So I've been blogging for the last few years with reasonable regularity, and mainly blog for myself - clarifying my own thoughts and making meaning of various things. Whenever possible I also share whatever I can, whether that's data I've gathered or useful references for a particular topic.I've never really blogged with the aim of being nominated for awards, as I think that can detract from the purpose of the blog - I wonder if the blog then takes on a hidden aim. Would that make it almost dishonest?I was pleased to be nominated in the top 100 UK educational blogs a while back and admit to have kept an eye of the list from eLearning Feeds after my inclusion there, however this last one is partly based on the amount/frequency of posts as well as social traction, etc. So it becomes easy to make pretty crappy posts with the aim of satisfying their algorithms - something I'm not doing...Having said that, when people in the edtech community go out of their way to nominate you/your blog for an award it's a really rewarding feeling - that kind of peer acceptance (for want of a better word) and the sense that someone has found something I've shared of interest or useful. [Not that I'm always getting nominated for awards mind...]Anyhow, I've recently been nominated in the the Edublogs award (#eddies14) in the category of Best Ed Tech / Resource Sharing Blog which I'm quite proud of. I had canvassed people previously to vote for me, but that might sound a little hypocritical after what I have just said so I won't be doing that again. It's an absolute bonus that I've been nominated in the first place and I'm honoured.If you want to take a look, head over the edublog award pages - you might find some new blogs you haven't come across previously. My category is available here...Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

After taking a few weeks off to look after my fresh new baby, I'm back to facilitating #LTHEchat. This week's chat focussed on Games and Learning in HE and we were lucky to have the guest appearance of Dr. Nicola Whitton from MMU.I thought her line of questioning was probably the best of all of the chats thus far - really interesting and thought-provoking questions:Q1: Have you ever used a game - traditional or digital - in the classroom? What worked well? What bombed? #LTHEchatQ2: What reservations (if any) do you have about the idea of games for learning in Higher Education? #LTHEchatQ3: Gamification uses game techniques - typically points, quests, badges, leaderboards. Is it appropriate in HE? #LTHEchatQ4: How can we get over the media perceptions of gamers - violent, solitary, addictive - to make games acceptable in for learning? #LTHEchatQ5: Stealth learning is the idea that an activity can help people learn without being aware of it. Does this work in HE? #LTHEchatQ6: What do you feel about stealth assessment? #LTHEchat There is a storify of the chat available here. And of course here are a couple of visuals of the network throughout the chat. Although Nicola was hectic in facilitating the chats, this chat wasn't actually as busy as some other chats - we were missing a couple of proven big hitters from previous chats though, notably @s_j_lancaster. It was lovely to see +Maha Bali getting involved.Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

Join our Forest of Technology: Promote and Enhance Literacy with Tech!.

