Social Media: There are More Voyeurs than Participants!

This article from the Graduate Grapevine called Social Media: There are More Voyeurs than Participants! reports on a survey of 3000 UK University students (from May 2007) and makes the point that even though the web has seen an explosion in user-generated content the majority of users are still lurkers, utilising content rather than creating it. The findings should not be a surprise. It’s true generally (compare sportsmen to sports fans, musicians to music lovers, artists to art appreciators, newspaper reporters to news readers).

What is great about Web2.0 is the opportunity to contribute if you want to and the ability to share the things you’re interested in with others.

The article finishes with a quote that I like:

“If the web was once an enormous library, it is now a vast conversation. Transmitting information from one person to another has never been easier. Everyone can participate. Young people now communicate more through social networking websites than through email. Instead of keeping diaries, they keep blogs; instead of photo albums, they have Flickr.

While older adults go online to find information, the younger crowd go online to live. The boundaries between private and public and between offline and online are blurring, and there is a widening generation gap between adolescents growing up with social technology and adults who find it foreign and unsettling. Welcome to the MySpace generation.” (Gefter 2006)

TxTme007

The last session of the e-Exemplars: exciting developments in e-learning mini-conference was another hands on session, this time with mobile phones. Dorothy Waterhouse from NSW AMES discussed and demonstrated how she has used mobiles and Telstra’s Desktop Messaging service to communicate with students, most of whom are migrants yet most of whom own a mobile.

It was interesting to see how it worked. Dorothy was able to recieve and reply to SMS or MMS messages from the session participants and show us how they were managed in the Telstra Desktop Messaging application on her computer (using Elluminate’s application sharing). It all looks very easy.

For more information on her use of mobiles see http://txtme007.tumblr.com/ and http://txtme07.wikispaces.com/

GAME ON!

This session of today’s e-Exemplars: exciting developments in e-learning mini-conference from Ken Gooding of e-Works gave a good demonstration of why games are so valuable to learning and how to use them within a webconferencing application like Elluminate, and there were many additional suggestions from the participants (unfortunately I had to step away from the session so I missed most of it. Thank goodness for archiving).

This session probably would have been better scheduled for the first session of the conference yesterday as it gave everyone a good chance to become familiar with the different tools within Elluminate (i.e. raising hands, clapping, drawing on the whiteboard, application sharing). I particularly liked the role-the-dice game, which used application sharing to give different participants the chance to role a flash-based dice.

The archive is available at the above link.

Using Wikispaces as public educational platforms

This session from Jo Kay was all about wikis and how they’re being used at TAFE NSW – Sydney Institute. If you’re thinking about implementing an organisational wiki this might be a good place to start.

Their wiki includes a list of wikis being used for teaching and learning and the extensive wiki guidelines and terms of use that they developed. They’ve also developed a tagging system, using del.icio.us, to keep track of all their wikis (see http://del.icio.us/tafewikitagger), and are planning to expand this across other NSW TAFE wikis.

Innovation and Leadership

Today’s first session from the e-Exemplars: exciting developments in e-learning mini-conference was led by Jennifer Harding of TAFE NSW – South Western Sydney Institute and Clare van den Blink, from Cornell University in the States, and focused on how they were leading innovation within their respective organisations. Once again there was lots of interesting discussion.

What I found most interesting was:

• the use of mobile phone polling at Cornell within f2f lectures to engage large numbers of learners (great idea, particularly if you can immediately graph and project the results onto a screen)
• discussion on the challenge of developing a consistent evaluation process for innovative projects across diverse disciplines (particularly important these days as a whole range of new technologies are being adopted before anyone has had a chance to properly assess their educational merit)
• This was a strange one. One slide indicated that at Cornell, “Students percieved that the use of technology had a positive impact on learning”, yet in another slide 67% of surveyed students said, “I prefer taking classes that DO NOT use instructional technology”, with only 17% prefering classes that used technology extensively.
• There was discussion around what creates good conditions for innovation (things like open discussion, open communication, willingness to take risks, supportive environment). I think Douglas Merrill from Google expresses it well in this (long) video on Innovation at Google.

What about the Trades?

The final session I attended at yesterday’s e-Exemplars: exciting developments in e-learning mini-conference was by Guy Truss, a Fitting and Machining trades teacher at the South West Regional College Of TAFE in Western Australia.

He predominantly discussed the use of Moodle but there were a couple of really interesting points:

1. He first got involved in e-learning in 1999. In my experience and from what I’ve heard other e-learning practioners say it’s often the Trade teachers that are disinterested or resistant to e-learning. They’re the ones that don’t think e-learning is relevant to their trade, that don’t use email, that don’t even use computers, etc. Yet here’s a guy who saw the benefits of it 9 years ago.

Makes you wonder where the problem lies; with the technology, with the teachers, or with the people promoting e-learning.

2. Guy is using spyglasses to record student assessments. This is really cool! I’ve been thinking about how to use webcams or video recorders on mobile phones to remotely record student assessments (either delayed or in real-time) ever since I saw this report on a project using webcams to assess students (MS Word doc).

Workplace assessors waste a lot of time and money (and fossil fuels) driving around the countryside visiting students in the workplace to assess them. If they could do the same assessment from their office desk it would be much better. Skyglasses go one step further.

