Open Educational Repositories – Share, Improve, Reuse

The 2009 IntraLibrary Repository Conference will be held on 25-26 March 2009 in Edinburgh.

Abstracts are being accepted until this Friday, 6th February. The theme this year is on Open Educational Repositories, and papers are being sought in any of the following areas:

What does it mean to be “Open”? – How do you make the resources in your repository easily discoverable? This may be related to interfaces, or search tools, or awareness raising, links to other applications, or anything else that increases the exposure and use of resources in repositories.

Share, improve, reuse – Why do people use resources? What types of resource do they use? How easy do they find it to discover/adapt/reuse resources?

Evidence for sharing resources – Intrallect has recently completed a major project on behalf of JISC “Good intentions: improving the evidence base in support of sharing learning materials” which will be presented during the conference. Other presentations on the evidence for sharing are welcomed.

The registration deadline is 27th February. For more information contact events@intrallect.com

Calling Irish Innovators: The Jenn Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning

If you are or know innovative teaching and learning individuals or teams (this can be either academic or student-based) then consider applying for the inaugural Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.

Jenn Burke was a leading teaching and learning innovator and highly regarded friend of the Irish Learning Technology community who sadly passed away in June 2007. This award has been established by DCU and the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) to recognise and reward innovative practice in Irish teaching and learning and reflects Jenn's vibrancy, energy, creativity and passion for learning.

The award is about innovative ideas put into practice. The person or persons should be nominated on the basis of an innovative idea that is effective in supporting learning. The innovative idea needs to have been put into practice and have worked with a group of learners.

The submission process is novel. No portfolios required for this award! Original, innovative and creative submissions are required. This could be a short video, audio or multi-media submission. A maximum of 10 minutes is allowed for the judges to review each submission. Those shortlisted will be invited to a Dragons' Den-type presentation forum. Sounds like fun!

The winner will receive a specially commissioned pieces of artwork which will reside in the award winner's institution for one year, and a prize that will be retained by the award winner.

More information from the award website, but be warned...the closing date is Friday February 13th. Good luck innovators!

EdTech 2009 - Call for Papers Open

The Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) has announced that their 10th annual educational technology users' conference - EdTech 2009 - will take place at the National College of Ireland (Dublin) on May 21-22.

This year's conference theme is appropriately titled '2020 Vision: Changing Learning Futures Through Technology' to reflect this milestone.

The EdTech conference brings together a range of educational technology researchers and practitioners, and is always an enjoyable and informative occasion. This year's keynote speakers are:

• Richard Katz, Vice-President of EDUCAUSE
• Fiona O'Carroll, Senior Vice-President of HMH (formerly Riverdeep)
• Neil Sclater, Director of Learning Innovation at the Open University

The EdTech 20009 call for papers is now open for practitioner, research and postgraduate strands via the conference submission portal.

Clickers and Peer Discussion in the Classroom

Previously I blogged about a study of the use of clickers, or personal response systems, in the classroom and how a study had shown that students who used clickers earned exam scores that were 10% higher than students who didn't use them.

A new report, published in Science, by M. K. Smith et al, at the University of Colorado, demonstrates that the effectiveness of clickers can be greatly enhanced by having students discuss the questions, and their answers, in peer groups in class.

The study used a class of 350 undergraduate Science students, who were asked an average of 5 clicker questions per class. The students first had to answer a question individually and were then invited to discuss the question with their peers. Following the discussion, they could re-cast their answer. Unsurprisingly, the number of correct answers increased. However, when asked a second, similar question, the average number of correct, individual answers also increased. It appears that students learned from the peer discussion.

Moreover, students reported that "having someone in the group who knows the correct answer is unnecessary". The opportunity for peer discussion allows the group to explore the concepts and arrive at an understanding constructively.

While this doesn't tell us anything new about the power of peer discussion in the classroom, it does suggest how we can enhance the use of personal response systems.

Carbon footprint of that Google Search

Oh no! You've just looked up this blog - think of the carbon footprint of such a rash action! Well a back of the envelope calculation, but one which takes into account the real energy usage of IT server farms and desktop PCs, has revealed that two Google searches cost the same in energy terms as boiling a kettle. The story broke on the Sunday Times yesterday and has made its way across the web over the last couple of days. Aside from the funny little comments many of the journalists have appended to the item, it is sobering to consider just how much energy is being gobbled up by modern lifestyles. Another comparison is that your Second Life avatar uses as much energy in a year as the average Brazilian. Makes you think, doesn't it?

New Year, new technologies

Happy new year to you all. Sorry about the lack of postings here of late, but with the festive period and the high activity in some of our other blogs...

Anyway, MacWorld is well under way now and in jovial and celebratory mood, the Onion has produced this nice little video news item.

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Digital Cre8tors!

For the past two days, some of us in CELT have been attending a "Train the Trainer" session for the Digital Creator Award, facilitated by Ciaran McCormack (IADT),(who is also the the Creative Director of the FIS project) and his colleague, Chris. We covered all aspects of creatively using digital media using devices such as mobile phones, cameras, computers, webcams, etc. It was a fun and engaging workshop, where we all got the chance to create, edit and enhance photos, music, movies and animations. Thanks to Dr. Tony Hall in the Education Department at NUI Galway for the invitation... we'll definitely be hearing more about this in the future!

