Second GeoLocation in Learning and Teaching Event hosted by the School of GeoSciences: Tuesday 9th June

In February this year I organised the first GeoLocation in Learning and Teaching Event as part of the Social and Cloud based Learning and Teaching Service and was pleasantly surprised at the level of interest and enthusiasm. You can read all about this session in the accompanying blog post.

I was very pleased when Owen Macdonald, GIS Support Officer in GeoSciences contacted me to ask if we could work together on a follow up event which took place on Tuesday 9th June.

Photo of a map of Edinburgh in an old book — Map of Edinburgh, used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 with thanks to Burns Library, Boston College on flickr

In this post are brief summaries of the presentations and links that the presenters have kindly shared:

Our first speaker was Anna Groundwater from History discussing digital mapping and history, she began by reassuring everyone that ‘it’s okay not to be a specialist in GIS and digital mapping.

She described the value of digitization and historical mapping within the History discipline and explained how they approach teaching students the potential uses and theories around maps and mapping.

This link will open a PDF of Anna Groundwater’s presentation which includes fantastic examples, resources and links (will open in a new window).

She introduced the idea of deep mapping or thick mapping where maps are augmented with additional data, e.g. layers of geographic information, images, chronology which can create richer artefacts for study and can bring new insights from analysis.

I was particularly drawn by the comments on the theory of mapping, Anna spoke of encouraging students to rethink the western oriented mapping of spaces to capture something of the human or of human behaviour within maps. She says ‘Mapping is not static, it’s a process, to tell a story’ and “GIS is not just a software tool, but an ‘approach to scholarship”.

Bruce Gittings from GeoSciences then described ‘Teaching with The Gazetteer for Scotland’. For those unfamiliar with the term, a gazetteer is a geographical directory used in conjunction with a map or atlas, and in fact the ‘Gazetteer for Scotland’ began as a project to update the six volumes of Groome’s Ordinance Gazetteer of Scotland (1885), and was originally envisaged as a book.

Appearances can be deceptive, the Gazetteer for Scotland, with its slightly dated interface (Bruce has been working on this project since 1995) might appear basic but behinds it’s simple exterior there is a wealth of information, functionality and teaching and project opportunities for students.

Bruce encourages students to engage with the Gazetteer for Scotland as part of their student projects from researching and writing entries to developing site functionality – with only the best work making it to the live site. He showcased an impressive tool which allows you to generate a PDF Guidebook for any area with information drawn from the Gazetteer of Scotland.

Please see the PDF of Bruce Gittings presentation for further details (will open in a new window).

Next, Carol Blackwood from EDINA showcased Digimap for Schools which is a subscription service that provides access to Ordnance Survey maps to primary and secondary schools across the UK. It’s a web based service, therefore schools don’t need to manage any software instillations. It’s aimed at students aged from 8 to 14. It includes additional tools to annotate maps and resources written by curriculum experts. It is also available to teacher training courses within institutions.

Mikaël Attal from GeoSciences demonstrated tools for topographic analysis for GeoSciences undergrads. GIS tools are used throughout the undergraduate programmes and Mikaël discussed the approaches used to support students who use them. He explained that combining geographical information with topographical gave another way of understanding what is happening in the landscape. He has produced many useful handouts which can be found on his webpages.

Here is a link to a PDF of Mikaël Attal’s Presentation (will open in a new window).

The afternoon was closed by Tom Armitage also from EDINA who demonstrated the FieldTripGB App. After downloading the App to our devices (it’s available from the Play store for android or iTunes App Store for Apple) we had a very short field trip – to capture information about all of the professors who’s portraits were displayed round the lovely ‘Old Library’ room where the event was held.

The tool allows you to design a data collection form via the FieldTripGB website and then your students can complete this on their device, these can then be uploaded to Dropbox to collate. The App really lends itself to crowdsourced data collection projects. There will be a new release of FieldTripGB soon, and we were advised to follow the @FieldtripGB twitter account for updates.

As the afternoon came to a close, I left this event with new insights into the useful GIS technologies that are embedded in both GeoSciences and History programmes and in the approaches used to share these with students.

I’m very grateful to Owen MacDonald for suggesting this event, and bringing together such an interesting group of speakers. Thanks to all to the speakers and attendees it was a most enjoyable event. We hope to bring together another event on this theme at the starts of next year so please do get in touch if you’d like to get involved.

Further Information:

About The School of GeoSciences:

In the School of GeoSciences we explore the factors and forces that shape our world. We aim to develop a better understanding of the coupled Earth System, that is, the interactions between the Earth’s geosphere, atmosphere, oceans, biosphere and cryosphere, the drivers of variability and change, and the roles and responses of humans in this complex interplay. With over 370 academics, researchers and research students, we are the largest grouping of geoscientists in the UK. Research activity is currently coordinated within three main Research Institutes – Global Change, Earth and Planetary Science, and Geography and the Lived Environment – and within many smaller research groupings that may reach beyond the School.

About GIS and Digital Mapping within GeoSciences:

While mapping and spatial data are used throughout the School the bulk of GIS activity, including specific GIS teaching and research, can be found within Geography in Drummond Street which houses the School’s GIS Group. The Group are responsible for a cluster of MSc degrees including MSc GIS (taught and research degrees), and MSc GIS and Archaeology and have up to 30 years of experience in GIS! The School also employs a full-time GIS Support Officer primarily focussed on supporting these MSc degrees (e.g. practical development and delivery, teaching/learning support) but also providing a level of teaching and research support across the wider School to staff and students.

