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! 

 

  

Friday reflection!

That Wow factor!

+Philip Spalding 

February has arrived!  The end of the month and how has 2013 been so far? Busy!  

The online learning experiences are coming thick and fast at the moment!  Almost too much as also trying to the day job!  Finding the right routine and the enthusiasm  to do the travelling is the essence and the key to succeeding in trying to leap those even minor buildings!

The Science Wow factor for the week from the net has been this from a maker site, the $5 projector .  Really simple idea great for teaching optics far more impact than traditional practicals for majority of children.  How great for awe and wonder in the phone culture!

A week of great changes for education announced in the UK with  the Ebacc causing most controversy.   In my opinion the sticking point with all this is the pre-occupation of using the word academic and non-academic to describe the educational outcomes of the different qualifications path.  The general view point is academic good, vocational bad (borrowing from George Orwell).  This may be due to the make up of the UK parliament being predominantly "middle class", although you probably cannot get more middle class in England than ex-army officers.  We do need to break the cultural link between the traditional stereotypes of "academic" and "non-academic" students being related to socio-economic groupings.  This has been more than a bit of millstone around the neck of the English education system ever since the first education act (and before) in 1870.  Universal education as opposed to mass education is still the debating point.  More recently who is paying for the education is also an issue.

Haverhill Online Learning Community (HOLC), OLC, Coursera Course and  other projects have been a little slow this week owing to the daily commitments of a drive to Harlow.  HOLC  has drawn the interest of the local MP (Member of Parliament) who is also a minister in the Department of Work.  Will have a chat with him next week one to one and see how it goes!

Have started the Cousera MOOC from Edinburgh University e-learning and digital cultures.  Have some videos to watch this morning and a hangout later today.  Will compare this to the edX  course which ton be honest was extremely time consuming as it is a full undergraduate module as if you were attending lectures etc!  Some good links to learning platforms which I will at some point share some if not all.

Full day of working own projects today including being trained online on the Blackboard LMS.  School I am working at the moment having a conference day.  All staff attending have been asked to have a twitter account up and running for collaborative interaction (how social this becomes when account "open" all the time and you can be expected to respond "out of hours" will be interesting to watch in the first few weeks) .  

Next week move onto local history with HOLC.  Have not proceeded as far as wanted to with the Telework Week but will revisit. 

So Cat at least will be happy to have me around all day at least!

 

Friday Reflection!

Somebody left their Freezer door open!

Well we have had an icy blast from the north or was it Siberia?  the snow came down on Monday which was not too bad. I have been travelling to Ely about 30 miles away everyday (and will do today as well) since Tuesday.  Luckily knowing the area I have avoided the 2 to 3 hours queues on the A14 and A11 roads when accidents have happened.  More snow predicted for later today but hopefully I will be on my way home before that starts.  

The temperatures have been on average about -5 C.  Might not seem a big deal to other countries but it is in the UK.  The get of jail free card played by the local authorities is that we rarely have these conditions.  If rarely (but frequently have them in winter) have them then the contingencies should be in place rapidly.  This is potentially where Teleworking should kick in, relieving the roads, the emergency services and the cost of heating buildings above frost protection.  It is not usually the first day when it snows that there are staffing problems since most will attempt the first day.  The subsequent days when people develop colds or are more stressed owing to the journey to work is an added problem.  All those commuters sitting on iced up and delayed trains are not being productive!  

Anyway the Friday Reflection.  It was good to get into the classroom this week and see how ideas of online learning could be matched as an aid to traditional class room learning.  The blended learning scenario.  We always assume a lot of prior knowledge when we walk into a classroom whether we are a regular teacher of that class or a substitute or supply teacher.  There is more worth in several "I get it" exclamations than an hour of  child minding and hoping that what you have imparted has the building blocks to support it in the first place.  In science (my subject) one dispelling of a misconception which can last a lifetime (ie the mass/weight conundrum for many pupil) and can often being the difference between the light coming on for the rest of the curriculum, not just science.  That little bit of success and understanding can be the brick that causes the dam preventing  further learning AND understanding.

