It feels like the last few weeks I have experienced accelerated learning. This is mainly because I've had to create a lot of bespoke content for consultancy work lately. In many ways, this is the most rewarding work activity I have. I love to create and in my subject area I feel like I often have a blank canvas on which to draw together my experiences and knowledge. The creation process is about getting the message right - which is about broaching the subject at the right level - the subject being using technology in education. I've always been a big picture kind of guy and recently I've been bolder in talking about the big picture with clients. This is vital and will never teach again without some reference to this topic. The big picture is basically about how the reality of the educator changes when delivering learning at a distance or through blended learning. When addressing nervous and disorientated educators this is good place to start because it shows empathy with their situation. In addition, I run through the basic arguments for using learning technologies. This is important because it forces them to reflect on why their company or educational institution is going down this road. The answer to the "why" question often gets lost. I also ask "how ready are you to teach using technology?" It's a good way of teasing out the problem areas and tenor of the group. Much of what I offer to the educational world is still about giving people an opportunity to practice using different types of internet based tools which they may not have encountered and discussing their potential for teaching and learning. Where I feel confident of value is that much of what I see out there is either too technical or too pedagogical. I try to find the middle ground in an attempt to always be relevant.This sounds like a sale pitch but it's written for me to help articulate my thoughts.

I did a wordle of this blog which is now sitting on the front page. There are no real surprises. Learning is the biggest word which makes sense. I always intended this blog to be about my learning so I use this word in this context and in the context of using technology for learning. Technologies is second which is an obvious dominant theme. The important point for me is that when thinking about technology in education thinking about the learning should always come first. Any technology is there to act as an appropriate communication tool through which the learning can take place. It's all about informed decision making when it comes to choosing the right tool (be it online, offline, face-to-face etc). This is where educators need help. Making an informed decision is hindered by lack of training, training that concentrates too much on how to use a technology or a pedagogical model, and not having the time and space to undertake reflection and course design.

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change JournalWhen you think about the various options for using technology in teaching and learning there is a stark contrast between those that come from the Web 2.0 movement which are often free/easy to use; and those that come from the commercial software companies - expensive and often cumbersome. Overall, you can also draw a pedagogical dividing line between these two areas - acquisition or participation. Acquisition is all about preserving what we have, transmitting the knowledge in the way we have done in formal education. I'm talking here about web conferencing system, Learner Management Systems (I mean the core products not the added on interactive stuff), Lecture capture systems. They are complex, bandwidth heavy and are usually accompanied by a manual or require expensive training and support.Participation is about... well participation, collaboration, knowledge construction, all that stuff. The tools to achieve these are usually stand-alone, free, easy to use, graphically impressive, and have build in communities of support to draw on.I wonder why this is. Perhaps it's because commercial companies know they can make money from building a product that fulfills what the customer wants rather than what some people think they should want; it might be that it's more natural to make a tool about communication and collaboration online than it is to build something that is all about preserving the face-to-face lecture, it's certainly easier.Whatever the reason, it feels from where I'm sitting that acquisition stuff is made the priority. No matter what it costs we want technologies to preserve what we do already. Ok, there is all this collaborative stuff but we can think about later once I get my head around this LMS control panel!I'm simplifying things of course. The divide isn't that stark and in reality you need a combination of both. What's interesting is that if ever we want evidence for the dominant pedagogical model we only need to look at how we are using technology. Despite all the affordances for collaboration and communication it's the transmission we want it for.

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change JournalIt's common to hear the argument "we need to use social media in learning because that what the kids are doing." This position has merit but there's a lot that's packed into statement and this can sometimees cause confusion. The sentiment is correct in that there is a desire to engage with school age students on their terms. However, often this gets wrapped up in intentions for more learner centred and collaborative pedagogical stances. That's fine (if that's what you want), but it's important to make a distinction between the medium and the pedagogy. Although the affordance of social media to clearly towards to collaborative. It's also interesting that this statement is often tied in with increasing the engagement of learners who are not engaged. It's almost like we are saying "let's speak their language." Again, this has merit. But it's important to understand that this is part of a bigger picture. Choosing the right communication channel is important if it will mean greater chance of validity with a particular group of learners. However, this will only take you so far. What most important is good learning design. Take your pedagogical stance, design the learning, and choose the mediums to deliver this learning appropriately. If you are taking a participatory or collaborative stance this could well involve internet based tools. I won't go further on this track as I've been this road before. What I will say is that it's easier to talk in terms of communication channels. Teenager are communicating through facebook because they can. We now have additional communication channels. These supplement what we had before - talking, telephone, email. They allow people to be in contact in times and places where they couldn't before. We should be interested in using such channels for learning. Expressing the issue in this way takes the edge of statement: "we need to use it because they are using it". It also takes it away from merging it with the pedagogical debates.Overall, I think it's useful to seperate the tool you use to deliver the learning away from the learning design process. Starting with the medium in mind is dangerous in that it can determine how you teach.

It's been a while since I last blogged. This is mainly due to getting married and going on honeymoon. A welcome distraction from my Learning Technology Learning.Recently I've found myself reading more academic articles than blogs. I aimed to catch up with my blog reading but it's been enlightening to gain some academic perspectives. Overall, blog reading is easier. It fits in with my informal learning ethos and lends itself to the extraction of ideas which I can then weave together as I reflect. Academic article reading is hard but rewarding. Hopefully I can achieve a good balance of learning from both in the future.A recent bit of learning has been around formal learning on reading the paper Theories of formal and informal learning in the world of web 2.0 by Charles Crook (2008). He says:"It is the act of deliberate teaching that ‘formalises’ learning. But deliberate teaching is complemented by deliberate learning. Ideally, both parties in theeducational contract have a degree of this intent - albeit not equally well or equally enthusiastically developed."It is easy to bash formal education but the above reminds us that, in essence, its a wonderful thing. It's about deliberately engendering learning and this should be celebrated. So what's the place of informal learning? I promote informal learning because I know how powerful it can be and I would disagree with the notion that the only "proper" learning is done through formal education. Where it's good quality a formal course is the best and easiest way of accelerate your learning in a certain subject. But such instances are not always available when, and where, you want them. This is where informal learning comes into play. It's take a certain skillset and mindset to do it effectively but these can be learned. And certainly from my perspective, technology is fundamental to being able to realise it.The above quote hints that motivation isn't always there with formal learning. Essentially in schools, we are forcing people to learn whether they want to or not. Or, at least, we are trying to. Informal learning only exists where there is motivation to learn. But if we took away formal education I'm not so sure that everyone would jump into doing it themselves enthusiastically. The learner control aspect is often mooted is a big plus the informal learning and that this can aid with learners who are disenfranchised from formal education. Here there is a clear role for informal learning and what we need are processes and support mechanism in place to help learner get started.