About GIS and Digital Mapping across UoE:

A level of consultancy and support are provided University-wide by EDINA, such as GIS training for non-geosciences staff and postgraduates.

EDINA is the Jisc-designated centre for digital expertise and online service delivery at the University of Edinburgh and may be familiar to you due to their extensive range of online services. EDINA runs the Digimap services which are an invaluable source of geographical/geospatial data to Higher Education

GeoLocation in Learning and Teaching Event Wednesday 25th February 2015

As part of the Social and Cloud based Learning and Teaching Service I recently organised an afternoon event focusing on Geolocation technology used in learning and teaching at the University of Edinburgh.

A screen shot showing a world map with lots of photos on different locations — Image is a screen shot from WikiMiniAtlas at https://wma.wmflabs.org

In this post are brief summaries of the presentations and links that the presenters have kindly shared:

Dr Hamish Macleod, Senior Lecturer, Education, discussed the INGRESS game which is produced by Google. It is a location dependant game based on google maps. It is a mobile game, but not a casual game (which requires little commitment from the user) it has a rich back story and ongoing objectives to capture portals. Hamish was interested in the learning potential of the collaborative elements and the possibilities of proposing missions within the game.

Dr Hamish Macleod – Presentation on INGRESS PDF (Will open in a new window)

Tom Armitage, Geoservices Support, EDINA presented on the mobile mapping and data collection app Fieldtrip GB.

A titbit for me from this session was the description of the ‘Urban Canyon’ effect, which explains why GPS reception can be so poor in streets flanked by tall buildings.

Armitage, Geoservices Support, EDINA presentation on app Fieldtrip GB is attached as a PDF (will open in a new window).

Dr. Anouk Lang, Lecturer in Digital Humanities, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures discussed how she uses the SIMILE Exhibit platform, which runs off Google Maps API, to create an interactive map to use with students to explore the literary culture of Paris in the 1920s. Dr. Anouk Lang did not use slides for her presentation instead giving a live demo from her website, which you can access for further information: http://aelang.net/wordpress/mapping-modernist-paris/

The Map data is held in a Google Spreadsheet which the students edit (the students take this very seriously as they know that their contribution will be public). She emphasised the transferable skills gained by students. The precision required for basic coding forces them to pay attention to detail, for example, if they make typo’s the entry will not appear.

Duncan Shingleton presented on various location based research projects Design Informatics has done:

Walking though time – negotiating the streets of Edinburgh in 1860
Download the App from: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/walking-through-time-edinburgh/id381528712?mt=8

Comob – Networking people movements
Download the App from: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/comob-net/id326303438?mt=8

GoGet – Objects hitch hiking on the path of humans
Download the App from: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/coget/id843552747?mt=8

Treasure Trapper – Mobile game in conjunction with Edinburgh Museum and Galleries.
Download the App from: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/treasuretrapper/id898429541?mt=8

Mr Seels Garden – Food narratives in the city of Liverpool. This App uses local informational clouds, so only works when you use it in Liverpool.

Ghost Cinema – cinematic narratives in Battersea – also a local App.

Duncan Shingleton’s presentation PDF (will open in a new window).

Jonathan Silvertown, Chair in Technology Enhanced Science Education in the School of Biological Sciences – presented persuasively on his vision for “Virtual Edinburgh: turning the whole city into a mobile learning environment” taking us on a journey from Calton hill to King’s buildings to show how much data is already available just waiting to be linked up. We will watch with interest as this project develops.

Jonathan Silvertown “Virtual Edinburgh: turning the whole city into a mobile learning environment” PowerPoint Presentation – will open in a new window.

At the close of the session I spoke briefly about Wikipedia ‘nearby’ functionality.

Screen shot of Wikipedia Nearby on an android phone

This uses the GeoData extension for Media Wiki, which provides a structured way to store geo-coordinates for articles, as well as an API to make queries around this information. (source http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/01/31/geodata-a-new-age-of-geotagging-on-wikipedia/)

It is designed for mobile (just download the Wikipedia App) but can also be accessed via the desktop – http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Nearby

It is aimed at getting people to explore their surroundings, so could be useful for tourists or new students?

This quote comes from a Wikimedia blog post:

“The mobile team has focused on using the Nearby page to surfaces articles in close proximity that lack images, inviting users to add one. Upon visiting those pages, the user will be prompted to illustrate the article, which they can do quickly and easily if they’re on a mobile device that supports taking and uploading photos.”

My colleague and I have tried to test this but can’t find the prompt to illustrate the article, or an easy way to upload photos? I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who has made this work?

Can you think of any uses to put this to with your students, exploring an environment using Wikipedia, setting up a scavenger hunt activities, or developing activities editing pages?

Thanks again to all the speakers for presenting at this event and to everyone who attended, it was a most enjoyable and inspiring afternoon.

Please do get in touch if you have any suggestions for topics or speakers you’d be interested in hearing at future events.

Links

For further details of these presentations Nicola Osborne wrote a live blog of the event which you can find here: http://nicolaosborne.blogs.edina.ac.uk/2015/02/25/geolocation-in-learning-and-teaching-liveblog/

Screencasting software: some thoughts on the best options

I have reviewed several software options, with both free and paid licenses, to assess whether it is worth replacing Camtasia Studio.

