It's a Mash Up: Online Learning meets Classroom Teaching

Lesson: PgCert Teacher Training: Online Assessment and Evaluation – Wednesday 30th Jan – Group 1

Background

This was the first group of three, to be taught on this lesson. I was drafted in to help deliver this classroom based 90 minute session on online assessment and evaluation with colleague Heather Conboy. It was an interesting and rewarding experience. Rewarding in that I did feel that the session went well, which was by and large confirmed in feedback from the 10 strong group of PgCert group of tutors.

Leading up to the class there was a little apprehension. Reasons for this: I) I was dual presenting, so delivering and writing a lesson plan for two was a new experience 2) The subject matter I had not delivered a lesson on before and the style of lesson was different in that it was a one-off session for me although for the students it did feed into an ongoing series of lessons. Heather and I agreed a lesson plan, which I am acutely aware of is a great anchor to support you through a lesson. The lesson plan gave us confidence that we had a clear strategy (to deviate from :-), I’ll explain more later).

Preparation

Delivering this lesson emphasised the fact that preparation and a flexible approach are vital to try and make any lesson achieve the intended learning outcomes, ensure the lesson goes smoothly and that the students benefit from the lesson. So in addition to the lesson plan, a series of examples to demonstrate were identified by myself and Heather, as well as additional resources that we could direct the students towards. The approach in actual fact is very similar to the recent online synchronous lessons that I have run which is characterised by a very detailed lesson plan, (which has some flexibility built in for the teacher to deliver in their own style), emphasis on participant activity, discussions and demonstrations. All of which are an important part of teaching in both arenas.

Social and Active Learning

From my reading and practical experience I am ware of the benefits of social and active learning and therefore hoped to take advantage of this by using a wiki in class to promote discussion in small groups, thus enhancing the enjoyment of the session(by adding a social element to the learning), laying the foundations to learn from each other and then using the attributes of the wiki to capture and store the thoughts of the small groups as a record for themselves to return to and reflect on and for myself and heather to also be able to reflect on the participants activities and offer constructive written feedback at an appropriate time outside of the class.

Feedback from the participants seemed to vindicate this approach as when asked about the best part of the session many replied with comments relating to this active and social approach saying for example “using the wiki”, “playing with the computer”, “Community as a group”, “practical hands-on”. Other participants commented that the best parts were general discussion and demonstrations. So the feedback was good to me in that the variety of strategies helped to cater for the needs and enjoyment of a broad spectrum of the audience.

Adapting and being flexible

The initial part of the class was planned around the fact that the participants were to have completed a number of pre session tasks, one of which was identifying any online assessments that they currently used in their practice. It was quickly apparent that the participants had no or minimal experience in using online assessment and the initial task planned for; a small group wiki based task was not going to happen. Recognising this fact, it was obvious that the session needed moving along to give the students an appreciation of what opportunities there were to use online assessment and evaluation in their work, so we preceded to demonstrating examples of various technologies to show what could be achieved. Heather led this part of the lesson and I contributed to the discussion as and when appropriate. In retrospect the time initially allocated to demonstration and discussion was probably too short and that for future lessons and bearing in mind the time constraints, a brief discussion to garner the use of online assessments amongst the participants maybe sufficient, rather than a hands on task. However I am aware that there may be a new batch of tutors with different levels of experience and it may be that a wiki based task early on might be the way to go. So being flexible and prepared to adapt I would say is quite a necessary attitude/ skill to possess.

Participant Perceptions

I believe we actually achieved a lot in the lesson. This group of students came with little knowledge and I sensed a little reluctance to be bothered with online assessment and evaluation. There was an obvious lack of knowledge about what is possible and a questioning of whether there was any value in online assessment in comparison with the traditional ways of doing things. After discussions and demonstrations, myself and heather were able to highlight advantages and possibilities of how online assessment could be useful and emphasised the point that there is not a set prescribed method for using the tools mentioned, but once they have an appreciation of what the tools can do they may recognize opportunities for using them. Also it was pointed out that online assessments don’t necessarily need to replace current practices but are there to aid and assist current learning and assessment strategies.