A mantra you often here with regard to technology in education is designing the learning first and then using the best medium to deliver this learning be it technological or not. Clarence Fisher puts this better:"We cannot choose tools and then find ways to use them. We must consider the skills and abilities that we want our students to have and then choose the paths to help them get there."Of course, I agree with this and I think I've said so on this blog many times. The gap comes with the fact that many educators simply don't know what tools are available and what they can be used for. I am often surprised by how seemingly established online tools have not penetrated into the real world of education.One relevant issue here is the problem of allowing our educators the time and the space to think about their teaching. The profile of this activity isn't high enough. If it was, showcase events of new tools would occur as a matter of course; pedagogical discussion and debate in relation to such tools would be standard. Instead, such activity is anecdotal and the domain of the enthusiastic few. My observation, therefore, concerning the above quote is that it applies only to a utopian educational system. I'm not saying learning design doesn't happen, but it's our system is not designed to accomodate assimilating new tools into our teaching and learning. Such tools therefore go unnoticed and become subject to misinformation and misinterpretation.

Also published on the Educational Technology and Change journalRecently I have arrived at the opinion that developing a viable distance learning offering is the way to go for Higher Education. Much of the e-learning I've been involved in has concentrated on developing blended learning where there was previous just face-to-face. This is largely like banging your head against a brick wall. This policy is often seen as a safer, less ambitious step along the learning technologies route. THIS IS WRONG!! It's wrong because most of the time the educators and the students don't really want to use technology. They'll do a bit for admin but for learning, no way. It's a face-to-face course. Why tamper with it. I am of the opinion that this is misguided but it's not a battle worth fighting (for now). Fighting this resentment is unnecessary. The most important point is that the participants have signed up a face-to-face experience. Some might not mind adding a bit of technology but it shouldn't take over. Shoe-horning e-learning into an already designed course is like swimming upstream with half the people not knowing how to swim. These metaphors aren't great but the sense is right.Pushing to develop a number of quality distance learning offerings is, I think, the way forward. Certainly, for any educational institution is a way of seperating you from the competition. I don't there's enough market research in this area but I am convinced there are more and more people out there who can't attend face-to-face but still want to study. With distance learning, the learning is only delivered online. Therefore, the students will engage. They have no choice. But feeling towards this mode of learning is largely eradicated past the the few couple of weeks. For this to work in HE, you need entire MAs offered online, not just one or two modules. This way the market you want can be tapped into to. It's pointless having the odd module online. If a student can attend one module face-to-face, the chances are he/she can, and will want to, attend the others face-to-face. The main problem we face with promoting distance learning is convincing academic to teach in this way. Unfortunately, I fear this problem is underestimated. There's also the issue of whether to run it in parallel with the face-to-face. What about the capacity for this? It's a bold move - one that is hard to take.I'm pleased and excited that the Institute of Education (my place of work) is pushing the distance learning agenda and working towards increasing what we offer at a distance - we're using the term "Open Mode" (which I like). It's the first step on an important journey in an uncertain time for HE.

How best to create an environment where educators feel comfortable and willing to embrace the use of technology in education is what my job is all about. There are various strategies you can employ. It's very easy to focus on the process of the particular project you are working on. So you prepare the environment (usually a VLE), show the tools, make sure everyone knows how to work the thing and look after the technical running of the space. It's important you do this for sure, but there are often larger issues that need to be addressed and it's important to establish yourself as a contributor to design, startegy and policy where this is coherent with other strategic areas of your organisation. This is difficult and messy and often fraught with problem and setbacks but it's necessary and the right thing to do. People in learning technology should not just be about processes. It can feel like tech support and, for the educator, this is exactly what you are.I guess it boils down to a choice between whether you want to be proactive in your promotion of learning technologies or reactive. I like to be in the proactive camp but sometimes this is a hard stance to sustain for a variety of reason. One sad footnote is that there are often not enough people or enough time to be truly proactive.

I've been reflecting on the relationship of technology in teaching and learning and pedagogy. It's right to have a strong link. It's right for the technology to have a pedagogical purpose, an identifiable reason for it's use which fits in with the pedagogy of the teaching and learning. The reality-check here is that (quite understandably) many educators' pedagogical knowledge is tacit or unconscious. All educators have natural leanings towards different pedagogies even if they don't know the particular many syllabled word. Also, there is often not the time to design the teaching and learning to such an extent so that the pedagogy is explicitly stated and identified.Saying that the starting point is the pedagogy (in relation to technology) is correct. However, hand on heart do all educators start with the pedagogy? I'm not so sure. I think they start with the content, designing a lesson comes second and sometimes a distant and poor second. So where the pedagogy isn't really thought through, it's difficult to associate technology to something that isn't really there. The context of the message about pedagogy and technology is often motivated by the desire to ensure that we are technology led. This is right and important. But if you are wondering why this utopian ideal isn't working, then part of the reason isn't evil technologists pushing technologies onto education. It's because knowledge and awareness of pedagogy isn't what it should be. There are a variety of reasons for this which I'm not totally clued up on. I'm just reflection on what I experience.