CC BY -  flickr photo by kevin dooleyHaving just read @Bali_Maha 's reflective post on the 'Year of Hyperconnecting' I am now in a  reflecting mood myself - it has that positive infectious kind of vibe to it so if you're tired and just looking forward to the Christmas break, head over and smile.As most bloggers do these days, I quite like to post an end of year reflection on all things and this shall be no different. It's actually been nice to go back to my reflective post from last year.It's been a great year for me personally and professionally. I achieved some of the things I'd set out to do in last year's post but not everything happened, such as any involvement with the MOOCs at Liverpool, but that's ok.In January we finally booking our wedding. In Vegas. In February Mrs R got pregnant (I hate it when people say 'we' got pregnant. My body and hormones didn't change at all FYI). In August we got married. In November, just 3 weeks ago today, Max was born and is an absolute gem. Immediately I can sense my perspectives and values are changing.In the midst of my hectic and exciting personal life, I worked to get a couple of modules online, one of which is now complete and went great, as well as working on some staff development sessions (an area I think lacks a perfect solution). I presented at my old haunt #solstice2014 in the summer. I was invited to keynote the eAssessment Scotland conference in September (a couple of days after returning from Vegas) and also presented at #ALTC in the same week. Building relationships at these events were definitely the highlights. I've officially began my PhD (Social networking in Meded) and have plans for focus groups to continue my work on hygiene factors for VLE minimum standards. I also sit on lots of working groups as a Faculty TEL rep, as well as the University Senate (yes, check me out!). This all helped in my promotion at Liverpool which has just been confirmed. Woop.I've been busy all year collaborating with @suebecks, @chrissinerantzi and @drdjwalker on initiatives like #byod4l and #lthechat as well as with @hopkinsdavid on the #edtechbook. I'm a new Deputy Editor for the ALT Newsletter and have/am publishing some research in RiLT, etc. These have all been great opportunities to build lasting relationships with colleague from across the globe. As I've blogged previously, there is real value in social networking and it has certainly helped me in my day-to-day roles and career progression to date. Along with the people I've mentioned above, there are also too many people to mention, like @hallymk1, @sheilamacneil, @dkernohan, @ambrouk, @s_j_lancaster, @bali_maha, @boyledsweetie, @mark_power to name but a few.At Liverpool, VLE minimum standards, EMA, and Lecture Capture have been a key focus as part of the TEL strategy and will continue to be a large focus next year. I'm also wondering how I might have a more direct impact on the student experience. I'm thinking more social media sessions, app swap breakfasts (which I wanted to do this year) and so on.I am interested in how the MOOC landscape might evolve over the next year, and @dkernohan has made some interesting insights in his recent '9 things to watch out for in 2015' post. It would certainly be interesting if, as he predicts, a major MOOC platform will close or move away from their current model. I wonder how this might impact on the many Universities engaging in MOOCs currently? I also wonder to what extent VCs and senior management see MOOCs 'as TEL' and TEL 'as MOOCs'. If their understanding of TEL is limited to just MOOCs, and then MOOCs fail, what will that mean for local investment and support for real TEL initiatives? I think this hangs precariously through 2015. For students though, I continue to believe they are interested in tech implementations that are not really innovative. They want support and convenience consistently across their studies and they have an expectation that technology can/will play a part here. I think we are still some way off real innovation across the board (which feels strange as I'm supposed to be all positive about this type of stuff).Anyway enough for now. Enjoy Christmas y'all.Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

        View image | gettyimages.com       How do we organize our Curriculum Frameworks to help students build their knowledge and become creative problem solvers in the 21st Century, and will it be any different in 2015 than it was in 2014, or 1984? How we answer this question will ultimately […]

The 8th, and final chat this year, was guest-led by Dr Alison James on the topic of Engaging the Imagination.I think the numbers have dipped as we approach Christmas - our very own @chrissinerantzi at one point thought she might not make it due to the festive activities. Needlesstosay she did and the discussion was still very vibrant around a topic that I admit was a little out of my normal train of thought.The questions for the tweet chat were as followsWho or what fires your teaching imagination? #LTHEchatHow do you nurture student imagining? #LTHEchatAre there good examples of imaginative pedagogies? #LTHEchatHow do you counter things which kill the imagination? #LTHEchatWhat risks come with imagining? #LTHEchatHow can we get better at imagining? #LTHEchatA storify of the tweet chat is available at this link and you can access an interactive version of the network diagrams via this link.What seems apparent in comparison to previous weeks, is that although the numbers of tweets/nodes are fewer this week, there is more of an even distribution of engagement across the community. Typically we see a few big hitters, and lots of very small hitters, and some in between. I think this week is a little more balanced with a good number of incoming and outgoing edges between nodes. As such the betweenness centrality isn't as great for nodes like @chrissinerantzi, @alisonrjames and @annakwood.Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 19,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many […]

  It takes a lot of gumption to believe that we have the ability to make the future what we want. It takes even more nerve to set out to strive to prepare students for how to deal with it - and in innovative ways nonetheless. I think it starts with the recognition of how […]