Off the back of the demonstrations and the discussions, students engaged in a small group wiki based task. With one of the group acting as a scribe they devised an online assessment and recorded this on a wiki page. This further shifted perceptions as to the potential uses of online tools for formative, summative or diagnostic assessment. You could sense that by the end of the lesson with increased knowledge, that participants were overall feeling more favourable towards the use of online assessment and this was reflected in participant feedback where seven of the students indicated that would probably or very probably change some aspect of their practice as a result of the workshop, one would change a little, one was unlikely due to work constraints and the other did not respond.

Conclusions

I think a predominantly social and active learning approach is correct in both online and face to face teaching and learning. The use of the wiki as a tool in the classroom is a good medium to pull together small group discussions, where participants can be benefit from face to face interaction and thereafter ongoing discussion, debate, collaboration and decision making online and out of class if necessary and desirable.

The example demonstrations were most definitely useful in laying the foundations of knowledge to comprehend the possibilities and engage in subsequent discussions, where participants benefited not only from teacher input, but also from fellow participants.

This session was very much an introductory and awareness raising session and with links provided participants have some initial signposts from where to gather deeper knowledge. With a more knowledgeable group, discussions may focus on the success or failure of online assessment approaches and this will emphasise the need to be flexible and adaptable in this type of session.

About Me

A Quick Overview I am a Distance Learning Development Team Leader in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at De Montfort University (DMU), previously i have worked in web and multimedia development and i am interested in helping myself and other teachers to take advantage of web 2.0 technology to find new and effective ways to deliver interactive and collaborative learning. Other Interests I have recently successfully completed an MA by independent study: e-learning and education where my focus was on using social software and web conferencing technology to enhance adult distance learning. In my spare time i am interested in keeping moderately fit, mainly through Swimming and Spinning Classes.

Update: Sept 2022
I no longer work at  DMU and am not currently on a consistent basis updating and providing fresh content for this blog. I am pursuing a few other interests at this time.

A discussion of strategies for managing social bookmarking teaching and learning activities (using del.icio.us)

Many educational benefits are attributed to the activity known as social bookmarking. Whilst re-iterating these benefits this article will discuss and offer a solution to the task of managing social bookmarking learning activities.

Three reasons why teachers and students should join a social bookmarking site

1. Accelerated Knowledge Acquisition: Through personally tagging, building a network of informed users, through subscribing to specific tags and from connecting with like minded taggers, you will acquire phenomenally fast access to resources of interest. What this means is that your access to knowledge is increased dramatically, your knowledge and understanding will develop more quickly and your awareness of current issues will keep you up to date and at the forefront in your field.

2. Portability and Flexibility: Because social bookmarking websites can be accessed anytime from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection the opportunity to tag bookmarks, retrieve information from saved bookmarks and keep up to date with the tagging activities of your network is increased dramatically compared to the option of saving your bookmarks to a location bound home or office based personal computer.

3. Easy and fast searching and retrieval of Resources: your own bookmarks, your network members bookmarks and the bookmarks of all members of your social bookmarking site can easily be searched by keyword or tag to retrieve previously bookmarked resources or find new resources of interest.

More reasons to join a social bookmarking site

4. Easy organization and categorization of resources means teachers can offer improved support for students. Students have a mechanism to assist themselves in self directed study. Tagging allows bookmarks to be organized in a number of different categories, not just one as is the case in a hierarchical folder type set up. Bundling of tags is an additional organisational tool

5. Connections: Tagging can reveal other individuals that have bookmarked the same resources as you and who may therefore share the same interests. Apart from adding them to your own social bookmarking network it could lead to collaboration, support and access to other knowledge resources external to the social bookmarking activity.

6. Sharing your access to knowledge: For teachers’ resources can be made easily available to students and colleagues either through the social bookmarking site itself, embedding bookmark links into web pages or by using RSS Feeds. Students can do the same and learn these valuable skills for other areas of their life e.g. work, family, hobbies.

Individual Motivation
In my view initially the use of a social bookmarking tool such as ‘del.icio.us’ is essentially a tool for the individual to have a convenient location to store and categorize bookmarks for their own benefit, thus enabling 24/7 access from any internet connected computer. In relation to the wider world of the web, the individual tagging of bookmarks has unwitting, unplanned and uncontrived social and group benefits.

As the concept and features of social bookmarking have evolved it is possible that some individuals develop a collective consciousness and the tagging of bookmarks may become more of a social act as well as just for individual benefit. That said, as there is no overwhelming reason or obligation to conform to a tagging standard, then it would seem that primarily the tagging of bookmarks is for individual gain. Which I guess is how it should be for it to be a genuine folksonomic tagging system (that reflects the true tagging intentions of its members). Tagging habits may change overtime depending how influenced an individual is by the rest of the tagging community.

