It's been a criminal amount of time since I last blogged. The standard excuse of being busy applies but seems lame as I write it.
Today I want to reflect on some teaching I did on Tuesday, 17th May at the Institute of Education (IOE). It was called 21st century learning: using web 2.0 tools. I usually call this session Web2.0Learning but our marketing people didn't like that and renamed it. This was the first time I've been on the LCLL core events calendar so this was quite a bit deal. By the way, the LCLL - London Centre for Leadership in Learning - is where I work in the IOE.
Web2.0Learning is a day's training that I conceived a couple of years ago to teach educators about the various types of tools freely available 'out there' on the internet. I describe them as 'outside your VLE' tools. I've now delivered it 5 times mostly at the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I've always found it a rewarding experience. Part of the satisfaction comes from the fact that it's inspired and dictated by what I read, learn and reflect about in my personal learning on the blogosphere. It's more of a personal interest than a work chore. Also, it allows me to be creative as I seek to make sense of the different tools and software I encounter and distill it down into coherent messages.
There's lots to reflect on. Firstly, this is the programme I arrived at. When I compare to the last time I did it in July, 2010 there is a much that has changed:
9:30 - 9:45 Welcome and Introductions
9:45 - 10:10 Web 2.0 technologies in education
10:10 - 10:30 Our site/Group creation sites*
10:30 - 10:45 Group notice boards*
10:45 – 11:00 tea/coffee
11:00 – 11:10 Knowledge Building
11:10 – 11:35 Mind mapping*
11:35 – 11:40 Drawing tools*
11:40 – 11:50 Word Clouds*
11:50 – 12:00 Tool exploration*
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:10 Brainstorming
13:10 – 13:25 Which media?
13:25 – 13:45 Creating a narrative
13:45 – 14:00 Collaborative bookmarking*
14:00 – 14:10 Screencasting
14:10 – 14:15 Recording audio
14:15 – 14:30 Break
14:30 – 14:35 Creative commons and copyright
14:35 – 14:50 Blogs/discussions
14:50 – 15:10 Collaborative documents/wikis*
15:10 – 15:15 Selection criteria
15:15 – 15:30 Reflection and discussion
The timings seem precise and weren't kept to as we moved through things quicker than planned. It's difficult to judge but it was useful to plan in this way so I could be clear which tools I was covering and in what order. The * means that we did a hands on practice on an instance of that tool. The purpose was to give an overview of what a particular type of tool is for and how it could be used for teaching and learning. My broad plan from this time was to get more contextual examples of actual use and extract this information into templates which I could talk around. I wasn't able to do this extensively for every tool but there was still lots of ideas for educational use. It was really helpful this time to have assistance from a colleague, Isobel Bowditch. She did some valuable research into some of the tools as we made sense of what's out there and decided what's important.
The first reflection was that it went really well. A positive day with positive feedback - the best I've got so far. I wasn't sure about how school teachers would react to it. On reflection, it has more relevance in this context than in HE and FE as a lot of the more dynamic, creative and fun tools don't seem to appeal the older the context. One important structural point was that I house the weblinks and resources here:
http://web20learningmay2011.grouply.com/
We linked to each example from the site and there are extra links to explore after the day. It's good to have a hub of activity and it allows me to build a resource which I can use again. I've left it open so that they can share it with colleagues. My ethos of sharing knowledge comes from a belief that more good than bad comes from it. I had someone this morning request to use a prezi I've done which is gratifying. The success of the day meant that two more sessions have been pencilled in for the next academic year which means I'll get to update the session again.
The group was mostly ICT co-ordinators and classroom teachers. The ICT folk were really good participants as they sought to incorporate the tools into their thinking. But I'm pleased those less ICT minded found it useful. As I suspected some of the tools were familiar to some of the group but this turned out to be no problem as there was sufficient breadth and variety of topics. I think they liked being given context/explanation before being allowed to practice using a tool. The practice were carefully setup to minimise difficulties. I tried, where possible, not to endorse a particular service and explain why I had chosen what I'd chosen. Primarily I was going for tools which didn't require any account creation, was free to use and had good usability. for example, with mindmapping I chose bubbl.us. There are better mindmapping tools out there but they require money and an account to be created so to practice in a controlled environment they are not suitable. BTW, never run a session like this and have them create an account which needs to be validated from an email - it's chaos!
