Early morning meeting today - University Executive Board meets Heads of Departments. Shorter meeting than usual, with another good presentation from the VC. Biggest discussion was about the release of the RAE results later this month, which will go to the press before the Universities. And even the Universities can only share them with a few senior staff as they are embargoed for a day before we can release them to the rest of the University.
Then at lunchtime my presentation to UEB - seemed to go OK. Lots of discussion and questions. Managed to find plenty of pictures to illustrate it, so very few lists of bullet points. Hope I got over that we're not just about technlogy, but about supporting the business needs and objectives of the University. We need and want to be involved in strategic discussions - almost every decision made by the Board will impact on us in some way, and almost everything we do will impact on the University. Partnership is the key, and we need to work together to make sure that the University gets the maximum benefit from our services.
Then later today I had a meeting with our Apple Higher Education rep. As I'm sure everyone know, I'm a real fan of Apple products, and this was a good opportunuity to talk abot some issues. I found out why Apple weren't at the EDUCAUSE exhibition, and why they won't be at UCISA later this year. A corporate decision aparently, but a pretty stupid one if you ask me. We talked about some of the issues we've been having getting iPhones on an O2 corporate contract, and also about iTunes U - something I'm very interested in. There's some excellent University sites onthere, and we will be considering having our own as part of our media hosting project.
Showing posts with label Educause2008. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Educause2008. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
EDUCAUSE videos
Videos of some of the sessions I attended at EDUCAUSE have just gone on line - I've put links to them at the bottom of the relevant blog posts. All of them can be accessed from here, and I might now use the opportunity to watch some of the ones I didn't get to - it's difficult when there's 20 sessions running at the same time, there's always at least two I want to get to.
And if you want to watch a funny video, try this one
And if you want to watch a funny video, try this one
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Be careful of...
Given the momentous events of the last few days, there were several things in the last talk of EDUCAUSE which had particular relevance.
It was given by Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and he was inspirational – there were many IT Directors in the audience who left wishing that he was their President/Vice Chancellor.
He told us the story of his grandmother who as an African American growing up in the Southern US (I think it was Alabama) couldn’t vote. Eventually non-whites were given the opportunity to vote, but had to take a literacy test, and he read out 3 sample questions and asked us to raise our hands if we knew the answers. Given that the questions were on the American constitution, I didn’t know any of them – but nether did any of the Americans in the audience! Based on the results, there would have been a very small turnout on Tuesday. It was his grandmother’s overriding wish to be a voting American citizen, so she had to take the test. It took several failed attempts and weeks of revising the American constitution, but she became a voting citizen at the age of 73. His message – don’t take your right to vote lightly – exercise it!
His final comments (which he made us learn and recite back to him)…
Be careful of your thoughts, they become your words.
Be careful of your words, they become your actions
Be careful of your actions, they become your habits
Be careful of your habits they become your character
Be careful of your character, it becomes your destiny
A video of the session is here
OK – that’s the last EDUCAUSE post – normal service will be resumed next week when I leave the beautiful Lake District and get back to work.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
Hire the Howards
One of the general sessions was given by Moira Gunn - she’s a former NASA scientist and now hosts Tech Nation. I didn’t take a lot of notes in this session, (battery must have been running out), but one of her anecdotes stuck in my mind - although with apologies to those concerned as I’ve probably gone some details wrong, but the general principles are right!
Whilst she was studying for one of her degrees, she was allowed to share an office, unlike other undergraduates, because she was already a graduate teacher. Also in her office was an undergraduate, Howard, and she couldn’t understand why he was allowed an office – when pressed he told her the story why.
It was in the days of the mainframe, and rooms full of teletypes where you input your code. Howard had worked out how to get into the kernel of the mainframe and thought he could shut it down and bring it back to life seconds later by typing in a time.
One day, in a very noisy room of teletypes, all clacking away, he watched the clock second hand coming up to 30 – he keyed in 35, and miraculously the room went silent as the machine stopped, and then at 35 seconds, it all started up again. Howard thought this was hilarious, and did it again, stopping the machine for a few seconds. Then he realised that maybe, someone in the computer room had spotted this, so he ought to leave – he gathered up his belongings and crept out, passing the Head of Computing and some technicians storming towards the room.
A week later he thought he’d try it again, and again it worked. Next time he thought he’d try for longer – watching as the clock second hand approached 50, he typed in 60 – the room went quiet, the clock second hand passed by the top, and nothing happened. Howard had forgotten than a second counter never goes to 60 – it goes from 59 to 00!
As he made to run out of the room – he was too late – there was the Head of Computing, with a number of other systems people blocking the door, pointing a finger at Howard, he shouted, trembling – “you, you, you’re hired!”