Social Bookmarking in relation to teaching and learning activities
As part of their definition Phillip Jeffrey and Samia Khan from the Human Communication Technologies Lab describe social bookmarking as a “non-hierarchical and inclusive process of groups cooperating ad hoc to categorise and share information using reader-created (e.g. del.icio.us) tags” They add “This non-hierarchical concept of tagging to classify and share is called a folksonomy.” (Jeffrey and Khan 2005) .

The differences between social tagging and collaborative tagging are highlighted by comparing the definition of collaboration; “to work together, especially in joint intellectual effort” and the definition of social; "living or disposed to live in companionship with others or in a community, rather than in isolation" (ASC 2007) to emphasise that collaborative tagging has more purpose and is perhaps a better way to describe the tagging that will occur in a contrived teaching and learning activity.

Whilst informal social bookmarking has all the benefits mentioned previously, more formal teaching and learning social bookmarking activities bring a number of additional issues relating to secondary tasks such as for example reorganisation and retagging of bookmarks, reviewing and critiquing bookmarks or discussion of tagging strategies. The specifics of various teaching and learning tasks are for another time, the focus of this article centres around two main issues; 1) Task management and 2) A single account strategy.

Scenario and Issues to address
The number of students, the intent of the task and the time in which to do the task will all add to how a task is organised and facilitated. As an example we shall use the following scenario, and assume that the task is completed using the ‘del.icio.us’ social bookmarking site.

If we imagine a scenario where a teacher has 150 students to teach. In order for the individuals in a group to develop some kind of bond and to give focus to the learning activities, the group of 150 is split into 15 groups of 10. Tagging, organising, reviewing and critiquing tasks can ensue from here. The two issues of interest are:

1. Activity Management: How can a teacher maintain and control a number of different groups attempting the same social bookmarking activity.
2. Single Account Strategy: How can this group work be achieved without the need for a separate group account being setup.

Perhaps the first issue is more obvious than the second, but I think both issues are closely related in developing a satisfactory strategy for both teacher and student. I’ll take the second issue first as I believe this is at the heart of a potential problem. When social bookmarking moves into the arena of teaching and learning the emphasis moves onto group work, collaboration and the requirement to complete specific tasks. For social bookmarking the formation of a separate group account seems an obvious and easy solution to organize and control the task. But is this either satisfactory or necessary for the student? Should a student have to work with more than just there own personal social bookmarking account? For the student it is a major inconvenience to interrupt their surfing activity to have to switch from one account to another. For the teacher it is not so much of an issue as one way or another they need to isolate the bookmarks into 15 separate groupings rather than one big group,

Solutions

Options include:
1. Separate group account – Students all login and contribute to the group account with bookmarks that are specific to the purpose of the learning activity. (teacher can still view activity without having to log into group account, by subscribing to RSS feed)

2. Tag as Individuals; View in separate group account – teacher to create a network of the users in the group. Teacher and users can tag in their own account, and also view the group network tags through ‘del.icio.us’ or RSS feeds. (bookmarks not relating to the learning activity will also appear)


3. Tag as Individuals View in separate group account - using the ‘FOR’ function students add bookmarks to their own allotted groups whilst tagging in addition to tagging for themselves.(RSS feeds do not appear to be available for this feature)

4. Tag as Individual with unique identifier tag - We can ask the student to include as one of their tags a unique identifier such as the institution name plus a course code and then a group number e.g DMUabcd1234_G1. Then set up a subscription to this tag. (note: there is potential for misspelling, but both teachers and users can access all bookmarks through ‘del.icio.us’ or RSS feeds)

5. Tag as Individual with unique identifier tag. Use a separate group account – Same as four above, but isolates specific learning activities away from other subscriptions teachers or students may have. (So for a teacher that could potentially be capturing many groups subscriptions in one place, they can look at all subscriptions ensuring bookmarks not relating to the learning activity will not appear)

With all of these options (except the FOR function) viewing of contributions would be best achieved by looking at the network, subscriptions or specific tag pages, either
a) Directly within the ‘del.icio.us’ network or
b) By setting up an RSS feed on the ‘del.icio.us’ tag.

