Mark L. Sheppard :: Blog

http://TerryWassall.jiscinvolve.org/2008/12/31/part-time-students-and-part-

Having read Part-time Study in Higher Education by Prof. Christine King it seems that most students, enrolled as full-time or part-time, are actually engaged in part-time study to some degree or other. The distinction between full-time and part-time study, in practice, is breaking down. FT students are increasingly working part-time to fund their studies (66% in term time, 82% in vacations) compared with 83% of PT students who work. A key difference is that FT students fit work around their study and PT students fit study around their work. And of course PT students do not get their fees paid up front.

The report makes it clear that more flexible organisation and curricula would benefit full-time students as well as part-time students. Perhaps HEIs that do not see part-time students as a key area for growth over the next 10 years or so may well find they are in a position to do so anyway on the back of developments aimed to improve provision for their full-time students. As the report says, quoting UniversitiesUK, ‘the high level of flexibility and personalisation in part-time study mode provides a template for the future of the learning experience in higher education’. The report also identifies the need for a flexible HE workforce to support diverse patterns of student needs and expectations, enhance staff scholarship (perhaps to produce open learning content and to develop the skills required to facilitate the use of  OLC and blended learning techniques?), and practice based learning. This may provide a variety of different employment possibilities for PGs and even ‘retired’ staff. I hope so!

It also looks like the part-time route to a degree is becoming increasingly attractive to school leavers. 10% of PT students are under 21 and this proportion is growing. If PT students had the same funding model as FT this would expand dramatically I suspect, in which case HEIs that have mainly full-time students may well get far more applications to study part-time and may find they are in a good position to accommodate these due to initiatives already in place to offer flexible, blended and personalised learning.

The development of a flexible curriculum could also benefit strategies designed to respond to other significant opportunities and threats for UK HE, for instance internationalisation, recruiting overseas students and constructing partnerships with other universities. It seems that flexibility in organisation, curriculum and teaching will be the answer to all our problems!

SchoolCentral  = COMPLETELY FREE

My name is Michael Chua from Zebra Mobile, and I would like to introduce you to a new, COMPLETELY FREE service called SchoolCentral.

SchoolCentral is a custom-built web based communication platform, built upon the latest Internet and mobile technologies.  This platform is not a call system, but serves as a mobile notification system, organizational tool, and communication hub between administration and the community.  SchoolCentral will enable administration to improve the districts communication with parents and students, and will measurably impact parental involvement, staff communications, school organization, and community out-reach.  Functioning as a supplement, this platform supports existing emergency procedures, providing different options of how important school information is sent and received.


10 Ways SchoolCentral Will Benefit Your School District:


1. Real Time Communication -SchoolCentral has the ability to send up to 9,000 messages per minute, via email, text message, web, mobile web or RSS.  Capable of notifying the whole community, faster than any call-system, some districts under 60 seconds.

2. Platform Independence -School administrators and community are enabled to decide how they want to receive and respond to important information. School notifications are sent via Internet or SMS.  If a district alert is sent from a cell phone, SchoolCentral deciphers what phone number it is sent from, and where it should be delivered.  More frequent messages of less importance can also be sent to notify families when an event such as an awards program is cancelled, or if their child on the soccer team is returning late from an away game.  Each member of the community now has the option to select what methods of communication are best preferred.

3. Communication Hub –SchoolCentral is a protected, moderated communication platform that provides each school, and groups within, its own online community.  Parents and teachers can connect easily and engage in what is most important to us, our students.

4. Tool For the Classroom – Everyone benefits when using SchoolCentral in the classroom.  Teachers are enabled to compliment a student for a job well done, or connect to a parent with underlying concerns.  Our filing system allows teachers to store documents of unlimited size, giving students the option to access school material outside the classroom, or to reprint an assignment accidentally forgotten at school.

