The History of the Internet

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

"History of the Internet" is an animated documentary explaining the inventions from time-sharing to filesharing, from Arpanet to Internet.

New videos show how researchers use advanced technology

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK has been funding a programme to look at exploring tools needed by researchers to do their research, interact with other researchers (who may come from different disciplines, institutions or even countries) and to make use of available resources and technical infrastructures. They call this collection of tools "Virtual Research Environments" or VREs.

Recently, JISC have begun to put some very useful videos on YouTube describing some of the projects that come under this programme. Four particular projects in phase two of this research programme include the following:

Collaborative Research Events on the Web (CREW): |Youtube video|Website|
myExperiment - a social networking site for scientists. |Youtube video|Website|
Study of Documents and Manuscripts |Youtube video|Website|
Virtual Environments for Research in Archaeology |Youtube video|Website|

Explore further on the JISC website to find out how Virtual Research Environments (VREs) can help researchers in all disciplines manage the increasingly complex range of tasks involved in carrying out research.

Augmented Reality - The Future of Education Technology

Augmented reality looks at augmenting the real-world with virtual reality in real time. It's a been around for a long time (the term first coined in 1990), and has become popularised in the public mind by the film Minority Report (2002). More recently, some interesting projects have been looking at mobile phone applications as avenues for new interest and research.

This video here illustrates an idea how augmenented reality could positvely work in an educational context. For me, it identifies the importance of reading - central to student learning - and paper as a tool to support it. The main character uses the individual reflective "alone" time to prompt ideas, that are then explored and expanded through digital interactions as he moves through the world. A simple spark of an idea unleases a curiosity that the student can then explore in an augmented way, on paper and his experience in world. The creator is Sorin Voicu, from the Valle Giulia faculty of Architecture, University of Rome, in Italy.

Check out also MIT's Adaptable Bus stop as part of their SENSEable City Laboratory,to see some other potentially transformative ideas in this space.

Oepncast expands

UC Berkeley has had a proud tradition of webcasting lectures, interviews and other content and we here in Galway have long been fans of their work which preceded the growth of youTube and iTunes. Now they have received funding to develop the OpenCast Matterhorn platform for lecture capture and video content sharing with an intended release sometime in 2010. If all goes to plan this will provide an Open Source alternative to the commercial solutions for lecture capture, although much of the development and sales effort from such companies in recent times has focused on providing resilient, simple, all-in-one hardware solutions and that might well still be an issue. Nonetheless, Matterhorn sounds really exciting and we are pleased to be part of its widening community. You can learn more from this overview and by visiting the project website.

Libraries of the future?

JISC has just released its video programe on "Library of the future". Depending on your perspective on these things it is either (a) inspiring and exciting; (b) depressing; (c) stating the obvious. However, it is worth watching and thinking about.

http://www.youtube.com/jiscmedia

The Online Student Experience

Following the tweets from the Blackboard World 09 conference taking place in Washington DC over the last few days, I came across this video. I don't think it represents the experience of the students involved in the various online and blended programmes offered at NUI Galway.

However, it does demonstrate very effectively that technology in itself will not improve the student experience.

Britain goes Open

JISC, the Higher Education Academy and England's Funding Council (HEFCE) today launched the new Open Educational Resources porgramme. The programme, which builds on earlier work and combines initiatives such as Jorum, CETIS and InfoNet, has ambitious but achievable aims.

"The programme will make the equivalent of 5,000 undergraduate modules of existing learning resources freely available online. Projects will be working towards being able to sustainably release a much larger pool of resources over a longer period.

The funded projects will run for 12 months and will end on 30 April 2010."

More info is available on JISCs website.

EdTech 2009 Conference Review

We all had a great 10th anniversary EdTech conference experience at the National College of Ireland on May 20-22. The programme was action-packed with 50 papers presented by Irish and international researchers and practitioners around the theme '2020 Vision: Changing Learning Futures Through Technology'.

Keynote speakers included Niall Sclater of the Open University; Theresa Hagan of HMH; and Richard Katz, Vice President of Educause. A really interesting feature of the conference was the use of Twitter, especially in the closing panel session where conference Tweets were visible throughout the open floor discussion.
Other highlights included the pre-conference launch of the NCI NELL usability lab by Leo Casey, and the presentation of inaugural Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning to the TCD outreach programme 'A Bridge to College'.

