Learner Bytes

’It’s in the news today, oh boy’, (to borrow a line) and I thought I’d collect some of the ‘noise’ and provide it here for anyone interested. Google Wave has been announced to developers and coders to drum up some application, plugin, widget, & extension development before it gets released to the world.

If you’ve got the time and bandwidth check out the developer preview at Google I/O (181MB & 80mins) “Google Wave is a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.”

Commentators have been busy writing about the implications of this service/application for the use of the web, in education, and business. I’ve collected a few links and apologise for not annotating them…

The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave

Google Wave - the beggining of the end for VLEs?

Look out Outlook, Google’s Wave is coming

I’ve Seen the Future and the Future is Us (Using Google)

What Intrigues Me About Google Wave

Does Google Wave Mean the End of the LMS?

A Google Wave to the LMS Haters

Google Wave: What Might Email Look Like If It Were Invented Today?

Google Wave Drips With Ambition-A New Communication Platform For A New Web

Google Wave: A Complete Guide

Whatever the ‘wave’ ends up being capable of, it does point the way towards being more collaborative while using an integrated interface in the web browser, and I reckon that’s cool.

I was able to attended the Apple Mobile Learning seminar (for higher education but off course any educators were welcome) at the VCA last week. Quite a few colleagues were there and it was also fun to bump into some twitter friends while enjoying something to eat and drink afterwards. Everyone who attended was provided with an iPod Touch (you could use your own iPhone of ‘Touch’ if you wanted) on the way in and we were asked to use them to provide feedback during the presentation. It was a neat demonstration of the (free) ‘Mobile Academic Platform’ (MobileAP) a web-based platform for creating interactive conference and classroom experiences. It contains features like question/response, discussion, link sharing and scheduling. It was great to be able to be part of he demo and to see how it worked from a user perspective.

The presentation focused on mobile applications and we were given time to check out the apps that were on the ‘Touches’. Some of them were; iHomework, Acid Plus, Medical Calc, Papers, Anatomy, OsiriX, Hubble, iStanford, Tally Counter, Free Piano, NYTimes, WSJ, Notecards lite, Critter Crunch lite (game), Blackboard, Art, Free wifi and AudioBoo (audioboo.fm) which all means I need to find a free afternoon to follow them up.

The focus on higher education meant that iTunesU was highlighted, and it’s good to see just what some unis are doing. Hopefully we’ll have our own channel delivering some worthy material soon enough. Overall a worthwhile event which gave us an insight into some of the developments in e-learning and application development for mobile devices as well as how mobile devices can provide engagement for students (as well as staff). Oh, and I didn’t win the iPod Touch

I gave a presentation last week at the ARK Group, “eLearning and Instructional Design” conference. My talk was focused on the capacities of Web 2.0 and I spent some time on the topic, The world at you door, tools for developing your Personal Learning Network (PLN). The areas I covered included social networking/forum websites, blogging and micro-blogging. I mentioned applications/services such as Twitter, Yammer, Ning, Elluminate, Wikispaces, Wetpaint, Wordpress & Blogger.

I told my own story with regard to the way particular technologies and applications had supported the development of my PLN (while I’m calling it a Network, the term Environment is also appropriate - check out Britt Watwood’s blog post where he reflects on his notion of a PLN and provides a nice graphic to explain it). To demonstrate the value and power of the Twitter aspect/component of my PLN, it was fun (and surprising to myself) to be able to say;

“It’s only because of Twitter that …

• I’m here talking with you
• I have an international network to draw on (immediately)
• I have become part of communities of practice
• I know @AnneBB (and others)
• I found a place to eat last night
• I’m having dinner with some tweeps tonight”

Some members of the audience may have thought to themselves that to be able to give these examples was all a bit sad, and that Twitter was running my life. It may seem that way, but Twitter has provided me with many opportunities to meet people face to face and enabled friendships to grow as well as develop my professional understanding of the way we might use the affordances of tool like Twitter for learning and teaching.

After all, I recognise that Twitter is still only one dimension of my PLN, but it is a very valuable one. I haven’t done the exercise, but with the traditional tools such as email, academic journals, and conferences etc. I’m sure my PLN would have taken years to develop, rather than months.

Now to do some evangelising and convince some colleagues to ‘get on board’. Any suggestions from you as to how I might do that?