5. Tool For Athletics –Coaches can instantly notify students and parents, if practice is cancelled, when riding on the bus, or standing on the field.   They also can address the community with the winning scores, stats or rosters.  Each sports team now has a web presence, and their own calendaring, filing and alert systems.  This enables them to share important notifications, drum up support, organize team practice and game schedules, or post pictures of the winning touchdown.  The potential is endless.  SchoolCentral’s group’s for athletics is a powerful tool, easily engaging parents and students throughout the community.

6. Easy to Use Calendaring –The RSS Feed calendaring system checks for new events or changes, and automatically updates every 60 seconds.  It also can be synced with Ical, Gcal, and Outlook.  Now all school related events are synced with your personal, work, and mobile calendars.  Besides Alerts, the calendar is the second most utilized feature in the SchoolCentral platform.  It allows parents with multiple children, to organize their schedule more efficiently with color-coding.  It also has a reminder and invite feature, easily allowing reminder and event invitations sent to friends via Email, SMS, RSS, and Desktop Widget.

7. Upload Your School News Letters -Our News Section is a big hit with Superintendents.  They now have the option to blog messages addressing the community without third party help.  School newsletters of any size can be uploaded, and the community has the option to be notified by text, Email, or neither every time new material is released.  This could save the district money by reducing cost on postage.

8. Easy Effort for Schools –This is an End-User-Based Platform.  There is no database management, staff allocation, or maintenance required.  Each member manages their own account, self-registering through a setup wizard, choosing how they would like to receive their school updates and information.   Zebra Mobile custom-builds every platform for each district.  Schools can choose what they want to use SchoolCentral for and we will make all the arrangements.  We customize the look and feel to your districts needs.  You can pick your school colors, and can even choose your own U.R.L.

9. 24 Hour Support -It is Zebra Mobiles commitment to accelerate, and provide your district with superior service and support, available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

10. COMPLETELY FREE -We are currently offering this service completely FREE to early implementers, as a thank you for helping us get SchoolCentral started.



Please send me a message to arrange a short (10 min.) web demonstration.

 
Please feel free to contact my direct line listed below, or send me an email.

Warmest Regards,


Michael Chua
Zebra Mobile's
SchoolCentral Team
Direct line (513) 729-6973

mike.chua@yourschoolcentral.com

www.yourschoolcentral.com

http://www.terrywassall.co.uk/terry/2008/12/29/knowledge-in-an-inform

I have been wrestling lately to understand the difference between knowledge and information. I am finding this very difficult. What adds to the difficulty is that, of course, both terms are social constructs. There is nothing in the world that is either knowledge or information outside of what individuals or groups so label.This doesn’t make them unreal of course. The prompt for this is a couple of observations on the nature of the so-called Google generation. One in particular is by Sir Ron Cooke.

3.14 But there is reason to believe this ready access to content is not matched by training in the traditional skills of finding and using information and in “learning how to learn” in a technology, information and network-rich world. This is reducing the level of scholarship (e.g. the increase in plagiarism, and lack of critical judgement in assessing the quality of online material). The Google and Facebook generation are at ease with the Internet and the world wide web, but they do not use it well: they search shallowly and are easily content with their “finds”. It is also the case that many staff are not well skilled in using the Internet, are pushed beyond their comfort zones and do not fully exploit the potential of Virtual Learning Environments; and they are often not able to impart new skills to students. (On-line Innovation in Higher Education Professor Sir Ron Cooke).

The gist of the argument I am following up is that the new ‘free market’ in information offered by the web does not translate unproblematically into a free education or to the process of building knowledge. Access to information is one thing. Having the information literacy skills to turn the information into knowledge is quite another. Information needs a context to inform what counts as information and a context for evaluating available information.  That context is provided by knowledge. So I’m getting a picture of the relationship between information and knowledge that sees information as feeding the knowledge construction process. There seems to be a movement from existing knowledge to the setting of a problem or defining an objective that requires information. The information is specified and evaluated on the basis of knowledge and integrated into the knowledge building process accordingly.

