The Virtual Leader

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-07T14:47:00.002Z

New Year's Resolutions, a photo by elycefeliz on Flickr.

The first term has ended and the first assignment has been marked. How have the first year students coped with their investigation into social networking and higher education?

My Prezi gives an update on the success of the Diigo experiment. From the assignments it can be seen that the vast majority got to grips with Diigo pretty well though whether they will continue to use it for the remainder of their studies is another issue. I feel that on balance what it did create was a greater awareness of the need to record what they are reading on the web. One or two did however get confused between a "proper" web address for their sources and the Diigo bookmark link, but then again they also had web addresses that included links via ebscohost, the vle or their own documents store. I guess this is something that just needs practice.

One of the things I really enjoyed about reading their assignments was the reference to lots of interesting sources they had discovered via web or library searches. A popular choice was José Picardo - one of whose blog posts we had worked on in a seminar. Other authors selected, who coincidentally also appear in my own PLN, include this by Grainne Conole and this by Tristram Hooley. I admit to having picked up a lot of interesting tips for my own future reading in this area!

It was fascinating that quite a number of the students came down on the side of "social networking and education just don't mix!" whilst one or two got into the web 2.0 versus VLE debate. I wondered whether some were saying what they thought I wanted to hear ("put that mobile phone away!") but on reflection I think it is true to say that not every student is a fan of Facebook.

Some were not afraid to let me know that they find traditional lectures boring and think tutors could do more to facilitate learning through technology. Again, they may be saying what they think I want to hear, but there was a sense that students are getting to be more savvy about the dangers of social networking - distraction, cyber bullying, identity theft and reputation management - whilst at the same time recognising what a valuable role it can play in "socialisation" (no surprise there) and support for study.

As for me, I am becoming more and more disillusioned with the VLE after a week spent uploading these assignments into the "drop box" only to find it has fallen over and refuses to give the students their feedback. Anyone got any alternatives - other than, you know, paper?

And so to my New Year's resolutions.

Well, I feel more resolved than ever to persevere with the use of web based technology for learning, despite problems, mistakes and frustrations. I am about to start teaching a final year module based on a wiki and as the module involves group work, I am using Wikispaces which, with free HE upgrade, includes "projects" or private pages for separate groups within the one wiki. This was one of the things I used to love about Ning (before we had to pay for it), so it is a welcome addition to an already brilliant resource.

And I promise to keep blogging about it. Having completed what felt like an endless stream of marking, I am suddenly liberated - hence being able to write today's blog.

Finally, I am resolved to find simpler ways of assessing and giving feedback. I'd also like to explore self and peer assessment. If any one has any good ideas, do pass them on!

Happy New Year!

Future skills

2011-12-20T12:26:00.003Z

It is not always immediately obvious to my students (or to my friends & colleagues) why I like to use internet based tools for research, presentations and portfolios in my teaching. Many I am sure think I spend all day wasting my time on Google+ and Twitter. Others regard the tools I use as a form of modern day magic and treat them and me with a mixture of awe and fear - then promptly turn away and get back to business as usual. It can be a bit lonely and a bit disheartening (if it wasn't for my virtual personal learning networks that is ☺). It is nice then to come across a piece of work that explains exactly why it IS worth trying to engage with the weird and wonderful world of the web.

Future Work Skills 2010 describes 6 key skills that tomorrow's employees are going to need.

Sense-making: ability to determine the deeper meaning or significance of what is being expressed
Social intelligence: ability to connect to others in a deep and direct way, to sense and stimulate reactions and desired interactions
Novel and adaptive thinking: proficiency at thinking and coming up with solutions and responses beyond that which is rote or rule-based
Cross-cultural competency: ability to operate in different cultural settings
Computational thinking: ability to translate vast amounts of data into abstract concepts and to understand data-based reasoning
New media literacy: ability to critically assess and develop content that uses new media forms, and to leverage these media for persuasive communication
Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and ability to understand concepts across multiple disciplines
Design mindset: ability to represent and develop tasks and work processes for desired outcomes
Cognitive load management: ability to discriminate and filter information for importance, and to understand how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques
Virtual collaboration: ability to work productively, drive engagement, and demonstrate presence as a member of a virtual team

It is interesting that my journey into teaching with web 2.0 began with an exploration of Virtual Collaboration - leading virtual teams and developing the skills needed to operate in them. It was a reality of working life for the students I taught in the Scottish Health Service. More and more Health and Social Care organisations everywhere are tuning into the power of social media to transmit health messages. The other skills mentioned, it could be argued, are developed using a range of teaching and assessment activities in traditional University teaching, but what is interesting is the focus on using tools for Cognitive Load Management. That is exactly what bookmarking sites like Diigo are designed to do and of course it is also what the PLE is all about.

So, despite the obstacles, technical and psychological that I often run into, I think Keep Calm and Carry On is my message to myself for 2012.

VLE wrangling - again....

2011-12-18T14:54:00.004Z

I love my VLE, no honest, I do! It has all sorts of lovely features which I am still getting to grips with and I have not given up on it entirely - I intend to try out some new tips and tricks which I learnt at our recent staff development day. But I also get damned annoyed with certain little issues which irritate and sometimes totally confound students.

Things like links not working properly or having to download stuff when you want to view it, or only being able to view stuff when you want to download it. I don't pretend to understand what goes on under the bonnet so I resort to all sorts of inventive and long winded workarounds.

And then there is this lovely little facility that allows me to link a "Learning Room" to an external url, so now I am rebuilding a lot of content into a wiki which students can access from the VLE. Why? Well, a) it is a damn sight more attractive b)it allows for student contribution and collaboration (it's a wiki after all) c) links are clearly links to external websites and not previews d) lots of yummy widgets available without lengthy and unstable workarounds.

I just hope the students like it....

Can we diigo it?

2011-11-29T15:25:00.004Z

I made this Prezi for an in house staff development conference at the end of the autumn term. 8 people showed up (about average for other sessions I went to at the same conference). Undaunted, I tweeted it and 270+ others have now viewed it. I really, really, really love throwing social networking into the HE mix :)

Can you Diigo it? on Prezi

We don't need no educator?

2011-11-27T15:09:00.003Z

The many roles performed by educators today: (via +Sue Beckingham on Google+)

We don’t need no educator: The role of the teacher in today’s online education

View more presentations from Stephen Downes

Great Expectations Part 2

2011-10-25T11:21:00.003+01:00

Well after a traumatic week of IT "failures" I thought I should report back on the great Diigo social bookmarking experiment.

Firstly - technical: our IT department are investigating the fatal mix that is IE7 and Diigo and "will get back to me". Fortunately for my credibility, the same browser freezing happened when they tried it!

Secondly - the students' reactions: I met up with a small group in another seminar and asked how they had found the IT session. They shrugged, said everything was fine and they had got on with the task quickly and efficiently. They didn't find downloading Chrome a chore and thought Diigo was possibly quite useful.

Thirdly- activity on the Diigo group: 75 out of the 103 students on the course are now members. During the introductory sessions students added some additional links they had researched. The original library has doubled in size. Some joined the site over the weekend and continued to add links (following instructions I had provided in the form of Jing screencasts). Some have added a couple of things into their own libraries, but all of this activity is still limited to the focus of our current assignment. What I hope to see over the coming weeks and months is continued use of the site for saving bookmarks related to other modules.

So maybe not such a disaster after all but whether this proves to be a really useful tool for the students is another question......

Great Expectations

2011-10-19T16:23:00.006+01:00

I have been putting off writing this post all day. Maybe I just had a couple of bad sessions (OK, four bad sessions) but as I see my modest plans (for incorporating social bookmarking into my study skills module) crash and burn, all I really want to do is sit in a corner and weep.

Firstly, trying to demonstrate the beauty of Diigo using the university's PCs in our IT suites failed at the first hurdle - Internet Explorer. For some unfathomable reason, the web browser freezes as soon as Diigo loads. (This doesn't seem to happen off campus).

After a wasted hour with my first group of by now rather bored and cynical students, I managed to work around this by getting the next group to spend the first few minutes of the session downloading Google Chrome, but really - should I have to?

I am trying to look on the bright side - hey! I have by now introduced some 50 students to the joys of Chrome! And most of these have now also joined Diigo, managed to handle bookmarking - and even highlighting and sticky notes using the lovely Diigolet for Chrome.

But there is more. I am witnessing, right in front of me, the workings of the digital divide.The thing is that these groups include international students, "mature" students and those with dyslexia and other difficulties. The 18 year old, straight from A levels, UK born students generally whizzed through instructions in seconds and had installed Chrome, Diigolet and highlighted their first webpage whilst I was still showing our "non traditional" students how to search for the download.

(I should also acknowledge that some new students - including the digital "residents" - have still not been able to find lecture notes on the VLE!)

Over the next few weeks, I will continue to monitor the students' use of Diigo (and the VLE come to that) to see how things progress.

It has been a salutary lesson for me, though what exactly it all means is maybe too early to tell.

Thinking Ahead

2011-09-29T20:08:00.006+01:00

In another great centrally driven initiative, all programmes were told this year that they had to produce a pre-induction activity for prospective students. Actually I do agree that some sort of engagement with students prior to starting their studies is a great idea, I just dislike central, marketing driven initiatives that sneak up on you without warning....

