Google Wave today, Moodle Wave Tomorrow?

I am just about to dive into Google Wave (just could not resist the association here). From what I have read and seen so far this seems to be a really fascinating concept and from the hype anyway, what would appear to be a one size fits all for many applications, in a way I hope that it is when you consider features like

• a replacement for those WiKi’s, great as they can be, and I have used the Moodle version for some time now, it does present some degree of challenge to my students.
  
• Just like the view in demand services that are appearing for TV and Radio, we will have the Wave playback facility, wow.
• 
  How about the ability to have concurrent editing of group owned documents, wow again
• 
  Simultaneous private as well a public communications
• 
  The ability to publish to a website, Face Book and soon I hear even Blogger.

If you are yet to get your head around Google Wave, and I anticipate that being a learning curve in itself, there are some really good video’s out there that I have been taking the time to look at. You may like to start with this two minute plus quickie, and then go on to the one hour twenty minute coverage preview, both are worth the time to sit and watch. For sure there is going to be a lot of new stuff here, not to mention the terminology like waves, wavelets, blips etc.
Well to help with all this I came across a great free book, The Complete Guide to Google Wave actually you can buy the book but the net version of it is free and very nicely presented and readable.

I will be back in due course, to let you know how I am getting on, but if you already have any experiences of the Wave, then please feel free to post a comment.

Phased Moodle training

If you have been following this blog, then you will have read that last year marked the start of a new rollout strategy for our Moodle vle to staff at the college. While there has always been a steady though often less than regular stream of staff attending my training sessions, the strategy this time around has been more of a drip feed approach rather than the former one of empowerment. In past years the training course has been delivered over a three-hour session that covers a whole raft of exercises accompanied by a substantial user guide. Looking at the resource take-up however proved that in the main, teachers while being prepared to utilise the system for assignment hand-ins and uploading of content for distribution, and in so doing removing much of the need for printing, little use has been made of facilities such a forums, glossaries, quizzes etc. The core of our new phased approach, has been to offer in the first instance a shorter training session covering those more popular practices, with other more ambitious uses becoming the domain of later phases. Of course we shall always need to retain an introductory course for new staff, but this will now be running in parallel with our phase 2 course.

The new course includes some features such as forums, chat and glossaries that have been removed from the introductory session, but includes new training on the setting up and use of blogs and RSS feeds. My first phase 2 training session is due to start this next coming week and it will be interesting to see if resource utilisation in the specific areas finally starts to lift off. Please stay in touch for updates on this one.

OpenSim and virtual worlds

Apart from my work here at Bromley Colleg with Moodle and all that that involves, some time ago, I think it must be about 7 or 8 years now, I discovered 3DML and started to do some developing with buidling 3D worlds or Spots as they were called back then. Anyway I built a Spot, and trialed it with my students with really encouraging results. But then the world moved on, which is when Second Life appeared; if you look down the left side bar you will see the link or slurl to one of my sims.



If you pay a visit (teleport) over to my sim at Shimmer Island, you see that essentailly all I am trying to do here explore and develop Second Life as an extension to any other learning technology. Anyway more to the point, the other day I came across an interesting video on Second Life ‘surviving the hype curve’; if you are not familiar with these things heres a link you should find useful. Its certainly true for me, at least I like to think it is, that any new technology, no matter how seductive, is going to have to survive this curve before I give it serious buy-in, otherwise it could just be just a steep time consuming learning curve that takes you effectively nowhere. I must confess actually that I have not always taken my own advice on this one, so plunging head first into Second Life was for me anyway a somewhat high risk investment back then. So if you find yourself teetering on the edge of getting onvolved with SL, this video should give you some confidence in the likely persistent nature of the product.

For us here at Bromley College and for me in particualar, the use of virtual worlds is starting to play a regular part in course delivery, two projects last year 08/09 and more planned for this year 09/10. One issue that your institute may face however is in access to the resource, SL requires a number of ports to be open that your network admin people may respond to by simply shaking their collective heads in disbelief. But again be reassured, we have been running SL in one lab for around 18 months now and no problems.




