Swansea University Inclusivity Links

I am always looking for new ideas and new approaches to learning and teaching. It is so valuable to share experiences with other practitioners especially from other institutions or disciplines. It is not only interesting, but vital to your own personal development to hear about creative approaches that have been developed and tested in the field. Pedro Telles, senior lecturer at Swansea University talks about how he used role play successfully in his teaching of law in the SALT conference this July.

Digital Fingerprint

Dr Bex Lewis describes herself as a ‘DigiExplorer’, she experiments in the digital spaces. She has a background as a cultural communications historian and a PhD in wartime propaganda. I have copied her bio from her website and included the website address is below for you to explore at your leisure. Let me know what you think!

In recent years Bex has provided the definitive history of “Keep Calm and Carry On”, quoted in a range of publications, including the New York Times, Independent and Daily Mail. Bex has over 17 years of experience in the digital environment, having built her first website for her PhD in 1997, been involved in usability and accessibility projects, and is an early adopter of social media tools.

She has a very useful website called Digital Fingerprint and has some great resources and information that you can use to get your started, or make you think as you travel on your own digital journey.

http://digital-fingerprint.co.uk/

http://digital-fingerprint.co.uk/2015/02/media-bbc-news-for-sid2015/

http://digital-fingerprint.co.uk/2015/02/media-top-10-internet-safety-tips-for-sid2015-premierradio/

A Space For Learning.: An Interesting Way to Teach.

A fabulous blog post from a year 3 Education Studies student. The module is Learning Environments and in this section of the modules we were looking at the place and value of animation for learning. Caroline has written a very engaging blog which is worth a read. But if you are short on time just check this post out.

A Space For Learning.: An Interesting Way to Teach.: Today I came across a fantastic visual literacy website; The Literacy Shed , that offers animation that can be used within educational plann...

Charlie's world: Website domains

An interesting post from a 1st year student. Although You do need to consider .gov websites, you can see how they change when the Government changes, so you still need to keep an open mind and to realise that it is still just 'current thinking' at best 'opinion' at worst! Thanks Charlie

Charlie's world: Website domains: What is a domain? A domain is an area that is controlled by a particulate person or company, for instance you may have heard of a lion...

Inspriation Shared

Marking my year 1 blogs The Principals of Change by George Couros was a blog that one of them recommended. I really is a great find for anyone interested in education today. Unfortunately, for me, I got side tracked as I read and listened to more and more of the blog! Quite inspiring, it is great to hear someone so passionate about things that you already believe and try to achieve yourself, and it is so well put. I particularly liked the podcast below. The author of the blog has the opportunity to talk about some of the things that are happening in classrooms around the world with the presenters of Calgary radio show.

In his post introduction paragraph George tells us that the conversation he had with the presenters of the radio show reminded him "...that we have these types of conversations with other educators all of the time, where we should have more of these conversations with our entire community.

They are at the Calgary Teacher's Convention, where George Couros is a Keynote speaker. George talks to Roger and Rob about today's classroom- And how students are using tech to get ahead.  There is a similar convention in Manchester at the end of February that looks great Education Innovation Conference and Exhibition. EICE is an accessible and highly focused event for a cross curriculum audience. It is designed for anyone interested in education. Whether you’re a primary school, secondary school, academy, college or university, EICE seems to have something to inspire. It advertises relevant content for teachers, head teachers, governors, lecturers, department heads, ICT managers, leaders, bursars, and it boasts that EICE is “an event that will inspire and engage all.” Now where is my diary?

EJD: Blog vs Wiki

An interesting blog post from a 1st year student as they explore the realm of online tools to support collaboration and communication in education. - thanks Emily

EJD: Blog vs Wiki: A blog shares a variety of different content, from editorial to multimedia. The blog entries are all in the form of posts. Users are able t...