Earlier in the Spring I had listened to our acting Dean talking about the importance of careers education starting as early as possible in a student's university life and so - Hey Presto! - these two great ideas collided in my head and my pre-induction activity became a "career investigation" website.

I based it on a wiki and started with grandiose ideas about getting students to collaborate or at least start discussions with one another. Then I chickened out and opted for straightforward information-giving with a structured activity culminating in the completion of an answer sheet which they could print off and bring to Induction Week.

The activity directed them to four skills sector websites which guided prospective employees through interactive quizzes to find the most suitable career or provided detailed information about a wide range of roles. In addition I posted links to some of the main charities who represent the types of care users our students will most likely come into contact with. (This idea came from another colleague and I think it really added a helpful dimension to the site).

Finally, I gave them a few contact points for the course, including a Facebook page which our student mentors had set up for them (no staff involved!).

As I was using Wikispaces I found it fairly easy to monitor site hits and views by individual user. We were averaging about 8 or 9 people a day visiting with a peak of 125 views. The night before the course induction we had 40 visitors and 450 views!

The Facebook site was slow to take off but by the time Induction week came along 28 students had joined up.

On the big day I collected in 25 completed answer sheets - out of around 90 students who attended my session.

On the whole I am pretty pleased with the level of response - particularly as this is my first attempt, but obviously I'd like to work on getting an even larger % take up next time!

In terms of the answer sheets that were returned, the first couple of questions asked them to say which jobs most interested them and which least.

(I should explain ours is a BA (Hons) Health and Social Care and we have "pathways" in criminal justice, counselling, communities and policy/leadership)

I was not surprised to find that most wanted to be Social Workers. The next most popular sector was criminal justice, followed by counselling, advice and mental health and finally other types of social care workers.

The most gratifying part of the feedback came in answer to the question "what did you learn from looking at the websites?"

Almost all responded that they had been surprised and pleased at the wide variety of roles on offer in the health and social care sector. Many had not considered a clinical role but some of our graduates do go on to train to be nurses, midwives, Occupational Therapists etc.

One responded that they felt sure they were on the right degree course because of the choice of pathways available given that they were still undecided about their ultimate career direction.

Another question focused on what further qualifications or experience they would need to reach their career goals. Some made quite detailed replies demonstrating that they had researched this thoroughly and all seemed to have a realistic sense of what they needed to do beyond graduation.

Some of my colleagues disagree vehemently with the idea of embedding careers planning in our curriculum arguing that this is not the university's primary function. On the other side of the argument, students themselves seem to want to be better prepared to get a decent job at the end of their university course and employers are looking to us to provide them with graduates who are savvy about the world of work.

Is it right that we talk to students at this early stage about careers? Are we encouraging them to see education only as something instrumental in getting a job? What about the joy of learning for its own sake? Or is that a luxury only those of us already in employment and who got our degrees in the time of local education authority grants, can afford to entertain?

I certainly feel I owe a duty of care to my students to give them the best possible chance of success in the job market and if realising that their education can help them achieve that success makes them a little bit more appreciative of the course they chose, or makes them want to do well in their studies because they know that will also help them in the long term, then that is no bad thing either.

(image Laenulfean)

Ready Steady Go!

2011-09-25T15:15:00.003+01:00

Image: nicecliparts.com

Getting ready for the new term this weekend. I have a number of fears and quite a lot of excitement.

It is exciting to be meeting new students but I am scared because this year our first year students number 110.... and I will be teaching a first year module single handed...

I am excited because this year I get to design and structure modules which last year I took over from someone else with no time to reorganise them.

I am very scared of the new institutionally imposed deadline of 15 days in which to turn around all my marking.....

But I am excited about some of the new tools I am going to be using with my students. In the study skills module I am going to be introducing Evernote as a convenient storage and organising platform, Diigo for bookmarking and sharing resources, Google Sites for creating an e-portfolio.

I have just been setting up some online polls for my introductory/welcome session with the first year students using Poll Everywhere..... get your smart phones out!! I saw a demo of this last week in a staff training session and I think it is brilliantly simple and a great way to get nervous new students to interact with each other (and with me) during their induction. The free plan only allows 30 users so I plan to get them to work in small huddles and post multiple responses.

I was really inspired last week by the Guardian's seminar on using social media to enhance the student experience. So many great ideas for engaging students and enhancing teaching and learning - I particularly liked Alan Cann's ideas about using Google+ and that is something else I might consider introducing at some point - as a platform for micro blogging and sharing learning.

I am beginning the year with a survey designed to find out my students' current confidence with internet based tools. I hope in this way to be able to have a point of comparison so I can show some enhancement in this area by the end of the year.

One of the positives of being forced into tighter marking timescales is that I am having to get creative about setting assignments and giving feedback. I find it much easier to grade very tightly structured work, so am using templates for major pieces of work like reflective portfolios and am going to be experimenting this year with a grading "matrix" like this example.

I will continue to review this and also students' reactions - do they want formulaic feedback in 15 days or something more detailed a week or two later? I am sure many just want their grade, but we are also trying to get them to "engage with feedback", apparently.....

Well, there are probably enough (maybe too many) objectives there for the coming year. I'll continue to post about how it all goes..... (this is why teachers should have blogs)

2011-09-10T12:09:00.001+01:00

Using evernote to support your studies

View more documents from Jane Challinor

the alternative ALT-C 2011

2011-09-08T10:44:00.000+01:00

NTU City Campus, Nottingham

Yesterday I attended a learning and teaching conference at my university in the College of Arts and Sciences. I love these sorts of events - brimming with ideas from people who want to improve their practice and - better still - having put the time and energy into passing on tips to colleagues.

Occasionally it is nice just to hear that other teaching staff are struggling with the same dilemmas or thinking along similar lines. Sometimes I garner nuggets of wisdom and sparkling innovation.

So in the spirit of sharing, here are some of the things I enjoyed.

Keynote speaker was Aaron Porter. He used a useful analogy in talking about students as consumers. being a "consumer" of a university education is not like buying a new HD TV set from a high street store, rather it is like taking out a gym membership. You expect a good level of service and all the right equipment to hep you get fitter, but if you don't put the effort in, nothing changes. And there are differences - you can't get your money back for a poor educational experience and it is very difficult to just pack up and decide to take your custom elsewhere.

Food for thought too in some of the findings from the National Student Survey - for example, that students generally are not told what criteria is used to mark their work but would like to be involved in designing it. That they rate teaching quality as low but don't know much about how their University is rated in terms of it. That students don't know what happens to the feedback they give in module evaluation forms, and that some would like to be more involved in course and curriculum design.

Other great ideas from the day include a wiki set up as a pre induction activity for design and technology teaching students. I was particularly interested in this as I have done the same for my course but with a lot of trepidation. I was impressed that the tutors had managed a 80% uptake in the first year and that the wiki had had strong interactive and socialisation properties. In my wiki attempt I had initially decided against getting prospective students to join up and post discussions, fearing they would find it daunting, but I had directed them to a student-led Facebook page. In reality my wiki functions as a web site that encourages them to undertake a bit of research and download an answer sheet which they can bring to the face to face induction, but the School of Education pre-induction wiki seemed to have a very powerful impact on student engagement. They also continued to use the wiki for collaborative group work in key level 1 activities, which is also something I could consider as I will be teaching study skills to the same group (and indeed, teaching them how to use social networking tools....)

More on the study skills front and a presentation from the School of Arts and Humanities about developing writing skills using very structured exercises - in pairs or small groups, to increase confidence. So now I am thinking about how this could be developed using the wiki.....hmmm

Over lunch I was discussing the issue of feedback and in particular the new 15 day turnaround deadline being introduced (something which has also emerged from the NUS Student Experience report is that students want faster feedback) It seems that we are going to have to get creative about assessment and feedback methods - interim feedback which is generic and delivered verbally, for example, with marks to follow.

I have been working on a mark sheet which is pre-loaded with grade descriptors specific to the learning outcomes for the task, in a matrix format - similar to this one. This would certainly make criteria very transparent, going back to Aaron Porter's point, and make marking quicker.

Finally, a session on professional tutoring for trainee teachers. Tutorials are being re-introduced and formally timetabled and as one of the staff who will be involved in managing tutorial groups for first year students, I was interested in hearing how this was working. Obviously there are workload and staffing issues to be resolved to make this a reality but case studies presented by the staff in the School of Education showed how the system could support students to improve grades, make the transition between levels, and link theory to practice during work placements. Students do value individual tutorials especially - and it is another great place for giving feedback on assessment - but we should also consider peer support networks and tutorial groups.

So I may have missed out on ALT-C this year, but I have nonetheless come away refreshed and inspired and ready to start the new term!

Questions

2011-09-04T12:19:00.001+01:00

http://www.mrlovegrove.net/2011/09/04/questions/

I love this idea: and for those who think this is lazy teaching , try it sometime.....

Skills for study

2011-08-13T12:26:00.005+01:00

oh where to begin......?!?!??

I took over leadership of the study skills module this year and began by proposing a few tweaks. Now I am heading for revolution (shakes head in despair).

The modest proposal I first mooted was to change the first assignment for this module from a paper-based journal/photocopying and note-taking exercise into an online search terms/ database accessing exercise, with online submission via the VLE. So far so 21st C.

But still I wasn't happy. Yes I need to show first year students how to use library catalogues and e-searching techniques, but surely they need more? What about social bookmarking as a place to save their web searches?