And that was the finale of her talk – Hire the Howards!
A philosophy I completely agree with. You can teach people technical skills - it's difficult to teach creativity, innovation, a different way of looking at things, and a desire to push things to the limit.
Howard did go on to make quite a name for himself by inventing something a lot of us use, but no-one knows him as Howard now – any guesses as to who he is?
A video of the session is here
Whilst she was studying for one of her degrees, she was allowed to share an office, unlike other undergraduates, because she was already a graduate teacher. Also in her office was an undergraduate, Howard, and she couldn’t understand why he was allowed an office – when pressed he told her the story why.
It was in the days of the mainframe, and rooms full of teletypes where you input your code. Howard had worked out how to get into the kernel of the mainframe and thought he could shut it down and bring it back to life seconds later by typing in a time.
One day, in a very noisy room of teletypes, all clacking away, he watched the clock second hand coming up to 30 – he keyed in 35, and miraculously the room went silent as the machine stopped, and then at 35 seconds, it all started up again. Howard thought this was hilarious, and did it again, stopping the machine for a few seconds. Then he realised that maybe, someone in the computer room had spotted this, so he ought to leave – he gathered up his belongings and crept out, passing the Head of Computing and some technicians storming towards the room.
A week later he thought he’d try it again, and again it worked. Next time he thought he’d try for longer – watching as the clock second hand approached 50, he typed in 60 – the room went quiet, the clock second hand passed by the top, and nothing happened. Howard had forgotten than a second counter never goes to 60 – it goes from 59 to 00!
As he made to run out of the room – he was too late – there was the Head of Computing, with a number of other systems people blocking the door, pointing a finger at Howard, he shouted, trembling – “you, you, you’re hired!”
And that was the finale of her talk – Hire the Howards!
A philosophy I completely agree with. You can teach people technical skills - it's difficult to teach creativity, innovation, a different way of looking at things, and a desire to push things to the limit.
Howard did go on to make quite a name for himself by inventing something a lot of us use, but no-one knows him as Howard now – any guesses as to who he is?
A video of the session is here
Monday, 3 November 2008
Intellagirl
I got a few blog posts behind last week, so saved them up for this week, as I'm having a few days leave in the Lake District and won't have anything work related to blog about!
Sarah Robbins, (aka Intellagirl - have a look at her site) gave a very good talk on Social Media and Education: The conflict between technology and institutional education and the future
Sarah started by postulating that many of the benefits of institutional learning can now be accomplished via social media. If we (as University staff) don’t realise this we will get left behind and possibly replaced. She compared what HE offered with what role social media can play:
What does HE offer?
What is the educator’s role in a world where production and consumption of information has become:
In a world of social media, the role of the educator is more important then ever.
Enjoyable talk, but my thoughts were perhaps summed up by someone who asked a question about the appropriateness of using this type of learning for all disciplines - would you really want to drive over a bridge where the bridge builder had learned his skills from Wikipedia? No, not necessarily - you'd want some formal imparting of facts, theories etc which have been peer reviewed. But social media does still have a part to play in discussions, inquiry based learning etc
A video of the session is here
Sarah Robbins, (aka Intellagirl - have a look at her site) gave a very good talk on Social Media and Education: The conflict between technology and institutional education and the future
Sarah started by postulating that many of the benefits of institutional learning can now be accomplished via social media. If we (as University staff) don’t realise this we will get left behind and possibly replaced. She compared what HE offered with what role social media can play:
What does HE offer?
- Membership of intellectual and social affinity groups
- Engaging in intellectual discussions
- Access to resources and experts
- Official endorsement of completion ie graduation
- Accumulate and develop skills for employment
- Association with professional communities
- Guidance through experiences and thought processes
- Self expression – can upload anything you’ve created and share it with the world
- Sharing enthusiasms for common interests – web sites, blogs, wikis ,
- Access to experts and personalities –people you might never meet face to face _ (see TED talks)
- Enhanced personal and professional reputation – you can create on-line portfolios
- The ability to build and share skills. The example here was the “You Suck at Photoshop” videos.. which were put together by an out of work graphic designer.
What is the educator’s role in a world where production and consumption of information has become:
- Democratic – Wikpedia vs Encyclopedia Britannica
- Amateur –eg you tube – a student can film a video in their free time and millions of people can watch it
- Distributed – information is spread out – being aggregated by sites like delicious – imagine going into a library and finding every book had been reviewed by students.
In a world of social media, the role of the educator is more important then ever.
