Saturday, 12 January 2008

Online Profiles in confluence wiki

Experimenting with using the "personal spaces" in confluence, the college wiki as a place to develop content for online profiles on the one hand and PLEs (Personal Learning Environments) on the other. If used well, confluence supports a flexible framework for storing and aggregating different kinds of content for different purposes. Used badly it could create a confusing mishmash space.

Here is a simple Online Profile template that I've constructed and started to use with students.

Here is the start of an experimental PLE space (very much a work in progress)

Last week, as part of a L2 PPD session, I introduced some students to the Online Profile templates. Students are preparing to find work placements, so they were thinking about how they could create a simple online space to represent their identities as designers and evidence their skills through their projects and CVs. The rationale for using templates was so that students could start with a workable but flexible framework for their online profile and learn wiki mark-up whilst customising them.

I anticipated the following problems:-
- hard to manage the possible diverse technical skills and experience amongst the student group.
- students used to creating websites might be unhappy with the limited customisation currently available (which is v. usual for wikis)
- some students might feel uncomfortable with putting their content into the public domain at this stage.

What worked:-
- the wiki seems to provide a good, manageable introduction to mark-up language for beginners (about 95% had no previous experience of html, css, wiki markup, xml etc).
- beginners appeared satisfied with the theme and colour-scheme customisation provided by confluence. They were also interested in the increased control over visual display and formatting that will soon be available (once Theme-Builder plugin is installed).
- students were able to manage the levels of public access to their own personal spaces.

Room for improvement:-
- it might be useful to bundle the pages of the template so that students could download it and install it in their personal spaces.
- it would be useful to have some way of consolidating and testing student's understanding of page hierarchy and management etc
- the few students who had some experience with html and css became quickly frustrated, disgruntled by the limitations of customisation and found wiki mark-up confusing. They seemed unconvinced by my arguments for wiki as the collaborative tool for designers of the future and didn't see the value of investing energy in learning. In retrospect it would be more useful to talk to those students about how they would prefer to use online spaces to the same ends.
- need to work out a way to aggregate links to students' personal spaces for assessment.
Posted by rcatlow at 2:54 PM in /
Comments (2)

Friday, 11 January 2008

Laptop Project and Student Blogging

Met with L1 Graphics students yesterday to discuss the role of social software in relation to their learning and future professional development. The conversation was fun and informative- and students had lots to say about the shift between social and professional uses of these softwares. I was however, surprised that students participating in the Laptop Project expressed no enthusiasm for blogging as a simple and effective way for them to document, share and reflect on their work yet. Instead they regarded their once-a-week blog post as a the minimum requirement for ownership of the laptop and were confused about what the subject of their blogging should be. After some discussion about the possibilities, in which students identified a whole range of potential approaches and benefits, it seems that we could make a few simple interventions to really improve their experience. 1. As they get started on blogging it would be useful for students to be able to compare their approaches, processes and experience in tutor-supported studio discussions. This would help them to share different techniques and approaches to documenting and reflecting on their work. As well as helping them to overcome some minor technical difficulties. 2. A few work-flow/ technical issues need sorting out. - Student's trial versions of Ecto (desktop clients) have run out and some have difficulty making blog entries through the Blojsom interface. - Students need some support to rename their blogs- they are currently displaying their student numbers- this prevents students from commenting on each others' blogs. - Students are not familiar with the notion of aggregation (only one student used RSS feeds as a way of receiving content). - Students are unclear and nervous about
Posted by rcatlow at 1:29 PM in /
Comments (0)

Thursday, 20 December 2007

trying out ecto

Shamed into using a desktop client for blogging by a college colleague who forwarded this link to Atlassian which describes how much better wikis, blogs etc support collaborative working than email and Office's 'track changes'. I'm using ecto, which is commercial software for mac (need to do a bit of research on other free/open apps). It seems very clever and useful. - backs up my blog posts - knows what different tags are supported by different blogs - allows me to save drafts and publish later (which means I can blog-away whilst offline and press go on a week's worth when I reconnect.) - format posts - skip between different blogs - preview on my desktop rather than in public space
Posted by rcatlow at 3:52 PM in /
Comments (0)

Saturday, 1 December 2007

Student Wiki Profiles

I've been working on A dummy Student Profile Page within Confluence. I'm thinking about what might be useful approaches for students developing their online identities. I have been using some of my own content (for galleries and blog feeds) and some student content (like the CV) to create examples of how the wiki might be used by students. I'm a bit worried that any staff or students looking will be confused by the unconnected fragments of content rather than using it as a starter-template for aggregating, structuring and laying out the content. It's still a long way off being useful for this either at the moment :-(

