The Crisis of Credit

This is an excellent video detailing the story of the credit crunch. I posted it as a AAA example of a electronic learning resource.

Proposal for e-pedagogy journal club

I would like to propose an online e-pedagogy journal club here at good ole’ Manchester University. I thought I’d blog my thoughts on the subject and then throw it open for discussion.

So here goes.

Purpose – To allow contributors to both discuss and propose journals on the subject of integrating technology and teaching. With the aim of enhancing our understanding and application of e-pedagogy
Target Audience – E-learning Techies and interested Academics and anyone involved with designing and delivering programmes
Engagement/Committments – 1 journal article per month to be selected by either a) a rotating choice by the members or b) online vote
Tools – Journals to be submitted to the social citation website 2collab.com discussion can either take place face to face or online via synchronous or asychronous tools. I propose the use of a wiki to coordinate the club.

I don’t mind coordinating the techie bits (wiki etc).

So is the suggestion:
a) something you’re interested in
b) ok in it’s detail?

All comments greatly appreciated

21st Century Technology Tools – Tutorials for Teachers

Just thought I’d quickly post this “e-book”21st Century Technology Tools – Tutorials for Teachers.

Is is written by Liz B. Davis who works in Belmont Hill School in the US.

EduMash – "Using Web2.0 for experience based learning"

Just had to post this. Is is a taster session for www.vitae-project.eu. (by foxdenuk)
Web2 for experience based learning
Is is a great example of:
a) mashing up various online tools for educational purposes (I found the presentation on their Ning community, the presentation itself is on Slide Boom, Graham Atwell’s video about personal learning environments is on youtube)
b) active, online, experience based learning – that leaves the learner with control over the artifacts they produce as part of the learning.

Blogging & Social Networking – Some thoughts about the social and educational potential for distance learning students

Embedded is the presentation that I gave today to a group of distance learning teachers at the Univeristy. It tries to give a brief overview of some of the lit related to this area and to start some discussion about how these technologies can be used in their learning designs.

It will be interesting to hear their stories as (or if?) these these technologies gain traction. Thanks to the participants with whom I enjoyed a great discussion about these issues.

Any comments or suggestions from today’s audience (or eleswhere) greatly appreciated

Some links from todays session

Social Bookmarks
www.delicious.com
(my account here is www.delicious.com/hardmana)

www.diigo.com
(my account www.diigo.com/user/actualal )

Micro Blogging
www.twitter.com
www.search.twitter.com is a great place to search for “tweets” of interest.
www.twitter.com/actualal is me…

Research Connect
http://rhogos.mc.man.ac.uk/gradconnect/

Social networking around slides (sounds whacky but it is where I posted today’s presentation)
www.slideshare.net
www.slideshare.net/actualal

Social networking around academic papers
www.citeulike.org/
www.citeulike.org/user/Actualal

Blog hosts
www.blogger.com (google’s version)
www.wordpress.com (a good alternative)

Blog search engines
www.bloglines.com
www.technorati.com

Some Content Aggregation for Educa Online Berlin

I didn’t get to go to On-line Educa Berlin but I’ve been keeping an eye on things from my Liverpool lair. Here are is some highlights/ content from today’s events.

Links
All Tweets
Michael Wesch Interview
Emerge community reactions

Feeds/ Links

Tweets (from hashtags #oeb08)
(Link)

Visit the Widget Gallery

The Official OEB Podcasts
(Link)

Visit the Widget Gallery

Sounds of the Bazaar

Visit the Widget Gallery

Blog reactions
(Link)

Visit the Widget Gallery

If there are any omissions please let me know…

Becta – Web2.0 benefits in the classroom

Becta have published research into the use of web2.0 in the classroom for children between 11-16.

The headline benefits of the research include:

1. Web2 can improve engagement and participation. This especially true amongst ‘quieter’ pupils.
2. Web2 facilitates discussion outside of the classroom
3. Provides extension opportunities
4. The sense of ownership can increase the quality of the work.

"Why do you blog and how does blogging help with your research?" Response from Science bloggers

Part of our strategy for promoting ResearchConnect and Science blogging in general, was to ask PhD and academic bloggers about why they blog. Scienceblogs.com have an “Ask a science blogger” section so a little while ago I sent in the following question.

