Web/Tech
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The lack of uptake of new technology by researchers
Yesterday I gave a presentation for George and Stephen's open course PLENK. You can see the recording of the session here. The slidedeck is below: Research, technology & networks View more presentations from Martin Weller. I have been writing a chapter on research and how researchers are (or rather aren't) using new technologies for my digital scholarship book. Several good surveys and reviews have been published recently looking at this, and the overall picture is a rather depressing one (see some references in my Mendeley list). While there are islands of innovation, generally researchers are making little use of new technologies and are very cautious and conservative in their adoption.…
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Understanding the attention economy
My iPad (which decided to stop connecting for a couple of weeks, but has now returned from its sabbatical) has made me appreciate anew the importance of good design and using media to grab people's attention. This was brought home first by the Flipboard app, which takes your Twitter & facebook feeds along with other feeds to convert social media into your own glossy magazine. The result is that it provides me with another 'in' to the stream. This isn't the only way I interact with these sources but it's a pleasant interface and pulls me into looking at links and articles I might otherwise miss. Bloglines is a…
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iPad connectivity issues (told through the medium of a pirate comic)
I have just been away for a few weeks in France on holiday (many thanks to Phil for trying out guestblogging for me in my absence, I’m afraid it’s back to the usual bobbins now). Just before I left, I got an iPad. This struck me as the perfect travelling gadget for all the family, so I duly loaded it with apps, music, books and some films. You can see how smug and happy I was: I have to say, I do love using it and my daughter seemed to claim it as her own. But while I was away I discovered a real issue around its ability to pick…
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Content may not be king anymore, but it has some influential friends
A couple of weeks ago I took part in a two day staff development workshop here at the OU. It had been very well organised by the Social Sciences Faculty and the aim was to get staff thinking about using new technologies to solve some of their problems in teaching. There had been some good initial work, so the groups came with problems they wanted to address, eg student retention from 1st to 2nd level, encouraging reflection, etc. I was asked to present on the use of blogs and wikis. I gave a brief whizz through and tried to convey my enthusiasm for them as educational tools (I ended with…
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Eduflow
I recently signed up for the new music service Mflow. It works like this: You find people to follow, like in any social network, you can play 30 seconds of a track, and you then flow it, which means it will turn up in your followers' inboxes. They can play the full track, but only once. If they choose to purchase it, then as the person who flowed it (I guess we can't use the term 'flower') you get a percentage in revenue. As a music service I found it a bit frustrating – only being able to play 30 seconds of a track, and then only play those in…
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To the ghosts who write history blogs
Okay, maybe it's not an Obama moment in history, but, as you may have heard, the OU has adopted Google Apps for education for its students, and I think this may be a significant move in educational technology. Niall announced it and Tony has given his reaction. We're by no means the first to do it, but I think the OU's adoption is significant for a number of reasons: It ain't Microsoft – there will have been strong lobbying to adopt an MS solution, so the move to Google marks a shift in the power base or at least the default assumption that it's MS who do enterprise solutions. It's…
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How do you connect – the rise of serendipity
D'Arcy Norman has set up a project which asks the simple question 'How do you connect to people online'. He says we are free to interpret that how we want, and responses can be in any format. He is publishing the open responses as it goes along. Many people have chosen to respond in video format, and here is my offering: There different ways of interpreting the question, so I gave four answers. There is the purely technical, practical answer – so I connect mainly through twitter and this blog, plus a bunch of other tools. But there is also a set of behaviours associated with connecting, so you do…
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An interview with the future
I am one of the ‘presenters’ at the JISC 09 online conference. I don’t actually present, but instead have been asked to create a short video for the session looking at Do educational institutions have a future? Graham Attwell and Rob Howe are the other presenters. We had a chat about the session and I mentioned that I had considered doing an interview with a future version of myself, as a means of exploring the issues. They liked the idea so we have decided all to adopt it, with myself taking the academic perspective, Rob the learner one and Graham the institutional view. Below is my video, although it’s meant…
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Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change
Last year I wrote a piece for a special edition of On the Horizon, which Michael Feldstein was editing. It has (finally) appeared in print. Michael gained permission for authors to publish their work online also (the journal isn't open – boooo!) so here is the PDF of mine, and below the article itself. I haven't revisited it since I wrote it, and may disagree with what I said now, but I am trying to ensure I put all my publications online as they come out. [Published in On the Horizon 17(3) pp. 181-189]________________________________________________ Using learning environments as a metaphor for educational change. Martin Weller Abstract: Purpose: The central theme…
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The “Technology isn’t important” argument
<No Technology in Brighton by Sammy0716 http://www.flickr.com/photos/28438258@N08/3005591006/> Ten years ago I chaired the OU's first major online course (I may have mentioned this before 🙂 and we had an onslaught of students who wanted to take it, precisely because it was online. I gave a talk about how we (John Naughton, Gary Alexander and myself) had shaped the course around the web. Our idea had been to fundamentally make technology the focus, and envisage a course that had the internet at the centre of it. At that talk one of the objections was 'technology is irrelevant, it's pedagogy that matters.' I gave a woolly, conciliatory response then. I have been…
