Mark Childs

This week I will be mainly trying to get my paper for ReLIVE finished and my paper for ALT-J restarted. I also want to try and re-work the thesis to incorporate the ideas that are coming out of incorporating Activity Theory. I’ve also got a couple of meetings with FEC on planning their new website and on planning their new building. Doing the clicks and bricks thing.

Also this week I will be showing off my new piece of kit - a projection keyboard. It projects a laser keyboard for inputting to a PDA - it’s lots faster than the tiny keyboards you get with the phone. And it’s a laser, so if I see you in a meeting apologies for the techie nerdie thing.

Last week produced some interesting points. The action research workshop went well. There were some issues raised about the ethics of action research, or rather the process required to get clearance through ethical committees to get to do action research. AR is an interesting blend of social science and natural science. Experimental but also interpretivist. Good to see it catching on.

I also got to meet two students from Said Business School who are doing some research for Linden Labs on experience of Second Life. Hopefully I sounded intelligent enough when answering their questions. It’ll be interesting to see the results of their survey.

Thursday was the RSC’s virtual worlds forum. It was an excellent event, just the right mix of planned and ad hoc. I don;t need to say anything more about it since Kevin Brace has already blogged about it at http://kev-brace.blogspot.com/2008/07/muvle.html

Also last week I finally took the time to get my head round Activity Theory. It was a lot simpler than I first thought - I’d been put off mainly by all those triangles and arrows. Thanks to my colleague Sue passing a paper my way I got it - and found that it really brings together the stuff that had previously been quite fragmented on my PhD. I’ve come up with a blend of my conceptual framework and activity theory which is on my eportfolio at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/wie/courses/degrees/docs/who/students/edrfap/research/framework/activitytheory2/

I also learnt to build in second life in order to recreate the framework in 3D. I did OK on the building but unfortunately my geometry let me down. Bizarrely I expected all three sides of a right-angled triangle to be the same length.

Another colleague (Marina) has suggested a collaboration on a paper at just the time when I felt all fired up from watching this video http://blip.tv/file/855937 Watch this - if it scares you, you’re in the wrong profession.

Interesting sidenote though - this and the Mike Welsch videos are inspiring lectures about web 2.0. Really good lectures. They’re so good that they partially undermine the point theyre making, which is that the future is all about participation and experiential learning and all that.

Evidence that there are some really bright kids out there that our educational system is failing to reach :
http://img20.photobucket.com/albums/v60/profmadhatter/nguyen1.jpg
http://img20.photobucket.com/albums/v60/profmadhatter/nguyen2.jpg
http://img20.photobucket.com/albums/v60/profmadhatter/nguyen3.jpg
http://img20.photobucket.com/albums/v60/profmadhatter/nguyen4.jpg

I guess I’m wondering how I’d've marked these essays.

Just in case you’re not a subscriber already, I recommend Seb Schmoller’s Fortnightly Mailing list, which brings together a range of current developments in education - and mainly elearning.

I first got to know Seb when he approached me for some of my research on WOLF (Wolverhampton’s VLE, developed over 10 years ago, for which I was the pedagogical researcher) in the search for prior art relevant to Blackboard’s VLE patent. I don’t think they ever used the research, but it’s good to see that the challenge to the patent seems to be progressing
http://www.desire2learn.com/patent/ReExam/D2LComments/Comments%20in%20response%20to%20Bb%20%28PTO%29.pdf

There’s also a link to a new publication from BECTA about “next generation learners” which are the students we’ll be teaching in just a few years from now. Worth a look therefore. I’m with the people who resist the idea of next generation learners, though, where that means there are digital immigrants and digital natives - that whole Prensky thing that technology is creating different forms of learners. If you look at what things like the BECTA report reports students saying - it’s no different from what I would have needed when I was a student in the 1980s - it’s just that with technology we have a better chance of meeting those needs. Anyway - here’s the link to the report.

http://publications.becta.org.uk/display.cfm?resID=37348

Anyone who’s into education (there’s probably a few out there) need to watch this:

http://umanitoba.ca/ist/production/streaming/podcast_wesch.html

This is a keynote (lecture!) by the guy who did that video of students holding up signs in a lecture room. This really shows why we need technology to improve what we do.

