Weekly Learning Technology Digest... 5

Image from Camera Eye Photography under
a CC BY 2.0 license 

Friday and time for my weekly learning technology digest again.  Here's my selection of tasty morsels from the web this week, all of which might help spark some creative ideas to enhance your learning / teaching:

• PowerPoint into Prezi - this first link caught my eye because I've been struggling to get my head around Prezi for a while.  My PowerPoints tend to be made up primarily of images and very few words... and I'm happy with them being a backdrop for a presentation so struggled to see what Prezi could offer other than seasickness!  I went to a workshop this week on using Prezi and one of the things I found out was that you can import your PowerPoint slides into Prezi - which is excellent if you want to start your ideas in a familiar environment, choosing pictures, thinking about order etc and then move into Prezi to give it a bit more of a dynamic feel as you reveal concepts / show layers of ideas.
• Using Google Docs to Create Digital Kits for Student Projects - a great tip and a nice idea for kick starting a project with a 'digital kit'.  I especially liked the handy pointer about the ease of using Creative Commons licensed images from within a Google doc (i.e. if you insert a picture using a Google search into a Google doc, it only gives you images which are licensed for reuse and modification).  Excellent stuff.
• How can infographics produce better e-learning content? - an article from the excellent Rapid E-Learning blog this not only explains why you might consider using infographics in education, but also points you towards a fair few great resources that'll further fire your imagination and get you started.  Plus, I love a good infographic!
• Videos to help you rethink learning, education and school - this post came from Garr Reynolds (who wrote Presentation Zen and is an expert on presentation design) and has a really great selection of videos to dip into.  While you may not necessarily agree with all of them, they get you thinking about the processes of learning... and that's really healthy.

Another couple of things to note this week: firstly, that Blackboard acquired Moodlerooms and NetSpot - a move that surprised many but is an indicator that the learning management system market is heading towards change... and secondly, we've set ourselves up a Google+ page.  For bits of news, views, links, resources, updates and discussion... that's where you can find us!  Be sure to follow us to stay in touch.

As ever, if there's anything else we should have been looking out for this week and missed, do leave us a comment below!

Sarah

Top 10 Tips: Help me develop my online course

Image from Sindy available under a CC
Attribution-ShareAlike license

Recently, as I was chatting to someone about the sorts of things involved in producing an online course, it became apparent that there were ten common areas which crop up whenever you're involved in projects like this... and which are worth knowing about before starting to develop your own online / blended courses.  I thought it might be useful to share them here too.


Top 10 Tips: Don't forget these things as you develop your online course

1. Project management skills aren't necessarily the ones possessed in academia!  You'll need these to get it from conception to completion and beyond.
2. The gap between design, reality and delivery can be huge - someone needs to take on the job of helping to close this.  It's probably going to be you.  Manage expectations, be realistic, prioritise.  This can make all the difference.
3. Going from face-to-face teaching to online teaching can be scary - it's important to cut people some slack and find multiple ways to support them in developing skills and confidence.
4. Don't wait until the course goes live for teaching staff to acquire online teaching skills - developing an online course isn't just about content. Don't assume staff can 'just do it' - and if you've got someone in to develop the initial materials, ask yourself 'what will we do when their contract ends?' as the ongoing maintenance and development process doesn't end once the course goes live.  Skills development is vital.
5. Be clear about the objectives and get them communicated clearly too - establish what it is you're after early on as being pulled off course by new additions / other agendas / misplaced priorities can be fatal.
6. The moment someone says 'we'll just put the PowerPoints online' should set off alarm bells in your head.  Establish your definition of what counts as online learning early and allow these conversations to air sooner rather than later.
7. Give yourself enough time - online isn't automatically quicker, easier or cheaper.  Counter the myths and be realistic - or you'll spend the month before the course is due to be delivered going grey!
8. Inactive content is dull.  You have to make the most of the medium and if people need help with activity design, alignment and active learning... support them to get there because it'll be worth it.
9. Aim big if you want, but start small - testing a small sample of content on a willing group of students and taking on board their feedback is much better than hiding away and developing the whole lot... then discovering it's rubbish. 
10. Establish a visual style guide at the outset - templates, models, examples etc help those new to online course creation - and enables you to produce a consistent look and feel to the materials.  For fully online courses, the online content *is* the University for your students!

How to get started?
So... how to do it?  Well... there's lots of stuff out there, but some places to kick-start your thinking might include:

• Professional Development Framework for e-Learning to help give you an idea of some of the skills needed as well as checklists etc for the production of online learning content
• Some nice design ideas from Articulate especially if you're after some 'fancy bits' to tart up a text-heavy course
• The ADDIE design approach is also useful in establishing key tasks in producing an online course and this is explained in a simple-to-get manner by Intulogy.
• The Design Studio from JISC is jam-packed full of resources and ideas and the curriculum lifecycle is especially helpful when you're starting out.
• JISC Infokit on Project Management is a good place to help you with the Project Management side of things and the checklists are dandy!
• Open University Learning Design Initiative is one to watch as the  resources and links to Cloudworks are great for activity design 

Oh, and the other thing to realise when someone asks you to 'help me develop my online course' is that as much as this seems to *just* be about something academic and / or technological... it's about people and communication. 

Sarah

PS  Don't forget to enjoy the process - getting a course online and seeing students learning and enjoying what you've developed is a fantastic feeling!

Visualising a Learning Technologist - a Self Portrait

I had an idea that, as part of the current module portfolio for the MEd in Learning and Teaching I'm studying, I'd create a self portrait. The module is about technology in L&T, so I chose to investigate the role of Learning Technologist (LT). A picture is worth a thousand words apparently, although looking at my word count, if it is I've gone over my limit! Anyway, the idea was to bring all the elements I could think of that relate to the role of LT in a multi-self portrait. It was also a chance to have a crack at some studio photography and a self portait.

To give the idea more scope, I threw open the question to the ALT mailing list. A good discussion ran and some really good ideas for visualisation came out. Some I tried to use, some I didn't have the time for, in fact some of my ideas I didn't have time for either. I had about a week to get things together, and that turned out to be way too little time to really do everything I had listed - next time I will give myself at least a month! I was prepared for the image to fail as well as work so it was as much about the process of creating the image, and what I could learn from doing it; the planning, the creative process and the technical. So I gave myself a weekend, set up what I had and spent a Saturday afternoon taking the shots, and the evening and following morning editing it together.

