EdCompBlog

Fun with GPS

2008-08-18T09:15:00.006+01:00

I've talked about GPS in this blog before but usually in the context of geotagging pictures (e.g. Maps and mobiles). I am aware of its educational potential (see for example Ollie Bray and Noel Jenkins) but have never tried it with a class myself. I also know about leisure uses such as geocaching - mostly through my friend Gordon McKinlay and his Flickr account. I'd even heard of GPS Art projects. However I was unaware that GPS technology was beginning to find its way into games.

Day 213 - GPS for Geocaching
Originally uploaded by Gordon McKinlay

What prompted this post was an article I saw in a free paper (London Lite) about a game called Fruit Farmer from Locomatrix. Fruit Farmer is a bit like a cross between Pac-Man and orienteering! Essentially, your handheld device displays a virtual map with fruit to collect and "killer wasps" to avoid. You then run about in the "real world" using GPS to track your position. Get to the right place and collect a fruit. I suppose it is a logical extension to the Wii - using more than just your thumbs to control a game. You can play as an individual or with a group of people and can even design and upload your own levels. This has got to have potential uses in schools. The only problem might be the health and safety implications of running about outside while staring at a small screen. There are other games on the Locomatrix site and their tag line is:

Jumpers-for-goalposts for the Wii generation. Bringing gaming back outside.

Hopefully I'll have a go at their games soon. I'll let you know how I get on. :-)

Another GPS game site that looks interesting is Mscape. Their tagline is"

Get out and explore. Discover the unexpected – games, guides, stories triggered by your GPS location.

They have straightforward games such as Stamp the Mole, which are not tied to a particular location but there are "anchored" activities too (e.g. the London mscape challenge). According to the site, "Mediascapes are rich in interactivity — full of sound and music, images and text, videos and animation, narrative and dialog, all embedded in the space where you’re standing." As well as downloading the examples that are already there on the website, you can create your own mediascapes and upload them for others to use. Good fun and huge educational potential I think.

Finally, a few other games I came across while reading around this area (although I've spent even less time looking at these than I did with the two already mentioned).

GPS Mission - a multiplayer scavenger hunt
Boxed Pervasive Games - seems to be a cross between a murder mystery game and a GPS scavenger hunt
Google Earth Battleships - a two player game
PhoneTag Elite - a virtual game of tig
Word Finder, Google Earth Edition - A word search Google Earth GPS mashup!
The Shroud - a fantasy Role Playing Game that spills over into the real world.

What do you think? Interesting development or yet another nail in the coffin of "real" play? I'd be interested in hearing what Derek Robertson makes of these games and I'd be interested in hearing from anybody who has actually played one.

Technorati Tags: GPS, games, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Assessment 2.0

2008-08-07T08:54:00.002+01:00

Big plane
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

A comment from Joe on the previous post got me thinking about Assessment 2.0. I looked it up on Google, and the number one hit (at least on UK Google) is from the SQA! It was posted in March 2007 no less. So despite me saying they wouldn't go for Accreditation for Prior Learning they may be further along than I gave them credit for.

My only comment (so far) about the SQA page is that podcasing is conspicuous by its absence. I have spoken briefly about our SSciPod project before but in that post I concentrated on what our students did in school. What I haven't talked about yet is the second part of the project where we replaced an assessed presentation with a podcast from the students. I will write it up soon (maybe) but the edited highlight is that we found podcasts to be a very useful assessment tool.

More on SSciPod assessment soon I hope.

Technorati Tags: Assessment 2.0, SSciPod, podcasting, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Accreditation for prior learning?

2008-07-22T07:35:00.000+01:00

If you watch my Flickr account (and there is no particular reason why you should) you will have noticed that I have been more than a little obsessed lately with a guitar. This is because last October, I won the opportunity to build a guitar with Bailey Guitars thanks to Rock Radio, Bailey Guitars and Elixir Strings. (I took a picture of the goodies I won at the time.) However, I can't play guitar and wasn't sure I'd have the time to build it. Daughter Number Two though can play and so it was decided she would build it.

199/366: First try with an amplifier
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

Well now it is done and it is gorgeous -- it looks gorgeous and when someone plays it properly, it sounds gorgeous.

My daughter did a stunningly good job. Mark Bailey was a patient teacher and he is very, very good at what he does. In making the guitar she practised a huge range of skills and learned about woodwork, music, design and goodness knows what else in the process. (Grief, I wasn't there for most of the time and I learned a lot! At a trivial level, I learned what a luthier is and even learned a luthier joke!) She chose the wood, made design decisions, sketched logos, soldered wires, drilled, shaped, sanded, planed, ... As I look at what my daughter achieved, part of me feels she should be able to take the guitar to the SQA and say, "What do you think of that then? That's got to be worth a Higher at least!"

I realise the SQA are unlikely to go for this but with Curriculum for Excellence developments encouraging cross-curricular projects - building your own guitar offers all sorts of possibilities. Apart from Technology, Music and Art, there's some good Physics there too (e.g. investigating why is the bridge of the guitar not at right angles to the strings?). I don't know if Mark Bailey works with schools but if I were in a technology department, I'd be contacting him to find out!

In closing, I thought I would share a video of the first time this guitar was plugged into an amplifier. It will quickly become obvious why my daughter has claimed the guitar as her own and wont let me near it!

And do you want to hear the luthier joke? ... Look away now if you don't want to read it...

