Reflections on TEDxHull - Beyond Limits

Today I attended TEDxHull at the Hull Truck Theatre.  If you've never come across TED before then the following paragraph from the TED website at ted.com explains it best.

TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Since then its scope has become ever broader. Along with two annual conferences -- the TED Conference in Long Beach and Palm Springs each spring, and the TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh UK each summer -- TED includes the award-winning TEDTalks video site, the Open Translation Project and TED Conversations, the inspiring TED Fellows and TEDx programs, and the annual TED Prize.

TEDx is described as follows:

TEDx was created in the spirit of TED's mission, "ideas worth spreading." The program is designed to give communities, organisations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.

I've watched quite a few TED videos on the TED website and through the app on my iPhone over the last few years and when I heard that there was going to be a TED event so close to where I live I was very excited and keen to get there.


I'm very pleased to report that it didn't disappoint.  I thoroughly enjoyed all 11 live presentations on the day and also the three pre-recorded TED Movies from the TED site which were shown.  I've embedded these three movies below.  I'd seen the Ken Robinson talk previously but it was still great to see it again on a big screen and even 6 years on it still feels very relevant (which I guess is an indictment of how little has changed in the meantime).


The full listing of the presentations today was as follows:

• How do you kill a theory? - Tom Whyntie
• The wages of fear - Andy Kirkpatrick
• The power of procrastination - Dave Windass
• Running to the edge - Robin Harvie
• Ubiquitous energy - Jim Gilbert
• Classical music is cool - Lucia Walsh Hughes
• Hunting for alien life - Lewis Dartnell
• Why don't you? - Luke Williams
• 7 steps that might just change your life - Honey Langcaster-James
• Science fiction as poetry - Adam Roberts
• Crossing Antarctica - Felicity Aston

Pre-recorded TED Movies:

• Aimee Mullins and her 12 pairs of legs
• Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine
• Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

Now I'm not going to attempt to summarise all of these talks but I am going to pick out my favourites and try and explain why.

In "The wages of fear", Andy Kirkpatrick talked about his attempt to climb the Troll Wall in Norway and why he turned back when he was so close to the top (50m and he had run out of food and water and it was dangerous not a walk in the park by the way).  Robin Harvie held everyone rapt while he talked about his attempt to run the Spartathalon (250km in less than 40 hours) in "Running to the edge" and the experience of not managing to complete it (he's going to try again next year).  Felicity Aston closed the day by talking about becoming the first woman to ski across Antarctica alone in "Crossing Antarctica".  This seemed all the more incredible given she only completed it less than a month ago.

The theme of the day was "Beyond Limits" and these three presentations really resonated with me above all others because of the things that the three presenters learnt about themselves during their experiences.  While listening to Andy talking about his climb and what was involved I couldn't help but feel that in some ways the choices he was making by risking his life in this way were selfish given that he has a young son.  He made the decision to turn back when he did because he accidentally turned on his camera in his pocket while he was agonising about what to do and heard it play back his son's voice.  This was the catalyst for him turning back and he seemed to be more than happy with the decision he made.  In a similar way with Robin I came away feeling that what he had learnt about himself in what was a very difficult challenge would help him achieve his goal another time and I have every confidence having heard him speak that he will.  He has a clear idea of where he got it wrong last time.

In the case of Robin and Andy, they technically failed in what they set out to do but in neither case does it appear to have been a negative experience and they have emerged from these experiences stronger and better prepared for the future.

Felicity Aston openly admitted at the start of her presentation that a lot of her motivation in attempting to cross Antarctica had been to try and find her own limits.  She felt that although expeditions she'd been involved with in the past as part of the team she had never found her limits and she was looking for them.  The end result of this is that having completed the expedition successfully and despite the fact that it was the most difficult thing she's done she seems to almost feel that she failed in her goal as she didn't find her limit.  She was able to do it.  She closed her presentation by acknowledging that she is still too close to the event to really know how she feels about this.