Technically, it was difficult to do this on my own. Setting up the shoot wasn't too bad, although I'd never tried such a big area in a studio before. The lighting took a while to get right and I did a lot of running from in front to behind the camera, and taking the shot of me holding the iPad was an exercise in spatial guesswork! However, the biggest issue was translating the ideas into a visualisation that made some sense. I had some (what I thought) were subtle ideas, but would they work?

The final image was not what I had in my mind, although that mental image was far from complete. I had problems conveying the details in the shots - the items on the desk that represented various aspects of the role are just too small to make sense of them at all, and my poses aren't creative enough in some aspects. One or two ideas had to be left out because it didn't work in the final image as well, but that's what editing is all about. All in all, excluding the ideas phase, it took about four hours to shoot and about six hours to edit together.

Although it didn't quite work as I thought, I don't think it is a total failure. The final image, I hope, conveys a sense of the multi-faceted role that most LT's have, and even if it doesn't, I hope it's an interesting enough self portrait.

Or "how many Learning Technologist's does it take to change a light bulb?"

Danny

(This was first posted on my personal work related blog, which has now merged in here. Original comments are still available there)

Learning Technologies - Where Do I Start?

copyright Danny Monaghan 2012

At a recent conference, I was delivering a presentation with Chris Stokes about how you can make group work more effective using technology. It was a good session, with lots of questions at the end, but one question put to me stood out; that person said ‘it’s all very well looking at all these different technologies, but if I want to get someone who has never used technology in their teaching before developing their use of it, where do I tell them to start?’ My answer to that was ‘The VLE’.

Why start with the VLE?

The reasoning behind directing a newcomer to technology towards a VLE (whatever flavour you have access to) is not complicated, but in many ways that is the point. KISS is paramount to new users of technology in L&T. The last thing you want to do is put hurdles to jump in front of someone dipping their toe in the water for the first time (that’s too many analogies for one sentence - no more, I promise).

Of course, there is the question...

Why use a VLE at all?

Well:

1. It’s an excellent place to develop the curriculum and learning activities.
2. It’s available to all staff and students, anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
3. It’s easy to deliver information to a large number of people.
4. Group work and assessment can be easily facilitated.
5. Students’ progress is easier to follow.
6. It can free up some of your time to spend more in other areas of your teaching.
7. It can increase retention levels, decrease failure rate and increase performance of students.
8. Students can learn at their own pace.
9. It can help with course administration, for example student submission and feedback.

But all this can be done without using a VLE, so...

Why does the VLE make it simple?

1. It gives you a range of tools that can deliver results in one place. The tools may not be the best example of type, but they are all available to you without having to research, evaluate and pull together a number of different tools from different locations.
2. It’s familiar to your students. Because everyone is using the same system, students will know where to find content, how to use the system and where to get help and support. This means the system becomes a background to the real work, which is developing their learning.
3. It is integrated into your institution. You don’t have to worry about manual enrollment of staff and students, or getting your these people to enrol themselves, on to lots of different services. This can often be a barrier to success because it’s another password to remember and another location to go to.
4. It’s supported by the institution - if there’s a problem with the VLE, someone is there to help sort it out. If you’re not sure how to do something, there’s a reliable source of help and advice available.

In addition, there are a couple of other things that can influence where you chose to build your online learning environment, and not just for newcomers to e-learning. A VLE also means:

• The data is safe. This is the often overlooked aspect of using external services. You are responsible for backing up the data. If you are using, for example, an external wiki for students to work on, you need to keep a copy of that work for a number of years, so it can be referenced if needed. Different HEI’s will have different policies on this, for example here at Sheffield we keep archives of our VLE (MOLE) courses for at least seven years.
• You don’t need to worry about legalese. Have you read the T&C’s? Some external services have T&C’s that can be worrying for students IP and copyright, and it is often very difficult to properly understand just what all the legal jargon means. Your VLE data belongs to your institution, which will almost certainly have suitable IP and copyright on your students work. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to think about copyright and IP for material you are using though, that’s a different thing entirely.

So starting out in e-learning? The VLE is a great place to begin.

Danny

Six useful features in YouTube you may have missed...

It's easy to upload video to YouTube without noticing some rather nice features hidden away under the bonnet, that will help you enhance your videos and the way they're presented.

1. Annotations
Annotations, such as speech bubbles, labels or pauses, can be added to videos at selected points. These are very useful for screencasts created using free software, as you can add simple callouts without putting them through editing software, or for adding hyperlinks and other additional information to your videos.

It could be if you have information you think may change frequently (such as contact names, phone numbers, dates etc.) you add these as annotations rather than include them in the video itself, as they are easier to change and you can keep your YouTube URL for the video.

The example below is an excellent way annotations have been used creatively - using invisible annotations called 'spotlights' that have been used as a navigation tool between videos.



To get to Annotations select the video you want to change in Video Manager, click 'Edit Video' above the video window, and select the 'Annotations' tab.


2. Enhancements
You can make adjustments to your video once it has been uploaded, such as trimming, stabilising camera wobble, and making various tweaks to colour, contrast and brightness, which are really useful for making small changes without the hassle of editing the original file and reuploading. There are also a host of effects you can apply to make it black and white, pixellated, cartoonised, etc.

To get to Enhancements select the video you want to change in Video Manager, click 'Edit Video' above the video window, and select the 'Enhancements' tab.


3. Closed captioning
YouTube does have the facility to auto-caption videos, but this is still in its infancy, and often has baffling, if not hilarious, consequences. It's actually really easy to supply your own subtitles to your video, with the simplest way as follows.

• Create a plain text (.txt) file with a transcription of your video.
• Select the video you want to add subtitles to in the Video Manager, click 'edit captions/videos' above the video window.
• Click 'add new Captions or Transcript'.
• Click 'choose file' and select the plain text transcript on your machine, changing type to 'Transcript file'.
• Click upload file and, after some processing, your closed captions should appear on your video.

