Using formidable and penpusher to upload log sheets

Been a while since I posted on here so thought I would update it with some of the work I am doing at the moment.

I have recently started 'Cochran Boilers' as the IT support technician and am currently getting use to the systems they have in place.

What happens is an engineer is sent out to service the boiler and uses http://penvision.com/formidable_features.html to create forms that allow a digital pen to be used out in the field.  Once the engineer finishes the log, they connect the pen to their mobile which then sends the data into a web database which is then converted into the main database back at main office.

The interesting features of pen-pusher is it is a step up from character recognition in that it actually records what the user is writing and recognize up to 38 languages.

It also has software which allows you to compare the recorded information easily against the desired output to minimize errors.

Main benefits
XMS Penvision is the sole provider of a complete system and includes:

DesignTool in Flash for visually enabling forms functionality.

Printing software for Windows XP/Vista/7.

Easy-to-use administrative interface for users, applications and pens.

Handwriting recognition for 30 languages and 88 alphabets.

PC and mobile phone software including web based distribution tool.

Validation interface for visually checking and editing the final result from the forms.

Measuring Fish Fat

I have recently began working for Distell.com as their 'Assistant Business Development Manager'.

Distell produce meters to 

• measure the fat content of fish
• measure the fat content of meat
• measure the freshness of fish

And also the website.  Which is in Joomla.

Joomla seems actually fun to work with ( if you can call computer work fun), installing the plugins and improving efficiency, SEO etc is something that is enjoyable as you can see a definitive outcome at the end.

Social Advertising is another area which I am charging into,

We currently have:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/DistellMeters

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/DistellMeters

Youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/user/DistellMeters

Since measuring fish fat is one of the main objectives I am going to develop some e-learning materials to help support the process

Here is an example video of one our fish fat meters in use.

Motion Based Sensing In Education

Hello, and welcome to the first post of the year. Having received  a Kinect for Christmas I have spent many an hour playing it with my 3 year old son (especially Kinect Adventures).  I also managed to wangle a copy of the UFC personal trainer and all I can say is WOW, this game is amazing, it can read when you do press ups, push ups, standing jumps etc and can even tell by my posture if I have cheated.

Now, bet your wondering where the e-learning comes into this.  Well on my google + stream the other day I notcied a post by a Mr James Clay talking about a http://edublend.blogspot.com/2011/09/motion-based-audience-response-system.html  motion based response system being developed at the University of Portsmouth.

Now we have all seen motion tracking cameras that can follow you about, but now we are starting to see motion based selectivity that can be programmable... I wonder how long it will be till there are scripts, clients that have this built in.



I have been having a think about how this could be used for e-learning and think there could be many a possibility, but as always we shouldnt try to use this for stuff there is already a market for unless it is a improvement.  Maybe health and safety vids in the future will test you to see if you are picking stuff up properly etc.

Fixing the financial system

With the advent of technologies and GPS.  It should be possible to track the flow of money through the world.  Especially digital transactions.  Without identifying people we could see how much money is swallowed up and where.  You could see where investment was needed or track how much money goes out of the country from foreign workers.

The downsides of OER

Having recently tried to use some OER in anger, we download a QuestionMark questionset from a well known repository.  On installing the qpack, we noticed that there where questions with graphics missing.  There was a name and an e-mail next to the releaser, so I thought may as well drop them a line to see if they had the graphics handy.  The releaser it seems was not the releaser of the materials but the author of the questionset. So someone else had released the materials without giving it a proper review.  The releaser was very helpful though in getting the images to us, but as they mentioned they are under extreme pressure in the normal work instances.

A lot of people might not be aware of the extra workload and communication involved in OER and really should.  Someone might get in touch and expect an answer, others might be after more information about a specific subject.  Quality control is something that needs to be rigourus especially when releasing materials out into the wild and people need to be aware of the possible extra time after publication.

Creating a Plug n Play framework for OER in HE institutions

As part of the Oxford ripple project we are looking into a kit of software called OERCA.  This kit of software basically makes the copyright clearance process for #OER much easier.  What could be done to further improve the process would be to have an end point where the clearance could say safe for exposure, from where the software automatically uploads it into JORUM or Xpert or some other repository.

In that case an institution could install this software and they almost have a full working process from start to finish.

Teaching students real world skills

Was approached today by an academic who wanted to incorporate version control in their engineering course.  Now VC is something which is used in the 'real world' and is an industry standard practice.  This also includes project management methodology, so why not start introducing them to project management tools!

The academic wishes to create groups and wants the groups work to be locked down to that group. But also have a place for them to discuss the project.

