Friday, October 05, 2007

Nice little definition of constructivism

Nice summary here about the contrast between traditional and constructivist approaches to learning/teaching by Ken Carroll at Praxis (a.k.a. Chinesepod):

Is knowledge delivered or constructed?

Friday, September 07, 2007

2007 - the year of Moodle?

It's everywhere. Even my next door neighbour has heard of Moodle (he works in a sixth-form college)! Here in UCL, it has been adopted as an official VLE, having been a pilot service for a year or two.

With colleagues, I have been putting together simple course structures and courses for a variety of levels (undergrad/postgrad modules and executive training). Point Click, prod, poke, bosh. Sorted. Not much real need to read the manual. So far so very easy. Compared with WebCT, the process of course creation is much speedier. The interfaces are generally much less clunky and the metaphors are straightforward enough that even a particularly notoriously un-techy teacher doesn't constantly crash things.

One thing I particularly like is that any item (file, activity, quiz) has a static URL [1] that can be used anywhere else. An obscure URL, but a URL nonetheless. This makes integration with other sites and blogs possible. Another thing : the feeds and email hooks mean that Moodle courses aren't forgotten, allowing integration the other way. WebCT, as I recall, was a black hole, almost nothing went across its event horizon.

We are still learning the ins and outs (there are a few bugs, which Julie knows all about), and we have yet to receive proper student feedback.

I'm looking forward to rolling out programme-wide Moodles for at least a couple of MSc's later this year. I'm also looking forward to the software itself stabilising. The sunny uplands of Version 3. UCL has 1.6 right now, and 1.8, 1.9 are out there in development-land.

[1] It still mentions a script called view.php, so, according to the ultra-pure W3C, can't be considered "cool". Unlike Sir Tim.

Monday, May 28, 2007

Independent learning

Chinesepod, one of the podcasts I regularly listen to, has recently done a version-up. Among other things, they have ditched the idea of a series of podcasts, while keeping up the daily deliveries. No longer are they numbered Intermediate 97, 98, 99 and so on. Instead, they are giving prominence to the theme of each program, the un-numbered title.

This seems to promote a bit more user independence, and encourages, gives permission to perhaps, the idea of dipping in to the stream ad hoc. Ken's pretty keen on user-centered learning, look, he's referencing Blackboard whitepapers about it.

On the website end, they have enabled users (paying ones anyway) to develop a calendar of learning. So you can be browsing the stock of podcasts, and you see a lesson on Tai Chi. Cool! So you bookmark that one, and that's remembered for you. You look at your calendar, and decide that next Monday lunchtime might be a good time to listen through and look at. From your bookmarks, you drag the lesson title to the Sunday. That's when the relevant audio file and PDF transcript will be delivered to your iTunes. After breakfast on Monday, you sync the pod and you can't wait till lunchtime.

I just now grokked all this, having been confused for the last 5 weeks.

Friday, May 18, 2007

Permanent Markerus Erasius

This isn't e-learning, but chemical-based learning. We never called it c-learning, did we?

You know, last time I was in a lecture room and accidentally wrote with permanent marker on the white board, I shrank by a foot, apologised, threw the marker in the bin, and tried to carry on around the fresh graffiti. I needn't have been so upset, here's a wonderful undo spell:

Lifehacker : erase permanent marker

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Becta on Web 2.0

Here's a nice report on trends in T+L using new generations of web tools:

They've called it Emerging Technologies for Learning.

Hello?! The tech has long since emerged. The users and managers now need to emerge after it.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

TLN : Podcasting

Just back from the TLN talk/discussion on Podcasting at UCL. About time too! There has been some traffic on the insanely great Mac list about this recently. You know, the usual worries: what mic and recorder to use, where to put the file, with what compression, and how to wrap it all up in a xml file. And does my bum look big in this. As usual, have been meaning to develop something podcastish for ages, but haven't got to it yet. I did the round trip thing a couple of years ago, and the 23-second "hello world" is still there on a server someplace.

So, after a fairly routine (though very slick) couple of presentations for the noobs about what a podcast is, or was last year, and what a feed is, we got to the discussion business. I was almost expecting about half a dozen UCL people to reveal their wonderful podcast seminars series, and for the web services boys and girls to say "Here we are with another big webserver that's got the nuts to host it all, and here's a nice form-n-script that you can use to upload and cook your XML for you, and here's a mic (that we've found works well) for you to borrow till you get your own, and oh by the way we've sorted things with iTunes podcast directory so your busy students can't forget where you put it."

I said almost. Back in the world again, my fat mouth got its usual run.

Questions, questions:

Why are people obsessed with "putting lectures on the web". It's like 1999 all over again, only with bad audio instead of over-long web pages. What's so fantastic about a lecture that it has to be badly reproduced in an unsuitable medium?

Why is everybody afraid of polluting the Brand? A big part of our brand should be "does stuff".

Why does the harmful meme "what is the best way of doing this" have such a hold? There is no best way.

Matt's way:

Get on with it. Let flowers bloom, and prune and arrange later.

Experience. Listen to Chinesepod, watch youtube, and work out how bite-sized media work.

Keep it short. Don't for heaven's sake consider putting 40 minute lectures through someone's headphones. Keep boring meta stuff out, such as where the departmental coffee machine is. Ums and ahhs are tolerable in RL, nice even, but are leaden milliseconds when recorded. Love the Wayne's World model, also the BBC model. We are not the BBC, however.

Use face time (lectures) for the exchange of human emotions about the topics. Put the reference works into print, web, video or audio as appropriate. The lecturer's job is a DJ's, to showcase other people's tunes, pointing out the interesting bits, filling the gaps, and keeping them dancing.

The audience don't mind if the records are a bit scratchy, but they must not be bored. Don't confuse pace and style (which are mandatory) with production gloss (which isn't).

People laughing about a point is a great way to teach. Get down the pub with Audacity and a pair of mikes, and talk about the subject, preferably one that's been described elsewhere. "You've read the notes on the theory of price elasticity, now Peter from Freakonomics is going to tell me about Barca's moves in the transfer market. Now Peter, 20 million is a lot for a defender, what are the forces here, are the TV networks dominating the demand side of the equation? ..." Remember, 10 minutes max. Your punter is a busy person.

Now, about copyright and the creative commons in audio content ... Sorry time's up.