Enjoyable talk, but my thoughts were perhaps summed up by someone who asked a question about the appropriateness of using this type of learning for all disciplines - would you really want to drive over a bridge where the bridge builder had learned his skills from Wikipedia? No, not necessarily - you'd want some formal imparting of facts, theories etc which have been peer reviewed. But social media does still have a part to play in discussions, inquiry based learning etc
A video of the session is here
Friday, 31 October 2008
The long haul home
The end of another excellent conference. Strange that after traveling several thousand miles, I attended two presentations from Sheffield. There was the one from SHU yesterday, and this morning one given by Martin Lewis and Phil Levy about the Information Commons. It was a very well attended session and the buzz in the room was that it was a very exciting project - lots of interest and people saying how fantastic it looked. And of course they would be right!
As I write this I'm sitting at the airport waiting for the long flight home. As usual a very useful few days - most of the sessions I attended were very good (and I made all of the 8am ones....). The networking opportunities are excellent, with colleagues from different countries, different institutions, suppliers and friends. I had a very useful hour with a Vice President of Blackboard about their roadmap and new product -Blackboard 9 - which will help to inform us as we review our elearning systems and agree our future strategy.
I've still got some sessions to write up for this blog, including the last one which was inspirational. I'll do them over the next few days.
Finally, one of the things that makes a conference is the company, and I was fortunate to be with a group of great people - colleagues who have become friends. Especially the cute furry badger - you know who you are!
Oh, and Happy Halloween everyone!
As I write this I'm sitting at the airport waiting for the long flight home. As usual a very useful few days - most of the sessions I attended were very good (and I made all of the 8am ones....). The networking opportunities are excellent, with colleagues from different countries, different institutions, suppliers and friends. I had a very useful hour with a Vice President of Blackboard about their roadmap and new product -Blackboard 9 - which will help to inform us as we review our elearning systems and agree our future strategy.
I've still got some sessions to write up for this blog, including the last one which was inspirational. I'll do them over the next few days.
Finally, one of the things that makes a conference is the company, and I was fortunate to be with a group of great people - colleagues who have become friends. Especially the cute furry badger - you know who you are!
Oh, and Happy Halloween everyone!
Meeting or managing?
Always nice to find out what the opposition's doing, especially when the presentation's given by a former colleague! Louise Thorpe from Sheffield Hallam University gave a good talk on "Responding to student expectations through policy and practice"
As well as carrying out student satisfaction surveys, for the last 5 years SHU have been carrying out an expectations survey in freshers week and the first week of term. Their view is that an expectations gap can lead to difficulties in making the first year transition to University and in retention and non completion as it is a different experience going from from school to university.
They wanted to understand student expectations to inform development and planning and to use the feedback to inform curriculum design.
One of their challenges was the issues of whether actually asking questions raises expectations – for example if you ask whether students expect podcasting, do they then expect you to provide them. So - do you try and meet expectations, or manage them?
Their results show a number of things whch haven't changed over time:
Overall expectations are high
Working and commuting students assign biggest value to technology
All see it as an essential feature of learning and preparedness for workplace
Many students are confident with technology, but there's still a significant minority needing support
Their essential baselines – electronic resources, email communications with tutors, blended activity – don’t want just on line resources but need face to face contact as well
What has changed:
2003 students were more uncertain that those surveyed in 2007
2007 students want technology to play a greater role in assessment - 83% expect on-line feedback
They are more confident about the robustness of technology and trust it more
The newer technologies have seen the greatest growth – 50% expect online collaboration and reflection tools, eg blogs and wikis.
They want more access to online media eg podcasts
What have they done about these expectations?
To try and meet some of them they've moved to on-line feedback and technology supported submission of course work. Students have to read their feedback in order to release their grades.
To manage them they've encouraged staff to have a clear rationale for using elearning and to publish it including what is expected of the student and of the staff member.
This year they are not doing the same survey but have moved to just text based questions such as
what are you most looking forward to about course, what do you think will be different, and what skills would you like to improve to help you to do better.
I look forward to seeing the results.
As well as carrying out student satisfaction surveys, for the last 5 years SHU have been carrying out an expectations survey in freshers week and the first week of term. Their view is that an expectations gap can lead to difficulties in making the first year transition to University and in retention and non completion as it is a different experience going from from school to university.
They wanted to understand student expectations to inform development and planning and to use the feedback to inform curriculum design.
One of their challenges was the issues of whether actually asking questions raises expectations – for example if you ask whether students expect podcasting, do they then expect you to provide them. So - do you try and meet expectations, or manage them?