Conclusion
If we start from the premise that no extra group accounts are to be setup and that students will only need to tag as individuals using their own ‘del.icio.us’ account then that rules out option 1. We now have to decide what of the remaining four options seems to be the most suitable to manage the activity of fifteen groups of ten. As I would prefer to view any bookmarks via an RSS feed reader this would rule out option 3. Option 2 with the possibility of unrelated bookmarks being included is also ruled out. For similar reasons I would rule out option 4 as this could also include unrelated subscriptions.

Option 5 will allow students to use their own individual account and tag bookmarks with no restriction on how they tag, other than adding a unique identifier tag.
There is no major burden for the teacher by setting up a separate group. The teacher can use the group account and its subscription feature to collate unique identifier subscriptions for all 15 groups, whilst having the flexibility to flick easily to anyone of the smaller subgroups to view specific group unique identifier subscriptions. These benefits can apply to students as well.


What do you think?
Do you agree with the strategy, have you any other ideas in mind? Can you see any problems or inaccuracies with the five options mentioned.

Bonus Point!
For archival purposes bookmarks for each groups subscriptions can be exported to a separate html document.

Food for thought!
Tagging strategies – if you have a blog post on a particular subject that you want to publicize then tag your own blog to circulate to your network and for those people that might subscribe to a particular tag.

Webex Synchronous Environment

Having just completed three online Interactive synchronous classes with eight of my teaching colleagues on the subject of Web 2.0 technology I thought it was time to review the environment from a technical point of view. The online communication tools I.E whiteboard text and drawing tools, innovative pointer tool, text chat and feedback icons have been easily adopted by the participants for use in the session. Video conferencing has not been used, but there is a facility to view 6 webcams at once if desired.

Quality of Audio
The key technical issue is the quality of the audio. Using VOIP the system overall seems to have worked very well. The system limits speaking to seven people at one time, which seems to be better than most competitors. The microphone is passed around to those not in possession of a free microphone who wish to speak. This is achieved easily by the facilitator. The facilitator also has the ability to mute participants which is useful. Participants also have the ability to mute themselves as long as they select their own name first on the participant panel. With regard to muting of participants it was obvious that a lot of background noise could be heard at various times and a much stricter outlining of ground rules to highlight no distractions or using the mute if you are aware of the potential of background noise to interfere with the lesson.

It would seem that everyone could hear me clearly, which was obviously very important especially for those participants that were in the unfortunate position of not being able to be heard. It seems that all those that could not be heard were basically suffering from a problem related to how they initially setup, using the webex audio setup wizard. We will address steps that can be taken to minimise problems in this area later in this article. We seem to be able to get through the sessions ok, if only 1 or 2 had a problem as the participants could still follow the conversation and contribute and communicate via text chat. So most participants once sorted out had no problem with hearing or being heard. Occasionally though people could not hear me for patchy moments of 5-10 seconds or so, maybe longer in some cases. I experienced this myself as a participant in a subsequent session. This would appear to be as a result of the use of VOIP and the way data is transferred over the internet leading to occasional delays in voice data being transmitted across the data networks even though webex use their own private network and most others in this industry use public networks (question for self - is that the Internet only?). So overall it seems that webex does provide an effective application for communicating via audio in using VOIP in a web conferencing environment.
VOIP and Teleconferencing
The actual product that I have been working in is 'training center'. This does come at an extra cost. VOIP usage is charged per person per minute for participation in a session. Teleconferencing linked to the session is also available and I know from having participated in many webex sessions conducted using teleconferencing audio that this is a much more reliable and effective method of audio communication. There is a charge again for this and it is higher than VOIP. Currently I have perceived the use of VOIP as the chosen mode of audio communication because with other companies that use VOIP there are no extra costs involved for students or the institutions and ALSO with a microphone and headset attached to the PC it should be less hassle. As I understand it there are no extra charges for companies that use VOIP over public networks. Although participants will be given a toll-free number to use for teleconferencing my understanding is that most if not all will be charging the institutions for this service. From a participants point of view I think the audio will be clearer and they will need a hands free phone so that they can complete whiteboard and text chat tasks easily. So I don't think teleconferencing option should be dismissed out of hand, but it will be a more expensive option for the institution.

