Drop is an online tool to share files. Set up a private space to drop any files by email, web, phone, widget or fax and then share them with whoever you like in a variety of outputs. There is no need to register to use this service.
So you can upload some pictures, set a password on the space and supply that to your friends who you would like to see the pictures. They could also be allowed (or not) to add further pictures to the area. Drops are not searchable or networked.
I’ll be trying this out with a few of my colleagues and friends.
Awasu - A state-of-the-art feed reader that comes loaded with features for both casual personal use and professional, high-powered information management
MyProjectpages.com - Built by teachers for teachers, use myprojectpages.com to create structured online inquiry-based learning activities for the courses you teach that enable your students to engage in meaningful learning experiences while online.
Slideshare - Share presentations online, either openly or with a group. Add other features to them such as audio and join community groups. Discover and promote your interests professionally
ThinkFree - Online FREE office package. Allows you to create docs, spreadsheets, presentation and web documents. No need to download any software…comes with 1 GB storage
Berkeley offers podcasts and webcasts of professors lecturing. Each course has an RSS feed so you can track each new lecture. For printable assignments and notes you can check the professors homepage, which is usually given in the first lecture or google their name. Even though the notes, homework and tests are not directly printed in the berkeley website, as they are in MIT and other courseware sites, it’s not a problem to find them.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is ranked 7th nationally in the United States. Many of the courses do not have video lectures. Instead, they have notes in PDF format along with tests and homework.
Since MIT OCW is heavily based on opening PDF files it’s recommended you download FoxIt Reader, a freeware PDF reader that’s many times faster than the bulky and slow adobe acrobat. Also Ghost Script in combination with GSView is able to read pdfs, and post scripts files.
Carnegie Mellon is a private research university ranked equal with Berkeley. Though registration is not required they have a registered user mode that allows you to keep track of your scores and progress. The courses are basically ebooks in a frame-based easy to use navigation system with an occasional powerful interactive Java Applet for practice and testing.
Open University’s OpenLearn supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Contains many online course and a different style content management system, powered by Moodle.
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health offers health based lecture notes and assigments. You’ll find the JHSPH OCW website uses the same familiar navigation structure as MIT OCW.
CNX.org is an open-content library of course materials developed by Rice University. It has a huge database of content which is very useful for people who know what they’re looking for. It does have ebook style higher level courses courses you can choose from.
From the creators of wikipedia, Wikiversity describes itself as being a community seeking to create and use learning materials and activities. Wikibooks is also incredibly powerful already containing everything from a detailed guide to learning French to Organic Chemistry and Nanotechnology.
I’m not talking about the latest explanation from my energy provider, explaining why costs are increasing or my bank explaining funding charges - but a site called Common Craft. They produce, among other things, easy to follow and understand video clips about commonly used technologies and products.
I like them for the main reason that they are clear and “get to the point”. Here is an example of the wiki one they have produced and posted on YouTube.
A demo by Johnny Lee showing you how to make your Wii into an interactive whiteboard for a relatively low cost. I’m not sure how many educational institutions would go for this approach….but I may try this out at home……once we buy a Wii, that is! More useful talks can be found here: http://www.ted.com/
Twine is a new service that helps you organize, share and discover information about your interests, with networks of like-minded people. You can use Twine alone, with friends, groups and communities, or even in your company.
A series of case studies have been compiled by JISC infoNet, The Higher Education Academy and the Association for Learning Technology (ALT). The web page explaining the project, the publication and the list of case studies can be browsed to at this link .
Having read the publication it is interesting to see the wide range of tools being used across subjects and across the sector. Here are a few, to whet your appetite; e-assessment at Leeds Met (Applied Tech & Finance) and Nottingham Uni (Medical School), video-conferencing at Swansea Uni and e-portfolio system at Wolverhampton Uni (Nursing and midwifery).
Due to the nature of publications the case studies are about two to three years old. I think this document is intrinsically useful but also on a personal level gets you thinking creatively about how you would like to teach some topics yourself.
On Monday I attended a one-day Workshop on “Effective application of quality assurance & enhancement procedures to courses using e-learning” @ the University of Teesside. The event was attended by practitioners in e-learning from across the HEI sector. It was a useful day for me to discover how other institutions view QA and what e-Learning projects are being undertaken on the Pathfinder projects.
The IoE delivered the workshop in a professional and engaging way.