Assumption is a problem with MOOCs when they are too big.  Overcoming the group inertia against against admitting you do not understand.  The hierarchy that is being set precludes as in traditional settings questioning of the instructor whether they are Professors of Oxford, Cambridge or the local Community College and school.  Challenges such as this are best addressed in a peer to peer online learning community or tutorial setting.  Moves away from tutorials by British Universities has been a feature with some arts courses having only 6 hours taught time a week.  You have to question are people being given a fair deal when this happens?   

Will update the Haverhill Online Learning Community Computer week later in the day.  To quote  the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, if don't stop now I am going to be "late for a very" important date in Ely! 

Friday Reflection!

Week 2 of 2013 and Still going!

We are approaching the end of the second week of 2013.  This week I have started to take a little bit of a perspective of the size of the task I have taken on and the work needed so far for Haverhill Online Learning Community (HOLC).  I have used my new Google profile picture (pictured left) to illustrate the effect the effort has had on some days.  The cat appreciates a comfortable sleeping place and the fact that I am not in front of a screen!  A bit of quality purring going on!  That said there is starting to be a bit of satisfaction in the fact content is starting to be added to the website.  Recognition of the idea by others (thanks +Gail Poulin and +Rob Perhamus for your Google Plus comments) and it's potential value for a Learning Community.

HOLC itself is a relatively small community at present.  We are in the establishment phase at the moment.  The lag phase (to borrow a term for biology and bacteriology) so to speak of establishing a new community. this is the stage of adaptation to the needs of the community by interaction.  Once a critical mass of participants the log or exponential growth phase should be steady.  Reaching a stationery phase of growth is the difficult stage to recognise.  Four scenarios may exist once a stationary phase is reached.  Firstly the community remains the same and is limited by the "space" of the interactions and activities   Secondly a  death phase of the community starts to take over as interest and engagement is lost.  Thirdly a community interaction puts the community back into the lag phase or growth phase.  The fourth scenario is the formation of a new colony or community separate or in addition to the original community.  There are precedents in Ancient Greek society for this which resulted in the formation of new colonies such Marseille (Massalia), Syracuse (in Sicily) and Emporium (Spain).  These examples still survive today but do not necessarily (or have to speak) Greek because they now have their own identity.    

Measuring the success of the community and being able to recognise the different phases is a  skill of the moderator or facilitator of the community.  The last thing that needs to be done  when a community appears to be going into the death phase is to throw the baby out with the bath water!  Do we judge objectively success of a community by numbers of members?  Do we judge it by the number of active members?  There are a lot of Google+ Communities with 2000+ (in some some cases 30000+) that have been set up.  I have joined some of these larger communities and it is quite apparent rapidly that there are only a relatively few core active members.  There are a lot of "lurkers".  But as we have discussed in the #oflc set up +Jeannie Crowley these may become active when there is something they feel they have an opinion on.  A index of Active or lurker/size of community (AL/C) within  a time frame could be a measure of the success of the communities aims and the ownership of that community by it's members.

Is the success criteria  of AL/C  a measure of the quality of engagement?  I suppose it all depends on which stage of the lifecycle of the community you are in.  Subjectively as a facilitator you may have the success criteria that establishment shows that you have a successful community.  Objectively the participants may say the quality of the interactions and the scope of the material might be their success criteria and why they joined.  Pictures of cats might not be everybody's cup of tea, for which other communities might be a more appropriate forum (honest only use the four legged assistant for illustration purposes).

Meeting diverse success criteria are some of the  challenges that the online community community and facilitators must face in the evolution of the online learning community.  MOOCs which are the longest established are undergoing a possible  entry into a stationery phase.  I say stationery phase as it has been identified by some that their  free model of engagement might not be sustainable  against the other demands that their constituent universities might have to satisfy.  

The success of an  educational model is a trade of the finite price of what the market is prepared to pay for and a floor price at which providers are unable to go below.  This is possibly where the Open Learning Community has it's place.  The initiator of awe and wonder in Life Long Learning.  Where certification is required the MOOCS take over.  A community that keeps a core perspective of why it was set up will probably be adaptable to it's members needs.  Also there has to be a realistic view that a community  can be considered to be a living organism as well.  The health of an Online Learning Community is not  necessarily judged as to does it meet the success criteria of the initiators.  The quality of the social interactions might overwhelm the learning aspects.  For instance the idea of visiting a garden together in a group to learn the  names of flowers might have been the original intention for forming a Garden Group.  The social aspect of having a day out might be goal of the people participating.

