http://web2booklet.blogspot.com/

This blog explores the use of Web2.0 in various educational contexts.

Libraries in the Digital Age - conference visit

Libraries in the Digital Age: What if..?
Europa Congress Centre, Budapest, 21st October 2007.

Summary statement:
DMU should review the use of scenario planning as a tool for planning for the impact of future federalisation, globalisation and regionalisation. Review how learning spaces can be developed to accommodate students, allowing the integration of virtual and physical to provide a comprehensive learning environment. Where possible the university should encourage greater collaboration between the support departments and academic faculties to help bring about a vision for the 21st Century.

1. Outputs and outcomes: the main outcomes were

· Awareness of scenario planning.
· Considered how to integrate virtual and physical environments into a coherent and supportive learning space.
· Gave thought to how students now operate as independent, self motivated, self regulated and collaborative individuals.
· Awareness of JISC’s “Digital Libraries in the Classroom” (http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_dlitc.aspx)

2. Issues and challenges: the main issues are for us

· This requires the development of a more personalised system allowing the students to play to their strengths. One size no longer fits all!
· Close collaboration between academic staff and support colleagues will be more crucial to develop useful and innovative methods of delivery that move the university forward.
· Need for us to maintain a holistic approach to integration and a vision for the 21st Century.
· The University must monitor the impact of regionalisation, federalisation and globalisation and prepare as a change in the direction of any of these will affect the services we offer and may wish to provide.

Web 2.0 and Policy : JISC

The study provides a set of recommendations for JISC, institutions, and
teachers on the effective use of Web 2.0 technologies for sharing content
for teaching and learning. This was achieved by desk research
building on JISC-funded and other work already undertaken, and widespread
consultation across the community through an online workshop. The desk
research looked at both existing practice and institutional policies, which
can facilitate or inhibit the use of Web 2.0 technologies to share content.
To provide a focus for the workshop, we published the results of our desk
research together with any interim conclusions and the issues that we
believed the workshop needed to address. The workshop had
a specific focus each day to ensure that all the important issues were
addressed.

Read More...

Britt Watwood's Posts - College 2.0

Book Review of Palloff and Pratt's Building Online Learning Communities. I think this is a sweet review with pertinent analysis and comment. What do you think?

Britt Watwood's Posts - College 2.0

Facebook versus Ning

We have a discussion running on our Facebook group about Facebook versus Ning. In essence this boils down to "the use of the social networking tools for short bursts of learning, where participants are expecting [and expected] to contribute and debate" [Steve Mackenzie] This is an interesting way of getting our staff to think about synchronous and asynchronous conferencing. We would like them to think about task-driven, time-limited activities, where it is the task that shapes the use of a tool, rather than the tool becoming omnipresent.

Ning enables you to manage videos, break-out groups, photos, discussions for specific communities, as well as for oneself. Facebook has a cleaner interface and is more fun. I wonder whether we will see a growth in Ning for "task-driven, time-limited academic activities"?

JISC podcasts

I decided to try to catch up with some of the JISC podcasts on new technologies,during a "quiet" moment. The Web2.0-related podcasts and their key points include:

#6 - Techwatch and Web2.0: the Techwatch Web2.0 report is a must read. This podcast is not really a must listen unless you are interested in how Techwatch works. The podcast covers the report's identification of the difference betwen first and second-generation social software, issues around standards and the web as platform, and the 6 big ideas (user-generated content, network effects, data on an epic scale, the wisdom of crowds, open standards and participation). It talks about the lack of data on student expectations for the assumptions around Web2.0.

#7 - Web2.0 and education: this podcast covers the implications of new applications for education. Lawie Phipps highlights the characteristics of the read-write web for interaction and participation. Community is flagged by in terms of bookmarking, sharing and networking by David White. In education the impact of self-selecting, tribal social networking spaces with a shared immediacy is noted. Interestingly Lawrie figures that it is the impact of the technologies on the social, emotive side of life that engages us. The key question is do students feel that education is invading a distinctly non-academic, social space? Can teaching be interwoven in to these spaces? Do we harness Facebook or build our own? Or both?

#14 - IPR and Web2.0: the impact of repurposing original material; rights in collaborative working; how to share someone else's digital material; the impact of the open culture of Web2.0 on IPR, and the blur between the personal and the corporate; "ticketing" material for re-use; risk assessment for HEIs and staff; publishing to Web2.0 is publishing - do you have the rights to do so; think through the question "if I were the owner of this material how would I feel about its publication?"; if you create a identity on Web2.0 who owns or controls that identity? Can Facebook tailor advertising to your interests? Do you mind?

Student podcast experience

I have just released an anonymous online questionnaire on podcasting for my Yr 2 Pharmacy students (re: WP4) - prior to using podcasts in my lectures - and am surprised to learn from the 37 replies I have had to date, that 73% of them have never watched/listened to a podcast.