CC BY Flickr photo by Scott McLeodAfter 2 weeks leave at Christmas coupled with 2 weeks paternity leave shortly before that, I now need to get back into the swing of things. And what better way than a quick blog post...I've been doing some thinking over the break and I feel that although Learning Technologists (and the variations of the role) are often future gazing and innovative, much of the stuff I've been looking at is actually relatively basic in comparison - things like VLE Baseline / Minimum Standards, Online Submission and Lecture Capture. Now I'm not demeaning these at all as they're very valid implementations in edtech (and perhaps more so considering the student as customer), but not particularly exciting from a technological perspective.So my resolution for the new year is to be a bit more adventurous. Obviously this can be really tough in Universities, but there are opportunities to get some exciting projects off the ground, whether that be things like Augmented Reality or rolling out our exciting Kritikos project into other subjects. I'm also keen to get some other things off the ground too - 10 Days of Twitter (10DoT), Bring Your Own Device for Learning (BYOD4L) and an App Swap Breakfast (for staff and students) are three in particular (and all stuff I wanted to do previously). Staff Development is often a difficult thing to really make an impact with on a large scale, so I wonder if these could be useful - I'm often disillusioned when only getting a small number of attendees so this could be interesting.Of course large scale implementations of the big three I mentioned earlier will continue to be a huge deal for us at Liverpool, as it will be for many institutions, and I like our approach because I'm interested in how we roll out learning technology broadly across the institution as well as specific tools in small scale areas.So what things are looking to do in 2015 and what things will dominate the edtech area?Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

So yet more tweetchats are taking place this week - this time for the #BYOD4L get-together. Of course at these times I typically capture the chats using @mhawksey's TAGS Tool.The #BYOD4L has run a pre-'course' chat on Sunday, followed by chats on Monday and Tuesday evenings. Although they'll also be further chats throughout the week, this post is just capturing what's happened thus far. So here goes...This first image shows the overall activity related to the #BYOD4LChat hashtag (between Sun evening pre chat through to Wednesday morning). There's not much we can make from this first image due to the sheer volume of activity (almost 2300 tweets). We can see a large tight knitted ball where most of the activity has taken place, with lots of outliers that haven't really engaged much with the rest of the community. Tweets using #BYOD4LChat hashtag from Sun evening through Wednesday morningIn an attempt to make some sense of what's happened in each of the chats, I'll now break this down to just include specific tweetchats.Sunday Pre-ChatThe Sunday tweetchat was a pre-'course' activity which seen over 300 tweets. As you can see from the image below, @whitneykilgore played a significant role in the chat - demonstrating the greatest Betweenness Centrality (inc incoming and outgoing tweets). Essentially she was most influential in the chat. Having said that, the whole group was reasonably active - typically people (nodes) who are not quite so active would be displayed small and on the outskirts. Take @jbj for example. It's clear this user had an incoming tweet from @whitneykilgore but didn't actually send any tweets.  Monday Chat #1 - ConnectingMonday's tweetchat saw over 600 tweets amongst the community. Again there's a tight ball of activity and a number of outlying nodes.The volume of tweets makes it difficult to make sense of what's actually happening in the chat so the following is a more magnified view of that tight ball in the middle. It's clear that the @BYOD4L account and @chrissinerantzi had a high betweenness centrality, but that's not surprising considering their role in the 'course' and tweetchats. Beyond those two, there is a lot of incoming and outgoing edges (tweets) by quite a lot of people - the visualisation identifies 67 nodes (or people) active. In chats like this it's difficult to visualise the differences between a community and a network - A Network is everyone we're connected to, whereas Communities represent everyone that is tweeting about #BYOD4L. As such it's difficult to visualise the concept of Strength of Weak Ties (SWT) - this refers to those nodes who bridge multiple communities and networks. Those nodes have increased social capital - "whom a person is connected to, and how these contacts are connected to each other, enable people to access resources that ultimately lead them to such things as better jobs and faster promotions' (Borgiatte et al, 2009, p898). What we can see though, is a number of people crossing the whole community.Tuesday Chat #2 - CommunicatingTuesday's tweetchat seen over 700 tweets amongst the community. This magnified view again demonstrates the more active nodes and gives an idea on activity.On the whole the #BYOD4L chats (and hashtag in general) has generated a lot of buzz on Twitter and engaged lots of different users. of course there are a core group that have played active roles in previous iterations of #BYOD4L and #LTHEChat tweetchats, but there are also lots of other contributors engaging in rich dialogue within the community. Hopefully they can glean value from their participation in the chats, as I've discussed previously. I've also previously blogged on networks and communities if you're interested.Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

