What a great idea. And what fantastic out-turns. A teacher blows £30,000 on a new car, but why? An executive headteacher finds himself locked in a stockroom. An RE teacher prepares to tell her headteacher about a lesson plan. A teacher on the brink of retirement locks herself in the toilet. Wild stuff!
Teachers TV has just published the best of the monologues they received for the Nation Union of Teachers (UK) education personnel monologue competition. It’s all based on ‘fictional stories from the perspective of someone working in a school’ and they received 725 entries.
The home page is here and links out to the wining entries and sample and support materials materials. A very useful resource for anyone te aching English / Media at many points in the system - both formal and informally.
Can’t help wondering if there isn’t something here that we could usefully play with on the next PG intake…
June 17th, 2007
Nick Short from RVC, London is just rounding out a really good presentation on using podcasts and ‘potcasts’ within the Vet College.
iTunes has given them a whole new way of approaching a raft of questions that have come up in relation to student 2.0:
How does their learning supported by podcasting differ from their learning through structured campus or e-learning processes?What kinds of pedagogical applications can be developed for Podcasting?
Can students switch from MP3 players for entertaining to learning?
What are the psychological, social and institutional barriers to and advantages of more informal learning using podcasting?
Much of what he covered comes from the IMPALA project - of which RVC is a partner and which Gilly Salmon currently heads up. I really liked what he said about ‘potcasts’ in particular. What a lovely idea; taking the anatomy ‘pots’ (samples produced and pickled by students down the years) and simply videoing them, adding a voiceover description and a bit of colourising. These are then unloaded to their VLE and can be downloaded as required through iTunes or to a laptop / digital assistant. Inspired.
What was also impressive was the pace at which the project has taken - and the work around of using some of your students as Appointed iPodders with up-load rights to your VLE. That I really liked.
And as for Learning Objects LX that’s another post at some point down the line, I think. Just as soon as I get my hands on a copy!
Setting up; it was a techie event so naturally the ceiling mounted projector didn’t work!
June 12th, 2007
Professor James Wisdom is an engaging and informed non-Powerpointed speaker. With or without the distractions provided by a microphone failure!
His observations on CPD for established staff, mentoring and promotion in particular were both provocative and thoughtful. His sense of funding attaching to retention and so on surrounding the day-job was a bit OverThere but he raised problems that we need to address over here also; time and reason to research and the context in which we work and what’s needed to support staff in the context in which they are in. He says UK institutions need to look at this: we do too .
The ‘change effect’ was what he turned to next. And the problematics of sharing good practice. His comments on the necessary flexibility of the context and the holding out of reservations concerning investment in change with an overly institution / strategic focus was particularly striking. Even if an e-learning model that is sufficiently flexible may offer a way through or around this.
Wisdom challenges the blithe assumption that CPD can and should be attached to institutional initiatives. His example of the range of strategies linking to strategic interest in an unnamed University Teaching and Learning Policy was a case in point. He offers the SEDA framework as a much more potentially productive route to better CPD. This he sees as being simply about making sense.
Moving on then to the UK Higher Education Academy’s Professional Standards Framework for Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education, Wisdom sees the principal challenge of getting CPD right as being about how to animate Standard Descriptor 3 of this code. Not the sort of stuff that gets people out of bed in the morning as he acknowledges but the reality of ‘where we are’.The intriguing closing conundrum he left us with concerns the secret life of those fascinated and devoted in secret - out of earshot of the HoD! - to the area of development and the quest for pedagogical improvement. People like Sally Fincher might provide reference points for us here in Ireland. As well as Gosling and O’Connor (working out of University of Gloustershire) and in particular Rhona Sharpe’s work on professional learning and development. This he précised (neatly) as cyclical, iterative and likely to involve planning for action; insightful in relation to individuals need to construct their own meaning; professional knowledge being constructed with a CoP and unlikely to be an individual activity; and the need to make the tacit explicit in how we approach efficient learning.
Interesting and insightful. The SEDA connection was strongly evident. And useful to note.