Resources:

www.teachertrainingvideos.com

www.andrewdouch.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/the-best-screencasting-software-for-teachers

Windows Media Encoder + Windows Movie Maker

This is software that can be downloaded for free with Windows, and in theory should work without problems on Windows machines to record the screen and edit the footage, respectively.

Although not its primary use, WME works as a screen recorder and creates files compatible with WMM. While testing it, I kept getting an error which made the recording useless. This occurred probably 8/10 times. I found no solution for the error after several tries, and it seems to be a known bug that occurs on Windows 7 and 8. Another potential issue with WME is the files it creates are huge (many GBs) which is great if you are after pristine quality, but for our purposes, it is unnecessary. Furthermore, I have noticed the quality of the recordings from WME is poorer than what Camtasia produces at a fraction of the hard drive space. I do not recommend WME unless absolutely no other option is available.

WMM would work well as a video editor, it has the capacity to add closed captions and callouts, and it has a user-friendly interface. It supports a variety of formats so it can be used with a different screen recorder if needed. Since WMM was not built specifically for screencasting, it requires some actions that do not have easy shortcuts, so it may be slightly time-consuming, but it is a powerful enough tool to get the job done.

List of accepted formats: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows-live/movie-maker-file-types-faq

Download Movie Maker: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/get-movie-maker-download

Download Media Encoder: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=17792

Quicktime + iMovie

The OSX version of the WME+WMM combination. Quicktime player (Mac version ONLY) has the option to record the screen, and the resulting footage can be edited in iMovie. iMovie is user-friendly and a very good tool for basic editing. I haven’t had to work with iMovie for screencasting in the past, but from what I know about the software, it should be similar to WMM: powerful enough to get the job done, with a few workarounds perhaps. I did not test this combination myself as I am on a Windows machine, but drew my conclusion from past experiences, online videos and help forums.

VLC Media Player

VLC is free to download and an amazingly powerful tool with countless functions, one of which is recording the screen. It saves footage in multiple formats and is compatible with many different brands of editing software. However, it does not record audio (neither microphone, nor system sounds). Another limitation is that it only records fullscreen, and can’t record the secondary screen, therefore some cropping may be required in post-production. Also, VLC has no editing capabilities, so it would require additional software (like WMM, for example). The process of getting VLC to record the screen is not immediately obvious, the function is buried in the menu, but it can definitely be used in a screen-recording emergency situation if nothing else is available.

How-to: http://youtu.be/n-miLXpXiUw?t=8s

Download VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Jing

Jing is free to download from Techsmith, and has a minimalistic and easy-to-use interface. It is easily accessible via the little bubble icon on your screen. It only records and has no built-in or online editing possibilities. You can record your screen, then have it automatically uploaded and share the link from www.screencast.com. It can also record audio from the microphone. It can record a specific, pre-selected area of the screen, so there is no need for cropping afterwards. It also allows you to trim the edges (beginning and end) of the recording before sharing. It is the ideal tool for a quick demonstration you need to share over the web. I would not recommend it for anything else though, as it only allows up to 5 minutes of recording.

The recorded footage can also be saved to the hard-drive. However, Jing only creates .swf files which are pretty much incompatible with any editing software, and if you have the time and luxury to use a video convertor such as TMPGenc or Mac Convertor which would resolve this, then you can probably use something better than Jing to begin with.

http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

Snag-it

Snag-it is another tool from Techsmith, and it sits somewhere in between Jing and Camtasia. The recorder works similarly to Jing, and is very easy to use. It automatically uploads the recorded footage to www.screencast.com, and gives the possibility to download the file as well. It also has the integrated option to share the video straight to Youtube or Google Drive. It records files as .mp4 and other widely used formats, which can be played and edited on most platforms.

It has an online editing option, so you can use it anywhere, saving you the need to install specialized software on your machine. The editing is very basic, but is a big step forward from Jing. It allows you to add an intro or outro to the video, as well as cut out any unwanted parts. It doesn’t look like a proper timeline however, so you have no idea where your cuts or different portions of video are, you can only scroll/scrub through it. I’d describe it as the seek bar in a video player. You can use it to add closed captions. It also has some ‘special effects’ that I don’t really see the point of.

You can get a free trial of it, and here is a list of the features: http://www.techsmith.com/snagit-features.html

It costs ~£35.

While this is a decent tool, I would recommend screencast-o-matic over it, and the only major advantage I see in Snag-it is that it the video is easily movable to Camtasia Studio should you need to work on it more. But if you already have Camtasia, better just use that.

Screencast-o-matic

S-o-m is similar to Snag-it, but better (in my opinion) and cheaper/free. It’s web-based, so it can be used anywhere and does not require installing any software. It does give the option of a desktop install though, but I was unable to make it work. The web one worked well. One of the first problems is that it requires Java, and installing/updating that can be annoying. But once you get past that, it works. Secondly, it does not work on Google Chrome, so I used Firefox. Another slightly negative aspect is that it (the free version) adds a watermark to the produced video. The paid version removes the watermark and also allows editing online.