Isn’t it really just learning by another name? Guest post by Peter Skillen: I would like to thank Deborah for inviting me to write this guest post about knowledge building. With the frequency that we hear the term these days, it is timely to have some conversation about its origins and intricacies. We hear a […]

          Of late, I am very keen on considering the questions and language that we use when implementing and designing the curriculum. Questioning the curriculum itself, in addition to being aware of our questions that we put forth for our students to learn with, is important. View image | gettyimages.com When […]

So the latest #BYOD4L iteration has come to a close. Well formally the non-course has come to a close, but initiatives like this are often just the beginning for all those participants that have connected with others. I suspect many will have made long term connections just like I have done in previous iterations.Anyway, last week I posted a summary and analysis of the first few days of tweet chats, which summarised activity as well as identifying concepts such as social capital and betweenness centrality. So this post is a follow up to complete the week.Wednesday Chat #3 -  CuratingWednesday's Tweetchat was the most active of the week with around 750 tweets and for me, is one of the most interesting topics because it's something a lot of people don't really do - Curating. I certainly seen a couple of tweets along those lines, and other than this blog, I don't really do much curation myself (although whatever works for you, or me, is still valuable).The recurring theme in looking at the visuals for these tweet chats is that we see some nodes that are not connected to the discussion at all, skirting around the edges. And then we tend to have a tight knitted ball where the majority of the activity takes place.I've zoomed to get a better feel of some of those key nodes in the chat. There are some obvious key players in the chats like Sue and Chrissi, but I like to identify some of the non-organisers (so to speak). The likes of s_j_lancaster is a regular and one for always stimulating discussion - there's no wonder that there is a lot of activity around him - almost forming his own sub network. @iwilsonysj and @neilwithnell have also been active in this chat with lots of incoming and outgoing edges. You can easily imagine the impact it would have on this discussion if they were not present - their betweenness centrality is high because they've been central to the discussions taking place. Thursday Chat #4 - CollaboratingThursday's tweet chat saw just over 650 tweets on the topic of collaborating. Interestingly, this chat didn't have any outliers like the previous chat, which is actually becoming rather common. The magnified view of the chat is showing more close knit discussions, this time around @andrewmid and some other not-so-familiar faces like @podzilla and @isobel_gowers. @sheilamcn is again pretty active around @chrissinerantzi and a few others, whilst @neilwithnell is linking around @suebecks. These are beginning to form subgroups with some of these key figures demonstrating betweenness centrality and social capital.Friday Chat #5 - CreatingFriday's chat was the least active with around 450 tweets (of course still no mean feat). But what we can see here, is that whilst the volume of tweets were lower, there appears to be greater weighting amongst the nodes.This time we see the likes of @whitneykillgore, @juliedesigns, @samillingworth and @diverselearners coming to the fore along with the usual suspects.Overall SummaryWhat fascinates me with these tweet chats is that they start off with a series of questions coming from a single account. It would be easy to expect individual responses to just go back to that account, but the rich discussions that seem to naturally emerge demonstrate just how great an enabler technology, and in this case twitter, really can be.The week seen around 3000 tweets using the #BYOD4LChat hashtag across 177 users, with almost 10% containing a link - evidence that the community are really building on the discussions and sharing resources.The top 10 most active nodes were as follows (some of which are not surprising):@chrissinerantzi - 266 tweets@byod4l - 197 tweets@neilwithnell - 173 tweets@suebecks - 157 tweets@sheilamcn - 119 tweets@juliegillin - 101 tweets@iwilsonysj - 89 tweets@anortcliffe - 88 tweets@sonofedd - 88 tweets@cpjobling - 86 tweetsAnother interesting view to take is the amount a single node's tweets that were retweeted. For example, 51% of @alexgspiers tweets were retweeted. #influence @cpjobling and @juliegillin (both 44%) and @sonofedd (41%) were also very influential in the tweet chats which adds more value than simply their number of tweets. Other users are clearly valuing the points made by these nodes, increasing their social capital. I suspect these would be good people to follow (it's just as well I am :-))Anyway, it's difficult to make sense of the overall visuals for the week due to the sheer volume, so I leave you with a few of them to make your own mind up.As always, if  you have any reflections on the week I'd be eager to read them, as would the rest of the #BYOD4L team.Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