Their results show a number of things whch haven't changed over time:
Overall expectations are high
Working and commuting students assign biggest value to technology
All see it as an essential feature of learning and preparedness for workplace
Many students are confident with technology, but there's still a significant minority needing support
Their essential baselines – electronic resources, email communications with tutors, blended activity – don’t want just on line resources but need face to face contact as well
What has changed:
2003 students were more uncertain that those surveyed in 2007
2007 students want technology to play a greater role in assessment - 83% expect on-line feedback
They are more confident about the robustness of technology and trust it more
The newer technologies have seen the greatest growth – 50% expect online collaboration and reflection tools, eg blogs and wikis.
They want more access to online media eg podcasts
What have they done about these expectations?
To try and meet some of them they've moved to on-line feedback and technology supported submission of course work. Students have to read their feedback in order to release their grades.
To manage them they've encouraged staff to have a clear rationale for using elearning and to publish it including what is expected of the student and of the staff member.
This year they are not doing the same survey but have moved to just text based questions such as
what are you most looking forward to about course, what do you think will be different, and what skills would you like to improve to help you to do better.
I look forward to seeing the results.
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Google Apps and Spiderman
A couple of nights here at EDUCAUSE are know as suppliers nights - certain big suppliers put on special nights for their customers, or for people who they hope might soon be their customers. Last night I was invited to Google Night held at Universal Studios. The Google Bus was there, and we were given a presentation on Google Apps for Education. Very slick presentaion at at the end of it I was certainly left wondering why we hadn't implemented them - after all, it's quick, it's easy and it's free (according to Google). Well, a presentation today answered that question!The University of South California gave a very good warts and all presentation of their experience, and it was quite illuminating! It was a packed session with people sitting on the floor and standing all the way round the room - there's a lot of interest.
In the Summer of 2007 USC decided to implement Google mail for students – it wasn't Google apps at that time. Their justification was that it was perceived to be a better mail client, students would get increased storage (2Gb), it should reduce email storage costs and their mail would not be purged after 12 months as was their practice. Of their 38,000 students, 15% were already forwarding their email to Google.
And, according to Google, it's quick, easy and free!
They made some initial security decisions - they wouldn't provide their enterprise password to Google and would forward mail rather than change the DNS. They also decided it would be an opt-in service and they would have a privacy policy. Students would have a Google password which would be forced to be different to their UCS password, which therefore required integration with the university change password application
The plan was to go live in January 2008, but in November 2007 google mail for students morphed into Google apps, leading to a whole raft of additional work, but they did go live and currently they have 15,000 student signed up which is 50% - a lot lower than expected.
There are many limitations to the service - Google offers no means of renaming an account, the Google migration was not as simple or secure as first thought, suspending an account bounces email ( an issue when you have to temporarily suspend an email account), there's no restore function - an issue if you accidently delete an account. there are more but that's perhaps enough!
Google will also release new services and new functions without any advanced notice - your students usually find out before your helpdesk does.
So,
Was it quick? No - it took more than 8 months to implement, and there are still issues outstanding
Was it easy? No - it required a lot of people and impacted on other projects - there were more than 30 people on the project team.
Was it free? No - it took 4000 hours of time. There was also opportunity costs as other projects were delayed.
Does make you wonder why they did it!
What I failed to mention at the beginning, was that last night's Google event provided unlimited access to part of Universal's Island's of Adventure theme park, after the park was closed to the public! I got to go on the best ride in the world - The Amazing Adventures of Spiderman - 4 times. Some members of our party were seen to go on the Hulk Roller coaster 8 times! So, I can forgive Google some things...
Pushing aside the tears to get the job done.
Lawrence Hincker is the Associate Vice President for University Relations at Virginia Tech and gave a moving and scary story of the events which unfolded on April 16 2007 and how the PR team and IT team worked together to manage communications.
Virginia Tech is a large campus with 26,000 students and 6,000 staff. On that fateful day, one student, in 9 minutes of carnage shot 60 people and killed 32.
It became a global event - 15593 news stories were logged about the incident in 2 weeks, and because of the unthinkable nature of the tragedy it seemed like the whole world was involved.
The university teams had to deal with influx of journalists, and a communications situation that no-one expected to have to handle.
A Media City had to be set up – 1500 journalists turned up, together with 140 satellite trucks. They needed a briefing room, a work room, truck logistics, internet access, protocols for campus access. VT opened up their campus network so that everyone had internet access.
Some important thoughts from the situation:
Think about how you’re going to manage phone calls – their telecomms team were constantly adding capacity and priority management. The mobile providers were contacted and mobile towers added. A Joint Information Centre to handle calls was set up within 12 hours with phones, TVs and computers and all calls were diverted there. Interestingly their on campus network held up - it was the off campus and mobile networks which crashed.