Quite often the lecture finds itself under attack from people involved with learning technology. This is mainly because the lecture is often associated with rigidly didactic teaching and a lot of e-learning people have a constructivist pedagogical stance. I can see where this is coming from but I don't think it's necessarily the right way to go. The main problem is that a good lecture is an inspirational, high quality learning event. An event which doesn't stick to the powerpoint stereotype. Implicit in what I've just said is the notion that bad quality lecturing means a purely didactic pedagogy. I draw this out because I realise that this is a value judgment I am taking that some may not agree with. But this is not just a pedagogical stance, there is very little learning design in reading off the content of your subject matter. By designing in group and individual problem solving or discussion activities shows that the educator has thought about their teaching and their learners at least to some degree. So, in a simplistic way, I'm saying that part of the problem with a purely didactic lecture is the fact that it requires no learning design beyond a mastery and expression of the subject matter.But does less effort necessarily mean less quality? It's not clear cut. My experiences of what makes a good lecture involve a mixture of both the delivery of content and the discussion of content in some form. However, I know student who prefer extremes of each with those that prefer blanket presentations in the majority. One of the unanswered questions is exactly how much of current HE teaching is presentation only? I suspect it's a lot, but I don't know. Where can I find evidence of this? And even if I can find this out... so what? Others may say why is this bad? There are more questions than answers when I reflect on this issue. I guess my conclusion would be to be against bad quality lectures (or bad e-learning for that matter) but what defines bad quality is up for discussion.

Wow, it's been ages since I blogged. Certainly, I've been busy (and ill) over the last few weeks but I need to keep in mind the value of this process.Blended learning has lots of different definitions. In addition, there are the different balances struck between the face-to-face elements and the online elements. I've reflected previously (in Promoting Distance) about the different attitude with which students approach blended vs purely online learning. Here, I will examine how the structure of the course can have an impact on this.I'll give you two scenarios in my higher education context:1. The course begins with a face-to-face day or two - often the preferred term here is residential. The course is explained, the course begins, participant get to know eachother and bonds are formed. Importantly, the online environment is introduced with a hands on practice if necessary. More importantly, the educator can (and should) show commitment to facilitation of any communication/collaboration online activities. The rest of the course is taught online with perhaps another face-to-face event at the end of the course. So the only organised way students can interact or collaborate on the content is by engaging in the online activities.2. The course consists of 8 face-to-face days that occur on a weekly basis. Between these days online activities are run. Each face-to-face session delivers the core content. The online activities build on this after each session or prepare them for a session.There are various points to make about these two models of blended learning. Firstly, the latter is far more common. The reasons for this are wide-ranging but high up on this list is the fact that fundamental learning design issues are set up almost out of habit. Rooms are booked, sessions are numbered, this is how teaching happens. Afterwards, there is a vague notion and directive from some policy about e-learning. A Learning Technologist is consulted (sometimes) only for the functionality of a couple of interactive tools (usually the discussion board) and that box is ticked. As a result, even if the tutors are committed and diligent in their e-facilitation of the online element there are tumbleweeds blowing across the online forums. Let’s think why? There’s a clear message about the primacy of face-to-face. The online aspect feels and is subservient to this. You couple this with a blended learning student’s natural inclination to think this way anyway (see Promoting Distance) and you are left with what is essentially a face-to-face course.Compare this with the first example. The key point is that at certain points the learning from a particular subject is delivered online ONLY. In this example, it’s most of the course. This makes is easier for the students to get used to this idea and just run with it. Give a student in 2010 the alternative and face-to-face wins most of the time (in my context anyway). Take away this choice and there might be a bit of grumbling but they soon get on with it.Another crucial weakness of the second example is lack of time for the online activities to take place. There’s a conflict between the need to think in terms of time periods online and sessions lasting a few hours in face-to-face. If the face-to-face sessions are sorted out first, it’s common for an online discussion to last only a few days. Just as they get going they stop. So for effective blended learning to occur you want careful spacing in the learning design. This is easily achieved if each mode is given equal status in the planning.

I was struck by this headline in a mashable article - The internet empowers self-motivated learners. This is a good way of putting something that is blindingly obvious. But is it therefore not good for learners who are not so self-motivated? The internet is well suited to learners who are completely self-regulated, aggregating learning resources from a variety of sources, seeking out their own channels of support and collaboration. There has never been a better time to manage your own learning experience. However, where you have learners who are not motivated the management of the learning experience is done by someone else. In formal education this is always what happens. All learners have to be catered for and, even where the teacher wants to give free rein, its easier to set a strict agenda. This is probably why there are so many tensions with online learning. For better or for worse learning is synonymous formal education in 2011 (happy new year) and with formal education more time is spent on managing the learning experience than anything else. This is the way it's always been online or offline. From the learners perspective I also believe that the habit of active learning is sorely lacking. Self-regulation and control is something closely guarded by educators. As a result, when given the opportunity to take control many don't know what to do. They neither want it or expect it. This is a rejection of the ethos of managing your own learning rather than a rejection of technology. Unfortunately, things are often interpreted incorrectly.