Of course there other likely obstacles, such as the cost of Second Life, particlularly in the endless cash strapped world of FE. So we started work on OpenSim, or at least my collegeue Clive Gould did and we now have two regions running, one as a test and the other which will become live. Apart from the obvious fact that OpenSim is free, its other benefit is in only requiring one extra port to be open, 9000. If you would like more information on setting up OpenSim then please feel free drop an email or alternatively Clive runs a blog that holds all his install notes.

Writing on the wall

Since I decided to begin making use of Facebook as a means of communicating with my students out of class, the post to response time has generally dropped in some cases from hours to minutes, clearly something I should tried before. So now I start to think of ways that I can make use of the network to draw-in and engage it with college life more. I began by posting out messages of congratulations accompanied by badges for work they had completed to an exceptionally good standard for C programming exercises. Now if I had write access to their personal Wall on Facebook, then I would post there for everyone to see, if they had not given be write access, then I simply sent it via email. Was it popular, well some have replied with a thank you, but perhaps more meaningfully, those that did not grant me write access to their wall now have.

Giving Facebook a try

The other day I had an email from our network manager with a link to a BBC news item promoting the use of social networking in colleges using Facebook; strange that I often go to some lengths in separating social from computer networking during conversations, still. The article suggests that using Facebook, improves both engagement and retention, mmm. I have for some reason, that right now I am not completely sure why, avoided using Facebook with my classes. I think I had probably formed the view, that we are likely to be about as welcome as educators in using the network for college matters, as turning up at a rave and handing out course notes, but I am happy to be proved wrong on that one. Anyway it was a Saturday night and I thought give it a try; yes that is when I received the email. My experience with contacting students using their college emails has I must say not proven very successful as I am likely to get no more than one read confirmation within 24 hours. So I started by not using college email, but first went to the vle, Moodle, to see what their preferred emails are, surprise surprise, just about all of them were of the form Jbloggs@anyserver.com! So I used the vle contacts and sent out my Facebook invitations, within a couple of hours 8 out of twenty had replied, so perhaps this may not be such a bad idea after all. I have opened up the question on how they would like the network to be used, but for my own part right now I am not going to abuse with nagging messages about course work, what is clearly a window into some interesting, unexpected and intriguing views on student life.

Note taking any where

I was talking to one of my colleagues recently who, with some enthusiasm has embraced the idea of eLearning to such an extent that all of his students now arrive at class not with a notebook and pen, but a wireless enabled laptop! Now not withstanding the problems that you may or may not experience with wireless technologies, one of the issues that soon make itself apparent is the activity of note taking in an electronic environment. Let’s face it, the combination of mono-purpose scripting tools and double sided optical paper have a bit going for them still, i.e. you can change to any writing to drawing mode in an instant, annotate at any time and of course providing you resist the temptation to rip out, materials can been retrieved from their storage medium with ease. If you are using say Word or equivalent package, of course you have access to drawing tools of sorts, though they tend to be a bit clunky, alternatively you can always task switch to drawing package and import the images, fiddly though. So what is this all leading up to, go back to pen and paper, no. The other day I discovered OneNote, which comes with Microsoft Office 2007. If you look at the Microsoft site for this then OneNote is described as an ‘easy-to-use note-taking and information-management program where you can capture ideas and information in electronic form. Insert files or Web content in full-color, searchable format or as icons that you can click to access'. Add to this the fact that you can use freeform drawing tools and OneNote starts to look as if it could be a really useful package. If you would like a preview then take a look at this video, and please feel free to drop a reply to this blog with your own experiences.

Chatting Software Design

Today I met with a group of my new Foundation Degree students who are just starting out in learning Software Design using C, not the best of places to be I must admit. We met today not because we had a class, but because they wanted advice in how to establish a self-group, brilliant I thought. Apart from the advice on content, I started out by setting up a new forum for them in Moodle, which they liked the idea of, and I asked if they had any preferences for a name, they came up with Cmaritans, good one. Anyway, then I remembered a web app that I have been very keen to get the chance to tryout when the opportunity arose called Tinychat. Basically this is a free (up to 12 simultaneous users) chat facility with live web cams, a suggestion that definitely received the thumbs up, and naturally I am looking forward to reviewing their use and views. If you are interested in knowing how they get on, then be sure to revisit this blog, as I will be making future postings for sure.