A point well made was that in these days, the Web is everything – it’s a powerful tool in a crisis, particularly as it allows you to self publish. University home pages are normally heavy with graphics – in situations like this you need a very light text based one – get one ready now and hold it in reserve. The traffic on VTs web site shot through the roof, and the IT team had a new webserver up and running in 15 minutes. In total they added a 5 new fileservers in less than 24 hours. Information was continually added in a blog-like format. Think web 2.0.
Some issues around communication
It was a very thought provoking presentation and has made me realise that our notification systems are nowhere near as good as they could be, but it usually takes an incident to make you realise it.
A video of the session is here
Virginia Tech is a large campus with 26,000 students and 6,000 staff. On that fateful day, one student, in 9 minutes of carnage shot 60 people and killed 32.
It became a global event - 15593 news stories were logged about the incident in 2 weeks, and because of the unthinkable nature of the tragedy it seemed like the whole world was involved.
The university teams had to deal with influx of journalists, and a communications situation that no-one expected to have to handle.
A Media City had to be set up – 1500 journalists turned up, together with 140 satellite trucks. They needed a briefing room, a work room, truck logistics, internet access, protocols for campus access. VT opened up their campus network so that everyone had internet access.
Some important thoughts from the situation:
- Communicate as much as possible – they can’t get too much information
- Stay on message
- Use other experts where necessary
- ID target audiences and flood them with information
- Reputation management starts at the beginning of the crisis
Think about how you’re going to manage phone calls – their telecomms team were constantly adding capacity and priority management. The mobile providers were contacted and mobile towers added. A Joint Information Centre to handle calls was set up within 12 hours with phones, TVs and computers and all calls were diverted there. Interestingly their on campus network held up - it was the off campus and mobile networks which crashed.
A point well made was that in these days, the Web is everything – it’s a powerful tool in a crisis, particularly as it allows you to self publish. University home pages are normally heavy with graphics – in situations like this you need a very light text based one – get one ready now and hold it in reserve. The traffic on VTs web site shot through the roof, and the IT team had a new webserver up and running in 15 minutes. In total they added a 5 new fileservers in less than 24 hours. Information was continually added in a blog-like format. Think web 2.0.
Some issues around communication
- Notifications – the fact the we have capability creates expectations
- Notification systems – do they work? Are they quick? NB no single system does it all
- When do you declare an incident? What about false alarms?
- Who makes the decision to notify when public safety is involved?
It was a very thought provoking presentation and has made me realise that our notification systems are nowhere near as good as they could be, but it usually takes an incident to make you realise it.
A video of the session is here
Wednesday, 29 October 2008
Give me a segway....
I want a Segway - the Conference Centre is just too big - 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other. I doesn't help that I walked out of the last session and absent mindedly turned the wrong way, and walked for 10 minutes before I realised I was heading away from the hotel not towards it. But then anyone who knows me will know what a good sense of direction I have.
Last session of the day was a debate about outsourcing IT services - should you or shouldn't you. Despite the fact that it was a debate, both sides seemed to me to be saying the same thing, or perhaps that's just because it was late! Basically if it's right for you, and gives you benefits whether they are service related or cost savings, do it. If not, don't. I think that sums up the hour.
Last session of the day was a debate about outsourcing IT services - should you or shouldn't you. Despite the fact that it was a debate, both sides seemed to me to be saying the same thing, or perhaps that's just because it was late! Basically if it's right for you, and gives you benefits whether they are service related or cost savings, do it. If not, don't. I think that sums up the hour.
Culture eats strategy for lunch every day of the week
So the presentation on IT governance started with the most important quote. Whatever plans, strategies etc we have, it’s culture that will be the deciding factor on whether it happens or not.
The CIO of Guelph University (Ontario, Canada), Mike Ridley took us on a journey of how he had introduced a new IT Decision framework, and how he'd coped with the cultural and people issues that such change brings with it.
Some things I will bring back with me - one is something we have been meaning to do for a long time, which is to engage the IT support staff we have located in our academic departments more. At Guelph they took this disparate group of staff and suggested to them that they should organise themselves, and in return they would be given designated positions on IT committees. So the ITSIG (IT Special Interest Group) was formed, which meets regularly, and is attended by central computing service staff, and has representatives on all IT committees.
Mike's view was that CIOs should spend a lot of time communicating and building relationships- "The way forward is paradoxically not to look ahead, but to look around".
He advocated the use of blogs, twitter etc (I'm OK there then...), so I had a quick look at his blog and thought you might enjoy this article he'd written for the student newsletter.
The CIO of Guelph University (Ontario, Canada), Mike Ridley took us on a journey of how he had introduced a new IT Decision framework, and how he'd coped with the cultural and people issues that such change brings with it.
