a new(s) ways of looking at disasters

January 20th, 2011

Current technologies are enabling us to participate nearly first hand in disasters as they occur. As the incredible footage of a small creek rising very quickly and carrying off away parked cars during the flash flooding in Toowoomba on Monday 10 January 2011 demonstrates.

 

I remember seeing a tweet about this clip and watched it when the count was only around 350 on the the 11th of January. now there have been over four and half million views 10 days later. There is a demand to see these things from a real-life perspective, and with digital still & video cameras and access to fast internet and the of networking power of social media we can just about be there.

Here’s a link to a PhotoMap (satellite image) by NearMaps that shows the flooded suburbs of Brisbane as at 13th January. Where you can see the date (at the top of the picture is a time line so you can scroll back (or use the drop down menu) through time and see the changes in water levels. You can zoom in and out of the image and scroll just like on Google Earth. Try clicking on the ‘Multiview’ and check out the ‘More…’ buttons too.

The ABC News Online team developed these remarkable before and after infographics of the Brisbane floods. Brisbane floods: before and after & Brisbane Floods: Up Close.

I find it amazing that we have such ready access to this resource of rich information. The mind boggles as to what educational purposes this might be put. I can imagine students making the most of material like this to illustrate and explain the phenomenon of disasters, and all the while having a (nearly first hand) context that might provide a deeper level of understanding.

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mobile devices in education – is the iPad proving itself useful?

September 4th, 2010

I’ve been thinking lately about the impact of mobile devices in education and wondering what some of my colleagues are thinking about using an iPad. There’s been a moratorium at my workplace on purchasing the iPad with university funds. We haven’t really heard the reason for this, but understand some work is being done on how they can be implemented. I just want one to test, evaluate, and use at work with the aim of determining their usefulness for supporting professional development and learning and teaching. While initially acknowledged as a brilliant tool for consuming content, I’m coming to understand that the third party apps available for the iPad will make it just as useful for content creation and collaboration.

So, I’m waiting for one – but there’s quite a few of the devices appearing and they been purchased by individuals who are using them at work. I did chat to one person who was struggling trying to keep the device going during a meeting. It seemed the bluetooth keyboard was using more power then the recharger could supply (I’ll have to ask some more questions about that). Someone else was going paperless and saving all their attachments (meeting agendas, minutes, reports etc.) to iBook as pdfs and reading them off the bookshelf. There might be other ways to do this and maybe converting to epub would be better for reading. Need to do some experimenting for myself I think.

Academics are finding that students are bringing their iPads to class and using them as an instant research resource. There may an issue of distraction etc. but could be useful if managed correctly for specific class work for either individuals or groups. They can also be used with a document camera (& the optional vga connector for TVs/projectors) to share what’s on the screen. Nice way to show capabilities and demonstrate apps such as interactive books, google earth, and discipline specific applications such as maths & science.

I recently read an article by Louisa Burnham, iPad Travelling Cold Turkey, where she reflected on using an iPad exclusively while travelling for 6 weeks in Europe and doing academic work. This gave me a good insight to what to expect and what’s possible with regard to working without a fully featured laptop. I’ll also be interested in the result of Dean Groom’s project underway at Macquarie where they are asking staff to evaluate their use of an iPad for a couple of months.

The iPad might just a step or two away from a device that will be the ultimate tool for learning (amongst other things). I haven’t been able to do a lot of testing myself yet, and look forward to being able to put one of these through it’s paces. I’m finding it hard to imagine that something might replace my MBP, but recognise that it’s going to happen sooner rather then later.

PS. and then there’s the new iPod Touch. Upgraded to include the new Apple iOS4, now features a camera and ability to capture HD video, do video chat/call via wireless using FaceTime, and has the 3 axis gyro built in. Cool!

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the getting of wisdom – is it part of your plan?

August 28th, 2010

Can you remember the last time you witnessed someone being wise? I know for me these moments are far and few between. This might be because of the circles I move in – but I do work in a university, so I might expect to come across it more often… A thesaurus provides a number of synonyms for wisdom such as; sagacity, discernment, insight, understanding, knowledge, perception, astuteness, intelligence, acumen, and good judgement. It’s interesting when you think that wisdom is all of these.

I’ve been thinking about wisdom for a few reasons. The first is my previous post and the idea of a big picture. The second was the coincidence that three friends blogged about a similar issues this week (I’ll get to them in later post). The third was the Macquarie University Vice Chancellor’s Annual Lecture by Steven Schwartz this week. The speech was called ‘Wise up: Restoring wisdom to universities’ and talked about the changing curriculum at Macquarie to ensure students learned how to think. Students will be required to participate in activities other than just book learning. They will undertake a range practical learning applications to provide better understanding of themselves and those around them. A range of contexts outside the classroom will help develop life skills that will make them ready to take on a meaningful role in society.

Wisdom is special, an ability to distil something to the essence and apply it to a situation. And it doesn’t come cheap. It takes time to develop because it is, as Confucius suggests, the culmination of reflection, imitation and experience. Some of that experience comes the hard way, but we do learn best when out of our comfort zone. Reflecting on what we know & learn and practicing things to understand the consequence all take time – maybe that’s why the stereotype of a wise person, is an old one. But I don’t think that’s an excuse for us not endeavouring to learn how to apply our knowledge and experience in wise ways throughout our lives. I reckon wisdom takes courage too and there’s a level of responsibility to use this talent to benefit those around us. Maybe some of us are fortunate to have a disposition to better thinking processes.

Of course just being wise isn’t enough to be an active, informed, participating, member of society – there are many other qualities (virtues if you will) that make us complete, but being able to think is a great start. So, I think changing (or realigning) the curriculum at University is a wise move.