It's hard to work out the best way to introduce any mark-up language at Ravensbourne... and then even more tricky once you move into working with Macros and dynamic content- Perhaps it's hard for me cos I just feel my way through it all rather than being systematic about what I learn. From this link to Atlassianthe people who designed Confluence wiki system), kindly sent to me by Miles I found my way to the details about how to use all the Macros. Really helpful for reminding me of the really key (and yet I'd forgotten) {include} macro for pulling content from one page into another

Anyway with all this in mind I do intend to go back over today's work and create some code views like this and howtos like this.

Posted by rcatlow at 5:20 PM in e-learning
Comments (0)

Sunday, 11 November 2007

Building a personal profile page in Confluence/Wiki

I've just made a start on building a personal profile page in the  college Wiki, Confluence, the idea being to encourage Rave students and staff to use this excellent facility as a space to aggregate all of their work-related online activities, blogging, photo uploads, podcasts etc. There are many good reasons for this....another time.

I worked with reference to notes from last year's social software seminars.
- V. Pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get rss feeds working. Still puzzled about why an image posted in this blog doesn't show up in the feed? - I'll have another look tomorrow- in the meantime I've limited the number of feeds to just one (this one).
- Super easy to create a thumbnail gallery with reference to the confluence instructions.
- After sweating a bit over the syntax finally managed to display it on the profile page using the confluence include macro.
- Don't seem to be able to upload a profile image (in Firefox or Safari) so currently displaying the ghost. I'll give it all another go tomorrow.

Posted by rcatlow at 1:28 AM in e-learning
Comments (2)

Tuesday, 6 November 2007

what is a hack?

A visitor to the Zero Gamer exhibition at our gallery yesterday asked me what we meant by hacking - lots of the exhibited artworks either hack game software or hack some aspect of gaming activity. Today I recieved this image in my email via my subscription to the wonderful, 'images w/o text' irremediable mailing list.

 cultural hacking explained in an image 

 

Posted by rcatlow at 5:37 PM in Networked culture/
Comments (0)

Tuesday, 30 October 2007

Jared's solution to the students' group blog

Jared Taylor has created this group blog for his a level 2 unit, Digital Environments on the Foundation Degree in Computer Visualisation & Animation course. All the students have signed up for blogs (I think they are all within the free blogging service, Blogger) and then Jared has aggregated the links into groups within a single page. This means that students and staff can easily find each others' blog posts.
It also means that students can see how each group is working together as well as how individuals are doing.
Posted by rcatlow at 5:08 PM in e-learning
Comments (0)

making a tools-map available

Had a good meeting with Richard Oliver talking about appropriate approaches to elearning in contextual studies.

He has a great framework for thinking about some of the learning experiences key to CS. We looked at the JISC Designs on Learning project and especially the Blogging to Support Peer Learning case study together. He said that it would be useful for him if a map of tools were available- this would be a map of both institutionally supported tools (ideally with some howtos) and tools that are in the public domain. This would support a sense of possibility. We also discussed the sense of linking in with and connecting up with PPD and LRC resources.

Posted by rcatlow at 4:41 PM in e-learning
Comments (0)

Monday, 17 September 2007

Happy@ALT-C 2007

Things I found useful and enjoyable

Tools
- An online matrix to support choice of wiki
- Jaiku Create your own microblog and connect with your friends. Post from the Web, bySMS, or from desktop clients. Add comments, use icons, link Webfeeds.
- Shozu- enables you to send photos directly to Flickr which now allows you to notate images as well as to tag them.

Things to read
-Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (available online here)- talks about learning networks and putting knowledge holders in touch with people who want to learn.

-Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed about literacy for social change.