Sue Waters has written about educational uses of skyglasses. Imagine when these can be connected to a mobile. A remote teacher could actually see what a student is doing from the student’s perspective as they’re doing it (great for teaching them a procedure or doing an assessment). Add these to an e-portfolio and employers could watch how you did certain tasks (eg. how you engaged with customers). Endless possibilities.

I can’t wait for today’s conference sessions. More from me later.

Blended Baking – Online mobile Baking course for Bakers Delight

Gary Sewell from NSW TAFE gave a great talk as part of the e-Exemplars: exciting developments in e-learning mini-conference yesterday afternoon. Who says the trades can’t benefit from e-learning? Not only has Gary adopted e-learning but he’s leading the way. This was another inspiring talk and is well worth accessing the archive to hear. It has lots of innovative ideas for all vocational qualifications.

Main points:

• Industry is the dog…not the tail, yet course structure and delivery is often dictated by training organisations (TAFEs anyway). This is ironic given that Training Packages were meant to be created by and for industry.
• Gary consulted with the client and then build course around their needs
• 80% of training occurs in the workplace but is not recognised, formalised or assessed
• Cert III is now delivered 100% in the workplace
• Use resources already developed. Industry has a pool of resources. Make use of them.
• Bakers Delight did not want their apprentices developing ‘transferable’ skills (i.e. they want to keep their employees). This was a very interesting point. The benefit has been eliminating the question “why am I doing this, we don’t do this at work?”. Training is designed to be specific to one workplace (eg. using company specific tools). It is 100% contextualised.
• Various delivery options (including having it all on a PDA (sponsored by Telstra, including subsidised call costs))
• Almost 100% of Bakers Delight students use blogs to access course material and to record their learning.
• Learning has occurred before delivery has started…use it!
• Measure skills not time. Use RPL.
• Three year Cert III reduced to one year!
• No attrition rate. Higher grades
• 50% less time delivering this way than normal course.
• Relevant links: www.thebakerscrust.blogspot.com and http://nicktafe.blogspot.com

Educational Development and Otago Polytechnic NZ

The second session from the e-Exemplars: exciting developments in e-learning mini-conference, titled “Educational Development and Otago Polytechnic NZ”, was from Leigh Blackall of Otago Polytechnic. This was a really interesting talk about Otago Polytechnic’s adoption of Web2.0 technologies and attitudes to learning.

Below is a summary of the points that I recorded:

• The use of Web2.0 technologies (blogs, wikis, socially networked media, creative commons licensing) is embedded into staff professional development.
• All staff are encouraged to blog
• Developing digital literacy amongst staff is very important
• Staff are being encouraged to become nationally and internationally known as e-learning innovators within their subject specialisation. This has raised the profile and reputation of Otago Polytechnic around the world
• Staff are encouraged to know what each other is doing (this touches on knowledge management)
• Copyright has been turned 180 degrees so that Teachers now retain the IP for products they develop. This has given them the freedom to confidently and freely share their resources on the web (i.e uploading resources into YouTube, Flickr, etc.)
• Organisational resources are licensed under CC BY (Creative Commons Attribution, which lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation).
• Courses are being created and delivered in WikiEducator (see here for details), which saves them hosting and support costs and gives greater global exposure of their courses and their institute, and facilitates networking, collaboration and sharing of resources with other professionals. It also allows them to help develop the software in a direction that serves their needs.
• WikiEducator courses are offered free, with students given the option to formally register in the course in order to gain a recognised qualification (which is happening)
• WikiEducator allows teachers to see each other’s content, facilitating greater sharing of resources and providing a natural peer-pressure regulated form of quality control
• Money has been saved through using free resources
• Using online services saves money for servers and bandwidth
• Putting courses on WikiEducator has been goog marketing – lots of hits on company website
• Less focus on selling content and more on selling support services for that content

Embedding vs Innovation – Facilitating change on a continuum

The first session from the e-Exemplars: exciting developments in e-learning mini-conference, titled “Embedding vs Innovation – Facilitating change on a continuum”, was led by Linda Smart from Holmesglen TAFE and created some good discussion.

Linda highlighted the organisational challenge in trying to embed e-learning into the organisation when so many teachers are still at the stage of working out how to use e-learning in their teaching context, and in some cases still learning how to use a computer or email.

This is a comment I’ve heard from a few TAFEs in Victoria and I’m sure it’s true nationally. The issue has been exacerbated by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework’s (AFLF) 2008-2011 Framework Strategy, which focuses it’s e-learning funding (on which many training organisations depend) on projects that embed e-learning. Unfortunately, this could result in some teachers being funded to develop their e-learning skills even further, while leaving behind those teachers who aren’t yet on board.

On a tangent, the session also exposed me to a new educator word, which I’ve added to my Educator Words page: Heutagogy, which according to Wikipedia “is the principle of teaching based upon the concept of truly self-determined learning”.

e-Exemplars: exciting developments in e-learning

I’m attending the AFLF’s online mini-conference “e-Exemplars: exciting developments in e-learning” today and tomorrow. Each session uses Elluminate and is being archived but you have to login (I think anyone can register) to access the archives.

The four presentations I’ve attended today have been really good so I’ll try to post my comments before bedtime. Carol McCulloch is live blogging some of the sessions here.