A fairly wordy discussion of the life cycle of an Online Learning Community.  The phase that Haverhilll Online Learning Community and ukonlinelearningcommunities.org are in definitely the lag phase.  The task for this week is to try to publicise the community to grow size of the community.  I have a number of meetings coming up including attendance of the Best of Haverhill event organised by +Elaine Carr which providea a great opportunity for local networking of the "traditional" face to face variety.  Will have to remember to take some business cards along!     

Right tools for learning: Part 1.

Virtual Machines

One of the problems with a MOOC (see previous blogs for definition) experience is having the correct tools to access the materials that have been placed online.  There is one solution in using Google tools such as Google plus for social interactions on the course.  What if you want to run a programming course?  How can you standardise the experience across all platforms?  How can you enable at low cost all members of the MOOC no matter the depths or shallows of their course to take part?

Sounds like a tricky problem with asking for a lot of different resources to tackle all types of platform.  The MOOC I have joined edX CS50x Computer Science 1, approaches this problem using  virtual machines.  It offers Linnux emulators that runs on either a Mac or Windows.  It is within this that the virtual machine is opened and the programming language in this case C can be entered.  Versions are offered where the native operating system is Linnux.  The Linnux platform they recommend is Fedora which again they give the instructions for downloading and installing.

I am in the process of installing of the applications and should start using it in the next 24 hours.  I will also have a go at installing the Fedora from clean on another machine and see what the experience is like between the two.

Online Faculty Learning communities

Snow could arrive this weekend!
Shot taken  last year of Hamlet Green
100 m around the corner. 

 The Friday Reflection!

Reflective practice in action in  less than 500 words.  A worthy aim see if I can achieve this self imposed limit.  This week has been a very good week for the Bank Street College of Education OFLC (Online Faculty Learning Community)  activity.  One of the problems, often, with a "normal" teaching job is the inability to find time to reflect.  The demands certainly of UK education has reflective practice talked about but often not considered a vital of good practice.  I admit I have been guilty of this in the past!

 I set myself a number of tasks when planning my Google Calendar for the week last Saturday morning. The calendar I have been using now for more than a  couple of years for time management. This will be one of the tasks I will doing on Saturday morning.

The major task for the week was formalising a specific project for attention.  That has been initiated and completed up to the point of planning the logistics.  This has also been shared with the OFLC ready for comment and collaboration.  On reflection although the proposal looks to be a self-contained project of delivering CPD to a specific aim of familiarising teacher with Scratch, that may not be all that is needed!

 The article highlighted by one of our collaborators (not mentioning names since this blog is in the public domain) , College is dead ... in Time magazine was instructive.  I have previously used articles in my own Life Long Learning in another blog    from the Harvard Business Review.  A journal I have a little familiarity with from all the Daniel Golman reprints that fly around British Schools.  Time is a publication not usually looked at by an English Audience certainly not in the context of Professional Practice.  Point to note then is that not all publications have to have a direct subject specific target audience to be useful.  Articles of mass appeal and importance are sometimes better where they can viewed by the greatest number in this case Time.  After all we do own our own learning, don't we?

So up to this point how are we doing.  Word count 348 to the question mark.  Enough reflection and food for thought for next week.  A medium term plan would be for me to look at how the OFLC schedule fits in with the project and also the other working commitments. A long term plan up to the end of the OFLC schedule and beyond encompassing maintaining collaboration and extending collaboration and skills would be  an aspirational task.  Probably now on or near the 500 word limit and have some achievable aims for the next week?    OK, copy and pasted into OpenOffice and word counted (440 words).

So enough written now.  We have a snow day predicted in Suffolk.  Visitation from sister, niece , nephew and bouncy Spaniel.  Cat is really going to enjoy that.  But all part of maintaining the Work-Life balance!

Meta MOOCing

Seeing the wood for the trees!