The editing is very simplified, and somewhat “destructive”. The editor looks similar to Snag-it’s tool, and does not show a proper timeline, it’s more of a seek bar. It gives you the option to trim and extract unwanted parts, but it’s not suitable for very precise cuts, because you aren’t exactly shown what you have on the timeline. It allows captions, which can be used in the free version as well. These captions have to be uploaded and manually “programmed”, in the sense that you have to type into a text file the start and end times for the display of each bit of text. This sounds repetitive and time consuming, but in fairness, it is no worse than pasting each line of the script from a text file into a more professional video editor, it only looks and feels more rudimentary.

The videos can be published into broadly used formats such as .mp4, which can be also downloaded to the hard-drive. You can also upload straight to Youtube or use s-o-m’s own server. I would recommend s-o-m for short, simple videos that require more attention than a basic record & share type of video, but nothing more complex than that. The editor is easy enough to use, has the advantage that is always available online and is cheap ~£10/year. I would recommend this over Snag-it.

http://screencast-o-matic.com/

They also have video tutorials for their editing features, which are very handy.

Camtasia Studio

Camtasia is the way to go in my opinion, if complex videos are required. It is a tool built especially for this purpose, and is easy to use if you have some experience, and easy to learn if you don’t. It can also be used easily for creating very simple videos.

Techsmith have great video tutorials available, and going through them once should ensure you have the knowledge you need to create your first video.

While version 7 is great at doing what you need it to do, it does have some limitations which I have come across. Camtasia 8 seems to have resolved many of these (though not all), and for this reason, I would prefer to work on 8. Furthermore, University of Edinburgh’s Information Services already have staff trained and experienced in Camtasia 8. The cost per educational licence is ~£116, much more expensive than any other software I have reviewed, but the features and options included are also incomparable to anything else below that price range.

IS Skills screencasting: https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action?title=Producing+a+screencast+video&spaceKey=ISSC

Camtasia 7 tutorials: http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-7.html

Camtasia 8 tutorials: http://www.techsmith.com/tutorial-camtasia-8.html

TREE – A new online tool for teaching staff: Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement is LIVE

TREE (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement) Logo

For the last year I’ve been working with my colleague, Steph Hay, on a project to deliver an interactive educational resource discovery tool, and we are really pleased that the beta version is now live: Tree (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement).

So what is TREE?

The TREE tool is designed to act as a bridge between the technology enhanced learning (TEL) services offered in Information Services and those who want to use them.

The drivers for this project were the need to:

raise awareness of TEL services
provide information 24/7
provide information that people can find for themselves
communicate the versatility of our tools.

Anyone can access the tool but it is primarily aimed at teaching staff, particularly those new to the University.

I wrote about this project in a previous post where I talked about the requirements gathering process. To recap- we used an agile methodology for this project, keeping users at the centre of development throughout, from user stories for gathering requirements to frequent user testing.

I can’t believe how far we have come in the six months since I wrote that post. At that point it was still called the ‘Resource Discovery Tool’.

What’s in a name?

We started thinking about what to call this tool early in the project. ‘Resource Discovery Tool’ was too broad and non-specific, and for librarians means something more akin to a library catalogue. But it did lead us to some interesting conversations with our library colleagues. We collected name suggestions from participants in the requirements gathering sessions and then set up a survey in Bristol Online Surveys to poll opinion on these suggestions:

ASK (Academic Services Knowledgebase)
ASK FRED (Academic Services Knowledgebase Finding Resource Education Discovery)
Enquire Within
WhatTeachingTools?
TREE (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement)

And the winner was: ASK (Academic Services Knowledgebase) (with ASK FRED a close second).

So why didn’t we call it that? Well, one of the fun things about working in a large institution is that there is so much going on, and it turns out that this name is already earmarked for another project. So we went back to the drawing board and sent out a second survey offering the choices:

GUIDE (Guide to University Information supporting Digital Education)
WhatTeachingTools?
TREE (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement)

And so the winner was TREE (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement). We were pleased with this name as we hope this name reflects what the tool is for and the acronym TREE offers interesting visual options for branding. Alas, it also offers Steph a world of pun options and word play became a large part of the TREE meetings and quickly infected our communications!

Photograph of A tree and the Mc Ewan Hall silhouetted against an orange sky — A tree and the McEwan Hall silhouetted against an orange sky

Growing TREE, from seed to sapling

We decided to build in Drupal, as the university website is also moving to this and there is in-house expertise to call upon when advice was needed. Continuing the Agile approach we went through four short build and checking cycles to reach this first live version. I say we, but really it was Steph who has worked the magic in Drupal on this project.

For each build we also undertook user acceptance testing (UAT), to check TREE was functioning as planned. For the first two rounds we send out test scripts (with a list of tasks) and asked users to complete these and email them back to us. This was great because testers could complete these when it suited them, from their own desks. However, it was difficult to frame tasks to test all aspects of the tool (for example how people react to a null search response) and it was not always clear from notes what testers had done at points. While the UAT was useful and successful, it did not allow us to do as much usability testing as we would have liked.

So for the last two rounds of testing we tried another approach called ‘accompanied surfing’. For this we booked a room and invited users in to sit with us as they worked through the tasks on the test script, talking through their thought processes as they did so. This offered a far greater insight into users expectations and search strategies than the earlier User Acceptance Testing.

TREE is currently in its ‘beta’ phase, which means that while fully functional and ready for use, there are further improvements coming and we are hoping for continued feedback and comments from users. These can be sent to us via the form on the on the Tree (Technology Resources for Educational Enhancement) website.