Minimizing Technical Problems
To minimize technical problems related to audio for individual students and to minimize disruptions to classes the following measures will help:
1. An online induction session should be arranged for all students to make sure audio setup works ok. They should not be allowed onto a session until audio setup issues are resolved. If the facilitator cannot help, then the individual student should be directed to webex support (who seem to respond quickly to any queries) to clarify the problem.
2. A document or perhaps a webex recording should be available explaining the step by step process of completing the audio setup wizard, highlighting key points such as
* When indicating the audio equipment to be used make sure you select the correct equipment from the list presented. (Note that if you have 3 or 4 audio devices attached to your machine they may not show up automatically and you need to scroll to find them.
* Headset with microphone is the preferred option for audio quality and if you use them participants need to make sure that during the audio setup wizard process that the option for speaker setup is set to ‘headphones’ and not ‘desktop or laptop speakers’. As a temporary measure in a class – if students have set this up incorrectly the CONTROL key on the keyboard when pressed down can toggle to and from headphones as the preferred choice.
3. Also from the START menu of your machine go to >SETTINGS> CONTROL PANEL>SOUNDS AND AUDIO DEVICES>AUDIO TAB to make sure sound playback and recording are set to the correct devices.
4. Finally if a participant experiences patchy audio during a session they could try leaving the session and then coming back in again to get a better connection.

Adobe Connect Report 2: it ain't happening

Supposed to start delivering a 6 week course online live synchronous course on Monday Nov 5th. In preparation for my course I am massively behind schedule because i was naive enough to assume that adobe connect and the many other products of this ilk were robust enough in the digital age to handle a bit of true interactivity and not just some talking head in a web conferencing system answering a few text chats and ponderously allowing others to speak because the VOIP systems have massive difficulty dealing with multiple speakers. I believe problems are compounded in adobe Connect because of the craziness of having to give presenter rights to participants to access the voice controls and the same problem applies to whiteboards where participants cannot use a whiteboard without presenter rights, meaning that anyone can move onto the next slide or erase text just like that.

during a couple of trial runs with only two people setting aside intermittent patchy audio, there was terrible echo. After investigating i believe problems could stem from the fact that participants can click on all sorts of options, multiple speakers, mute etc and the true host/ presenter is not sure what is going on.

the presenter rights issue aside, all systems seem to struggle with the VOIP bandwidth issue. At might last investigation Webex allow 7 microphones on at once and elluminate 6. I have worked with 5 in a webex environment and it worked fine. As i want to work with 12 at a time it seems that dialing in on a separate teleconference seems to be the best way to ensure that everyone is free to talk freely. I have participated in many sessions of this nature.

The advantage of VOIP in is that there are no additional phone costs to be incurred by either host or user and it's one less technicality to worry about.

Anyhow i have to come up with solutions for a monday start, but all the extra investigation of problems has seriously effected other complimentary preparation for the class, so i am not a happy bunny.

Community Building, Learning Networks and all thatJazz

Sheryl Nussbaum Beach on community building. Sheryl continues to come up with interesting articles. This latest one ties in with my recent thoughts on how best to build an online community of practice/interest. 21st Century Collaborative: Community for Everyone

When i think about DMU, i don't believe there is a mechanism in place that is harnessing to great effect the great knowledge and experience that the people of DMU have to offer. I believe that technologically web 2.0 offers increased options to build a significant online DMU community that will have social and learning benefits.

Currently i love ning networks and their ability to create specialized networks that would be ideal to promote a learning and knowledge community that can spread 'the word' quicker than current methods.

Perdsonally i don't see Blackboard as a unifying force. I have noticed in social networks i have been involved with recently of an example of a move from moodle to a ning network because the environment is percieved to be more conducive to participation. Facebook is i believe to wide and even if a group was setup in this environment it would lack identity and can not be focused to the same degree that a self created ning network offers.

interestingly as i look into to social networks i noticed this article by Mark Hopkins The Real Value of Web 2.0 (Hint: It’s not Facebook), which extols the virtues of twitter and google reader and whilst there is plenty to consider and might be good for the individual i still believe the development of a learning network with social spin offs would be a good thing for DMU.

If it was developed it would be good to debate the pros and cons of the various implementation options available.

Adobe Connect : Interaction and Collaboration

My initiation to interactive and collaborative live online learning was using the webex environment. My opinions of other synchronous collaboration software is somewhat clouded by what i perceive to have been an excellent schooling in an excellent webex environment. Three significant influences were the use of an individualized pointer tool for each participant that could be moved easily around the screen to indicate contributions to the white board, the use of whiteboard tools without giving presenter control to the participant and the use of phone dial in as opposed to using VOIP for audio connection to the host and other participants.