Thanks for this quote from Bob Hunter at Birmingham Uni which is originally attributed to Lewis Elton @ UCL. The difference between QA and QE:
“QA is about doing things better and QE is about doing better things.”
As widely reported in the media UCL (University College London) is to offer downloadable lectures on Apple’s iTunes U. This is an area of the iTunes stored designated for universities. Education Guardian Article.
At Newcastle I am involved with a similar project involving lecture/event capture. Interesting to see if we go down this route
The first Blackboard (Bb) conference event I’ve attended. It was held in Manchester over 3 days (Monday 12th may to Wednesday 14th May) and also coincided with the arrival of over 100.000 Glasgow Rangers fans! I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
The vast majority of people attending this event were mainly, learning technologists, “staff trainers”, developers, academics and managers from the UK education community.
Day 1
Colin Stirling gave an introductory talk about the history of Manchester and how this relates to current iinovations in teaching and learning. He is the Vice President (Teaching & Learning) @ Manchester Uni. It was an entertaining and informative presentation….comparing the plight of Luddites and the way in which we need to change how we teach students. he also thoughtfully warned us to get out of town as quick as possible on Wednesday…..on reflection sound advice.
Day 2
As my area of interest is more pedagogical then technical over the next couple of days I attended mainly presentations of this type. I won’t mention each in detail but will arttempt to pick out the best bits.
I attended Chris Turnocks session. He is a Teaching Fellow @ Northumbria Uni (NU). He has been involved in conducting a study to see what the students use the VLE for. At NU 70-80% adoption of Bb, main issues are inconsistency between and within modules. As with most vles it is mainly used as a transmitive tool.
At noon Michael Chasen, one of the original founder of Bb, explained the development roadmap for Bb. He demonstrated a beta version of Bb 9. it looks very much like iGoogle/BBC. More interactive features, ALAX, the UI has completely altered….not sure about the back-end at the moment? I wish we could move to 9 straight away, versions prior to this look really old and out-dated. Bb on your mobile or iPhone is also in development.
John Morrison from Bb talked about 4 areas: Scholar, Safe Assign, Bb Sync and Edugarage. Scholar looks interesting and one we might persue, similar idea to del.icio.us or Furl - Sharing of bookmarks/urls created by tutor or by student, also allows tag clouds to be created and view other peoples urls outside of your immediate network.
Day 3
After the dinner on the previous night I managed to make it to the 8.30 am start….although it didn’t start until about 8.45. For the first keynote speech of the day Andreas Schleicher from the OECD. He is the head of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Lots of stats to absorb at that time of the morning. The main issues I picked out were that Finland, Korea and many of the Arab states are altering the way they teach young people in school and they will reap the rewards in the coming decades in terms of a skilled workforce.
Attended a session delivered by Helen Lyons and Louise Thorpe from Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) explaining the qualitative study they have undertaken with staff and students @ SHU. Thet asked students to keep a reflective diary for 2 weeks detailing what they used Bb for and eLearning in general.
I am attending the symposium today in London and I’m writing this as the train bumps and meanders its way down the track. Apologies for any typos along the way.
The title of today’s event is:
Inside Out: What do current Web trends tell us about the future of ICT provision for learners and researchers?
The programme and list of speakers looks interesting. I’ll post my thoghts in here after I’ve attended the event…..probably on the return train journey.
I’m particularly interested in what Gráinne Conole (OU) has to say about Web 2.0 V Institutional systems.
UPDATE: I found this event very useful and interesting from a technological perspective: A. The first speaker was Larry Johnson who talked about The Horizon Project. This is a project that looks at emerging technologies and applying their uses to learning and teaching. From this project the Horizon Report is produced on an annual basis. The current report from 2008 (which covers developments in 2007) outlines six main development areas:
Grassroots Video - Anyone can create, edit and share short video clips. Emmergence of YouTube, Video Jug and other similar channels. Main reasons for their use, inexpensive, ease of use and intuative to access.
Collaboration Webs - For example, wikis of all types, Google docs. Similar to point 1 easy to use and inexpensive to set up. Educationally used in a variety of ways, especially useful at a global level to collaborate across different time zones. Use a browser to access them and many API’s open source or free at use.
Mobile Broadband - Rapidly developing area. Mobiles are becoming the most cost effective way of staying networked on the move. Technology is evolving and developing at a rate of knots. The must have device at the moment is the Apple iPhone. In fact anything you come across tends to be fashionably marketed and prefixed with an “i” , IMO.