*Great e-learning Idea to test out*
To record audio student feedback, save it as an mp3 and distribute it either via email or via the VLE- This could work very well for Ravensbourne students. Just need GarageBand (comes with Mac) or Audacity (free software)

Other Random Stuff 

Educational value proposition summarised as - Create, share, discuss, evaluate
Marion Miller - (manager of the jisc regional support centre for Yorkshire and Humber, Leeds Uni Learning Technology for the Social Network Generation

Cn we uz mobz 4 LernN - James Clay - Resources mangager at Gloucester College- mobile learners- access learning anywhere anytime anyplace.
- demonstrated a range of devices and online tools that he is experimenting with for MLearning: psp, pda, gps, pbr, umpc, iphone
- sending lectures
- bluetooth for same-room group communication

Student feedback through 7 days video diaries
Amanda Jeffries from University of Hertfordshire presented results of student-feedback about their experience of blended learning. Students created video diaries/audio logs using dvcams and mp3 recorders over 7 days. Students were given 7 envelopes at the start of the process - each of which invited participants to consider a particular aspect of their learning experience. A student union rep texted them each morning to remind them to open it. Main findings were that:-
Students appreciated:-
- printed hand outs
- materials available through the VLE
- listen again facilities for lectures
Outside the formal learning environments
- students spent lots of time using social software and internet communication tools as they worked: myspace, facebook, youtube, irc
- they liked to communicate with tutors through: email, skype, video conferencing.
The research was useful because it encouraged:-
- staff to experiment
- learning tech admin to continue develop useful stuff
- the institution to invest

Dr Frank Rennie- Managing Sustainable Rural Development
Presented a regeneration project in Galston (can't find the link)
- developing "authenticity" through user generated content
- high tech, low cost, highly sustainable
inviting different interest groups to use different social software tools for different themes and functions
- Tourist promotion through locals multi-authoring "unlocking heritage resources" by uploading local music, songs, stories about the area.

Eportfolios and Web2.0
Excellent and dynamic workshop with Andrew Middleton and Suzanna ? from Sheffield Hallam university about their research into the motivations, purposes and tools for students creating eportfolios. Some useful sharing of thoughts through brainstorming and roleplay with other participants on the uses of eportfolios for learning, assessment, personal development and presentation.

Assessment to improve learning - not just measure it.
Dylan William - Deputy Director, Institute of Education
An enjoyable and stimulating keynote lecture.Drew on research to demonstrate the crucial importance of the quality of teachers to support the quality of learning. Also demonstrated the impossibility of predicting what will be learned and therefore the importance of regularly evaluating what is learned at what stage. Reinforces the importance of Formative assessment.

The crux of the lecture was to demonstrate some of the very few elearning tools and processes that supported effective evaluation of learning through:
- asking good "hinge" questions
- through systems of realtime student feedback using sms to screen or even coloured cards, in conjunction with well designed multiple choice questions. If all students answer correctly the teacher moves on but if the 30% of the class are answering wrongly in the same way it indicates to the teacher where the misunderstanding might be occurring and to address this specifically.
Posted by rcatlow at 12:26 PM in /
Comments (1)

Thursday, 13 September 2007

Grumpy@ALT-C 2007: Beyond control

I won't lie- my attendance at the recent Association for Learning Technology 2007 conference in Nottingham, subtitled Learning technology for the social network generation, made me grumpy.  Before I can get to the things that were really useful and fun I have to work  out why.

The centralised and top-down channels of traditional learning (which are mainly foreign to the practice-based learning culture of Ravensbourne) were embedded in the architechure of the buildings in which the conference itself was housed; a huge, raked conference hall with a brightly lit stage, surrounded by smaller, satellite lecture rooms and a PC lab. Then its hierarchy of participants: keynote speakers, theme leaders, presenters-of-research, work-shoppers, poster pimps and then hundreds of passive/absorbent audience members (mainly learning technology administrators and academics).  Admittedly participants at remote locations were able to access a live stream of keynote speeches which they commented and questioned in real-time. This was an interesting intervention into the traditional broadcast/lecture model- how interesting depended the ability and bravery of the moderator to filter and flag-up specific points. Parallel to these was an exhibition hall with many stands displaying  corporate elearning products- a mix of VLE packages and tools and learning objects. 

This provided a seemingly incongruous setting for the enthusiastic promoting of free Web2.0 social softwares and user owned mobile devices to support lateral, self and peer-organised learning in both formal and informal settings.  The approach has been short-handed by elearning enthusiasts as Learning 2.0 Open brain- collaborate, connect, create meaning as opposed to Learning 1.0 Open brain- insert knowledge (expanded upon here). When social constructivist ideals for  collaborative learning and the negotiated creation of meaning and knowledge by learners (of which the wiki for the Ravensbourne MAs provides a good working example) were discussed, they often seemed (with a few notable exceptions) abstract and theoretical or rather mundane after the hype... or more about what might happen, or else they were technologically determined. 