From these principles, I ran the day. I have the following observations about some of the tools:
- Answergarden is a tool where you can ask a question, share the website and get quick feedback in a fun, dynamic way. I found this tool at the last minute, it seems to fit into a bit about brainstorming or generating quick feedback in a fun way so I included it. They liked it a lot and someone discovered that you could create word clouds out of the answers which I hadn't spotted.
- wallwisher and linoit are online noticeboard tools which also hit the spot. They are good tools where account creation is optional. It seems that this kind of quick, interaction, simple and visually impressive tool is right for the schools context. This is unsurprising when you think about it but useful learning for me. I'm sure there is more out there.
- I was almost apologetic in my inclusion of drawing tool, tagging them onto the end of mindmapping bit very briefly. However, they liked this as well which could be linked to the previous point about quick, easy and interactive.
- Collaborative bookmarking was also a winner. I prefer diigo as the educational account allows for bespoke groups to be created and the teacher to create accounts. This is a tool that I will always champion is I think it is under used in education.
- Collaborative documents/wikis - I put these together as they are similar in spirit. For the activity I chose a synchronous collaborative document tool - http://sync.in/ which worked well. I was right to have this at the end as people had got to know eachother a little bit so were ok with the ability to edit others' words. I nearly did this using a wikispace wiki but I'm glad I didn't now.
- I was unsure about whether to dedicate time to allowing them to explore different web 2.0 tools from the sites I'd linked to which had loads of them categorised, e.g. Best Online Collaboration tools, 2011 and Free Technology for Teachers but this worked well and we ended up giving more time for this.
- Word clouds went down surprisingly well. I've not included these before for some reason. I think I thought everyone already knows about them but I was wrong. Their potential for teaching and learning is perhaps limited but the ease with which they can be created make them worth a look.
- Finally, the section I called Creation a narrative. This is the section that Isobel helped me research. I knew I wanted to do something around cartooning/comic strip software and photo/video mashup stuff. We talked at length about how these tools related and what their educational potential was. What we found was not much of a track record for educational use or overt marketing in this direction. However, I felt there was suffificent potential to include them. I couldn't fashion a hands on activity as none of the tools fitted the criteria so I just did demos. At the time, I thought that it wasn't going down very well but afterwards some of the primary people said that they would think about this. The session suffered a little by having weak examples to show but I'm still glad I did it. Have a look on the website down the bottom of the page to see the tools that I decided to demo along with brief descriptions. Zimmer Twins and Xtra Normal are my favourites.
- As an afterthought to the creating a narrative section, I talked about and showed a couple of examples of glogster - the multimedia poster tool. I need to give this a higher profile to as they really liked the look of this. I can see why as there a lot of potential for homework activities with this. I need to look into this more.
Aside from the tools, I need to think of ways to engender more discussion. The computer room setup didn't help but I could have done more in this regard.
The biggest development I need to work on is getting better knowledge and understanding of the schools context. This session has potential if I can give it more contextual relevance. I'm not sure how best to do this so I need to have a think.
Finally, let me give thanks to the ICT gods for having all the technology work for me.
Presentation on "Structuring an online course" and some prezi reflections
Last week I taught a session (with a couple of colleagues) called Structuring an online course: guidance and example. Here I wanted to share my contribution to this session: a prezi presentation and talk about it. it's not embedding well so I'll just link to it - Structuring an onine course: Guidance and example - public version
What I've attempted to do is group together different sections of the process with a view to helping educators organise their thinking on this issue. The hard part of this is knowing what to leave out. I see this as a work in process because I hope to get clearer about the issues and the relationships as I get more experienced. The point of this practically focused framework is to help a Higher Education institution in 2011 - I work at the excellent Institute of Education. The point is that many academics need help with the basics. Basics that aren't well defined or universally agreed. By basics I mean the key decisions that need to be made; the main structural decisions to take. Some may disagree with the phrases used in the structure but the point is to give a framework from which to work. Of course, it needs context. I work with individuals to give this context. However, I'm interested in the academic staff who aren't banging down my door to have these conversations and are only at this particular session. It's something for them to take away. I want to make the maximium impact I can; an impact that cover the foundations of what they need to know. If this is all the time I get with them I don't waste time focusing on a small piece of the pie before they have tasted a bite or all the slices (not sure that works).
