Personal Learning Networks

Recently attended the first Scottish e-assessment conference up in Dundee. The conference itself was quite progressive, usually these conferences are full of old fashioned test theory etc. While there is nothing wrong with this, I prefer seeing how new technology enhances the learning experience.

I found John Connors talk on Convivial Learning in a Tangled World very thought provoking. He talked about how connectivism is changing our fundamental psychology ('If all team think the same then the team isnt thinking')and about new century unlearning skills. This is very interesting as the amount off crap we intake via the internet , useless information takes up space.

One of the most important points I took away from his talk was that the empahise that at the moment in the transition stage to personal learning networks a lot of onus is put onto the student to create their own learning network.

Survival of the fittest rule number 1

TwitterFall

Well after numerous times to get interested in twitter, I finally came trumps. Twitterfall is a superb online application developed to classify and segregate the information that you require based on keywords. Students or lecturers could use this to find the most up to date information on whatever subject they wish.

For example I have listed Modern Warfare 2 as my keyword and it shows up any tweet that mentions it. This has helped to view sneak peec videos etc.

Liasing with students

This is more of a question of sort, I was wondering how many people liase with their students union, especially with regards to rolling out large central student software.I think this is something that we could do a bit better to gather a better feel of what the students are missing or want.  Or should this communication always come from the lecturer and if is the communication getting through?

For example, do you put forward your proposals to the students union and gather their feedback or do you rollout large services from the top down?

Who are we to play god?

With the advent of social networking sites, peers were able to link up relationships with others.  There was no heirarchy with regards to the relationships unless you count the people who collected others to look popular.  Now that is all and well, but what happens when a University or Company introduces these capabilities.  The lecturer if in the group now becomes the lead figure and this create heirarchy and accountability.

That gives a lot of power to the University, we now not only control and administrate the students education system, but we are now trying to control and administrate their personal information.  We can see who is more popular, who is the alpha's. Would that slip into the way academics perceive students, will the lecturer use that to their advantage?  Others might feel left out of a group if they start Uni and see that there are already groups being formed.  It is an interesting topic, and one that should be experimented with first to ensure that these details do not come to pass.

Will the uptake be as well without a heiracrhy or with?

University e-Learning Scale

Recently a colleague attended another University to have a look at what their e-learning set-up was.  It was interesting to hear what other Universities are doing.  I thought I would spend a few minutes visualising what I think the different stages are of a Universities e-learning structure.

Have a look at it and feedback any comments changes or where you think services should be placed.

Video help for applications

We seem to be getting a lot of requests into the department for screen videos showcasing features and intrsuctional videos on how to help guide users.  I know many people use these videos for their products, and it is something worth integrating into a product development.  I just thought I would highlight this topic as we have had about three request in this week.

We personally use captivate for this as it is very user friendly and can easily add comments etc
Also the motion capture part allows for easy recording of second life.  The only downside to these things is when you are entering text on the screen as it takes ages.

Next generation web---Illuminati?

Step back in time and the world generally learnt english to communicate with each other.... well http://www.babelwith.me/ has certainly thought outside the box. Everyone thought web 3.0 would be semantic or mobile.  Babel have thrown in to the mix the ability to communicate with people in their own language.

This cool website which is in alpha, would if integrated into the web properly allow for some really powerful chat applications, for example second life and allow people to speak comfortably with each other.