A luthier won the £10 million on the lottery. He was asked if it would change his life. "Oh no.", he replied. "I'll just continue keep making guitars until the money runs out."

...Well, do you know any better luthier jokes?

Technorati Tags: Bailey Guitars, Rock Radio, Elixir Strings, guitar, luthier, joke, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Re-visiting old sites.

2008-07-11T11:37:00.003+01:00

Well... when I say "old", some are fairly new. :-) What I mean is, I'll be using this post to look again at some sites I'd looked at in the past but have now realised that I missed something, have discovered they can do something new, or got excited again about the educational potential.

This post was prompted by an item from Terry Freedman - Increasing the conversation. He talks (among other things) about using Seesmic to post two minute video tips. I think I had come across Seesmic before but after watching Terry, I decided to go and try it out for myself. You can go to Seesmic and see the results of my experiments so far, or just watch my first attempt below:
It has to be said that while recording videos and sending replies is very easy, the interface is more than a little rough. Finding your way about is tricky to say the least. However, a final plus point is that the community seems very responsive. For example, within minutes of me complaining that you couldn't delete video, someone had posted a reply telling me how to do it.

Also, thanks to Terry's post, I found my way to Tom Barrett's blog and from there to Tom's Seesmic videos. I watched him talking about VoiceThread in a video about Online Collaboration. I thought VoiceThread was about annotating videos but I had obviously got it confused with a completely different site (which I will need to look up again too). I had played briefly with VoiceThread last year and clearly thought it had potential (I posted a Powerpoint presentation and a picture of a computer lab in October 2007) but never got around to using it with students. That's something I'll need to put right next session. However, the most interesting thing about Tom's post was his ideas for using VoiceThread as a way of encouraging peer assessment. Brilliant!

End of Day 2 with added effects from Picnik
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

Finally, and I'm not sure how I got to it from Terry and Tom's stuff, somehow I ended up at Picnik. I used to use Picnik (a free, reasonably powerful, online photo editing application) to edit many of my Flickr photos but since it was integrated into Flickr, I have not been back to the main Picnik site. This was clearly a mistake. The Flickr version of Picnik still has a number of effects and tools that are labelled as Premium - that is, you have to take out a paid subscription to Picnik before you can use them. However, I discovered that the Picnik website is now advert supported and you can access features that were previously only for Premium users. You can see the results of me playing with these tools in my Guitar Hero Polaroid here, as well as in my HDR-ish landscape and in my Orton-ish flower. Quick, easy and free - brilliant!

Technorati Tags: Seesmic, VoiceThread, Picnik, Flickr, Terry Freedman, Tom Barrett, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

How Do You Browse?

2008-07-02T09:39:00.007+01:00

Generation C - Connected, Communicating, Creative, ...

When I first came at Jordanhill as a lecturer (nearly twenty years ago - grief!) I told students that, before my children left school, they would be carrying a computer with them the way that I carried a pocket calculator. As the years have gone by, I continued to make this prediction... but I was becoming increasingly worried that my prediction was wrong. Then, one day, I realised they already had a portable computer that they carried with them every day - it's just that it's called a mobile phone!

Upcoming.org on Opera Mobile / Opera Desktop
Originally uploaded by coxy

One example of the computing power of mobiles can be seen in their uses as web browsers. The Opera Browser people published a report in May (see this press release) which they titled: State of the Mobile Web that describes some of the trends they have noted in mobile web browsing. For obvious reasons, the report deals only with the use made of their Opera Mini browser but I suspect it gives a reasonable view of mobile browsing habits more generally.

The part that first caught my attention (and that made me chase up the full report) was:

Almost 40% of traffic worldwide is to social networks. In some countries, such as the United States, South Africa and Indonesia, the social Web accounts for more than 60% of the traffic.

Interesting? I think so. For example, the top site visited by Opera Mini users in the UK was Facebook. My guess would have been that searching for information would have been the top use (and to be fair Google was in second position in the UK) but clearly social networking was the dominant use.

Also of interest was Opera's claim that the use of WAP or special mobile versions of sites was in decline. This may have something to do with the power of the Opera Mini browser but it may just be human nature - stick to what you know. If you use a particular site while browsing at home, you are likely to use the same one while on the move. My own experience with mobile browsing (generally not not with Opera Mini... yet) has been to stick to "standard" pages. Occasionally, where a page is too hard to read (text too small, or graphics throwing everything out) I've gone to it through Skweezer, which does a great job of rendering tricky pages so they work on my phone.

I was told recently that mobile browsing was very common in Africa because mobile phone coverage was more reliable than Internet access. I'm guessing that this is unusual and that for most people, mobile browsing is the exception rather than the rule. However, do we, as the Opera people suggest, expect there to be One Web - not one for "standard" computers and a different one for mobiles? One web to rule them all... :-)

So, how do you browse? Do you use your mobile for browsing and if so, are you aware of altering your behaviour or expectations?

Technorati Tags: Opera, Opera Mini, mobile, web, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Science or Technology or ...

2008-06-25T10:13:00.002+01:00

I can't seem to get off thinking about the nature, and the future, of Computing in schools, so here is yet another post on the subject... {I'll try to get back to more general educational computing themes soon.}

Danger, Will Robinson!
Originally uploaded by drp

We spent a good bit of yesterday morning wrestling with the Technologies outcomes for A Curriculum for Excellence and comparing them with the Science outcomes. It took us a long time and I'm not sure we're much closer to drafting a response. Once again, at least part of the problem was exploring the boundaries between ICT and Computing. We were trying to ensure that the ICT requirements, stuff that every pupil needs to know/do was covered but we were keen to see a good foundation for Computing Science courses too.