The way it works is by using software to analyse then speech patterns of the video, and plotting the text file to fit. You can also import Caption files, which include the time codes, but this is a lot more fiddly to create and very time-consuming. One final way is, if your video has been auto captioned, you can download this as a file, edit the mistakes (of which there will be many!) and then reupload your edited captions.

4. Playlists
If you have a series of videos you want to show somebody in a particular order, you can create a playlist and link or embed to it. This can include other people's videos as well as your own.

An instance Playlists would be useful is if you had a series of modular videos that different groups of users needed to see a different combination of, you could use a series of playlists tailored to different groups. This would save you having to edit them together in various combinations, or send different users a long list of URLs or a page full of embedded video.

An example below is the Playlist of Creative Media videos from the University's Teaching Tech team.



To get to Playlists go go to Video Manager, and select 'Playlists' on the left hand menu. You can add a video to a playlist on the buttons at the bottom of the video.


5. Video editor
On of the best "hidden" features of YouTube is the video editor, which is hardly the most sophisticated way to edit, but is not far off Windows MovieMaker for various tasks.

When accessed it shows all the videos you have uploaded to YouTube (including unlisted and private ones), and allows you to place them on a timeline, trimming where necessary and adding wipes, music and titles. Once finished you then publish it to YouTube where it can be viewed as a normal video. This is a very basic way of editing, but more than capable of putting a simple sequence together. It's also useful if you haven't got much storage space, as your rushes are hosted online.

To get there go go to Video Manager, and select 'Video Editor' tab.


As well as editing with your own clips, you can add in other people's clips from...


6. Creative Commons


When uploading videos, there is a choice to give them a Creative Commons license. This means that the videos are usable by others when using the Video Editor.

This is a great resource for finding extra bits and pieces when putting a sequence together, with loads of footage (of very variable quality) to choose from. Be wary though - it's quite obvious there is some material on there that the uploaders had no right to give a CC license to, so still use common sense.

As well as videos there are a number of audio tracks on there with CC licenses that can be used in the Video Editor, or added via 'AudioSwap', which will replace the soundtrack of your video with some legal music.

So that's six that I've found useful, and really extend the functionality of YouTube beyond just a video-streaming service. So... what else is tucked away in there that I've missed?

Using Google+ Hangouts as a Teaching Tool

This week I had the first real chance to use Google+ Hangouts as a teaching tool on a pilot programme the English Language Teaching Centre (ELTC) are running to offer additional language support for international students at the university. I had previously used it for some one-to-one consultancies with distance students, but this was the first time using it as a classroom with multiple students. Anyhow, I just wanted to share my initial impressions

A little background....

At the ELTC we want to offer additional language support to both international students here at the University of Sheffield but also distance students. We needed some kind of video conferencing platform that was cheap and reliable. Over the last few months, I tested out a variety: Adobe Connect, Blackboard Collaborate, Global Meet and Any Meeting but they were either too slow (Any Meeting, Global Meet) confusing to use (Blackboard Collaborate) or just too expensive (Adobe Connect). The other issue is that these services favour more of a transmission approach rather like a lecture. All of them do have tools for interaction (chatboxes, polls, whiteboards) but it’s not really like a classroom. At the ELTC we favour a small group classroom approach.

So, it was useful that Google Hangouts became available recently because it met two of our needs: it’s cheap (free in fact) and it supports video conferencing for 10 people and this makes it feel more like a class.

Student access and technical issues

We decided to start piloting it this week with students who had signed up for one of our courses on Blackboard that offers additional language materials. These come from a range of departments across the university. An email was sent out with a link to a Google Form, they signed up for a particular session (we offered two on a day) and then I sent them an email confirming their place with a explanation of how to access the Hangout. This is not a trivial thing since they are not signed up by default to Google+ and I had to attach a visual guide to help them through the steps.

On top of that, I had to stress that they could not access this from a university-networked computer since they won’t allow the installation of the Google audio/video plug-in. So, really quite a lot of conditions and requirements for the students and I’m thinking that this could be a real barrier to access in the future. When you compare this with other conferencing software where all anyone really needs is a link to follow, this seems pretty complicated!

This was perhaps reflected in the numbers who actually accessed the seminars. We had two organised with nine sign-ups in each group, but in the first one only two managed to get in (and one of those was late due to technical issues) and in the second one only five (though there was one more who was trying to get in but was clearly having access issues)  

Oh, and one other problem. I decided to create a Brand Page from my Google+ account called English Language Support and it was this account students were supposed to follow and then from there the Hangout would start. At the last minute I discovered that currently Pages does NOT support the Hangout with Extras feature. This is a special type of Hangout that allows integration of Google Docs and use of a Sketchpad (whiteboard) with the participants. By the time I discovered this it was too late and I had to go with the basic Hangout, which only supports screensharing.

The Seminar

I’ve been pretty negative about Google+ Hangouts so far, but on the plus side when you are actually in the seminars, it works really well. It feels more natural and conversational than some of the other video conferencing software available and the way the large viewing window changes focus depending on who’s speaking makes the whole thing feel more egalitarian.

The screen sharing function is decent, I had to show  a variety of webpages to the students during the seminar and it was easy to do that. You have the option to screenshare your desktop or a particular window/application. The chatbox is useful, particularly so in our second seminar because one of the students could could only hear/see the seminar but didn’t have voice/video access so that was her way of communicating. I could also use the chatbox to get students to write answers to questions or for me to clarify spelling of words or send links to the websites I was showing them.

The quality of video/voice was really good as well. On some other video conferencing software I’d used there was significant lag in video/voice and during the screensharing, but this was very smooth throughout. However, I would suggest NOT using a wireless connection, particularly if you are running the seminar. The first one I did I was on wifi and I was kicked out of the Hangout several times, but in the second one I connected to the wired network and didn’t have so many problems.

I wouldn’t say it was my finest teaching hour as I’m still learning how to conduct effective online seminars but the students seemed reasonably engaged and a couple of them did ask when the next one would be - which is a good sign. 


Future Potential
I can see definite potential for the use of Hangouts as a learning tool. The most obvious use would be to provide tuition/access to office hours for distance learning students at the University of Sheffield, but it could also be used in the same way for students at the university as well. Tutors could offer virtual office hours or conduct seminars through Hangouts.   

