Monkey business

I took my wife and son to see the animals yesterday. No, not the football crowd at Plymouth Argyle. I refer to the wonderful animals at Paignton Zoo, especially the baboons. Morrison's Supermarket is right next to the Zoo, and I remembered that they had a great little restaurant there. So that's where we went for lunch. Now I wish we hadn't.

We got in line and waited. And waited... and ... waited. Five minutes went by. The queue was in the same place, not moving. Ten minutes went by. I looked down the line and then spotted the hold up. At the checkout there was a poor woman of mature proportions struggling to operate the touch screen till. We waited... and waited... five more minutes passed and the thoughts were going through my head that I would soon need another shave if I were to look half way respectable when I later had my photo taken with Mr and Mrs Baboon.

So we waited... each transaction seemed to take about 4 or 5 minutes, because the poor woman on the till just couldn't seem to get the hang of it and kept having to restart each new transaction. Several of her colleagues appeared in cameo roles, monkeying about with the screen, trying to fathom out how it worked. Eventually, after about 20 minutes of waiting, during which time 2 people died of old age and my son was carried screaming from the building (slight exaggeration - he was only sobbing), we eventually arrived at the head of the line. We ordered our meals and drinks and waited... and waited. Tap, taptap.... tap...... taptaptap.... The poor till operator just couldn't get the hang of her till touch screen. But she remained remarkably calm. I peered over her shoulder and noted that the screen had multiple touch squares, each of which led to another set of options, which in turn led to another set ... you get the idea.

She was hopelessly undertrained (of course I blame the management, and also the designers of the till who it seemed had overcomplicated matters - the till screen was incredibly badly designed). In the end I resorted to helping her out, pointing out which sequence she should tap to enable us to pay for our meals so we could sit down and eat them before they grew hairs all over them. The amazingly stoic members of the British public in the line behind us kept their counsel and not a word was said, not even so much as a rolled eyeball, even though just about everyone was by now fuming with frustration. And so we paid for our meals and sat down. Next I noticed that the till lady had been relieved of her post and suddenly to everyone's relief, the queue started to move faster. She was sent off to clear the dishes and do the washing up, poor woman.

But it wasn't really her fault. I blame the management for setting someone loose at the sharp end of a busy restaurant without checking to see if she was up to the job. And the designers for not creating a system that was transparent.

Got me thinking about the opacity of some VLE systems. OK, this is my opinion, but many VLEs are not fit for purpose, and masquerade as solutions for the management of online learning. Some are merely glorified e-mail systems. Others are overpriced aggregations of web tools that you can get for free out on the web if you know where to look for them. I have not seen a single VLE system yet that works so transparently that students think more about their learning than they do about how to make the damn VLE work. Again, I don't blame this on the users - it's a management and design issue. When will we get VLEs that do what they are supposed to do, and with minimal cognitive effort on the part of the student? When the baboons start operating the checkouts at Morrisons restaurant, I guess...

Digital scaffolding

Earlier this week at the Open EdTech Summit in Barcelona, I spent some time with Professor Paul Kirschner of the Open University of the Netherlands. During one of our creative thinking sessions (see yesterday's post) Paul came up with an idea for the support of online learners which I promptly gave a name to. In this post I am briefly going to outline the concept of Digital scaffolding.

As the name indicates, the concept is based on a social constructivist perspective, loosely on the ideas of Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). Jerome S Bruner took the idea onwards, by proposing scaffolding as a means of fading support as learners become more expert and independent. These are fairly familiar concepts to most people in education, and simply involves learners being supported to achieve a level of competence or knowledge which goes beyond what they could otherwise achieve on their own. Generally the idea when first expounded, was descriptive of human support. Now, with the advent of digital technologies and intelligent agent software, the concept can be extended.

The problem is this - many learners enter the somewhat 'cold digital wasteland' of online learning with no immediate signposts or recognisable help. Sure, there are FAQ pages and help call numbers, and supposedly a tutor who can provide online support. But how about learners coming into the online environment at exactly the point where they can be challenged and motivated enough to press onwards, but not to the point where they quickly lose impetus and crash out of the programme? How do we use digital media to ensure that learners are challenged just enough within their ZPD and how can we scaffold their learning so they can maintain their progress through their course of studies?