What prompted this post however, was a response to my Difficult teenager post by Rob Hill: Computing vs ICT. He says, "...I am not certain that Computing can ever be a science in that it does not have a body of fundamental knowledge independent of other sciences. It is a very important technology, perhaps the most important at the present time and thus deserves academic study."

I'll post my reply to him here as well because I'm still thinking it through and I'd be interested to see other people's views:

…I think it depends on how you define “science”. If you take a very strict interpretation of the definition you venture above, you wouldn’t be left with much! See for example the recent xkcd cartoon: http://xkcd.com/435/

I would argue that all sciences have bodies of knowledge that overlap to a greater or lesser degree. As a new science (and I’m still going to claim its a science… so there!) Computing has yet to establish it’s identity and stake a claim to a clearly defined body of knowledge - hence my teenager analogy. However, Computing is not unique in arguing about what’s in and out… it’s just older sciences have more consensus about what’s in! (For example I heard a great programme on the multiverse where the experts admitted that many physicists think what they are doing is philosophy rather than physics.)

I suspect there is however a growing body of science knowledge that we can legitimately claim as our own. Some of it may have grown out of other sciences but Computing has stamped its identity on it and pushed it further in a particular direction that it may have gone otherwise.

… I think I need to think more on this though. Thank you for pushing me to think it through a bit more carefully.

Final thought is a poster I blogged about a while ago but got no response at the time. The poster said, "[Insert subject here] is the unequalled agent of mental discipline and the embodiment of constructive and inventive thinking." Anyone want to have a go now at guessing what subject is being described?

So, any comments? Computing - a science or a technology. Discuss. :-)

Technorati Tags: Computing, Computing Science, Science, Technology, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Computing Science and Games Programming

2008-06-18T09:25:00.003+01:00

I caught a report on the radio this morning about the UK computer games industry. Perhaps not surprisingly, they are finding the same recruitment problems as the rest of the Computing/IT sector and are complaining they can't get enough suitably qualified graduates.

BBC NEWS | Technology | UK games industry needs brains

Franci plays maze
Originally uploaded by nico.cavallotto

What the radio clip I heard included and what is absent from the video clip above was a conversation with a university person. The university lecturer said that applicants to the course needed a good A-Level Maths to get in. "You need maths to make computer games?", the reporter exclaimed with obvious shock and amazement! I then did my grumpy old man bit and shouted at the radio expressing my own surprise at the reporters surprise. :-)

At the risk of flogging a dead horse long after it is a greasy spot... I wonder if the reporter's incredulous response is caused in part by the confusion between ICT and Computing. If you see the two as equivalent, it could lead to the following wrong thinking:

Computing can't be all that hard, can it? I mean everyone can do it already. You just press a few buttons and the computer does it all for you. Why a three year old child could write a computer game! Now maths... maths is hard. Are you sure you need to be able to understand something as complicated as maths to produce a game?

Perhaps I'm being unfair to the reporter but the amazed response to the idea that you need to understand maths and physics and make use of a whole range of other complex disciplines seemed to show a lack of understanding of what computer game creation, and perhaps more generally what Computing Science is all about.

We really need to do a better job of explaining Computing Science. We need to make clear the complex, inter-disciplinary nature of Computing Science and the intellectual challenge and rigour that is needed to be successful in Computing. Also, we need to make clear the huge skills shortage that our Computing/IT industries are facing unless we get our act together soon.

What do you think? Have I misrepresented the reporter? Are most people clued up on the complexity and challenge of Computing? Or is schools ICT making Computing seem low-level, boring, unchallenging and unrewarding?

Technorati Tags: computer games, ICT, Computing, Computing Science, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Difficult teenager

2008-06-17T10:13:00.004+01:00

I still find myself talking about the difference between Computing and ICT and the need to make the distinction in education. There is general consensus (I think) that the distinction has to be made but there is still uncertainty as to what Computing is. The best one line definition I've heard is:

Computing is the science of the digital world

This is OK for a sound bite but perhaps not hugely helpful in defining the core of the subject. However, at least it asserts that Computing is a science.

Day 349 / 365 - Purple or Violet
Originally uploaded by JasonRogers

As we were talking about this the other day, I found myself describing Computing (well perhaps just school's Computing) as a difficult teenager. Not quite sure what it is yet. Growing out of what it was but not clear about what it will be. As Britney would put it: "I'm not a girl, not yet a woman".

The more I ranted about this, the more pleased I became about the metaphor.

It wasn't that long ago that Computing was the golden child - the cute baby that everyone wanted to cuddle. We were turning pupils away from Standard Grade classes and parents were writing to their MPs to demand that their child would get in!

Now we've turned into Kevin the teenager - all angst, acne and anger! We've fallen out with our siblings (ICT) and fallen in with the wrong crowd. Our parents are worried but don't know what to do. Our only hope is that we will be able to get through these troubled teenage times and Computing will take its place with the grown ups of Physics, Chemistry and Biology and make a positive contribution to society, science and schools. However, it could all to easily go wrong. We could skid off the tracks and end up marginalised, disenfranchised and in dispair.