This blog discusses some of the issues of implementing a synchronous class in Adobe Connect. First of all please note as a great source of reference and help the excellent Adobe Connect Blog.



In anaylysing Adobe connect i make the following observations

1. For participants to access the class a host has to open the class. This is fine as the class can be opened early, up to 12 hours in advance to allow participants to logon early to check initial audio connections. Adobe Connect seems easier in this respect to logon which is a good thing as we need to keep the technology barriers to a minimum.

2. Using Flash and the vector based system 'pods' that contain whiteboard, chat and other tools automatically adjust to the size of the participants computers, which again is good. However if you woork on high resolution screens like i do, it is still better to reduce the size down to 1028x768.

3. The Interface is easy to organize and has a good feel to it.

4. It is easy to add content and Url's, which are stored on the adobe server for easy retrieval next time around.

5. I am working on the basis of a VOIP connection as this is the least troublesome for students, both technically and from possible additional costs that may be incuurred. My experience is that a phone dial up is preferable for quality and allowing a large number of users to participate at once. I hope i can overcome this issue and be proved wrong during my 10-12 strong synchronous classes.

Useful Links: Adobe Connect Tips




POINTS to Note
1. After logging on participants need to be given enhanced rights to use the camera and Voice pod and the 'Share' pods which will allow them whiteboard tools to annotate powerpoint slides which are the backbone of the class. The host needs to ensure that the camera is off and that multiple speakers are allowed to speak. Note that webcams are not used as part of the course. They are not really necessary and will take up bandwidth which could effect the quality of audio that is broadcast.

2. When working with participants off campus best to use a connection speed at DSL level and advise students to set their own connection to their own level (modem or broadband dsl). The connection status of each participant can be checked in the attendance list options. in the top right hand corner the strength of connection is indicated with either green(best), orange (ok) or red (not good). Similarly the same colour indication is used when a participant speaks in the camera and voice pod. greyed out when not speaking, green when good connection and speaking.

3. Once given the rights to speak participants have the choice of pressing the 'talk' button down and holding or use hands free to keep it permanently available to speak. Keeping it hands free is my preferred option, but after a practice session this morning there may still be a possible problem with bandwidth availability as my connection was distinctly patchy. I will try again and change a few settings, but it may be that in order to best proceed we'll have to take the approach of holding the'talk' button down.

4.Another irritating issue is that due to all participants acting as a presenter, if one was to use the erase (clear) whiteboard objects tool, then all screen objects are lost and not just the individuals contribution. The way around this for individuals to delete their own whiteboard contributions is to select for example a text object by using the selector tool and drag it slightly to reveal the border resize handles and then press the delete key on the keyboard. This seems ok, but is not totally natural and sometimes it does not seem to work on some text objects that are drawn. If it does not work then using the pointer tool to surround the object with a large invisible rectangle will select the object, (providing the complete area of the text object is covered) and then again use the delete key on the keyboard.

5. One advantage is that once the selection tool is mastered text objects can be easily moved around the screen. Drawn objects that use a pencil for example work slightly differently and the only way to select a whole drawing that is the result of a few pencil lines is to use the pointer tool to draw an invisible rectangle around it as in the second method described previously.

6. Recordings can be made, but unless things have changed recently they can only be saved and accessed on the adobe server. No downloads to your own computer to save or distribute for offline viewing is available.


To achieve the fluid interaction and collaboration i want, so that the only thing to worry about is the learning and not awkward technology requires a lot of research and experience in using the various synchronous classroom options. Consideration of the points above is essential for institutions interested in solutions that are aimed at improving learning. straightforward connections with low interactions will be easy to achieve, but institutions need to look deeper than that.

Connect is offering some ease of access plus points. I will work with it in the coming month to see if i can get it to act in a matter befitting a group of people that just want to concentrate on the learning.

Twitter yeah not!

As i posted my last blog on Twitter, having still not used it and not knowing that much about it. I decided to take jennifer Jones RSS blog feed and add it to my pageflakes page. The feed dropped straight on top of my translitercay RSS feed and guess what the first article of the transliteracy feed was on the use of twitter for intimacy and empathy.