Of course the distinction between information and knowledge (where does data fit in?) may be too crude. And as was noted at the beginning, they are both social constructs of one sort or another. There is nothing in ‘nature’ that is prelabeled as one or the other. It’s ‘us’ constructing the concepts and looking for the demarcation criteria. If this is the case then perhaps an analysis of common usage would be a clue. What distinguishes the terms in actual use? As a preliminary contribution to this, it seems to make sense to talk of information processing but the notion of knowledge processing doesn’t sound quite right. Perhaps knowledge is the outcome of information processing. But this would suggest a dialectical relationship between information and knowledge not dissimilar as that between facts and theory. Information is only information to the extent it is pre-specified in some way by a knowledge context. Knowledge is the outcome of information processing but not just information processing.

Another approach would be to think of the current focus in Higher Education on knowledge transfer. We don’t advertise these endeavors as information transfer. What is it that the notion of ‘knowledge transfer’ captures and promises that ‘information transfer’ doesn’t?

My main interest in this is what it implies for how we understand learning and the role of professional educators. If knowledge is simply information we have it in abundance and its out there for any one that wants it. But I wouldn’t want surgery conducted on the basis of Googled information or social policy made on the basis of Googled undergraduate essays. Clearly information is a precondition for knowledge but knowledge is required to make judgments and build on experience, our own and others. Knowledge provides the context for giving significance to information and for connecting it to decision making processes and action. The model that seems to be emerging here is that of students + information + teachers = knowledge creation. This sounds like a community of learners and learning objects. The specific role for teachers seems to be a combination of a model of professional learning (i.e. an expert learner), a learning mentor and a knowledge broker. This doesn’t seem to be far away from the model of apprentices and master practitioner. A key characteristic of an apprenticeship is membership of a community of practice where formal, informal and vicarious forms of learning are available. What would the process of module design, learning and teaching and assessment look like on this model?

http://TerryWassall.jiscinvolve.org/2008/12/22/education-20-designing-the-w

The Teaching and Learning Research Programme TLRP has just published its commentary on education and Web 2.0 technologies Education 2.0? Designing the web for teaching and learning.

Despite valuable early contributions to the web 2.0, much of the discussion within the education community has been speculative. This Commentary sets out to challenge the confident portrayal of web 2.0 by many educationalists in terms of an imminent transformation of learning and teaching. Careful thought has therefore been given to how technologists, educators and learners can best shape the fast-changing internet in the near future. It aims to explore how education can change the web, as well as how the web can change education. 

“Web 2.0 is a reality. Education 2.0 is an aspiration. I hope this Commentary will play its part in transforming the web into a technology that can shape a radically new vision of teaching and learning in the 21st century” Richard Noss, Director, TLRP-TEL. London Knowledge Lab. University of London.

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but the content page looks interesting!

What are web 2.0 technologies and why do they matter?
Educational hopes and fears for web 2.0
Learning and virtual worlds
Learning and social networking
Web 2.0 - future issues and technologies
Education 2.0?