I'm not much further forward in defining the essence of school Computing but at least I had fun pushing a metaphor until it squeaked. What do you think? Helpful analogy or stupid waste of time? :-)

Technorati Tags: Computing, science, ICT, teenager, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

{I can't quite believe I quoted Britney Spears in this blog post... Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!}

SSciPod - Schools Science Podcasts from Strathclyde

2008-06-16T09:24:00.004+01:00

I'm doing some research on podcasts for learning, teaching and assessment with a colleague. We worked with a small number of Biology students who were nearing the end of their teaching course and asked them to record podcasts for use with their pupils. It seemed to go well and we are now looking through their evaluations of the process.

Since the students have finished their analysis, I think I can share their work more widely. My colleague and I came up with all sorts of duff names for the project but one of the students suggested SSciPod and that's the one that everyone liked. However, I'm not sure we have reached a definitive decision on whether that stands for Strathclyde Science Podcasts for Schools or Schools Science Podcasts from Strathclyde. We also wanted to work Jordanhill in there somewhere too, but did not always remember. I suspect we should have been more careful to establish a consistent brand. :-)

Whatever it's called, I found it a really interesting project. The students covered a range of topics and used a variety of methods of presentation. I'm very impressed with what the produced. Our intention is to do it again next session but probably with more students and probably starting earlier with the pupil podcasts.

Although the students have finished their evaluation, we are still interested in getting feedback, so feel free to visit the SSciPod blog and leave your comments/suggestions - especially if you are a pupil or a teacher who uses the podcasts with pupils.

Finally, there is a fair bit of published research on using podcasts in Higher Education but most of it focusses on lecturers producing podcasts for students to listen to. There seems to be little published research on students producing their own podcasts. Also, while there is some research on podcasts to aid learning and teaching, there is less on podcasts as a means of assessment. (Instead of delivering a presentation of their research, our students recorded a podcast. They listened to each others podcasts and left left comments and questions for each other online. We then assessed their podcast and their online interactions.) Therefore, if you know of any research, school or HE based, on learner produced podcasts or podcasts for assessment, I'd love to see it.

Technorati Tags: SSciPod, podcasts, science education, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

CALLing SickDog

2008-06-10T22:37:00.005+01:00

I was at a meeting of the Scottish ICT Development Group today. (That is SICTDG - pronounced Sick Dog!) As always there were parts that were more relevant to me than others but almost all that was discussed was interesting.

158/366: Victoria Quay
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

SICTDG tours the country and pretty much every meeting is in a different Local Authority but Friday was a bit different because we met in the Scottish Government building situated at Victoria Quay in Leith, Edinburgh.

I hope to say something about the item I presented on the future of Computing as a discrete subject in schools later but here I am going to talk about some of the work of CALL Scotland. (CALL has recently changed the words in its acronym... I think - it now stands for Communication Aids for Language and Learning.)

First off, they provide a number of freebies. For example, they have developed a screen reader called WordTalk. It is a free plug-in for Microsoft Word (Windoze only I think), which can speak the text of the document highlighting stuff as it reads. And as I said at the start of this paragraph... it's free. The second freebie is a high quality Scottish accented computer voice known as Heather which, did I mention this already, can be downloaded free. It should work with any program that is SAPI 5 compliant.

Next, an interesting piece of news. CALL reported a change in the CLA licence that most (all?) schools have which allows them to make copies of material for educational purposes. For some time, the CLA licence has allowed greater freedom to copy for people who are "visually impaired" so that the material can be adapted and made accessible. However, recently the relevant phrase in the licence has been extended to "visually impaired or otherwise disabled". The CALL centre's understanding is that this will cover people with a range of print disabilities, for example dyslexia. It will allow schools to scan textbooks etc. and make them available to pupils electronically. CALL are setting up a national database that will enable schools to share scanned material so that many pupils can get the benefit of the legally scanned and electronically available texts without every school going through the pain of converting the text to electronic form.

Finally, and on a similar theme, CALL told us about how they have worked with the SQA to produce Adapted Digital Exams. This means that candidates who would have needed scribes or readers to help them access the exams, can now use screen readers to listen to the paper, or change the background colour of the paper, or enter their answers electronically - depending on their needs. CALL's research shows that the pupils benefit greatly from this approach because of the sense of independence that it gives them and that it can save schools time and money because they do not have the problems of arranging rooms and employing extra invigilators and scribes, etc. I think it is brilliant that such a facility exists but I must admit, I'd like to see the provision extended to every child that wants to make use of it, not just those with print disabilities.

Technorati Tags: CALL Scotland, print disabilities, CLA, screen reader, Scottish voice, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

As my grandfather used to say...

2008-06-03T08:37:00.004+01:00

I suspect most families have sayings that get passed down through the generations. Certainly, I find myself quoting my grandfather a fair bit. For example, "It's the auld dog for the hard road and the young pup for the pavement!", is one I use with my own children when I'm feeling a bit hard done to. "Better oot than in", is one my wife is not so keen on, and I still use his toast every New Year: "May the best you've seen in [previous year] be the worst you'll see in [coming year]".

My Grandparent's Wedding
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

If I stop to think about it, I'd have to admit that few of these sayings are entirely original but I was surprised recently by the source of one of my favourites: "The graveyards are full of indispensable men.", which my grandfather used to say when he felt my dad was doing something daft like struggling into work when he was clearly too ill to be upright never mind working! A recent discussion of these sayings prompted me to look up that last one up on Google. (Where did we get answers before Google?) It turns out to be a quote from Charles de Gaulle.

