Friday Reflection!

I've seen this before!

Twitter and the real world!

+Philip Spalding  

also on holc.co.uk and twitter: @HOLC1

Half-term week in Suffolk and Essex.  Little call on my time from Cambridgeshire so have been working on the Haverhill Online Learning Community.  Have been confident enough in the content and where we are going to start to use the twitter account!  

Twitter does require a bit of effort as I have found over the years that I have had personal twitter accounts.  Finding people to follow is not a problem.  Getting people to follow and continue to follow is the challenge.  Choosing who you follow back when they have followed you is also a judgement call.  Have had this on Google+ Communities recently where obviously some people passionate in their interests  have invited me to some potentially dubious groups that at best conflict a little with the web presence I am trying to maintain.  Once it's out on the web, it's out or exposed so to speak!  Some of the invites are enough to scare the horses (old English saying)!

Gathering pace this week then, HOLC has tweeted a bit,  but not a lot?  In the #fridayreflection for HOLC I have described the meeting I attended yesterday organised by +Elaine Carr of Best of Haverhill at a local hotels' conference venue.  The value of meeting people such as the local mayor and other stakeholder groups will often only reveal themselves on these stages.  You cannot do it all online in a local community you have to meet face to face!  It also provides that personal connection that builds lasting local networks!  

MOOCs this week have seen Coursera become the largest online campus.  The numbers at 2.8 million are still relatively small compared to total populations of students in universities globally but it is massive grow than in just a year!  I struggle at the moment to find the time and inclination to enage with the MOOCs I have signed up for at present.  Work commitments and other interests such as HOLC are taking precedence.  The fact that I already have a Masters and I am not depending on future advancement  upon completing the course are other factors.  It will be interesting to see the measure of drop outs at the end of the first year from the people like myself who have joined out of curiosity to see how they work.  

Genuine figures of engagement of students who are using the MOOC to further their career as opposed to attending a full time residential campus course will be difficult at the measure in my opinion at the moment.  the question will be are they sustainable from a financial point of view?  Should they be sustainable from a financial point of view as a direct replacement for campus based instruction (or do I mean learning)?  Should they be considered as part of the role of providing access to universal education that Universities/Colleges have to satisfy in order to be allowed to grant degrees?

So my reflection for this week is can the MOOC stand on it's own or is it part of the blend of learning offered by Universities and Colleges for the benefit of society?

Next week getting back with the plan for spending more time on the OLC Google + Community that +Jeannie Crowley facilitates and trying to do some Python Programming on the Raspberry Pi! 

 

  

The Friday Refletion

Is it Friday already?

Very busy week! Have been to Cottenham, Chatteris and Ely doing the "day" job.  So have seen a lot of the Cambridgehire Fens, water and Newmarket on the way to the above.  Newmarket was the only significant traffic jam while waiting for the racehorses to cross the road going out to exercise. When not working or driving I have been pushing forward the interests of Haverhill Online Learning Community   and the ukonlinelearningcommunities.org.  I have also just cleared the hoops to become an online tutor for a company in Gloucestershire who I visited in November.  Just have to find the time to do all I have promised!   Beginning of 2013 looking good as a time for growth and expansion.


Really impressed with a new feature on Google + ; Communities.  At a stroke it would appear to enable a true community sense to be applied to the online communities set up.    I have set up the Haverhill Online Learning Community and ukonlinelearningcommunities.org Google + Communities to join just follow the links and click on the Visit Google Community group.  You may get a 404 error with the sites but if you follow the Contact Us tab and provide your email address (has to be a GMail account) we can get you involved that way.

Haverhill Online Learning Community (HOLC) have very kindly been provided use of a private room on StudyRoom. This is the resource used by Harvard for edX courses.  By joining you can have access to this resource where you can interact with the rest of the community.  This is a complementary tool to Google + Hangouts from the community page.  StudyRoom allows you to gather around a table, use a whiteboard, chat and generally socially interact.  The tools you choose to use are up to you.  At HOLC we intend to provide as many ways of carrying out Life Long Learning effectively as a community.

Lots of things going on but the cunning plan (reference to Baldrick from BlackAdder) seems to be coming together.  Next week will be a good test to find out how the momentum of the set up process can be mainatained as working in Ely all week.  If I have put enough of the bare bones in place it should not be too much time invested in putting meat onto the bones!  

Oh by the way the picture was designed by me for a business venture while holidaying in Crete.  A bit of a description of what was going at the time when I was a full time teacher looking for a trapdoor to vanish from that particular stage.  Still running, still have the hat but hopefully the battery is nearly full charged, looking forward to just trickle charging!