June 12th, 2007
Chris Pegler who is currently with the IoET at the UK Open University and a National Teaching Fellow – the only one who is in her own words ‘a totally on-line’ fellow. Her talk was characterised by a refreshing realistic and open take on eLearning.
But the real game is, in her view, about Content 2.0 which allow us to offer something very different. This is about content that can be changed and edited on line – about approaching learning and teaching in a more community way where learning participants can share content and practices and where course leaders can offer blends (customised) to suit the learners and their orientations. Essentially content 2.0 is about ‘new forms of connected documents’. Chris made a number of particularly telling points about the significance of this. Reuse promotes better practice and is far more sustainable / efficient. It recognises that digital resources are not static. Once we have connectedness we almost inevitably have reuse.
CURVE project and one of her own teaching modules (H805 Learning in the Connected Economy) to show in a very tangible way both the process and the exciting potential of LOs that are Los are ‘movable aroundable’.
All in all a cracking start to the day….
June 12th, 2007
It’s that time of year again. And as usual I’m left feeling a bit like an end of term politician driving through some daft reform or another before the Dáil goes into recess.
We have our Exam Board tomorrow morning. It’s a bit more restricted in its reach and remit than last year’s (pre-semesterised) board and for the first time in almost 10 years ‘my’ HDipEd Database is not needed to help sort final grades and rank ordering in the yeargroup. We’re all Banner now :-)
The course evaluations were very positive this year; however, a number asking for extra practical workshops and projects to be built into the programme. That’s not going to happen on current budget… So, Yes; there will be a Grad Dip Ed ICT strand next year - and an MEd one possibly but No there is little possibility of investing in more authentic resources and provision.
Oh and the long-awaited UCD Fellowships won’t include a learning technology / elearning strand. Not strategic enough it seems… Nice one. The stuff of legend perhaps in a year or two but right now a bit too D4 to be credited.
So. That and the news that DIT are once again forging ahead with their eLearning Summer School while we at UCD sit staring into our square lake can only mean that it’s time to be elsewhere.
For a few weeks or so at any rate.
While the dust settles on another Belfield moment and the wounds are healing…
Class of 2007: wear sunscreen….
June 6th, 2007
NCSL, Nottingham. 120 teachers. Three days in a digital sandpit — can’t be bad!!
More seriously, the British Council which is the UK NSS for eTwinning has laid on an interesting and varied Natinal Conference programme again this year. Details HERE.
During my opening talk to the conference, I threw in the usual off-the-cuff site references which come back to haunt etc as well as a few that I have found useful in terms of the project. As promised these are listed here:
www.slua.com - lovely, simple but effective use of a blog to share practice between a school in Ireland and one in Malta. A prizewinner at European level too…
Http://scratch.mit.edu - a free-download from the MIT crowd. Fun, fun, fun. Well, fun anyway. 
Easy to download and run, intutiive and kids love it.
http://plasq.com/comiclife - home of comiclife. 40 of the best dollars worth of value out there, and now available in PC as well as Mac versions. Try the free download first. 30 days.
http://www.bubbleshare.com - a simple to use fileshare site particularly good for short slideshows of classwork and/or activity.
http://analogik.com/multimedia_samorost.asp.com - Samorost. A slightly mad, surreal flash game that I first came across thanks to a heads-up from Ewan McIntosh. Addictive and challenging.
The Sultan’s Elephant flickr stream is here and the London website here. Also lovely footage from various Royal de Luxe performances of The Elephant all over Europe here.
The conference itself is going well. From where I’m sitting typing this I can see Oscar’s animation workshop. Teachers and claymation. Magic!
[And for those who might want a look, there's a summary of my own input here. ]
June 2nd, 2007
… it didn’t all go downhill on Day Two of EdTech 2007. In fact it got even better.
Jon Dron opened the morning sessions with an amusing and thought provoking reflection on ‘Designing the Undesignable’. It involved some shameless plugging of his book but was not any the worse for that. And the Borg voice on his presentation was a nice touch. It felt uncomfortably close to the truth about dealing with a VLE discussion board!