The other use of Hangouts is as an informal conferencing tool between colleagues. In fact, me and Fergus Conolly, a technician from the Modern Language Teaching Centre have been using Hangouts quite extensively as a more personal alternative to online chat or phone calls and I could see this kind of usage expanding as a way of bringing together colleagues from different departments or universities for meetings and discussions.

Weekly learning technology digest... 4

Image from pynomoscato under a CC
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license

Friday already!  Which can mean only one thing - another weekly learning technology digest.  This week's haul is mostly focused on learning and teaching-related news, mainly because that's been what I was looking at as I prepared a presentation on the drivers for technology enhanced learning (which I'll write up and share here soon).  Naturally these links were begging to catch my eye!

So, here goes with this week's articles:

• A model of learning objects based on Bloom's revised taxonomy - this one comes from the Iowa State University and it's a super little resource if you're designing learning outcomes, especially if you want to get a feel for how the taxonomy hangs together.
• Best practices in using Twitter in the classroom - an infographic - which I'm very partial to! - from Dr Rey Junco at Lock Haven University.  What's particularly nice about this is not just that it gives you some ideas about using Twitter, but also that he's chosen to present his research findings in this way - it makes a change from the traditional academic poster and is pretty effective.
• Make your own eBooks - Following on from Dr Chris Stokes' blog post last week on 'Journeys in an Augmented Reality', his mention of iBooks meant that when I saw this article it immediately stood out.  It's really not as complicated as you might think and as a format for getting your content 'mobile', this is an excellent starting point.
• Disruptive technologies in higher education: adapt or get left behind - is a provocative but thought provoking article which appeared in The Guardian's Higher Education Network (if you're not a member, it's worth joining for free as the articles they publish are highly relevant to anyone working in an HEI).  Essentially the thrust of the argument is 'US universities are going massively open with their courses... the UK isn't.  What are we going to do about it?' - and along those lines came another article, this time from Wired on 'The Stamford Education Experiment' which is worth reading in parallel
• The Ultimate eLearning Design and Development Checklist from Nicole Legaut at Langevin Learning Services, is extensive and although might be a little daunting could also help in evaluating skills ahead of developing online materials.  'Do we actually have the skills to do the things on this list and do we understand why each element is there?' as starting questions for a workshop with a programme team could be a great way of grounding the process of online course design in reality.

I think that any successful use of technology in the curriculum has at its heart an understanding of the processes of learning and the art of teaching.  The above are all little nuggets which tease you towards doing things just a bit differently and get you to think about where technology might fit.  Hope you find them useful.  

As ever, if you've seen anything else interesting this week, pop it in the comments below!  I'd love to see what caught your attention too.

Sarah

Video Conferencing for Learning & Teaching

After what was our busiest week for video conferencing at the University, (at least in the time that I’ve worked here), it seems quite timely to write a little but more about the technology and how it's used. The overwhelming usage of the equipment is for meetings and administration purposes. However, there are some pockets of teaching being carried out via video.

Last week, Professor Mike Cork from the Medical School gave a lecture using our IP video conferencing system in Firth Court to students at Cardiff University. This is a lecture that Mike delivers annually, and I imagine benefits both parties. For Mike there is obvious time and travel saving; whereas the students get the benefit of a lecture from an eminent professor in their subject. The lecture subject was around dermatology, so showing clinical images is clearly very important to help explain the subject, so a PowerPoint presentation was also delivered via the video link. Mike has also given similar lectures via video to institutions in the US, Canada and Sweden.

Students from Sheffield join a lecture with UCL & Nottingham 

I think one massive barrier around using video conferencing equipment is a fear of the technology, and the worry that the link will not work. And whilst this is certainly a very real problem, we are fortunate enough to be able to use the JANET JVCS Booking Service to set up and monitor conferences. The JVCS service allows us to easily link up with over 700 registered UK institutions, which includes the vast majority of FEI and HEI’s.

From a user’s point of view, all they need to do is get into the video conferencing suite and turn the lights on; when connecting with a venue registered with JVCS, the video conferencing units, or ‘codecs’ as they are known, will automatically dial each other and connect. The booking service can’t do anything about hair or makeup unfortunately!

From an administrator’s point of view, conferences can be booked online in about 5 minutes. Telephone support is available for administrators (and users) during the conference. Paul Bonnet, the Videoconferencing Technical Manager at JANET recently gave a presentation about the JVCS booking service at a JISC Green ICT event. The presentation has been made available on Slideshare.  Some key points from his presentation was that use of the JVCS Booking service was steadily rising 20% per annum, and there were 2780 separate sessions in February, so it’s clearly gaining traction in other institutions, as well as ours.

Desktop Videoconferencing 

Desktop videoconferencing is how many people think of ‘video conferencing’, especially with software like Skype. Skype is a fantastic tool, which is perfect for point-to-point, person-to-person communication. Skype can also do group calling when a premium membership is purchased. However, Skype, and all other desktop video conferencing systems are limited when there are multiple participants in the same physical location, such as with a teaching environment. This is because it is very hard to pick up the audio of multiple participants without multiple microphones, cables and a mixer feeding back the signal into computer. All of this requires a certain amount of technical knowledge, equipment and time. Of course, there are elegant plug and play solutions available, such as this all in one space age solution from Polycom. As you may expect, these are in a different price league to a USB webcam and headset. Having to have this sort of equipment for a videoconference involving a group of participants in one location is a clear barrier.

The JVCS booking service allows us to join a PC user to a ‘traditional’ room based video conferencing system. For example, the University’s Learning & Teaching Committee links with our City College in Thessaloniki using this technology. It is very difficult to connect proprietary systems, such as Skype and Google Talk to a traditional video conferencing system. It is something JVCS are looking into; at the recent JISC Green IT conference at the University of Warwick on 6th March, Paul Bonnet (Videoconferencing Technical Manager at JANET) said "it’s a question I'm asked every day". There are providers out there who ‘bridge’ conferences in the cloud, such as BlueJeansNet, and Paul said a cloud based solution is something JANET is looking at, but it comes at a significant cost. These cloud based providers have no commercial relationship with Skype, so if Skype (owned by Microsoft) was to change it’s business model then these cloud providers, and their customers could be left with a useless service.