Paul and I believe that intelligent agents and/or expert tutor support can provide this type of digital scaffolding. We will no doubt be working on this idea in the coming year or two to develop it further into a concrete proposition. But that's the germ of the idea. Let us know what you think.

Muy Caliente

The weather this week may have been cooler than I have experienced during my previous visits to Spain (usually I'm there in the summer when the sun is a raging demon in a brazen sky) but the company was 'hot and cooking'. It was a priviledge to rub shoulders with some extremely smart and knowledgeable people drawn from diverse backgrounds. The Open University of Catalonia staff (Eva de Lera and Albert Sangra in particular should be singled out) pulled off an amazing logisitical feat to bring almost 40 people together in one place for the Open EdTech Summit this week. We met up at the well appointed Hotel Catedral, deep in the atmospheric gothic quarter of Barcelona, and attendance was by invitation. The attendance/contributor list reads like a 'who's who' of innovators and champions of open learning.

Although we spent less than 48 hours together, the experience was intense, and the outcomes will no doubt be far reaching. Our task was to divide into four groups of around 8 members, and each tackle a set of issues which would ultimately produce 5 good ideas, and another 5 'interesting' (read crazy) ideas which would inform the future of open learning, open technology and open content.

Memorable moments for me included working alongside people like Paul Kirschner (Open University of the Netherlands) Paul West (Commonwealth of Learning, Canada) and Debby Knotts (University of New Mexico) as we grappled with innovative ideas and argued over concepts and theories of e-learning. I bumped into Brian Lamb for the first time and we shared a rant on Edupunk over a few jars. There was also an informal on the hoof chat with Neil Selwyn (Insititute of Education) as we passed through the old roman walled area of Barcelona under a full moon. I enjoyed intelligent and sometimes hilarious conversations with the likes of Sugata Mitra (University of Newcastle), Mark Bullen (University of British Columbia, Canada) and Vijay Kumar (MIT) - who gave everyone of us a free copy of his Opening Up Education book. Ishmael Pena and Tom Caswell were new contacts who I am certain I will continue to maintain contact with, even if it's only on Twitter.

I will leave the summarising of the event to Ismael Pena (Open University of Catalonia) as he is far more eloquent (and probably more concise) than me. His summary can be found on his ICTlogy blog. Oh, and of course, there is now a Twemes site which holds a growing set of images captured during those 48 hours, and other artefacts of the event for all to enjoy. If there is another event planned for next year, I aim to be there, believe me.

Learning futures festival

I'm a guest speaker at the University of Leicester Learning Futures Festival which kicks off on 11th November. I will be sharing a session with Steven Warburton (Kings College London) and Ricardo Torres Kompen, (Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain) where together we will be addressing the topic of the 'Social Web for Formal and Informal Learning'. I am still debating whether to wear formal or informal attire for the presentation, but in the final analysis it probably won't matter to anyone but me. Y'see the sessions will be delivered synchronously online through Elluminate, so I can dress how I want on this occasion.

Here's the blurb on the session: The Social web, also known as Web 2.0 technologies and services that enables the lay-person to be actively and collaboratively participate on the Internet has received much attention in the recent years. Educators, researchers, practitioners and technologists are keen to harness the potential of social web for learning. This two hour seminar and discussion forum will explore the potential of social web for both formal and informal learning.

The session is on 19th November 2008 between 14:00 - 16:00 (GMT) and will be live on Elluminate. Here's hoping you can join us!

Retro ALT-C

For those who attended ALT-C 2008, and for those who didn't but wished they had, a report on the conference has just been published, nicely capturing the mood, highlights and reflections of the event. Thanks go to Matt Lingard and his team, Athina Chatzigavriil and Kris Roger, who have done a great job conveying the atmosphere and ambience of a very diverse and enjoyable conference. The report is a good read, and comes complete with photos from several sources, including one from our very own Helen Keegan. Look out for the Learning Technologist of the year award presentation - Josie Fraser - and then tell me whether she looks bemused, triumphant, or .... something else. There is also a nice section on the ALT Fringe (F-ALT) events that punctuated ALT this year for the very first time, and some reflections on that astoundingly good Gala dinner at Headingly Cricket Ground. Enjoy reading the report, and then get ready for ALT-C 2009, to be held at the University of Manchester, in September.

