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Social networks and education
(This is a bit of blog tidying, and trying to make sure I gather my publications through my blog, but it's a good read, honest). I mentioned a while back that I edited a special edition of RUSC with George Siemens, on the use of social networks in education. We wrote an introductory piece, which can be found here. Abstract: The last decade has produced tremendous innovation in how people connect with one another online. Social networks have experienced a rapid increase in popularity, producing both concerns (privacy, content ownership) and opportunities. The articles in this journal can be viewed as attempts to answer the question: What should educators do about…
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Ed tech & the new academic reality
In my last post I tried to set out some new(ish) realities for academics in the UK. In this post I want to think about what these might mean for educational technology. I am not going to discuss the broader implications for higher education and research as a whole, as there has been lots written about that. Again, I am going to attempt a neutral tone, my aim in this post is not to bemoan the state of affairs (I do that enough in other posts), but to think through what it means to operate in this context. So in terms of ed tech, here are some thoughts: Less time…
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The new academic context
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/nualabugeye/2636448990/> My starting point for this post is that the financial crisis and changes in funding are going to radically alter the higher education environment within the UK. In this post I want to set out the context within which academics will have to work from now on. There are two things to point out: the current climate may see these changes become a reality, but they are also the culmination of a number of trends that have been occurring over the past twenty years or so; I want to set out the new context in an objective manner, and to avoid ascribing value to these changes. This is the…
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Why don’t academic authors self-publish?
<Photo by MonsierLui http://www.flickr.com/photos/monsieurlui/316350341/> I got an invite from Frank Rennie the other week to contribute a chapter to a book he is thinking of putting together around the subject of the mismatch (or distance) between academic thinking and the potential of new tools. Frank is a big fan of the self-publish sites and has suggested we eschew an academic publisher, and just publish ourselves via Lulu or Blurb. This got me thinking as to why more academics don't do this, and still chase the book contract. It certainly isn't for the money, so it must be for the prestige. This can be broken down into personal and external I think.…
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A Couros birthday and user generated content
I'm sure many of you will have seen this, but it's worth showing again. Below is a video that Dean Shareski compiled for blogger Alec Couros's 40th Birthday (Dean describes the process here). It's fun and heartwarming, but it's also a great example to show people about the power of the network. As I understand it someone suggested the idea on twitter, Dean then put together a Google Doc with the lyrics and contacted people in Alec's network to assign them lines. They then uploaded or emailed him the video clips, which he then compiled together. Here's why I think it's interesting, beyond it being for Alec who's a…
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A marathon not a sprint
So, yesterday, after talking about it for a few years, I finally got around to doing a marathon, over in Llanelli. It was a warm day, along the coastal path, with only about 600 runners. I've been following a training plan since the beginning of the year, so was reasonably confident. I was aiming for a 4 hour finish, and was on target for this until mile 17 when I hit a bit of a psychological as well as physical wall. The route is two loops of a figure of eight and this was the furthest point out, and suddenly, the thought of having to come back all the way…
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A quick and dirty REF
I am currently engaged with working on the REF submission for my Institute. I fully understand why we do this, in cash strapped time in particular, research money will make a big difference. It is also almost impossible not to play the game if you want to be recognised as a research institution and attract staff. But it is a horrible, pernicious process that seems deliberately designed to kill innovation, perpetuate existing models, waste time, focus energy on gaming the system and keep publishers happy. If you wanted to design a process with the sole aim of restricting the adoption of new methods and technology, then you could do a…
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Digital Scholarship – the DJ set
I have a vague idea of maybe one day doing a keynote as a DJ set (I think Brian Lamb did this once), but of course, I have never done a DJ set, and it would be a painful affair. So in lieu of that, I decided to create a DJ set to accompany my book. I used Soundcloud, to produce the set below. Lots of tracks were disallowed because they had restricted rights, so my 30 odd track set came down to 12. I've added in a little explanation in between. My mic started dodgy and then packed up altogether, so the quality of these (both in technical and…
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Job selection and the paradox of choice
<Image by Ted Percival http://www.flickr.com/photos/tedpercival/3115404982/> I read Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice recently (after Erik Duval recommended it). The title kind of tells you all you need to know, but his basic argument is that, contrary to what we might think, greater choice isn't always a good thing. As we get more and more choice, we become either paralysed by the possibility of making the wrong choice, or we revert to standard, old practice, ignoring the choice we have. This came to mind recently when both selecting people for a job interview and talking to someone else who was trying to shortlist. The 'problem' is that in times of financial…
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Space – The purpose of education
<image http://www.flickr.com/photos/see-through-the-eye-of-g/5414817728/ by GollyGForce> This is my contribution for the Purpos/Ed blog In this post my default interpretation of education is that which I’m closest to, namely formal, tertiary education, although some of my points will be valid for other levels of education (primary and secondary) and informal, personal learning. I’ve been writing about digital scholarship a lot recently, so one way to think of the purpose of education is to turn this on its head, and rather than consider what functions scholars perform, to suggest that the purpose of education is to have a place where these functions reside. Not all of them relate directly to teaching, but they can be…
