Chocolate coated raisins and termite mounds

I enjoyed a very interesting few hours over at the University of Southampton yesterday, where I was a guest speaker at the Higher Education Academy e-Learning Symposium at the subject centre for Languages and Linguistics Area Studies. The e-Learning symposium was small but intimate with around 65 delegates from about 20 universities. All of the plenary sessions were streamed out to the web, so those who couldn't attend at least experienced a flavour.

Jon Dron (formerly of Brighton University) who is at Athabasca University, gave an interesting first presentation on control and constraint in e-learning. Drawing on diverse sources such as Winston Churchill, termite mounds, Stigmergy, and chocolate coated raisins, Jon took us through a discussion on how ideas develop and learning processes work in online social environments. There was some debate over Personal Learning Environments and an interesting statement about the wisdom of the crowds vesus the stupidity of the masses. Unfortunately, we ran out of time, and so the discussion petered out.

Next up was Emma Place (University of Bristol) who talked about her concerns over plagiarism, cut-and-paste research and the general malaise that seems to be overtaking students in higher education due to digital laziness. Most of the audience concurred, and when a straw poll was taken, there was almost unanimous agreement that Internet research skills should become a part of the fabric of every undergraduate first year programme.

I gave my own presentation just before lunch (probably the best slot of the day) in which I covered some of my recent studies on wiki based learning, and unveiled my new 5 stage model of wiki activities. The model, which progresses through deeper stages of cognitive engagement and also a progression from solo to collaborative exercises can also be applied to just about any other online learning. It's easy to remember, because it's 'E' sy.... Students start by exploring, then progress into exhibition of some of their ideas, followed by explanation. Elaboration ensues in which all the group are engaged with trying to understand the ideas and this is capped by evaluation - placing value on the currency, relevancy, accuracy and other merits of the wiki content. It seemed to be well received, and at least one delegate blogged about it the same day.

After lunch there were two workshops, one on Second Life and MUVes in langaueg learning, and the other very much focused on a new tool for the creation of learning objects. Due to the long(ish) drive back home, I only got to participate in the first workshop, but the trip was worth it. And I met some interesting people, and had some interesting conversations, too.

Dinosaur warning!

Is the traditional library in danger of becoming a dinosaur? Well, a new report, issued on 16th January and commissioned by JISC and the British Library, warns it may do if libraries don't change to keep pace with digital trends.

The report challenges the common assumption that the ‘Google Generation’ – young people born or brought up in the Internet age – is the most adept at using the web. The report by the CIBER research team at University College London claims that, although young people demonstrate an ease and familiarity with computers, they rely on the most basic search tools and do not possess the critical and analytical skills to asses the information that they find on the web.

The report ‘Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future’ also shows that research-behaviour traits that are commonly associated with younger users – impatience in search and navigation, and zero tolerance for any delay in satisfying their information needs – are now the norm for all age-groups, from younger pupils and undergraduates through to professors.

The study calls for libraries to respond urgently to the changing needs of researchers and other users and to understand the new means of searching and navigating information. Learning what researchers want and need is crucial if libraries are not to become obsolete, the report warns.

The findings also send a stark message to increasingly lack-lustre Brown government - that young people are dangerously lacking information skills. Well-funded information literacy programmes are needed, it continues, if the UK is to remain as a leading knowledge economy with a strongly-skilled next generation of researchers. Will the government see the dangers and cough up some funds? Do a dog's lips move when it reads?

Dame Lynne Brindley DBE, Chief Executive of the British Library, said of the report findings: “Libraries have to accept that the future is now. At the British Library we have adopted the ‘Wiki’ view and the ‘Beta’ mindset. We have seized many of the opportunities new technology offers to inspire our users to learn, discover and innovate. However, we must do more and welcome the report findings, particularly the need to equip users of all age-groups with wider information and digital literacy skills.”

Dr Malcolm Read, Executive Secretary of JISC, welcomed the publication of the report, saying: “These findings add to our growing understanding of subjects that should concern all who work in further and higher education – the changing needs of our students and researchers and how libraries can meet their needs. We hope that this report will encourage debate around these important questions. We hope it will also serve to remind us all that students and researchers will continue to need the appropriate skills and training to help navigate an increasingly diverse and complex information landscape.”

Bringing e-learning to book

A new book arrived on my desk on Friday. I get a lot of them these days, mainly because I'm the book review editor for a journal called Interactive Learning Environments. A lot of freebies land on my desk and I then send them out to reviewers, who write their comments and then get to keep the book as 'payment'. But this one caught my eye, and I thought - I'm going to review this one myself! I'm glad I did.

It's by Chris Hill (he manages the JISC Regional Support Centre in the East Midlands), and is entitled 'Teaching with e-learning in the Lifelong Learning Sector'. It caught my eye, because it covers quite a number of issues and concerns that currently impact upon e-learning in further education. OK, It has JISC stamped all over it. But Hill does offer some useful little models and frameworks to help people understand what has, frankly, started to resemble the battle of the Somme. He expertly picks his way through the morass of ILT, ICT, IT and e-learning, and neatly skirts around the machine gun posts of Moodle and other VLEs. He even avoids the minefield that is social networking (I was disappointed with this, even Web 2.0 barely merits more than half a page) but then carelessly allows himself to be snagged on the barbed wire of learning styles and individual differences. Nearly a home run, but no cigar.