Technorati Tags: microblogging, PLN, twitter

I’ve thinking about difference and the challenges we have in encouraging the adoption of digital and learning technologies for learning and teaching.

The original idea of Marc Prensky’s digital natives and immigrants and more recently Dave White’s suggestion that it’s more about digital residents and visitors has kept me thinking about the best ways for me (as an early adopter) to engage those who aren’t keen on things digital.

I was chatting with my 15 year old nephew a while ago and he suggested he was a digital native and that I was an immigrant. I challenged him as to what he meant, and we had a good chat about using technology, being digital, and growing up with the Internet. Intitially he was probably basing his judgement on age rather than knowledge, expertise, and understanding. Carl Berger presented some research at the Apple University Consortium Conference in 2007 and mentioned a student (’digital native’) who spoke about his knowledge of technology ‘being a mile wide but only an inch deep’. What the student meant, was that he had a broad experience, but a shallow understanding, of digital technology.

I’d suggest (as discussed in earlier posts in this forum) that we don’t really know to what extent students (let alone staff) know and engage with technology, it makes it difficult for us to develop policy and implement technology use to support learning and teaching. I came across Kate Carruther’s blog post, The Real Generation Gap, where she suggests that the difference between those who know technology and engage with “is about the individual’s relationship to technology and their willingness or desire to become and to remain connected.” Kate refers to Mark McCrindle’s report, ‘Seriously Cool: Marketing, Communicating and Engaging With Diverse Generations’ (.pdf). Is it really more about (as Kate suggests) being connected (having the willingness, desire and inclination) rather than age, that divides us?

This all resonates with me. I’m as engaged with social networking as my kids but I use it professionally as well as socially. I’m interested in the use of what I’ll call Web2.0 applications in education, but now asking questions about how willing others might be in taking up these ideas on communication, collaboration, and connection.

Does this mean that the adoption of social media and encouraging social networks in education (let alone anywhere else), may only work for those who are interested in using it. What does that mean for all those who aren’t? What does it mean for the curriculum? Do we understand that we may be disenfranchising both students and staff as we adopt more and different technologies?

I believe we need to think carefully about how we proceed and ensure that care be taken to ensure that any implementation be scaffolded in such a way that no one is disadvantaged or dismissed as a laggard for being negative or hesitant. We have a responsibility to understand and cater for the interests and limitations of our cohorts (of students and staff). What kind of support and activities could we provide to help narrow the gap - is professional development (in whatever form that might take) a solution?

Technorati Tags: collaboration, digital, social networking, web2.0

Social networking has been in the news lately, and there have been quite a few comments in the media recently about Twitter and micro-blogging. Seems the mainstream journalists are finally getting a sense of what a lot of us are already aware of. Amongst others, last week’s article in the A2 section of The Age, Tweet and greet, highlights how popular it’s becoming. I’ve been caught up in the phenomenon and wanted to share some thoughts and write a little about my experience. I have found that I haven’t been writing (longer) blog posts as regularly as I would have liked, I think this is because I’m spending more time interacting on Twitter. Maybe I don’t write well, or provocatively enough, for people to comment on my blog posts, and I find the feedback and response from my Twitter network more numerous and immediate. In the end though, I suppose it’s about purpose, priorities and time.

Twitter continues to amaze me in how it can help you find answers to questions, provide a plethora of online resources (supplied by those you follow), facilitate the development of your network, and give you a stream of news and updates. I’ve been tweeting for a year now and Twitter’s been good for me professionally and socially. It’s nice when you can help someone see its value and watch them become a regular tweeter.

I suppose the point I wanted to make was, that when I show people Twitter, they often don’t understand it and suggest it’s a waste of time. Now, I can agree with that, but it’s like many things - the more you put in to it, the more you’ll get out of it. Understanding, and using Twitter effectively is about gaining experience and learning by doing, which generally works for most people. Britt Watwood in his blog post Am I an Outlier? reflects about the necessity to ‘practise’ doing something to become successful at it. This is true, but I believe it’s also about being able to make the experience more than the sum of it’s parts. To do this you need to be able to add value by taking risks. Putting yourself ‘out there’ can often pay dividends. Interaction is the key, so you need to respond to others and even pose your own questions, be provocative and ensure you make a contribution. Sue Waters has often written of the value of commenting (on blog posts) - this is when interaction happens and a dialogue between (often more than two) people develops an idea further than the initial writer intended.