http://TerryWassall.jiscinvolve.org/2008/12/21/responding-to-diverse-groups

Reading the Universities UK paper on demographic changes helped clarify for me the choices available to Russell Group universities to the threats and challenges it identifies. One of the possible consequences of the increasing diversity of student groups and needs - adult work-based, returning learners, part-time, individual life long learners, employer funded and so on - is that the expanding HE sector and its public could become even more confused than it is already about what HE is and what it is for. The diversity of student groups and their needs and expectations will provide numerous opportunities for existing HEIs and for other bodies and institutions, existing or newly created in response to demand. Existing HEIs will need to be clear what is distinctive about their provision and what student sectors they are best fitted to serve. As the report says, higher education delivered by a university (emphasis in the report) “offers a unique opportunity to learn in an environment informed by current research”. What many HEIs offer students is the opportunity to join and be partners in a research and scholarship led community of learners.  The excellence of their research and the way this informs the curriculum and the learning/teaching processes, resources and facilities is the key differentiator with respect to other and emerging providers of, in its increasingly indeterminate conception, higher education. Direct engagement with the secondary and FE sectors and with employers will be beneficial to all concerned but HEIs should maintain a clear distinction and concentrate on their core missions of research and knowledge creation coupled to a commitment to preparing graduates for a career and life and not, in the words of the report, “a single job”.  It may be that the best way forward for many HEIs is to concentrate without compromise on their current student constituencies, UG and PG, and the excellence of their provision for them but at the same time develop the curriculum, learning materials, resources and learning and teaching processes and support so that they can be packaged and made available more flexibly to part-time and non-traditional students via mixed delivery modes. This could be achieved over a period of years in a way that allows for the required development of systems and staff. This would fall a long way short of providing an extensive distance learning offering or becoming specialists in bespoke programmes, something other institutions and bodies may choose to become. However it would allow selective engagement with the growth areas in the student ‘market’ most aligned to fundamental core missions by developing and exploiting our traditional strengths in research, knowledge creation and the development of the graduate skills suited to work, well-being and citizenship for life in a fast changing knowledge based society.

I tried to change my password, to one that contained characters that aren't letters/numbers - as if often suggested.

I thought it had changed & realised it wasn't working. I then reset it & tried again. 

This time I saw the feedback & it does say "password can't be changed" & it says why. 

However, this was all the in body of a large block of text - and very easy to miss. 

If this still applies for version 1.x - is it possible to ensure that it's highlighted & put in red at the top - or something  - so that it's clear?

I also noticed that my Twitter password is showing up nice & clear when it reports what's been reset ... 

Hi

I have recently updated my external blog to WordPress 2.7 - and have noticed that the updates to here stopped at more or less the same time. (The last post to appear was the peunultimate one posted from the old versoin - but I wrote a post & then updated fairly shortly afterwards, so quite likely didn't give Eduspaces time to get the RSS feed)

In resources, my blog's still listed. If I click on the RSS icon, I get to see the new content as well as the old; however, if I click on the "view content" then I only see the old content (i.e. what's showing in my blog). Has anyone else got a similar issue? 

Hi, I am quite impressed with the format of the front page on this ELGG powered system, and am trying to achieve the same. Would the developer(s) of this site be willing to share their knowledge of how they managed to achieve this? Any help or tips would be extremely appreciated. I'm running the latest ELGG. Many thanks. Dean

This is unrelated to Eduspaces (we're not involved), but we thought some of you might find this event interesting:

The Scottish Book Trust is hosting Creative Sparks, "a conference for learning professionals interested in creative approaches to literature in education," in Edinburgh on February 27, 2009. (It's open to educators outside of Scotland as well.) From their site:

"Join Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen (find out more about the Children's Laureate post), Nínive Calegari from 826 National and some of Scotland’s best writers and literature development experts to explore and discuss the impact of creative approaches to literature and language in education."

You can "find out how engaging with a new approach to computer games can stimulate your pupils’ creativity and get them writing – almost without them noticing." Standard Life is also sponsoring a Best Practice award:

"If you have developed a project in your school or library that you think is innovative and really effective, we would love to hear from you. The 5 best projects will have the opportunity to showcase their work for 6 minutes each at the conference. The winner will be chosen by the delegates and will be announced at the celebratory reception at the end of the day."

For more information, check out the Creative Sparks website.

Hi, I am developing an ELGG system (version 1.1), and cannot get the user registration to work.  The only method I have that works is by an administrator manually adding a new user via the admin panel. However this is not practical if there are going to be many users of the system. What is happening is that, even though the new user's details are recorded in the database when the new user registers, their accounts are not getting activated because no email is being sent to them to activate their account. I notice that the registration system is working soundly on this Eduspaces system....I am hoping that the developer(s) can help me out here.

Many thanks.

Dean