Role playing font styles

I recently posted a blog on some thoughts that I was having on the subject of fonts, which you may have read. Anyway on lighter note, today I found this amusing video on characterising fonts, amusement value good, follow this link and enjoy.

Free hand written font generator

Producing materials that will be distributed through either a vle or similar e-learning delivery platform, immediately draws the question, should these be the same as documents I would hand out in class, well maybe, but maybe not. For a start, handouts in class tend to be black and white, fundamentally because of the printing costs, so there’s the first difference that’s up for easy change. Now not withstanding all the widgets and gadgets that you can incorporate into almost anything that’s electronic, how much consideration do we actually give to fonts? In a class situation you are there to present and guide students through the material, but distributed materials will not have that accompanying hook; fonts, typography, can play a part here. You may like to watch this little video on the rise of Comic Sans. Just recently I took a move away from the usual font list options in my word processor package and began to think more about fonts that would look more natural than the standard Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet, Calibri set that I tended to gravitate toward. And I started to look at possibilities of handwritten font styles. But that costs, and has copyright issues right, well not if you create your own using the free MyFont tool from Microsoft, follow this link for a short tutorial and feel free to get back and post a comment.

BarryS

Blog worth a visit for the eLearner in you

To quote from the site

Learning Learning is a collection of blog posts and articles all around eLearning. It uses the Browse My Stuff technology to create this topic hub. Topic Hubs are sites that aggregates content from a variety of sources, organizes that content around keywords in the topic domain, and supports both manual and social curation of that content. There are a variety of ways you can Participate in the eLearning Learning community.

looks like a good project, pay a visit by following this link

Teaching and learning C online

This year in both our FE and HE programmes in Software Development, I am using C as the principle language. I feel that C as a structured introduction to programming has a lot to offer students new to the subject area. One of the many issues that arise when you teach any programming language I have found is going to be that of a compiler. If the institute make use of a licensed product, as we do, then students either have to purchase it, or make use of a freeware or trial version. Having students using different products can cause a few difficulties, certainly in the early stages of the course, and so finding a solution to this has not been immediately obvious. This year I have decided however to begin by making exclusive use of the DJGPP online cross compiler. The advantage being that everyone gets to use the same product, all you need is an Internet connection to get compiling and the interface is about as simple as it gets, this last point does have advantages when you look at some of the complex semi professional inetegrated development environments that often ship with the newer visual compilers. The only disadvantage really is that it will only compile a maximum of 1000 bytes of source code, but for our early examples in the coming weeks that should be fine. Of course I have naturally placed the link to the facility in a Moodle block. The image that you can see accompanying this posting has actually been taken from my Learning Space in Second Life where students can visit alone or in groups to try out the examples, and the compiler, as part of a Web 3D learning experience, which you are also more than welcome to tryout.

Feedback welcome Barrys

Computing in the cloud

Having problems with reliable services, or platforms where you are right now? Then why not give Cloud Computing a try, so what is cloud computing?

According the the definition in Wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

"Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualised resources are provided as a service over the Internet". If you would like to know more, take a look at the video under the heading 'Web 2 on the tube' in the right sidebar of this blog. Comments welcome.

e-Learning tools list

If you are looking for some ideas regarding tools for e-Learning, then follow the link to this list, thoughtfully divided into the free and not so free it seems, though I have not actually carriedout a full review by any means

good searching

Starting to use LAMS

We now have LAMS installed and integrated with Moodle here at Bromley College, and I have started to use the system with my year 2 BTEC National students. One of my objectives for 09/10 is to begin moving away from the usual assessment method involving fairly prescriptive coursework toward a more open ended and self directed type of assignment; this will of course require a change of approach in more than one area, not least the requirement of tutorial type support on my part. The first LAMS sequence involves just a Noteboard and combined Resources / Forum to provide the scenario, scaffolding and communication, in what will essentailly be a practice paper. The students will access the LAMS sequence outside of class time, which I am hoping will introduce them to the potential of indepent learning, through online collaboration and perhaps the emegence of an online indentity. Following the completion of the exercise the students will then take an assessment in class based around the LAMS experience. If you would like to know how I get on, then please stay in touch with this blog and feel free to post your own comments.