As an example of this serendipitous adventure, it was fun to read a great story about tweeps (a couple of fans and the Shaq) catching up with each other f2f. Other blog posts regarding Twitter that I’ve read recently include Chris Betcher’s ‘Twitter is messy’, and Jenny Wood’s, ‘a Twitter reality check’, and there’s a very recent TED Talk, How Twitter’s spectacular growth is being driven by unexpected uses, given by Evan Williams (the co-founder of Twitter). The amount of data collected by Twitter is huge, and it’s all searchable, just use your imagination. There are also plenty of small applications that will return data on all sorts of Twitter usage, and they’re good fun to explore.

Please let me share just one of my own Twitter stories with you… I was attending a conference recently and tweeting about it, when I received a tweet from someone else (’Jo’) in the audience who said that they would like to meet me and asked where was I in the auditorium. I was about to answer (“Down the front left”, etc.) when I thought I’d check their bio and visited their website/blog. As the blog opened on my screen, there was some chatter from the across the aisle and I was told by the person sitting across from me that I was looking at her blog. The penny dropped, and I asked, “Are you Jo?”. “Yes”, she said. With the biggest grin, I said, “I’m Colin!”. Twitter made it possible.

I’ve also initiated the use of Yammer (microblogging within a domain) at my workplace, and after a couple of weeks we’ve got some interested people joining up, interactions beginning, and a few groups starting to form. I’m also encouraged by questions asking how we can use this technology with our students and in research…

So, what’s in it for me (or you)? You usually get a return on investment (except maybe during the current financial crisis), so if you haven’t, have a go and spend some time and energy on investigating the possibilities of micro-blogging and network building for yourself.

So, Twitter is topical and if you’re not sure what it’s about, you might want to do a quick Google blog search to find plenty more for you to read (or you might even check out my delicious bookmarks), or take the plunge and signup to Twitter and start tweeting and find some like-minded people to follow. Oh, and in case you’re not following me yet, I’m @colwar in the twitterverse…

Technorati Tags: twitter microblogging

… and getting back into it this year.

Phew, I needed that couple of weeks of holiday to slow down enough to get my brain to breath (deeply) and stop puffing. It was a big year. New job that I had to learn, research proposal and ethics application, setting up blogs, finally getting what Twitter was all about, finding people to follow (and getting followers), bloggers feasts with like minded people in education who have a passion for technology, developing a personal learning network (PLN), conferences in Melb, Wollongong & Mooloolaba (that’s a few o’s & l’s), chairing a committee, having three different bosses in the year, being dissappionted at some of the attitudes of those administrators who control resources. etc. etc. By December 23rd I was quite ready for a holiday break.

I actually went cold turkey for two weeks with no access to the network/interweb and headed off to the bush for a lot of nothing. Well, I did manage to read a couple of huge sci-fi novels, do some beach visits, bush walks, catching up with family, some photography and generally develop a relaxed frame of mind too distracted by nothing to think about much at all. Rather indulgent, but bliss. Might try and do that a little more frequently this year.

Two weeks is a long time - anywhere, and getting back into things the second week of January was another matter. Just reflecting on what I’d done over Christmas and New Years, meant that those people in my PLN would also have had any number of adventures & experiences. I wondered what my Twitter followers had been up to, and what of my colleagues at work. Interestingly (or disturbingly) I found it difficult to get back into the flow. I logged back into Twhirl to get my Twitter stream and noticed things were as lively as ever, but I couldn’t jump back into the stream. Very weird. I did notice that some regulars weren’t tweeting and reckoned they were probably on holidays too. So, why did I feel awkward? I did want to connect back into my network, but something was stopping me.

Maybe the cold turkey had removed my need to tweet (my addiction had been cured?), or I had lost some Twitter mojo, or maybe I had to get my head back into the space. Anyway, after a week or so of hesitation and a couple of tentative tweets, I just plunged straight back in! I thought that maybe that would be the best way. People weren’t going to invite me back, I had to commit myself to engage again. And you know what surprised my most (but shouldn’t have), I was immediately welcomed back and made to feel part of that stream and my network - and another lesson learned.

All is well with the world - I’m a tweep. So, now I’m all set for another year of sharing, learning, growing and contributing to my PLN. As BIG Kev would’ve said, “I’m excited!”

Technorati Tags: community, network