Some things I will bring back with me - one is something we have been meaning to do for a long time, which is to engage the IT support staff we have located in our academic departments more. At Guelph they took this disparate group of staff and suggested to them that they should organise themselves, and in return they would be given designated positions on IT committees. So the ITSIG (IT Special Interest Group) was formed, which meets regularly, and is attended by central computing service staff, and has representatives on all IT committees.
Mike's view was that CIOs should spend a lot of time communicating and building relationships- "The way forward is paradoxically not to look ahead, but to look around".
He advocated the use of blogs, twitter etc (I'm OK there then...), so I had a quick look at his blog and thought you might enjoy this article he'd written for the student newsletter.
Cyberlearning
Good session from Christine Borgman, who chaired the NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning, which produced its report in July 2008 entitled Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge
She started by outlining the Task Force’s vision of cyberlearing in 2015. We were asked to imagine a college student, Katie, in the year 2015. She has grown up in a world where learning is as accessible through technologies at home as it is in the classroom, and digital content is as real to her as paper, lab equipment, or textbooks. In high school, she and her classmates engaged in creative problem-solving activities by manipulating simulations in a virtual laboratory or by downloading and analyzing visualizations of real-time data from remote sensors. Away from the classroom, she has had seamless access to school materials and homework assignments using inexpensive mobile technologies. She continues to collaborate with her classmates in virtual environments that allow not only social interaction with each other but also rich connections with a wealth of supplementary content. Her teacher has tracked her progress over the course of a lesson plan and compared her performance across a lifelong “digital portfolio,” making note of areas that need additional attention through personalized assignments and alerting parents to specific concerns.
So, the question was, how are we going to get to this vision. The Task Force made a number of recommendations:
The first involved building a vibrant cyberlearning field, promoting cross disciplinary communities of cyberlearning researchers and practitioners. This will require a partnership of IT technical specialists with educators.
Interestingly the second recommendation was around instilling a platform perspective with shared, interoperable designs of hardware, software and services. New technological innovations need to be incorporated and supported. Multiple course management systems and platforms lead to duplication of effort
Thirdly, the transformative power of technology should be emphasised. Information and communication technologies can allow interaction with data, visualisations, remote and virtual laboratories and experts.
Finally, the report suggests that open educational resources should be promoted. Materials should be made available on the web with permission for unrestricted reuse and recombination. Need to be able to pull things from different sources mash it up, combine and use in novel ways. In this respect, the creative commons was cited as an example of good practice.
In making these recommendations it was suggested that we are a long way from the vision - students can’t move seamlessly between school and home and are using new technologies for everything but learning.
Is that really true here in the UK? I think not!
She started by outlining the Task Force’s vision of cyberlearing in 2015. We were asked to imagine a college student, Katie, in the year 2015. She has grown up in a world where learning is as accessible through technologies at home as it is in the classroom, and digital content is as real to her as paper, lab equipment, or textbooks. In high school, she and her classmates engaged in creative problem-solving activities by manipulating simulations in a virtual laboratory or by downloading and analyzing visualizations of real-time data from remote sensors. Away from the classroom, she has had seamless access to school materials and homework assignments using inexpensive mobile technologies. She continues to collaborate with her classmates in virtual environments that allow not only social interaction with each other but also rich connections with a wealth of supplementary content. Her teacher has tracked her progress over the course of a lesson plan and compared her performance across a lifelong “digital portfolio,” making note of areas that need additional attention through personalized assignments and alerting parents to specific concerns.
So, the question was, how are we going to get to this vision. The Task Force made a number of recommendations:
The first involved building a vibrant cyberlearning field, promoting cross disciplinary communities of cyberlearning researchers and practitioners. This will require a partnership of IT technical specialists with educators.
Interestingly the second recommendation was around instilling a platform perspective with shared, interoperable designs of hardware, software and services. New technological innovations need to be incorporated and supported. Multiple course management systems and platforms lead to duplication of effort
Thirdly, the transformative power of technology should be emphasised. Information and communication technologies can allow interaction with data, visualisations, remote and virtual laboratories and experts.
Finally, the report suggests that open educational resources should be promoted. Materials should be made available on the web with permission for unrestricted reuse and recombination. Need to be able to pull things from different sources mash it up, combine and use in novel ways. In this respect, the creative commons was cited as an example of good practice.
In making these recommendations it was suggested that we are a long way from the vision - students can’t move seamlessly between school and home and are using new technologies for everything but learning.
Is that really true here in the UK? I think not!
Faceblindness, seeing in colours and metaphor
First keynote speaker was Professor Ramachandran, Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California, San Diego, talking about The Unique Human Brain: Clues from Neurology.