Further growth

I’m really pleased to have been involved in this project and it’s really satisfying for Steph and I to have created a live web tool, it’s a great feeling to see those user requirements turn into a real functional tool.

I’m also really pleased that this is just the start for TREE, as a phase two project has been agreed. Future developments may include:

extending the range of services included beyond those offered by IS
adding functionality to rate or comment on services.

We hope that TREE will be the ‘go-to’ site for any staff member at the University of Edinburgh interested in central services for technology enhanced learning.

Seeing the TREE in the woods?

Alongside further development comes raising awareness. We want to tell everyone involved in teaching in the University of Edinburgh about the TREE tool.

We are fortunate that so many people at the university contributed to this project and would like to thank all of them:

17 participated in requirements gathering workshops
143 completed the requirements gathering survey
14 took part in prioritisation events
47 individuals took part in user testing
many more provided help and consultation.

This is a large institution and it will take effort to make sure all staff in a teaching role are aware of the TREE tool. We are sending out emails and news items to every list we can access but would really appreciate help with this.

So please tell people about TREE

Please can you forward the TREE link (http://www.tree.is.ed.ac.uk/) to any list or person you think might be interested. Please add the link to any webpages, wiki pages or documents where you think it would be relevant, for example those you give to new members of staff.

I look forward to letting you know how the next phase of development goes in a future post.

Links:

TREE is a new online tool to help staff find out about the great learning technology on offer from Information Services http://www.tree.is.ed.ac.uk/ there is information about TREE, including an introduction video on our website.

We have been using the Projects Website to help manage the project and you can see further details of the project here.

MELSIG – Social Media for Learning #1 at Liverpool John Moores University 3rd June 2014

I took a day trip to Liverpool for an event from the Media Enhanced Learning Special Interest Group (MELSIG) called ‘Social Media for Learning #1: promoting participation and engagement with social and digital media in higher education’. ‘That’s a long way in a day’ my colleague said, but how could I miss the opportunity of an event so relevant to the Social and Cloud Based Learning and Teaching Service that I support?

Photograph of a seagull looking inquisitively into a windowng inquisitvly to a window — I photographed this seagull who was very interested in joining the session on Pinterest, no doubt already an expert tweeter.

The full programme offered multiple streams of presentations and in this post I’m sharing brief notes of my highlights of the day.

I arrived part way through the key note from Sue Beckingham (from Sheffield Hallam University) but did manage to catch some useful links giving advice for students :

The Sheffield Hallam Social Media Guidance Leaflets

Professional online presences for Students, Podcasts

Also a useful resource for staff, from Professor Andy Miah (University of the West of Scotland) The A to Z of Social Media for Academia, which lists platforms used by acedemics in their professional lives (you can contribute to this by email or follow the hash tag #socialmediaHE)

Professor Miah also contributed a very watchable YouTube video on Social Media in Teaching and Learning

Twitter in Journalism

Steve Harrison (@newsnumeracy) from Liverpool Hallam University gave an interesting presentation about Twitter as a tool for teaching and learning in the context of an undergraduate Journalism course. He explained that in Journalism Twitter is part of the professional repertoire. When I questioned this later he explained that using Twitter cannot be optional for Journalism students as they would not be able to get a job without being able to use it. So expertise with Twitter is threaded through the three years of the course in increased levels of complexity. In first year students learn to write news tweets in 140 characters, in the second year students use protected Twitter accounts as part of an assessed piece of work and in the third year the students use public Twitter as a source which they use to research and distribute live news stories.

Facebook Groups

Several speakers were talking about the use of Facebook. Mark Feltham (@MarkFeltham666) from Liverpool John Moores University shared his approaches to teaching 1st year students a core module in fundamentals of science, which offered several challenges including large amounts of statistics and a Monday 9am teaching slot. His approach included an innovative mix of: flexible pedagogies; student choice; and the ‘maker ethos’; and utilised Facebook groups. Marks presentation offered 10 reasons why you should use Social media in your teaching including several which focus on Facebook as a familiar place for students (he found 99% of students are already on it) which is quick and easy to use. He also found it easy and more creative to set work in Facebook, for example posting videos or using tools like Bitstrips. It was found to be a great way to manage group work because it gave evidence of contribution and he could ‘scrape posts’ to document this.

Anne Nortcliffe from Sheffield Hallam University also spoke about using Facebook to manage a computing course on which she taught. The students volunteered to set up and manage the closed group and also came with Anne to MELSIG to talk about their experiences. It was interesting to hear from the students directly and they spoke enthusiastically about this approach. They liked being able to see who had seen what was posted and that you could ‘tag’ people to draw their attention to things , features they don’t have in their VLE. They liked it because no one got left out of events if they were organised in Facebook. They also found it the easiest way to contact someone and worked out that tagging their tutor Anne was the best way to get her to contribute to a discussion. They described Facebook as ‘second nature for students’.

LinkedIn advice for Students

Charlotte Cork, World of Work Team manager, Liverpool John Moores University offered advice on LinkedIn from the context of advising students, but much of which is applicable also to staff profiles. For example I now know that I can change my ‘professional headline’ rather than leaving it at its default setting of my current job title. She suggests that part of the value of LinkedIn for students is the insights that can be gained from looking at the profiles of people working in your field, their skills and career paths.

