Learning Technologies

Some Thoughts on Twitter Lists

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:40:00 +0000

Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts.

So says the banner appearing at the top of my twitter page on twitter.com. So, I decided to give lists a try and see what use I could make of them.

A twitter list allows you to create a group of people that you can follow all at once, without necessarily following each person individually. When you look at the twitter page for that list, you see all the tweets from only that group of people.

My first thought was that it might be useful to create a celt09 list, containing the participants from our Learning Technologies module in the Postgraudate Diploma in Academic Practice. (You can find this list at sharonlflynn/celt09.) Until then, we had been using a hashtag (#celt09) to filter course-related tweets. Having used this list for a week, I can now observe:

This is great for following members of the group with locked (private) Twitter accounts. Their tweets, even using the #celt09 hashtag, don't appear in the search, but do appear in my list.
Sometimes participants forget to use the #celt09 hashtag, but I still see their tweets in the list. That's another thumbs up for lists!
Most of the class participants are new to Twitter, so most of their tweets are currently course related. Thus, most of the tweets in the list are related to the course. But this is not always going to be the case.
Sometimes other Twits (no offence) reply to the class using the #celt09 hashtag, making a (potentially valuable) contribution. These don't appear in the list. That's a disadvantage of lists!

So, I'm still unsure about the use of lists, apart from using them as a way to organise people you follow. Grouping people together around a theme doesn't result in a twitter stream on that theme. It might prove a useful starting point though.

For the moment, I'm going to combine my use of the hashtag with the list, so that I can see everybody and see what everybody is saying about the course.

One area where lists might give added value is around the participants in a conference. Here the list is a short-term artefact, and might result in something close to the theme of the conference. It couldn't replace the conference hashtag though, which has become such a useful backchannel, allowing those not at the conference to follow and participate.

Irish Learning Technology Association: Web Site and Publication News

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:07:00 +0000

Great to see the new Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) web site launched earlier this month with a webinar from Gráinne Conole from the Open University, UK discussing Cloudworks.

The ILTA Working Group will be convening on November 13th in DIT to devolve ownership of the Research, eLearning Practitioner, eLearning/Industry Collaboration and Continuing Professional Development to ILTA members.

Lots of ILTA activity going on with the announcement of a new dedicated AISHE-J publication highlighting EdTech2009 presentations, research and technology-enhanced initiatives from the annual ILTA conference which was held in the National College of Ireland on May 21-22.

EdTech2010 will take place in Athlone Institute of Technology in May 20-21.

More information from info@ilta.net or http://ilta.net

#Twittering CELT Learning Technologies Team

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:45:00 +0000

The CELT Learning Technologies team at NUI Galway (and this blog) is mentioned in Ferdinand von Prondzynski's President's Log in today's Irish Times, under the headline Why I've joined Madonna, President Obama and 14 popes on Twitter. The DCU President writes:

Does Twitter have potential uses in academic life? Absolutely. One group showing the way is the Learning Technologies team at NUI Galway (who also have an excellent blog, learntechgalway. blogspot.com). All of their key staff are active on Twitter, and if you follow them you will be able to share in their experience of using new teaching methods and online technologies, as well as their thoughts on other matters.

I've just created a Twitter list (more on this in a later post) collecting together some of the people from CELT on Twitter. You can find it at twitter.com/sharonlflynn/nuigcelt. Another list of people includes the academic staff taking the Learning Technologies module as part of our Pg Diploma in Academic Practice, who have just been introduced to Twitter. You can find that list at twitter.com/sharonlflynn/celt09.

Thanks, Ferdinand, for the mention!

New from Google

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:37:00 +0000

Google have just recently released on limited preview their new communications and collaboration tool Google Wave.

In their own words, "A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more". You can find out more here.

This is on limited preview, so you will need to request an invitation to fully explore.

Michael Wesch keynote at ALT-C

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:14:00 +0000

Recordings of the keynote and invited speakers at the 2009 conference of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) in Manchester (8-10 September) are now available on blip.tv.

Here is Michael Wesch's keynote. Some familiar themes (whatever!) but an enjoyable watch all the same - if you have a spare hour.

Asus ebook reader

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:11:00 +0000

According to the Times Online, Asus is likely to launch an ebook reader with two screens, sometime before the end of the year.
The two screens would enable a person to use the reader like a conventional book, displaying two pages at a time.
Alternatively, one screen could display the book text, while the other allows the user to surf the web at the same time.

