LSIS – Excellence Gateway

Stalybridge Station Buffet Bar or bust

I was asked by David Sugden to join an advisory group investigating Social Media (Web2.0) for the LSIS Excellence Gateway.  Our first face-to-face meeting took place yesterday at Ashton Sixth Form College in the MoLeNET Academy. [ a very productive way to spend my day off ]

We have a great group of people from across the Post 16 sector, who all bring many different viewpoints, ideas and experiences of Web2.0 (which we are actually calling ‘stuff’, for now).  Without going into the subplot – we’ve established a few things about ‘stuff’… fundamentally – it’s difficult to put a finger on what ‘stuff’ actually is.  I know I’ll probably get people posting comments about what Web2.0 is… however – give a bunch of people a few hours and they’ll come away with very different views.

Do you want to know about the journey?  OK – The train from Liverpool to Stalybridge was on time until we got somewhere near to Warrington, then for some reason the train slowed to walking pace because there were a few leaves on the track.  Alright – I was 10 mins late, which didn’t matter really as I was technically still early for the meeting.

The return journey was far more eventful.  David mentioned the Stalybridge Station Buffet Bar

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- which is a sort of cross between a sweet shop & an olden-days pub.  It would have been rude not to make use of its facilities.  There was a nice roaring open fire, a few Locals, some strange beer (I had ‘American Werewolf in Wigan’) and unique decor.  There was even a guy from the Sunday Telegraph taking photos [keep your eyes out later this month]… However, the trains home were awful – either very late or canceled. I’m sort of getting used to eventful rail journeys home now, which is lucky really because they seem to be on the increase.

Anyway, as Ronnie Corbett would say – I digress.  Our meeting was productive, we’re currently collaborating online and will be meeting up again soon. Great to meet some new folk and catch-up with those I already knew.

I’m sure there’ll be another blog entry about LSIS Excellence Gateway very soon.

Confession

Forgive me father, I have sinned – it’s been two months since my last blog entry.

So, what’s been going on then?

Well, BECTA Technology Exemplar Network is finished, MoLeNET has also finished and we’ve completed our college enrollment.  BECTA TEN was enjoyable, I made some new contacts (as well as renewing old ones) I got to learn about life in the WBL (work based learning) sector and found out about some amazing work with the homeless & refugee community on the south coast.

MoLeNET was a great experience and our project generally went well.  The technology element was outstanding and I pay public tribute to Martyn Coleman and John Paul Szkudlapski for their technical wizardry and commitment to ensure the technical aspects of the project were flawless! Thank you guys

I think if there’s one thing I’ve learned from working on projects, it’s that with the best will in the world – personnel will let you down far more often than technology will.  That said – I loved working on the project and would get involved in more, if the opportunities arise.

Back at college – it was another hectic summer of upgrades and installations, which (if you’re interested) you can start to read about on our new departmental WordPress site.

lunchtime lecture for laggards

Found myself, once again, revisiting a Blog post I made in early 2009. I’ve even renamed it ‘Early adopters or early majority?‘ I seem to be getting a lot of visitors to this page.  Perhaps I should have made it a Wikipage, rather than a blog entry?

Something that has been on my mind for quite a while now, is – how can we effectively move ideas, innovations, technology, research, etc. from out of the domain of ‘the few’ to the wider audience in education establishments?

Having been involved in many case studies and project reports, I often wonder how effectively they (case studies and good practice reports) are taken-up by the early majority, late majority and laggards at my own college and other education establishments?  I have voiced my concerns many-a-time, as I am genuinely worried about schools and colleges where there are no innovators/early adopters to help drive the take-up of new technologies and learning methodologies.  What happens to the learners and what effects are there on the staff in terms of embedding technology into the curriculum?

Now I guess you could argue that schools and colleges don’t need to be operating at the cutting edge in order to achieve results.  Which brings me round to wondering if education is about ‘results & statistics’ or about facilitating a ‘useful rounded education’ that prepares learners for life.

Anyway – that’s my lunch hour over… I’ll just get back to some un-innovative paper work.

reasons to be cheerful, part III

This is a follow-on from my post about the BECTA ‘Time to Innovate’ Conference 2010.