We are not lost

We have a 3D immersion cinema here at the University of Plymouth. It's a converted planetarium, which among other things, is now used to research some of the principles of virtual reality. I take visitors there just so they can experience the 'Wow!' factor. But how far down the road to full immersive experiences in education are we? We have handheld devices such as the Nintendo Wii, and sites such as Second Life which offer us a semblance of immersive experience sans the headset devices and much vaunted VR systems we heard so much about in the 90s. VR headset versions are being used in a variety of learning contexts such as military training, but how effective are they? And do we actually need them anymore? Popular fiction writers dwelt on the capacity of virtual reality to inspire, excite, terrify and bemuse, as in the Michael Crichton novel Disclosure:

He brought the headset down from the ceiling and started to place it over her eyes.
“Just a minute.” She pulled away. “What is this?”
'The headset has two small display screens. They project images right in front of your eyes. Put it on. And be careful. These things are expensive.”
“How expensive?”
“A quarter of a million dollars apiece.” He fitted the headset over her eyes and put the headphones over her ears.
“I don't see any images. It’s dark in here.”
“That's because you’re not plugged in, Louise.” He plugged in her cables.
Sanders stepped up onto the second walker pad and brought the headset down from the ceiling. He plugged in the cable. “I'll be right with you.” He said.
He put on the headset.
Sanders saw a blue screen, surrounded by blackness. He looked to his left and saw Fernandez standing beside him. She looked entirely normal, dressed in her street clothes. The video was recording her appearance, and the computer eliminated the walker pad and the headset.
“I can see you,” she said in a surprised voice. She smiled. The part of her face covered by the headset was computer animated, giving her a slightly unreal, cartoonlike quality.

Crichton painted a picture of a high cost, graphically rich, and exotic multi-media based technology into which users could mentally immerse themselves, and into which social interaction and interpersonal communication were embedded. It was a technology where the edges between reality and fantasy were blurred and where the interface between human and computer faded to grey within the mind of the user. Crichton's story was the unadulterated fiction we would expect, particularly with large cash advances and a Hollywood movie deal in the offing. This set of possibilities became the central theme for the cult movie series 'The Matrix' in which the boundaries between reality and virtuality were blurred. How does VR work on the mind so well, deceiving people into believing they are having some kind of 'real' experience? And do we need visors anymore now we have Second Life, the Wii and other apps which can 'fool' us almost as well...?

The media expert Derrick de Kerckhove sheds some important light on this question in his book 'The Skin of Culture'. de Kerckhove relates the story of a colleague who was visiting the wilds of Ontario, with an Alonquin Indian guide to look after him. At one point, he turned to his Indian guide and suggested that they may be lost. 'We are not lost', replied the guide, 'the camp is lost!'. This disconnect in cultural perceptions of space was not lost on the colleague, who realised that in his world space was fixed and he was a free agent wandering around it. His guide saw a different perspective, where the only fixed point was himself, and the rest of the world flowed by as he moved it under his feet. This is the exact same principle employed by VR systems to fool the individual into thinking s/he is moving around and encountering objects when in fact s/he is fixed in space.

This principle will sustain itself as the virtual experience in all its guises continues to perplex. But what it will look like is probably still beyond us.

Atlantis rising

There is still time to submit a 300 word abstract for the Plymouth e-Learning Conference - deadline is 30 November, but time is running out. We have had some interesting proposals so far under the theme of: 'Boundary Changes: Redefining Learning Space'. The keynote speakers are already booked, and we are working on a spectacular conference dinner too. Several attractions are already planned during the event including special sessions in the Virtual 3-D Immersion Cinema on the university campus.

There is also at least one special track planned - it will be reserved for the students of the Atlantis University Project - an Erasmus funded transnational computer project which involves students not only from my own Faculty of Education, here at the University of Plymouth, but also from the University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, Germany, the Institute of Technology at Tralee, Ireland, and the Warsaw Institute of Technology, Poland. The Atlantis students are doing some very interesting research and development into areas such as collaborative content management and online shared learning spaces. They will be presenting several papers showcasing their work (some of them are pictured above in February, on the beach near Dingle, Ireland). Slots for other special tracks, panels and symposia have also been reserved. All you need to do is contact us at the conference website above, and propose the session, with a title, list of speakers and a chairperson. We will do the rest.

And so, in the words of the sublime but slightly rediculous Delia Smith "C'mon - let's be 'aving you!"