It was a fascinating talk, focusing on the complex structure of the human brain, and it's relevance to creativity and metaphor!
The human brain is the most complexly organised form of matter in the universe, with 100 billion neurones in the adult nervous system each making 10,000 points of contact. It's been estimated that the number of possible brain states exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe. So - how do you begin to understand it? His technique is to study patients with tiny brain injuries which often lead to a highly specific loss of one function. One example he gave was faceblindness. A condition where people canot recognise faces, even of close relatives. Studying these patients has lead to the identification of the part of the brain which indentifies faces.
Another rare condition was one of his students who after a head injury thought his mother was an imposter - he couldn't recognise her face. A highly selective delusion with a number of freudian explanations. However, cognitive neurosciene has shown that it is a straightforward small brain injury where messages are not getting to emotional centre of brain from the visual recognition part.
A particular area of study is phantom limbs, where after amputation patients can continue to feel the limbs presence, often with excrutiating pain in them (as an aside he said that this phantom presence can happen when any part of the body is removed except of course the brain, unless you were a politician). Study of these phantoms has allowed the identification of cross wiring that has gone on in the brain, where the lack of signal from one part of the body to its area of the brain allows that area to be "invaded " by another area and signals misinterpreted as coming from the arm – even though it’s gone. A radical change in the pathways of brain. His hypothesis was that the brain is in a constant state of dynamic equilibrium with the potentail for pathways to be changed and adapted.
The final area he covered was Synesthesia - a condition where people see things (often numbers) in colours and hear music as colours. This runs in families and is more common in artists, poets and novelist.
There are many theories to explain this– the patient is mad, high on drugs, reliving childhood memories, or just being metaphorical. But it is a concrete sensory phenomenon and he has shown that the part of brain processing colour is right next to area which processes numbers and that some cross wiring has occurred. It's a genetic phenomenon, and happens when there is a fault in "pruning genes" which operate in the foetus to correct misconnections in the brain.
Some people see days of the week, months etc as colours and this is caused when the cross wiring is higher up.
The excess connections caused by the synestheseia gene makes people more creative - artisits, novelists etc are all good at metaphors. That’s why this seemingly useless gene has survived. and the reason not everyone is synesthetic - you don't want everyone to be metaphorical and creative - especially neurosurgeons! A diverse set of skills is needed.
I really enjoyed this talk - took me back to being a genetics student again! I liked that fact that he made it clear that he did not believe in intelligent design, but in evolution. His final comment was that it was ironic that the President was championing intelligent design when his own existence was a living negation of it!
A video of the session is here
It was a fascinating talk, focusing on the complex structure of the human brain, and it's relevance to creativity and metaphor!
The human brain is the most complexly organised form of matter in the universe, with 100 billion neurones in the adult nervous system each making 10,000 points of contact. It's been estimated that the number of possible brain states exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe. So - how do you begin to understand it? His technique is to study patients with tiny brain injuries which often lead to a highly specific loss of one function. One example he gave was faceblindness. A condition where people canot recognise faces, even of close relatives. Studying these patients has lead to the identification of the part of the brain which indentifies faces.
Another rare condition was one of his students who after a head injury thought his mother was an imposter - he couldn't recognise her face. A highly selective delusion with a number of freudian explanations. However, cognitive neurosciene has shown that it is a straightforward small brain injury where messages are not getting to emotional centre of brain from the visual recognition part.
A particular area of study is phantom limbs, where after amputation patients can continue to feel the limbs presence, often with excrutiating pain in them (as an aside he said that this phantom presence can happen when any part of the body is removed except of course the brain, unless you were a politician). Study of these phantoms has allowed the identification of cross wiring that has gone on in the brain, where the lack of signal from one part of the body to its area of the brain allows that area to be "invaded " by another area and signals misinterpreted as coming from the arm – even though it’s gone. A radical change in the pathways of brain. His hypothesis was that the brain is in a constant state of dynamic equilibrium with the potentail for pathways to be changed and adapted.
The final area he covered was Synesthesia - a condition where people see things (often numbers) in colours and hear music as colours. This runs in families and is more common in artists, poets and novelist.
There are many theories to explain this– the patient is mad, high on drugs, reliving childhood memories, or just being metaphorical. But it is a concrete sensory phenomenon and he has shown that the part of brain processing colour is right next to area which processes numbers and that some cross wiring has occurred. It's a genetic phenomenon, and happens when there is a fault in "pruning genes" which operate in the foetus to correct misconnections in the brain.
Some people see days of the week, months etc as colours and this is caused when the cross wiring is higher up.
