playing with prezi

I've been waiting for an opportunity to have a go at using prezi - the zooming presentation software. As far back as 2003 I was experimenting with using concept mapping software to do presentations... but the software wasn't developed for that purpose and it was rather challenging although usually well received because it was different.

I recently had the opportunity to use prezi for the first time in fornt of an audience at the JISC Learning & Teaching Practice Experts meeting where we were presenting some of the findings from the LLiDA (Learning Literacies for the Digital Age) study. My session was to present a case study of good institutional policy and strategy for learning literacies. These are still very rare but the Glasgow Caledonian University has done some really interesting work with their i-Learn project - an Independent Learning Framework for the whole University.

the presentation is available at http://prezi.com/122745/
I did put one picture into the presentation. It was one of my faves of the Saltire Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University.




My thoughts on using this application are as follows:

• offers a non linear approach but allows you to create pathways through the content
• allows you to present the whole picture in a fairly visual form and then zoom in as required
• fairly limited in choice of colours and styles at present (really hoping they will be adding some)
• relies on a good internet connection for presentation unless you purchase the desktop version (which I did - and had to use on the day)
• allows you to incorporate a good range of file types so not limited to lists and bullet points
• can be shared as an editable resource of limited to owner (I limited this as need it to be correct for a presentation but could see some educational for developing collaborative stuff
• generally the audience liked the wow factor and the difference
• not sure how accessible it is yet?
• I will use it again as I've invested about £100 for it.
  
• it's a bit faffy to get stuff placed properly and it helps to have a big screen
• I made it on a wide screen laptop and the display didn't work properly (although could have been the ancient projector

Engaging Learning with Social Software

I have been working for Oxford Brookes University on their online course Engaging Learning with Social Software. I have been a co-tutor with Patsy Clarke and the course is coming to an end. I want to give some feedback to the particpants so decided to use my blog - which seems only fair as one of the activities in the course was an option to set up their own blogs.

The supporting text fro the course was Mason, R and Rennie, F (2008). E-Learning and Social Networking Handbook - Resources for Higher Education. (Routledge). Sadly Robin Mason died recently and will be much missed.

The first two weeks of the course provided an opportunity for participants to try out some suggested applications - including bloggng tools, flickr, twitter, Diigo, Delicious. The course content was provided through the closed VLE which did raise some real challenges for course tutors and partcipants. One advantage of using the VLE is that it brings (and keeps) everything together - course content, discussions and links out to other sources. We used a tag of elss0609 to try to pull things together but this does rely on everyone understanding the nature of tagging.

Several students found it really difficult to keep track of other students activities and it was challenging being a tutor on this course. We introduced them to some mechanisms for bringing disparate stuff together such as netvibes and pageflakes.

We discussed many issues around identify, ownership and control of technologies, managing leaning in a ditributed environment, immersion and saturation. Course particpants were considering how these tools could help their own social and professional networking as well as how the tools could be used in an educational context.

E Lss0609 Week 2 Summary

View more documents from loumcgill.

The above slides provide a summary of the issues that arose during the first two weeks.

The second two weeks provided an opportunity for particpants to work collaboratively using sharing software of their choice:

• A Wiki (e.g. http://www.pbwiki.com (now renamed PBWorks) or similar) for collaborative documenting and writing
• Facebook (http://www.facebook.com or similar) for networking and sharing/presenting graphics, video
• RSS (using an RSS aggregator of the groups choice) to monitor changes in content.
  See the 'RSS in plain English' video - 3.5 minutes - at http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english
• YouTube (http://www.youtube.com for video sharing.
• Slideshare (http://www.slideshare.net) for sharing powerpoint slides and adding audio
• Google docs (http://docs.google.com/) for collaborative writing

Googlegroups was a poular choice for this. We built the activity around recent evidence from two recent JISC funded studies:

• Learners' Experiences of e-Learning which has just completed its second phase and reports on findings based on research among HE and FE students in the UK
• Learning Literacies for a Digital Age (LLiDA) of students has been looking into what practices support students to learn effectively in a digital age. The report examines current institutional practice to support and develop a range of learner skills/capabilities , including technical/tool literacies, information and media literacies, academic and learning literacies.

The group activity involved designing a learning activity to support learning literacies of their students. These activtives are clearly more about the process than the end product and the particpants experienced the usual difficulties of trying to work across time zones with people they don't know in any other context.