NUIG had a high profile presence at the conference with 5 practitioner and 1 research papers featuring in the programme. Well done Sinead Hahessey, Michael Campion, Mary Dempsey and Elaine Wallace for flying the flag for NUIG.

CELT staff were highly involved in the organisation of the conference with Michelle Tooher sitting on the ILTA Working Group, while Fiona Concannon and Paul Gormley served on the EdTech 2009 Organising Committee. I was also delighted to be voted in as the Chair of the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) for the forthcoming year.

...and Sharon Flynn got voted the Twit of the conference - for non-Twitterers, this is a compliment!

Broadcasting the Volvo Ocean Race

Just back from a fascinating lecture on "Broadcasting the Volvo Ocean Race' in the race village, where media crew members Anton Paz (TELFONICA BLACK), Gustav Morin (ERICCSSON 3) and Rick Deppe (PUMA) spoke of their experiences filming using high-definition television, on their respective boats. Climbing up the mast, getting hit at 30 knots by waves, and sitting on the bow crashing up and down were all in a day's work. All the while, these media crew members kept a plan or theme in mind and looked for stories and action to document on film or to blog and podcast. Then, below deck, it was time for digitising, compressing, editing and then uploading via the Inmarsat system via satellite, followed by a few snatched hours sleep before doing it all again. This all took place under conditions of keeping electricity usage low (running off disel on these weight conscious boats) and stopping cables and wires from corroding with salty water. Heroic tales!

Dr. Seán Crosson from the Huston School of Film welcomed this rare opportunity to meet these "embedded journalists", as part of the Huston School's two day symposium on Representing Sport. Each of the boats are fitted with five fixed cameras and a delay camera, which is activated by a button to record 2 minutes back and six minutes forward- useful for things that go bump unexpectedly.

One of the biggest challenges noted (aside from sailing around the world at breakneck speeds) was the condensation that builds inside the housing for the HDTV cameras. Gustav spoke of the frustration at lining up a good shot, and then having to stop and somehow open the waterproof housing to clear the condensation and then begin again. Solid state cameras might offer some longer term solutions to the problem, but are unlikely to be as reliable as the DV tapes for the adventure this time around.

You can watch some of the footage on http://www.volvooceanrace.tv/. The replacing of the PUMA rudder mid-Atlantic by Rick Deppe won a media award for the Boston-Galway leg of the race.

Marcus Hutinchson, the race communications director, spoke about the potential to develop a more pedagogic and educational approach to the race, with recognising the value in linkages for learning between stop-over cities for a younger audience. To date, however, the videos, the race viewer (my favourite!), the online game, the regular updates, the weekly TV broadcast, have all combined to give spectators an unprecedented insight into ocean racing. Congrats to all the media production people involved!

Lindsay Jordan: Blogging with Students...how and why

We came across this lovely video yesterday from Lindsay Jordan, educational developer at the University of Bath. Linday's blog is promising an accompanying paper soon.

Learning Technologies Projects

I spent a very pleasant evening yesterday listening to the presentations being given by our students on the Learning Technologies module of our Postgraduate Diploma in Academic Practice. The students are all academic staff members, with busy teaching and administrative workloads, and we have spent the last number of months looking at the use of various technologies in teaching and learning. The project was to consider the use of a technology in their own context. Since each student started the module with a different level of competence in using technologies, the aim of the project was to push each individual beyond their comfort zone.

So, yesterday evening we had a wonderful range of technology use. Projects included:

• Social Networks: using Ning to support Irish language learning; using grou.ps in project work in Botany to promote and support peer-learning; using Blackboard tools to support a research group in Microbiology.
• Video: a Microbiology lecturer has created some short videos to demonstrate skills in the laboratory; a lecturer in Occupational Therapy recorded in a nursing home, in association with the HSE, to create self-instructional videos showing the correct use of wheelchairs.
• Second Life: we were given a fantastic overview of Second Life and shown plans for how students of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship will have projects based in the virtual world in the next academic year.
• Reflective Logs: students of Speech and Language Therapy will, in future, submit their reflective logs using blogging tools on Blackboard instead of the current practice where they have to travel to the campus to submit paper based versions.
• Blended Learning: although she couldn't be there, one lecturer from Nursing recorded her presentation on lessons learned from moving to a blended learning environment, using a participatory group narrative.

It is great to see how each of these students has moved on and really embedded the use of their chosen technology in their teaching practice. I'm looking forward to the project reports, which are due to be submitted at the end of next week.

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.