And instead of a final portfolio in a Word document, how about an e-portfolio? a wiki? a blog?

And if I am going to start telling them about these tools and introduce them to Twitter along the way - well, am I not I really on the verge of describing a PLE???????

So my question is this: is it appropriate to introduce Year 1 students to these tools - will they get it? will they be bored already? will it be just too different given that 99% of the rest of their studies will be based on using libraries, text books, the VLE and handing in their work at 2pm on a Friday afternoon after a lengthy queue to get to the reception window.......

Or are these actually essential life skills?

Anyway I have now pretty much decided on a way forward and though I take this route with some misgivings, I will be blogging as a I go and reflecting on how it turns out.

Last year the task for the first assignment in Term 1 was to find, then contrast, two or three articles on a topic chosen at random from a current issue of a health and social care journal. I then discovered that they do a nearly identical assignment for a different module in Term 1 and another also pretty similar for yet another module at the start of Term 2. I don't feel the task on my module is really adding anything to their learning about techniques for study and writing at HE level.

So this year I have decided to give them as a topic the use of social networking tools for study/learning in higher education. This fits well with some of the key texts we look at in relation to study at HE - for example Study skills for social workers - Stogdon, Chris, Kiteley, Robin, 2010

I have already done some research and put some useful articles in a Diigo group they will be asked to follow/join/add to and I will spend some time talking about and demonstrating this site and a variety of other tools - blogs, Twitter, Google sites, wikis, slideshare, iGoogle etc, which they might want to use to start to build their Personal Learning Environment.

I feel like I am stepping into the unknown: but on my side is my passion and my practical experience of using these tools myself for my own learning and I also know I'll have my personal learning NETWORK to fall back on for advice and support :)

Wish me luck!

Reasons to be blogging - Part 1

2011-08-13T11:33:00.003+01:00

Yesterday in the course of doing a bit of preparation for next year's modules (or should that be the modules that start in less than 2 months???), I came across this interesting bit of research on motives for blogging.

Motives for Maintaining Personal Journal Blogs Erin E. Hollenbaugh, Ph.D in the journal Cyberspace, Behaviour and Social Networking (where else?) Vol 14 No 1-2 2011

Basically motives for blogging divide into:

Helping/Informing
Passing the time
Exhibitionism
Archiving/organizing
Professionalism
To get feedback

I started blogging to archive and organize my reflections on learning as a PGC(H)E student; I was encouraged to do this by Richard Hall , but I continued in an effort to bring some additional resources to the attention of my distance learning students.

I think the first of these reasons still holds true for me as I tend now to use my blog as a place to try out ideas - and to keep a record of them - so that at the end of the year I can reflect on how my plans turn out.

I now include a Twitter feed on my blog which adds a bit more of the helping/informing dimension as the feed is from key players in the health and social care sector and often has some great links to articles and websites which I think students might find useful in their studies.

There's a bit of exhibitionism in the mix as I recently added a Flickr feed. And I do love it when I get feedback :) - this is one way of linking into my Personal Learning Network.

Almost never is this a way of passing the time for me as I find it difficult to find time to blog.

What are your reasons for blogging?

And so .... the end is near.....

2011-05-27T17:31:00.004+01:00

I have finished teaching for the year and am now on the home stretch as far as marking is concerned.

The reflective assignments from the 3rd year social work students were a revelation. I will definitely re-run this group project next year.

Despite some gripes about the project not being assessed (I am reconsidering this) the level of engagement with the project and with the reflection was tremendous.

Some students clearly started out on this project and on the formation of their groups with the view that the whole process was "fake" and that putting together an online presentation over 9 weeks or so was going to give them very little insight into how groups work "in the wild". Their reflections tell a different story and the sophistication with which some of them have applied theories of group dynamics, team roles and motivation theory has been quite inspiring.

What is more, the projects themselves have provided a legacy - a set of resources about the art and craft of leadership which are going to be invaluable not just for future students, but for me too!

I also feel really inspired by the students' ingenuity - the range of TV programmes and films studied (from Toy Story 3 to Hell's Kitchen) as well as the platforms used (Facebook, Wordpress, Powerpoint) has been enriching and the freedom to be creative is something most embraced eagerly in the midst of a heavy final year.

Some have been troubled by the need to wrangle the technology but the exercise also produced some real "stars" in terms of getting to grips with the on-line platforms.

So what will I do differently next time?

Probably introduce some form of credit for the work actually produced and reduce the amount of reflection to be done alongside the presentation.

Instead, reflection on the group process could be an option for their exam (I HAVE to give them an exam, apparently).

Give them a free choice of platform, film, and even topic (leadership, motivation, group process, team types, organisational culture etc.....)

What I won't do - but would love to - is give them one another's reflections to digest.

The variety of perspectives was dizzying at times and that would be the real way to learn about teams.... however they would (I would!) write very differently if their work was going to be reviewed by peers. But maybe there should be some part of the process where they ARE encouraged to do a group reflection?

Maybe actually all teams should do this from time to time....?

So if you'd like to see the student's work,(with their consent) here are a couple of Facebook Pages (The Beach) (Hell's Kitchen) and a Wordpress site. I'll be adding the Powerpoint presos to Slideshare shortly....

Little footsteps

2011-04-15T13:44:00.009+01:00

...it has been a while - sorry, dear blog.

There is just such a lot going on and so many ideas to try and capture...

Firstly, I got my 3rd year leadership students talking about their online projects which focussed on either Avatar or The Apprentice for a discussion of models of leadership. I created a little video about it that I could show to next year's students. I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome - and their enthusiasm for Google Sites and the use of TV/Film sources.

Given how much the social work students are enjoying this aspect of their assessment it is something I will definitely continue with - and be a little bolder next time by giving them the freedom to choose their own platforms and resources.

Ipadio podcasts have been a big hit with the social work students - especially in giving them some tips on the assignment. Again this is something I plan to continue next year and as much of this stuff won't change I'll be able to reuse my podcasts too!

Today I will be starting work on marking the e-portfolios that my second year students are preparing. This has been an interesting process: I didn't make use of the e-portfolio compulsory and I didn't "officially" tell anyone I was using it. That caused some hiccups with school office as I thought I should get students to hand in some sort of declaration in hard copy - and school admin staff just turned up their noses at it! A bit of a chat soon straightened things out. Note to self - consult with the all powerful school admins before trying stunts like that again!

To make the process as painless as possible, I had prepared a template for the students to use (see left).

Responding to a request from the guinea pigs, I set up an extra seminar session in the IT suite to show them how to use the Google Sites tool.

In the end about eight have submitted electronically and the results range from OK (in terms of presentation) to pretty damned amazing.

Oh well - back to the marking now! See you on the other side....

Making the effort .....

2011-02-17T18:52:00.007Z

The projects the social work students are engaged on are starting to take shape. I am just so impressed by the creativity here.The truth is I had expected this group to be rather serious and also a little jaded perhaps. I think my invitation to them (right from the start) to have fun with this project has started to pay dividends.

They are a mature and a challenging group - they are not overly keen on my suggestions for topics (the films and TV programmes I put forward) - they would rather come up with their own. They are not all totally sold on the idea of creating a web site - so again they are playing around with different ideas. One group is quite interested in using Google Sites and have asked to see examples. Others want to stick to Powerpoint but will upload those to Slideshare or Googledocs as the deal is there has to be an online presence.

Two groups have come up with the idea of videos: in one case they want to undertake a team building task, film themselves doing it , and then analyse the video in terms of emergent leadership behaviours (wow!). The second group wish to film themselves discussing leadership theory and commenting on the film case study they are using rather than write anything at all (wow, and wow!)

PS A little anecdote: today a final year student told me that he prepares for my seminars (looking ahead at the links I post on the VLE ) and that this is this is the first time he has ever done so. We chatted a bit more about how he likes the "technology" and feels that it is especially good for engaging students who often struggle to engage (his terms - and he included himself in this category!) He particularly liked the videos and podcasts I have been providing to supplement the lecture notes - but what really motivated him, he told me, is that he could see that I was motivated to do more than just the hour of teaching that is timetabled. Now I am even more motivated :0)

Google Sites in the Classroom

2011-01-20T16:18:00.003Z

I embarked on an experiment at the start of last term to introduce my Leadership students to collaborative working using Google Sites.

My reasoning was that the students would this way have a forum for synchronous collaboration which didn't involve sending round emails of PowerPoint slides; they would learn a new transferable skill in setting up and designing a website. They would produce a revision tool about the key leadership theories and how they can be applied in practice and along the way they would experience the highs and lows of team working which they could then reflect on.

The task was to produce a site which elaborated/ illustrated key leadership theories as applied to a specific setting. As they are mainly undergraduates with little direct work experience I offered them the opportunity of using the film Avatar or the TV series The Apprentice as their "case studies".

Assessment for this part of the module took the form of a reflective piece focusing on the team dynamics which were operating whilst producing the finished site. In addition they would be given individual credit for evidence which demonstrated their participation in the finished site.

In the first few weeks of the module I doubted that I had designed the task appropriately and was unsure whether they would take to the idea, but in fact they readily formed into groups and began assigning roles and sub-tasks with great enthusiasm.

Over the next 6 weeks or so that enthusiasm waxed and waned and there were the usual grumbles about people not pulling their weight. This culminated in a class discussion where it was decided that each team should nominate a "leader" who would take responsibility for "motivating" everyone else to complete their work by the deadline.

