http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/05/alt-c-2007-da

I’m now in Nottingham at ALT-C - which is a much larger conference than I’ve got used to! There are people everywhere - and a choice of 9 sessions to attend each time.

The first Keynote was Michele Selinger (link to Elluminate recording), who spoke about a range of different “chasms” - and how we might get over them. I was particularly interested in the north/south issues. She also mentioned podcasts quite a few times, though not really how she saw them being used. From what I’ve seen, and other posters that are here, etc., I’m not sure that many students would want podcasts as an alternative to a lecture; though as a revision aid/ catch up tool for missed lectures, I can see that they’re useful.

The majority / Western divide came up again in a later session, when Alanna Fitzgerald discussed the “Overcoming Poverty project”; which aims to have a range of case studies looking at overcoming poverty, through initiatives such as the Grameen Bank.

Sue Rivers looked at the ideas of “Online Silence”. It’s an interesting concept, as it seems that as academic staff, we can cope much better with students who listen to class discussions, only commenting occasionally, but in the online environment, students who are reading but not writing are seen as “lurkers”. A friend, in a different situation, has used the description “listeners”, which I prefer, as lurking does have rather negative connotations. She said that few of the students partipated (Sue herself was both student and researcher), though the students were working in the eLearning field. The question that I would have asked, had there been the time, was if any of those non-partipating students were intending to use discussions with their students…

One session that I found particularly interesting was Michael Cameron’s. He discussed a History Unit, where the lecturer, in the past, had had good student participation on the discussion board in Blackboard. Suddenly it had declined. Jo had, therefore done some investigating and had discovered the students were using Facebook. She joined, and, because the students liked her, she was invited to join the group that was set up for the unit. That gave her an insight into the things that they were discussing. While some were “What a boring lecture”, others were discussing the sort of things she wanted them to discuss; albeit rather informally! She was able to act as a broker - to get those students to refine and then post to the discussion boards.

In several papers, this same idea of drawing in things that students are doing outside, rather than moving out to join them seems to be coming up. I, too have an account on facebook, which some students have found & some have made me a friend. (Facebook doesn’t have a “I taught …” as reason for knowing another person)

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Tags: ALT-C2007, Web2.0, majorty_world,

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/05/web-20-slam-a

Fun session this morning … Josie is thinking of setting up a Matchmaker 2.0 service; though I’m not entirely sure I can say that I’ve had a 100% satisfaction…

The site wiki, set up as we went will have the videos once they’re done. I was rather impressed with the “Hood 2.0″ group that was set up in facebook during the session.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/06/alt-c-thursda

One of the best sessions so far this morning…

It started out with “Students aren’t prepared for Web 2 technology, are they?” - which highlighted that students were having difficulties using wikis etc., not really because of the technology (though they weren’t as familiar as one might have expected), but due to the fact that they weren’t used to group working.

Next was Alan Cann, discussing his Biology students and their ability at statistics (which included many “plankton” as well as a few “Penguins” when it comes to learning stats) We got to see “socky” - his sidekick for videos teaching basics of stats; and, interestingly far more students wanted to download the files, rather than using the RSS feeds. He’d felt that was the need for students to separate personal/entertainment [on ipods etc] and work - on the University PC.

Finally, Iain Wallace looked at the SpokenWord project, which is an archive - mostly of BBC recordings (audio/video) - and a way of searching it for educational purposes. Like Alan, he’d also noted that students just don’t seem to like RSS feeds for educational materials; they’d rather have the option to find the feeds when they want to work.

An excellent final session.

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Tags: ALTC-2007

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/19/striking-in-s

The Sydney Morning Herald has a report of a threatened strike by IBM workers in SL. The actual dispute surrounds an Italian Internal collective agreement, but employees in 18 countries have agreed to take part.

Somehow standing round a brazier in SecondLife isn’t quite the same as in real life (or is it only UK strikers who have a brazier. Perhaps you don’t need them elsewhere!)

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/19/facebook-frie

Bluetooth helps Facebook friends So, if I have a bluetooth phone, I can register it with Cityware & then when I encounter someone else who has also registered, and they are my friend on facebook, then it will register.

