Padagogy

This is a repost of some excellent work of a friend, Allan Carrington, who is also an Apple Distinguished Scholar and has considerable experience with integrating technologies into classrooms and lecture theatres.  His work blends Bloom's taxonomy with the verbs needed to articulate the specific learning outcomes desired for a course of study, the activities you might engage in with students to support the learning outcomes, and ultimately, some of the tools available on the iPad to help support those activities.

It is a very nice piece of work and well worth discussion. Go HERE to download a copy of the current iteration of the Padagogy Wheel or HERE to read more about Allan's work if you haven't already come across his work. Enjoy.

Cloud Computing: An IT or Educational decision?

As many institutions move towards the adoption of cloud based computing, one sees a great deal about the need to manage various types of risk. For example, in a recent article from Educause they identified a number of institutional risks:

• 'Operational risk — service or business failures
• Financial risk — surprise support or integration costs
• Compliance risk — failure leads to liability costs and reputation damage'

 From the perspective of the individual user, staff and students they noted that for the 'User view' one needed to consider:

• 'Reliability, privacy, security — similar to operational risk
• Utility — functionality
• Simplicity — which requires interoperability'.

Now I have quoted directly from the article because it highlights what seems to be a gap in the thinking/ planning process. Educational issues seemed to be lumped under utility which is loosely considered to be issues of collaboration and communication (email to alumni for example). It is only much later in the process that educational issues start to get addressed more seriously. For example, how the various cloud services integrate with the manner in which staff and students use the various technological tools for teaching, learning and engagement. Many of the articles I have been looking at seem to take a very technological approach and while that is important, surely the ultimate users (staff and students) need to be a part of the process very early on. I would be interested in hearing from anyone that has already been down this path and is willing to share their experiences, from an educational perspective.

In closing this post, we have all seen the discussions about what is wrong with the iPad, no USB, the need to sync with another computer, and no really familiar file storage system (e.g., see HERE). However, cloud computing and iPads seem to be a near perfect match, the cloud being where all of the collaborative services are available for sharing, communication, file storage, and interaction. Now all we need are really fast wireless services freely available on campus and in the city - as we have here in Hong Kong.

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0
This blog has been inspired by recent conversations with a number of colleagues. The buzzword is, without doubt, Web 2.0 leading to education 2.0, a rethinking of student engagement, teaching and learning. There are some that would have us believe that the elements of a Web 1.0 environment are somewhat old-fashioned and that somehow transmission of information is less desirable. Web 2.0 and Education 2.0 are where the up-to-date teachers are now!

I prefer to think of a Web 1.0 and 2.0 applications as offering a possible synergy of potential activities and engagement that can be conveniently organised and managed. Web 1.0 applications, particularly in education (for example, learning management systems) offer a number of affordances that are useful in large institutional settings. A little bit of bureaucracy is a necessity when faced with multiple groups of students undertaking a myriad of different subjects and taught by a variety of academic staff. In particular, learning management systems help structure groups of students with common interests and provide mechanisms for scaffolding and organising learning. Personally, I prefer the mix master approach. Does everybody remember the Mix Master? You bought your basic machine for mixing eggs and creating cake mixes. However, you could also buy attachments which could slice onions and carrots, beat dough for bread, juice oranges or lemons, and grind coffee or nuts. Modern learning management systems such as Moodle fit the idea of a mix master, with the LMS providing the 'engine' for managing the student learning experience. For example, creating student profiles, enrollments in courses/subjects, grouping students, grading and grade books, access to content, forums and glossaries, to name a few. Into this environment one can now add Web 2.0 applications such as YouTube videos, Blogs and Wikis, ePortfolios, and RSS feeds, for example. For too long learning management systems have been not unreasonably described as being too teacher centred. The flexibility (for example Moodle) offered by a second-generation LMS allows teachers to enrich the learning environment by adding additional Web 2.0 applications and links to these applications as required by the learning outcomes. One of the combinations I have been particularly impressed with is combining Moodle and Mahara, or what is now described as MaHoodle. The two applications provide a learning environment that can be co-constructed with students. The organisational component is provided by Moodle with single sign-on into Mahara. In Mahara students have the ability to organise their own groups, publish and tag blogs, develop and present a personal eportfolios, embed media created by them or from external sources (e.g., YouTube) and comment on other student work. In effect, the two applications provide an environment which supports what teachers are expected to be able to do well (designing an effective learning environment) and what students are encouraged to do well in enlightened learning environments (articulating their ideas, mentoring others, interacting with and creating a variety of media artifacts which may also be used for presenting and structuring arguments). Moodle supports RSS feeds and Delicious or Diigo bookmarking, to name just two Web 2.0 applications. Mahara supports publication of student work in the form of an ePortfolio, Blogging and tagging. Initial observations in a recently taught Masters subject (module) suggest that students value the organisational framework provided by Moodle while relishing the freedom offered by Mahara to express their ideas and collaborate with peers of their choosing. Feel free to share your comments about these two applications.

Mobile learning: Preliminary data

One aspect of the trip to Thailand was to test the new Moodle Block that facilitated the upload and download of files to PDAs and smart phones. The second was to see what effect access to a server and all of the communication (e.g., upload and download of files) that support would have. Some of the data has been analysed and the results are interesting.

Did students avail themselves of the mobile server, and access it? In total numbers, there were more than 1300 accesses within four days from 67 students. Given that they worked in groups for much of the time, it was expected that some students (ie., the ones with the notebook computers) would access the server for uploading and downloading of files more than others. This was in fact the case, as shown below. The mode of access by students was 7 times. What is interesting is that more students (60) than there were notebooks (about 35) accessed the server at least once. Only seven students didn't access the server using their own login and password. The maximum number of times was 88 while a number of students just accessed once to download specific files to work on as part of their analysis.

Did this impact on learning? During classroom observations each evening the students were engaged in:

• developing presentations on their learning and understanding using Photostory;
• post-processing their data gathered during the day (particularly Excel data);
• organising their extensive photographic resources taken during the day; and
• uploading and sharing data across groups.

More data (questionnaire and interviews) will be gathered from teachers and students to look more closely for evidence of learning. Anecdotally one of the teachers commented that a great deal more data analysis work had been done before returning this year than in previous years.

There is hope yet.