One final thought on video conferencing via JVCS. They offer a recording service, which is something I am looking into, but we haven't signed up for it yet. Would anyone be interested in using this facility? JVCS provides a link to download the conference as a movie files when it is finished. This could be uploaded to uPlayer, watched back in class or simply stored as an archive.

Where Next? 

I think this is an exciting time for video conferencing. With the explosion of different devices capable of video conferencing, and mobile working being more widely adopted, I think it’s something we will all have to embrace sooner or later. I still feel there is a need for room based video conferencing systems, due to the problems with desktop problems I have outlined above. CiCS are running a pilot of Blackboard Collaborate over the next few months, so it will be interesting to see how that is received in a learning and teaching environment. In addition, the University Executive Board (UEB) have been trialing Cisco WebEx for their meetings. In fact, we may have an announcement very soon about a wider trial of WebEx………

Two alternative VLEs

The English Language Teaching Centre (ELTC) is a little bit different from the rest of the university in that it is based around classes rather than courses. Although each class is part of a larger course and follows certain materials and requirements, each teacher has tremendous freedom to do what they want with their students. We also have quite a few classes which are NOT part of a larger course and teachers are very much on their own when it comes to deciding on syllabus and content.

What this also means is that the traditional VLE which serves a large number of students on a standardised course is not always relevant for our teachers’ needs. Although some teachers do use the University VLE (Blackboard), others have been experimenting with lighter, more personalized online solutions for their groups.

Edmodo

A few of our teachers have been successfully using Edmodo with their classes. The best way to think of Edmodo is ‘Facebook for classes’. It deliberately mimics the look and feel of Facebook and this makes it very easy for the students to understand the way that it works. As a teacher you can create multiple groups and students are given a unique code to join their one. When you post material or links, you can specify whether it goes to all your groups, just one of your groups or an individual. 

Also, there are options for setting polls, homework and you can add more than one teacher to a group (as you can on a traditional VLE). One thing I like about it is that it has excellent embedding options: most embed codes from popular online services such as You Tube, Audioboo and Voicethread can be added and the video or audio will be playable directly from the page. Another thing I like is that any audio uploaded is automatically available to listen to through a media player. Since we do a lot of recording of our students speaking, this is a great feature.

Edmodo is used mainly in K12 education, so there is an emphasis on teacher control that isn’t appropriate in higher education. For example, there’s very little opportunity for students to contact each other through the website and they can’t send private messages. Also, it doesn’t function that well for document storage. However, if those two things are less important to you as a teacher, it can be a really attractive tool to use with the students.

Google Sites

Google Sites seems to be the ginger-haired stepson of Google services, which is a shame because I think it’s a fantastic tool once you get to grips with it. For anyone not familiar with Sites, you can build your own website using a variety of templates or build your own from scratch through a user-friendly interface. This site can then be shared publicly or with a limited number of people such as a class or group. 

Over the last few years, I’ve created several Google Sites to use  with my classes. When I first started a couple of years back, it didn’t work as well as I hoped mainly due to problems with sharing and accessibility. At that stage the university hadn’t fully switched over to Google Apps so I was using my own email address and students were using their university email address and they were all kinds of issues with them not being able to access the site.  There were also fewer options for embedding things like forums and media players on the page and I had to search around on the Internet for complex solutions.  

However, I came back to use Sites recently and things have really improved.  Google groups is now integrated into the service and can be embedded right on the page as a class discussion forum. There are also many more options for adding widgets to the page, such as Twitter feeds, word of the day and homework announcements. There is also excellent integration of other Google products such as You Tube and Google Docs. 

Integration of Google Groups into a Sites webpage

What I love most about Sites is that I can customize exactly the way I want it so I only have the pages and services I want my students to access and I can also tweak the design so it looks exactly the way I want it to.  Everything from the logo to the navigation panes can be changed.

On the negative side, creating your own site can be laborious and there is quite a learning curve if you don’t want to use one of the ready-made templates. I consider myself reasonably proficient with web interfaces, but even I found myself floundering around the settings sub-menus trying to find a particular feature or editing function. There are also limits on storage which means it may not be the best solution for teachers wanting to use it to upload large audio or video files for students to access.

I think VLEs are great for organising online content for large courses with large numbers of students and fairly fixed material and systems of assessment. But for those working in a different environment, some of these other services might be more appropriate.

Is there an echo in here?

copyright Graham McElearney 2012

We’ve recently made some changes to our lecture recording service, myEcho, which I’ve been involved for some time now.   We recently upgraded to version 4 of Echo360, the underlying hardware and software we use to run the service. It means that we’re now able to take advantage of some of its new features, like its new “player” which has received  bit of an overhaul, and also the new EchoCenter portal, which makes recordings available to students via a graphical calendar-like interface. We’re also looking at using some of the other new features, such as some new collaborative tools, and the ability to stream directly to IOS devices, which is a good enabler for being able to deliver resources in a more flexible way. Integrating the service with MOLE, our VLE, based on Blackboard Learn 9.1 is another area we are interested in developing. This should be quite do-able with the Building Block that’s available to tie the two together - basically we give the myEcho system the unique ID’s generated for each course by the VLE, and whenever lectures are recorded for that course, they should be automatically published to the VLE. Anyway, I'm in danger of digressing into technicalities...

In moving from a pilot to a generally available “service”, there are of course many steps that have  to be sorted out along the way. So some of the above represent some of the basic functionality we need to enable so as to make the system worthwhile and attractive to use.  Many other components of the service are a lot less obviously technical. These entail sorting out sensible business processes and workflows that are palatable to our colleagues, but also sustainable and scalable for ourselves as service providers. Sometimes it might look like the two have divergent interests.....So some of the things we’ve had to address along the way are for example processes for booking recordings, and providing sufficient support and guidance on tricky issues such as copyright. The latter is a whole topic unto itself, and one I may return to in future postings.