You can hear Steven interviewed by Richard Aedy on the Radio National program ‘Life Matters’. You can also follow Steven on twitter @macquarievc or read his blog at: http://www.vc.mq.edu.au/blog/.

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how do we zoom out enough to see the big picture?

August 21st, 2010

This week’s been an interesting one in which I’ve been challenged to think more deeply about what might be possible with regard to improving curriculum design during the implementation of an LMS. I believe there is an opportunity to have academics think about their teaching (how they might achieve better learning outcomes & improve student engagement) during the time of transition and preparing/revising their materials in the migration process between two systems. In response to a tweet I posted regarding the possibilities of change afforded by new tools in our new LMS, Dean Groom tweeted to remind me that the tools won’t change a teachers perspective. I appreciate this, but I don’t want to explore what opportunities there might be to make incremental change (if only small) in the way academics teach.

At one level the implementation of a new LMS is fraught with risks – it’s a process that needs to be planned and managed so that there is a smooth transition and teachers and students can get on with their teaching and learning. So, should we be happy to accept this model of ‘let’s just get the course material migrated, the staff and students trained, and it’ll be business as normal’? I’d like to think not, but there a number of institutional pressures to have things working properly – and we’ve become risk adverse as we don’t want to distress our clients (students) and staff with a poorly implemented system. So, I understand we may want to work on an implementation process that provides a robust and working system and then focus on what we can do improve learning and teaching.

On an another level there is an opportunity to work with, and encourage staff to re-think their curriculum in light of the affordances of the new tools available in the new LMS. I see a challenge in helping academics come to understand the potential of different ways of designing learning activities & experiences to achieve outcomes using the functionality of the LMS. Maybe there’s a need to be subversive in all this – change won’t happen en mass – it requires a slowly slowly approach understanding that academics are time poor and looking for efficiencies. There also needs to be an understanding that this will involve some cultural change if new modes and models of teaching and learning are used. The level of resourcing required to develop a framework (and hopefully policy) as well as materials for professional development to support systemic change, will need addressing. It is only by stepping back, and zooming out to see the bigger picture, that we might be able to better understand the context and demands of university education. This includes; teaching, research, service, having work ready and beginning professionals as graduates, and as well as other things, achieving government and institution priorities. I hope that there is some institutional recognition of this and that appropriate resource might be directed to supporting not just an implementation but ongoing curriculum renewal.

So, my mission (that I wish to accept), is to support the introduction of a range of new tools available via the LMS that are intrinsic to holistic learning processes. This will lead to the development of better learning experiences while encouraging teachers to think about how they could adjust/ their curriculum design to develop higher order thinking and engage students more fully.

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administration and instructor training – learning a new LMS

August 13th, 2010

This week I’ve been to training sessions to learn how Desire2Learn (our new LMS from next year) functions. It’s been week of adaptation and my brain hurts. I’ve had to restructure and adapt my mental models I have of how our old LMS (Blackboard Vista – formerly WebCT) worked – to a new one. While much functionality is similar, the way you do things is different. I suppose most of this is about how to system works rather than using the system for teaching. I have found it useful that we have been presented with examples of how particular tools and functions can help to develop learning activities.

While I’m learning new ways to build courses, create discussions & quizzes etc., I’m wary of mapping old work practices onto new ones – I’d rather start again from scratch and ask the question, “What do you want your students to do?” The new system provides new choices – not just in how to configure roles and permissions but also in look & feel and tools to use. I’ve come to understand that there’s a lot of work to be done, particularly to do with course building and learning design.

I suppose we’re initially focused in getting it as nearly right as possible so that we can migrate and get all the courses, staff & student into the system so that learning & teaching can begin when we roll out next year.

There may be some compromises in the first instance, so that the mainstream are operational, but from then on we’ll have to tweak things as we come to understand the possibilities and respond to issues and requests. The system will allow for these adjustments and I’m looking forward to being able to fine tune things once we’re underway.

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we are changing our LMS – exciting and daunting at the same time…

August 5th, 2010

Another busy week so far and the highlight was that we were able to announce (internally) that our university has chosen Desire@Learn as it’s new Learning Management System. While we haven’t announced anything publicly, D2L made this announcement last week. It’s all very exciting as we’ve been using the same system for the last six years (Blackboard Vista) and it has come to the end of its life and we needed to find another platform to support our learning and teaching program. Our short list of potential systems were BlackBoard Learn (v.9), Desire2learn, and Moodle. Personally I thought that the open source route with Moodle and the Mahara ePortfolio would have adequately suited our needs, but the decision’s been made, and D2L it is. Lots of implementation planning underway with configuration, integration, training, migration, trails & pilots all leading toward a phased rollout from Trimester 1, 2011. So, the job is ahead of us and I’m keen to see us make use of some of the available functionality of D2L like their competencies, analytics and learning design tools, as well as the ePortfolio. I’m expecting lots of challenges as well as an excellent adventure over the coming 18 months…

speech bubble

Photo credit: Marc Wathieu

On another matter, I tweeted this during the week,

“@colwar interesting the difference a simple explanatory conversation can make to clear up misconceptions. (let’s have more of them)”.

It was in response to a situation were I was able to explain how a certain new technology worked and give some people have a better understanding of how the technology functioned. I suppose I’m wondering why people don’t seek out good advice and want to know more about something, rather than rely on someone else to make a decision without explaining letting stakeholders know why. Maybe we all just need to make space (and/or go out of our way) to have more conversations and share the knowledge we have. I believe the spent spent doing that would easily cover the delays encountered vacillating around in the unknown.

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