LinkedIn Advice for Students in Higher Education

Using Pinterest to bridge theoretical gaps

Oli Young of Sheffield Hallam University, described his use of Pinterest as a tool to bridge theoretical gaps. He is teaching subjects such as Business Management, Hospitality, Finance and Legislation to students at level 4, 5 & 6 with little work experience. The students have a task to plan an international conference, and use Pinterest as a board to collect resources, such as venues and destinations. This means that when students move on to further aspects of the process they already have developed a context for the project and so it is more meaningful and less abstract.

#MELSIGJMU

As you might anticipate there was a lot of Twitter activity for this event which you can see ‘storified’ here: https://storify.com/melsiguk/melsig-social-media-for-learning-1

The focus of the day was on use of social media tools but I was interested to note that most speakers also talked about using the institutional VLE alongside these for other aspects on the course such as core content or assignment drop boxes. It interests me to see how the pieces such as core supported systems, external tools and service integrations fit together in different institutions.

Links

The presentations from this event can be found here.

MELSIG has a forthcoming event BYOD4L Bring Your Own Devices for Learning an open (registration free) learning event for students & teachers (facilitated, stand-alone, for other groups/courses) running online 14^th – 18^th July 2014.

Reflections from the Ninth International Conference on Networked Learning 2014 7th, 8th and 9th April 2014

Earlier this week I was able to attend the International Conference on Networked Learning when it was held in my home city of Edinburgh. I’ve not been to any of the previous conferences and was pleased to find this to be a very friendly and welcoming conference attended by an interesting group of delegates. It was also a very well organised event (and I’m not just saying this as much of this was so ably arranged by colleagues at the University of Edinburgh).

#nlc2014

The conference hashtag was #nlc2014 and there was lots of twitter activity. I’m not yet experienced enough at multitasking to contribute to twitter during the sessions, but I could see that plenty of people around me where doing so. Interesting slides where photographed and on the twitter stream before I’d thought to take a photo. It also allowed me to get an idea of the sessions I’d not been able to attend. Tweets and retweets were coming from people not attending and it was clear that people were following the conference from elsewhere which really added to the buzz of the event and feeling of connecting to a wider community. I’m now following many people from this event which should give my Twitter account a new lease of life!

During the three day event I attended two key notes, two symposia and 17 full papers presentations/pecha kucha presentations and it appears (now that I am back in the office) that I wrote 18 pages of notes. Leaving me with the dilemma of how to distil this experience into a coherent blog post! I’m also aware that this is a very active group so much of the conference has already been blogged and tweeted (I’ve added some links at the end of the post).

For this post I’ll briefly talk about the two plenary speeches which were definite highlights for me. I think these have been recorded so should be available for others to enjoy, I’ll add the links when they are available.

Neil Selwyn: Why it is crucial to be critical

The first was from Neil Selwyn, Professor from Faculty of Education, Monash University in Australia. He gave a thought provoking opening plenary on ‘Why it is crucial to be critical’ in which he suggested that ‘Being critical is not in the ed-tech DNA’. He encouraged us (as educational technologists) to ask awkward questions:

SelwynQuestionsCrop — Ask awkward questions – Selwyn

Q. what underlying values/agendas are implicit?

Q. in whose interests does this work? Who benefits?

Q. what is new here?

Q what are the un-intended consequences…what are the second-order effects?

Q. what are the potential gains…what are the potential losses?

Q. what are the social problems being addressed?

He also suggested 5 things for educational technologists to do:

Need to de-personalise how we perceive ed-tech
Need to be nasty (but after some debate downgraded this to snarky)
Need to do this with humour and good grace
Need to be contrary, contradictory, uncertain
Need to be persistent and prominent

Followed by the call to: write often, publish often and publish widely.

I’m greatly looking forward to reading his book Distrusting Educational technology.

Steve Fuller: The lecture 2.0 or why the future of the University depends on brand

The second plenary speaker on the second day was Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology in the Department of Sociology University of Warwick who gave a talk ‘The lecture 2.0 or why the future of the University depends on brand.‘

He started by asking: What difference do Universities make? Are they past their sell by date? Going against the current trends he states that lectures are very important. What is valuable about the lecture is not that it provides reliable transmission of information. Lecturers should exemplify ‘daring to know’, not be someone who can be reduced to their PowerPoint.

He made the case that since the Enlightenment the value of a University education was to teach individuals to learn for themselves and to make judgements for themselves. The right for free expression came along with this. Academic freedom was a guild right, because they had developed the skills to make judgements.

He proposed Lecturing as an art form of the University. Other providers can produce materials to transmit information and there are other accreditation bodies. Writing was made to come alive in the lecture. It is/was a branding medium, great Universities had the great lectures. They understood the difference between speaking and writing as mediums. The importance of improvisation, saying much more than is in the notes. For Steve Fuller being a good performer is important for an academic.

This was a great conference and I’m aware this post doesn’t really do justice to the breadth of the work presented. I’ve been privileged to meet fascinating people undertaking interesting work and I’m going to think further about how this impacts on my job, particularly around the development of the Social and Cloud based learning and teaching consultancy service which I am currently supporting and developing.

The first Networked Learning Conference was held in 1998, and has been held every two years since. The 10^th conference will be in 2016, with the venue to be decided. Even if I can’t be there in person I’ll be following it on twitter.