So why did these particular presentations resonate so strongly with me.  Well in many ways it links in very nicely with the talk shown by Sir Ken Robinson about our education system.  I believe very strongly that we can learn as much by our failures as by our successes.  The problem with our education system in this country and particularly in the FE sector where I work is that there is no room for learners to experience failure as a positive developmental process which they can learn from and grow from.  We have an education system now where learners are simply taught that passing exams is all that matters and that is all they care about.  The joy of learning itself that I remember from my childhood is sucked out in the process of chasing the grades.

The irony of this is that at the end of this educational process business and industry tell us we are producing learners that they then have to spend two years re-training as they are not ready for work (I can't remember the source of this quote but I'll attribute it if I can find it later).  I believe our educational system is broken but I also believe I need to be inside it to make a difference and that is what I will continue to strive to do.

So finally, TEDxHull was an absolutely fantastic event.  I would highly recommend TEDx events to anyone and I am really hoping that TEDxHull becomes an annual event.

See you next year.

Pre-recorded TED Movies shown at TEDxHull

Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers and Attribution

** Note: following the conversation with WizIQ describe in this article, they have very rapidly changed the name of the resource advertised and described below.  I am very impressed with the response from them.  Download "12 Moodle tools to interact with you students online"  from WizIQ here.


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A few days ago I received an email from WizIQ, a company who we work with at East Riding College who have provided a virtual classroom solution which is integrated into Moodle.  They were promoting/advertising a free to download paper called Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers which discusses

"...how teachers can interact with students online using the Moodle course management system..."

Great I hear you say, another free resource provided to help teachers use Moodle.  Well yes, up to a point.  The only problem is that there is already a resource called Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers.  This was created/published in May 2010 by Learning Technologist called Joyce Seitzinger on her blog "Cat's Pyjamas".  This is a great poster which was freely shared with a Creative Commons licence.  I know it is widely used all over the world and has been translated into a number of languages.


The whole thing left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth to be honest.  I don't know Joyce Seitzinger personally (although I follow her on twitter where she tweets as @catspyjamasnz).  It felt a little bit like WizIQ were trying to associate themselves with or somehow promote themselves on the back of her work.  Therefore after some careful consideration I sent the following email this morning in reply to the email I had originally received.

Dear Sir/Madam
 While I appreciate the useful guide provided in this document I would like to object to the use of the description “Moodle Tool Guide for Teachers” as there is a previous well-established poster with this name created by Joyce Seizinger which has been available since May 2010 (http://www.cats-pyjamas.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/MoodleToolGuideforTeachers_May2010_JS.pdf).
I think it highly unlikely that you are unaware of this and your use of the same title seems calculated to take advantage of something that someone else has created for your own promotional purposes.
 Please consider this next time you are creating resources. Many thanks
 Nathan

 Now I don't for a minute think I am the first person to have pointed this out to them but to my surprise and their credit I received the following response only half an hour later.

Nathan,

Thanks for pointing this out. Honestly, we didn't know about it. Now that we do, we are going to change the title. But if you look at the content, its completely original and have been written from scratch.

Thanks again.

Regards,

Harman Singh

CEO, WizIQ

I'm not sure if I really believe that they were totally unaware of the identical title given how widely I think the original is available in e-Learning circles but at least it appears they are doing something about it.  I do believe clearly illustrates how important it is to be aware of when they may intentionally or otherwise claim someone else's work as they own.

Reflections on #lrcon11 - Empowering the Digital Natives

On Thursday 20 October 2011 I attended the JISC RSC YH Learning Resources Conference 2011 with the title "Empowering the Digital Natives".  After a week to reflect on the conference and with a flurry of activity from delegates on twitter today I thought it was time to add my own thoughts to the mix on this newly resurrected blog.