I enjoyed being a tutor on this course - and would recommend it for people who want the space to engage with different social software and the opportunity to reflect on this and discuss with peers. Particpants on the online courses often struggle to manage their time and can find things a bit overwhelming - but the value of experiencing life as a student for a while is always evident. They often say that they really understand the importance of clear guidelines and instructions, good tutor support and the benefit of working with peers.

Another great outcome is the new social network that people establish and another , for some, is a new professional activity of blogging and micro blogging. I look forward to seeing you on twitter, blogger and flickr... Great working with Patsy too...

One more important thing - I always learn a lot every time I tutor on one of these courses as the particpants are very engaging and knowledgable. Thanks to you for sharing your thoughts and reflections.

postcard from poland

Twice a year we usually have to deal with our son getting very upset and having a week or so of sadness, crying and inability to sleep. This is because on his birthday and at christmas his dad sends him a parcel and a letter.

He is torn because, of course, he is really really pleased that his dad still remembers to do this but he is also gutted that his dad apparently doesn't want to engage with him on a regular basis. His dad tells him of all his wonderful travels but all his son sees is that he never comes to see him or offers to take him with him.

We have tried to get his dad to communicate with his son directly by phone, email, letter or, even better, with visits both to us and to him. His father has refused to communicate with me for about 6 years now (which does make things difficult). I have tried emails, letters and even using solicitors to help establish an ongoing relationship with his son. He must still want one in some way as he sends these warm letters twice a year.

After the christmas parcel last year L tried to send him an email with some recent pictures but his dad's work email no longer worked. Presuming that he's moved jobs I was unable to find another email so L sent him a letter telling him his new email address and asked his dad to send him emails. I was hoping that this may be a start to developing enough of a relationship to start visits between them as there would need to be hardly any communication with me.

He would check his email every day to see if his dad had responded. Not a sausage...

Then yesterday - out of the blue - L got a postcard from Poland from his dad.

well thanks a lot mate - L spend most of yesterday in tears and will be upset for several days. He was talking to one of his twitter pals and told them he was having a bad day. When he told her why she said "well at least he has sent something" and L said "I'd rather he didn't".

He doesn't mean that though - he really wants to see his dad.

It is such a shame. I think it's to do with pride and intransigence and maybe even intending to hurt me. I just want to somehow tell him what he is missing by not spending time with this fantastic boy. His dad could teach him so much and as a scientist would really be able to inspire him. He could learn alot from his son too who is so loving.

Of course he also misses all the difficult bits, which his stepdad deals with. Like today.

Well his step dad has taken him out to play football in the park to try to cheer him up. His dad is missing that too!

I hope his dad might read this and understand that his son (deep down) really needs to see him. I also worry that one day he will meet his dad and he will say I stopped him seeing him. But I have a box full of evidence of my attempts to encourage regular contact. A parcel twice a year and a monthly payment into my bank account does not really cut it dad...

standing on the shoulders of giants...

This image is called 'Standing on the shoulders of Giants'. It is my son on the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland but it is accompanying this blog post because of the title and in acknowledgement of how much I have learned from two of my friends and colleagues.

I have waited years for an opportunity to articulate my thoughts on learning literacies in a way that may be heard.

As a librarian in the education field I have always been concerned with information literacy. What used to really drive me potty in the Higher Education institutions I worked in were the barriers I had to break down to get academic teams to engage with this and see it as crucial for their students (whether undergraduates or postgraduates).

I had the occasional coup and got invited onto some course planning meetings to discuss the potential for integrating information literacy within the curricula. The needs of Distance Learning Students was always a useful way in to these discussions. So was broadening the defintion of information literacy (seen by many academic colleagues as being library literacy - how to use the catalogue!) to include plagiarism, critical literacy and digital literacy. I tried to get people to use the term Learning Literacies as a way of not thinking in narror terms... often a lone voice with little or no impact... I eventually moved into elearning work but was still concerned with working towards embedding learning literacies within the curricula.

I was really pleased to recently join two brilliant colleagues to undertake a study into learning literacies for JISC - Helen Beetham and Allison Littlejohn. The intellectual rigour and research experience that they brought to the study was fantastic and I found it a great learning experience. The study has just been completed and is available to download as a pdf document. It is fairly extensive so we have also produced an Executive summary.

• Thriving in the 21st century: Learning Literacies for the Digital Age (LLiDA project). Helen Beetham, Lou McGill, Prof. Allison Littlejohn. June 2009 (pdf)
• Thriving in the 21st century: Learning Literacies for the Digital Age (LLiDA project). Executive Summary, Conclusions and Recommendations. Helen Beetham, Lou McGill, Prof. Allison Littlejohn. June 2009 (pdf)

We have also presented the report on our project wiki which includes the tools and some best practice snapshots.