Friday Reflection

In ancient shadows

Well last week in November been and gone!  Have spent an interesting week working in Ely and refining the Haverhill Online Learning Community(HOLC).  The poor camera phone photograph shows the view from the window towards the cathedral (better images can be seen on this Google Search).  Ely Cathedral  is a successor to the original buildings recorded in 673 AD.  These were founded by St Etheldreda  who was a daughter of King Anna of East Anglia.  Thus the site of  worship and learning pre-dates the founding of the English State.

Ancient learning is further emphasised in the city (city in the old sense that it has a cathedral) with the King's School Ely  founded in 970 AD turning such old boys out as Edward the Confessor, the patron Saint of England before the popular symbol of St George took over fully in the 1300s.

Ely has had it's rebels in the past.  Hereward the Wake who opposed the Normans taking over and whom some think was the basis for  Robin Hood legend, used the  fen (wet) lands around the Isle of Ely to avoid capture .  The other rebel of note who left an indelible mark on British History was Oliver Cromwell.  Oliver Cromwell lived in the city for 10 years prior to turning the English Parliament on it's head and creating a republic that lasted for about 13 years.  Ely has had a lot of influence on shaping what we now call the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland over the last 1300 years!

Side step into history over  and back to task!  The Reflection for the week!  Have continued to use what I have learnt from the OFLC (Online Faculty Learning Community) of Bank Street College New York to develop our own local Online Learning Community.  We have incorporated a SlideSpeech generated presentation as a link on the homepage of HOLC.  There have been many emails off to various different people and have received some very positive replies.  We have contacted the makers of StudyRoom  (as used by edX and Coursera) and have been granted a private room in principle  for HOLC for which we are very grateful.  Hopefully this should be set up and being used by the New Year!

Coding has started to be be looked at again but not to the stage where I can upload anything yet to the OFLC.  Getting excited though at the possibilities as I delve further into the coding.  Want to get a Raspberry Pi  and programme in Python on this platform, may even be able to run Chrome OS on it as well will have to look into this?  Really cheap basic access for less than £40 (with appropriate accessories).

So next week continue programming with course. Gather collaborators for HOLC locally and further a field. Have an idea of trying to get U3A  members in Haverhill involved in Local History projects, the Church Crawlers and Historians, Digital Camera Group, Garden Group and Art Group.  Already put the information out to local members so will see what happens.  Contact the myriad of local groups and charities (even our county council libraries are being run by a charitable trust on behalf of the council) and present the case for peer to peer learning!

Couple of more weeks of potentially travelling to Ely until the end of the school session.  I have a good journey along picturesque country roads.  The only major "traffic jam" is waiting for the race horses to cross the Fordham Road from  Exning (village where St Etheldreda was born, link back to first part of the reflection, knew I'd be able to get it in somewhere) as they go out to exercise on the gallops!  Very pleasant to watch as they come of the mist!

  

Friday Reflection

Back in the Swim!

At the end of last week I reflected again as to how the week had gone.  Well back in the swim well and truly now.  One of the tasks for the week was to take the next steps to establishing a Haverhill Online Learning Community.  After making contact with a number of people in local organisations to float the idea on Friday last week, I decided to take the plunge.  

On Sunday I re-established my own domain presence again on the internet after about a year's re-evaluation and consideration.   I used Google Apps for Business to set up the domain kritirecharge2012.co.uk.  The process was so simple and cheap compared to other packages that I have used.  The DIY approach suits me since I have a lot of experience of dealing with Templates and modifying HTML.  The tools provided were simple to set up (but then I have experience of Google technologies) groups, Google +, Blogger, WordPress and the website.  The website has been launched for Haverhill Online Learning Community (HOLC).  The website can be found at  https://sites.google.com/a/kritirecharge2012.co.uk/haverhill-online-learning-community/home.   Please follow the link and view the site.  Visit the Google + site from the link to see how the project is developing.  The site is almost complete in outline only the mission statement needs to be looked at but should be complete over the weekend.

We have a number of collaborators interested in joining the community.  If you are able to offer help and advice please contact via the Contact Us page on the website.  We have a number of projects for collaboration proposed including a Hacktivate Nursery Rhyme book and a Local History Project.  A CPD project for Teachers of Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 on how to programme with Scratch is included.  This is the project  already under way with the Bank Street College of New York's Online Faculty Learning Community.

The journey has begun to 21st Century Learning and 21st Century Working.  A good link to find out more about 21st Century Working is the Telework Association.  A body from whom we now have support in the role of an Online Learning Community.  We will be developing courses that will be available on the HOLC website showing  how to go about flexible working and teleworking.

A busy week coding for Google Course Builder is coming along will have to share some code both on the HOLC site and the Bank Street OLC.  So more of the same needed.

For next week, now the site set up and the bare bones of the HOLC stablished it is a time for consolidation and delivering content and connections.  The day job is starting to take off again (must be the season of cold, teacher training).  I have spent yesterday and will spend today in the Isle of Ely area teaching at a very good Academy. Always good to keep your hand in!  Looking forward to seeing how  HOLC develops!