Higher Education in a Web 2.0 World

Today's THE article Internet is fostering a 'want it now' culture among students reports on the findings of the Committee of Inquiry into the Changing Learner Experience. This committee has been investigating the impact of Web 2.0 tools on teaching and learning in higher education. The final report is to be published next week.

The findings, as reported in the THE, are not particularly surprising.

• The use of Web 2.0 tools in teaching and learning is very patchy, and mainly driven by enthusiastic individuals. However, they can be used very effectively to support collaboration and reflection in students groups.
• The lack of information literacy skills, and critical assessment of resources in particular, is a problem.
• There is a divide between those staff who like to experiment with Web 2.0 tools, and those who are reluctant to engage at all with them.
• Students like traditional, face-to-face interaction.

My own opinion is: it's not the tools that are the problem, or the solution. When used well, they can be very effective. Poor use can promote shallow learning. The lack of information literacy skills is a problem, whether you use Web 2.0 tools or not.

I'll look forward to reading the report of the committee, which will be published on 12th May.

re-Kindle-ing the flame of learning

Amazon's new version of its e-book reader, the Kindle DX was launched officially today. With a larger screen size, the device is also being aimed at the student market with deals being done to provide popular textbooks in electronic format and a number of pilot programmes running in various US universities. With a price of just under $500 however, it might be a little costly for most students.

In previous pilot studies of ebooks in university contexts, one of the key aspects of feedback from student users was the need to provide some means of annotating and commenting on readings, something students often do with their texts or papers that they are reading. No sign that the Kindle has addressed that issue however, but perhaps gradually we're moving towards the device that we really want.

The Future Internet: Web 3.0

The future of the web?

Read more...

Novelist Pens First Book on Smart Phone

This is an amazing story about author Peter V. Brett who has published his first fantasy novel which was written almost entirely on his HP iPaq phone, typing with his thumbs! He reckons about 60% of the novel was written using the smartphone, sometimes on the train to work, in the queue for the bank, or sometimes just sitting in the park. He doesn't like using a laptop!

If Mr Brett did indeed scribe 100,000 words of his novel using his smartphone, does this mean that students can be expected to write essays, reports etc using similar technologies while commuting home at the weekends?

Thanks to @TechCrunch on Twitter for the pointer to the story.

Any book, whenever you want it, freshly printed.

Last year we blogged about the Espresso Book Machine that was unleashed in the US, finding its way into college (and other) bookstores. Now the first has arrived in the UK and is printing on demand in Blackwell's as reported in the Guardian. Purchasers simply select the book of their choice and wait a few minutes for it to be printed and bound.  One on our campus might help perk up the local bookstore - how about it? It only costs £175,000 after all.

Flickr data tracks tourism

Retweeted from New Scientist magazine (@newscientist) : David Crandall at Cornell and colleagues have exploited the increasing use of geotags on (35 million) images submitted to Flickr to map out the 'tourism hotspots' of the world in an example of the sorts of large scale data analysis that can now be performed using social networking and 'web 2.0' tools. The original paper is available here.

68% of Facebook users score lower grade-point average!

Hmmm..these are the kind of statistics that newspapers love to expound but which are pretty meaningless. Cause or effect? Do people who aren't so great at studying use Facebook too much or does using Facebook too much affect your grades? What percentage of those who 'used' alcohol have lower grade-point average, or those who watched a lot of TV, or read too much, or work too much or....still maybe there's something in it...but isn't Facebook so last-year anyway?

Debating and deliberation tool

Debategraph is a truly fascinating new approach to visually representing and structuring debates about key issues in contemporary society. An interative, multi-layered 'mind map' type tool it also has similarities with a range of other resources online but is implemented in such a neat and elegant way that it is sure to be a valued and much-used resource by organisations and, from our particular perspective, students. ReTweeted from numerous sources....

Try it out in this example.

Flutter vs Twitter

Nano-blogging anyone? A mockumentary about a company that wants to take microblogging to the next level.

Digital Cre8or Day - Part 2

As a follow-up/refresher, Tony Hall, Kevin Davison and Jim Lenaghan organised a 'Digital Cre8or Day' for Tuesday April 7th in the AiPLE Room, School of Education at NUI Galway. The theme of the day was 'Digital Storytelling', and offered an opportunity to revisit the skills of the December session in developing a digital narrative using video, animation etc.

Kevin gave an illuminating introduction, pointing to some international examples where the storytelling process has had a positive effect. Firstly, in New Zealand, within a project called Photovoice, it has been used to elicit stories of youth groups. Secondly, Kevin also discussed an example of the Canadian film, Atanarjuat, produced by a small community of now expert filmakers and actors in Inuktitut. These were just two of the numerous examples presented.

The School of Education at NUI Galway, also have a youtube channel set up with examples of their students work in developing multimedia narratives... One example is Fred's Volcano Adventure, but no doubt more will appear in this space soon.

The day's event enabled us to get stuck into i Can Animate, iMovie and Garageband to look at storyboarding, shooting and editing of short stop frame animations, with a view to considering it's adoption in educational contexts. Some of us in CELT had the opportunity to attend- many thanks for the invitation!

Keith Loutit Photography/Flick Book

ReTweeted from Michael Wesch's twitter feed, Keith Loutit's videos really are worth watching. By using time-lapse photography of high-definition stills edited into a movie, you get a really strange effect and its hard to tell these are real people and vehicles and not toys!!

http://vimeo.com/3156959

DrupalCamp Galway '09

Just finished a second day at DrupalCamp Galway 09... what an amazing event! Two days of intensive learning, work and a lot of fun! Getting the chance to work with a team of coders, template designers, graphic artists and the Galway based charity, Zikomo, was truly amazing. In the space of one single day, an incredible Drupal site for Zikomo has been developed from scratch which they will now use to communicate about their ongoing projects in Malawi, and that fieldworkers can update with developments and events as they arise.

Of course, I should mention our rival group Rural Science Association who also had a hardworking team, racing the clock to get a similar set of requirements met- proving what is possible when a very brainy group of web developers get together for fun!

Also in attendance was Addison Berry from Lullabot who produce great "how to" videos and documentation on using Drupal, which is invaluable to newbies to this open source CMS.

Thanks to Stella Power, Alan Burke, Heather James, and Stephane Corlosquet for organising a fantastic event- and to the sixty people who showed up to make it happen!