This offering from Asus, known for its low-cost netbook, is likely to challenge other ebook readers from Sony and Amazon on price. A single screen version, according to the Times Online article, could cost less than £100.

Irish Human Computer Interaction 2009 Conference

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 11:48:00 +0000

Interested in Human Computer Interaction research?

The annual two-day Irish conference, called I-HCI 2009, will be held at Trinity College Dublin on the 17th and 18th of September. Some of the papers and presentations of interest will include research on online communities, and evaluation methods suitable for study in home, workplace and mobile settings. Check out their website on http://www.i-hci.org/

The History of the Internet

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:11:00 +0000

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

"History of the Internet" is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet.

New videos show how researchers use advanced technology

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:55:00 +0000

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK has been funding a programme to look at exploring tools needed by researchers to do their research, interact with other researchers (who may come from different disciplines, institutions or even countries) and to make use of available resources and technical infrastructures. They call this collection of tools "Virtual Research Environments" or VREs.

Recently, JISC have begun to put some very useful videos on YouTube describing some of the projects that come under this programme. Four particular projects in phase two of this research programme include the following:

Collaborative Research Events on the Web (CREW): |Youtube video|Website|
myExperiment - a social networking site for scientists. |Youtube video|Website|
Study of Documents and Manuscripts |Youtube video|Website|
Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology |Youtube video|Website|

Explore further on the JISC website to find out how Virtual Research Environments (VREs) can help researchers in all disciplines manage the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in carrying out research.

Augmented Reality - The Future of Education Technology

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 07:45:00 +0000

Augmented reality looks at augmenting the real-world with virtual reality in real time. It's a been around for a long time (the term first coined in 1990), and has become popularised in the public mind by the film Minority Report (2002). More recently, some interesting projects have been looking at mobile phone applications as avenues for new interest and research.

This video here illustrates an idea how augmenented reality could positvely work in an educational context. For me, it identifies the importance of reading - central to student learning - and paper as a tool to support it. The main character uses the individual reflective "alone" time to prompt ideas, that are then explored and expanded through digital interactions as he moves through the world. A simple spark of an idea unleases a curiosity that the student can then explore in an augmented way, on paper and his experience in world. The creator is Sorin Voicu, from the Valle Giulia faculty of Architecture, University of Rome, in Italy.

Check out also MIT's Adaptable Bus stop as part of their SENSEable City Laboratory,to see some other potentially transformative ideas in this space.

Oepncast expands

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 23:12:00 +0000

UC Berkeley has had a proud tradition of webcasting lectures, interviews and other content and we here in Galway have long been fans of their work which preceded the growth of youTube and iTunes. Now they have received funding to develop the OpenCast Matterhorn platform for lecture capture and video content sharing with an intended release sometime in 2010. If all goes to plan this will provide an Open Source alternative to the commercial solutions for lecture capture, although much of the development and sales effort from such companies in recent times has focused on providing resilient, simple, all-in-one hardware solutions and that might well still be an issue. Nonetheless, Matterhorn sounds really exciting and we are pleased to be part of its widening community. You can learn more from this overview and by visiting the project website.

Libraries of the future?

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:02:00 +0000

JISC has just released its video programe on "Library of the future". Depending on your perspective on these things it is either (a) inspiring and exciting; (b) depressing; (c) stating the obvious. However, it is worth watching and thinking about.

http://www.youtube.com/jiscmedia

The Online Student Experience

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:54:00 +0000

Following the tweets from the Blackboard World 09 conference taking place in Washington DC over the last few days, I came across this video. I don't think it represents the experience of the students involved in the various online and blended programmes offered at NUI Galway.

However, it does demonstrate very effectively that technology in itself will not improve the student experience.

Britain goes Open

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:16:00 +0000

JISC, the Higher Education Academy and England's Funding Council (HEFCE) today launched the new Open Educational Resources porgramme. The programme, which builds on earlier work and combines initiatives such as Jorum, CETIS and InfoNet, has ambitious but achievable aims.

"The programme will make the equivalent of 5,000 undergraduate modules of existing learning resources freely available online. Projects will be working towards being able to sustainably release a much larger pool of resources over a longer period.
The funded projects will run for 12 months and will end on 30 April 2010."

More info is available on JISCs website.

