Below are the slides and abstract of my talk for IT Sligo today:

• There is a also a  an archived version of my talk

Astract:

In a nutshell screen capture is the art of developing educational materials by capturing a video of what is happening on a computer screen. This simple process can allow rapid creation of rich-media instructional aides. In this talk I will present some experiences of mine and of my colleagues in developing these resources for students of Oscail in Dublin City University who are studying a Bsc. in Information Technology by distance education.

I will look at some tips I wrote two years ago on this topic and examine their continued relevance. The take-home message of this talk will be “publish or perish”, an exhortation to the educator to focus not on fancy production or editing of screen captures but rather on a process that involves a minimum of time and technical effort to create videos and get them to students. To finish I will give an overview of how we are using Camtasia Studio with Google Video as part of DCU’s roll out of Google Apps for Education and demonstrate some interesting aspects of this elearning platform.

Today (while editing a student handbook) I am listening to Curtis Bonk author of the World is Open talking about the open movement and its potential impact on Education. He mentioned an alternative to Wikipedia (for wikipediaphobics) the Wikisource project. Actually it is a sister project (all part of the Wikimedia foundation). It aims to be a repository for primary sources, in contrast to Wikipedia which is a secondary source collection.

I took a quick look. Not knowing where to start I searched for Moodle (as I had just been writing a guide to Moodle for students). I found something unexpected. A reference to the word Moodle from the 19th century from one of my favourite (though neglected) authors, Charles Dickens. Wikisource does seem something pretty great. And so, without further ado, for your delectation, after extensive scholarly research, I give you the Victorian Learning Environment:

Then there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his party, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Leicester Dedlock with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see to what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate used to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a Cabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment that supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited choice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie between Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle—supposing it to be impossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be assumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of that affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the leadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to Koodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle, what are you to do with Noodle? You can’t offer him the Presidency of the Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can’t put him in the Woods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What follows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces (as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Leicester Dedlock) because you can’t provide for Noodle!

There was a heart-felt letter in the Irish Times yesterday from a Science PhD in the context of this perennial debate:

Madam, – Prof Garret A FitzGerald seeks to address the depressing depictions of a career in science (Opinion, August 13th) but he presents a rose-tinted view of the life of a researcher that is unrealistic when applied to early-career scientists.

The practical side of being a contract post-doctoral researcher, with years of experience but no short-term prospect of a permanent job, became clear to me recently on learning that getting approval for a mortgage will rely solely on my (non-scientist) partner’s salary. My eight years of third- and fourth-level education plus years of post-doctoral research experience are worth nothing in the real world.

I agree wholeheartedly with many of the positive points Prof FitzGerald makes about a research career, such as the opportunities to travel, to contribute to greater good and to find intellectual fulfilment. However, intellectual fulfilment is not enough to pay the rent, or the mortgage if you can get one. Prof FitzGerald states that as a scientist “every day you can do something different. You can’t imagine what you will be working on in a year’s time”.

Many of us also have to wonder where we will be working in a year’s time, due to the nature of post-doctoral research contract positions. It is an oversimplification to say that to conduct independent research all you have to do is “convince a group of your peers that what you want to do is worthwhile”.

In Ireland, to qualify for most of the research funding schemes that allow this independence you must also have a permanent position at a university. With the current public sector hiring freeze and the constraints on university finances, permanent positions for young researchers are looking ever more scarce.

I love what I do and my research has been successful and is internationally competitive, but when I was a young and optimistic school-leaver I chose a career that interested me and I did not envision that when I would reach my 30s I might not qualify for a mortgage or that I would be uncertain of what I would be doing in a year’s time.

In a week when much is being said about the need to encourage students to follow careers in science, I was prompted to write this letter to stress to students that they should give careful consideration to the practicalities of a career that requires long years of study, hard work and discipline, and will quite likely lead you to emigrate. In addition there is no guarantee of generous financial reward and no job security. If this sounds depressing, it’s just how I see it from where I stand. – Yours, etc,

Dr SARAH HARNEY,

Department of Physiology,

Trinity College Dublin,

Dublin 2.
Irish Times, August 17th http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2009/0817/1224252678097.html

This letter seems to fit with the CAO points required for Computing courses across Irish third level institutions again this year, which is an indication of their relative unpopularity. It is not necessarily an indication of their difficulty however which is a problem for some entrants to these courses. The 480 points required for primary teaching on one particular course is well in excess of those for most IT courses. In one Institute of Technology you can do an IT degree or a degree in IT management for little over 200 points. Some great students may take and eventually graduate IT programmes around the country. Certainly however, a great many will not complete.