After this Team A seemed to make steady progress and, as I had access to their sites, I could see the work being developed and completed in good time for the final presentation. Team A asked me for some technical input early on but then got on with the task and added some really lovely innovative touches like an introductory video and a quiz to finish off.

Team B seemed to struggle to get together, to round up all the members and to get their contributions in to the right place. I made quite a significant technical input to get the site into some sort of order and a week before the deadline I was still showing them how to edit it. Three days before the deadline the contributions were starting to form but the site was a mess. I feared for the group presenting this in public on the due date. However, as their turn came round, the site displayed was unrecognisable. One group member had taken it upon herself to spend hours - the night before - editing, adding images, unifying colours and fonts, uploading YouTube videos all of which combined to produce a really high quality result.

So.... in the end everyone felt they had indeed learned to feel a little more comfortable with the technology and they were justifiably proud of the end results. Moreover, I think they recognised that although the presentation wasn't assessed, it had taught them/helped them revise a great many relevant leadership theories which would feature in their final exam. And finally they had all learned a great deal about effective (and less effective teams) and about their roles in them.

This Module is part of a pilot which is looking at e-assessment/e-submission of assessment. Next week they will upload their reflections via the drop box and I will give them online feedback via Grademark (part of the Turnitin process).

By incorporating Google Sites into the group task I have added another "e" element to the module which, although it is not being directly evaluated as part of this pilot, merits further reflection and research as the University looks at how we can increase the use of technology enhanced learning to develop students' "digital capabilities and information literacy".

And now for phase two - next week I introduce the same exercise to 60 Social Work students - it'll be interesting to watch how this "scales up" from my guinea pig group of 10!

Love, Friendship and Twitter

2011-01-20T16:11:00.003Z

"Love, friendship and Twitter" by @virtualleader

http://tinyurl.com/4uad2pc

Posted from Diigo.

About those podcasts.....

2010-12-31T15:02:00.007Z

I have had a horrid cold this last week and so, confined to my sofa with lemsip and laptop, I have been catching up on some reading (well, browsing Twitter).

An article about the growing interest in podcasting in HE took me to a video presentation from Gilly Salmon on the subject, and eventually to ipadio.

Gilly's talk about pedagogical podcasting ended by convincing me of two things: 1)that "podcast" does not have to mean lecture capture and 2) that there is value in the human voice supplementing written or visual material to encourage and support even on-campus students.

I have long been averse to podcasting precisely because I didn't want to offer recordings of lectures. I don't really DO lectures, so maybe that's why. I HAVE however used audio instructions to supplement written ones for students - on preparing assignments, for example - and I have had positive feedback from students about how they do indeed value that "human touch".

I am a big fan of screencapture and I still intend to do more of this - particularly in giving students feedback on assignments. There are times when the audio and the visual need to come together - to (literally) illustrate a key point, perhaps - but Gilly had evidence to show that pedagogical audio podcasting also has a place.

Where audio wins out over screencapture/video is in file size, downloadability, speed and simplicity. The almost universal provision of voicerecorders and mp3 players in mobile phones makes audio podcasting a very efficient way of getting information to students on the move.

So now we come to ipadio (rhyming with i-radio). This is a website hosting "phlogs" - voice based blogs that you phone in. It is also an iphone (and android) app that allows you to record high quality audio using "voice memo" and upload it to your phlog. You can also download the phlog post for editing or upload an mp3 file you have already created. There are one-click links to Facebook, Twitter, and many other blogging sites, codes to allow you to embed the phlog on your own website, upload it to iTunes or provide an RSS feed. One absolutely astounding feature is the incorporation of Spinvox speech to text software which provides a transcript of the phlog. This really adds to the application's accessibility. And you can add images and location data if needed. In fact there is so much going on here that the possibilities are endless.

My own modest ambition is to embed a regular phlog within the VLE Learning Room (I have already successfully done this in a test) as a means of supplementing the module I am teaching. As I have already abandoned the lecture format, my aim is to give the students online and printable material together with audio podcasts which direct them in key activities such as discussion board topics and further self-organised study. Our face to face time can then be used for more in depth discussion of the material and work on group projects.

I have embedded a phlog below, with a photo for illustrative purposes. Enjoy!

Accessible Learning

2010-10-28T13:05:00.002+01:00

I foolishly volunteered to present a workshop at our School Teaching and Learning Conference on the theme of accessible learning. I am thinking about doing some sort of show and tell about the way I have set up my learning rooms. It's not world changing stuff and its not rocket science, but I am trying to make the material more accessible.

Firstly I have written all my notes in Wimba Create so that the material can be accessed via the learning room, read on screen and with links to other material and sites live and instantly available. I like Wimba create and certainly prefer it to endless copies of Powerpoint slides which have to be downloaded. More information can be given on a page than is possible or even desirable on a single slide and illustrations can be included where this would increase the size of a Powerpoint file to several Mb.

Reading on screen isn't everyone's favourite activity so I keep the pages short, include illustrations and focus an key points and, importantly, links to more interactive or audio/visual sites.

Like I said, this isn't rocket science (Wimba Create is a Word add on that is pretty easy to learn), but I already see benefits for the students.

Many of them are off on placement at the moment and unable to make every lecture; some mature students have children and so have been missing this week (which is the schools' half term but not our university's) and ill health, physical disabilities, family bereavements and a variety of other issues do sometimes prevent students attending in person. But I have evidence from the Learning Room usage reports that many of them are looking at the material and even reading ahead to the next week's lectures.

Having the material available to read ahead is particularly useful for students with specific learning difficulties who often find it difficult to keep up with note taking during live lectures.

In addition, for those who do not want to keep on accessing the Learning Rooms via the Internet, I have reproduced the material as a PDF document which the student can download - to their own PC, laptop or smart phone - or even, heaven forfend! - print off. A document in this format can be easier and cheaper for the student to print - my "lectures" are on average 5 or 6 pages long compared to the, say, 50 or more slides that would be needed to give the same amount of information.

OK - I confess, my approach to producing materials has been influenced by my early training in e-learning and a personal dislike of actually standing up and lecturing people. By having the materials, a variety of links and reading recommendations already set up on the Learning Room, my "lectures" can instead be places for discussion, group work, exercises, watching clips from "Avatar" (yes really) and Q&As about important issues (like the next assignment - *sigh*).

Finally, I also base my approach on a desire to provide not only a variety but also a multiplicity of formats in order to make it accessible to an audience potentially comprising a variety of learning styles. I suppose I should add audio podcasts to be wholly consistent ... but that's a project for another day.

New beginnings

2010-10-02T17:42:00.004+01:00

I am actually quite excited about the start of the new term. For me as Programme Leader and Lecturer this is a new University, new programme, new VLE - and all the students are new to me too.

I should also mention that I am simultaneously beginning as a student of the University myself as I have just enrolled on a language programme. This has already given me a great insight into the student view of the VLE, how it is used to support learning and simple stuff like how student email works, which as a tutor, I couldn't have known.

As for the VLE, well, from the tutor's perspective, I can say that like all VLEs it has its clunky aspects and its bugs but on the whole I think it has a pleasing element of "customisability" and I quite like the ability to use colour and images - even a Twitter feed and some YouTube videos - to brighten up the Home Page.

It still functions largely as a depository - of announcements, documents, web links, assignments,
module guides - and of course has no option for the student to really interact with it or customise it to their tastes and needs. But there are a couple of useful tools which I hope might encourage some student involvement.

I am going to be promoting the blog tool, for one thing - as reflection will be a large part of all the modules I am teaching. I also plan to use the Discussion Boards, though I have had mixed success with these in the past with distance learning students.

But along side these "institutional" elements, we will also be exploring Twitter, Blogger, Google sites and Facebook as arenas for student collaboration and communication - not just for the sake of it, but because these tools and others like them - are a key part of any organisation's communications strategy these days. Learning to use them is as much about enhancing "employability" as it is about developing general information literacy skills.

With my dual identities as new lecturer and new student at this university, I expect it to be an interesting few months ahead - watch this space.....

e-portfolios

2010-08-27T18:45:00.005+01:00

I have spent much of the last few weeks designing and developing e-portfolios for our new students, using Google Sites. (The template is entitled PLR2010 if you want to have a look: it is designed for a specific module, though, so not suitable as a generic portfolio).

There is a portfolio widget available within the VLE, but as with all such platforms, it is only valid for the length of the programme and what I hope is that students will enjoy the idea of regular blogging and creating personal online spaces where they can keep track of their personal and professional development.

Ongoing professional development and personal reflection is important for everyone but particularly so in the human services and I am hoping the eportfolio will be a useful aid for individual supervison as well as career management and recording further professional training.

So I hope the e-portfolios will prove popular and easy to use -and even better - that the students will go beyond the simple templates I have set up to develop really creative learning spaces of their own.

NHS spends more than £300m on consultancy services

2010-08-21T10:25:00.001+01:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-11041845

Nigel Edwards, acting chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said: "Any spending of taxpayers' money has to be justified, and the NHS has been asked by successive governments to perform tasks for which internal expertise was not present or needed to be developed. Dismissing all this spending as wasteful is unfounded."