It's true that the pedagogy is only implicit in the presentation, if at all. In an ideal world the pedagogy is the starting point and the structure flows from there. My rationale for leaving this out is based on my experiences working with educators over the years. Rarely do they want to talk in the abstract and apply these abstract principles to their teaching. My best guess is that most educators have only a sense of their pedagogical tendencies but have a firm grasp on what types of activities they like using. So what I deem important for a first stab presentation like this are the types of activity available to them in their context. For this scenario, this meant outlining the main communication/collaboration tools available to people in my institution. A footnote to this is that pedagogy is complex and discussions around is are complicated and challenging. All this takes time, and this could feel a waste if there is only this one chance of communicating with them.
My concern with any teaching session is to avoid cul-de-sacs of discussion on issues of minor importance. Often such discussions focus on processes which hinder the success of teaching online or strategic and sometimes philosophical standpoints. This leads sessions and discussions down a slippery slope. By presenting something like this first, the chance of a focused discussion are much greater.
So the prezi provided has the following sections:
Before designing section - Basically, what I'm concerned with here is ensuring that you know why you are designing a purely online or blended learning course. Our context has a focus of converting from face-to-face but it applies to creating something from scratch. The why question is a whole area in itself which I won't dwell on here. The other noteworthy issue is whether you replace what you are currently doing with whatever you are designing now. This refers to replacing something purely online with something face-to-face. Most will not want to teach solely online, this is not what they signed up for when they embarked on this career! So duplication is the preferred way to go. I will probably rework this section. I think most of important issues are there but I'm not happy about the title and some of the wording.
Structural considerations - The prezi above is minus screenshots of example structures within our VLE. However, we have the key considerations. In reality these considerations are not decided upon before the actually activity/content design. It is an iterative process.
An online course needs - bespoke content, activities, readings This is the meat of the presentation and the focus is on the activities. The categories feel a bit simplistic but I think they work. What I'm keen to do is to make the point that uploading your powerpoint from a face-to-face lecture isn't good enough for bespoke content. You want specially created documents or multimedia at the very least. So I describe this area as bespoke content. Because we are HE, readings gets it's own area (the things in this bubble refer to our systems). For the activities bubbles, my split between asynchronous and synchronous was an easy design choice. They are such different beasts that we need to talk about them seperately. What I've outlined are the main tools available to us in our blackboard VLE. Moodlers out there will notice that moodle has more to offer. C'est la vie. I probably should have put e-portfolios in there however. What this model doesn't acknowledge is the relationship between the activities and the bespoke content. A blurring of the boundaries here would have got in the way of the message but this can come out when you talk.
Finally, some reflections on using prezi for this presentation. I did a few prezis a year ago but haven't done any since. My intention here was to present large structures and show relationships which could then be used to focus on individual elements. Doing it this way forces you to think hard about how the pieces fit together. When I started I didn't know what these structures would look like and, to be honest, I had hoped for better. However, it was a valuable exercise and I think it has a better look and feel using this tool. With powerpoint you can often get away with casually listing things as they come to mind and talk about them. BTW, if you just jump of one thing to the next without any big picture there's no point using prezi. What's frustrating about prezi is that when you decide to move a bubble and all it's contents, it's a fiddly job. There's supposed to be a multiple select option but I couldn't get this to work so I was forever dragging things around. Perhaps sketching things out on paper first is a good idea.
Anyway, I hope you find looking at the presentation and reading these reflections interesting. Presentations without the talking can only be so useful but hopefully you can get something from it. Feedback would be gratefully received.
What I've attempted to do is group together different sections of the process with a view to helping educators organise their thinking on this issue. The hard part of this is knowing what to leave out. I see this as a work in process because I hope to get clearer about the issues and the relationships as I get more experienced. The point of this practically focused framework is to help a Higher Education institution in 2011 - I work at the excellent Institute of Education. The point is that many academics need help with the basics. Basics that aren't well defined or universally agreed. By basics I mean the key decisions that need to be made; the main structural decisions to take. Some may disagree with the phrases used in the structure but the point is to give a framework from which to work. Of course, it needs context. I work with individuals to give this context. However, I'm interested in the academic staff who aren't banging down my door to have these conversations and are only at this particular session. It's something for them to take away. I want to make the maximium impact I can; an impact that cover the foundations of what they need to know. If this is all the time I get with them I don't waste time focusing on a small piece of the pie before they have tasted a bite or all the slices (not sure that works).
It's true that the pedagogy is only implicit in the presentation, if at all. In an ideal world the pedagogy is the starting point and the structure flows from there. My rationale for leaving this out is based on my experiences working with educators over the years. Rarely do they want to talk in the abstract and apply these abstract principles to their teaching. My best guess is that most educators have only a sense of their pedagogical tendencies but have a firm grasp on what types of activities they like using. So what I deem important for a first stab presentation like this are the types of activity available to them in their context. For this scenario, this meant outlining the main communication/collaboration tools available to people in my institution. A footnote to this is that pedagogy is complex and discussions around is are complicated and challenging. All this takes time, and this could feel a waste if there is only this one chance of communicating with them.