Clearly Charles de Gaulle was a great source of wisdom as one of the other quotes on the page Google found was: "How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?". :-)

So, how does your family wisdom shape up? Do you have any words of wisdom from your grandparents that you want to pass on?

Technorati Tags: family wisdom, quotes, Charles de Gaulle, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

{Oh dear. And it was all going so well. I felt I had got back into the swing of blogging with two or three posts a week, and then, silence! I've been fairly busy but mostly it was just poor organisation. Hopefully things will be easier for the next couple of weeks but in the meantime, this was an off topic post to get me going again.}

Stephen Heppell - Question and Answer

2008-05-09T12:06:00.002+01:00

{Again, blogged live... may edit later}

It is a stumbling block that we are still building 19th century schools for the 21st century. We have to ask the hard questions. Why do we ring a bell and expect 1000 children to be hungry all at the same time? Because it is convenient. Shouldn't have a counsel of despair but should ask the questions - talk to teachers and learners. For example, consensus document created in the Cayman Islands. You can't change the curriculum without changing the buildings. Gave example of allowing pupils to vote for the walls they want to knock down. He talked about children re-designing the toilets. They got rid of the special bullying ante-chamber. Got doors that fit fom top to bottom. Went unisex. - Bullying disappeared. 75% of school children try to get through the day without oing to the loo.

Can't do a "Dick Turpin style of teaching - stand and deliver". :-)

Use the school production as an example of collaborative cross-curricular learning - the models are there. Gave example of Be Very Afraid video on grammar rap. Is it music? ICT? English? What we can say is - it's learning.

Example of Classroom of the future (also from Be Very Afraid) - fibreglass classrooms. Open, colourful, spacious, lots of working spaces. Lots of examples of engaging pupils. E.g. classroom in darkness, children hiding under desk, archive film footage of goose-stepping Nazis, Teacher walking across desks shining torches... while the children read the Diary of Anne Frank. If Anne Frank had a mobile, what would she have txted?

Me, we, see. My stuff, stuff for our community and stuff we share. We need to see social networks like this. Places that re personal and places that are shared. {Way of avoiding the Creepy Treehouse Effect?} Gave example of closed Heads Together community where a forum on bullying filled up messages from head teachers being bullied. The "we" space in the community allowed them to discover things they didn't know - had no idea of the level of bullying going on.

Stephen thinks we need to let go of the productivity definition of education. He thinks that when we do let go, we see huge leaps in engagement and learning but acknowledges it is difficult to get people to let go. He thinks we need to find excuses to do it just now, but when people experience it working, they don't want to go back. Agility is the key.

If teachers were literate what would they be able to do? Asked children and they should be able to do? Said things like, post a clip to YouTube and comment on one. Manage a Flickr group (and spell Flickr). Switch on and off predictive texting. Find and use a safe online payment site.

See Photosynth. Creates a model of something by combing images from Flickr. The example from the video was a re-creation of Notre Dame Cathedral from people's holiday snaps.

If you search for "new university building" in Google images, you always get pictures of the outside. Example given of Loyds building which grew from a coffee house culture. New building is much more adversarial. Best examples are from successful new media start ups. Their spaces are flexible - agile. The physical design can stifle this or support groups coming together for a project and then disbanding. Not open plan, but flexible, reconfigurable spaces.

He gave two reports we should look up... I'll look them up and post them here later... probably. :-)

Stephen Heppell: Learning Spaces, Working Places

2008-05-09T10:42:00.004+01:00

{Blogged Live - will edit later... probably.}

I'm attending an event at the Lighthouse: Learning Spaces, Working Places presented by Professor Stephen Heppell.

The website described it as follows:

There is a revolution in the design of learning spaces all round the world and inevitably this is now impacting on the design of corporate space too...

During the talk we were invited to text during the talk to 07624805770

Stephen started by talking about what he's been doing recently. Started with talking about an indoor ski slope in Dubai. Suggested that here, people get a bit sniffy and complain about the waste of energy but in Dubai, the energy is cheap - it's the water that's expensive. Your perspective makes a difference.

We live in a world that's information rich. It's the ability to learn where we are poor.

Are we trapped in incrementalism? Aiming to get a little better? Stephen's experience is, if we get it rght, the improvements can be stellar. We can inoculate children from poverty with education. We can at least insulate children from war if we get countries collaborating educationally - talking to each other.

Paraphrase: "We put fluoride in the water to protect our teeth. What would happen if we put chemicals in the water to make our children brainier? You can imagine the outcry."

What countries are good at making cars? What countries are good at films? Short lists. What countries are going to be good at learning? Will Scotland be in the short list?

He showed pictures from old comedies (e.g. Bilko and On The Buses) often defined by the workplace - comedy from coming up against the boss. Modern comedies (e.g. Friends) what they work as is hardly known - its about the relationship and community. Reflects the changing world.

We are in a time of betweenies. There used to be broadcasters and viewers, or teachers and learners. All the interesting stuff is happening in the middle. For example teachers as learnesr, learners teaching. The space metween now and not now e.g. txts, or facebook profiles {or twitter?}. Space between me and you, e.g. e-bay, Google, e-communities. As we redefine our learning spaces, are we looking at using this in-between space?