However, given that bluetooth doesn’t travel that far, what are the chances that someone on my (limited) list of friends has also registered, and I’m within 100m of them & don’t notice them…

I suppose that it might work better if you were the sort of person who has many friends on facebook - so many that they’re not what I’d call “friends” - and, come to it, a phone that has bluetooth!

The friends aspect of facebook is fascinating. How do you decide who to add when they ask to be your “friend”. I don’t say “yes” to everyone; there are others who I say “yes” to only relucantly - generally if I have several mutual “friends”. But what is a “friend”? I think that the definition is rapidly changing.

I read over the weekend about Facebook Suicide - no, not actual suicide, but the removal of one’s profile. Though many of the readers at Valleywag see the article as rather amusing, it does raise important issues - especially when we are looking at students using it. Where, in the past, student pranks could stay firmly in the friendship group - and I’m thinking of traditional friendship groups … now it is far more permanent. It’s a very different scenario.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/19/how-the-socia

A two part slideshow about the history of the social web.

They’re both quite long - and it starts right at the beginning - with monks in 1746 connecting to a battery. It then jumps quite quickly to Vannear Bush (1945), and then almost 260 slides later we have the spread of different social networks around the world - and the fact that women are more active in them than men.

Takes a while to look at both sets of slides but well worth it.

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/19/google-presen

Google have added a presentation tool to their docs site. I’ve not yet tested it, but it could be useful for students who don’t have Office … but, I still think that Zoho has more to offer than Google at present. Zoho Writer offers integration with Google gears, (Google doesn’t)though as you can only download & view, but not edit, it’s probably not that useful, as both Google Docs and Zoho Writer offer export in a range of formats (rdf, pdf, html etc). Both presentation tools offer a much more limited range of export formats.

As well as the writer & presentation tools, Google only has a spreadsheet; Zoho has a whole range …

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/21/help-us-shape

Help us shape the future « Second Health. This has just been set up, it’s a collaboration between National Physical laboratory & Imperial College. This particular site gives you a direct entry to an orientation island aimed at Health Care workers.

Last week I tried to register this blog with Word 2007 & wasn't able to get it to register. I was, however, able to get Flock (a social browser) to add my Eduspaces account (it was able to pick up on all the blogs that I can post to on Eduspaces). Given that Flock was recognising the type as "MetaWeblog", and it's one of the options that Word offers, I looked carefully at the URL. While Flock was able to move from the http://eduspaces.net/emmadw that I'd entered, and convert it to http://eduspaces.net/_rpc/RPC2.php (with my username & password), Word wasn't so intelligent. Putting the URL in as http://eduspaces.net/_rpc/RPC2.php with my username & password has allowed it to register … so now I'm testing it. Word, like Flock, gave me a list of all the blogs that I could post to, though it seems that I have to choose when I set it up, rather than each time that I post (which Flock allows)

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/24/blogging-from

I’ve just started experimenting with Word 2007 – and discovered that I could blog from it. I’ve previously set up Flock to blog directly – and that was very easy. I just entered the URL of the blog – and it found the correct settings.

I erroneously thought that the inclusion of “WordPress” on the list of blogging sites for Word meant “those blogs hosted by WordPress”, rather than those with WordPress powering them, so didn’t try to register “Blogging IT and EDucation.” I was playing about with my Eduspaces account, and discovered how to get it into Word – where Flock had been able to pick up the actual URL that I needed, Word didn’t, but I was able to copy it. Flock, however, was able to add all the blogs that I can post to on Eduspaces all at once, (i.e. my personal one & those for all the communities that I belong to). Word, on the other hand, allowed me to select which one I wanted to blog to. If I want others, I’ll have to add them one at a time.

I then decided to try the WordPress option – it gave me the end part of the URL that I’d need (/xmlrpc.php) – and I could then add the main URL.

So, now I can blog from Word to either blog. Whether I will or not is entirely a different matter!

http://userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/09/25/student-expec

JISC have released a report looking at the expectations of students entering University - in terms of Computer access/ support/ use in learning etc.

Many of their expectations are predictable, that, for example, they’ll be less restricted in the websites that they can access - especially in Halls. Others are similar to some of the comments that we heard at ALT - that, though they are used to using social networking & podcasting sites etc., they wouldn’t expect their staff to frequent them and to put learning resources there.

I’ve not fully read the report yet, so there may be other aspects I’ve not yet found.