Hill lobs in a molotov cocktail of theories, models and frameworks towards the reader, and then waits for it to explode. There are many, many problems with 'learning styles', and I would not be as courageous as Chris Hill to venture into attempting to unpick them, especially not in the field of e-learning, I can tell you. Honey and Mumford's Learning Styles Inventory for example, has been *heavily* criticised by just about every self respecting psychologist (and his dog) for not only being overly prescriptive, and ignoring personal and group contexts, but also for demonstrating exactly .... zero internal reliability.... when tested. Bandler and Grinder's Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) theory is even more reviled, not least due to Richard Bandler, a cocaine addict who associated with gangsters, who was tried for the brutal murder of one of his girlfriends. NLP has been slated for lacking any scientific validation - and yet it is still sold as a personal development concept, (earning its inventors a never ending stream of money) and just like Honey and Mumford's theory, is swallowed whole by many FE and HE education lecturers.

Despite this dodgy little section in the book, which Hill tries gamefully to hold together, the remaining sections of the book, although in places simplistic, are useful and at times even insightful. There is also a dusting of humour which never goes amiss. The standard QTS/QTLS style Learning Matters format pervades throughout, with the obligatory Practical and Reflective Tasks and Teaching Tips. and there is a visual overview at the end of each chapter which, I suspect, most readers will ignore.

My verdict: Generally this book will be useful to all those who are embarking on a career of teaching in the 'Learning Skills Sector' (read Further Education), and I will be recommending it to all my students in this field. My advice: Drop the first two words of the title Chris: "e-Learning in the Lifelong Learning Sector" says it better.

BookFaced cheek!

I had a message passed on to me this morning from a trusted friend (my wife, OK?): "Someone with a lot of cheek is cloning FaceBook profiles. This person copies our pictures and creates a profile similar to ours. Then s/he sends scrap, spam or garbage to our contacts or friends in Hi5 and other profile sites. Friends are insulted…or asked for personal information…" (Sounds like the Inland Revenue).

"Send this message to your friends", said the message, "to prevent them from being offended in your name by other people. If you receive some junk mail from me, please inform me first, OK? Send this to all your friends!" (Kind of like spam?)

Well I never. Some people have far too much time on their hands. So if you are one of my friends on FaceBook, and you receive an insulting message from me, it's (probably) not me... right? But of course, you can't be certain. This blog may have been hijacked too.... Sven

Prank iPhone?

I received an e-mail from my friend Maged Boulos yesterday which contained the following warning:

'The first Malware for the iPhone has appeared. It began to appear a few days ago as a package named "iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep" and was described as "An important system update. Install this before updating to the new 1.1.3 firmware." During the installation, the package overwrites some other applications including OpenSSH and "Erica's Utilities"—a collection of command line tools for the iPhone. If the user uninstalls the fake 1.1.3 prep package, these other apps are also removed. No explicitly malicious actions are taken though; all the user need do is to reinstall the lost apps.'

This application problem is probably an unintended side-effect, and the fake package appears to be a prank, intended to be harmless. But it does show the potential for malware to do damage to iPhones and the need for users to be cautious.

Well, it's very nice of the malware writers to think of us iPhone users. We would feel left out if they hadn't created some special viruses just for us. If I ever meet one though, I will cheerfully dispatch them prematurely to the place all virus writers are destined to end up...

And get this.... the University's intelligent anti-spam software 'cleverly' identified Maged's e-mail as 'spam', so I didn't see it immediately, as it was zapped into my 'to delete' file.

Cross eyePhone

Convergence they said..... it's going to be the next big thing. All the gadgets you ever wanted will all be in one box, they told me. This is known as technological convergence. They said.

So I looked up 'convergence' on Google, and among others, I found this definition: 'Convergence is the simultaneous inward movement of both eyes toward each other, usually in an effort to maintain single binocular vision when viewing an object'. So, going cross-eyed is convergence.

Well, my eye-phone has kept me a little cross-i'd for a while. It's a small object of desire whose prime function is to make everyone in close proximity bright green with envy. Some of my colleagues have actually told me they are jealous. Not many people have one yet, it seems. The biggest put-off factor of the iPhone is that it is still relatively expensive at £269, and air-time charges, besides being confined to one provider (O2), can also be quite expensive. You are locked into a minimum 18 month contract too. Well, I suppose telecom providers need to find some way of making money, now that we will all soon be enjoying free phone calls and access to the Internet at home (I was offered free broadband today by TalkTalk, so it must be happening exactly as Stephen Heppell predicted!)