Learning is deeper, more sustainable when students are active participants and responsible for their learning.What better way to do this than to focus on the opportunities that we provide students for learning? I think that it is important to consider active strategies that we can embed each day. I consider my strategies by asking questions. […]

The first #lthechat tweet chat of 2015 took place last night, with David Walker (@drdjwalker) and I (reedyreedles) as facilitators covering the topic of The Language of Feedback.The topic itself is something that many people can easily connect with, so the hectic hour or so that ensued was hardly a surprise. In trying to stimulate discussion, we asked the following questions:What does feedback mean to you? #LTHEChatDo students (and staff) know the difference between formative and summative? #LTHEChatDo terms like 'high-stakes' & 'low-stakes' encourage students to value tasks differently? #LTHEChatWhat are the qualities of constructive feedback? #LTHEChatDespite interventions across HE students are still notably less positive about feedback than other aspects of study. Why? #LTHEChatWhat is the relationship between feedback and assessment criteria? #LTHEChat There were lots of really interesting points made and thoughtful discussions.Do staff and students really know what Formative and Summative mean? And if not why do we continue to use them? Is it like a secret code that you need to know in order to be part of the club?The notion of feed-foward was prevalent - in that feedback should be timely and related well enough to feed into future work. On a basic level, this could be as simple as providing feedback to improve how a student references/cites existing work so they can avoid losing marks on a second assignment. On a deeper level, this can provide much richer and detailed feedback so students can improve 'performance' within the same module and ultimately achieve better results.Also important in the discussion was the idea that feedback is the beginning point of a dialogue with students about their performance, rather than a one-way "here's your mark and feedback now get on with it" type approach.In this sense, and something I emphasised in my tweets/discussions, the importance on moving away from typical end of module high-stakes assessment is critical. If we can move away from 5000 word essays worth 60, 70 or 80% of the module mark, we can introduce more authentic assessment types that enable us to engage with students in a dialogue about their work and how they can improve, which can then feed into the next assignments. I spoke about this at the eAssessment Scotland conference in September, through emphasising visualising assessment timelines - I even shared a draft timeline of our medical curriculum.Anyway, here are the visuals from last night's tweet chat. When looking at the archive last night I was sure there was around 1000 tweets but having run it again this morning there appears to be around 650. I may have done something wrong.... Anyway.... @s_j_lancaster and @annakwood were very active last night and played a key role in the discussions. I kept forgetting to include the hashtag in discussions which I suspect is something a few people do by accident (I hope), which means those tweets are not captured in the archive.I thought it would be nice to have a specific view of @s_j_lancaster 's network through the tweet chat last night so captured this as well... We can see he engages a lot, with a lot of people. Quite how he manages this is beyond me knowing how hectic it can be, but he's clearly a pivotal node in the network with a high betweenness centrality. We can also tell from this image that whilst some of his tweets are directed to/from individual nodes, there is also a lot of tweets involving multiple nodes (see upper and right part of image). Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

View image | gettyimages.com I have been inspired to think more about Collaboration after the twitter #satchat this weekend. I couldn’t help but think that I needed to think beyond the idea of collaboration just for collaboration’s sake. It would be easy to talk about the benefits of collaboration, including the benefits of students working […]