My concern with any teaching session is to avoid cul-de-sacs of discussion on issues of minor importance. Often such discussions focus on processes which hinder the success of teaching online or strategic and sometimes philosophical standpoints. This leads sessions and discussions down a slippery slope. By presenting something like this first, the chance of a focused discussion are much greater.
So the prezi provided has the following sections:
Before designing section - Basically, what I'm concerned with here is ensuring that you know why you are designing a purely online or blended learning course. Our context has a focus of converting from face-to-face but it applies to creating something from scratch. The why question is a whole area in itself which I won't dwell on here. The other noteworthy issue is whether you replace what you are currently doing with whatever you are designing now. This refers to replacing something purely online with something face-to-face. Most will not want to teach solely online, this is not what they signed up for when they embarked on this career! So duplication is the preferred way to go. I will probably rework this section. I think most of important issues are there but I'm not happy about the title and some of the wording.
Structural considerations - The prezi above is minus screenshots of example structures within our VLE. However, we have the key considerations. In reality these considerations are not decided upon before the actually activity/content design. It is an iterative process.
An online course needs - bespoke content, activities, readings This is the meat of the presentation and the focus is on the activities. The categories feel a bit simplistic but I think they work. What I'm keen to do is to make the point that uploading your powerpoint from a face-to-face lecture isn't good enough for bespoke content. You want specially created documents or multimedia at the very least. So I describe this area as bespoke content. Because we are HE, readings gets it's own area (the things in this bubble refer to our systems). For the activities bubbles, my split between asynchronous and synchronous was an easy design choice. They are such different beasts that we need to talk about them seperately. What I've outlined are the main tools available to us in our blackboard VLE. Moodlers out there will notice that moodle has more to offer. C'est la vie. I probably should have put e-portfolios in there however. What this model doesn't acknowledge is the relationship between the activities and the bespoke content. A blurring of the boundaries here would have got in the way of the message but this can come out when you talk.
Finally, some reflections on using prezi for this presentation. I did a few prezis a year ago but haven't done any since. My intention here was to present large structures and show relationships which could then be used to focus on individual elements. Doing it this way forces you to think hard about how the pieces fit together. When I started I didn't know what these structures would look like and, to be honest, I had hoped for better. However, it was a valuable exercise and I think it has a better look and feel using this tool. With powerpoint you can often get away with casually listing things as they come to mind and talk about them. BTW, if you just jump of one thing to the next without any big picture there's no point using prezi. What's frustrating about prezi is that when you decide to move a bubble and all it's contents, it's a fiddly job. There's supposed to be a multiple select option but I couldn't get this to work so I was forever dragging things around. Perhaps sketching things out on paper first is a good idea.
Anyway, I hope you find looking at the presentation and reading these reflections interesting. Presentations without the talking can only be so useful but hopefully you can get something from it. Feedback would be gratefully received.
What a learning technologist needs to be good at
I've talked previously about the principle of offering practical advice. This is referring to the level of abstraction you employ when talking about the design of the learning experience. My gut feeling is that because researchers are often employed in Learning Technology positions the tendency is to more be too abstract. This is a completely anecdotal assertion (this blog gives me this kind of freedom of expression).
Aside from this, what are the qualities I need to possess to have the maximum positive impact? By positive I mean giving people a good understanding of key issues with regard to LTs allowing them to make informed decisions on their appropriate use. I will list some qualities:
Good communication/good teaching:
I'm realising more and more that's being a good communicator and teacher is priority number 1 for this job. I need to be able to communicate my message in a variety of fora and a variety of contexts. I need to be able to communicate well and where possible teach well so that I make maximium advantage of each opportunity. I've been a lot recently on what it means to give practical advice on LTs particular with regard to designing a whole course. I think an important principle is making order out of simple but disparate concepts and ideas. It's very common for discussion to flit around lots of different issues, so if you can give order, structure and context for all of this then that's is really useful. Often what you come up with sounds obvious. Don't worry about this, it's still useful. For example, colleagues at the Institute of Education have found it useful when I say think about:
- Start time/finish
- Aligning topic with time periods
And then for each topic, think about:
- What bespoke content you want
- What readings you want
- What learning activities you want
There's much, much more to think about but this is a good basis. Sounds like common sense but key points are easily overlooked and mashed together causing confusion.