IT and Human Resources were the biggest spend areas - the NHS Chief Executive argues that there isn't the specialist knowledge in the service to meet the needs, and that it would also be wasteful to employ people permanently for "one off" specialist roles. The RCN reply with "shocking waste" etc etc whilstthe opposition retort:

the NHS needs good managers. By wiping away the expertise currently in primary care trusts, [Lansley] is opening the door to consultancy firms

Is spending on consultancy a necessary evil? a clever way of hiding staffing costs in a service beset by targets and spending cuts? a sensible way of bringing in the staffing and expertise needed at the right time? Lazy management? all of the above. Discuss.....

Use of Social Media in Health Care - Report by Deloitte in U.S.

2010-07-31T20:23:00.007+01:00

Issue Brief — Social Networks in Health Care: Communication, collaboration and insights « ResourceShelf

tags: socialmedia HSC

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Some time ago I blogged about how reluctant the NHS is to let its staff use social media but also how so many NHS organisations are beginning to appear on Twitter and Facebook, etc.

Interesting then to see this report from Deloitte in the US about how social media is gaining respectability and more widespread use in health care there.

I am particularly interested as I am very keen on teaching Health and Social Care students how to use these tools - Twitter, Google Sites, Wikis and Blogs are all going to feature in my leadership and management modules this year. So now I can justify this as more than just "technology for its own sake" - students hoping to be employed in the health and social care sectors need to be social media literate.

A Practical Guide to using Social Media in your Job - an overview presentation

2010-07-31T20:08:00.002+01:00

http://janeknight.typepad.com/pick/2010/07/a-practical-guide-to-using-social-media-in-your-job-an-overview-presentation.html

PLE BCN July 2010

2010-07-04T15:19:00.002+01:00

PLEBCN: a conference with a difference:

http://www.pontydysgu.org/2010/07/how-we-share-our-ideas-ple_bcn

What's it all about?

Jordi Adell's introduction http://dotsub.com/view/7023a3f5-5463-4396-aa33-3b78f1557a48

Ismael Peña-López'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-3RCvE61co

Alec Couros' http://tinyurl.com/2docaad

and finally from Graham Atwell http://slidesha.re/cIJ3tx

Partnership working: policy and practice - Google Books

2010-06-19T10:35:00.002+01:00

Partnership working: policy and practice - Google Books

A useful resource for the session on Collaboration across organisations and interagency working

Demos | Publications

2010-06-19T10:27:00.001+01:00

Demos | Publications

A Collection of Essays on the need for collaboration across the public sector

Belbin Team Inventory

2010-06-18T12:13:00.002+01:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Belbin Team Inventory

View more presentations from Shaymaa .

Free online course to promote peace, reduce violence in Health Care Settings

2010-06-16T11:54:00.002+01:00

Medical Peace Work - free online course

http://www.medicalpeacework.org/?q=node/230

Personality profile

2010-06-01T12:20:00.001+01:00

Who are you? How does your personality impact on your leadership style?

BBC/OU Open2.net - Child of Our Time 2010 - Personality profile

Responding to Employers - Moving into the Mainstream

2010-05-28T11:53:00.013+01:00

| Get your SlideShare Playlist

These are the papers and slides from my presentation at the Employer Engagament Conference at DMU on June 11th. Please feel free to explore the rest of this blog for more discussion about e-learning and virtual teams.

Adventures in social learning

2010-03-09T13:58:00.004Z

As my weekly Spanish class comes to an end this week, I have been looking around for new, flexible, (cheap!) and effective ways to continue my language learning.

busuu.com has great resources for learning new vocabulary but I need to practice speaking and listening and with a new, full-time job looming where will I find the time or the right sort of class?

I have used verbalplanet.com before to locate native Spanish speaking tutors with whom I can connect on line at times to suit me, but it can be expensive if you need regular, say weekly, conversation.

At this point in my deliberations I was contacted on busuu by a young woman from Bilbao who wants to improve her rusty English and so we have set up a regular session to chat on line.

This has highlighted for me the power of combining e-learning with social networking. Busuu has a rudimentary but effective (and unobtrusive) social networking element which simply involves "friending" other learners, occasionally messaging one another, correcting each others' posts and sending virtual tokens or gifts. And it has certainly enabled my Spanish friend and I to make this connection which benefits us both.

What I am learning too is how really helpful this peer to peer teaching is. We each choose a topic and we divide up our sessions into half English and half Spanish so we both get the chance to practise our language skills. The fact that we are both learners as well as "teachers" means that, for me at least, I feel less self-conscious about mistakes.

Of course, a less sympathetic partner or one with considerably better skills (or considerably worse ones) might make for a difficult co-teaching relationship: but then it would be easy enough to make one's excuses and leave.

Now I have tried out this form of learning I know I would feel far more confident in contacting other busuu members for voice and text chats.

A Virtual Revolution

2010-02-27T14:01:00.007Z

I'd obviously be remiss in my devotion to all things virtual (well nearly all) if I didn't offer some reflections on BBC Two's The Virtual Revolution

I would recommend anyone with a passing interest in the Internet, e-learning, social networking - or even anyone with kids! - to take a look at this three part series.

I found it fascinating to understand the origins of the Internet and of the world wide web (and to understand the difference between the two) - and this in turn helped to explain something of the anti-authority, collaborative culture of the web.

The programme - and the website - also take a look at the generational differences in web-usage and there is an online test you can take to discover more about your web habits - which also contributes to research on the subject. I found out I was a web Bear

This could be a really useful test to offer new e-learning students as a way of understanding their own preferences and behaviours on line, and for e-tutors to assess the potential pace of an online activity....

However, I digress: the web behaviour test aims to provide data on what is happening to our brains as we surf, multi task, etc and to compare different age-groups' behaviours. I am looking forward to hearing about the results.

In the meantime, the programme explored myths and fears about the Internet (wheeling out Susan Greenfield- inevitably) but was equally optimistic about its potential benefits: for example, many South Korean children are afflicted by a new disease of Internet addiction but the country also has outstanding school results (South Korea was cited as the "most wired" country in the world).

The programmes have certainly made me think about my own web behaviours, the connections I make there, the "reality" of on line friendships, the authority, or otherwise of information to be found (Wikipedia was discussed) but also what all of this is going to mean for succeeding generations. Those of us who have come late in life to the web have a particular view of it based on our own paradigms of learning, knowledge, connection, etc. Those born with the web as their natural environment will inevitably be growing up immersed in entirely new paradigms.

This isn't necessarily the nightmare scenario that Greenfield suggests (infantilising etc). I think that inevitably there are difficulties and dangers involved in web use but we are in the learning and developing stage of a new-ish tool: our children, their children, may actually grow to be far more adept at managing not just the technology but also their online identities and relationships than we can currently envisage.

I always remember an edition of Radio 4's "The Long View" discussing video games that compared our current fears about their growth with 18th century moralist's horror at the vogue for reading novels.

It is unthinkable now that we would attempt to stop our kids from reading, but the Baroness Greenfields of the day were advocating just such remedies if parents were to save their children from intellectual and physical laziness, moral turpitude and a life immersed in unhealthy fantasy.....

something to ponder on!

Informal Learning: Part Dos

2010-02-13T14:16:00.004Z

Four weeks in and the Spanish class is settling down to some good work. Our tutor is continuing to bring written material for us to work on and the combination of reading outloud, translating on the hoof, chatting and discussing topics is going quite well. Most people seem to feel that we are actually learning more than we did previously (I certainly am)!

There has however been some discussion via email about the topics and format of the classes and whether they were suitable for everyone, and so last week we had a quick review to check everyone was getting what they needed from the process.

We have subsequently agreed to do more "every day" chat topics - to give those with a more limited vocabulary a chance to join in - and each person is going to bring an article or other piece of writing to share and discuss alongside the material that the tutor prepares.

It is no small feat really that we managed to work out all the costs, find a room, a tutor, get everyone to pay up front without major disagreements amongst nine very strong minded individuals and the very slight note of dissent about what we were doing in class has resulted in everyone getting more of a say in what we do in future.

**********************************************************

Busuu.com also continues to be a great source of fun and learning. It provides a huge amount of vocabulary and subtle encouragement to explore grammar at the same time.

I really love the "gaming" feel of the site - right and wrong answers are signified by sound effects, points are awarded for completing sections of work and the learner's "homepage" is a garden where your trees grow and gifts are added as you progress.

You are encouraged to network by the award of a gold heart if you get lots of friends. Online chat is still a daunting prospect for me but I enjoyed a discussion in two languages with a young man from Mallorca the other day - he wrote in English and I in Spanish, and we corrected each other as we went along. Another time, I chatted in English to an Italian housewife who is trying to learn the language whilst her kids are at school.

I think the reward aspect is very powerful: even the element of competition (similar to Farmville I suspect). My partner , my son and I are all competing to get the highest number of points,(or busberries!) for example. The fact that this is encouraging my son to study French alongside his normal homework and revision is an astounding achievement. And even more amazing is the way it has completely hooked my normally technophobe partner who has never been on Facebook or any other social networking site.

It has made me start to think about how I could introduce more elements of gaming, competition, reward, networking and fun into the distance/e-learning programmes I manage - I am sure with some creative thinking it must be possible to liven up the VLE and make people want to log on for another dose of learning?

