Tuesday, May 09, 2006

The New Web for Dummies

... or something like that. You know when you go "e-learning yada wiki yada blog yada" and people stare at you (thinking WTF are you on about why aren't you writing out OHPs or sharpening your chalk) and you want to stuff something like Web 2.0 (as applied to Education) for Dummies into their open mouths?

Well, here it is.

Thursday, March 30, 2006

Using Blogger for teaching - slides

It's a bit rough and ready, but my slides are here and here. 2.6 MB Powerpoint.

Bit of blog intro-theory, a few screen shots from VLEs and forums, lots of wild speculation.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Report from T+L 2006 (3)

17:20 Martin Reid & June Hedges (UCL Library Service): Coping with copyright and content.

Fairly routine introduction to what this bit of the library does for us. Phew! June mentions Creative Commons right at the end!

Report from T+L 2006 (2)

16:20 Using wikis to support collaborative exploration of anthropological issues.
Wikis incorporated into teaching. Looking forward to this one. Two presenters: Rodney Reynolds, Nicolette Makovicky. Material Culture. First year. I think I saw this on our Moodle (Phil Riding is a co-author).

Lots of ideas, new to the learners, flying about. Tutorials too didactic? ("Are you going to be like a normal teacher and give us the answer?"). Wiki an obvious (to me) a ripe medium for engaging with such ideas. How did it work?

Wikis seeded with opening text(1 sentence) by tutors.

Reluctance ... students concerned about "giving ideas away" ?
Confusion ... with summative/evaluative contributions in other courses
Is it competitive (in either a good or bad sense?)
Are traditional roles asserting themselves?

Can it be assessed?
Can participation be enforced?

Hugely interesting. Comparisons with Wikipedia's Discussion pages? Role of editors to provide structure? Assessment of all this?
16:58 Wiki technology in Dutch Dept and Virtual Dept of Dutch. Ulrich Tiedau, Kathryn Ronnau-Bradbeer.
Because Dutch departments round the country are small, they collaborate a lot. Bunch of stuff about their inter-uni study packs, use of WebCT, videoconference blah blah. What about the wiki? Motivation came from non-existence of WebCT collaborative ability. The speaker is Dutch and he says "vicky" now and again.

Each student given overall responsibility for one page, but encouraged to the others. Critical mass issues, need group of certain size (they had groups of ~4 and ~30), and for a certain time. Assessment needs to be integrated. S's would like to use this tool as part of assessment, but wisely decide to concentrate on what can be assessed.

Extremely interesting, look forward to discussing at the T+L club!

Report from T+L 2006

This morning: busy cobbling together my presentation. I've left it rolling in the exhibtion stands area.

15:59 First chance to to sit down and blog in the conference. Several expressions of interest as to what a blog is, why would I use one in teaching.

The HoD popped in too to talk strategy.

Lots of other interesting stories around the conference. Smart (i.e. experienced) learners: Sophie Martin; Smart boards: Frederick Simons; big WebCT courses: Andrea Sella; multimedia plugins and HTMLW : an "academic markup language:" : Andrew Martin; Extending the cultural scope of foundation science courses: Chris Fenwick.

There's wifi in the room, so I can report that right now I'm listening to Sue Lightman talk about Interactive Voting systems in clinical teaching. Three students per handset seems to be right number to cluster around a single handset, based on the amount of noise that comes off the room.

16:10 Key Skills Agenda ... hmm pretty uninspiring. Something about wikis next, so I'll sit through this one. Ah there's a colleague, I wonder if she's noticed me?

Friday, March 24, 2006

Tilting at windmills?

OK, cardboard armor on, chaaaaarge!

I shall be talking to anyone who wants to listen about using Blogger as a lightweight collaboration tool for education. I've had a few months now of using a blog for a course which has had hundreds of users pass through it, and I'll be going on about how wonderful (or not) that was in the 2006 UCL Teaching and Learning Conference.

One of the dragons I see through the heat haze is the dreadful clunkiness of WebCT forums. What's that, Sancho? It's really the friendly windmill of Moodle?