Monday was spent on the second face-to-face meeting of the THEATRON project. THEATRON is building theatres in second life, for performance and english literature students. It’s being directed by King’s College London, and I’ve been recruited to manage and evaluate it. We have five subsidiary projects putting together learning and teaching sessions to test out sl as a platform and the models designed in the project specifically. The meeting was a chance for the educators to talk about their experiences and to ask questions (and make requests) of the head of the technical team. The most impressive bit was a rezz-on-demand tool. By clicking on a button on the corner of THEATRON island you can see the Globe Theatre or the Theatre of Pompey or the theatre at Epidavros appear before you. I also set up a THEATRON group in Second Life. If you want to join just go in SL and add it as a group. Membership is open.

Tuesday and Wednesday is a JISC Innovation meeting at Keele University, my study day this week is on Thursday, since on Friday I have the first in my scheduled round of meetings with people to get to grips with what it is I’m meant to be doing here.

The action research meeting didn’t happen - however this did mean I got to talk to Andy Syson and Dean in the elearning unit. There’s a lot of really interesting stuff happening - and it’s good to see that there’s a fully integrated suite of tools to meet people’s needs. I just need to get up to speed with the ones I’m not yet familiar with.

Wednesday included some interesting sessions. One of these was with HEFCE who were after feedback about their elearning strategy. Two bits that were important to those there. One was that IT departments should address the needs of academics, particularly those who are experimenting with new technologies. I hear horror stories of technologies being blocked on a whim by IT departments because they don’t think they’re needed as part of learning and teaching - (like Second Life is a game and academics shouldn’t be wasting their time playing games). Luckily that’s not an issue here, but of the universities represented at the meeting, only one other seemed to have similar support. The other feedback was that a “strategy” should be a toolkit of various implementation models, which could be applied in institutions, not just a policy statement. Apparently an early version of the strategy had “not for action” on the front page.

The other interesting session was from BCU about the concept of Woven Learning as opposed to Blended Learning. Not just another buzzword, the concept is that bringing in technology isn’t just about creating a mix of distanced and face-to-face, it’s about mixing together appropriate learning activities, some of which may be technology-based others of which won’t be. But it’s about what you can _do_ with the technology, not just bringing in tech for the sake of it.

Thursday was the teaching and learning committee. I bought a suit specially because the meeting had the word “committee” in the title. There’s a lot going on, which will give me a very good leg-up in getting started, I’m sure.

Friday was a writing day. The conference proceedings are underway now, and I’m starting to get my head round the relive08 paper. Another day or two (and a trip to CAW) should crack that one.

I have three things I’m working on at the moment.

Edit DIVERSE 07/08 conference proceedings. The first step with this is back-engineer a template from the previous conference proceedings. Then I need to send out a call for papers to all the contributors to the last two conferences.

Paper for ReLIVE08 I’m co-authoring a paper for this conference with Joff Chafer. I’m hoping to get this done by the end of the month.

Paper for ALT-J. I’ve written a paper for Maggi Savin-Baden’s issue of ALT-J on immersive virtual worlds. I wasnt sure if the research is ready, but Maggi and Frances Bell were so supportive of the paper I’m giving it another go.

Tuesday 8th July - working on an action research workshop. My MA was in Practitioner Research (so I hope I know something about this) but my rule for this one is for me to shut up and learn something.

Wednesday 9th July - attending the JISC Learning and Teaching experts’ group meeting at the Orange Studios in Birmingham. I received the invitation for this because I used to be connected to the Learner Experience Programme. Although I’ve left the project that was part of that behind at Warwick, my invitation still stands. This should be interesting because it’s focusing on curriculum design and delivery from an elearning angle.

Thursday 10th July - Teaching and Learning Committee (TALC) - a first chance to start linking to the learning and teaching strategies here at Coventry. Should be interesting.

Also this week - I need to put together a list of what I’ll be doing for the rest of the month. So far this looks like it should be meeting with all of the heads of department in the EC Fac - as well as all the people doing elearny type things in the active learning groups. Plus the registrar for EC Fac and the elearning support team. That’s a lot of meeting.

I need to sort out the arrangements for the THEATRON meeting next week.

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