Links:

The Networked Learning Conference Website: http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/

Nicola Osbourne’s Live blog from Networked Learning 2014 gives lots more details of the sessions she was able to attend:

http://nicolaosborne.blogs.edina.ac.uk/2014/04/07/networked-learning-conference-2014-liveblog-and-other-notes/

http://nicolaosborne.blogs.edina.ac.uk/2014/04/09/networked-learning-conference-2014-liveblog-and-other-notes-part-2/

Peter J Evans blog post about Steve Fuller Keynote: http://pj-evans.net/2014/04/network-learning-conference-keynote-from-steve-fuller/

Setting out on an Agile project journey: Part 1, User Stories and Poker Chips

Last March I was given an interesting new project to work on:

The aim of the project is to deliver an interactive educational resource discovery tool that enables staff or students to answer a pedagogic or learning question they are trying to satisfy.
The tool will act as a bridge between the technology enhanced learning (TEL) services and the people who want to use them.

The seed of this project had sprung up from several colleagues working in learning technology support, it was inspired by the Service Options Graphic which was created to give an overview of the services offered in the Learning Services Team.

Grid showing the Learning Services — Learning Services Grid Graphic

The graphic proved very useful as tool both for promotion and supporting staff but quickly people started to say ‘if only we could have an interactive version of this….’

Initially it was hard for me to see how to translate this excellent if vague idea into an online tool. Fortunately Steph Hay joined both Information Services and this project in September 2013. With our small team complete and a tight deadline we decided to use an Agile Project methodology. Learning from the expertise of others in Information Services who have already used this approach: https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/insite/Agile+Projects (Page behind EASE).

Agile projects are iterative and deliver more frequent releases of software. There is an emphasis on interaction and customer collaboration. They should be simple and reflective and take working software as the primary measure of success. [https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=174606387 (Page behind Ease)].

Steph was then lucky enough to see a presentation given by colleagues in Applications Development ‘Darwin, Finches, and Poker Chips: An Agile Journey’ which they would later present at the Educause 2013 Conference.

She came back enthused and said our first steps were clear, we needed to find out what users want and the tools for doing this were ‘user stories’ – and poker chips.

Gathering User Requirements

At the end of last year we started by running several requirements gathering workshops using the ‘User Stories’ technique. This allowed us to capture user requirements in everyday language without thinking about technology. User Stories are written in the form:

As a/an……

I want to…..

So that…….

The short workshops took 1 hour and started with a brief introduction to the project and the technique. We then moved on to the main activity of discussing the project and getting the participants to complete the User Story Cards. Evaluation of these events was positive and included some nice comments: “interesting, fun, worthwhile!”

We also undertook a survey of teaching staff which received 148 responses and from this were able to add some additional User Stories and to see that a number of the user stories gathered from the workshops had broader support.

After reviewing the User Stories we had a group of 41 requirements. We then gave each a weighting which reflected the amount of effort we estimated would be required to implement this. These were numbered in the Fibonacci number series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 (this was as high was we needed). This sequence was used as the sharp rise in the numbers reflects the uncertainty that is introduced to any estimation as you become less certain of how to implement a requirement. It also allows an easier way to agree on the estimation of effort as the difference between effort 8 and 10 is difficult to quantify while a difference in effort between 8 and 13 is easier. Each requirement and its weighting was then printed out onto A4 card for the prioritisation events.

In January, to prioritise the requirements we ran ‘poker chip prioritisation workshops with users’. I had optimistically advertised the events as ‘both informative and fun’. (I may have even mentioned Vegas at one point, but was sensible enough not to put this in writing!). After a brief introduction we gave each participant 20 poker chips and asked them to read the requirements (laid out across several tables) and to play the correct number of chips (either individually or in together) to vote for an item. This led to some interesting discussion as proposals were made and deals where cut. Steph and I where both impressed that this technique fulfilled our original expectations: it meant we engaged fully with the requirements and had them reviewed by several groups of users.

Photo of user story cards and poker chips. — User stories and poker chips from one of the prioritisation events

Where next?

So now; we have a set of working requirements and will shortly start the first iteration of the build phase. The vague initial idea is starting to move towards something more tangible and as we are using an agile process there should be working software to test soon.

Also, we are currently surveying staff across the university to decide on a name for this tool, and so hope to have something far more meaningful to call it by the time we write the next blog post on the subject.

Links

Further details of this project are on the Projects Website.

You can subscribe to the project mailing list to be kept informed of project activity and to receive invitations to participate.

“Bring Me That Horizon” Jisc RSC Scotland Conference & iTech Awards 7 June 2013

A photograph of coffee, chocolate and wine — Images used under a creative commons licence with thanks to Rob & Dani on Flickr

How can you fault an event that starts with hot bacon rolls and ends with wine and chocolate? As ever the JISC Regional Support Centre Scotland know how to create an interesting, enjoyable and engaging event. Learning Services were well represented as David Findlay, Wilma Alexander and I all took the chance to attend this event which was particularly conveniently situated for us in Pollock halls in Edinburgh. In this blog post Wilma and I will share our highlights from the day (aside from the bacon and chocolate!).

Susie:

I particularly enjoyed the Key Note from Professor Susannah Quinsee (City University London) who offered some helpful observations on Managing Change. She gave a very interactive presentation (unusually for a key note), including discussions post-it notes and an online poll and was remarkably upbeat when participants were reluctant to put post-it notes on the wall! She offered some thought provoking scenarios for ‘Universities of the Future’ and left us with the Challenge to Dream about possible futures.