Apps for intimacy and empathy (PART)

This connection has obviously given me a heads up and further pushed 'Twitter' to the forefront of my mind. So connections with people and resources are nourishing my mind, feeding the connections in my brain and as Stephen Downes has highlighted in his own blog articles - The more a connection is used and strengthened there is a corresponding strengthening of the neural pathways in the brain to ensure that the connections stay strong.

In this connective world of web 2.0, where i now inhabit, i know not yet, my location, i don't know where i am going and unlike the real world, there are is no finite physical map. How best do i build my web2 Home to make best use of the possible connections that are available? Questions Questions Questions.

injenuity » Blog Archive » Twitter is Important

I have been looking more deeply into a number of web 2.0 technologies recently. What i conclude is this, if you are a teacher you should make a vow to yourself to try out a new web technology on a regular basis. It should be built into your weekly schedule - just make time to explore the many new technologies that can help to improve your teaching and the learning experience of your students.

I have only scrapped the surface of how web 2.0 can benefit myself as a teacher and subsequently my learners. It is blindly obvious to me that web 2.0 technologies are an essential part of a teachers toolkit if they wish to offer their students a varied and interesting educational experience. AND THE MAIN REASON IS CONNECTION. I'll say no more for now.

This particular blog was inspired by a technology called 'Twitter' which i have never used and have always previously dismissed as an irrelevant chitty chatty frivolous application. After reading the following blog post i realised i need to try things out before passing judgment. injenuity » Blog Archive » Twitter is Important

The Blog is written by Jenifer Jones, who is a member of the College2 online network (community)


I might in the end not value twitter as a major player in my web 2.0 toolkit, but i'll have more of an appreciation of it's potential and may then be able to find a use for it future solutions to learning or connecting with others.

An Exploration of Social Networking

This blog is primarily for the benefit of students who are preparing to participate in the forthcoming short Course - Web 2.0 for teaching and Learning: The basics - blogs, wikis and tagging



I guess that we can say the learning has begun.

First of all i believe it is true to say that web 2.0 technology is generally easy and relatively accessible for non-technical teachers to setup and administer. That said tenaciousness in sorting out problems is a good attribute, as is patience and preparing ahead of time.

Our short course will look at a few web 2.0 technologies. These are Blogs, wikis and tagging with the emphasis on social bookmarking. By enrolling you on the web 2.0 learning network i am attempting to use the web 2.0 technology that fosters and encourages 'social networking'.


Social Networking

The most obvious examples of Social Networking sites are 'facebook' and 'myspace' and both are quite obviously about socializing. In an educational situation and in our situation i want to use a social networking' site to support an online community of learners in what can be more accurately described as a 'learning network'. I can see a good argument for the ease with which a participant can float from social to learning interactions on facebook, and subgroups can be setup on facebook with the intention of acting as a group of learners.

The use of the Ning network on the face of it, (once technical difficulties are resolved) is a much better option. A clear distinct learning network (group) can be formed and then managed by the network creator. It is very easy to organize and administer for non-technical users. In my opinion one of the most important factors to foster and stimulate online community participation is the use of email notifications whenever activity (e.g. discussion board postings, announcements) occurs in the network. Ning networks include the web 2.0 learning network that i have created offer this facility.

Whilst Blackboard automatically offers an online community setup, the clunkiness of development (i.e 4 clicks when only 1 is sufficient), the lack of email notifications and not having a full set of features to cater for a smooth running community leads me to look for an external web 2.0 solution.

Another approach that could be taken is the use of google groups, which i have participated in. For aesthetic reasons i did not enjoy working in this environment. but simple and easy to setup and does notify by email of new postings.

Due to the difficulties encountered with ning, i have looked at a number of other social networking solutions - I looked at 'LinkedIn', which is a social network site for professionals which does not appear to add additional functionality for the purposes of our learning group. I have looked at Basecamp, which does have some potential, but is more of a project based setup, but could be customized for our purposes. I found also a competitor to ning networks called ' goingon', which from a presentation and functionality point of view, does not seem quite as good as a ning network. The final item i looked at was not so much a social networking site, but an individual course organizer. This was nuvvo and it seemed simple and easy to setup and could offer a solution to an online home for a group of learners to work together.

If you have any questions or comments about social networking you can comment here for now. I shall keep you up to date with course start dates and details of your first introductory online synchronous session. If we can persevere with ning for now - i think it will be the best option, keep me informed of how you are getting on.

cheers, Steve