So what did I get from the day?  Quite a lot as it happens.  Kevin Campbell-Wright (@kevupnorth) grabbed me at lunchtime (lunch was superb by the way) to make an audioboo (@nathancobb talks about the morning at #lrcon11) and get my thoughts on the day so far and some of his questions got me thinking about why I like JISC events so much.  It's all about the impact of the events on me and my institution.  When I attend an event like the Learning Resources conference I come away enthused, having met a group of inspirational people and I usually have things I can take back to the College and use immediately.


On this occasion I if I had to single out one single activity it would be the Martin Luther King exercise that Anthony Beal (@redsontour) and Eleanor Johnston (@elstopbanana) ran in their workshop entitled "Think before you click: steps on the road to independant learning".  This was a great exercise with clear outcomes and as they were kind enough to provide all the resources necessary to run the session including a full session plan I can use it immediately.  I want to see if I can work it into some kind of online session on our moodle and I can I'll share it here.


Andy Walsh (@andywalsh999) from Huddersfield University did a great opening keynote looking at the way learners access information and the devices they are using to do it and the session Jane Secker (@jsecker) and Emma Coonan (@libgoddess) ran on their Arcadia project was also really interesting and has got me thinking about the information literacy curriculum in my own College.


So in summary, what what was the impact on me and my practice?

1. I was inspired
2. I'm following a lot more interesting people on twitter and engaging in discussion with them
3. I have an activity I can use with learners in my own College

Thanks to everyone involved at RSC YH for making it happen and especially to Scott Hibberson (@scotthibberson) who was running the day and who I've managed to not mention at all up to now (Sorry Scott).

Here are links to some other audioboos recordings made by Kev at lunchtime with other delegates:

Over lunch @jsecker talks about her contribution to #lrcon11
Here's @bumsonseats talking about public libraries
As lunch finishes @scotthibberson talks about the day

Moodle & the e-ILP

It's been an extremely productive day today.  I've had a couple of successes with Moodle and made a lot of progress on updating the e-ILP staff training course I've been working on recently.


We've had a couple of issues recently with Moodle related to learners passwords expiring.  All learners passwords are linked to their College active directory account using ldap authentication.  The benefit of this is that learners only have  to remember one username and password instead of the multiple ones that they had before the start of this year.  The downside of this is that because of the number of systems which use the active directory and the way that they work, we can't allow learners to change their active directory password within the moodle interface.


Unfortunately moodle hasn't been handling this very well up until now and the messages appearing to learners on screen when their password is approaching the expiry date have not been very helpful.  I've been able to work through this today however and have done two things to help resolve this:

1. I've edited the moodle language pack so that the messages learners see have meaning to the context within the College.
2. I've linked to a page in the moodle help & faqs which gives information about the ways in which learners can change their password both inside and outside the College.

Learners are now clearly informed about their options and why they should change their password before it expires.  They are also made aware of the fact that if they allow their password to expire completely they can only reset it on campus.

We've also had a problem with our Moodle cron job since we upgraded to moodle 2.0 over the summer.  This was linked to permissions set on the moodledata folder and also to the services which the account we were using to manage moodle was allowed to run on the server.  Although we still have a few issues with getting the cron job scheduled task to run properly I was able to force all the statistics since the start of September to run today so the system is at least up to date now.

Finally I've put a lot of work into the staff training course "Using the e-ILP @ East Riding College" recently.  I'm quite pleased with the way this is running now.  There are still a few bits and pieces to do but it's mostly there.  I've designed it as a flow diagram through the tasks tutors are required to carry out during the year and there are video tutorials created which map to all the key events.  I've also created video tutorials for learners to support them in using the system.  This is one of the ones for learners:

It's been created using http://screencast-o-matic.com which is a great site.  There is a free version but I pay to use the "pro tools" which I find simple and intuitive and they do what I need.

Here's hoping tomorrow is as productive.

Conducting Effective Online Discussions

The video below is one I found via JISC Digital Media on twitter and contains an excellent discussion about conducting effective online discussions.  I thought it was worth sharing (plus it means I can find it again easily).

