Posted on April 16, 2012 by Chris Hall
The link below takes you to the reading group choice from the book “Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age” How Learners are Shaping their Own Experiences. You will need to your Swansea Blackboard password to access the content.
‘Understanding students’ uses of technology for learning: towards creative appropriation’
by Rhona Sharpe and Helen Beetham.
And there is still time to choose the date http://www.doodle.com/avkyysak6dax42w5
As has been mentioned before, if you can’t make the date don’t worry as we’ll use this site for an online discussion of the reading as well. We might even get the authors to chip in?
Posted on April 13, 2012 by Chris Hall
A free and open course from Stanford University, run by a commercial company, 160,000 students from around the world and a prediction that there will eventually only be 10 universities in the world. Video presentations, students creating course support, students taking the course online and not going to lectures even when they are offered. Pie in the sky, a vision of the future or something in between? Are we ready for the challenge?
More from Wired magazine http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/ff_aiclass/all/1
Posted on April 10, 2012 by Chris Hall
Posted on April 2, 2012 by Chris Hall
And the winner of the Reading Group poll is….
‘Understanding students’ uses of technology for learning: towards creative appropriation’ by Rhona Sharpe and Helen Beetham.
As everyone seems to love voting so much, we’ll have another poll. This time to find the best date for the reading group. If you can’t make the date don’t worry as we’ll use this site for an online discussion of the reading as well. We might even get the authors to chip in?
The following link takes you to a Doodle poll. All you have to do is add your name and tick any of the dates you can make. I’ve put in quite a few times to see if we can find one the suits as many people as possible
http://www.doodle.com/avkyysak6dax42w5
Posted on March 30, 2012 by Chris Hall
Posted on March 26, 2012 by Chris Hall
After the first round of voting two readings had the same number of votes. It’s now time to decide which one we ant to read
Posted on March 16, 2012 by Chris Hall
The last reading group post suggested we look at the new book “Rethinking Learning for a Digital Age” How Learners are Shaping their Own Experiences by Rhona Sharpe, Helen Beetham, Sara de Freitas has some interesting content. I thought we could look at one of the chapters for the reading group. You can see see the full contents here http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415875431/.
There was a feeling that this was a good place to start in conjunction with the suggestion from Deb Lewis that we combine it with some de-mystifying of the jargon.
So below is a poll of the chapters in the book. Select 3 and we’ll start with the one that gets the most votes.
Posted on January 30, 2012 by Matthew Allen
The latest edition is out now here:
http://www.educause.edu/er
From EDUCAUSE whose mission statement is “to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology”
And they do have a go !
Posted on January 20, 2012 by Matthew Allen
Tortworth Court Hotel - Leyhill Open Prison
I’ve just finished brushing the dust off myself, which I picked up under my desk, having fallen off my chair in surprise after reading of Blackboard’s intentions !
Fasten your seat belts … and have a look here.
Well, that’s a turn up for the books isn’t it !
Their previous moves towards openness have been … well … stretching the definition a bit, but this does seem to be legit !
How many lecturers will have the urge to act upon it, remains to be seen but it is nice to suddenly have the option !
I don’t know why I didn’t see this at the time (I’m 3 months late in putting this up now) so please accept my apologies for my shocking tardiness. I wish I’d seen it before too. There wasn’t so much dust under my desk three months ago …
Posted on January 12, 2012 by Matthew Allen
cc licensed flickr photo by RuffLife: http://flickr.com/photos/rufflife/5107716980/
My Dad used to have one of these old reel to reel tape recorders. He had it all set up so he could record himself “murdering” (his word) on the piano whichever bit of popular easy listening had taken his fancy most recently. He was / still is actually pretty good, not that you can ever persuade him of the fact …
One day, many years ago, he recorded me reading something or the other out loud (the exact details are lost in the mists of time) and then played it back to me. I was absolutely horrified at the sound of my own voice ! To hear myself as others must have heard me ! I didn’t want to speak again for about a month ! I sounded so dozy and absolutely nothing like my own impression of what I sounded like. As a result of that single event, I now avoid being recorded like the plague, either audio or video. I did have to be recorded a bit during my teacher training (video) and I hated every minute of it – even though I found it very useful …
Still … I digress …
Lecture capture is one of those things that rears its head occasionally and then, like Nessy, vanishes back under the surface with barely a ripple, to rear again another day.
Many people hate the idea:
- Some worry they’ll get all camera shy and look daft. Why you’d worry about a camera when standing up and talking in front of 200 people, I don’t really know … but it takes all sorts I guess !
- Others take the attitude that the lecture is an outdated, ineffectual artifact from a bygone age and has been superseded by other teaching methods, so why bother capturing it ! Their rather vitriolic sentiment … not necessarily mine.
- Some get all excited about their intellectual property being captured in the lecture.
(“excited” and “intellectual property” – not often seen in the same sentence …)
- Some just feel it is generally pointless and the time and energy expended on it would be better spent elsewhere.
- And of course … nearly everyone frets that if they record their lectures, then no students will actually turn up to experience them “live”. They’ll all watch lounging round in their pyjamas at home, in between repeat episodes of “In the Night Garden” and “Waybuloo” while eating Twiglets … or something …
This post however, on one of Donald Clark’s many blogs, brings a study clearly showing that students gain from the use of lecture capture to our attention. Have a look at it.
(I think Mr Clark falls clearly into at least one of the bullet pointed camps above, but don’t hold that against him. He’s a learning technologist.)
Point seven looks especially interesting to me. I wonder if Media Services could edit my two hours of anecdote filled rambling down to a slick 15 minutes of professionally delivered content ?
Lecture capture is potentially on the way. Perhaps we have to learn to embrace it and make it beautiful, before it gets here.
