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Open writing and the integrity of the book
This is the last of my reflections on the book writing process, for now anyway, so you can all stand down now. In this post I want to explore a bit of the tension between being generally open and the book as artifact. I have blogged small sections of the book as I have gone along, and also parts of the book are based on existing posts. I have wondered whether this open pre-publication approach will undermine the book itself. In an earlier post I mentioned how the book could be seen as being one element in a wider set of resources, and how my online network had been so valuable in the writing process. So…
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5 things I think about Learning Analytics
<Ed Techs go in search of data in the wild> I am at the 1st Learning Analytics conference in Banff, which has been interesting. I came not sure of what it was, or what my take on it was. The conference has been good, very interdisciplinary in nature (for which you can read 'I didn't understand some of it'). I'm still not sure about a lot of it, but here are five things that have occurred to me over the course of the past few days. I don't believe they're strong enough to say I've learnt them, but rather they are things I now have come to a tentative viewpoing…
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References are like airport security checks
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/4228752706/ by Mike Licht> This is the penultimate post in my week-long series of reflections on the book writing process (you have been reading them all, right?). I've moaned before that referencing is largely an anachronistic practice which is located in dealing with physical objects. As I said in that post, there are two main reasons that I can see: To properly acknowledge the work of others. The act of referencing provides a clear framework for avoiding plagiarism since it positively encourages students to reference others and thus removes ignorance as an excuse. To allow readers to locate any sources for themselves. This acts as both a check on the author…
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Book analytics
This is the fourth in my musings on the book writing process. When my book comes out it will be freely available online, in HTML (I think). I don't know how the site will be constructed, but it strikes me that as an author this is potentially very interesting. I'm at the Learning Analytics conference at the moment, and Tony has been talking about Google Analytics. I run this on my blog, and it's always interesting, but the type of data it might give a book author is more revealing. On my blog it tells me where people have come from, that most people tend to come from search, and come to one post…
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A tale of two books
Continuing my thoughts on the book writing process, this post is about how the process itself has changed, for me at least, over recent years. I start my book by comparing the process of writing this book with my last one about 6 years ago. Below is a list of some of the tools and resources I used to write this book: Books – via the library but increasingly as ebooks and on Kindle, and one audiobook E-journals – my university library has access to a wide range of databases, but I also made frequent use of others through tools such as Google Scholar and Mendeley Delicious/social bookmarking – as well…
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The book isn’t dead, it just has new friends
So the first of my reflections on completing my digital scholarship book can probably be filed under 'No shit, Sherlock': The book is a good format for some ideas I have suggested that books and articles have had a monopoly as the format for the dissemination of ideas, and new media liberate us from this somewhat. In my case the book has grown out of stuff I've been blogging over the past 4 years or so, but it isn't just a load of blog posts bundled together (whatever you may think). The length and format of a book is a very good means of both exploring ideas in depth and…
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About
I’m a Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University in the UK. I’m into exploring the impact of new technologies for learners and academics. Recently this has coalesced under the broad, inadequate heading of ‘digital scholarship. I chaired the first major elearning course at the Open University, with around 15,000 students annually. I was the director for the VLE project and the SocialLearn project at the OU. I live in Cardiff, run quite slowly but regularly, support Spurs, have a VW camper van and read literary fiction sporadically. Other places you can find me around and about are: Twitter: mweller Slideshare YouTube Flickr Tumblr scrapbook blog
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Consultancy
Although I work for the OU, I also do some consultancy on a part-time basis. I have acted as a consultancy on a number of projects including developing elearning content, advising on VLE adoption, and elearning advice. Current areas which I can offer expertise and advice on are: Use of new media by academic staff Digital scholarship policy Recognition of new outputs in tenure and promotion Open access policy and guidelines If you are interested in any of these or similar areas, and think I may be able to help, then contact me on edtechie [at] gmail.com
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Some thoughts on the book writing process
(The printout of my book) I submitted the manuscript (well the Word files) of my digital scholarship book to the publishers, Bloomsbury Academic, a couple of weeks ago. It should be out in September, with an online OA Creative Commons version as well as the printy touchy feely one. So now is a good time to reflect on the process. In the following posts I'll suggest a number of reflections on the process. Overall it's been rewarding, and a useful exercise, but I couldn't have done it without this blog. Whereas many authors create a blog to accompany a book, I think I have created a book to accompany the…
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Comparethejournal.com
A journal comparison site? Simples. This another post from the stable of 'Martin's great business ideas that never get taken up, and which he never progresses.' One of the themes in my digital scholarship book is that of alternatives – new technology driven approaches give us alternatives when previously we had none: we can join in a conference remotely, we can choose which medium we wish to convey our message in, we can make our outputs as detailed or as general as we like and we can chat about professional interests, sport, politics, film, or whatever we like all in the same space. Looking at academic publishing, it strikes me…
