re-purposed data

I was having a chat about ‘mobile web’ during MILT, which we hosted last week @BSFC, so decided to have a look at Wirenode (wirenode.com) – if you’ve never heard of it or used it, the site enables you to create browser pages specifically designed for use on mobile devices.

* It is free
* It is quite quick & easy to navigate & learn
* There are no apparent advertisement pop-ups or banners

It took me about 5 mins to create a basic test page with a few links – though I haven’t got round to adding any information yet… which is how I started thinking about the re-purposing of data/info.

It occurred to me that we appear to spend quite a lot of time re-writing information which is already ‘out there’ – hence the development of the Wiki model… – perhaps I should suggest (again) a college Wiki for our staff to enhance sharing effective practice and knowledge.

Has anyone tried using the Moodle Wiki? I had a brief try about a year ago but didn’t really think much of it – it does not really resemble a ‘Wiki’ and wasn’t operating much like one – it was neither intuitive nor aesthetically effective. I am currently contributing to an online book Wiki at WikiEducator, which does function really effectively and is very intuitive.

take note

I was on the London – Liverpool train on Tuesday evening, on my way home from the MoLeNET Conference and decided to add a blog entry about the event on our thin.clusion blog.

I copied and pasted notes between aNote (which I’d written at the conference) and WordPress 2, on my iPhone… however – Although the App had been saving a draft copy, a number of times the file did not save and so I ended up losing quite a few minutes worth of copy/paste/update/reformatting.  I did get frustrated and gave up after many attempts.

It made me realise that this note-taking and updating process is exactly what we will be asking our learners to do on the thin.clusion project.  Now, I’m a patient guy – but even I gave up on the blog entry after about 40 mins.  So how will this process work for our learners?  Will they give up if the technology lets them down?  I would imagine so. In which case, what can we do to address this?

stop making sense

I’m currently sitting at my desk in my home office – juggling the reworking of our MoLeNET research questions and the knock-on effect of having to ensure that the detail stays within the scope of the initial project bid… I’m also going to do some reflective work on my Post-16 teaching course and then I guess I’ll need to start writing my lesson plans for after Christmas!!!

Has anyone else ever spent time looking back over their own blog and thought “Wow, that looks interesting – I don’t remember writing that”?

I was checking through mine a couple of days ago and had totally forgotten some of the posts I’d made a few years back when I was on Blogspot.  I guess we spend so much time reading other peoples blogs and Tweets, etc. that it’s so easy to forget about your own prior work.

I am a MoLe

Back from two REALLY intense days of MoLeNET research training in Manchester (the hotel coffee was awful).  As ‘Lead Practitioner Researcher’ for our thin.clusion MoLeNET project, I am responsible for the research programme in the project;

Leading research activities – assisting colleagues to plan and conduct research relating to investigating mobile learning in the project – organise training sessions for the project staff – assist the LSN with specific data collection – Help colleagues to present the data collected, findings, analysis and synthesis of the findings of the research – write and submit the interim and final project research reports… etc.

Oh – and I have a demanding day job too!

I’ve written a little entry on our project blog

Coffee and damn fine cherry pie

Dave at work (hi Dave), said that I don’t blog enough about coffee…

Well I had some damn fine coffee this morning Dave.  Check it out a really great fresh brew of the finest Jamaican Blue Mountain.  Blows your head off – so I had two mugs!

Needless to say, after that – I’ve been hyper-busy in the garden dismantling the trampoline so we can sell it on and then cutting back a creeping bush that has taken over the apple tree. Made some soup for tomorrow and dinner for everyone tonite.

Now getting down to complete some work for my class on Tuesday nite – as I’ll be out in Manchester for two days doing some MoLeNET Action Research Training; with some coffee – happy now Dave???

Wish I had some damn fine cherry pie

 

 

 

Word(le) Up!

Word Cloud for 'The Journey to eMaturity'

 

Wondering what this word cloud means?

Check out my blog entry called ‘The Journey to eMaturity’, I posted it earlier this year after hearing the term eMaturity mentioned at a few conferences around that time.

I’m hoping that eMaturity refers to the positioning of and attitudes towards learning with technology at a given institution.

If it simply refers to the technology, then I’m afraid we’re going to be on a long journey.

• We research & implement emerging technologies, work with embedded technologies and phase out old or redundant technologies….

Oscar nomination/acceptance speech

I was reviewing some of my earlier funny work, last nite… and I got thinking that I really should thank a few folk who have really inspired me on my learning journey, so far:

• Professor Gráinne Conole
• Dr Rhona Sharpe
• Dr James Aczel
• James Clay
• David Sugden

Of course, there are many other people I respect, collaborate and interact with – but these people are my main source of inspiration.

Thanks everyone

Cellphone; life-style; advertising

I used this as an introductory item.  20 years ago, this was the technology and lifestyle being sold to us… Did the tech really ’set us free’? Some would argue that it has been a key driver toward our 24/7 lives. We talk about blended-learning in education, what about our blended-work/life?

A very slick Ad. This is where we are, 2009… a converged device. How many more functions are there? Does the guy in the Ad actually make a call on his phone?  I used this to show the lifestyle now being sold to us – fast-paced, multitasking, social, young. Compare this to the first Ad which was aimed at an older affluent, professional (city) worker.

Interesting… what market is this Ad aimed at? Are they selling a phone or a music player?  I guess that the emphasis is on life-style rather than work – possibly because this is a Sony Ericsson device, perhaps it is modeled on the prior success of the Sony ‘Walkman’ brand.

Don’t Tweet Me This Way

Does anyone know what has happened to TwittFon? (sic) I can still use it on my desktop… but the App has gone from iPhone store…
I even searched the web and found nothing to hint at it’s demise. I got quite attached to that App

micro-teaching

I had a really great experience delivering my first micro-teaching session last nite.  I’ve already posted about what I was aiming to deliver (The Digital You) – but I did end up having to revise it somewhat… (is that always going to happen???)

Although I had checked the timings of the advertisements and worked out roughly what I was going to say – I hadn’t really allowed enough time for the group discussion about ‘must-have’ mobile phone features.  I guess this is always going to be tricky to work out, given that learners ask questions, get side-tracked, go off-task, etc.   I had to reduce the session by cutting out the final part, which was to search on-line for a phone, using the criteria the learners came up with.

Anyway – it worked, I felt comfortable (apart from having to go over the Aims & Objectives) and I got some useful and mainly positive peer feedback.

Something I observed during another micro-lesson, was that the student-teacher read out the A&O from paper and was visibly out of their comfort zone – which is exactly what I did… I guess I’m comfortable with my subject matter and reasonably comfortable with delivering it – it’s just the formality of the A&Os etc. that I have to get to grips with.

aims & objectives