One school he's heard of does one GCSE per month - all the study for a month - not splitting up the timetable. Universities are going more and more modular. Heading towards the 19th Century as industry heads to the 21st. Building rigid top heavy management structures. Some industries are creating managers for projects. Recognising the need for leaders to be good followers too.

See Teachers TV programme on George Mitchell School - about teachers and pupils working co-operatively to improve learning.

Real spaces and Virtual spaces. Showed developments from Prestel, through Tesco SchoolNet (biggest online project at the time - huge age range - is age the best way to organise learning?), Think.com (grew out of Scoop), Ideas board for Orange (virtual board where you can stick text pictures etc., Notschool.net (learning space created by children excluded from school), to JellyOS.

Examples of an Australian university that has undergraduates from age 11 that are expected to do four hours of activity. Some universities building litte boxes for their students, driven by spreadsheet cells - cells in every sense of the word. Will the students come to the physical boxes? {Is it more sensible to create virtual spaces? If universities still see the content as precious then they miss it.} Full time work can be full time study.

What are we learning? Effective learnng orgainsations are

collaborative
24/7 and lots of other stuff! {will edit in later :-)}

From a PhD research looking at sociograms of communication. Found that in seminars only a third contribute. Online, that doesn't happen. There is real collegiality and mutuality. Web 2.0 is really Learning 1.0. People grow to respect each others perspective.

Every object tells a story - daft to put an object in a museum box and expect people to get it. Important for the objects to tell their stories.

Moving from a productivity model to new approaches. E.g. Criterion referencing to ipsative {?}. referencing. From uniform students to creative and ingenious students. {Don't care about creativity, I want ingeneous students"} It used to be, to get a first class honours degree you had to produce something that would astonish their professors.

Stephen wants us to stop building corridors. Why build spaces that are only there to move people around. Get rid of corridors and you instantly create collegiality {Hmm... need to think about this.}

How do you measure creativity? What is the equivalent of a 1500 word essay? Managing an online discussion for a week? Creating a 10 second video? Posting a podcast?

"In the next 30 years, more children will leave school worldwide than in the whole of histtory up to now."

Global Learning community

Crick Soft Day

2008-05-08T10:25:00.004+01:00

I'm at a Crick Soft day and the main thing they are talking about this morning is WriteOnline. It looks interesting. It is a Java based application, so it uses the power of your machine rather than relying on a remote server but has the advantages of remote storage and access to your documents anywhere you have Internet access. However, you also get offline access if you are not connected to the Internet. And it looks like a word processor with icons and standard keyboard shortcuts.

What is good about it (apart from all the online, sharing goodies that comes from online applications) is that you get a bundle of the Crick Soft type goodies integrated with the application. For example, it can speak as you type (like Clicker), Wordbar is built in as is predictive typing. The predictive typing picks up work from the Worbar. It is a doddle to create specialist wordbars - you can paste in a chunk of text (the demo took a chunk from Wikipedia) and ask Wordbar to exclude common words and short words. An instant word bank is then generated. Very cool.

Teacher tools include the ability to comment on work by highlighting and typing a note. (Students can also added comments. Currently you can't have collaborative documents but when this feature is added, they may want to send messages to fellow authors. There are also analysis tools for the teacher. These include information about how long the student worked on the document, what words were misspelled and corrected (so you can see if the student has trouble with "ly" endings for example) and a record of pasted text (some help in checking plagiarism).

Various preferences can be set and these are saved with your profile and so follow you wherever you log on. There are for example various accessibility options for the visually impaired. The save option allows saving either online or locally.

Currently the image handling is poor, but they are working on it. At the moment, there is only the choice to save in native format or html.

You can Take a tour of WriteOnline if you want to get a feel for what it can do.

Technorati Tags: Crick Soft, WriteOnline, word processing, online application, Java, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

I'm going... are you?

2008-05-01T21:33:00.004+01:00

I remember back when I was a real teacher, I helped organised a concert at the school - by The Electrics in case you are interested. Ticket sales were not going well and I remember being in a bit of a panic that it was going to fall on it face. I had visions of the people in the band out numbering the people in the hall. Part of the probelm (I thought) was that people didn't know who else was going. Crowds attract crowds (I thought). Therefore, I came up with wizard wheeze (I thought). I made up some badges with "I'm going to see The Electrics" on them and gave them away free with the tickets. ...It didn't work and I had loads of tickets and badges left by the night of the concert. Thankfully, it all worked out in the end because the band brought their own fans with them and lots of people turned up on the night and paid at the door.

I was reminded of this event when I discovered the Upcoming website. I think I'm a bit late in discovering this site (I noticed the ubiquitous Mr McIntosh and the inevitable Mr Johnston were already there) but I like the idea. I discovered it thanks to the photo I used in my OLPC - Help wanted! post. In particular it was the small icon of the yellow "u" on a red background in the Additional information section that caught my eye. I'd never consciously noticed it before and I wondered what it was:

The text after it seemed to identify the event where the photo was taken and clicking on the link took me to Upcoming... and a fair bit of time exploring and experimenting followed. :-) The basic idea is that events are created and people can indicate their intention to attend, leave comments about the it, tag it, tell other people about it, and join groups of people interested in the same kind of events. Also, it is integrated with Flickr so that if people tag their photographs with the specially generated tag, the photos will automagically be associated with the event. Brilliant.

It reminded me of LastFM Events which also generates tags so that Flickr photos can be associated with an event (e.g. my photos, along with photos from others who were at a Rush concert) but it deals with more than just music events. It also reminded me of Hitchhikr but with added social networking goodies.