One of the biggest issues that’s exercised me over the last year or so, and still does, is that of getting buy in and engagement from our academic colleagues. We’ve tried some fairly standard approaches like running awareness sessions, and also publicising the service through various newsletter articles and websites. We’ve also borrowed another approach that we picked up from Jason Norton  from UCL, during a webinar he did last year as part of a series offered by the Video In Teaching And Learning (VITAL) special interest group. What Jason and his colleagues did was to look through their room booking system to pull out a list of all their lecturers who had been booked in to teach in rooms that were equipped with their lecture recording system. They then emailed this group and offered to record all their lectures, proactively  recruiting  them to become users of their service without them having to do anything extra.  We have adopted the same approach here for the last year. Looking at our usage figures for this semester. where we’ve used the approach again, we have recorded about 250 hours since the end of January, which is the highest amount we’ve done so far, with the majority of these being done by colleagues we’ve brought on board using Jason’s approach. Not only was this a neat little strategy to adopt, but it also illustrates another very important point - we have a fantastic network of fellow practitioners out there, and due to the activities of JISC, the ALT and other special interest groups there are some great resources and events going on out there that we should all be drawing upon.

Next time I’ll have a look at some feedback on the service, from staff and students, and talk a little bit about “Creative Lecture Capture”, and the role of this kind of technology in the broader pedagogical spectrum.

Collaborative tools in online learning

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been doing some research preparing for a staff professional development session we ran last week on collaboration in online learning. 


I have always been an advocate of interactivity in online learning/teaching, but this research has really opened my eyes to the importance of collaboration and interaction and the myriad of ways in which we can incorporate the tools available to create strong, effective and stimulating courses in an online educational environment (i.e.: MOLE 2).


The session looks at group work, utilizing tools such as Discussion Forums (a great way to get students to introduce themselves - as an ice-breaker, as well as to contribute to asynchronous online discussions), Journals and Blogs (both reflective spaces, the former being essentially shared between student and teacher; the latter often open to comments from peers), as well as Chat and Virtual Classrooms.


Virtual Classrooms (often avoided, or under-estimated in online courses) can be extremely helpful in eliminating the feeling of isolation and loneliness often experienced by distance learners.  Regular weekly meet-ups in synchronous (real time) chat sessions can allow learners to engage in real-time discussions, ask questions in a safe (text only) environment, and give them the chance to engage and share ideas and opinions with other learners.  


Another tool that can be used in online courses is the Wiki (derived from the Hawaiian word for "quick").  The most widely-known / popular Wiki would be Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org).  Introduced in 2001, this wiki is an online open content encyclopaedia which can be edited by anyone.

Ward Cunningham CC Attribution license

"The history of wikis dates from 1994, when Ward Cunningham invented the concept and gave it its name (he gave the name "WikiWikiWeb" to both the wiki, which ran on his company's website at c2.com, and the wiki software that powered it). c2.com thus became the first wiki, or a website with pages that can be edited via the browser, with a version history for each page."                         
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_wikis 


Wikis can be used in many ways, but are typically web pages which can be easily edited by groups of users.


Typical uses could be for:

• group note-taking (during f2f classes),
• collaborative project working,
• organisational excercises,
• information gathering

Whereas Discussion Forums are asynchronous areas which facilitate discussions, Wikis are less conversational, and more about contributing factual information.


Here's a great clip (it is a little long, so pop your slippers on and get yourself all nice and settled!) about how Richard Buckland from the University of  NSW, Australia is using Wikis in his large (100+) f2f classrooms. 


Note:  Richard does use an external Wiki tool, rather than one built in (for e.g.) Blackboard (and does go on to mention at the very end (if you get that far!) that Blackboard and Vista's Wikis require too many clicks and permissions) ....This is not currently accurate:  Richard shared this video in 2009, and our current version of MOLE 2 runs with Blackboard 9.1, and this Wiki is quite simple and straight forward to use.  (I cannot comment as to ease of use back in 2009, however). ; )

All of these are powerful, useful educational tools to help our learners get the most out of their online courses, but these tools do not need to be used in isolation, either:   In fact, used in succession, they can become even more powerful as a suite of interactive tools employed to encourage engagement, teamwork and motivation for learners.


And so I would encourage any online instructors to go ahead and explore the interactive tools we have available in MOLE 2...

I'm sure you won't be suprised to learn: ...that students actually like / enjoy helping to co-create a course.  It’s a move away from being lectured to...to collaborating and discussing, and having some input...  


Leiza

Screencasting for free

Image from Nils Geylen, under a CC

Attribution-ShareAlike license

Although I'm a fan of Camtasia Studio for screencasting, it's an fairly expensive piece of software. Luckily there are plenty of great free options out there for people who want to screencast.


Quicktime Player
Mac users on OS X are privileged in the fact they get a great screencasting tool hidden away in Quicktime Player. By selecting 'New Screen Recording', it's quick and easy to create high quality screencasts, using either the Mac's inbuilt mic, or an external device. The resulting files can be imported into iMovie to edit them, meaning you can polish them up easily, and add text, music, transitions etc.

Screenr
Screenr is made by the same people as the commercial Articulate Presenter, and runs from your web browser on Mac or Windows. It's easy to sign in with Twitter, Facebook, Google or Yahoo accounts and presentations can be uploaded straight to YouTube, or downloaded as mp4s. The downside is you are limited to a five minute limit (on the free account), but this often more than enough for simple screencasts or software demonstrations, or several videos can be bolted together using editing software.

Screencast-o-matic
Screencast-matic is another browser-based system that also works well on Mac or Windows. Ignore the silly name, this is a great system that allows you to record up to 15 minutes, and add webcam footage to your video. Videos can be uploaded to YouTube or Screencast-o-matic's own server, and files can be downloaded as mp4, flv, avi or (if you're feeling old-school) animated gif. Users with free accounts are, however, stuck with a 'Screencast-o-matic' watermark on the bottom of their videos.

Screencastle
Screencastle is a one-click, browser-based screen recorder. It's a newer service, and doesn't look quite as impressive as those listed above, but has an advantage of having unlimited record time. There is no login, instead it hosts the videos, and supplies the links to the video in various formats as long URLs. Unfortunately the only download option is flv, and although it supposedly works on Mac, I've had trouble getting it to work.