The study examined the following issues:

• What skills and aptitudes we should be focusing on (current frameworks for learning literacies)
• How these requirements may be changing due to new demands and opportunities
  
• What provision is currently being made at a snapshot of UK HE and FE institutions
• What examples of excellent practice we can identify which point the way towards better provision and more effective learner support

I really enjoyed working with Helen and Allison - the study certainly offered value for money with a series of institutional audits and snapshots of best practice to augment the desk based research.

The report includes some general recommendations as listed below (these recommendations are expanded on in the report....). There are also recommendations around institutional provision and some specific recommendations for JISC.

But look at number 2 and 5 - and it's not just me saying it....

1.Tutors need to be proactive in helping learners to develop learning and digital literacies

2. Learning and digital literacies need to be embedded into the curriculum

3. Learners need to be engaged in their own development

4. Academic staff need to be engaged in rethinking their own knowledge practices

5. Information literacy needs to be broadened to include – or needs to be supplemented with - communication and media literacies

6. Employability needs to be more carefully and critically defined

I hope you enjoy reading the report - do get back to us if you have any queries or comments.

new blog launched

I've decided to keep a separate wedding photography blog so that any potential clients don't have to wade through lots of other stuff.

Go and take a look...

http://ithadtobeyouweddingphotography.blogspot.com/


This now means I have 4 websites and 2 blogs to maintain - perhaps I need to simplify my life; ))

I have recently revamped my websites. I have changed them around so that the wedding photography site is now a non-flash site which is more friendly for search engines. It has also gone from a black to white background which apparently brides prefer (so says someone in a SWPP (Society of Wedding & Portrait Photographers) forum.

Wedding photography website:
www.ithadtobeyou.co.uk

Art photography website:
www.loumcgill.com

Fora anyone interested in the educational consultancy work and wants to see the CV then I'm at www.loumcgill.co.uk

for moira

"Now wakes the hour,
Now sleeps the swan
Behold the dream
The dream is gone”
Pink Floyd

way back in may I was writing a blog post and mentioned that a woman's body had been found in our park - Queens Park in Glasgow. It's a fantastic park and is used in many ways by many people, but it is hard to go there anymore or drive past it without thinking about moira jones.

Moira suffered a terrible attack and died at the hands of a drunken violent man - it's been written about enough - but we need to remember her for her life, her family and for all women who are vulnerable to such behaviour. For any woman, whether or not she has endured violence, it is sickening to read of the pain and terror she suffered.

I feel for her family and her friends, and her partner whose last moments with her involved a row (according to the press). I also feel for those people who heard or witnessed something but never did anything about it. It guts me to think about this but I do understand - our society does not really support any other kind of behaviour.

Once when I was 18 I was being beaten on a busy street on christmas eve by my boyfirend who had been drinking all day - no one helped - no one did anything - so it goes it seems.

this is not OK - if you ever hear a person in distress you must try to help in some way - not to put yourself in danger but at least try to do something. And I say person because it is not just women that suffer abuse like this. I am trying really hard not to go into a rant...

feel like a small voice today but just wanted to say sorry to moira - sorry that no one could help... sorry that so many people were so close but couldn't hear

todays photo is from queens park and is called 'the dream is gone'

good intentions

I attended the Intrallect conference in Edinburgh yesterday - Open Educational Repositories – Share, Improve, Reuse. It was a two day conference but unfortunately I was unable to attend the first day.

I delivered the keynote presentation on the research study report Good ntentions:improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials and later ran a Workshop on open educational resources (OERs) with my friend and colleague Sarah Currier. I had a great day and the buzz throughout the day was great.

I welcomed the opportunity to talk about the Good intentions study as it was released just before the Christmas holidays and didn't have a very high profile. The outcomes of the study were a report and a series of business cases and I've discussed it before in a previous 'sharings' post. The presentation slides are on slideshare and is also available on the intrallect website.

Good Intentions: improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials

View more presentations from loumcgill.

On April 1st this slideshow was featured as a spotlight on the Education page!

It was the first time we had the opportunity to present the study to others (apart from delivering the report to JISC and our group of eminent critical friends) although it was included in the references list of the recent JISC OER call.

It generally received a very positive reaction and the business cases (presented in a series of tables) were noted as potentially very useful. In fact it has been my intention to develop these tables into a usable tool for institutions and managers of repositories to use to help identify which models of sharing (both formal and informal) are most approrpriate - depending on which benefits they hope to achieve. Whilst the tables can be used to do this a user firendly tool could really make this information more accessible. I hope to talk to JISC further about this.