Finding opportunities to spread the word
It is often about manufacturing situations where you have a captive audience, placing myself in environment where people will listen. Ideally, people come to something you have organised where they want your help and support. In an ideal world this is one-to-one tuition or group training sessions. However, these can be difficult to manufacture so other situations have to be sought. Working groups for sharing practice are a good idea. You can always slip in advice at strategic points.
Adapting your message to the audience
This is about not banging the drum too hard with the wrong audience, in the wrong context. Because technology can be an emotive issue with some, the context needs to be right before you think about delivering your message. Also, if educators come to learn about, say, a particular tool or technology you can also give some learning design advice within this to give it context.
Initiating and taking control of your own learning
This is probably the hardest part. Clearly it's a principle which could apply to any profession. For LTs, at a simple level, it's about staying on top of new software and environments and ensuring that you understand how to work tools before the edcuator gets to it. This is hard enough but then you add to it, trying to keep abreast of the latest thinking in research terms with regard to LTs. A third strand which I try and do is reading and reflecting on the latest thinking on LTs outside the academia. I am talking about the the blogosphere and the micro-blogosphere. This is hard and involves making time to read and share what you can. It's valuable because it makes you think outside your narrow world. With any job there are times when learning gets swamped by being too damn busy but it's worth the effort when you get a chance. Taking control of your own learning and ensuring that you keep abreast on all three fronts is hard and sometimes overwhelming. But I'm always glad when I do. In fact, this is one of things that keep me interested in my job. Being able to easily find information and opinion and turn this into knowledge by reflecting on it in light of my context.
It's interesting rating yourself against these criteria. I come out ok, but that's probably because I picked the criteria. Mind you, there lots of room for improvement.
Aside from this, what are the qualities I need to possess to have the maximum positive impact? By positive I mean giving people a good understanding of key issues with regard to LTs allowing them to make informed decisions on their appropriate use. I will list some qualities:
Good communication/good teaching:
I'm realising more and more that's being a good communicator and teacher is priority number 1 for this job. I need to be able to communicate my message in a variety of fora and a variety of contexts. I need to be able to communicate well and where possible teach well so that I make maximium advantage of each opportunity. I've been a lot recently on what it means to give practical advice on LTs particular with regard to designing a whole course. I think an important principle is making order out of simple but disparate concepts and ideas. It's very common for discussion to flit around lots of different issues, so if you can give order, structure and context for all of this then that's is really useful. Often what you come up with sounds obvious. Don't worry about this, it's still useful. For example, colleagues at the Institute of Education have found it useful when I say think about:
- Start time/finish
- Aligning topic with time periods
And then for each topic, think about:
- What bespoke content you want
- What readings you want
- What learning activities you want
There's much, much more to think about but this is a good basis. Sounds like common sense but key points are easily overlooked and mashed together causing confusion.
Finding opportunities to spread the word
It is often about manufacturing situations where you have a captive audience, placing myself in environment where people will listen. Ideally, people come to something you have organised where they want your help and support. In an ideal world this is one-to-one tuition or group training sessions. However, these can be difficult to manufacture so other situations have to be sought. Working groups for sharing practice are a good idea. You can always slip in advice at strategic points.
Adapting your message to the audience
This is about not banging the drum too hard with the wrong audience, in the wrong context. Because technology can be an emotive issue with some, the context needs to be right before you think about delivering your message. Also, if educators come to learn about, say, a particular tool or technology you can also give some learning design advice within this to give it context.
Initiating and taking control of your own learning
This is probably the hardest part. Clearly it's a principle which could apply to any profession. For LTs, at a simple level, it's about staying on top of new software and environments and ensuring that you understand how to work tools before the edcuator gets to it. This is hard enough but then you add to it, trying to keep abreast of the latest thinking in research terms with regard to LTs. A third strand which I try and do is reading and reflecting on the latest thinking on LTs outside the academia. I am talking about the the blogosphere and the micro-blogosphere. This is hard and involves making time to read and share what you can. It's valuable because it makes you think outside your narrow world. With any job there are times when learning gets swamped by being too damn busy but it's worth the effort when you get a chance. Taking control of your own learning and ensuring that you keep abreast on all three fronts is hard and sometimes overwhelming. But I'm always glad when I do. In fact, this is one of things that keep me interested in my job. Being able to easily find information and opinion and turn this into knowledge by reflecting on it in light of my context.