Barriers to Effective Use of Technology in Education

Marking my students blog posts recently and I happened upon some excellent material. One of the titles that I asked them to consider, in a more academic style, was "Barriers to Effective Use of Technology in Education". This brought some engaging and interesting aspects to light as far as my learners were concerned, it also ensured that they engaged with the research that has been conducted in the field. It was amazing to read lots of interesting issues that were considered barriers fifteen and sometimes twenty years ago. In some respects we haven't moved very far, but in many ways education has made superb progress. What I found interesting and still pertinent was the following “There is also a risk that as technology becomes more and more advanced, the human element of teaching may become lost. Ager reminds us “We still need excellent teachers who, by their infectious enthusiasm make us change the way we think about a subject.” (2000, p. 3)” I am please to say that this remains true and gives reason to highlight the fact that technology is only a tool, or resource that you can, if applicable, utilise to support good teaching. I particularly like the next snippet,“Whenever new technology is introduced into society there must be a counterbalancing human response…” (Naisbitt 1984, p.35 quoted in Roblyer & Doering, 2014, p.20). My student comments that, “is especially pertinent for students taking distance-learning options. Students may start to miss the human interaction of being in a classroom, so it is important to create on-line discussion groups to bring the social aspect back into learning. (Armitage, et al., 2007)” Food for though when planning eLearning, blended learning or really any learning. Nothing replaces a good teacher, not even google! To conclude however, the message remains the same, that the general categories of barriers to the adoption of technology include: reliability; lack of time to learn the new technologies; uncertainty that using technology really matters; and lack or support or training, as my own research showed in 2009 (Peace, 2014) when investigating student teachers take up of new technologies in their teaching.

I saw this table below on a student's blog too, made be go off on a tangent to see where that came from too!

Click to read full paper

Ager, R. (2000) The Art of Information and Communication Technology for Teachers. London: David Fulton Publishers

Roblyer, M.D., and Doering A. H., (2014). Integrating Educational Technology into Teaching [New International Edition] Essex: Pearson

Peace, M. (2014) Web 2.0 and Classrooms (in Teaching and Learning with ICT in the Primary School. Younie, S. Leask, M. and Burden, K.) London: Routledge

Groff, J., & Mouza, C. (2008). A framework for addressing challenges to classroom technology use. AACE Journal, 16(1), 21-46. (Image)

Blogging with Beth: 10 best photoshop alternatives

This might be useful for those of you wanting to play with images in a setting without expensive applications. Shared initially by a PCET student I thought I'd pass it on in case you missed it. Blogging with Beth: 10 best photoshop alternatives: Hi guys. (In particular my PCET classmates) I have found a great website which show a list of options for photoshop alternatives.

Learning for All Daphne Koller

As you probably know TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in under 20 minutes. You may also know that TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, global issues, the arts and more.  As I was looking for some new inspiration for my eLearning module I came across this talk by Daphne Koller. I found her talk refreshing and engaging in that she was so passionate about giving education back to the learner, regardless of their status. 

It links in nicely to the work being done by Curriki As I have written before Curriki is an online, free, open education service. It is structured as a nonprofit organisation to provide Open Educational Resources in support of education, helping to minimise the educational divide.  Curricula and instructional materials are available at the Curriki website to teachers, professional educators, students, lifelong learners, and parents. The majority of the resources on the Curriki site fall under a Creative Commons license.  Educational materials are provided by the Curriki community and are peer-reviewed for quality and adherence to standards, so you might want to have a look at their  resources. Maybe one day you can contribute.

Any way, back to Daphne Koller, she is enticing top universities to put their most intriguing courses online for free. She is doing this not just as a service, but as a way to research how people learn. Together with Andrew Ng she cofounded Coursera, which aims to provide universal access to the world’s best education.  With Coursera, Daphne Koller and co-founder Andrew Ng are bringing courses from top colleges online, free, for anyone who wants to take them. Bio: http://www.ted.com/speakers/daphne_ko...

Two excellent examples of eLearning. My intention is to look at some of the ideas presented and to develop a blended approach in order to meet the needs of my learners.  This in turn should hopefully encourage them to consider how they can hone the best aspects into their teaching in the post 16 sector.

Presenting your stuff!

There are a range complete presentation packages, some are 'freer' than others and some are more versatile than others. With little effort they can give you everything you need to produce a professional-looking presentation. But it isn't about the software. No matter what application you use you can still end up with slide by slide visual aid that sends your audience to sleep. Remember that if you are the presenter, your presentation is merely a tool to support what you have to say.  

In this post there are a selection of the alternatives  to the old faithful PowerPoint, Prezi and Keynote.

Try this links for size:

24 Powerpoint Alternatives & Presentation Programs For 2014

You might also try testing some polling system; a great way to get your audience involved, check a few out below:

Engage your Audience

Voting with your class

Nearpod is an interactive teaching and learning tool that allows teachers to construct presentations using the Nearpod website and deliver instruction to students by pushing content out to multiple devices at once. The teacher controls the presentation from a master device, while students follow along on a mobile device



Another 'neat' polling application that I played with today was Poll Everywhere. This one also allows a certain amount of 'free'dom before if offers you a payment package. Also I'm not sure about the charge for texting responses, that will depend on your phone package I guess.