Meta MOOCing a phrase very much like the sign on the left can convey many meanings.  Are you about to see a column of Tolkein's Ents? Is it one of John Wyndhams' Triffids?  Or something Big and Yellow with  wheels as seen by Arthur Dent in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy?

The MOOCing aspect and definition I touched upon in the previous blog (http://kritirecharge2012lifelonglearning.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/moocing-to-boldly-go-where-no-one-has.html).  Meta is one of those phrases is, I feel,  increasingly used for a developmental stage though which we pass to obtain a definitive understanding or product. 

As the VLE or MOOC develops and passes through a meta stage terminology becomes in itself a barrier to learning.  As part of a OFLC (Online Faculty Learning Community) we have recognised that the field dialect needs to be understood and equivalences recognised.  Sustainable Learning Communities are all about understanding the tools (the vocabulary) that enables the exchange of learning experiences.

A challenge would be to put together a frequency of use list, if on reading this you feel able to post a comment on a term you have used or seen related to  Virtual Learning Environments please do so!

Away from the Chalk Face!

The Friday Ladder:  Grimes Graves, Brecklands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimes_Graves  

Friday at the finishing post!

A Friday morning, still dark at 5.45 am (UK time),  time to see where we have been since Monday morning.

The picture of 5000 year old industry to the right is a very apt hook for this blog.  On Monday I started the odyssey away from the Chalkface.  

The semester for edX's CS50x (see link above in bar) commenced on Monday .  Semester strange term to the English eye, where terms are more usual linked around the major holiday periods.  Eleven weeks for the lecture cycle.  This is an example of MOOCs ( see previous Blog), an interesting experience of viewing lectures remotely.  A little bit of Scratch was introduced (something that I have used in a Summer School that I ran), an assignment to be completed.

Wednesday saw the start of an interaction with Bank Street College of Education, New York.  In this interaction/course, with online resources and courses interaction seems a better description of the experience,  we are as a group seeking to push forward our collective and individual understanding of VLEs (Virtual Learning Environments) for want of a generic term.  There at the moment does not appear to be a classification yet of the different types of learning experience available on line.  To this end I have created a GoogleDocs Spreadsheet for viewing trying to classify the types of learning experience and some of the terms used.  As with all new areas different people have used what to them is the most appropriate term.  As an educator I am more interested in the learning outcome based upon these tools rather than the elegance of the tool.  If it takes 10 hours to produce a whizzy presentation that lasts five minutes that is 9 hours and 55 minutes too long in an ideal world!

So having had the traditional platform of undergrad teaching transferred to the digital world with edX this week, what is happening next week?  Further exploration of the topics on the edX course will happen, I have to say that I am impressed by the level of support materials provided.  How this translates into something that can be used in the Virtual Classroom ( there another term ) would be an area to explore within the  OFTL interaction with Bank Street College.

A clear link for classroom teachers between learning  objective and learning outcome needs to be made with appropriate selection of the best IT resource.  Interactive Whiteboards are fine but not if the wall on which it is mounted moves due to poor workmanship (have experienced), or the room is the wrong shape for projection with pillars at inappropriate places.  (Architects please note this when designing new buildings).  

The cost implication is also a consideration in the especially in the UK at the moment.  The investment in computers we made many years ago has produced the model where we are often tied to particular delivery equipment and mechanisms. This is often due to the fact we have bought a system rather than analyse first what we want to with it!  (Headteachers are often guilty of being impressed with the look at the package what it can do in the hands of the salesman and say wow must have this, then it sits under a cloth in the corner of the room to be wheeled out when Inspectors arrive!)  And more importantly we may have neglected to audit the training requirement of staff who are going to use the equipment.  This is actually more difficult to do than it would at first seem owing to the human factor.  A period of sending round survey forms asking which IT resources staff used and what they would like often drew a blank, but many good intentions to fill out the survey to shape the experience.  This is because  most teachers in my experience are still not  100% confident the technology will work when they want it to work!  It is an after thought!    

To see the spreadsheet, initially, if you email me through the Google+ network or leave a comment I will email the link.  The spreadsheet is work in progress.  

