Twitter in Education

I’ve been using Twitter for quite a few months now and after an initial period of scepticism, reluctance and cynicism, I am now a fully-fledged Twitter convert.

How I use Twitter

Gone are the days of Twittering about ‘eating beans on toast’ or what you’re having for breakfast. Gone too are the days of stalking Stephen Fry and other such celebrity nonsense (in my opinion).

Twitter posts are now a ‘Thought Stream’ – cataloguing and promoting ideas, news and information; sharing links, help and advice.

I use Twitter mainly for work purposes – i.e. Within the e-learning community as a Learning Technologist.

Since joining, my personal network has grown enormously and I am now following and being followed by people throughout the country and around the world – all within the e-learning community.

My knowledge and awareness of new ideas, software, developments and conferences has been opened up. I am discovering new things everyday. Blackboard 9, virtual worlds, cloud computing, teaching tools, mobile learning, new technologies – just a few of the things I have been made more aware of recently.

Here’s some good links to get you all on-board:

Presentation: Twitter in Education

What is this Twitter thing and why should I care?

50 ideas on Using Twitter for Education

Twitter and the new wave of Digital Natives

The Guardian reports on proposals to introduce the study of Twitter, Wikis and blogs into the Primary curriculum. It says:

The proposals would require:

Children to leave primary school familiar with blogging, podcasts, Wikipedia and Twitter as sources of information and forms of communication. They must gain “fluency” in handwriting and keyboard skills, and learn how to use a spellchecker alongside how to spell.

I think this is a great idea, especially as tools such as Twitter are becoming more mainstream and finding their uses in e-education. I still believe touch typing skills are pretty much essential (faster, more productive) although this recent report suggests touch screen technologies will become the norm. But I suppose this is just making the mouse and keyboard redundant.

I just hope that new technologies with in elearning are supported throughout education, not just Primary (ie. FE colleges, HE Universities etc).

Virtual Worlds and Gaming for learning

Virtual World Watch is ‘Tracking activity in UK universities and colleges’. It’s set up through a collaboration of researchers including ‘Silversprite‘ (aka John Kirriemuir) who writes a great blog on Second Life research and using video games for learning. It’s the future.

This interesting article and videoclips show how a future generation are using new technologies for learning.

And more recently, the Nintendogs DS game is being used to teach pet care – in association with The Dogs Trust (and launched by Girls Aloud, naturally).

Cloud computing Vs Personal storage

Cloud computing seems to be the buzzword du jour in the world of technology. Cloud computing is a new concept of computing that uses third party software and storage space provided by companies such as Google or Microsoft, to handle work that would normally be done on your desktop computer.

There’s certainly an interest here at the College to try and utilize this technology and the advantages are numerous: No maintenance, free storage, no software installation, no access restrictions. But while we continue to explore the options of Google Docs and MS Skydrive, there is also a backlash against using this new technology.

This Guardian article has GNU founder Richard Stallman giving his opinion on cloud computing, “It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign.“

It also has Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle saying, “The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do,” he said. “The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

Is cloud computing just a fashionable fad in computing or will it revolutionise the way we use computers?

My main concern is the security of data put in the hands of third party companies, but with an incredible amount of data already out there on personal PCs (emails, bank details) and the increasing gaffs of data security breaches from personal hardware, maybe the ’safe hands’ of Google would be a better idea?

Online Collaborative Meetings blog

I’m maintaining a blog for a work project tracking our research and developments into online collaborative meeting tools.

Read about the project here:

http://ehwlcdtproject1.blogspot.com/

Microsoft’s LCDS

Our e-learning team found and installed Microsoft’s new LCDS application recently (Learning Content Development System). It is a tool that allows you to author your own e-learning course structured with modules and topics and populate it with images, quizzes, interactivities, animations and audio/video.

Once you have created your course, you can publish it to the web or an LMS, as a SCORM ready package. It’s all template based and simple to use.

This would be a great asset for teachers who want to create their own e-learning courses. The only downside is that the software uses Microsoft’s own Silverlight plug-in for a lot of the multimedia elements. I uploaded a .wmv movie file and in order for it to be viewed I had to install Silverlight (without installing this it threw up an error and essentially crashed my course and had to start again from scratch).

From what I can gather, Silverlight is Microsoft’s attempt to halt Adobe’s monopoly on viewing interactive web material which Adobe has had for years with its Flash Player. Sadly, this means that if people want use the LCDS they have to install Silverlight – this might sound simple enough but a nightmare if the LCDS was to be used by College staff for students. Entire IT systems would have be updated with this new plug-in.

Continuing research in Second Life…

I’ve been trying to explore learning in Second Life a bit more with varying results. I visited Learn 4 Life’s offices at Education UK and various UK Colleges and University areas that they have set up. It seems like there’s a big grab for land just to get ‘on the map’ as it were – but it all seems for promotional/marketing purposes. I’ve also tried talking to people there to try and find out more about Second Life and learning but no one really seems keen to talk. There were some people who seemed to be experimenting with Script – they were trying to sit on a box or something. Maybe everyone is still at the experimental stage.

I’ve found some good links though. John Kirriemuir’s Flickr page on UK Universities and Colleges in Second Life is a nice collection of images complete with slurls that you can jump to in Second Life. I discovered John Kirriemuir after reading an article by him on games in education. He keeps an interesting blog about his life living on a remote island in the Outer Hebrides. Read all about his own research into Second Life here.

On the other hand…

…despite not being sure of Second Life as a learning tool, I found this e-learning company up in Sunderland that specialises in games based simulations using an interactive 3D environment similar to SL and other first-person games. Here, training and learning is provided for sectors such as Pharmaceuticals and Health and Safety. There’s a nice little video that gives a demo of what they do.

Second Life for learning

Our team had a quick look at Second Life yesterday. There’s been a lot of speculation recently that this could be the future of online learning. It was fun getting to grips with the ’strange, new world’ and it’s quirky features but it seemed a bit frustrating trying to communicate with random people and engaging in conversation. You would need to spend a lot of time using it to explore what you can do and undertand it’s potential. And if it takes that much effort then I think a lot of people will just not bother.

My main concern is the amount of people using Second Life for ill-use. I’ve heard some pretty horrible things can or could take place in there. Pretty worrying really, especially for vunerable young people (although there is Teen Second Life available).

Although Second Life holds obvious value for marketing and advertising, I’m still sceptical of the true learning potential it can offer (apart from social networking) but it’s early days yet.

Top 100 tools for e-learning

This link at the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies lists the top 100 tools for learning. It’s compiled of tools people listed for personal learning and for creating learning solutions.

It’s interesting to see that nearly all the tools in the top 10 are all available for free.