Note to self - must blog more.It's good to reflect back on my thinking last year and how things have moved on. I've been reflecting on my Web 2.0 model. I still think it's a useful guide for making sense of what's out there and, although it could probably be refined, I don't think its worth the effort as the changes would be minor. I've said in the past that integration of internet based tools and Virtual Learning Environments will get better over time. The rate of this improvement is frustratingly slow. Our institution, the Institute of Education, uses blackboard. When it comes to integration with internet-based tool, it's not good. Moodle is much better and our potential switch to this VLE would be very welcome from this point of view. The issue of going outside the VLE doesn’t fit well with formal education. The instinct of an educational institution is to cover its back with anything it uses. As a result, the rules comes first. For the few that want to use something "out there", they are forced to justify this position against whatever criteria deemed appropriate. The result is that most will not bother. Why risk doing something wrong especially since there is no often nothing to counter balance these rules and regulations and no intensive to think outside the box. I’m talking about resources that portray web 2.0 tools in a good light and champion their potential for teaching and learning. Such resources would be difficult to keep up to date but its a worthwhile endevour. It falls under the category of "seeking to improve how we teach and learn". Surely this is worth doing.This issue is related to whether you are proactive, going out there and trying to display what’s positive about learning technologies; or whether you are reactive, giving advice and support when people want it. The norm is the latter whereas I think we should be doing more of the former. I can see the argument for adopting both positions and perhaps I am drawn to the stance that feels like marketing sometimes because it is a minority position. It should be pointed that often lack of resources dictates how proactive you can be with regards to learning technologies.On the internet based tools front, future VLEs will certainly have to cater for more integration. I can see them acting as a hub for pulling together everything the educator and the learners want to use. However, this probably won’t happen any time soon.

I've done a lot of work these past few months on helping academic colleagues who are thinking about converting their courses from face-to-face to be delivered through blended learning or purely online. This is unsurprising as this is a core component of my job! However, things have been pretty active recently as HE looks for additional modes of delivery to bring in more students and, by consequence, more money. Whatever the motivation, I'm happy. As a result, there's been lots of learning that needs consolidating. Firstly, I had an interesting discussion the other day about the levels of abstraction. This is in terms of how abstract you discuss things with educators when helping them design an online course. I've always tends to try and grounds things in reality and talk in terms of practical components/examples/templates rather than pedagogical models. This is probably partly because its in my nature to do this but also because my experience is that this is what they want - or at least this is what I think they want. There are a number of reasons for this which I won't go into here. But getting the balance right on the scale of abstraction is a judgement call that a constant issue for any learning technologist. It's certainly important to be able to talk pedagogy if the need arise but it is the best starting point? I don't have the answers. My instincts and practice keep such dialogue in my back pocket. You might be thinking why not do both, why not do everything. Well, you need to be careful. Educators often approach you looking for clarity, looking for answers. Clarity is so, so important and I guess this is the heart of the matter. You have to choose what to say first and how to say it to give maximium benefit to the educator. This will be different for each person but common is the need to practical guidance on how a course could look online and what key decisions need to be made first. My next post will reflect upon the practical advice I've been championing in this post.

I've talked previously about the principle of offering practical advice. This is referring to the level of abstraction you employ when talking about the design of the learning experience. My gut feeling is that because researchers are often employed in Learning Technology positions the tendency is to more be too abstract. This is a completely anecdotal assertion (this blog gives me this kind of freedom of expression). Aside from this, what are the qualities I need to possess to have the maximum positive impact? By positive I mean giving people a good understanding of key issues with regard to LTs allowing them to make informed decisions on their appropriate use. I will list some qualities:Good communication/good teaching:I'm realising more and more that's being a good communicator and teacher is priority number 1 for this job. I need to be able to communicate my message in a variety of fora and a variety of contexts. I need to be able to communicate well and where possible teach well so that I make maximium advantage of each opportunity. I've been a lot recently on what it means to give practical advice on LTs particular with regard to designing a whole course. I think an important principle is making order out of simple but disparate concepts and ideas. It's very common for discussion to flit around lots of different issues, so if you can give order, structure and context for all of this then that's is really useful. Often what you come up with sounds obvious. Don't worry about this, it's still useful. For example, colleagues at the Institute of Education have found it useful when I say think about:- Start time/finish- Aligning topic with time periodsAnd then for each topic, think about:- What bespoke content you want- What readings you want- What learning activities you wantThere's much, much more to think about but this is a good basis. Sounds like common sense but key points are easily overlooked and mashed together causing confusion. Finding opportunities to spread the wordIt is often about manufacturing situations where you have a captive audience, placing myself in environment where people will listen. Ideally, people come to something you have organised where they want your help and support. In an ideal world this is one-to-one tuition or group training sessions. However, these can be difficult to manufacture so other situations have to be sought. Working groups for sharing practice are a good idea. You can always slip in advice at strategic points. Adapting your message to the audienceThis is about not banging the drum too hard with the wrong audience, in the wrong context. Because technology can be an emotive issue with some, the context needs to be right before you think about delivering your message. Also, if educators come to learn about, say, a particular tool or technology you can also give some learning design advice within this to give it context. Initiating and taking control of your own learningThis is probably the hardest part. Clearly it's a principle which could apply to any profession. For LTs, at a simple level, it's about staying on top of new software and environments and ensuring that you understand how to work tools before the edcuator gets to it. This is hard enough but then you add to it, trying to keep abreast of the latest thinking in research terms with regard to LTs. A third strand which I try and do is reading and reflecting on the latest thinking on LTs outside the academia. I am talking about the the blogosphere and the micro-blogosphere. This is hard and involves making time to read and share what you can. It's valuable because it makes you think outside your narrow world. With any job there are times when learning gets swamped by being too damn busy but it's worth the effort when you get a chance. Taking control of your own learning and ensuring that you keep abreast on all three fronts is hard and sometimes overwhelming. But I'm always glad when I do. In fact, this is one of things that keep me interested in my job. Being able to easily find information and opinion and turn this into knowledge by reflecting on it in light of my context.It's interesting rating yourself against these criteria. I come out ok, but that's probably because I picked the criteria. Mind you, there lots of room for improvement.