One of the slides identifies our approach to developing the business cases and highlights why we think they are useful to a range of stakeholders - they could:

• be a mechanism to help people decide which business model/s to adopt as appropriate
• offer a process to automatically generate a context specific business case to support funding requests
• encourage an approach which starts with the needs (required benefits) not a preferred model
• emphasize that no one model fits all and often a combination of models may be appropriate depending on the context
• help to prioritise benefits and recognise that by making some business model choices certain benefits are more difficult to achieve
• support a dialogue within institutions by identifying what benefits the institution and wider community already enjoy from existing sharing activities

One of the areas we focussed on in the study was Open Educational Resources (oers) and in the workshop session later in the day several people highlighted their need to encourage academics to share and consider opening up their learning resources. During the discussion we agreed that giving people a choice in how open they wanted to be (ie who they feel comfortable sharing with) was key to encouraging sharing. This was reflected in the research study by several of the models we looked at. It was also suggested by one of the delegates that if we changed the word 'share' to 'publish' that academics may be less reluctant to deposit content in repositories. We also talked about letting students have access to repositories, trying to consider how we can make our contant available in their spaces, and the inportance of services to support and enhance teaching practice through Communities of Practice (CoP) approaches.

Great discussions - thanks to all for your input on the day. The photo to accompany this post is a polaroid shot of a picnic which we shared at a flickr meetup...

digital literacy

Why do I really dislike the term 'digital literacy'.

history
Part of it is due to history - we've been through a whole range of terminology starting with the change of library and information skills and computer skills to information literacy and computer literacy. Whilst these new terms broadened the landscape and tried to articulate that both of these areas were not just about skills with tools but about transferable skills and deeper conceptual learning. We also had (often not connected to these terms) the whole range of academic/study and research literacies which were the province of a whole different group of people- academics.

Then we tried the term 'e-literacy' which seemed fairly sensible considering the increased use of the term e-learning. None of the current debates seem to mention this term - is it due to embarassment now? Many of the people who contributed to the debates around e-literacy (which were just as passionate and covered the same stuff - different tools maybe but the literacies were the same - how to make best use of electronic tools and communication mechanism in life, work and learning) came from the computer and information literacy fields and gradually started involving more academics. Are the people involved in the current debate from different groups - learning technologists and educational developers? Is that why we seem to not be acknowledging the work from the past on this?

Skills...
I always has a BIG problem with the term e-literacy because of the focus on the 'e' and for I dislike the term digital literacy for the emphasis on the 'digital'. I feel that the use of these terms can result in people focussing on the technologies. This can mean that people concentrate on the skills to use these and not the underlying drivers, approaches and mechanisms needed to support development of the various competencies that make up these literacies. The Dearing Report and the whole govt focus on the skills agenda also impacts on this. Hence my concerns - if the govt drivers shape the institutional drivers and the focus is employability then what happens to the need to enhance the capacity of student to learn in a broad sense - to become lifelong learners. The term literacy in itself has always been contentious too and is hated by many. I prefer it to skills for that breadth that it offers us.

These terms are broad descriptions of a range of different literacies - some of which are important in life, some in learning and some in a work/professional context (and many which cross all three). Here is a link to a mind map which looks at some of these.

We have spent a huge amount of time with these definitions and if a government or European body takes up on one and produces a definition we are often led by this.

I am torn about the current digital literacy 'flavour of the month' terminology. It has caught on beyond the educational sector and is referred to in UK govt, documents so at least I should be pleased that it is actually on the agenda in a big way. It gives many of us who have been working in this area (on the outside or in silos) a chance to finally use this to highlight our work and our efforts within institutions. However the latest announcement about changing the primary school curriculum again focuses on tools that may not even be used in 5 years time! I rest my case...

I guess I'm just a bit jaded by terminology debates.

institution-wide strategies and frameworks
What I think is actually more important and does deserve our time and energy is that we look at those component literacies/skills/competencies and think about how we, as educators and as educational instituions, can support learners to develop these to interact, learn, contribute and enhance their lives. At the moment provision from educational institutions is still piecemeal, and many institutions would find it challenging to articulate how they support all of these literacies, but a few HE institutions are starting to take an institution-wide view and are developing their own frameworks. Halleluyah!!!!

Lots more to come about this in the new LLiDA (Learning Literacies for the Digital Age) report - coming very soon!

Big rant over - will be joining digilit debate later today - so likely to come back to this post later. also need to add in refs to support my outragous pontifications too...