. Thanks, Alan !!!!

Meanwhile found third PC problem - with my LCD screen. Have abandoned the PC and gone onto the laptop, usually the family games machine.......now getting time to enjoy being creative again.......

Two Blogs for different purposes

I have decided to go ahead with both my blogs for the time being - and just to be awkward, to use the OU one (only visible to other OU users) for my answers to the activities, and this Blogger one (visible to the public) for exactly what I say in my title - a reflective diary of my learning experiences. Whether this proves to be a workable format, time will tell, but so far Blogger seems like 'fun', with the ability to put include photos etc, and the OU one more utilitarian and feeling like 'work'. I don't want to mess up my fun anything goes space with activity answers but I may change that in the future!!

A Huge Morale Boost

OK OK OK so I wasn't back 'next week' it kind of got swallowed up with school hols, two SA public holiday weekends and having an awful lot to post about on Week 11. How can they put quality stuff and the digital divide in one week? :-) I care about both of these so much so I have to put my bit in again, even though I was actually planning to do a bit more real life. I'm all forumed out and very glad there isn't much of that this week. Are forums a waste of time and unproductive - or does the time that you spend on them yield rich rewards? As I said in Elluminate tonght, I don't think they've designed in sufficient time for both forums and activities on the course. It certainly doesn't feel like it; and it's a significant part of my learner experience. Talking of which, what a wonderful fabbo morale booster to be talking on Elluminate in the when-everyone-has-nearly-gone post session discussion. Loved it. Just to be talking, sharing and empathising about how tough we are finding it - and to see that others have exactly the same problems as yourself is sooooo heartening.

No pics of crocs and hippos yet, I know I said I would. Blogging to me is fun and the activities and forums have to come first. I shelved the fun part last week. Back soon......