Avril Behan and Frances Boylan had some interesting things ot say about the institutional level challenges of bringing a more blended course into play for a mixed agenda group of students. What they said about their students reactions to this particular WEBCT initiative was a bit of a reality check but excellent in its way.
Brian Mulligan’s session was also top class. He ‘walked the walk’ by putting what he was doing out to the web in real time using Macromedia Breeze. And what he said about his and Bob Kennedy’s work with a mix of onsite and offsite client bases - and the dynamics of teaching and learning in this mode made a considerable amount of sense. The problem as always about the kind of thing that he and his colleagues are doing is that it is not captured in a way that makes for easy sharing; if you aren’t in Sligo IT and up to your neck in solving the day-to-day issues as they present or in DIT yesterday to hear Brian talking them through (or on the webfeed) you missed it. Not sure what the answer is to this or even if there is one but a practitioner series of blognotes / webcasts may be one possibility. If there was only time!
Rhona Sharpe’s closing note was a very good one and a super end to the conference. She referenced extensively the work (completed and ongoing) that she and others are doing for JISC in the UK. And also one of my own current favourites - the DEMOS Their Space work. All of which could have been a bit of a dampener by comparison to what’s been funded in research and development terms over here. But the images and ideas put forward on the unintentionally / intentionally subversive underworld of technology that younger HE students in particular are increasingly comfortable with and expectant about, were really useful and brought about one of the most interesting discussions of the conference. Again there was a bit of ’subtle’ book-plugging. Though it was a light touch and pointed towards a useful text.
It was also interesting to put faces on people I’d only ‘met’ on Moodle and to catch up with people like Kevin and Helen (Helen should only be a coffee away but because of the increasing pace of newcorporate life at Belfield you have to go to a conference to meet someone with an office 5 minutes from your own!)
So. All in all two days well spent.
May 26th, 2007
When you hear about a conference that’s been building a following over the past couple of years it’s all too often the case that going along leads to disappointment. But not in this case.
The range of sessions has been very good - even if four strands meant that some presenters got a smaller group at their session than they probably deserved.
Highlights (for me at least) have been Niall Watts’ session on blogging and learning styles, Damien Darcy’s one on context based learning and most especially Shane Sutherland’s talk on PebblePad as an ePortfolio / webfolio toolset.
David Nicol gave a keynote on assessment and technology. Something I reckon we’ll be hearing more about as time goes on. His talk on re-engineering assessment to leverage technology more effectively - and on the pilot work of his own institution in this area - was very worthwhile indeed.
All rounded out nicely by a contribution from Eabhnat Ni Fhloinn a DIT staffer who was surprisingly good in the late afternoon slot. Almost made me regret giving up on maths… 
So all in all, not a bad Day One. Of course it could all go downhill from here.
May 24th, 2007
… something can be a bittersweet moment.
The eTwinning PAG has taken up a fair amount of time over the past few years. Last week we finalised our Report to the EU on the project and our recommendations for the next generation of the action - which will take place in a very different administrative context.
Then the obligatory photo. Anne wasn’t there because she was working somewhere else in Brussels. But anyway, here are the rest of us in all our motley glory on Floor 14 of one of the EU carbuncles:
Pieter, Michelle, Marta, Bettina and some fat old guy.
May 22nd, 2007
… this afternoon by two of the Postgrad Dip ICT group what would be my ‘ 3 most recommended reads’ from all the blog posts I’ve come across over the last year or two. Examples that they could use as reference points to help lift their game … basically to get a better understanding of what blogs can do.
And all I wanted was a quiet afternoon marking assignments!!!
So for what it’s worth and bearing in mind that choice is a subjective thing, here they are:
Ewan McIntosh’s blogging from the CESI conference in Colaiste de hIde in February.
Dervala - not strictly this year but still an example of the power of a literary blog.
And of course The Bridge. As Hdip as they come and as College as the Worry Trees.
May 2nd, 2007
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