One of the other really good things about the site is the way you get instant feedback - not just automated right/wrong on the multiple choice vocabulary tests but in the form of corrections from native speakers (other learners who happen to be on line) - bringing peer feedback into the equation too! This has two effects - for the person being corrected, you get speedy feedback from an expert or experts (in the sense that they are native speakers of the language you are learning) - sometimes you might get two or more options for translating a particular phrase. Secondly, as you are also required to correct another learner's posts you get the feeling yourself of being an expert and of being able to contribute to someone else's development. Oh and those all important 5 busberries!

Work Shifting

2010-02-08T13:40:00.001Z

ahhh - a blog after my own heart!

http://workshifting.com/

Informal Learning

2010-01-27T11:09:00.004Z

As my devoted reader(s) will know, I have been studying Spanish for a few years now and have used a variety of means for improving my vocabulary, grammar, speaking etc. I have had one to one sessions with personal tutors, both face to face and using Skype (see Verbalplanet.com). I have attended cosy WEA classes and I have followed BBC online, CD and TV-based courses.

Last week our lovely WEA class in Nottingham came to an end as our teacher has returned to Argentina. So as a group we have come to the decision that we will carry on - meeting weekly, preparing exercises and practising together. We have hired ourselves a native Spanish speaking tutor and a room in a church hall and are combining our many resources - and cash - to continue making the learning happen. Our plan is to decide together what it is we want to learn or practice, find our own resources and rely on the Spanish speaking tutor as a resource to correct our grammar and pronunciation.

I am excited and a little nervous about what will happen so I will continue to blog about our experiment.

I also Tweeted this week about a site I had been directed to called Busuu.com. This has the usual range of quite well done screen based language exercises but the real fun of it is in the interaction between students.

You can befriend others who are learning the same language as you - or who want to learn your native tongue - and the site provides a facility to text chat with one another and even to connect by video/audio link for live conversation.

As you progress through the exercises, you are asked to post your written answers and to correct those of other students who are studying your native tongue. In this way, work is corrected by a native speaker. Your activity is rewarded by "busuuberries" and your progress marked with little stars and diamonds.

I think it's a brilliant concept - social networking meets e-learning - and really good fun to get involved in. So if you have ever wanted to learn a language - give it a go!

No tweets please, we're British health workers

2010-01-14T13:58:00.002Z

http://4glengate.net/node/448

This blog post pretty much sums up the experience I - and my NHS based students - have had in trying to explore social networking sites for learning, newtworking, team communication and even health promotion. I agree that the potential threats to a hospital's vital information systems are not to be taken lightly, but the draconian tone taken in the forbidding of such networking sites does really demonstrate how little actual experience and understanding there is of their potential benefits.....

see my previous post about NHS and social media - clearly some people are using it (officially that is) and to good effect

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Twitter

2010-01-13T11:15:00.001Z

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and Twitter

I really enjoyed this blog post linking Twitter with Malsow's Hierarchy of Needs. Twitter certainly fulfills certain belonging needs for me as a teleworker (see my previous post) and I admit to a spurious(?) increase in my self esteem when I discover I have been "listed", "retweeted" or "favourited"....

As an interesting follow through of this concept, you could think about how using Twitter with a work team might increase motivation....

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.......

2010-01-08T16:20:00.004Z

oh the weather outside IS frightful and has resulted in me spending an entire week marooned at home: too nervous of the wintry weather to venture onto the treacherous roads and even more treacherous pavements.

Has this affected my ability to do my job? Added to the several £billions lost in productivity during the cold snap? No! of course not... I am a teleworker!

This week I have:

followed up a marketing lead for a new post graduate course (by phone & email)
conducted an informal appraisal of a new member of the tutor team and provided him with a number of resources to support his teaching (phone and email)
checked with the team on progress with the marking of the programme's final module (Blackboard, phone, email)
held tutorials with a student (via Skype)
collaborated with colleagues on documentation for the validation of a new Module (email)
found out about a really interesting up and coming conference and booked onto it (via Twitter and Eventbrite)
organised some appointments for next week (Outlook calendar)
read the current edition of a great journal about e-learning (on line)
discovered a fantastic file transfer site (via postingon Twitter) and used it to send some huge files to a colleague whose email provider kept on rejecting them
taken part in a research study conducted by an academic based in Brazil (via Twitter and Googledocs)
started to write up the findings from some research of my own (conducted with distance learning students via Googledocs)
used the rest of the time to re-work the Virtual Teams module based on that feedback, students' assignments and a personal review of what has and hasn't worked this time.
taken part in many fun and thoughtful conversations on Twitter and through reading others' blogs

I have also been giving some thought to what the Virtual Leader should be focusing on in times of inclement weather. For the most part, it's the same as usual, but more so.

Making sure the team members are safe and well and not taking unnecessary risks - maybe even issuing some guidance about home working/travel safety and ensuring those who have to be out and about, because of the nature of their jobs, check in regularly.

Keeping in touch - not to check up that those stranded at home are being properly productive, but to discuss with them what they are able to do, what they could be catching up on, checking what support they might need in rearranging commitments, and even just being a friendly ear if they are going stir crazy after a few days stuck behind a wall of snow!

Even more importantly, if just one or two team members are stranded whilst others have made it into the team meeting, look at how you can involve those who have become temporarily disconnected - with teleconferences, Skype or even just an email to fill them in on what is happening. Encouraging team members to buddy up and chat on the phone to keep each other up to date is also a good idea: it's not just the boss who should be oiling the social wheels of the team but all members can share this responsibility.

The great thing about Yammer, Twitter, even Facebook contact with my colleagues this week is that it has given me a sense of continuing to be part of the work community and afforded a few classic "water cooler" moments where we share news and a joke. Continuing to feel included is important for teleworkers.

An "out of sight, out of mind" attitude is just plain lazy leadership, whatever the weather!

Networking Reconsidered - Harvard Business Review

2010-01-05T13:29:00.001Z

http://blogs.hbr.org/bigshift/2010/01/networking-reconsidered.html

Motivation and New Years' Resolutions

2010-01-03T14:16:00.001Z

http://www.danpink.com/

Take a look at this blog for some ideas on motivating yourself and others......make your New Year's Resolutions work!

YouTube - Healthcare and internet in the Netherlands

2010-01-02T19:04:00.001Z

YouTube - Healthcare and internet in the Netherlands

tags: youtube, healthcare, imp2_learningorganisations, resources

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twelve tech triumphs of 2009....

2009-12-23T20:14:00.008Z

tools, conferences, connections.... what have been my virtual highlights of 2009? I have decided to make awards in my own very special categories. Many of these are Twitter related as it remains up there as my number one social networking and informal learning tool. End of.

So here's an award for each of the 12 days of Christmas

1. Best online conference: Digifolios - a Ning based community looking at digital identity and the development of e-portfolios

2. Best real life conference: ALT-C 2009 Manchester especially @jamesclay

3. Best Tweet-up opportunity: again - ALT-C 2009 Manchester - met LOADS of Twitter friends in real life for the first time (@sarahhorrigan, @adamread to name but two)

4. Best International Tweet-up (on home ground): @torresk (BCN) Flores restaurant, Leicester - a friendship that continues through Blip FM, Ning, blogs, facebook and of course tweets: can't have too much of a good thing!

5. Best International Tweet-up in a foreign language : @felipemorales (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) Cafe Mozart on the Paseo Canteras. Actually this was far more than a tweet up. In response to a DM asking for help on finding salsa venues in the City, Felipe (who I had never really "spoken to" before - only followed on Twitter) went out of his way to provide the information I needed . Both he and his family turned out to be funny, charming and generous people who I hope will continue to be friends! I also hope to return the favour some day!

6. The Tweet-up that didn't quite happen : @psweetman and I were metres away from each other at Holyrood in Sept - @Markhawker was trying to direct us towards each other but I didn't get the message until too late. Doh!

7. And the Tweet-up I had looked forward to longest: @cristinacost - Exchange Theatre, ALT-C 2009 Fringe meeting

8. Last of the Tweet-up related awards - to all the lovely Leicester people I finally got to meet for real in 2009: @ajcann, @lizzielib, @3quarks, @jobadge, @craig52uk and @caffeinebomb. (In 2010 WLTM @ffolliet and @mitchley....)

8. Most hyped damp squib of the year - Googlewave. I think it has amazing potential but I have yet to unlock it and am frustrated by the lack of interaction. Or is every one else having fun at the party and I am still in the kitchen, or in a different house maybe?

9. Most really useful asynchronous collaboration tool - I have been seduced away from Wetpaint into the arms of Googledocs this year and have managed to persuade our office staff to use it too. Recently I used Google spreadsheet to create an online survey and collaborated with a colleague on a presentation. I am also looking carefully at Huddle - especially as an application in Ning: potential for a great community collaboration tool here.

10. Best synchronous collaboration, learning and communication tool - has to be Skype: the latest version has screen sharing. It has become the tool of preference for me and my daughter to chat and share work/photos etc whilst she is away at University, and has thus made the pain of separation bearable! I have also used it for my own learning (Spanish conversation practice), for discussions with work colleagues when one or more of us is out of the office and of course for tutorials with my students.

11. Flip camera+ Camstudio + Moviemaker and Youtube ; Jing or Screenr - altogether a great set of free tools (except the Flipcamera which set me back a modest £60) for making short videos or screencasts - for friends and family, for learning, for recreation. I have filmed salsa classes, created holiday movies, made short welcome videos for distance learning students and provided instructional screencasts on using web 2.0 tools.