EdTech 2009 Conference Review

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 14:26:00 +0000

We all had a great 10th anniversary EdTech conference experience at the National College of Ireland on May 20-22. The programme was action-packed with 50 papers presented by Irish and international researchers and practitioners around the theme '2020 Vision: Changing Learning Futures Through Technology'.

Keynote speakers included Niall Sclater of the Open University; Theresa Hagan of HMH; and Richard Katz, Vice President of Educause. A really interesting feature of the conference was the use of Twitter, especially in the closing panel session where conference Tweets were visible throughout the open floor discussion.
Other highlights included the pre-conference launch of the NCI NELL usability lab by Leo Casey, and the presentation of inaugural Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning to the TCD outreach programme 'A Bridge to College'.

NUIG had a high profile presence at the conference with 5 practitioner and 1 research papers featuring in the programme. Well done Sinead Hahessey, Michael Campion, Mary Dempsey and Elaine Wallace for flying the flag for NUIG.

CELT staff were highly involved in the organisation of the conference with Michelle Tooher sitting on the ILTA Working Group, while Fiona Concannon and Paul Gormley served on the EdTech 2009 Organising Committee. I was also delighted to be voted in as the Chair of the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) for the forthcoming year.

...and Sharon Flynn got voted the Twit of the conference - for non-Twitterers, this is a compliment!

Broadcasting the Volvo Ocean Race

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 15:23:00 +0000

Just back from a fascinating lecture on "Broadcasting the Volvo Ocean Race' in the race village, where media crew members Anton Paz (TELFONICA BLACK), Gustav Morin (ERICCSSON 3) and Rick Deppe (PUMA) spoke of their experiences filming using high-definition television, on their respective boats. Climbing up the mast, getting hit at 30 knots by waves, and sitting on the bow crashing up and down were all in a day's work. All the while, these media crew members kept a plan or theme in mind and looked for stories and action to document on film or to blog and podcast. Then, below deck, it was time for digitising, compressing, editing and then uploading via the Inmarsat system via satellite, followed by a few snatched hours sleep before doing it all again. This all took place under conditions of keeping electricity usage low (running off disel on these weight conscious boats) and stopping cables and wires from corroding with salty water. Heroic tales!

Dr. Seán Crosson from the Huston School of Film welcomed this rare opportunity to meet these "embedded journalists", as part of the Huston School's two day symposium on Representing Sport. Each of the boats are fitted with five fixed cameras and a delay camera, which is activated by a button to record 2 minutes back and six minutes forward- useful for things that go bump unexpectedly.

One of the biggest challenges noted (aside from sailing around the world at breakneck speeds) was the condensation that builds inside the housing for the HDTV cameras. Gustav spoke of the frustration at lining up a good shot, and then having to stop and somehow open the waterproof housing to clear the condensation and then begin again. Solid state cameras might offer some longer term solutions to the problem, but are unlikely to be as reliable as the DV tapes for the adventure this time around.

You can watch some of the footage on http://www.volvooceanrace.tv/. The replacing of the PUMA rudder mid-Atlantic by Rick Deppe won a media award for the Boston-Galway leg of the race.

Marcus Hutinchson, the race communications director, spoke about the potential to develop a more pedagogic and educational approach to the race, with recognising the value in linkages for learning between stop-over cities for a younger audience. To date, however, the videos, the race viewer (my favourite!), the online game, the regular updates, the weekly TV broadcast, have all combined to give spectators an unprecedented insight into ocean racing. Congrats to all the media production people involved!

Lindsay Jordan: Blogging with Students...how and why

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:49:00 +0000

We came across this lovely video yesterday from Lindsay Jordan, educational developer at the University of Bath. Linday's blog is promising an accompanying paper soon.

Learning Technologies Projects

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 27 May 2009 08:25:00 +0000

I spent a very pleasant evening yesterday listening to the presentations being given by our students on the Learning Technologies module of our Postgraduate Diploma in Academic Practice. The students are all academic staff members, with busy teaching and administrative workloads, and we have spent the last number of months looking at the use of various technologies in teaching and learning. The project was to consider the use of a technology in their own context. Since each student started the module with a different level of competence in using technologies, the aim of the project was to push each individual beyond their comfort zone.