Data Mashups - Customised applications are created from one or more other applications. Typically many use Google maps, but it can be a combination of several different types of data. One of my favourites I visit regularly is a mash-up between Google Maps and the UK Land Registry Database, http://www.houseprices.co.uk
Collective Intelligence - As the name suggests, knowledge gained from groups of people. I’ve also heard this referred to as the “wisdow of crowds”. I’ve been recommended a book by the same title but haven’t read it yet! Intelligence gathered by repetitive actions, movements and recommendations.
Social Operating Systems - Bottom up (Community) evolving systems that are created around people rather than content. Examples, Elgg, Facebook, bebo, Myspace…
These two presentations were very interesting, in part because they are such “large players” in the media world, especially within the UK. Bobbie’s presentation was a historical look at where The Guardian was founded, what it’s principles are and how in essence those principles are still the same. It is now a digital media corporation that sells a few newspapers but reaches far more via the web.
Jeremy Stone talked about some of the tensions at the BBC and what they’ve learnt over the years from being a broadcaster. He talked about the BBC blogs, iPlayer and the “new” iGoogle look to the home page. At the BBC always a trade -off between the public funded licensing arrangement and open acces for all to, for example, web content. Some i,mage links used in his talk: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrlerone/2298188525 http://www.flickr.com/photos/ester68/920395176
C.Geoffrey Bilder talked about trust metrics and the web. A very engaging presenter, gsoh and I feel this area will gather greater importance in the coming months and years. Here is a link to his blog. He talke about the ability to trust what you read on the web. How credible is it? How can you verify it? You’ll trust something based upon a reccomendation from a friend/colleague but beyond that it is guess work? Should a standard be devised for the web?….almost like a kitemark or BS/EU/ISO quality mark. Some good ideas from him.
D. Chris Adietalked about managing the risks of web 2.0 for HEIs. He works at Edinburgh Uni and has devised a set of guidelines for Universities to follow or adopt. A lot of them seem common sense to me….but as the saying goes “it aint that common”! Ba - bum!
E. David Harrison is Assistant Director of Information Services at Cardiff University and holds several other posts including being the chair of UCISA.
Here are some of his thoughts about the event: Just thoughts… Cardiff is undertaking a radical re-think about how it delivers and uses it’s teaching and learning environment. The acronym this all fits under is the MWE (Modern Working Environment). The diagram used to depict this looks quite frightening at first….this is a huge task for any institution of this size to undertake. Good luck to them in doing this….one step-at-a-time.
F.Gráinne Conole was the last to present at the Symposium. She is Professor of E-Learning in the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK. The slides from her presentation can be viewed on slideshare. Useful to see the emphasis on the reasons-for and what we would like to doin teaching and learning, rather than the features VLEs and other technology can offer. Useful matrix produced for individuals and institutions:
A very informative talk. Gráinne has plenty of data sets to work with at the OU and it is interesting to see how they approach the evaluation of the proliferation of web 2.0 tools. A shame she wasn’t given longer to present and field questions. BTW she has posted a comment on this blog, which was heartening for me to read….and she has a sense of humour….which is always a good trait in my book!
Welcome to Ashley’s Online Journal (AOJ). Like many who use WordPress and other blogging tools I’ve dabbled with them before and eventually lapsed.
This time I’ll be posting articles, snippets and other things I come across on the web, in the hope that this will assist others who work in a similar field to me. My primary role at work is to create and deliver staff training sessions (aka interventions) in the e-Learning area.
All of the views expressed on AOJ are my own.
I hope that some of this will be of use to you and your colleagues. Please let me know by leaving a comment or two along the way.
Twine is a new service that helps you organize, share and discover information about your interests, with networks of like-minded people. You can use Twine alone, with friends, groups and communities, or even in your company.
A series of case studies have been compiled by JISC infoNet, The Higher Education Academy and the Association for Learning Technology (ALT). The web page explaining the project, the publication and the list of case studies can be browsed to at this 
On Monday I attended a one-day Workshop on “Effective application of quality assurance & enhancement procedures to courses using e-learning” @ the University of Teesside. The event was attended by practitioners in e-learning from across the HEI sector. It was a useful day for me to discover how other institutions view QA and what e-Learning projects are being undertaken on the 
As widely reported in the media UCL (University College London) is to offer downloadable lectures on Apple’s iTunes U. This is an area of the iTunes stored designated for universities. 
ALT-C 2008, the 15th International Conference of the Association for Learning Technology.