Wilma:

1) Derek Law (Chair of the JISC Advance Board) set a useful tone for the day: “Change isn’t optional” but suggesting that those who support innovation in learning will continue to be relevant providing that we match what the sector wants and needs. I’m always happy to hear more arguments for putting users at the centre of things and making sure we have quality information about them before we make decisions on their services. It was clear from this, and from lots of networking throughout the day, that HE and FE have more in common than differences, and have a lot to learn from sharing experiences.

2) One of the parallel sessions I attended was led by Jason Miles-Campbell from JISCLegal. He discussed the growth of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) and some of the joys and pitfalls of using sensitive data on phones, tablets and laptops in the educational context. These included BYOVRD (Bring your own virus-ridden device) and LYOD (Lose your own device) and left us all properly scared of our ignorance and carelessness. But it wasn’t a counsel of despair – more about helping individuals and organisations to recognise and manage the risks appropriately. And of course JISC Legal is on hand to provide neatly summarised information and appropriate advice as required.

Programme: http://www.rsc-scotland.ac.uk/Horizon/programme.htm

JISC BYOD Toolkit: http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/ManageContent/ViewDetail/ID/3070/BYOD-Toolkit-1-May-2013.aspx

An afternoon of Social Media: Tweets Posts and Analytics – 15 May 2013

I’m currently working on plans for a new service within Learning Services which will offer Advice on Social Media use in Learning and Teaching. Because of this I jumped at the chance to attend an event hosted by the Edinburgh Entrepreneurship Club which offered a whole afternoon of presentations about Social Media in a broad business context.

Wooden figures are set out in two intersecting social circles — Image used with thanks to jairoagua under a creative commons licence

The first presenter Louise Connelly (Social Media Officer at the Institute for Academic Development ) shared insights into how she manages her own ‘Social Media Brand’ or digital presence across various platforms (including Twitter, WordPress, LinkedIn, Academia.edu) and in different roles: personal; research; professional; collaborative projects.

In response to a question about how to target particular demographic groups, she recommended the Pew Research Center as a source of up to date information about who is using which Social Media Service and I’m grateful to her for recommending this fascinating resource.

Dug Campbell (Digital Director at MBM Commercial) explored the legal side of Social Media, and emphasised the importance of every company having a social media policy. His talk contained the following food for thought ‘Every tweet is an act of publication – including a retweet’.

I was introduced to the concept of ‘Niche Networks’ which are focused around specific interests in the presentation about KILTR a social media platform designed to connect Scottish interests globally

Alex Robertson & Jennie Stamp from YardDigital and Joe Halliwell from Sodash opened my eyes to the possibilities offered by Social Media Analytics for companies. These presenters showed tools (ranging from inbuilt options, to specialist options) that could make sense of this data from social media sites and also help manage multiple presences across social media sites. Joe Halliwell also explained how some analytic data is missing (e.g. location data), or needs to be paid for (e.g. historical data), but personally was happy with a payment model, he closed with this thought ‘Everyone needs a business model, if you aren’t paying, the service is you’.

This was an excellent event and I’ll be keeping a close eye in the EClub for future inspiring events.

Further Links:

Storify has been used to bring together tweets about this event

Presentations from the event are online

The University of Edinburgh Social Media Guidelines

Digital Scholarship: Day of Ideas 2, 2nd May 2013

In May I had the pleasure of attending this excellent event with two of my colleagues from Learning Services , Fiona Littleton and Stuart Nicol. Here I am sharing my highlights from a thought provoking day.

Big Data – In her Keynote presentation Tara McPherson spoke about how Big Data sets could be harnessed for research in humanities but emphasized that Humanities scholars should engage with the creation of tools that suit their needs. She shared the example of Mukurtu which is a platform for cultural heritage that is controlled by the people who own the information.

Tara also introduced the Vectors Journal which she edits and which offers some very different options for academic outputs than a standard text journal article: http://vectors.usc.edu/issues/index.php?issue=6

From a social media perspective I enjoyed the presentation of Professor James Loxley and Dr Anna Groundwater from the School of History, Classics and Archaeology talking about Ben Jonson’s Walk (http://www.blogs.hss.ed.ac.uk/ben-jonsons-walk/), on foot from London to Edinburgh, and which was chronicled by an anonymous companion in a recently discovered manuscript. I like the idea that as they have not been able to physically make the journey they will reenact it virtually on Twitter this July.

Aristotle latin manuscript. Image used with thanks under a creative commons licence from From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository

Dr Eyal Poleg made some interesting observations in his talk ‘Old Light on New Media: Medieval Practices in the digital age’ where he showed that medieval texts had more in common with digital texts than you might imagine. I particularly appreciated his observation that as a WIKI is designed for co-creation, a medieval book was also a communal object belonging to a group or family. Annotations were encouraged by wide margins and spaces between the lines. Additional annotations were seen to add value to the text. This is very different from the attitude to books I was raised with where books were not to be drawn in or marked! It seems that the belief that a book is in itself the repository of truth and therefore not to be amended, is a more modern phenomenon.

A link to the videos of the two keynote speeches at this year’s Day of Ideas: http://www.digital.hss.ed.ac.uk/college-events/digital-scholarship-day-of-ideas-2/videos-keynotes/

Digital Scholarship website: http://www.digital.hss.ed.ac.uk/

#digitalhss