12. Best present I ever bought myself: my i-phone! Apps too numerous to mention but three I use constantly are: Collins Spanish dictionary - worth every penny, Tweetie is of course essential for a Twitter addict and Evernote provides me with my virtual memory!

Phew - that's it, my review of 2009. Can't wait to see what 2010 has to offer.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Why people don't use Web 2.0 - Tristram Hooley

2009-12-22T10:14:00.001Z

it's often the case that students and fellow academics get scared off the idea of using Web 2.0 tools in their teaching and learning. This post made sense to me and caused me to wonder how we could be presenting these tools differently to get people more engaged?

http://adventuresincareerdevelopment.posterous.com/why-people-dont-use-web-20-thoughts-prompted

Wetpaint to damp squib

2009-12-14T11:31:00.006Z

a typical page with ads top, bottom and side

I started out this year as something of an evangelist when it comes to Wetpaint wikis. I have used them in my teaching in various ways and even adapted one as a website/induction module for new distance learning students. I have recommended them to academic colleagues and supported others in setting up a wiki for research and collaboration.

I have to say though that I am bitterly disappointed by Wetpaint's decision to end the removal of ads (for free) on educational sites.

I can understand that this may not have been a particularly attractive busness model and I realise that we shouldn't perhaps expect much for free nowadays, but it isn't just that ads are back - its the nature of them. The billboard style, flashing/animated banners advertising vampire films across the top, snap link ads at the bottom, google ads up the side.... I mean, come on guys! This is way over the top.

On a related note, though, I wonder whether I will continue to have a use for wikis.

I am currently preferring Googledocs for document sharing and Huddle looks potentially even more powerful and attractive with its links to discussions and clear version control/approval mechanisms. The fact that Huddle now comes embedded in Ning has made that platform a better option for communities, collaboration & learning groups (yes, I know - it also has ads: but they are fairly discreet compared to Wetpaint).

I have hopes for Googlewave as a collaborative tool too, though currently it is hard to find committed wavers willing to join in the experiment: I wonder what this will look like in twelve months time?

If I have learned one thing in 2009, it is that web 2.0 media come and go, they transmute and they transform the world around them. And for 2010 - well I think I know better than to attempt any predictions....I am pretty sure I will be using some new tools and letting go of others.

The five worst tech products of 2009 : Number One GoogleWave

2009-12-14T09:26:00.001Z

Despite the rather negative tone of this article, it does paradoxically give a thumbs up to GoogleWave as a tool of preference for dispersed teams....

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=343

BBC Radio 4 You and Yours 8th December 2009

2009-12-08T12:45:00.004Z

Teleworking, virtual teams, home working contracts. portfolio jobs - all being discussed today on BBC Radio 4's lunchtime consumer programme, You and Yours.

Some of the interesting view points being expressed:

is working from home making some people a slave to the technology that connects them to work?

What is the future for Trade Unions?

Teleworking is environmentally friendly.........one woman reduced her annual mileage from 25,000 to just 5,000

Successful home working arrangements depend on clear measurements of productivity (outputs) rather than hours of attendance, and requires enlightened employers!

Homeworkers suffer the "petty jealousy" of office-bound colleagues;

This sort of flexible arrangement cannot apply to farm workers, facory operatives, hotel receptionists etc who need to be in the workplace - so are they being disadvantaged?

There is a noble history of people working from their garden sheds - including Dylan Thomas!

Teleworking only applies to highly skilled knowledge workers.....?

Flexibility can also mean a blurring of boundaries - extending work beyond 5pm and beyond conventional retirement age

I am encouraged that this subject is being debated on a popular programme.

I have recently come across one Human Resources department for whom the concept of home working challenges current organisational policies - resulting in long drawn out "discussions" and delays in staff being paid.

The very notion that a member of staff was not turning up daily to a specified place of work to do their job was simply unthinkable to the HR professionals involved - and as the organisation in question is envisaging a future where delivering their services via technology is the norm, this mismatch between business strategy and employment policy needs to be addressed urgently!

Gina Trapani on “Making Sense of Google Wave” | Craig Deakin

2009-12-08T12:00:00.001Z

http://craigdeakin.com/gina-trapani-making-sense-google-wave

continuing the exploration of Googlewave........

Google Wave

2009-12-04T18:11:00.003Z

Recently been exploring Google Wave - a new platform that combines instant messaging with Discussion Board/email and has something of the wiki about it as multiple editors are also allowed.

Access is by invitation only - and I have a few spare invites if anyone wants one - so I was not an early adopter but there is still an air of "what do we do now?" about many "Waves" as the message threads are named.

I have made a concerted effort this week to invite a number of work colleagues to get on board as I can see potential here for collaboration on projects. It also occurs to me that it presents a great opportunity for people to keep in touch when working in virtual teams.

Here is a link to the Introductory Video which goes some way to explaining what it is/does. And here is a blog post about a really exciting use of a Wave involving a thousand or more young people across the globe.

Currently I am involved in one discussion about the use of Twitter in education but most of the Waves that come my way seem to be of the "what do we USE this for???" variety. Pretty much like Twitter in the beginning I guess.

It definitely needs people to be involved and active - and there needs to be a specific purpose to the Wave before people will get involved and start to use it......so I am still exploring and will no doubt write more about my adventures on the Wave as they unfold.

No one in charge?

2009-10-31T09:35:00.007Z

image: flickr salimfadhley

Been catching up on some of my favourite blogs this morning and the following caught my attention:

Graeme Martin's HR and People Management Blog

I include here three very short and somewhat out of context quotes (I hope Graeme will forgive me: but do please look at the rest of the post to review his evidence and well argued case)

celebrity leadership and traditional leader development are typically planned and individualistic while (Distributed Leadership) is typically emergent and collective (I have paraphrased here)
'no-one in charge' can lead to highly positive outcomes......
"The 'romance with leaders' is definitely on the wain"

One of my interests in looking at leadership of virtual or dispersed teams probably springs from my own disillusionment with leadership as much as it does from my personal predeliction for working from home.

My own sense of the reality of making things happen is that very often the impetus emerges from within a network of interested and proactive people and very infrequently at the behest or dictat of a nominated leader.

This is certainly true of all of the really exciting projects I am currently involved in - they seem to mainly involve small networks of people who do not naturally fit within any organisational matrix - indeed seem to exist in spite of it! - but who are working with passion (for their "subject" or service, for an inspiring end goal ) and well beyond their usual "terms and conditions of service".

Even when I have been placed in the position of formally leading a project, I have found that the outcomes are significantly improved when each team member has been able to contribute their own thoughts - and even better, when they have individually or in small groups, been charged with taking on some of the responsibility for designing those outcomes and working to achieve the desired results. Such teams are energised, they feel an ownership for and pride in the final product and the sense of having achieved it by themselves.

Unfortunately it is still the traditional view that certain tasks - setting targets, deciding on strategic direction, monitoring performance - are the sole province of a designated "celebrity" leader, ignoring the expertise of equally or more experienced colleagues in the name of "strong leadership". At best this approach produces bored, underutilised people who doggedly follow the rules and produce whatever mediocre results are deemed sufficient to tick the boxes. At worst it leads to passive aggressive behaviour: deliberate sabotaging of goals, disaffected staff who leave to find new jobs, take long term sick leave or simply refuse to contribute to "team meetings".

There are analogies here with teaching. Certainly in the areas in which I "teach", I am not the expert dispensing wisdom from on high, but the facilitator of students accessing their own and others' expertise, helping them to making sense of it and to turn this knowledge into something useful, something they might themselves start to feel passionate about.

This last few weeks, as always when I work with groups of clinical managers in the NHS, I have felt genuinely humbled by their creativity, dedication and genuine desire to make a change for the better. Despite the complaints of target driven bureaucracy and poor leadership I also see evidence of distributed leadership at work in the inspiring and creative projects these managers produce - and beyond that to see the genuine difference this work makes in the lives of others - their colleagues, team members, students, volunteers, patients.

My romance with leaders has clearly been on the wain for years and I see nothing around me to make me want to start believing in them again. Here's to the Distribution of Leadership....and to no one in charge!!

How I got that Prezi .....

2009-10-03T13:50:00.006+01:00

I promised @nlafferty that I would blog a little about the Prezi process and share some tips for speeding it up a little: I spent MUCH longer creating the prezi than a powerpoint, but mainly because I had to go through a big learning curve too.

Tip #1: create a story board too and rough out a design: I actually decided on the circular frames and created something on paper which allowed me to decide where I wanted to group certain ideas first.

Tip #2: think visuals first. I think Prezi is so preeminently a visual thing, the last thing you want or need is a lot of words or God forbid! bullet points... Also there is no "layering" or "ordering" on Prezi, so what goes down first is on the bottom. Put in visuals then add text on top.

Tip #3: I actually created visuals on Powerpoint first - eg found Flickr images or Clipart photos with lots of white space around them; saved the slides as separate JPEGs then uploaded to Prezi, so the image appears to emerge from the white background with no frame. Where the image was on a background, I used Powerpoint formatting to put it in a frame, added a shadow or reflection and then cropped it tightly so that it would appear to be a photo pinned to the Prezi canvas.

Note: the visuals - sourcing, converting, formatting and editing - was the most labour intensive part of the exercise. I have kept a folder of all the images used so I can re-cycle when necessary!