“There are many many academic bloggers out there feverishly blogging about their areas of interest. Still there are many many more academics who don’t. So Why do you blog and how does blogging help with your research?”

Luckily ScienceBlogs posted the question so I’ve put up the links to the responses below:
Dr Martin Rundkvist
Drug Monkey (a biomedical research blog)
Janet D. Stemwedel
Brian Switek
Uncertain Principles (physics blog)
Science Women (blogging on the “intersection of science and real life”)
GrrlScientist

I’ll pick out more general themes in a later post (start of year madness means I’ve little time to spend blogging about blogging)

If you are a science/ academic/ PhD research student who blogs and you would like to share your ideas about why you blog you can add your thoughts here.

Photo licensed under Creative Commons by Oberazzi – source of which is here

21st Century Skills – Some thoughts about the future skills requirements in HE

The recent ALTC conference (altc2008) had an overarching aim to explore the digital divide. The many thought provoking papers, seminars and workshops, explored the myriad of ways in which access or otherwise to information is arbitrated by digital efficacy (digital native to digital immigrants). The conference brought into focus some thinking that I’ve been doing lately about putting together some workshops to explore the potential uses of social media and communication tools in HE.

The ALT-C itself provided an excellent lens through which to to explore the digital divide in action. The conference elicited a large amount of back channel and online activity. This activity included:

• Numerous blog posts (see bloglines, technorati) and micro-blogging posts (see Twitter search, Twemes) (searches on these site were for “altc2008″)
• F-ALT, a series of more informal fringe activities (see F-AlT wiki, blog posts for F-ALT at Bloglines & Technorati, micro-blog posts at Twemes & Twitter search – search criteria “falt08″)
• Some in-session activities such as the ‘Digital Divide Slam‘ and a live radio broadcast broadcast from JISC’s Emerge community
• An official ALT social networking space using Crowdvine.
• Plus the live interactive broadcasts from the key note speakers.

Those who follow these online and back channel activities have access to a rich soup of information, opinions and artifacts that afford opportunities for further reflection and engagement with the themes and participants (forgive the food metaphor but I’m writing this on the coach and I skipped breakfast). The overriding theme with these activities is that they involved social/ communication technologies in their organisation, dissemination and/or delivery.

This hive of activity greatly enriched my own experience of the conference; and aside from the conference I use a growing number of social and communication tools to stay in touch with developments in learning technologies, web development and social media.

There are many social media and tech savvy academics and researchers out there who use social technologies as part of their academic work including blogs(Intute, Science blogs), social networks and more. However there are likely many more who don’t.

As a learning technologist I’m interested in disseminating interesting ways that people use technology in their Academic/ Research lives (and outside these too) in a way that exposes researchers to these uses and allows them to make more informed decisions about the technologies that they engage with

A network is born – First intake sessions on ResearchConnect – Social Networking platform for Researchers at the University of Manchester

Well what can I say? After a summer of installing ELGG, tweaking and theming and generally crafting (beating) the software into a usable, corporately recognisable application, today we threw open the virtual doors to ResearchConnect. The scope of the project has expanded somewhat from it’s initial inception as a platform for PhD students from two faculties at the University into a platform available to the entire research community at the university.

ResearchConnect is a trial project that has come from a small bid from our Roberts money allocation.

So what are my hopes for ResearchConnect?

Well firstly I would like to gauge the appetite for such applications amongst our research community. Will members actively engage with the site and if so what types of things will they use it for? Will members find it useful to have this kind of facility and what are their views on the need (or otherwise) for social applications in academia? My hope is that we can find ways of using web2 and user generated material to provide opportunities for learning, networking and reflecting.

I am interested in communities of practice and networked and user directed learning. Will communities of practice emerge on ResearchConnect; perhaps within research groups or broader groups based on common research interests such as methodologies? Will members be able to find out useful information from the community and will it supplement the more formal VLE based learning opportunities that we currently offer?

What makes online communities tick and really inspire meaningful contributions? We will be looking at ways to foster successful researcher communities and to document the types of activity (online and face to face) that work/ don’t work.

With my web developer hat on is I am interested to find out which features of the application really matter. Is ELGG the right piece of software? What is good and/ or bad about it and how does it compare with other applications such as Drupal?

I’d also be interested to hear from similar projects of people using social tech in HE/ research environments.