So I created some old events (Upwented?) to try out the Flickr integration (Rush, Dream Theater and Miss The Occupier) and added a real upcoming event - Learning Spaces, Working Places. At the moment, I'm the only person on Upcoming that's going to the Learning Spaces event so if you are going too - why not join, comment and tag?

Technorati Tags: Upcoming, Hitchhikr, LastFM, Flickr, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Totally Free!

2008-04-29T21:30:00.004+01:00

Update: I wrote about the We7 music website in Free MP3s. At the time I did say, "...there is currently a fairly limited choice of artists". Well, they've just signed a deal with Sony which means there's now a much bigger choice of music. :-)

Just one catch though... No, not the ads. I don't mind the ads. They are surprisingly unintrusive and more than worth listening to in exchange for the chance to download music for free. No the catch is, currently the Sony stuff can only be listened to online and cannot be downloaded. However, in the We7 blog they say, "Its our aim to make all the content ad funded download over time. To do that we have to prove that the artists make the same or more money this way than with the traditional models such as CD sales and pay for downloads." Excellent.

So, how do they make money for the artists? I assume it is by people listening to the tracks (and adverts) online. So here is my Foo Fighters playlist with the albums that I don't currently own:

So if you listen to my playlist, or enrol and create your own, I think the artists will be rewarded and We7 will have evidence that the model works... and I really hope this model works. As I said recently, Copyright law is hugely confusing and hard to understand (The copyright lawyers are taking over the asylum!) however, here is an aspect of copyright that is easy to understand and important to teach - creators should be acknowledged and rewarded for their creations. And We7 gives an easy to understand model that rewards artists and provides a simple way for fans to download music for free. It's win/win. If you agree - listen online. :-)

Addendum: While on the subject of free music, I recently came across the Totally Free Music blog which directed me to the Nine Inch Nails remix site. The music may or may not be your taste but what a brilliant idea. What Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails is doing, is releasing multi-track files of Nine Inch Nails songs and inviting people to create their own remixes. Once you have re-mixed a track, you can share it back with other fans on the website. As I said, brilliant! And useful for school music departments? I suspect so.

Technorati Tags: We7, music, download, Totally Free Music, Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

OLPC - Help wanted!

2008-04-28T12:54:00.003+01:00

I have a student writing about Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) initiative. It's something that I've been aware of but haven't followed too closely, so I enjoyed seeing her first draft. She picked up on Negroponte's repeated assertion that, "It's an education project, not a laptop project", yet almost all my encounters with the project thus far have all been from the technology side rather than the education side.

XO-1
Originally uploaded by Jeff Kubina

In part, that's what has prompted this post - she has found it difficult to get good educational critiques of the project. She has some stuff on the technical, business and economic sides, but next to nothing by way of educational critique. For example, the idea of making technology available to pupils in Less Economically Developed Countries would seem laudable. However, can technology based, constructivist approaches to learning be exported to countries with very different educational practices and expectations?

So I'm asking for your help. Does anyone know of specific educational critiques of the One Laptop Per Child program or a more general consideration of the difficulty of imposing technological "solutions" to educational "problems" in less economically developed countries?

As a supplementary question (in case you want to go for the PhD answer), what are your thoughts on the One Laptop Per Child project's impact on educational technology developments more generally? For example, has it raised the profile of green/eco-friendly issues in computing? Has it had an influence on the development of technology such as the ASUS Eee PC or the Elonex ONE?

All help/suggestions appreciated!

Technorati Tags: One Laptop Per Child, OLPC, Negroponte, constructivisim, ASUS Eee PC, Elonex ONE, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

The family that social networks together...

2008-04-25T14:51:00.003+01:00

I was directed to a website today called it's our tree. I'm impressed. It's not quite powerful enough for a serious genealogist (for example, although it allows the export of data in GEDCOM format, it doesn't look like you can import GEDCOM data)... or at least not yet but it is just at the beta testing stage, so it may get more powerful.

However, as you can see from the screenshot above, it looks very child friendly and I can imagine all sorts of educational uses. For examnple, the family tree of the royal family, or the characters in a book. Also, it is available in a variety of languages so you could switch into French to do family relationships - "votre arbre généalogique" as the site says!

What I really like about it though is you can invite your family members to join and work on the tree with you. Now, if for "family", you substitute "class" you have the makings of a great collaborative project. By way of experiment, I started a tree for James I and VI (see the screenshot above). If you want to see it and help add more information/people, let me know and I'll invite you to join my family. :-)

Technorati Tags: family tree, genealogy, collaboration, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

The copyright lawyers are taking over the asylum!

2008-04-24T11:28:00.007+01:00

I'm happy to admit that I do not understand copyright law... of course, that doesn't stop me talking about it! (See for example Stealing, borrowing or using?) However, a couple of recent bits of lunacy have been drawn to my attention by a colleague that I thought were worth sharing.

No Photography
Originally uploaded by smenzel

Here is part of a report from the MacUser news pages:

Organisers of an exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of the 1958 Brussels World Fair have sent out an appeal for 100 "photoshoppers" to remove a copyrighted building from photographs they hope to display.

The Atomium is the only structure from the 1958 expo that still stands. The Mechelen exhibition is collecting photographs taken at the expo, and appealing (in Dutch) for 100 people skilled in image editing to remove the iconic structure.

