do educational institutions have a future?

This is a post about one of the sessions in the JISC Innovating Learning 2009 Online Conference.

We wanted to have a session which stimulated discussion around some of the technological, social and organisational issues that are likely to affect the future learner, teacher and institutions. So we found three people to help us with this task. Martin Weller, Graham Attwell and Rob Howe have each taken on the task of producing a short video to offer us a selection of possible futures. do educational institutions have a future?

Martin has looked at this from the angle of the academic/scholar and engaged in a conversation with some of his future selves. I wont spoil the pleasure of watching it by describing any more but the beardyness seems to have caught a few people's imagination. Some people have also responded to his blog post and video by making their own 'conversation with a future self'. This could be catching - I will try to list these at the foot of this blog post in an attempt to pull them together.

Rob Howe has offered us a range of futures through the eyes of four learners and more beards... Personally I really love the last one with the TRIPE invention which involves tingling brains and Tesco's. He also links us to the JISC funded Learner Experience work too...

Graham Attwell offers two starkly contrasting visions of how institutions will cope with the various economic, polictical and technological drivers. From the abolition of JISC and courses costing 20k a year to a federated open innovation approach. Personally I love the 'aesthetics of bots sport' course.

John Traxler Director of the Learning Lab and Professor of Mobile Learning at the University of Wolverhamptonfrom will be facilitating the discussion during the conference who brings a wealth of experience as both an online and face to face facilitator.

I look forward to the discussion around this session and would encourage people to register with the conference to ensure that you don't miss it.

In fact we will be offering free spaces to the best three responses tagged with jiscel09 so get your beards ready and show us your future vision...

Inspired by the videos Grainne Conole has set up a very popular cloud on the OU Cloudworks site.

See also
Alan Cann, Leicester University
Very apt Halloween special vision of the future

Gill Clough, Open University
Interview with future self envisions a pink future; )

Short film for CLT's 2009 away-day. Asked to imagine the state of e-learning in the year 2020... Devised by and starring Jane Secker, Steve Bond & Athina Chatzigavriil

Innovating e-Learning 2009

Innovating e-Learning 2009 - Thriving, not just surviving

Innovating e-Learning 2009, the fourth JISC online conference, takes place on 24-27 November 2009.

Now a major event in the calendar of conferences on learning, teaching and technology, Innovating e-Learning focuses this year on the theme of Thriving, not just Surviving. The programme reflects the challenges facing further and higher education institutions in the 21st century and features leading thinkers, broadcasters and academics, such as Charles Leadbeater, Nigel Paine, Helen Beetham, Rhona Sharpe (Oxford Brookes University), Peter Bradwell, (Demos).

The 2009 conference has two themes:
Finding the way, which focuses on focuses on exploring guiding principles for technology-enhanced learning and teaching, and
Meeting the challenge, which explores the integration of technology-mediated practice under specific agendas such as meeting the needs of employers, developing sustainable and external-facing strategies for curriculum development and engaging stakeholders in the design of learning spaces.

Delegates from the UK meet in the asynchronous conference environment with colleagues from overseas, making this a particularly vibrant and accessible way to attend a conference. Last year’s delegate list topped 400 and included representatives from 14 countries.

New this year is the Have-a- Go area, where delegates can try out innovative new technologies demonstrated by JISC services, projects and other agencies. Representatives from the JISC RSCs are set to provide guided tours in Second Life, and James Clay (Gloucestershire College) returns by popular demand to take up the role of conference blogger.

Innovating e-Learning 2009 takes place in an asynchronous virtual environment which can be accessed at a time and place that suits you. The keynotes, however, are delivered live in Elluminate, a collaborative web conferencing platform.

For booking and further information, visit www.jisc.ac.uk/elpconference09

Delegate fee: £50 per delegate

word press madness

I've been having a go with wordpress as an alternative blogging mechanism and have transferred the wedding photography blog to one which uses a photo blogging template.

http://weddingphotography-glasgow.com/blog/

I'm also working on some other sites as I've just bought a few domain names. I'll post these soon. Most exciting too is a new portrait photography website as we've decided to move into that area of work too. It's in devenlopment - haven't even got the price list in yet...

http://www.loumcgill.com/portraits

Here is one of my current favourites of the boy...

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 front 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.

from prezi.com

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'