Reasons to be cheerful, part I

OK, I’ve slept on it – perhaps I came to the conference full of optimism due to the success and scale of the 2009 BECTA conference?  Perhaps I was interpreting ‘time to innovate’ as a call to arms – “be innovative with learning technology”!  Perhaps I was feeling good because we’ve been part of BECTA TEN Phase 1 & 2 and we have a MoLeNET Phase 3 project, and also had good case studies written about our effective practice with technology.

Reason to be cheerful? I know that we’re on the right tracks and are committed to utilizing learning technologies for all the right reasons.  I’m lucky that I’m allowed space, time & funding to be innovative in my job role.

Reasons to be cheerful, part II

It was interesting that James Clay posed a question to the conference Q&A panel, on the lines of – ‘How can we innovate, learn and progress, if funding streams, statistics and OFSTED, etc. penalize innovation?’ correct me, if I totally misrepresented that, James There were also some good Tweets within the conference stream which were still questioning and challenging, rather than just (virtually) nodding along with what the speakers had to say.

Reason to be cheerful? People are still prepared to be innovative and challenge the conventional.  I’ve always worked to a personal maxim: “If I don’t innovate, I stagnate”.

Reasons to be cheerful, part III

I’m back at my desk, facing some new challenges… the coming financial year will be tight (we all know that), changes at the LSC mean we go back under Local Authority control from April 1st -  I’m not yet sure what that will mean for us.

Reason to be cheerful? I have a great job, have wonderful staff, am involved in some amazing projects  – and possibly most importantly… I am part of a fantastic extended community of practice stretching around the globe – fellow practitioners and educators who are prepared to be innovative, share what they are doing and encourage others to do the same.

If you’re happy and you know it – clap your hands

Shibboleth Implementation at BSFC

BECTA TEN Profile

MoLeNET thin.clusion

the future is bright, the future is augmented

[Vimeo=http://vimeo.com/8569187]

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

There are a couple of threads about ‘the future of the web’ & ‘mavericks/innovators’ on the ‘BECTA Technology Exemplar Network’ Ning – which unfortunately for those outside the project, is a closed Ning group.

James Clay posted up this incredible video of the potential future for augmented reality in the home. Is this the kind of future you want? How should technology interact within your own personal space?

Blog2.0

Sorry folks – had to use the old 2.0 somewhere on this blog – it’s the law…

Just finding my way around WordPress after being a Blogspot user for a few years.

First task is to try an export from Blogspot and then importing to WordPress – you might think that’s a  little pointless, but I really am trying to consolidate the multitude of sites that I’ve sighed-up to during my Masters and day job… many of these sites are never re-visited or just stay under-popultated with a single entry.    not good use of the web…

Meantime, I found a great site called Throwboy, via @amberback – and thought I’d re-post this cool film.

External link to YouTube

Notes for Activity 1.4

I am continuing on with writing-up my first draft notes on the ‘Hiltz and Meinke’ (1989) paper. As I’ve been reviewing the paper and my initial margin notes, I’ve been trying to put it all into context.

I remember back to what I was doing in IT in 1988/89, in secondary education in the UK. Obviously I can’t speak for every secondary school, but we were just about to network BBC Masters. I think ‘IT’ had only just been add into the National Curriculum and EVERYTHING was new and pretty basic.

I know there will have been cutting edge establishments running better equipment and pushing the boundaries. It is interesting to read this paper, contrasting what was being developed in the USA in 1986-88; which is only now really beginning to be rolled-out in the UK… one of the biggest growth areas in the past 2-3 years has been the introduction and development of VLEs in colleges and secondary education.

I think it would be interesting to try and find some papers and empirical studies on CMC/VLEs in the UK to see where they fit on the time-line in comparison to research carried out in the USA.

Anyway back to my notes… I’ve pretty much finished typing them up and will post them (definitely) tomorrow (is there actually a ‘deadline’ for the Activities? week by week, or just to be completed within the group at whatever pace is set by the group?)