My final play was Micropoll - test it now!

QuestionPro

What makes a good teacher?

Creating Animated GIFs

Animated GIF images have are very popular on the web, as you may have noticed. You can create animated GIFs quite simply with a collection of photographs. Most phone cameras will have built in methods so you don’t even have to think about it.  There are some online applications too that allow you to upload your images and share the completed animation in a variety of ways.

The HTC one, for example, has a couple of ways to create animated gifs. The camera has a Zoe mode where the camera takes multiple shots in quick succession.  It stores them in the gallery like all your other photos. The other useful thing about the Zoe effect is that if you just want a single image, you can edit the animation, select the best shot of the range; so you can always get your best side!

If you’re not too keen on creating them manually (or simply don't know how), you can download one of the many useful free apps to simplify the process and save time.  About Technology have a list of 9 free GIF maker apps you can get started with, on your iPhone and/or Android.

Not Wordled for a while!

Nice to see what the popular repeated words are in your posts sometimes. I think I need to use word clouds more often. It does give a nicer view of a summary sometimes. You can use Wordle or Tagxedo or other word cloud creators to demonstrate to your learners your ideas about a project, to share vocabulary for a written piece or to celebrate common interests in something. You can either type in the text, copy and paste from a source or even put a web address in. With Tagxedo you can even choose the shape you want your words to be presented in.

Animation for Learning

As educators it is important for us to consider new and better approaches to engage our learners. Research suggests Ainsworth (2008) when we are having fun, we tend to learn better. It also suggests that when both visual and spoken communication is used there is a high retention of information. With this in mind, Animation offers exciting possibilities for meeting the needs of 21st century learners. I can see this in two way; using Animations to convey a message or information, and using Animations for learners to demonstrate their understanding of the message or information (Hwang, Tam & Lam, 2012). So, the input and the output if you like?
Animation fulfils a cognitive function. In this role, animations are intended to support learners’ cognitive processes that ultimately result in them understanding the subject matter. Animation can be used to make very exciting and fun animations into which education and training can easily be incorporated. Instructors can also use animation to demonstrate things and concepts visually exactly how they want to since they have control of every aspect of the animation. It can be used to show how things come together and work together.

Young people are fascinated by animation and animated stories and they enjoy the opportunity to create their own. The creative potential of animation is enormous, and integrating animation activities into the school curriculum offers the possibility of tapping this potential to meet a range of educational objectives

The world's largest stop-motion animation set

... shot on a Nokia N8!



Last year I shared the World's smallest stop-motion animation Dot. It was created by Sumo Science at Aardman Animations using a Nokia N8 cellphone equipped with a CellScope microscope attachment. So in contrast here is their new production the largest stop motion set. 'Gulp' is a short film, depicting a fisherman going about his daily catch. Shot on location at Pendine Beach in South Wales, every frame of this stop-motion animation was shot using a Nokia N8, with its 12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics. The film has broken a world record for the 'largest stop-motion animation set', with the largest scene stretching over 11,000 square

Learning Environments

The article from EDUCAUSE Learning Environments: Where Space, Technology, and Culture Converge, suggest that there is a strong and growing desire to try to make sense of the remarkable changes that colleges and universities have undergone in the past generation and to understand technology in the wide framework of educational opportunities.

As long as teachers have taught and students have learned, people have thought about learning spaces. Where do people go to learn? What do those places look like? How does the arrangement of a learning space contribute to—or detract from—the task of education? What do we mean by learning environments? I asked these questions today to my 3rd year undergraduates on the Education Studies degree. Their favourite response was "Anywhere that engages and stimulates the learner." They agreed that the learning environment doesn’t necessarily mean a physical space. The other thing that they all agreed with was the fact that learning happens anywhere, and the environment has many elements.  One group suggested that, "The environment needs to suit the kind of task that needs to be completed. People tend to learn more in an environment where they feel comfortable and confident. Duration and the level of noise can also have an impact on how someone can learn. Everyone's learning styles need to be taken into consideration."

Additional reading: The Future of Learning Interesting blog post

Learning Environments: Where Space, Technology, and Culture 

Incidental learning at its best!