It's interesting rating yourself against these criteria. I come out ok, but that's probably because I picked the criteria. Mind you, there lots of room for improvement.
Levels of abstraction - Practical vs pedagogy
I've done a lot of work these past few months on helping academic colleagues who are thinking about converting their courses from face-to-face to be delivered through blended learning or purely online. This is unsurprising as this is a core component of my job! However, things have been pretty active recently as HE looks for additional modes of delivery to bring in more students and, by consequence, more money. Whatever the motivation, I'm happy.
As a result, there's been lots of learning that needs consolidating. Firstly, I had an interesting discussion the other day about the levels of abstraction. This is in terms of how abstract you discuss things with educators when helping them design an online course. I've always tends to try and grounds things in reality and talk in terms of practical components/examples/templates rather than pedagogical models. This is probably partly because its in my nature to do this but also because my experience is that this is what they want - or at least this is what I think they want. There are a number of reasons for this which I won't go into here. But getting the balance right on the scale of abstraction is a judgement call that a constant issue for any learning technologist. It's certainly important to be able to talk pedagogy if the need arise but it is the best starting point? I don't have the answers. My instincts and practice keep such dialogue in my back pocket. You might be thinking why not do both, why not do everything. Well, you need to be careful. Educators often approach you looking for clarity, looking for answers. Clarity is so, so important and I guess this is the heart of the matter. You have to choose what to say first and how to say it to give maximium benefit to the educator. This will be different for each person but common is the need to practical guidance on how a course could look online and what key decisions need to be made first. My next post will reflect upon the practical advice I've been championing in this post.
As a result, there's been lots of learning that needs consolidating. Firstly, I had an interesting discussion the other day about the levels of abstraction. This is in terms of how abstract you discuss things with educators when helping them design an online course. I've always tends to try and grounds things in reality and talk in terms of practical components/examples/templates rather than pedagogical models. This is probably partly because its in my nature to do this but also because my experience is that this is what they want - or at least this is what I think they want. There are a number of reasons for this which I won't go into here. But getting the balance right on the scale of abstraction is a judgement call that a constant issue for any learning technologist. It's certainly important to be able to talk pedagogy if the need arise but it is the best starting point? I don't have the answers. My instincts and practice keep such dialogue in my back pocket. You might be thinking why not do both, why not do everything. Well, you need to be careful. Educators often approach you looking for clarity, looking for answers. Clarity is so, so important and I guess this is the heart of the matter. You have to choose what to say first and how to say it to give maximium benefit to the educator. This will be different for each person but common is the need to practical guidance on how a course could look online and what key decisions need to be made first. My next post will reflect upon the practical advice I've been championing in this post.
Looking outside the VLE is not a crime
Note to self - must blog more.
It's good to reflect back on my thinking last year and how things have moved on. I've been reflecting on my Web 2.0 model. I still think it's a useful guide for making sense of what's out there and, although it could probably be refined, I don't think its worth the effort as the changes would be minor. I've said in the past that integration of internet based tools and Virtual Learning Environments will get better over time. The rate of this improvement is frustratingly slow. Our institution, the Institute of Education, uses blackboard. When it comes to integration with internet-based tool, it's not good. Moodle is much better and our potential switch to this VLE would be very welcome from this point of view.
The issue of going outside the VLE doesn’t fit well with formal education. The instinct of an educational institution is to cover its back with anything it uses. As a result, the rules comes first. For the few that want to use something “out there”, they are forced to justify this position against whatever criteria deemed appropriate. The result is that most will not bother. Why risk doing something wrong especially since there is no often nothing to counter balance these rules and regulations and no intensive to think outside the box. I’m talking about resources that portray web 2.0 tools in a good light and champion their potential for teaching and learning. Such resources would be difficult to keep up to date but its a worthwhile endevour. It falls under the category of “seeking to improve how we teach and learn”. Surely this is worth doing.
This issue is related to whether you are proactive, going out there and trying to display what’s positive about learning technologies; or whether you are reactive, giving advice and support when people want it. The norm is the latter whereas I think we should be doing more of the former. I can see the argument for adopting both positions and perhaps I am drawn to the stance that feels like marketing sometimes because it is a minority position. It should be pointed that often lack of resources dictates how proactive you can be with regards to learning technologies.
On the internet based tools front, future VLEs will certainly have to cater for more integration. I can see them acting as a hub for pulling together everything the educator and the learners want to use. However, this probably won’t happen any time soon.
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