So some of the things we will have to look into is

• Who will support the technology (IT,e-learning)?
• What tech would be best suited?
• How can we link into what we are doing into other similar modules

This is a showcase of some of the places we as education have to go, by replicating real world scenarios and infrastructures.

Some of the ideas is using elgg/sharepoint as the communication platform, subversion as the version control and microsoft project/Trac as the pm.

Gaming in E-learning

Gaming/Movies has already been proved to be very influential in the way we learn.  For example think about after you have played need for speed, when driving have you thought, Im just going to try to slip stream that lorry or take the inner lane on a corner.

It intrinsically builds into you the desire to replicate the game into real life.  Same as real life replicates into the game, you see UFC and you want to control Brock Lesner in UFC Undisputed and you want to elbow smash into Frank Mir.  All these things are exiting, which is at the core of learning, if you have motivation and excited about something you will want to learn.  If its dreary you wont take much in. 

One of the most important aspect of gaming is levelling, you want to test yourself against certain situations that allow you to progress.  If you are on a linear module designed to cater for all skill levels you will either fail to learn enough important stuff or if you are on the higher end feel less stimualted to learn and so pass along the module course like its a breeze and it doesnt challenge.  The role of the teacher in that sense is to try to gauge the level of the course based on  their own academic and peer experiences, this is hard when most academics in the field are not teachers first they are content experts.

In order to build these quality gaming simulations takes time, money and experience.  All of which poses a major risk especially in this economic climate.  It is still something which I would like to triall and if the chance ever came about would like to partake some research on.

Timelines

First post in a while, been busy learning OER stuff and just getting to grips with my new post.

Well this post is going to be about time!

Time is generic, if there was no time , there would be no then??

Well anyways, one of the concepts that we have identified is that it would be useful for almost every course if there was a generic timeline tool created.  Even better if this tool could have overlays, sort of like you used to get with the transparent slides.

So one of the projects we have commisioned is to come up up with a generic tool that would have a database backend that would feed into a site with checkboxes, sort of like autotrader.

New Start

Well as from last week I finished my 6 year post at the University of Derby, I started there as a temporary developer and managed to work my way up to a senior position.

Yesterday I began my new role at Harper Adams University College as a Instructional Design Leader, where I got to meet the new team I would be working with.  There's a broad range of skills and the developers were whittled down from 80 applicants down to 5.  So these guys are the best of the best.

Theres a lot of exitement kicking about the project, with the fact that we can try new things and push a few boundaries.  Not only that but we all get brand new laptops complete with BioMetrics! Cool, always wanted to have a play about with that.  So as always we got them to start with a SWOT analysis, always good to find out about each others strengths and weaknesses. I think one of the ways to bring equalness and partnership to the team is to have everyone a owner of a service.  So that they feel they have a responsiblity for something.

Not only that but having met the e-learning team that already exists, it sounds like they are pushinng a few boundaries themselves with respect to the services they offer.

Since there is no e-assessment at the college one of the points of the project is to bring CAA to Harper and for that we are going to have a look at a range of options.

Definatly looking forward to the challenges that the project will bring.

Learning in Waves

Nope not google wave,

The concept is old but I thought I would do a bit of reflectiveness on the subject for my own benefit.  In the old classroom when a student would learn a bit of information, the wave of retention would begin.  Reinforcement would start the process again, in the old days and still to now this would be achieved via homework.  This would carry on until either it dissipated or the barrier broke and it entered the long term memory.

Nowadays people are thinking about how they can support the student to create their own wave.  Formally this occurs using groupwork or now socially.using social network sites.  We can support this by creating social learning tools or by creating social learning areas (SEA) within our learning centres.

E-learning can be seen to strengthen the wave by creating bursts at different intervals.

Constructivism occurs in a similar method, by planting the idea or item of knowledge within the subject the item can grow and change according to how the subject views and changes much like a tree with branches.

Encouraging Formal Informal Learning

Choice.....

That after all is what drives us an enables us to do the things we do.  Today we had Interviews for the new Dean of 'Learning Education and Innovation' department.  Almost all of them were focused on Students Learning 21st Century skills.  When asked what how we could support that as a department they talked about us working closely with Academics.

Here's my idea .... With all these informal learning learning spaces, we could utilise them better.  Having workshops, ran by academics and training staff on technology throughout the semester could prove valuable.  Students could pick n chose what workshop they wanted to attend.  Having them certified would be even better!