Oh wait, there is....The Really Useful #EdTechBookIt's called "The Really Useful #EdTechBook".Some time ago David Hopkins (@hopkinsdavid) came up with this wonderful idea of editing a book comprising chapters from lots of people engaged with #edtech on a daily basis and I was honoured that he asked me to be one of those authors, along with the likes of +Sheila MacNeill , +David Walker +Wayne Barry +Sue Beckingham and +Sharon Flynn (amongst many others).The whole writing of the book was interesting in itself, with authors dotted all over the place working in Google Docs and engaged in discussion with each other. David conducted short interviews with each of us and at the time of mine, he was shacked up in a hotel room - for me something that really summed up the impact technologies have had on us all.So my chapter attempts to take a view of Learning Technologists and the teams in which they sit within HEIs. I'm sure it's by no means a holistic picture but I think it sets the scene for the variations in both the roles and the teams. I consulted a few tweeps in the making to ensure that what I was writing was as accurate as can be.As I was writing the chapter I thought about the various pressures on HE and the LT role in particular. It struck me that as we move to a post-digital era, and with continued financial pressures on institutions, the variations of the Learning Technologist will not cease any time soon. Who knows what's in store for us...Anyway, you can buy the book, get on major eBook readers and there's also a cheeky pdf you can grab for free. Head over to David's blog here for more details.Oh, and a big hats off to David and all the authors for achieving this in such a short period of time.Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

We are hearing about the term ‘Innovation’ more and more now. I think that this is essential for supporting teachers in the quest to consider new possibilities and ways of thinking. Innovation encompasses changing the way we think about how learning should happen and changing the ways we view curriculum. We need to know where we […]

You know sometimes when you start a new job and you always hear about some great work that's been taking place in parts of the University? Well this post is about one such project - Dr. Anna O'Connor's 3D Eye Animations for the teaching of eye movement disorders in our Orthoptics department. What's even better, is that they're openly available on the web - #UKOER.Rather than me tell you about it, Anna and her students have provided me with some brief text...From Anna...3D concepts, such as eye movement disorders, are difficult to explain and visualise from 2D static images. That’s why we were very excited about the opportunity to work with the elearning unit to develop a series of eye animations showing eye movement disorders. These animations will be an invaluable resource, which students can access to support their learning at university, and to reinforce their learning while on clinical placement at hospitals around the UK. They are freely available for anyone interested, whether a student, patient, clinician or teacher. We started with normal eye movements which were a big hit, being accessed by over 2,000 people around the world in the first year. Now we want to let everyone know about the new developments. Huge thanks go to the elearning unit and Scott Dingwall for creating these amazing animations.From the Students...As Student Orthoptists, it is very important for us to know about different conditions that effect the muscles of the eyes and what problems can occur when these muscles stop working properly. When it comes to revision and studying, it can sometimes be quite difficult to visualise what happens to the eyes with certain conditions. These animations show how the 6 muscles around the eye (known as the extra ocular muscles or EOM's) act when certain conditions occur - such as Duane's retraction syndrome, Brown's syndrome and nerve palsies - where the innervation to the muscle is not working.The eye animations really are the next best thing to having a real patient in front of you! They are easy, quick and simple to use and it allows you to see the action of the muscles in all 9 positions of gaze in different conditions.So there you are. Another great project taking place at Liverpool. I think it's wonderful that they've managed to get a development like this together with a limited budget - the skills required to develop these 3D animations are not everyday skills so massive pat on the back for Scott, as well as for Anna to have the vision (no pun intended) to see the value in this. And even nicer to see students are appreciating it.Feel free to head over to the eye animations to have a play and you can follow Anna on Twitter (@Drannoc).Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

Originally posted on Mrs. McCallum's Grade 4's:Today we read the next chapter of the Creature Department. In our read aloud I modelled strategies that readers use to understand what they read. We created our own personal ‘tweets’ to authors about our Silver Birch books. Some of the authors even got back already!! So…