The excess connections caused by the synestheseia gene makes people more creative - artisits, novelists etc are all good at metaphors. That’s why this seemingly useless gene has survived. and the reason not everyone is synesthetic - you don't want everyone to be metaphorical and creative - especially neurosurgeons! A diverse set of skills is needed.
I really enjoyed this talk - took me back to being a genetics student again! I liked that fact that he made it clear that he did not believe in intelligent design, but in evolution. His final comment was that it was ironic that the President was championing intelligent design when his own existence was a living negation of it!
A video of the session is here
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
EDUCAUSE Exhibition Shock Horror!
No Apple stand! Usually one of the biggest there, with constant demonstrations, new products being demonstrated and a lot of hands on experience of how Apple can be used in Higher Education. But, they're not here. Wonder who upset Mr Jobs?
Lots of other suppliers though - some we're customers of, and some who would like us to be! It's a huge exhibition with more than 200 stands, many doing theatre style presentations throughout the day. I spent two hours there today - it's a great place to network and chat to suppliers, and find out about new products which are on the horizon. It amuses me the lengths some suppliers will go to to get you to their stand and then keep you there - one stand had a racing
car circuit, and another a juggler on a unicycle!The conference is really getting going now - they expect 9,500 delegates so it's huge by our standards. The conference centre staff get around on Segways, looks great fun!
Monday, 27 October 2008
Failure is not an option
Saw some great display screens whilst watching Shamu the whale do her stuff - giant ones, with a giant motor behind, and on a track. One minute they were 4 separate horizontal ones, then one single screen with them joined vertically, then diagonal. Sometimes with 4 different things on them, sometimes with one film or image. I though the giant plasma screens we had in the IC were good, but we must get some of these....Had a great trip to Kennedy Space centre as well - very excited to see a Shuttle ( Endeavour) on the launch pad ready for her next trip in November. You can just see the tip of the solid rocket
boosters and the orange tip of the external tank peeping out above the launch pad. I've always been fascinated by space travel and followed the Apollo missions closely. I've said before that one of my heros is Gene Krantz - mission controller for so many of them including Apollo 13 where he famously said "failure is not an option" . It's the reason I hate it when people tell me things can't be done. They might be difficult, or expensive, or would need something dramatic to happen, but they're not impossible. Not when you see how they got men to the moon in the 60s. I stood and looked at the consoles today in the control room used in Apollo 8, and it took me while to work out what was wrong - then I realised - these computers didn't have any keyboards! I've bought a mouse mat with "failure is not an option" on it to have by my desk....
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Pumpkins and awards
Well I'm here - ever so slightly jet lagged, but not too bad. Not seen Mickey yet, but there's time! America is right in the middle of one of it's favourite holidays - Halloween. Pumpkins everywhere, kids dressed up and sweets being given away for trick or treating - and its not even here yet. I have some time off before the conference starts and hope to get to Kennedy Space Centre, and maybe see Shamu the whale at Seaworld - will have to see how much we can cram in. 
Got some good news earlier today - it was the Regional RIBA awards ceremony in Leeds on Friday evening but unfortunately I couldn't go because I was packing! As well as the IC's RIBA
award being presented, the results of the RIBA's White Rose competition were also announced, and the IC won the Gold Prize for architecture, and was also named Building of the Year. Fantastic news!
Got some good news earlier today - it was the Regional RIBA awards ceremony in Leeds on Friday evening but unfortunately I couldn't go because I was packing! As well as the IC's RIBA
award being presented, the results of the RIBA's White Rose competition were also announced, and the IC won the Gold Prize for architecture, and was also named Building of the Year. Fantastic news!
Friday, 24 October 2008
EDUCAUSE 2008
As soon as I've answered all my emails, cleared, (or at least tidied) my desk, I'm off to pack for the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference which I set off to early tomorrow morning. Anyone who's been reading this blog for a year will remember that last year it was in Seattle, and this year it's in Orlando - home to Mickey Mouse, Universal Studios and Shamu the performing whale. We usually get one free day (to adjust to the jet lag of course) and last time it was in Orlando a few years ago, several UK IT Directors hit one of the theme parks for the day and had a great if very childish time! Not sure what we'll do this year, but I'm sure it will be fun.
Lots of sessions planned, so I'll blog about as many as possible, and until my laptop battery runs out. It's always funny watching people gradually move to the edge of the rooms to find the power sockets- this picture was taken last year by a colleague of mine - 3 of us (and 3 macs!) sitting in a row hogging the power.
Lots of sessions planned, so I'll blog about as many as possible, and until my laptop battery runs out. It's always funny watching people gradually move to the edge of the rooms to find the power sockets- this picture was taken last year by a colleague of mine - 3 of us (and 3 macs!) sitting in a row hogging the power.
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