Moodle the Internet and learning

If like myself you are very much a VLE'er in you course delivery then you will also know the many advantages and to some extent the issues that can become apparent and very real when you encourage students to connect to all those digital resources out there on the Internet. If this is in anyway reminiscent of your experiences, then you may like to have a listen to Radio 4'S Beyond Belief where Ernie Rea and his guests discuss whether the Internet is a gift to humanity or a threat to civilized values.

Mahara first time user

If you have read the previous blog posting, then you will have seen that in the session for Moodle training we had one of our members of staff, who is a Moodle user keen to tryout the Mahara ePortfolio for the first time. While we now have Mahara integrated and ready for the new academic year, I currently have no training notes ready to go for our staff; that’s one of my jobs for this summer, so it was a case of, here’s a link to the online user guide material at WiKi Mahara material see how you get on. All in all, the outcome was very good, some small glitches with sharing resources, but that was down to our understanding of the system and not Mahara. One of the real acid tests for any new applications that you would like to roll-out to staff is always going to be the ease of use; something like the 20/10 rule; 20 minutes getting into it yourself then 10 minutes to feel you could get something out there seems to be a reasonable touch. From this first user experience I think Mahara is going to fit the bill, of course there also the consideration that other ePortfolio systems that I have seen appear to have some considerable overhead with financial charges!

If you are intersed in looking at some tutrials for Mahara then try the Wiki of there is a nice 2007 PDF here alternatively there are soem nice movies at YouTube.com

Mahara Moodle

The rollout of our Moodle VLE has continued at a reasonable pace this year with the agenda of having as many staff as possible able to use the system to deploy a single course. Now that we have reached the end of term some extra sessions are being arranged for me to run and I am pleased to see that a request from one member of staff for Mahara has arrived. We now have the ePortolio running in Moodle and it will be of some value to get the impressions of use from a first timer, so stay tuned for updates on this

Trying out Lams

I have started the first real use of LAMS as a means of extended learning for my group working on the Designing Computer Games module. The idea was for them to see this as an out of class exercise that utilised both forums and chat sessions. As this was a first, I did only get partial success and today we got together in class and carried out exercise in a more formal environment. Though I have made use of LAMS in the past, it has only been as a means of scheduling work, and not really as an online reflective learning tool. Upon my own reflection, I think it will be more appropriate to introduce the environment as class based exercise in the first instance.

LAMS Activity Planner

LAMS Activity Planner beta The LAMS Activity Planner is a new layer on top of LAMS that provides pre-built templates to help teachers rapidly build quality e-learning activities. It provides advice on choosing effective approaches, as well as sample sequences and advice on editing individual tasks. Teachers can use the LAMS Activity Planner to easily adopt and customise powerful teaching strategies in less than 10 minutes.The LAMS Activity Planner is now ready for beta testing - that is, the system still has some bugs and rough edges, but is ready for exploration by those who'd like to try out an early version and provide feedback. For more information and a screencast with voiceover, see

http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/planner/

This is well worth a look and I feel will be just the type of thing that will encourage a broader spectrum of users to have a try. Feedback welcome

e-Book offer

We now have our new Moodle instance up and running ready for the start of our Quality Improvement Project and integrated into this we also have an instance of LAMS running. One of the aspects of the whole project however is of course content, and that's were I am going to be trying out eBooks, 1: because I have yet to make serious use of them as part of course delivery and 2 because I have been offered free access in retrnn for a case study; an offer well worth taking advantage of.

Social networking survey

If like many of us you are intrigued by the uptake and attitudes toward social networking then you may well find this latest set of survey results from Masie worth looking at. From my initial scan it seems that some applications and approaches are bucking the popularist trend. Comments welcome.

Quality Improvement Project

The Quality Improvement Project, is a new college initiative at raising attainment. A small group has been formed of which I am a member, looking into new approaches for teaching and learning. One of my insites of recent times has been the realisation, mainly from Moodle logs, that students do not seem to be engaging beyond college as much as they could. With this in mind one of my principle targets will be to utilise LAMS as a means of presenting graded exercises beyond the class room. Exactly what form the exercises will take and the value of the grading with regard to the standard Pass, Merit, Distinction criteria remains a question in point, as my experience so far with these trials points to the need for a systemic rather than component change in strategy, that covers both the delivery and the assessment, not to mention content; interesting times ahead!