So, yesterday evening we had a wonderful range of technology use. Projects included:

Social Networks: using Ning to support Irish language learning; using grou.ps in project work in Botany to promote and support peer-learning; using Blackboard tools to support a research group in Microbiology.
Video: a Microbiology lecturer has created some short videos to demonstrate skills in the laboratory; a lecturer in Occupational Therapy recorded in a nursing home, in association with the HSE, to create self-instructional videos showing the correct use of wheelchairs.
Second Life: we were given a fantastic overview of Second Life and shown plans for how students of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship will have projects based in the virtual world in the next academic year.
Reflective Logs: students of Speech and Language Therapy will, in future, submit their reflective logs using blogging tools on Blackboard instead of the current practice where they have to travel to the campus to submit paper based versions.
Blended Learning: although she couldn't be there, one lecturer from Nursing recorded her presentation on lessons learned from moving to a blended learning environment, using a participatory group narrative.

It is great to see how each of these students has moved on and really embedded the use of their chosen technology in their teaching practice. I'm looking forward to the project reports, which are due to be submitted at the end of next week.

Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:19:00 +0000

Today's THE article Internet is fostering a 'want it now' culture among students reports on the findings of the Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience. This committee has been investigating the impact of Web 2.0 tools on teaching and learning in higher education. The final report is to be published next week.

The findings, as reported in the THE, are not particularly surprising.

The use of Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning is very patchy, and mainly driven by enthusiastic individuals. However, they can be used very effectively to support collaboration and reflection in students groups.
The lack of information literacy skills, and critical assessment of resources in particular, is a problem.
There is a divide between those staff who like to experiment with Web 2.0 tools, and those who are reluctant to engage at all with them.
Students like traditional, face-to-face interaction.

My own opinion is: it's not the tools that are the problem, or the solution. When used well, they can be very effective. Poor use can promote shallow learning. The lack of information literacy skills is a problem, whether you use Web 2.0 tools or not.

I'll look forward to reading the report of the committee, which will be published on 12th May.

re-Kindle-ing the flame of learning

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:51:00 +0000

Amazon's new version of its e-book reader, the Kindle DX was launched officially today. With a larger screen size, the device is also being aimed at the student market with deals being done to provide popular textbooks in electronic format and a number of pilot programmes running in various US universities. With a price of just under $500 however, it might be a little costly for most students.

In previous pilot studies of ebooks in university contexts, one of the key aspects of feedback from student users was the need to provide some means of annotating and commenting on readings, something students often do with their texts or papers that they are reading. No sign that the Kindle has addressed that issue however, but perhaps gradually we're moving towards the device that we really want.

The Future Internet: Web 3.0

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:39:00 +0000

The future of the web?

Novelist Pens First Book on Smart Phone

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:24:00 +0000

This is an amazing story about author Peter V. Brett who has published his first fantasy novel which was written almost entirely on his HP iPaq phone, typing with his thumbs! He reckons about 60% of the novel was written using the smartphone, sometimes on the train to work, in the queue for the bank, or sometimes just sitting in the park. He doesn't like using a laptop!

If Mr Brett did indeed scribe 100,000 words of his novel using his smartphone, does this mean that students can be expected to write essays, reports etc using similar technologies while commuting home at the weekends?

Thanks to @TechCrunch on Twitter for the pointer to the story.

Any book, whenever you want it, freshly printed.

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0000

Last year we blogged about the Espresso Book Machine that was unleashed in the US, finding its way into college (and other) bookstores. Now the first has arrived in the UK and is printing on demand in Blackwell's as reported in the Guardian. Purchasers simply select the book of their choice and wait a few minutes for it to be printed and bound. One on our campus might help perk up the local bookstore - how about it? It only costs £175,000 after all.

Flickr data tracks tourism

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:23:00 +0000

Retweeted from New Scientist magazine (@newscientist) : David Crandall at Cornell and colleagues have exploited the increasing use of geotags on (35 million) images submitted to Flickr to map out the 'tourism hotspots' of the world in an example of the sorts of large scale data analysis that can now be performed using social networking and 'web 2.0' tools. The original paper is available here.

68% of Facebook users score lower grade-point average!

iain.maclaren@nuigalway.ie (Iain MacLaren) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 22:55:00 +0000

Hmmm..these are the kind of statistics that newspapers love to expound but which are pretty meaningless. Cause or effect? Do people who aren't so great at studying use Facebook too much or does using Facebook too much affect your grades? What percentage of those who 'used' alcohol have lower grade-point average, or those who watched a lot of TV, or read too much, or work too much or....still maybe there's something in it...but isn't Facebook so last-year anyway?