I noticed how academics/lecturers were characterised as either enlightened, early adopters of tools, or controlling and resistant dinosaurs and students as digital natives, fluent and avid users of social softwares such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and Twitter (which we know is not universally true of Ravensbourne students). 

Now I know what is bugging me... That the technology and the tools were so much the heroes of the piece and that so little conversation took place around the long-term social, economic and ecological dependencies associated with adoption of these tools and approaches. That (again with a couple of exceptions) the tools were accorded a higher status than the learning communities they served let alone the learning that was taking place. 

Soon I'll cheer up and blog a few of the really cool things that were presented.
Posted by rcatlow at 3:08 PM in /
Comments (0)

Tuesday, 13 March 2007

testing image uploads AGAIN!!! and again

currency
Posted by rcatlow at 2:33 PM in /
Comments (0)

testing image uploads AGAIN!!!

Posted by rcatlow at 2:32 PM in /
Comments (0)

Tuesday, 6 March 2007

Blogging on Blojsom

A while back Miles helpfully sent us this email that explained a whole load of stuff about blogging and customising blogs in blojsom. Whenever I have forgotten everything I retrieve it from a year old mail archive. Thought it best to do it the sensible way at last and to bookmark the blog and edit_blog pages and paste the core info here with some of my own notes.

===========

Desktop clients:
Windows: w.bloggar - http://www.wbloggar.com/ - this is free.
Mac: ecto - http://www.kung-foo.tv/ecto/ -cheap and better than w:bloggar in terms of features.

Blogging server:
Rave uses the open source blogging server Blojsom.

The blogging server is at  http://blogs.rave.ac.uk/blojsom/blog/yourname

Admin features and web-posting forms to add entries are made available by appending ?flavor=admin to your blog URL (advisable to do this over SSL), so: https://blogs.rave.ac.uk/blojsom/blog/yourname?flavor=admin

About DESKTOP BLOGGING Miles says
"However, the real fun begins when you point your desktop client (ecto etc) at the _XML-RPC endpoint_ for your blog. Most people find editing long posts much easier with a desktop client. Also, these tools add significant workflow and automation features (as well as the ability to work offline). The XML-RPC endpoint is https://blogs.rave.ac.uk/blojsom/xmlrpc/yourname and I suggest you use the Metaweblog API (as Blojsom exposes its richest featureset through that API). If this all sounds like babble, don't worry - it will make sense as you configure your client!

One thing to note is that Metaweblog as implemented by Blojsom doesn't work terribly well with categories. If you want to create categories for your blog (and you may well want to - as people can subscribe to a category rather than the entire blog), you _must_ use the web admin feature described above."

There is more documentation on the "Special Circumstances" space in the wiki: http://confluence.rave.ac.uk/confluence/ - please feel free to add your own!

About CREATING AN RSS STREAM TO YOUR BLOG
"If you want to subscribe to your blog with a desktop RSS reader, append "?flavor=rss2"  or "?flavor=atom" to your blog URL. (Note that we also support fully RESTful syndication URLs if you prefer, using /feed/<flavor>/ syntax - if this is gibberish, it's probably immaterial)."

About CUSTOMISING, MOBLOGGING, TEAMBLOGGING
This should be enough to get you up and running. Blojsom is a mature blogging system with a lot of advanced features. Some of these are available without much effort, others require a degree of familiarity with the system. For example, podcasting out of the box is a no-brainer, customising the look'n'feel of your blog needs some elementary knowledge of the Velocity templating language (unless you simply want to switch themes, when it's a no-brainer), team blogging requires some planning, moblogging (blogging from a mobile phone) requires some background reading. If you explore around the admin screens, you should begin to get an idea of the capabilities.

THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR
Some things to be aware of: Unless you explicitly opt-out (and I leave this as an exercise to those who want to), your blog will automatically be aggregated into the default blog at http://blogs.rave.ac.uk/blojsom/blog/. This blog, actually called "aggregator" displays the last few recent entries on the system.

NOT JUST PUBLISHING - ALSO DISCUSSION
 Another important thing to remember is that blogs are not solely about publishing, they are about discussion, and, although you can disable comments, we have enabled them by default."
Posted by rcatlow at 4:07 PM in /
Comments (0)

Tuesday, 13 February 2007

Another Image test

testing to see if this image loads correctlytesting image

Posted by rcatlow at 3:48 PM in /
Comments (0)

Tuesday, 6 February 2007

testing ecto

Posted by rcatlow at 1:01 PM in /
Comments (0)