As one world ends another begins...

Recently we reported on Google's imminent shutdown of its Lively virtual world - a shame since we'd been using it here as a 'virtual common room', particularly for those in a building on campus who lost their actual common room in a refurbishment. Ah well. 

In this multiverse of parallel worlds however, it wasn't long before a new world manifested iteself in cyberspace. Sony's Playstation Home started in Europe last Friday and as a proud (partial, if you count my children!) owner of a PS3, I popped into this new 3D realm. First impressions are good, insofar as the graphics are excellent, particularly in comparison to the constantly re-rezzing Second Life. I was quite impressed with the harbour view appartment with which I was provided. Fairly minimal, but a far cry from the Glasgow Tenement of my early childhood! However, apart from that, there's little here of particular interest yet. Some venues built around the main town square and some impressive streaming video embedded into displays, but all for advertising - surprise, surprise. So the technology is there to make this a very effective world, but in all likelihood it will be used as a shop front for Sony games and media and a place for gamers to chat and swap cheats.

Of course, being proprietary and heavily dependent on the PS3 hardware was always going to be an issue, but the hint at what the platform could be capable of, especially when driven by the powerful  cell processor at the heart of the device, is tantalising, would that Sony and their developers have the creativity and imagination to reach beyond this narrow implementation. Time will tell, I guess,  but without more users, a lower price point and a concerted drive into the broadband media and education areas, my avatar might be confined to watching ads and making funny little dances.

Award winning support for accessibility applications

As reported on the JISC website,  AccessApps has won a prestigious Scottish Software Award. Essentially it is a collection of over 50 Open Source applications that support accessibility and which are run from a simple USB memory key. As the JISC blog puts it:

 Using open source and freeware applications packaged in this way, users can access assistive software in a flexible way without the stigma of using dedicated machines. The suite includes tools to make reading and writing easier and browsing more accessible, anywhere the user happens to be and on any machine.

AccessApps will now be made available across the UK, distributed via the JISC regional centres, but clearly it is international relevance and is a great idea that deserves to be celebrated and provided to students in need of such support.

Online Educa wrap up

Well, the official photographer has uploaded most of his photos but more materials including summaries and video-clips will no doubt emerge in the fullness of time of the successful Online Educa 2009 event in Berlin.  

If you look very closely in the background of some of these shots you will notice my presence - so I was there, hence the travel expenses claim! 

NDLR Symposium

Last Tuesday, 2nd December, I attended the second annual NDLR (National Digital Learning Repository) Symposium. The NDLR is a project involving all HEA funded Higher Education Institutions in Ireland and is now moving from a 4-year pilot phase through a transition phase to a full service. According to the NDLR website:

The NDLR project is establishing a framework to enable development and sharing of digital learning resources between the seven Universities of Ireland and the Institutes of Technology.

The event last week was a celebration of the work being carried out within the communities of practice associated with the NDLR. All the sessions were recorded, and the recordings are all freely available online.

For me, the most interesting talk of the day was from Dr. Ahrash N Bissell, Executive Director, ccLearn, Creative Commons. Ahrash spoke about the ideal of a global pool of educational resources, offered openly to use and re-use. He discussed the legal, technical and social barriers to such a global repository and proposed that Creative Commons can provide support in two out of three of these areas. His full presentation can be viewed online.

Co-incidentally, via Stephen Downes, the Indira Gandhi National Open University, one of the largest Universities in the World, has opened its vast repository of materials. The materials are under copyright to the IGNOU, making it somewhat restrictive, and users must register, although registration is free.

Final report from Online Educa

Phew...marathon end to the conference as I chaired a couple of sessions on the last afternoon. All that and the journey back made it tricky to update the blog, so apologies for the delay. I also, put away the recorder and left the podcasting to the official service this year once it got started. No point in trying to nab many of the same people for interview, even when I did get the chance.

There were lots of interesting conversations taking place about issues around higher education pedagogy and not just the technologies. Indeed, the role of the teacher and expectations of students were key themes. Some interesting comments from participants working in a number of universities that had undertaken local surveys included: (a) whilst most new students have a PC (usually a laptop, with the % ownership in the UK, for example, being 95%) many of them don't plan on carrying it around with them everywhere even when their university provides near-ubiquitous wifi - so there's still a demand for the provision of well-equipped, open access computer labs; (b) whilst many students are well aware of a range of technologies and have been exposed to them in school or in their social lives, that awareness shouldn't be interpreted as meaning high levels of confidence; (c) whilst they have used word-processors and spreadsheets to some extent in their schooling prior to university, presentation software such as PowerPoint which is used extensively at university is not something that many students have actually used before; (d) there are mixed views on  the merits of using social networking software, with most students prefering to keep personal lives quite separate from their formal education.

Anyway, that's a quick summary of the remaining points. The official website will in due course be populated by summaries, photos and other materials, whilst the attention of the organisers will now focus on next year's event!