Last week I taught a session (with a couple of colleagues) called Structuring an online course: guidance and example. Here I wanted to share my contribution to this session: a prezi presentation and talk about it. it's not embedding well so I'll just link to it - Structuring an onine course: Guidance and example - public versionWhat I've attempted to do is group together different sections of the process with a view to helping educators organise their thinking on this issue. The hard part of this is knowing what to leave out. I see this as a work in process because I hope to get clearer about the issues and the relationships as I get more experienced. The point of this practically focused framework is to help a Higher Education institution in 2011 - I work at the excellent Institute of Education. The point is that many academics need help with the basics. Basics that aren't well defined or universally agreed. By basics I mean the key decisions that need to be made; the main structural decisions to take. Some may disagree with the phrases used in the structure but the point is to give a framework from which to work. Of course, it needs context. I work with individuals to give this context. However, I'm interested in the academic staff who aren't banging down my door to have these conversations and are only at this particular session. It's something for them to take away. I want to make the maximium impact I can; an impact that cover the foundations of what they need to know. If this is all the time I get with them I don't waste time focusing on a small piece of the pie before they have tasted a bite or all the slices (not sure that works).It's true that the pedagogy is only implicit in the presentation, if at all. In an ideal world the pedagogy is the starting point and the structure flows from there. My rationale for leaving this out is based on my experiences working with educators over the years. Rarely do they want to talk in the abstract and apply these abstract principles to their teaching. My best guess is that most educators have only a sense of their pedagogical tendencies but have a firm grasp on what types of activities they like using. So what I deem important for a first stab presentation like this are the types of activity available to them in their context. For this scenario, this meant outlining the main communication/collaboration tools available to people in my institution. A footnote to this is that pedagogy is complex and discussions around is are complicated and challenging. All this takes time, and this could feel a waste if there is only this one chance of communicating with them.My concern with any teaching session is to avoid cul-de-sacs of discussion on issues of minor importance. Often such discussions focus on processes which hinder the success of teaching online or strategic and sometimes philosophical standpoints. This leads sessions and discussions down a slippery slope. By presenting something like this first, the chance of a focused discussion are much greater.So the prezi provided has the following sections:Before designing section - Basically, what I'm concerned with here is ensuring that you know why you are designing a purely online or blended learning course. Our context has a focus of converting from face-to-face but it applies to creating something from scratch. The why question is a whole area in itself which I won't dwell on here. The other noteworthy issue is whether you replace what you are currently doing with whatever you are designing now. This refers to replacing something purely online with something face-to-face. Most will not want to teach solely online, this is not what they signed up for when they embarked on this career! So duplication is the preferred way to go. I will probably rework this section. I think most of important issues are there but I'm not happy about the title and some of the wording. Structural considerations - The prezi above is minus screenshots of example structures within our VLE. However, we have the key considerations. In reality these considerations are not decided upon before the actually activity/content design. It is an iterative process.An online course needs - bespoke content, activities, readings This is the meat of the presentation and the focus is on the activities. The categories feel a bit simplistic but I think they work. What I'm keen to do is to make the point that uploading your powerpoint from a face-to-face lecture isn't good enough for bespoke content. You want specially created documents or multimedia at the very least. So I describe this area as bespoke content. Because we are HE, readings gets it's own area (the things in this bubble refer to our systems). For the activities bubbles, my split between asynchronous and synchronous was an easy design choice. They are such different beasts that we need to talk about them seperately. What I've outlined are the main tools available to us in our blackboard VLE. Moodlers out there will notice that moodle has more to offer. C'est la vie. I probably should have put e-portfolios in there however. What this model doesn't acknowledge is the relationship between the activities and the bespoke content. A blurring of the boundaries here would have got in the way of the message but this can come out when you talk.Finally, some reflections on using prezi for this presentation. I did a few prezis a year ago but haven't done any since. My intention here was to present large structures and show relationships which could then be used to focus on individual elements. Doing it this way forces you to think hard about how the pieces fit together. When I started I didn't know what these structures would look like and, to be honest, I had hoped for better. However, it was a valuable exercise and I think it has a better look and feel using this tool. With powerpoint you can often get away with casually listing things as they come to mind and talk about them. BTW, if you just jump of one thing to the next without any big picture there's no point using prezi. What's frustrating about prezi is that when you decide to move a bubble and all it's contents, it's a fiddly job. There's supposed to be a multiple select option but I couldn't get this to work so I was forever dragging things around. Perhaps sketching things out on paper first is a good idea.Anyway, I hope you find looking at the presentation and reading these reflections interesting. Presentations without the talking can only be so useful but hopefully you can get something from it. Feedback would be gratefully received.