According to the Atomium website, the building's image is protected and cannot be used, reproduced or distributed without permission. And Sabam has been known to take action by sending takedown notices to websites.

Though not to Flickr, it would seem, since the Atomium blog is happy to link to the photo sharing site's many images of what is probably Brussels' most famous landmark - after a small urinating boy.

-- MacUser: 100 "photoshoppers" wanted to erase copyright building

It is worth reading the whole article but the above quote gives the flavour. The Atonium people say that a building, in full view in a public place, is protected by copyright and you cannot put your own photographs of the building on a website. Is it just me, or is that a bizarre concept - that you can copyright a public building and prevent people posting pictures of it online? What is even more bizarre however is that the copyright lawyer right hand doesn't seem to know what the Atonium blog using left hand is doing!

However, the same colleague also showed me an example that is closer to home:

-- SQA Website

In case you can't make it out from the screenshot, the Copyright notice says, "linking to... this site or any part of it is not permitted without express permission" but then, underneath this, they helpfully give you a set of buttons that allow you to link to the site! Again, left hand, can introduce you to your right hand? A couple of further observations. Firstly, I have linked to the site and I have reproduced a part of it in the screenshot, so clearly I am in trouble. Secondly, does the person who wrote that part of the guidance know what the World Wide Web is? It's the links to and from sites that make it a Web!

How are you supposed to teach children to respect copyright when it is as weird and confusing as this? The sooner Creative Commons becomes the norm rather than the exception the better.

Technorati Tags: Copyright, MacUser, Atomium, SQA, Creative Commons, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Crowdsourcing... sort of

2008-04-18T19:38:00.001+01:00

I think this is brilliant for at least two reasons.

Firstly, it's Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson from the greatest band in the world playing at a Foo Fighters concert. I mean, how cool is that? Brilliant.

Secondly, there's how the video was created. It has become almost standard for people to use their cameraphones to record live events and almost always what they do with the recordings is post them to YouTube. So lots of people are at a Foo Fighters concert, Geddy and Alex turn up, lots of people video it and many then post it to YouTube. So far so good. What vidiot4u2 did is what I think is brilliant. He edited and remixed the various cameraphone videos to create a multi-angle view of the performance. He has created something greater than the sum of the parts.

It's the blind men and the elephant... except someone has taken all the partial views and shown us the pachyderm! Useful in education? I think so... Oh wait a minute, YouTube is banned in schools! Bah!

Technorati Tags: Rush, Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Foo Fighters, YouTube, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Flickr and "Long Photos" Hmm!

2008-04-09T16:57:00.002+01:00

Coke And Mentos
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

Interesting... I think. I've just noticed (thanks to S Pipczynski's invite to her Flickr Video! group) that as well as photos, you can now upload short videos to Flickr too. Flickr describes them as long photos and seems to be pitching them as an extension of the photo service it already offers rather than as competition for YouTube.

To be honest, I'm not sure how or if I'll make serious use of it. If I wanted to share videos, I'd probably use some other tool.

Any thoughts as to why Flickr video might be useful in education?

Technorati Tags: Flickr, EduFlickr, video, FlickrVideo, coke, mentos, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog

Telling Stories

2008-04-04T14:17:00.001+01:00

Thanks are due Susan Kambalu's post on Digital Stories for drawing the We Tell Stories 6 from Penguin to my attention. It is a brilliant idea and Penguin have done a fantastic job putting it together. Of the three works of digital fiction published so far, I think my favourite is The 21 Steps.

27/365: Fix?
Originally uploaded by DavidDMuir

What I especially like is that the techniques used to tell these stories could easily be used by pupils to create their own examples of digital fiction. For example, I'm really inspired to have a go at telling stories using Google Earth along the lines of The 21 Steps and I hope I get the chance to try it with some students soon.

It also reminded me of work I did with BEd students towards the end of last year where we used Flickr to tell stories. Here for example are a few of their six word story ideas:

We also had a go at some stories in five frames:

Happiness is ...
Snacking {Although neither story used my favourite photo. :-)}
The Tree
The Book of Shadows
Walking To Uni

I was also intrigued by the possibilities of using Flickr to make Choose your own adventure games. Flickr may not be the best way to create this kind of game but it does make them very easy to share. I had a go and created the Jargon Hall Adventure. There's potentially a lot of creative writing in describing the locations and the decisions to be made... and it was surprisingly good fun to make. :-)

And finally... Twitterstories! A simple, but stunningly brilliant idea. One hundred and forty students, from around the globe, each contributing a Twitter message to tell a story. (See Mr Mayo's blog for more details.) What I really like about this project is the constraints that the pupils have to work within, for example, Twitter messages must be 140 characters (or less) in length and the story must reach some conclusion within 140 messages. The authors will have to pick their words very carefully to keep their message within the word limit while still moving the story on and keeping it interesting. Are your pupils overly verbose, using a plethora of extraneous words and multiple sub-clauses, which, in actual fact are full of repetitive, redundant and superfluous detail and, in the final analysis, producing long, rambling and confusing work? :-) Perhaps the constraints of a twitterstory would help. (Twitterstory or Twition or Twittory or ... ? A good idea in search of a good name!)

Do you know of any good examples of pupil produced digital stories?

Technorati Tags: digital stories, Penguin, eduFlickr, Flickr, Flicktion, twitter stories, George Mayo, DavidDMuir, EdCompBlog