Jing
Jing is a downloadable piece of software from the makers of Camtasia. It sits on your desktop in the form of a "sun" that hovers at the top of the screen, and it's easy to click on it and create both short screencasts, and annotated screen grabs, which can be shared via Techsmith's own Screencast.com. You're limited to five minute videos, and annoyingly in the free version the videos save as swf files (which are useless for editing purposes), but it's still a nice tool for quickly grabbing and sharing onscreen actions.

Camtasia Studio
Hang on, didn't I just say Camtasia was expensive? Well it is, but you can download a fully-functional 30 day free trial that will allow you to evaluate the product, and may be enough time to do that project you need to do... We also have Camtasia in the Information Commons Creative Media Room, so if anyone wants to come and have a go then please get in touch.

So they're the best ways I've found to Screencast for free. Anyone else got any more?

Brainstorming Tools

At the English Language Teaching Centre (ELTC) our students need to learn how to write both basic and more sophisticated essays. One thing we stress is the importance of planning their essays - this includes gathering ideas through brainstorming and then organising them based on theme and relevance.

With my class of pre-intermediate students, we’ve been experimenting with a variety of online/offline brainstorming and mind-mapping tools to help them create visually stimulating representations of their ideas.

Linoit

Linoit a neat little tool for initial brainstorming sessions round a topic, it looks like a corkboard and you can stick post-it notes on it with ideas/suggestions. 

There’s also the option to embed You Tube video, pictures or documents. You can adjust the permissions so that anyone can post to it without the need for registering and multiple students can work on the same page at the same time from different computers. I often use this to gather pros/cons about a particular topic (e.g. animal cruelty, studying abroad) that they are going to write about. 

In the past I used a similar tool called Wallwisher, but this turned out to be a little unreliable, so I now prefer Linoit.

Inspiration

It’s a shame that this software programme is hidden away in the Load Applications folder on the University managed desktop as it’s a really useful piece of software. Students can create very detailed and elaborate diagrams/mind-maps using the interface and it’s easy to move the branches around and create sub-branches. 

The one feature I really like about this is that you can export your diagram into a variety of formats (Word, JPEG, HTML) and create a written outline at the same time. The only thing is that the file sizes are pretty large (3-4MBs)

A less complicated (and expensive) solution for mind-mapping is the online service Mindomo. This is a free service for the basic package and you can make a limited number of mind maps and export them into a variety of formats. As a free, online service, it doesn’t offer the variety and flexibility of Inspiration, but if you want to just create a quick and free mind map, it’s not a bad service. 

There are a few other online mind-mapping tools available such as Popplet, bubbl.us, Lucid Chart but I haven’t had much opportunity to try them out with my students. If anyone has any experience using them, it would be great to hear how effective you found them.

Weekly learning technology digest... 3

Image from just.Luc, under a CC
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license

This week seems to have absolutely flown by and as ever there have been lots of bits and pieces of learning technology loveliness to have a look at.  I always like things which trigger ideas and help me make connections... and lists of ideas are a nice place to start.  So, here are some of those lists which caught my eye in the past week:

• 21 Things that will become obsolete in education by 2020 - so, while this is completely debatable, it's a timely reminder that the children who will be coming to university in the next decade are going to have a completely different set of 'normal' expectations about education than our own experiences.  Planning for the future is more about building in flexibility and creative / critical thinking than setting the foundations of experiencing specific technologies.
• 18 Amazing examples of Google+ Hangouts in Education - I'll admit it, I've been slow on the uptake with Google+.  I think the tangle between a personal G+ account and a work-based Google Apps account threw me in trying to decide which network to build / how to handle them.  But, I think I'm figuring that bit out and starting to see some interesting things that people are doing with Google+.  And Google+ Hangouts are one of those areas on the 'interesting' list - have a look at these ideas and see what you think!
• TED-Ed - this isn't strictly a list of succinct ideas, but it's from the brilliant TED Talks and they've just launched TED-Ed which they describe as 'lessons worth sharing'.  I have a feeling that over the next few months this will build to become a really rich resource.  New videos will be added from 16th of April.  One to watch.
• 7 tips for developing an e-learning strategy - whether this is at an institutional, departmental or even an individual level, if you're wanting to put some effort into planning these simple tips are handy for giving that thinking a bit of shape.
• 15 Grammar goofs that make you look silly - I was at a presentation recently and on the very first slide was the classic 'its / it's' transgression.  At the coffee break, sure, people were talking about the content, but they were also going 'did you see...' about the grammar goof.  If you're preparing a course for online delivery, then getting these points right is essential - your words are there to be read and re-read, and your mistakes will be seen and seen again.  A useful checklist of some common grammatical horrors.

And finally, a few other articles which stood out this week - 'University is about job prospects, say parents' in the Times Higher; '45,000 caught cheating at Britain's Universities' in The Independent; and finally, we're 'Slaves to the Smartphone' says The Economist.  Employability, academic practice and the technological blurring lines between work and home.

Some meaty topics to get you thinking, that's for certain!

Sarah

Journeys in an Augmented Reality

An early AR experiment, built using BuildAR. 

A couple of years ago Augmented Reality (AR) was the next ‘big thing’ to hit the internet. It was a stop and gawp technology, show your friends and colleagues, and talk about how you could use it for your next big idea (in my case, in teaching).

If you don’t know what I’m on about Wikipedia has a definition: 

“Augmented reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.”

If you are still not sure, the best thing is to try it for yourself. You’ll need a computer with a webcam, and a printer. This GE example was one of the first sites to get AR noticed.

The example above was typical of the technology a few year’s ago. Since then, in this form it has since become more mainstream, but is now hidden and integrated into popular devices. Smartphones (Apple and Android) have lots of apps that use the technology (see Starwalk as a popular example). If you’ve ever leapt about your living room playing on an Xbox Kinect, or PlayStation EyeToy you’ve also experienced it, but in a much more sophisticated way. So what happened to it for learning and teaching? Well, in my experience it turns out that the path to creating your own AR applications is tricky, expensive and frustrating, but offset with the possibility of creating engaging, interactive  learning objects that leap off the screen.

Let me explain.