It's been a criminal amount of time since I last blogged. The standard excuse of being busy applies but seems lame as I write it.Today I want to reflect on some teaching I did on Tuesday, 17th May at the Institute of Education (IOE). It was called 21st century learning: using web 2.0 tools. I usually call this session Web2.0Learning but our marketing people didn't like that and renamed it. This was the first time I've been on the LCLL core events calendar so this was quite a bit deal. By the way, the LCLL - London Centre for Leadership in Learning - is where I work in the IOE.Web2.0Learning is a day's training that I conceived a couple of years ago to teach educators about the various types of tools freely available 'out there' on the internet. I describe them as 'outside your VLE' tools. I've now delivered it 5 times mostly at the Chartered Institute of Marketing and I've always found it a rewarding experience. Part of the satisfaction comes from the fact that it's inspired and dictated by what I read, learn and reflect about in my personal learning on the blogosphere. It's more of a personal interest than a work chore. Also, it allows me to be creative as I seek to make sense of the different tools and software I encounter and distill it down into coherent messages.There's lots to reflect on. Firstly, this is the programme I arrived at. When I compare to the last time I did it in July, 2010 there is a much that has changed:9:30 - 9:45 Welcome and Introductions9:45 - 10:10 Web 2.0 technologies in education10:10 - 10:30 Our site/Group creation sites*10:30 - 10:45 Group notice boards*10:45 - 11:00 tea/coffee11:00 - 11:10 Knowledge Building11:10 - 11:35 Mind mapping*11:35 - 11:40 Drawing tools*11:40 - 11:50 Word Clouds*11:50 - 12:00 Tool exploration*12:00 - 13:00 Lunch13:00 - 13:10 Brainstorming13:10 - 13:25 Which media?13:25 - 13:45 Creating a narrative13:45 - 14:00 Collaborative bookmarking*14:00 - 14:10 Screencasting14:10 - 14:15 Recording audio14:15 - 14:30 Break14:30 - 14:35 Creative commons and copyright14:35 - 14:50 Blogs/discussions14:50 - 15:10 Collaborative documents/wikis*15:10 - 15:15 Selection criteria15:15 - 15:30 Reflection and discussionThe timings seem precise and weren't kept to as we moved through things quicker than planned. It's difficult to judge but it was useful to plan in this way so I could be clear which tools I was covering and in what order. The * means that we did a hands on practice on an instance of that tool. The purpose was to give an overview of what a particular type of tool is for and how it could be used for teaching and learning. My broad plan from this time was to get more contextual examples of actual use and extract this information into templates which I could talk around. I wasn't able to do this extensively for every tool but there was still lots of ideas for educational use. It was really helpful this time to have assistance from a colleague, Isobel Bowditch. She did some valuable research into some of the tools as we made sense of what's out there and decided what's important. The first reflection was that it went really well. A positive day with positive feedback - the best I've got so far. I wasn't sure about how school teachers would react to it. On reflection, it has more relevance in this context than in HE and FE as a lot of the more dynamic, creative and fun tools don't seem to appeal the older the context. One important structural point was that I house the weblinks and resources here:http://web20learningmay2011.grouply.com/We linked to each example from the site and there are extra links to explore after the day. It's good to have a hub of activity and it allows me to build a resource which I can use again. I've left it open so that they can share it with colleagues. My ethos of sharing knowledge comes from a belief that more good than bad comes from it. I had someone this morning request to use a prezi I've done which is gratifying. The success of the day meant that two more sessions have been pencilled in for the next academic year which means I'll get to update the session again.The group was mostly ICT co-ordinators and classroom teachers. The ICT folk were really good participants as they sought to incorporate the tools into their thinking. But I'm pleased those less ICT minded found it useful. As I suspected some of the tools were familiar to some of the group but this turned out to be no problem as there was sufficient breadth and variety of topics. I think they liked being given context/explanation before being allowed to practice using a tool. The practice were carefully setup to minimise difficulties. I tried, where possible, not to endorse a particular service and explain why I had chosen what I'd chosen. Primarily I was going for tools which didn't require any account creation, was free to use and had good usability. for example, with mindmapping I chose bubbl.us. There are better mindmapping tools out there but they require money and an account to be created so to practice in a controlled environment they are not suitable. BTW, never run a session like this and have them create an account which needs to be validated from an email - it's chaos!From these principles, I ran the day. I have the following observations about some of the tools:- Answergarden is a tool where you can ask a question, share the website and get quick feedback in a fun, dynamic way. I found this tool at the last minute, it seems to fit into a bit about brainstorming or generating quick feedback in a fun way so I included it. They liked it a lot and someone discovered that you could create word clouds out of the answers which I hadn't spotted.- wallwisher and linoit are online noticeboard tools which also hit the spot. They are good tools where account creation is optional. It seems that this kind of quick, interaction, simple and visually impressive tool is right for the schools context. This is unsurprising when you think about it but useful learning for me. I'm sure there is more out there.- I was almost apologetic in my inclusion of drawing tool, tagging them onto the end of mindmapping bit very briefly. However, they liked this as well which could be linked to the previous point about quick, easy and interactive.- Collaborative bookmarking was also a winner. I prefer diigo as the educational account allows for bespoke groups to be created and the teacher to create accounts. This is a tool that I will always champion is I think it is under used in education.- Collaborative documents/wikis - I put these together as they are similar in spirit. For the activity I chose a synchronous collaborative document tool - http://sync.in/ which worked well. I was right to have this at the end as people had got to know eachother a little bit so were ok with the ability to edit others' words. I nearly did this using a wikispace wiki but I'm glad I didn't now.- I was unsure about whether to dedicate time to allowing them to explore different web 2.0 tools from the sites I'd linked to which had loads of them categorised, e.g. Best Online Collaboration tools, 2011 and Free Technology for Teachers but this worked well and we ended up giving more time for this.- Word clouds went down surprisingly well. I've not included these before for some reason. I think I thought everyone already knows about them but I was wrong. Their potential for teaching and learning is perhaps limited but the ease with which they can be created make them worth a look.- Finally, the section I called Creation a narrative. This is the section that Isobel helped me research. I knew I wanted to do something around cartooning/comic strip software and photo/video mashup stuff. We talked at length about how these tools related and what their educational potential was. What we found was not much of a track record for educational use or overt marketing in this direction. However, I felt there was suffificent potential to include them. I couldn't fashion a hands on activity as none of the tools fitted the criteria so I just did demos. At the time, I thought that it wasn't going down very well but afterwards some of the primary people said that they would think about this. The session suffered a little by having weak examples to show but I'm still glad I did it. Have a look on the website down the bottom of the page to see the tools that I decided to demo along with brief descriptions. Zimmer Twins and Xtra Normal are my favourites.- As an afterthought to the creating a narrative section, I talked about and showed a couple of examples of glogster - the multimedia poster tool. I need to give this a higher profile to as they really liked the look of this. I can see why as there a lot of potential for homework activities with this. I need to look into this more.Aside from the tools, I need to think of ways to engender more discussion. The computer room setup didn't help but I could have done more in this regard.The biggest development I need to work on is getting better knowledge and understanding of the schools context. This session has potential if I can give it more contextual relevance. I'm not sure how best to do this so I need to have a think. Finally, let me give thanks to the ICT gods for having all the technology work for me.

