Category: education

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Learning Studio celebrates Year One

I have been following the Learning studio with interest and they just hit the one year mark, congratulations.

It’s hard to believe but the Learning Studio opened its doors to the campus last March. In that time we’ve seen over a thousand camera and equipment check-outs, are averaging 900 room reservations a month, and have offered dozens of workshops and training sessions for students and faculty.

Year One: A Glimpse from Learning Studio on Vimeo.

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JISC elevator

JISC elevator is a new way to find and fund innovative ways to use technology to improve universities and colleges. Anyone employed in UK higher or further education can submit an idea. If your idea proves popular then JISC will consider it for funding. The elevator is for small, practical projects with up to £10,000 available for successful ideas.

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The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies

Doug Belshaw has just announced that he is writing an ebook over the course of this year titled “The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies“.

What are you expecting from this book?
– from the purchasing page

Digital Literacies is one of the hot topics at the moment and as there isn’t much in the way of guidance out there, capturing the essentials in a book is a good idea. I have some understanding of the topic of course but am always happy to have my views better informed. I want examples I can refer to and ideas to challenge me/us.

I like the open approach to the writing and self-publishing model, and I am particularly interested in how the book will be created technically – hopefully Doug will touch on this subject in posts to come. I hope it comes as an Epub too.

Doug is a great guy and when they say you should be in a room with folk that you can learn from, Doug is one such person I am happy to chop it up with.

The initial releases will be spread across the year and it only costs £1 at present so go and get your copy.

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Podcast: I have no idea where this podcast is heading…

After listening to one of his podcasts at the weekend I contacted Craig Taylor to see if I could be on it. He kindly accepted and thus ensued a series of tangents around e-learning, how us FE/HE types and corporate folks converge (measuring success and ROI).

I super briefly met Craig earlier this year at the Plymouth e-learning Conference and via twitter/podcast felt like I knew him enough to cheekily ask to chew his ear off!

I suggest you subscribe to his podcast and stalk him on twitter.

Listen to our podcast

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Speaking: Mobile learning at Bath Spa

In my talk today at Bath Spa I set out to touch on key aspects of mobile learning, what is mobile learning and why we might be taking the time to care. Below are my supporting notes:

What is mobile learning

  • If you read nothing else, the JISC Mobile Learning infokit is a great body of work to get you started
  • It isn’t just about wheeling out devices, it is about seeking ways to enhance our teaching and learning by taking advantage of the opportunity and constraints
  • Mobility of people with devices opens new doors
  • Context is king
  • There are 100s of devices (demo’ed 3 tablets) and there can be social pressure on students to get the devices everybody else has
  • Mobile learning is leading to transformation in the classroom AND institutions are having to address this. Many institutions are are starting to address this with steering groups, research and initiatives such as “mobile clinics“.

Why Mobile learning?

Further signposts

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Show and tell with UOB ebooks

I recently delivered 3 one-hour sessions to small groups of library types on the subject of all things ebook at the University of Bristol.

The University of Bristol has around 5,000 ebooks at the moment. Enough of a critical mass to get my interest in ebooks in the institution. John Hargreaves, Assistant Subject Librarian for Law kindly organised the 3 sessions which I was using to see what the problems are from the other side of the issue desk whilst giving them a brain dump of what I see as the opportunities and constraints.

Being the book reading type that I am, I was keen to wade in with using ebooks – that was until I actually tried to find and use any of them (more of that in future posts).

Problem #1 By using the library catalogue, ebooks as a “type of resource” are not easily surfaced without using an advanced search, which I believe is a huge barrier to “discovering” ebooks. I doubt very many people use the advanced search as the first port of call. My mental model is that I do a search and all results are shown, regardless of the ‘type of resource’ be that print books, journals, CD-ROM or ebook.

I came to each session armed with 1 print book and various ebook reading capable devices as to my surprise the library doesn’t have any staff ebook devices, each loaded with the same ebook:

  • Amazon Kindle 1st Gen
  • Sony ebook reader Touch Edition PRS-650 *
  • Desktop Windows computer
  • Apple iphone 1st Gen
  • Android Tablet *

* Thanks for the lend Mr Gray

#Problem 2: The libraries do not have the kit that they require – using ebooks from the other side of the issue desk is both theory and practice and in order to help folks with trouble they need to use the devices themselves.

After briefly explaining about the common ebook formats (EPUB, PDF, mobi) we had a play with each device using the “Responsive Web Design” ebook. The above list shows the most liked (kindle as best) down to the least user-friendly (pressure-sensitive tablet).

The test ebook also makes use of video which displays on devices that support EPUB3  video and this showcased why the ebook version may have an advantage over the print version.

Opportunity #1 Next I showed the ibis reader which I only have glowing things to say about it. I wonder if the platform could be integrated someday into the University system and act as the official ebook reader for desktop and mobile.

Then we tried a University ebook and things got really depressing.

We used the search keyword ‘china’ to find our guinea pig ebook.

It appears that the major education publishers ship ebooks using Adobe PDF as the ebook format of choice. Clearly this is to make use of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) but has the nasty side affect that none of the ebooks will run on a ebook reader such as the Kindle… thats right, ebooks that do not run on the most popular ebook reader device. So I think it isnt too much of a leap to connect the dots that access to ebooks and use on devices are two of the major barriers to ebook uptake. I sent an email to one of the major publishers to ask them about this but am yet to get a response.

We were all in shock. Say it slowly – “ebooks that do not work on ebook readers, are probably not ebooks”.

If you work in a library, what are the issues here and how to do you work with such barriers?

I hope to wade into lots more ebook stuff in coming months.

UPDATE 10th Jan 2012

The fantastic Ibis Reader has been acquired and so it is watch this space as  to the future of the platform as I know it.

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A credit to the profession?

I work in computing and education within a subset called ‘e-learning’. ALT are hoping that their accreditation scheme will help benchmark our little field.

Today i got the word that my recently submitted application for CMALT accreditation was successful.

Everything is over at the CMALT mini-site I produced to showcase the portfolio.