Tek4L

A good summary of some of the big changes coming in Moodle 2.0:

http://blog.hansdezwart.info/2009/12/10/did-you-know-moodle-2-0-will-online-educa-2009/

Some more background to the Open University’s SocialLearn platform development.

http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2009/09/using-learning-environments-as-a-metaphor-for-educational-change.html

Lots of other people playing around in this area also, but the OU has resources to throw at a project like this, so it will be really interesting to see how it shapes up. It will also be interesting to see where it leaves Moodle in the OU mix medium-long term, as moodle is very much focused on taking traditional approaches to education online at the moment.

An interesting sounding project from the Open University

http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/sociallearn/2009/09/10/sociallearn-announced-softly/

Just picking up on a comment of Derek’s

Just over one in five (20.2%) said they left the phone on in lessons – which is usually forbidden by schools. Should this statistic be a surprise – and what of the ‘forbidden by schools’? Does this represent a bias in the way mobile phones are regarded in a school setting? What’s wrong with having a mobile left on in class – provided the appropriate courtesies are observed about sound off and avoiding distracting behaviour etc.?

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing an innovative english teacher in a secondary school who was integrating the students’ mobiles into her lessons in several ways:

• She was getting them to use predictive txt to teach spelling.
• Those that had internet access on their phones she appointed as researchers to look up quick facts for the rest of the group, eg. when students came back from break saying they had heard that Michael Jackson had died she got somebody to find out as much as they could from their phone and report back to the class.
• She put a mobile number up on the board and said it was a mobile phone dictionary and if you txt a word to it the definition will be returned. The number was actually her phone, and when students sent a word to it she would secretly return the definition.

The mobiles that students have in their pockets are being increasingly powerful devices – why not try and make maximum use of them.

Recently watched Emily Levine’s theory of everything Ted Talk. I am no post modernist, so wouldn’t agree with all of her thoughts, but I liked her concept of the trickster – the one who deliberately avoids trying to be objective, or drawn into win/lose debates.

There is currently a lot of debate going on at the moment around various aspects of educational technologies, eportfolios, IAM, etc. which is trying to be very objective, and narrow everything down to neat and tidy applications with fixed standards for interoperability, etc. I can’t help thinking that there is the need for a trickster or two in these discussions.

I am currently having a play with Alfresco Share as a possible option for an online collaboration tool for our teams. There is a nice feature in the site blog function that enables the posting of blog entries to both the team collaboration area and to an external blog. We have talked about the need for this sort of functionality in the past, so teams can maintain a blog which may be mostly for internal consumption, but with the ability to push some of the posts out to an external facing blog. It is great to see this feature implemented.

This entry was created on Alfresco Share running on my laptop, and was also pushed out to my external blog.

After an initial play around I am impressed with Alfresco and keen to have a detailed look at its document management features.

Yet another new system claiming to be the latest and greatest in online learning

http://www.schoology.com/

“The first course management system built on a social networking platform” they claim – but it is interesting to note that the key features of their new system that they highlight on their homepage are – manage attendance, upload documents and course material, and manage student grades – doesn’t sound awfully social constructivitist to me

I have just been looking at frameworks for reviewing IT systems in schools. We have used the ITIL version 3 framework as the basis of reviews in the tertiary sector, but I thought I would look at BECTA’s adaption of ITIL for primary and secondary schools.

At first glance it appears to be based on the ITIL version 2 framework, which is ‘process’ driven. I like the version 3 approach which is instead ’service’ driven. I think this was a sensible move on the part of ITIL. It is too easy for IT people to get focused on the processes and forget that the delivery of services is the key reason for IT to exist – and the version 3 framework helps to keep the focus on this. It is largely just wording, as the underlying processes of v3 are much the same as for version 2, but is still a worthwhile change in my view.

I wonder if BECTA are going to revise their framework to keep current with version 3 of ITIL. Must have better hunt through the above site to try and find out.

I was lucky enough to get a small contract in the middle east country of Bahrain a few weeks ago. It was my first time in the middle east, and it was a great experience. Click on the photo below to see a few snaps from the visit.

I was reading the South China Morning Post in a cafe in the City Gate mall in Hong Kong, as you do on a Saturday morning, and spotted an article about a great scheme to kick start the economy in the Fujian province. They were offering 10 bonus marks on the high school entrance exam for children whose parents spent more than $284K on property. For some reason there was a bit of an outcry against the scheme and they had to withdraw it. I think someone in the NZ ministry should pick this idea up and run with it