There are different types of e-learning courses. I going to draw a divide between public and private sector courses purely to help my thinking. The divide is, of course, not that simple but it's a useful starting point for this post.Appearance is the most obvious difference and this is down to money. The content of the private sector world is dynamically displayed, well designed and often involves bespoke video. The interaction is with the software and often restricted to the odd multiple choice instant feedback job. It's mostly about absorbing the content. It's more about web design than learning design. Pedagogy is firmly didactic and pedagogical thought seems lacking.For the public sector, there is little money to sink into creating content to the same dynamic, multimedia standard. One area I am starting to explore is the easy creation of web content so that educators are less likely to whack on a powerpoint or word document. Making the content bespoke to a purely online course is an important step which many have not taken. The DIY nature means that it seems less valid to just put content up. They need to look good for this to work. Within education, there is unwritten understanding that learning activities are required regardless of this. However, I'm sure some would make do with just providing content if they could. Hiding behind making the content dynamic would make this easier.Often, people bemoan the poor look and feel of VLEs. This is a fair point when compared to some of the communication/collaboration tools out there. It's not fair, however, if they are comparing to whizzy graphics of an expensively put together e-learning course. Pedagogically, such courses have less going for them even if they look the part.This is not to suggest that HE online courses have good learning design across the board. Far from it, my job is try and facilitate this process and we have a way to go just to get everyone listening. However, there is conscious effort to make this happen. Private companies who get into e-learning steer clear of the asynchronous learning-type activities because they want to produce a produce and then sell that product. Ongoing costs are not on the agenda and facilitators cost.A pertinent point to make is that this is largely what the customers want. Learners of all ages are used to being thrown content and then make to make sense of it themselves. They are not clamouring for a scaffolded learning process. They are not used to it and it seems too hard. All the better if the content they are given looks and sounds great.Overall, there are massive differences with learning activities, software interaction, use of multimedia, look and feel and pedagogical design. My observation for this post is that private companies concentrate creating impressive looking, well designed software and where they produce courses themselves they often don't go much further with the pedagogy. Is this a bad thing? I guess it's just an observation.

We want our greater understanding of pedagogy to matter, to make a different. I've been looking closely at different pedagogical theories as part of my studies. It's interesting and challenging in equal measure. But at the back of my mind there's a so what factor which bugs me. In my role, there are very few situations where I can envisage making explicit use of pedagogical theory. Certainly, it's essential to have a good grasp but I want this knowledge to matter at a practical level.So what are the issues? The first point would be that they are abstract concepts. Of course they are, this is the point. But thinking about a practical learning design scenario there's a lot the educator has to do to make use of a theory. It's almost as if you read about a theory and then let it subconsciously effect your practice. Basically, the link between theory and practice has to be done by the educator which is a lot of work.Which theory? Each theory makes it's own claims to get to the essence of learning and how best to teach/facilitate. For the educator, this means some form of value judgement about which to favour. Am I right about this? Certainly, this is how it feels as I read about them. I'm not saying this is bad but it makes it hard for the average educator to make decisions about their own teaching and learning.Are they really so different? Of course, they are if you have the time to read and reread the important papers concerning each theory. Just reading the highlines can lead to confusing and a sense that some overlap with others. I found that ones with the word construct somewhere in the title take a while to nail as distinct entities.Research around pedagogy is important and interesting. Long may it continue. But what we need are more conscious effort to make sense, make use and make them matter in the real world of education.Answers on a postcard.... In my next post I will explore how I'm thinking about making use of the conversational framework to facilitate this process.

The title of this post is the title of a consultancy one-day session I ran on 22nd July. Once I'd convinced the client that such a course would be good for their trainers as they looked to develop blended and purely online learning, I relaxed thinking that running it would be simply about bringing everything together from my working practices. This is largely what I did but it was harder than I thought. To suggest that you can teach everything there is to know about designing and teaching an online course is ridiculous. What to leave out and what to focus on is the challenge. I decided to present via prezi again so that I could create a coherent structure to help participant get a broad picture of events. Using images and much, much more zooming gave me a better quality outcome than previously but it there's still a way to go with my proper use of this canvas presentation tool. The fruits of my labour can be found here: http://prezi.com/4t29bt5r_s7m/designing-and-teaching-an-online-course/. I also did a powerpoint backup with all the same words. This was valuable on the day when I changed the order around somewhat. I've not achieved a neat and tidy framework yet which really justifies the use of prezi quite to the extent I wanted. However, I still think there was added value doing it this way. The main sections were: - Strategic decision to make before the design process - Structural points - Scaffolding frameworks - Discussions - Blogs - Wikis - E-portfolios - Webinars I organised the bulk of the day around the above 5 communication/collaboration tools. which are common to most VLEs. It wasn't about usability but providing them with example activity types which were context free. For each tool I composed about 12 and presented them on individual small bits of paper. I then had them marry up each activity to a phase in the scaffolding process of the Salmon model as a small group activity (I nearly went with Walmsley's Best practice model). I thought it useful to give them this as a launchpad for discussion or to provide some structure if discussion was struggling. It proved successful in that for the later ones they were less interested in marrying up with scaffolding phases and more interested in talking about the tool and it's possible uses. This is what I wanted and it worked well. I have already agreed with the client that next time we will have the bits of paper laminated and more neatly presented. In addition to the above, I did a slot on e-facilitation where I presented some actual examples of facilitation in asynchronous discussion and got them to critique. I've done this before and it's worked well both times. I had a few other subject up my sleeve but only got a chance to do the ones on mindmapping, social bookmarking and glogster. For the latter two it was simply mentioning and showing them. For mindmapping I gave out some guidance and had a discussion but not using the same format as the other tools discussed. At the end, I had them have a go at structuring a session or course and give them a context they were all familiar with. None of the groups really stuck to this brief but there discussions were still on topic and there was some good good feedback. Overall, I'm pleased with how things went. But there are bits to work on: - I wanted a freeness to the discussions around each tool and this is what I got but I should perhaps think about more specific topics to feed back on. I might also abandon the marrying to Salmon stages and get them to do something else in their small groups. - Everything needs more time. I felt like I was constantly rushing and that's even after I culled a couple of sections. - Although this deliberately wasn't a hands on practice type workshop, I need to include some look and feel stuff on the tools which some won't have encountered before. For example, I assumed too much with wikis and ended up showing a couple of working examples when it became clear they didn't really know what a wiki was. If you look at the prezi be aware that like powerpoint each phrase is a launchpad for me to talk around it, I wouldn't recommend presenting from this without knowing the meaning behind everything.