How does this square with another big CAO story of recent days - that of teen entrepreneur John Collison who scored eight A1s in his leaving (600 points)? Collison and his brother have made, on paper, millions from IT having founded and then sold their own successful IT company. They must surely be poster-boys for the Knowledge Economy. Not only that but unlike almost all other students who will score 600 points this year, or last year, or next year, John Collison has not chosen to study medicine but rather Science. He has been accepted to study Science in Harvard. Sadly we do not seem yet have Science or Technology courses in Ireland that would attract world class candidates. Something to ponder for the architects of our Knowledge Economy.

Twitter is completely stupid.  Celebrities use it so you know its very, very stupid. Numerous studies in the respected scienticifc journal Celebrity Cerebrums  have noted the inverse correlation between ego and brain size. Scientists have proved that certain celebrities are not actually alive according to their projected brain size and can only truly be considered as plants. And they can use Twitter.

Now think how stupid your students are. Completly thick. And what about lecturers? Well we know their ego-sizes so… you do the Math (I can’t I’m too stupid). So the moral of the stoy is it is safe to assume we can all use Twitter. That is how media should be before we consider using it - completely stupid.

From this week’s Sunday Tribue:

Row after Cork TD said portacabin school good enough for town that doesn’t support him

Conor McMorrow

FIANNA Fáil TD Ned O’Keefe is at the centre of a major row in his Cork East constituency after he said he would not help a community to obtain new school buildings because he does not get any votes in the area.

The row erupted on local radio station C103 on Friday morning after O’Keefe claimed that Rathcormac national school should not be a priority for government funding because it has “a wonderful layout of portacabins”.

O’Keefe made his controversial comments on Patricia Messinger’s Cork Today programme, on which he said, “I’ll prioritise as a politician for my own area the areas that I think are right and necessary and where I get my support from.”

Messinger asked O’Keefe if he only looked after people who gave him their vote. The Cork TD replied: “Equals being equals, I’ll defend my own people. I have never been top of the list in Rathcormac so if Rathcormac wants me to support them, they can support me.”

His comments sparked outrage on the airwaves and the local radio station was swamped with calls from angry parents in the area.

O’Keefe’s comments on portacabins fuelled the row when he complimented the “architectural work” of the portacabins as they have a “wonderful layout” and are “well-engineered”.

He continued: “There is no stigma attached to being taught in a portacabin. Many people in offices and administration across the country work in portacabins and they are delighted to have them.”

Defending himself, the 66-year-old former junior minister said, “I have been right in many of the things I have said in the last five to seven years, even on the economy, so I am not prepared to stand back and listen to people abusing me and telling me this, that and the other thing.”

Claire Flynn, chairwoman of Rathcormac Parents’ Association, came on the radio and said: “I want to ask Ned O’Keefe, how come our children go in there and they are passing out with the heat during the summer and in winter we have to put coats on our kids to keep them warm in the portacabins?”

But O’Keefe stood his ground and said that “you get the tallies and you will see I was never very welcome in Rathcormac”.

July 5, 2009

Image by Enrico Fuente

Clickers are great for adding interactivity to the classroom. The best thing is they allow some interactivity but not too much. They scale. Like Twitter does.  However they cost lost and can be fiddly to set up and annoying to mind and maintain. What are the alternatives?

Online polling: Most famously the free system Doodle which has been taking the web by storm over the past year. Highly recommended for sheduling meetings but can also be used to run polls.

TwtPoll or PollDaddy for Twitter. I just Googled these and have never set up a twitter poll but Twitter is a natural environment for polling. In fact why not just use twitter altogether as a classroom participation medium? You need devices and you need rules but the technology is free and simple to use if you  can crack the hardware nut and get something into the hands of your learners.

If you use Moodle simply add a “Choice” activity type or check out the Q&A forum which you can configure so that users can only see other contributions once they make one themselves. What has that got to do with polls? Its about making people contribute. And they only need to contribute in a small way. 

SMS polls: I mentioned these previously and I wrote some software for Nokia NSeries phones that effectively turns your phone into a router and would allow you to run Twitter-style interactions in a classroom using SMS only i.e. no web or special software required on the phones. This would be perfect say for a conference to allow listeners to spontaneously interact and hopefully I will demo this some day at a conference (invite me please!). Hopefully I will also get around to polishing this software and releasing it to anyone who wants it.  Or it would make great student project…

I smiled when I read the title of Jon Dron’s paper “Any Color you like as long as its Blackboard” which is about Virtual Learning Environments. Blackboard, TopClass, FirstClass - it’s interesting how we use metaphors from our existing practice to brand eLearning Platforms.

Within the field of technology acceptance models however there is one researcher who stands head and shoulders above all others. Be aware you may laugh out loud when you read The Pencil Metaphor by Lindy McKeown,

Now, with the advent of realtime web serach, you can find out what student’s are thinking about VLEs right now