Moodle User Group in Leeds (& RIP Steve Jobs)

On the day it was announced that Steve Jobs had sadly died at the untimely age of 56, I find myself sat on a train on my way back from Leeds City College using an iPad to reflect on the day. However you feel about Steve Jobs and Apple products, it is hard to argue against the fact that Steve Jobs was a true innovator, a pioneer if you will who had the ability to create a Market that the competion didn't know existed (the iPod & the iPad) and redefine the standard in an existing market (the iPhone). Everyone else has been playing catch-up for the last decade and the technology landscape looks more bleak without him.  He inspired me and I'm sad that he's gone.

Today I delivered a presentation to a group of colleagues from a number of other FE Colleges and training providers about Moodle @ East Riding College and the changes we have made over the last few months. It was particularly interesting as we were able to contrast what we had done with what had been done at Leeds City College as Lewis Carr, their main Moodle administrator and developer followed me immediately afterwards to discuss their changes.

• We had a fresh start where they upgraded.
• We have less that 4000 active users where they have over 25,000.
• We have less than 200 courses where they have more than 7000.
• We have a moodle administered by the e-Learning Manager where they have a dedicated Moodle development team.
• Useage of Moodle there is more mature where here it has traditionally been more often a content repository for word documents and powerpoint presentations.

It's been a really good opportunity for me to reflect on what we've achieved over the past few months.  I believe Moodle is now more attractive, more accessible and more engaging for all users.  Users only have to remember one username and password now and we get them enrolled on their courses in advance of their logging on to Moodle for the first time in the majority of cases.  I know that all our learners have a Moodle account and I know which learners are using them.  As of right now there are 3662 learners with moodle accounts.  That is more than 1000 more learners than were on Moodle at the end of last academic year and we know who they are.  Having access to this information means we can target specific needs to ensure learners are getting the most from moodle to support their learning within the College.

We've still got some way to go.  Moodle will never be finished and there will always be more to learn, more to develop and more to achieve.  We'll carry on talking to staff and learners about what they want to see in moodle and we'll carry on trying to develop it further in response to feedback.  Let us know what you want and we'll try and do it for you.

Finally, I did see a couple of really cool plugins for moodle today which may make life easier for staff.  More to follow when I've had the chance to test them properly.

The classroom of the future is virtual

Actually I'm being slightly tongue in cheek here as I don't ever expect virtual classrooms to completely replace face-to-face interaction for the majority of the courses we offer at the College.

Over the last few days I've been testing a virtual classroom which we've integrated into the College Moodle platform and I really like it.  This morning I had an online conference call with 4 colleagues from different areas of the College and during the session we were able to do the following:

• talk to each other
• see each other on our webcams
• collaborate on a whiteboard space
• share video resources
• conduct polls of the attendees (both pre-prepared and instantly created in response to outcomes during the session)
• view and annotate powerpoint presentations and word documents
• share our computer screens with each other to show what we were working on

Overall we were really impressed with it as a tool and are keen to develop it for use with learners.  Tracey intends to use it to support learners as part of their main programme of study, either by offering it as a required attendance item or by making herself available at pre-advertised times so learners can access live support.  Adrian plans to use it to develop the support offered by the College's success centre to deliver online support for learners at a far wider range of times.  Dave and Ade are looking at delivery of completely online short courses which require attendance in the virtual classroom.

One of the opportunities presented is the ability to record the session so that learners who are unable to attend can still access the content at a convenient time of their own choosing.  Obviously this won't work for everyone and in some cases we may want to restrict access to some sessions and insist on attendance.

Either way, I believe this technology has huge potential for us in the College and is an opportunity to exploit to improve access for learners.  If the College has to close again due to unforseen circumstances such as snow as happened last year, teachers could carry out a significant amount of teaching from home in the virtual classroom even if they and their learners can't travel.

Just a thought ....