Various initiative this year have led me to one point - the production of example learning activities using the main communication/collaboration tools available in the standard Virtual Learning Environment. I've often had cause to reflect on the merits of the abstract vs the practical. I've been reading an interesting article by Laurillard and Ljubojevic (2011) called Evaluating learning designs through the formal representation of pedagogical patterns. They talk about it in terms of finding a middle ground between learning theory and learning design patterns. The former is seen as too abstract for practical use and the latter as too specific for widespread adaptation. They are engaged in the LDSE project which should be a very good, well thought through online tool to be used by educators when designing learning. This Learning Design Support Environment (which I have been privileged to see early versions of) is careful to make explicit reference to learning theory. It is a commendable attempt that establishing a link between research and practice. Such an endeavour is worth pursuing. My output in this area is similiar but less sophisticated and less ambitious. What I have composed are short, succinct examples of learning activities using a particular communication/collaboration online tool. For example, re. an asynchronous discussion tool: Simple Concept DiscussionWhat do you understand the term xxxx to mean? Please share your thoughts within this Discussion activity. This is principally a dialogue between you and your fellow students so please ensure you visit and contribute at least three times in the two week period. & re. a blog tool: Reflection on learning Blog activity 2 It’s time to consolidate your learning within this session. Reflect on this statement xxxx and then write down your thoughts in a blog entry. Your tutor will give you some feedback in the comments area of this entry at the end of the session. This could be a recurring activity. I have a few or these for discussion, blogs, wikis and e-portfolios. These are presented within the context of Salmon's 5 stage model as it's important to present a scaffolded learning experience. The aim is to give example wordings for a learning activities using the common tools encountered in standard VLEs. I have decontextualised them as far as I can. Previously, I had produced templates which included lots more detail. This has now been stripped back so that they are as simple as they can be. Theory-laden time consuming resources are readily available and under utilised by the great mass of academic colleagues not well disposed towards learning technologies. I see a need for something that engaging them in a different way. In a way that make things as easy as possible for them. I haven't ignored theory but I have deliberately excluded references to it. It's a can of worms I want to keep shut unless specifically asked for (it rarely is). So I am basically saying - you can use this tool like this, and this and this. And I'm saying with an actual wording that can be utilized. This is less threatening and less challenging that framing it within a learning theory or a abstract statement about a type of activity use. As yet, I have only had a chance to use them within a single face-to-face training day. It went well and I hope to do more this term. I may reflect further on this here.

I'm often engaged in the business of breaking things down for academic colleagues so that the process of designing an online learning course seems less challenging. Sometimes it feels like I'm going against the grain a bit and distilling the academic rigour of the e-learning research that I read and hear about. Actually, its more than a feeling, its a reality and a deliberate policy. I do this because its needed. Its needed for the great mass of educators not convinced by the virtues of teaching and learning using internet-based technology. The hard part is to distill and not water down or dumb down. The aim is for simplicity or to explain in simple terms that which can be seen as too complex and unwielding.I've blogged previously about example activities templates which I've started using in face-to-face training to give educators a starting point when engaged in designing learning activities using the standard VLE communication/collaboration tools. These templates are as simple and succinct as I can possibly get them. This is one part of process. Another stage would be to aid educators with a process that is commonly faced - using a face-to-face course design to design a purely online version of the same course. Here you have a starting point, you have content, you have knowledge and understanding of how you taught in each face-to-face session but how would you engage students in the same way online. This is where I will develop ideas. The concepts are simple - discuss face-to-face - discuss online. For those in the know this is simple. For those with no experience and don't really want to do it in the first place, I could support the process by describing the process. More to follow....

Breaking off from my previous train of thought....A VLE is like a gym membership - bought for show and only properly used by a handful of hardy souls.For a few years now the Virtual Learning Environment is a must have for any self-respecting educational institution. For HEs, it's a behemoth of a walled garden where integration with registration and administrative systems takes more time and effort than the teaching and learning integration it's supposed to be about. The use is patchy at best. It's like a gym membership. Both are purchased with the best intentions. There is recognition that change is necessary for proper and fulfilling use. However, this recognition is tacit at best and romantic at worst. Realisation and readily to change the culture of your organisation or the way you live you life is often lacking. When the turmoil of such change comes into view the hard decisions are shied away from and the status quo continues with minor aberrations. This metaphor just about works, but what's the point of it. It's useful to think about how HE is approaching the use of learning technologies. Where this metaphor is useful is that it highlights how institutions like to play up their use of technology without really understanding or intending to enact the changes necessary to realise what they say is happening or will happen.

I've updated the word cloud of this blog which you can see in the column on the right. It's interesting to see how things have changed over the last four months from: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3652594/My_blog tohttp://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4135003/Learning_Tchnology_Learning_blog_-_Tom_PreskettAlthough things are largely the same, the biggest word is now learning whereas previously it was tools.  There's also evidence of my reflections on activity templates and recent learning design teaching sessions I've been running.One question I'm asking myself is:Does this word cloud give a fair reflection of my role as an E-learning Manager? (for the London Centre for Leadership in Learning (LCLL), Institute of Education (IOE))  The answer is probably not.  I reflect on what's interested me from what I've been reading and what's been challenging me and been valuable learning experiences in my job.  The mundane stuff doesn't get in there like the setting up of online course areas and the repeated process/navigation demonstrations.  E-learning/learning technology jobs are about maintaining and setting up structures and systems and negotiating opportunities and events where you can show that you can offer much more than this.  For me, I've done this by setting up sessions on Web 2.0 technologies and online learning design.  Showing people how to use a particular VLE tools is the halfway house between the two extremes.  It's ostensibly about process but you can shoehorn in pedagogy if you careful about it.