We talk about getting students to use web 2.0 technologies etc, but what are we doing to encourage the use.  We push stuff out to academics all the time, but what are the odds of it filtering through?

I think having informal workshops now and again would not prove too difficult, would enable students to feel in control of their teaching and help towards there PDP.

Custom Questions in Blackboard

Ever wanted to do custom questions in Blackboard but didn't know how... read on.

If you need to do a drag and drop question, balance sheet or have your own randomly generating questions then you can.  We have been looking into this for a migration project to convert from our current existing assessment system to another.

Using the HTML question box in the blackboard quiz creator your can insert a link to your externally hosted flash question file and then by using JavaScript pass the answer from the flash piece to standard Blackboard question.  For example

Question  >  Pass question answer  >  Blackboard text entry  >  Check Score > Auto Input to Gradebook

Any questions feel free to ask

Skills For Life (21st Century Skills)

At the LTA forum I attended an event hosted by Elani.  Elani is an academic who is using PDP (Personal Development Plans) within her modules.  The reason being is Elani believes that by encouraging students to branch out into different areas of the field will allow for a better student learning experience.  Also at the course was an academic from ADT who is using similar methods within his module and is looking to support 21st century skills through it.  The exeption is that the academic from ADT changed the name from 'PDP' to 'Passport to Learning Certificate', this is more friendly on the ears to students and they seemed to engage more with this than the offical PDP.  Elani agreed with this and noted it was something to change in her modules.  Now since I am coming at this from a technologists point of view, I was thinking how can we support this process.
Something similar to what Adam has done with his SQM could be used as it take into account some of the Basic Structure, see below for a mockup of a system.

Portable Social Profile

t would be dab handy if there was a way of transferring a student socially to other applications and transferring their links, friends etc.

Please find below a mock up of the concept,

To be able to plug your own social network outside of facebook would be ideal.

XML

Example Piece

Interactive E-Books

Ive been reading the Horizons Report on the up and coming technologies to watch.  One of the technologies they mention is e-books.  Now the benefit of e-books is that they save paper and are pretty mobile you can take them anywhere.

Now if you where to treat it as a e-learning course and have the text along with interactivity then user might receive a better learning experience.  The old books used to have mutliple choice questions at the end so lets make e-books more interactive.

Tsunami

While I was browsing I came across a demonstration island for weather studies,


This was developed by the earth system research lab of the NOAA.  They have took the simulations of second life to the next level, demonstrating such things has how hurricanes occur, what happens in a tsunami etc.  This is a really good useful way of demonstrating the effects and what it would look like to be in one, though maybe second life graphics itself could be improved, the concept behind it is really good.


I suggest you take a look...http://slurl.com/secondlife/Meteora/177/161/27/

Ownership

Watched the programme on the 'Virtual Revolution' on Saturday and found it quite informative.  It reiterated some of the ideas I have heard about regarding the lack of deep learning within e-learning.  And one of the concepts it made think about is ownership.  

When you go out and buy a book it is yours you can look at it at anytime and you have control of it.  One of downsides of electronic material online is that it is shared with everybody so the knowledge is distributed.

I suppose one of the way to get around this is to use tablet pc's or e-readers.  I think this is something we should concentrate more of in the future within the University and provide some focus to it. 

One Big Community

Think about it, we badger on about social networking for all types of things, for business to get together, for students to do collaborative learning and for us all to socialise together.

Now do we practice this ourselves, wouldnt it be great if the University itself had a social network, allowing each other to share best practice/ideas/reasearch etc. Lets say Academic A has been trying some really cool stuff that lecturer B would never probably get the chance to see or hear about. You could make postings that way and allow people to subscribe to feeds on e-learning or whatever subject you wanted to.

Now we things like intranets etc which is sort of like this, but does not provide the personality of a social network, then we could have sub groups for the sub committees, if someone has interest or a speciality that they would like to share then they could join that group as such and provide feedback that way. It could make interpersonal working more friendly etc, I have found social networking does not really work for small teams you need a pretty hefty user group to work best, providing a lot of posts. The other benefit of a large cohort is that you are just a number, this makes it a lot more easier to voice opinions etc without judgement.

That is not without problems:

Implementation

Engagement

Privacy etc

But is that not you have with social networks anyway??

Excellent diagramming tool

Recently came across a website called lovely charts which provides an online diagramming tool. 

Lovely charts is a web 2.0 tools that allows you create charts for many purposes.  These range from swimlane designs, uml 2.0 to wire framing.  See below for a mock-up I did for the proposed hosting service for Question Mark.  You create and export to png for free from lovely charts but further features require payment.