Soon after playing the the GE Augmented Reality demo I realised that dentistry might make a good fit for the technology. I teach 1st year students tooth morphology, and at the end of a long lecture I expect them to be able to identify all of the adult teeth in isolation. To do this, the lecture is team taught (with one lecturer being the knowledgeable tutor, the other being a stooge, pretending not to know how to identify the teeth and making notes on an OHP that the students copy). In the lecture, models of the teeth are thrown into the audience, to be thrown back with the tooth identified. The latter half of the lecture is a group task where the students have to arrange models of teeth into the correct orientation and order in order before they are permitted to leave (a good motivator I’ve found). It is the models of the teeth I use that the students covet the most, but due to their cost I cannot provide students with them (and they are made in-house, so they can’t buy them either). If I could provide the models to the students digitally, as 3D AR models, I would be able to let the students recreate the practical elements of my lecture at home.

The ‘vision’ was to be able to provide an Augmented Reality experience of tooth morphology to students that they could use to learn and revise the teeth. 

Making an Augmented Reality

A quick examination of most of the AR apps on the web showed them to be using the same underlying code, by a Japanese coder by the name of Saqoosha. His FLARToolKit was the first ‘kit’ of code to allow the creation of AR applications within Flash and webpages and is offered for free. The installation and setting up of the code is quite complicated, and has inspired many YouTube tutorials on how to do it (none of them short). FLARToolKit does offer ‘in the browser’ Augmented Reality, but it is not fast or smooth to render the image, and of course requires the Flash browser plugin (which means the iPad is out). If Flashscript is not at the tip of your fingers, there are some alternatives that work by having a downloadable program to set up the AR, and then the user downloads a viewer to see the images. This is currently the easiest way to do it, and I recommend the BuildAR free version if you want to try it out. 

Making models

The next big hurdle with making AR is getting the models into the computer that you want to augment reality with. There are a few options, and I started initially with the free amateur methods that turned out to be clumsy, and not that effective (although they did work). These methods ‘stitched’ photographs from set angles together to calculate depth, and a 3D mesh is calculated. For models of molecules, something like ChemDraw or Jmol allow you to build from scratch, and Google Sketchup will let you build simple objects (and has an AR viewer plugin too). In my case, I needed teeth, and these are not easy to draw in 3D. Talking to colleagues, most also had real things (in cupboards usually) they wanted to present virtually (e.g. a larynx, beetles, bones etc) and it would be easiest if these could be scanned into 3D, and then imported into AR.

With the support of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health I obtained a NextEngine 3D Laser Scanner, which scans objects from a few millimetres across, up to large surfaces (e.g. walls,  archeological graves). I soon managed to produce scans of my tooth models, and imported them quite quickly into the BuildAR tool to experiment. At this point I started to  capture the interest of students and colleagues as it is quite a visual and “wow” technology. The project was subsequently demonstrated to CiCS (Christine Sexton’s blog), and was featured in the internal University e-zine Overview. 

Publishing

By mid-2011 I had produced scans of the model teeth, and started to look at the next phase of the project which was to build an AR website that would support the teaching of tooth morphology with as few barriers to entry for students as possible. At this point, there is a trade-off: downloadable ‘apps’ to view the AR content could provide fast, smooth multi-model (multi-teeth in my case) visuals, but only to those that had the right machine (e.g. a Windows PC) and the desire to install the right software. The alternative is to run it in a browser with Flash, which means single models and as mentioned above, jerkier playback. The project stalled at this point, as it was clear that to create AR that would work for most students, and also that was easy to author (for colleagues who would want to duplicate this project) was not yet possible. I was lucky at this point as a company called Aurasma (who are owned by HP) visited the University to demo their smartphone based AR authoring and viewing tool. This offers the ability to create AR very rapidly using pictures as triggers, to place video or images over objects around you. A cover of a text book or a sign can trigger the playing of a video as though it was on that surface, and this is all authorable very simply within a free downloadable app (search for Aurasma on the Apple Appstore or Android Market). With the free developer kit, 3D models can be included into scenes, so it should be possible to easily have my virtual teeth popping out of some handouts. Well, so far I haven’t managed to make it work in a way that is easy for others to replicate. The reason? How the 3D models are stored.

Just like text documents, 3D model files come in different types. There are the simple mesh files that contain only the shape of the object (the text equivalent would be a text .txt file), or they can include formatting data like the textures (colours) as a map to wrap around the object to make it look realistic (text equivalent would be a Word .doc file). The latter come in many types, with the popular ones for AR being OBJ and DAE. The problem is Aurasma will only import DAE files (and only a certain type of these) and the 3D scanner doesn’t save in that format, so you need to convert the files - and 3D object editing software is extremely complicated for the novice user and it is not simply a case of opening the file and selecting ‘Save As’. For the experts there is 3D Max and Maya (thousands of pounds for a licence) if you want to model in 3D, or there are free options such as Blender and Wings 3D. All are complicated, and in order to transform a model for use in AR requires the helping hand of a 3D modelling expert (at least until you can establish a workflow of buttons to press to get the desired result). 

Thoughts on Augmented Reality for education

Having achieved a successful import into Aurasma of videos and a 3D object (a duck!) I have started to explore the implications of the technology for education and teaching. After all this effort I’m coming to the following conclusions:

• While the workflow to obtain a 3D model to display in Augmented Reality is achievable by a relative novice to 3D modelling, the lack of file compatibility between the scanner and the newer AR applications means it is still a technology not yet ready for widespread use.
• The barriers to entry for a student wishing to engage with AR are still high (computer, camera, correct software installed). Smartphones have made it easier.
• For accessing video and 3D models, AR provides an engaging access route, but not a practical one. The technology has been developed aggressively for marketing and advertising, where 3D models or video triggered in AR by a magazine ad is a throwaway novelty. For learning, students will want quick access to the video/model when they want it, and not necessarily by having to hold up their phone or webcam to get it. A link to the video on YouTube would be much more practical.

So where next? I am currently exploring other delivery methods for getting my 3D models virtually to students. The new iBooks Authoring application from Apple for the iPad has the facility to import 3D files, and they can be wrapped in with text and pictures to form an interactive book. I’m currently putting the finishing touches to my first pilot of this technology and hope to report my findings in a future blog post.

If you have been, or are considering, experimenting with AR, please get in touch through the comments.