So weekend maybe have a look at some Sicilian food http://2pointfiveageofman.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/sunday-foodie-bit-sicilian-cookery.html!  There is life beyond the Chalkface!

MOOCing: To boldly go where no one has been before!

MOOCING for all!

The age of the STAR TREK ACADEMY is here.  Distance learning was something that became included for younger members of the Star Trek Enterprise in the popular saga by Gene Roddenberry.  The concept was already there in the Australian idea School of the Air.  Now we have the MOOC!

Massive Open Online Courses have arrived with the sites such as edX, Coursera and ALISON (see links at top of the page).  In order to understand this experience myself (and to formalise my own self-taught learning) I have joined an edX course CS50X .

As part of a group examining online course delivery "based" (world wide collaboration via Google tools)  at a separate institution I became aware of the idea of MOOCs.  An article (http://sleve.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/why-mooc-engagement-is-so-hard/) was one that the Bank Street College  OFLC Course/Group recommended for reading.  Having read the article I was struck by the my own experiences using social media and the ways I have been instructed post 16 years old.  

In classes for A-Levels we had 30 per class for Maths, Physics and Chemistry but only 10 for Biology!  The engagement socially with the learning experience was better in the smaller groups as the interaction between tutor and pupil were easier and more immediate!   This  pattern of pupil to real-life tutor  experience continued through my Scottish University where we had classes of between 100 and 200 in size with tutorial time spent with a group of 7 to 8 pupils in the early years.  This last model was a better experience than Sixth Form A levels but owing to previous training of how to learn in a formal context was like being at school.  At later stages in the first degree experience we had increasingly less formal instruction in  "class" but there was still "traditional" engagement techniques.  After all these were research Professors with a teaching load of Undergraduates as opposed to teaching Professors! Plus they did not have the whizzy presentation to engage pupils as we have today and break up the delivery of material.

Having seen the first lectures of the CS50x course I was struck by the content compared to my experiences as an undergraduate 20 years ago.   Key concepts although delivered at quite an active pace were not that many in the 2 hour lecture/MP4.  What was apparent was the audience participation and the "pausing" to explain the learning outcome.  The online experience was also made more interactive and a non-popcorn/coke/beer movie experience by the occasional question appearing to check understanding of key concepts.  This is a simple but key trick to keep the solo listener engaged.  The peer pressure of note taking neighbours being absent in this environment.  That was also apparent in the auditorium the lack of note taking materials when we did see audience shots.  The material was online in the form of video recordings of the lecture, transcripts, Tutorial  materials and most importantly web-links (the most difficult thing to note down quickly).

The forums signed up for the and program critique requests  starting to appear, addresses some of the MOOC's social limitations.  It does require a collective interaction of learning.  It does require confident self-learners.  It does play to the strengths of undergraduate enthusiasm in asking the question, why? Or more important that very difficult statement , I don't understand.  This is the  a potential pitfall of MOOCs that social media can overcome by doing what most pupils from the age of 3 do without thinking they are doing it, which is peer to peer learning!  It is also a challenge to the "closed filing cabinet" state of traditional academic work.  If you are not on the privileged list of one to one personal contact that knowledge acquires a proprietorial existence. 

The universal aspiration of knowledge being free can be a reality but only if a MOOC  engages social interaction in a learning community.  Competition to be the first to think of an idea will always be there, social interaction dose spur uncovering of  new concepts.  Would we ever have known about Darwin's theories in his lifetime if he had not been in correspondence with Wallace?  Historians of life sciences argue who was the greater Wallace or Darwin? And who should be on the pedestal carved in stone?  MOOCs potentially have the ability to speed up dissemination of  understanding of knowledge but have to overcome the inertia of lack of communication between learners.  A problem experienced in UK, if not all UK classrooms, for the majority of pupils driven by need to fulfil a curriculum!

So the major conclusion of the article http://sleve.wordpress.com/2010/09/27/why-mooc-engagement-is-so-hard/, is to start to engage socially.  Be confident to record your experiences in a learning journal or blog.  And more importantly to be persistent and leave your "footprints" in the sand to see where you have been when you look up to see where you want to be!