But the iPhone looks and feels like it should - small, sleek and compact, and with so many functions on it (see the picture above) that you can't possibly get bored with it. I have so far done everything with it I wanted to (come on guys - take it seriously please). I have accessed my e-mails and the Web from strange and remote places, I have taken reasonable photographs which I will no doubt bore my Flickr fraternity with in the next few weeks, and I have made and received chrystal clear calls to friend, family and the tax office. I have stored over 1500 of my favourite music tracks onto it and it shows no signs of filling up. My best achievement to date has been to moblog - something I have wanted to do since I was knee high to a JCB digger.

The iPhone has its limitations - it's still stuck at 2G stage, which I am assured by my 80 year old Dad is absolutely fine. It is also noticeably slow in loading up web pages, but this is more than made up for with the superb touch screen technology that allows me to stack pages, album covers and photographs up and roll them across the screen, in a much better fashion that Microsoft's Vista can. So you can understand why I'm a fan of 'convergence' - whatever it is.

Wiimote control

Yesterday, in the technology section of BBC Breakfast, I watched as Rory Cellan-Jones talked to Bill Gates at a Las Vegas Techno-Fair. Gates (of Hell) was demonstrating a new, and sickenly clever table top touch screen computer, the 'Microsoft Surface' which he confidently claims, millions of punters will have bought over the next 5 years. He's probably right, I thought, and there goes a few billion more dollars into Mr Gate's already obscenely bulging trouser pockets (priced at around $10,000 a piece, it wouldn't be long...)

Then, lo and behold, the angel of heaven descended, and brought us great tidings of joy (I know, I know ..... that was last month...). A wizz kid called Jimmy Chung Lee has just created a hardware hack on... wait for it... the Nintendo Wii. Using nothing more than a few simple ballpoint pens, he replaced the guts with Infra Red lights. Because the Wii works by tracking IR lights, any surface, whether a projector screen, an LCD screen, or even a coffee table top can be turned into a multi-touch screen similar to the iPod Touch or Microsoft Surface. And what's more, the software can be downloaded for free. Hooray! So is that hard cheese for Microsoft? Wii hope so....

Plymouth e-Learning Conference

There's still time for you to submit a paper or workshop proposal for the Third Plymouth e-Learning Conference. Deadline for submission of abstracts (200-300 words) has now been extended to 31st January. The themes of the conference and paper submission details can all be found on the conference website. The keynote speaker for this year's event which will take place in Plymouth on 4th April, is Professor Mark Stiles from Staffordshire University.

It's a small and intimate conference, but in previous years has attracted delegates from all over the UK and farther afield, who were willing to engage in lively debate and explore new territories around e-learning. The event will take place in the stunning new Roland Levinsky Arts Faculty building (pictured) and there will be a large space available for exhibitors and vendors. I hope to see you there, but get your proposal in soon!

Moblogging

Here is my first attempt at blogging using a mobile device - my iPhone. I'm finding it a little bit tedious and slow with the small virtual keyboard not used to the speed of my fingers yet. It will also be a bit untidy when compared to my regular posts, but it's a start. If you have any experiences to relate using a mobile device such as a Blackberry, iPhone etc for blogging, please make a comment below.

Buses, blogging and breakfast

It all started during my visit to Utrecht to speak at the Bazaar conference last month. Coming out of the railway station at Utrecht, I caught a public bus, which I was assured by the driver, would stop just outside my hotel. It was dark and getting very cold by now, as it always does in Holland in mid-December. I asked the Dutch driver if he would be so kind to indicate to me when he reached my stop. "Yah, of coursh", he said.

A dozen stops later, and I was getting worried. I asked the driver when my stop would be coming up. "It'sh two shtops back" he informed me.......

I was livid. But of course, being British, I didn't show it. I got off at the next stop and started the long walk back to where I thought my hotel was. After over half an hour trudging about in steadily dropping temperatures, I realised I was hopelessly lost in a strange town, with no decent map to guide me. No-one knew where my hotel was. I was getting cold and tired and beginning to despair of ever seeing a warm bed for the night...

Then joy of joys.... I chanced across a car-park attendant who was very helpful. He showed me the map, and said I was miles away from where I should be. Then he called me a taxi. (Frankly, he could have called me any name he liked at this point, I was past caring...). The taxi arrived and I jumped in, and within 5 minutes was at my hotel. Wonderful.

Got me thinking. At breakfast on the last day, I found myself talking to some colleagues including my newest German buddy Kristina Hoeppner. I was holding court about my views on LMSs versus PLEs and likened Learning Management Systems to public buses, which have prescribed ways of operating, and cater more for timetables and costs than they do for the needs of individuals. Drawing on my experience a few nights before, I said I thought that Personalised Learning Environments were more like taxis - you could get them to go in exactly the direction you wished, making them more flexible and personalised.

Kristina brought this all back to me when I read her blog yesterday. (Thanks for reminding me what I said Kristina - I may have forgotton this little analogy otherwise!) It's nice to be mentioned in dispatches but it sure makes you think - if a conversation over coffee and croissants can be blogged to all and sundry, I'd better be a little careful what I say in public in future.