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Chasing the Hawthorne effect
In a response to a comment from Alan Cann I glibly mentioned the Hawthorne effect and that maybe it wasn’t the evil it is usually portrayed as. I’ve been thinking about this since, and wanted to explore the idea. It goes something like this: The Hawthorne effect says that because you start experimenting that can change the behaviour of the people you are observing (see also the related Pygmalion and halo effects) . It bedevils educational technology, because say you introduce podcasting on a course and then measure student performance or satisfaction then you can’t be sure that any change is really due to a pedagogic benefit of the podcasts,…
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Some more reasons to blog
In a recent post I mused on some reasons why educators should blog. Since then I’ve done my official ‘thou shalt blog’ report (incidentally, I am really enjoying running to Thou Shalt Always Kill which contains the excellent lines ‘thou shalt not judge a book by its cover/thou shalt not judge lethal weapon by Danny Glover’) in which I added a couple more: It exposes the process – much of the community of practice theory argues that being able to participate in a community novices should be able to observe, and to an extent participate with, experts in action. A blog is good means of allowing others to observe some…
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Some 2.0 reality checks
The Pew Internet report on Typology of ICT Users (thanks to John for sending me this) has some interesting findings. We do rather tend to get swept up in our little bubble around web 2.0 and modern usage of technology generally, but this paints a rather different picture. It has some great categories also: ‘omnivores’, ‘lackluster veterans’, ‘light but satisfied’, and my favourite which surely describes most of us at some stage ‘connected but hassled’. A few of the finding that caused a mild raise of the eyebrow: Those who have ever gone online for no particular reason, just to pass the time – 62% (28% yesterday). This seems quite…
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I wish I’d thought of that #243
This is such an obvious, yet brilliant idea (via Beth’s blog). Meredith Farkas had a book coming out (social software in libraries), and rather than have some dull cover foisted upon her by the publishers from their standard stock of photos, she set up a competition in Flickr. The winners got – a free copy of the book! While I’m sure it’s a good book, it’s obvious that the prize wasn’t the motivation for entering, people just really enjoyed the chance to be creative. The pool can be found here. Below are a couple of my favourites: And all are better than the publisher generated cover of my book: Lazy…
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Reasons for not doing elearning 2.0
Tony Karrer recently did a post suggesting that educators should just do it and try using web 2.0 technologies in education. He’s right of course, this stuff isn’t rocket science, the tools are being used by millions of people everyday, so why do so many educators resist even thinking about them? This came back to me during the recent OU curriculum and technology conference. There were some good examples of part-time tutors who had ‘just done it’, but also a lot of resistance. This resistance isn’t usually voiced as direct opposition, but is rather couched in ‘reasons to be cautious’. Here are the main reasons to be cautious that I’ve…
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My daughter’s music – now with live playlist
In my earlier post on my daughter’s playlist I wondered if there was a way of pulling the playlist in from iTunes. Of course there is, and of course Tony Hirst pointed me at it, but what was interesting was that actually I didn’t even bother to look in iTunes. I think of Apple as such an obsessively proprietary organisation that they wouldn’t bother to do something so open. So this is just by way of a test.
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Open as to…
The OU’s internal curriculum and technology conference ran over the last couple of days. As with all such events it is both inspiring and a bit deflating. Inspiring because you get to hear of all the good stuff going on and see the enthusiasm of your colleagues. Deflating because things you want to happen still seem a long way off, and some of the same old arguments keep coming up. One of the thoughts that occurred to me (not for the first time) was that the OU now needs to establish a new definition of openness, and by extension, new identity for itself. The OU’s mission statement is: open to…
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My daughter’s music
My five year old daughter has her own playlist on iTunes. It is reasonably good: The Automatic – Monster Coldplay – Yellow Kanye West – Touch the Sky Madonna – Sorry The Blood Arm – Suspicious character Cliff Richard – Batchelor Boy The Feeling – Never be lonely Scissor Sisters – I don’t feel like dancing JET – Are you gonna be my girl Just Jack – Starz in their eyes Kaiser Chiefs – Ruby Kooks – Naive The View – Same jeans Is there a way of pulling in an iTunes playlist by the way? I don’t want Tony Hirst to accuse me of being clunky again 🙂 You…
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Cardiff the slow city
I live in Cardiff, which I think is a great city – it’s the right size, it’s got a strong identity, it’s got good facilities, we have some great coastline nearby and the wonderful Brecon beacons behind us. It now turns out that it is also Britain’s most laid back city. Some recent research has measured the pace at which people walk, which has increased by 10% over the past decade or so, but Cardiff came out as having the slowest walking pace. That’s because we’re not in a rush, we’re enjoying ourselves. And it was also found to be a fairly honest city in a not very scientific study.…
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Educator as DJ
James Cridland gave a good presentation today at the OU’s internal curriculum and technology conference, talking about the Virgin radio site, and more significantly about the changing nature of broadcast. I’m presenting tomorrow on the broadcast strategy and so his talk had a lot of resonance with me. What struck me when listening to James was that radio now has to compete with the likes of LastFM, and indeed Virgin has a similar social networking site (which I must admit I was unaware of). Given that you can find the music you like and listen to a much greater range of stuff through the likes of LastFM, what makes people…