Englebart's Mouse PrototypeIt's seemed like for many years the relative genius of The Mouse as an input device was truly innovative. It enabled us to interact with iconography on our desktops and thus transform the personal computer from something a bit geeky to something that, through the use of some strange metaphor-inspired icons, would be usable to millions of people across the world. Importantly, the metaphors of the User Interface - the desktop, trash can, folders and files - went hand-in-hand with its success at supporting users understand and move from the analogue world to a digital one.The mouse has quite an interesting history, since its early prototypes by Douglas Englebart (who named it) through to the Xerox Alto and ultimately, the Macintosh Lisa (a decent-enough history is available on wikipedia). It has ruled as the main input device since, and has seen many slight variations in its design. But, it's still a mouse.Of course, Apple really blew our minds when they introduced the iPhone and its touch screen, which has ultimately led to almost all smartphones being touch screen; the introduction of a viable tablet device and even touch screen laptops and desktop PCs. To a large degree, controlling our devices with the touch of a finger, a pinch and zoom, or a swipe has become second nature to many of us. In fact for some young thundercats, it's all they've ever really known.Leap Motion | CC BY Flickr user David BerkowitzIt wasn't until around 2010 when we seen Leap Motion - a gesture based controller, enabling us to wave our hands in front of the screen to control what we would typically use a mouse for. It was all a bit exciting and Minority Report-like. I still find it fascinating how that movie is seen as almost the goal for technological development. The Leap is now quite affordable (about £60 on Amazon) but for one reason or another, I think it's still seen as a gimmicky type of device that hasn't really impacted on computing, or even educational technology, quite as much as I thought it might. Which is a shame.The latest gesture-based interaction is something that I've just come across (and actually which inspired me to write this post) - an app called ControlAir. Well actually, it's the webcam which is the device, and the clever software does the donkey work. It enables the user (using a Mac) to control certain apps (iTunes, Spotify, etc) by the use of a gesture. For example, to mute the volume, bring your index finger up to your mouth (as though you're telling it to shush!). Genius. To raise/lower volume and move back and forward, raise your index finger and click your finger in mid-air. Check out the marketing clip below. I downloaded this over the weekend and love it already. Yes, it's hugely gimmicky but offers an insight into how we might be controlling our devices in the future. It's easy to see how we might point and click to select items on a screen, pinch and zoom, fast forward through movies or swipe away. Apply this to scenarios enabling students to interact with virtual skeletons, muscles and organs and it's actually quite exciting.Head over to the eyeSight website to see ControlAir.Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

Contribute to the Big Ideas in Education! In the spirit of collaboration, I would love to generate new ideas and relevant discussions on the Big Ideas in Education. Sharing ideas and building our knowledge together is important and something we aim to accomplish with our learners each day. Guest Blogger Guidelines: Share your thoughts on […]

I've been asked to present at our Staff-Student Digital Literacies (LearnIT) event this week on the theme of Digital Research. I don't consider myself particularly good in this area but happy to share my experience.There are many workflows and programmes out there and lots of people will disagree on what works best for them. So this just happens to be what works well for me.I've recorded a short screencast on this, but essentially it's made up of using Google Scholar to identify articles - sometimes by the metrics option but also by general searches and viewing academic profiles for published work (the video only covers metrics though). Then I'll either use the Mendeley import tool or just download the article, drag and drop into Mendeley and annotate away. It's a god-send that Mendeley automatically recognises the journal citation details (author, date, volume, etc) - well 99% of the time it does anyway.Then in Word I'll use the Mendeley plugin to insert citations and add my bibliography. It works super easy which is why I like it so much and as long as you use Mendeley for all your articles, you literally can't go wrong. I love it and use it for any writing project I'm working on. I suspect this will be my best friend as I'm embarking on PhD studies.There are lots of other features of both Scholar and Mendeley that I haven't mentioned - the Mendeley groups for example, can be a good way to learn more about work in specific areas. Oh, and the iPad app works like a charm if you want to do your reading/annotating that way.Anyway, take a peek at my video below and/or head over to Mendeley to grab it for free yourself. Oh, and I'd love to see how other people manage similar processes so why not blog your own workflows or just leave a comment below.Peter@ReedyreedlesThe Reed Diaries by Peter Reed is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

Originally posted on http://elearningindustry.com/ What makes you a good instructor in the classroom - does not necessarily translate to good pedagogy in an online learning environment. Online Learning Environments are becoming increasingly available for learners in all areas of education from primary grades right through to higher education. They require key considerations to be cultivated to […]