Today it was Easter Tuesday and we beat the weather and managed a stroll along the coastal path from Mumbles Pier to Langland Bay. Here’s a view along the path towards the coastguard station at Bracelet Bay. More photos on Flickr.
Thanks for the link to Maria's pre-print here, Chris. It started me on a journey that linked back to gaming. She references Seth Priebatsch's Game Layer TED talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_top_of_the_world.html) I found a link in a recent comment there to a Game Mechanics Wiki that seems largely unfinished and very promising. http://gamification.org/wiki/Gamification_Encyclopedia
In a report in this week’s Technology Guardian (March 13, 2008), Tim Anderson discusses Microsoft’s announcement that Internet Explorer (IE) 8 will be standards compliant by default after all. This is a reversal of its previous position which was that it would be IE 7 compliant by default to avoid “breaking the net”. (To become standards compliant, web authors would have to set a tag in their code: this is known as Version Targetting and was seen by some Web Standards Advocates as a minor threat while others were less sanguine.) Whether the turn around is a result of lobbying by the web standards community, or whether it’s a result of a general policy of “support for industry standards and data portability.” is arguable, but the decision seems to be a victory for web standards – at least up to a point. Microsoft’s concentration on its rich web application framework Silverlight seems to be deflecting support away from the emerging ECMAScript 4 standard. So the CSS headaches may have gone away with IE 8, but cross-browser JavaScript may still be some way away!¶
People come into a course such as PLENK with differing degrees of knowledge and/or background. Your involvement with the course showed that you already had a high level of both. The questions you posed along the way and your insights certainly added to my learning in the course. I'm glad you have been there. Adding to the learning process for others is part of the process, and as with any learning, at some stage, one shifts from becoming mainly a learner to becoming mainly a teacher. Thank you:-)
Hi Chris - I'm not sure what I learned either - but then I haven't been that active in the course - certainly not as active as you. I don't think I will know what I have learned until I have tried out some of the ideas in practice, which I hope to do soon. The two areas that I want to focus on are learner autonomy and effective information management - for me and for the students I work with and am currently working about how to build this into the courses I work on - but for now I'm going to have a break from the computer :-) Jenny
Thanks to all who commented that you learned from me. Most gratifying. I think I will miss this community! I just wonder if I'll be back for the next MOOC. I think that I did learn that community is important but I'm not convinced that completely open learning environments are that suitable for learners. Some scaffolding is needed.
Hey Meerkat, I know I have thanked you a number of times and in a variety of forums, but I'll say it again- thank you for your enthusiasm, your respect for other learners, your professional generosity and your personal integrity. I do hope you'll be back for another MOOC should there be one. But it saddens me that you're in a deflated mood at the moment. Perhaps I can use an analogy which may be of some help- I was involved for some time in a telephone counselling organisation in Sydney called Lifeline. We fielded calls from those generally in a state of emotional distress for a variety of reasons. I had been supported by friends in the past and I wanted to give something back. I found that I gave so much of myself in an endeavour to give strength to others that I had nothing left in the well for myself and so selfishly, I quit. Perhaps it's this transitory state that you're experiencing now - you've given so much and now it's time for you to recharge your batteries. But never underestimate or devalue the positive impact you've had on so many. I agree with you completely with respect to the scaffolding issue. Scaffolds are required to support the learning process. Never assume expertise, particularly in non ftf interaction. If the scaffolds exist, it is up to the learner to either use them or elect to 'swim without water wings'. If I were to have the opportunity to MOOC again, I would establish a help file if there was none other available. I guess it comes from teaching fledgling learners for so many years ! All the best Chris - maintain that wonderful enthusiasm for learning and for sharing with others, I'm just saddened by the fact that you seem to have given more than you think you've gained. But then again, how many other people have had such a positive impact on such a diverse group of experienced learners.
Chris, your disire for mediated collaboration and co creation is to huge. You are right, you seem to have given more than you think you've gained. But you are the knowledgeable participant, to whom all the questionnaires refer to. If you wouldn't have been so active, a lot of knowledge about tools, their usage and their creative implementation simply would not exist. Adding to the course for others like you did is immense, the facilitators will neither congratulate nor fondle you for your great contributions. They are only interested in data - you are in human connection. We thank you. Aren't our comments more valuable to you? Cheer up Eva
Thanks for your kind words Susan. I'm weeping here! You're probably right that I may have used the experience as a way to share my knowledge rather than as a learning experience. However, I did learn a few things about how (or if) I'd do things differently with my own students. Paradoxically, I've reached the conclusion that a VLE (or LMS) -- used well of course -- would be a bigger rather than a smaller part of my practice going forward. Thanks also for the nickname and your support and encouragement. I hope we can stay in touch. Chris
Eva thanks, I'm genuinely moved to find that I've had such a positive affect on people. I've had responses and mentions from Stephen, George and Rita (who I know anyway -- she used to work at Swansea) so I've had my fragile ego boosted a little. I hope this course has been more than data gathering ... there are a group of people, the people who've visited and taken to comment here in particular. I hope that we'll be able to Keep in touch! Chris Chris
I've also gained a lot more respect for a well designed LMS, 'well designed' being the most important factor. And yes, I anticipate keeping in touch. Maybe I'm the one to drag you screaming and kicking into SL. Just out of curiosity, why doesn't my avatar show up here in my posts when I've enabled it in my Google settings ? My favoured anonymous avatar is actually a meerkat.
Michael Kölling is a Senior Lecturer in Computing at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He was one of the the key developers of the BlueJ programming environment and is one of the authors of Objects First with Java. His demonstration to folks at Google HQ of Greenfoot , his new Java programming environment for young learners, has just been published on YouTube. By providing a programming environment based on graphical objects that move in artificial worlds, Kölling hopes to make programming compelling to high-school-age kids and thereby reverse the current UK trend of students thinking that ICT is only about office programs and spreadsheets (and thereby convincing most of them that computing is boring). These are excellent aims, and Greenfoot is an excellent programming environment and the video is excellent and inspiring presentation by one of my heroes.
It’s worth noting that Greenfoot, and its bigger brother BlueJ, support the Java programming language. This is a potential weakness of the approach in that, as Kölling himself admits, the Java programming language may not be suitable for students younger than 14 or 15 (see also an earlier post on this topic).
The video is available on YouTube in the googletechtalks channel. Enjoy!
In another experiment in Web 2.0 for learning technologies I recorded a soundtrack for a presentation that I make annually to my first, second and final year students, and put it up on Slideshare. This wonderful site is a social sharing site for PowerPoint files. It allows the usual social networking features. So you can upload a PowerPoint presentation, tag it, share it, and comment on others. You can also link it to an MP3 track, and there’s an easy to use tool for synchronizing the audio track to the slides.
Because I tend to use slides that, because of copyright, may not be publishable in this way and my recorded lectures are recorded and published as podcasts which have to be listened to with a copy of the downloads slides. However, Slideshare has real potential as an alternative presentation medium. It certainly compares favourably with to the expensive desktop tools that do the same sort of thing. It’s also really easy, which desktop tools often aren’t!
Here’s the presentation. Leave your comments here or on the Slideshare site.
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