Tip #4 I tried to avoid motion sickness (!!) by not having too many extreme zooms, changes of direction or big panning effects. Grouping things fairly close together and making gentle moves at slight angles for the most part, big effects once in a while to jazz things up or change topic.

Tip#5 Learn from others: look at the show-cased prezis and work out how they did them; watch some of the tutorial videos. I was inspired by @adamread 's lovely prezi on designing posters.

Tip #6 Take your time! I found myself stealing an hour here and there, whilst watching TV or sitting in a hotel room during a few days working in Scotland recently, to actually work on the Prezi. It became frankly a bit addictive. I also found it a very rewarding and creative experience - I absolutely loved working with the visuals and finessing the layout.

Tip #7 STOP when it' s done: This is not a good medium for anyone of a slightly Obssessive Compulsive tendency (like me) - a point comes where you have to say, hey this is good enough!

If any one would has their own favourite tips to share, please add them in the comments below.

Prezi and the PLE

2009-10-02T00:03:00.004+01:00

I have been experimenting with a presentation format called "Prezi" to support a talk I'll be giving at the Public Sector Skills conference next month.........(click the grey arrow below the screen to get started)

Freedom to Learn

2009-09-30T09:19:00.004+01:00

I was chatting to my daughter late last night on Skype: she is in her first year at University and everything is new, exciting and confusing.

Not least her first experiences of lectures: 400 coughing and sneezing 18 year olds in a lecture theatre, rapid fire powerpoint, notice of regular tests, a 50 page book to read by next week - all around her people taking down notes. There was even a prize given away for the student who could remember and quote back at the lecturer an obscure author she had mentioned at the start....

As an added incentive to attend the lecture, students were informed that they could not have access to the lecture notes or slides until later that day, and only then if they answered some questions to check they had been paying attention and taking notes.

My daughter has done well to get to where she is, being midly dyslexic, with specific difficulties in reading and comprehending that were confirmed in a test the University carried out last week. Taking notes whilst listening is not something she can manage easily - in fact it would help her understanding of what is being said if she could have copies of the slides in front of her to make notes on as she goes along.

Being new to Blackboard it wasn't easily apparent to her where she could access the tests she had to take in order to access the slides .... on top of all the confusion and disorientation she was already feeling in a new environment, her own learning difficulties were adding to the problem. She was sad and disappointed. I just feel angry.

On the positive side, she has got support from the University for her dyslexia, she is in a small seminar/workshop group where she can talk about the course in a slower and more considered way, there are some good learning materials available on Blackboard and in her text books, and there is a drop- in session available to those who want further explanation of some of the points covered in the lecture - so in her own time and in her own way, hopefully, she can begin to learn what she needs.

My point is - what is the point of lectures? I don't think it is only students with some form of learning difficulty who need support, small group work, handouts before the session, clear signposting on how to use the VLE.

When I first saw Mike Wesch's "Vision of Student's Today" I thought it was reflecting an archaic, peculiarly American phenomenon - I have obviously been teaching at PG level for too long....I'm with Wes Streeting on this!! Let's abolish lectures and encourage personalised learning.

A great resource on critical thinking

2009-09-17T13:14:00.000+01:00

Education & technology - some useful links

2009-09-13T11:54:00.003+01:00

Distance Education

The intersection between work and learning

Theme D Teaching & Learning Strategies

Social Media Classroom

YouTube - A Vision of Students Today

eLearn: Best Practices - Online Course Design from a Communities-of-Practice Perspective

The Instructional Use of Learning Objects -- Online Version

e-Learning pedagogy programme : JISC

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Informal Learning - some useful links

2009-09-13T11:52:00.002+01:00

Informal Learning :: Ageless Learner

100+ Examples of Social Networks for Learning Professionals

ICTlogy » Working Session on Open Social Learning (III). Dolors Reig: Open Social Learning in Spain. Clarifying Concepts

Mobilising Remote Student Engagement

Deseret News Universities will be 'irrelevant' by 2020, Y. professor says

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Personal Learning Environments : some useful links

2009-09-13T11:51:00.003+01:00

Christopher D. Sessums :: Blog :: Social Media and Learning Institutions in the Digital Age: Rolling Your Own Communities for Learning

stickylearning: My Personal Learning Environment

Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media: Guest Post by Gaurav Mishra: The 4Cs Social Media FrameworkThe Need for the 4Cs Social Media Framework Over the last year, I have had to explain how social media works to diplomats, defense officials, and academics and students focused on fields as diverse as international affairs, management and sociology....

Educational Leadership:Teaching for the 21st Century:21st Century Skills: The Challenges Ahead

The Personal Learning Network Petri Dish « Mollybob Goes To School

Online Video Lectures and Course Materials - Open Yale Courses

Learning 2.0: Learning Today and Tomorrow

New structures of learning: The systemic impact of connective knowledge, connectivism, and networked learning

Science of the Invisible: PLEs at HEA

Creating a PLE - SlideShare

http://www.slideshare.net/GrahamAttwell/personal-learning-environments-46423

Informal Learning :: Ageless Learner

UoL PLE Project Home - UoL PLE Project

Personal Learning Environments - The future of education?

creatingaPLN » home

The Psychology and Skills of Personal Learning Environments

Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day: The future of e-learning is social learning

Digital Dialogues: The learning versus technology disconnect

Informal Learning 2.0 — Internet Time Blog

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/06/29/online

Self Organisation and Virtual Learning

Why Some Elearning Isn't Working E-Learning Lounge

Edge: THE IMPENDING DEMISE OF THE UNIVERSITY By Don Tapscott

From Knowledgable to Knowledge-able: Learning in New Media Environments Academic Commons

Our post-digital priorities: overcoming the neglect of the tutor DMU Learning Exchanges

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Dropping out

2009-09-02T09:15:00.003+01:00

Its a depressing fact but the drop out rate on e-learning programmes is disturbingly high. (see for example: http://jolt.merlot.org/Vol2_No2_TylerSmith.htm )

On this programme as a whole (not the virtual leader module specifically) it is even higher than expected.

Students suffer various unexpected crises during the year ranging from pregnancy to death of a family member, with everything in between - marriage, divorce, nervous breakdown, personal illness and redundancy.

By far the biggest pressure - the one students most often cite - appears to be work, and having worked in and around the NHS for 25 years, I know the demands placed on managers at all levels. Throw into the mix the flu pandemic, the recession and the obligatory reorganisation of services and the turbulence is clearly too much for most people.

However, in England, a sister programme for NHS managers - similar content, same academic level, same demographic, similar numbers - suffers nothing like the same rates of attrition. And this despite the fact that students get less face to face workshops and contact with tutors. It is in fact a "supported distance learning programme" whereas the Scottish NHS programme is described as "blended learning" - that is, it mixes on-line and face to face support with self study.

I think there are a few variables at play:

in the English course, students have all the materials they need presented in hard copy.

in the Scottish programme, students have to research materials on line from references provided, using a free, university provided electronic library resource.

In England students have two workshops per module but beyond that are left to get on and study by themselves

In Scotland they have two workshops but are then expected to contribute to an online discussion board and complete week by week activities on line.

In England students generally pay a contribution for the programme.

In Scotland it is free of charge and there is no penalty for withdrawal.

In England tutors are generally drawn from the same organisation - the Trust's training lead or another senior manager who is enthusaistic about management and leadership development.

In Scotland, the tutors are employed by the awarding university.

Some of these factors would suggest - intuitively - that the Scottish students get a far better deal: more support, no financial cost, less "supervision" from their employers, access to wider resources and up to date technology.

However, I think the act of paying for something secures greater commitment, not less, and the involvement of trainers from the same organisation may tend to make students more reluctant to give up.

It is perhaps too easy for students to email their resignation to a distant university administrator than it is to go and tell their line manager or the hospital's training lead.

One student recently emailed me that he had simply "lost enthusiam for the course". Would he have said that (even if it were true) if he was explaining to his line manager why the Board's investment of nearly £2000 in his development (never mind "cost" of study leave) was being wasted? Would he have thought twice if that money had been his own, and not the NHS?

As I say, I think there are many factors at play and simply forcing students to stay the course by imposing a financial penalty is not the only answer. Certainly many of the students withdrawing report a lack of support at work and protected study time as factors in their decisions.

Like all complex problems, this is going to require more than one solution.

Any thoughts?

Project Management Video

2009-09-01T09:46:00.001+01:00

A video interview with Ken Thompson - author of Bioteams. Do Virtual Teams and Bio Teams (self managed teams) still need a project manager?

As you approach the assignment for this module, you might want to watch this interview and discuss with your colleagues.

http://www.bioteams.com/2009/09/01/new_bioteams_project.html#more

How will NHS leaders protect frontline staff and patients?

2009-08-27T19:19:00.002+01:00

http://www.hsj.co.uk/comment/opinion/ken-jarrold-on-sharing-the-economic-pain/5004729.article?referrer=RSS

We love the NHS and Social Media

2009-08-25T09:16:00.010+01:00

A year ago when I started this blog, I struggled to find examples of the NHS' use of social media and it was perhaps for this reason that some students on the module struggled themselves with knowing how to apply various tools to solve their own communication conundrums.

My instinct tells me, however, that the use of Web 2.0, social networking sites is increasing - and used with increasing sophistication. There are admittedly still huge swathes of the population living in blissful ignorance of such phenomena: I have girlfriends who run screaming from the room when I twitter on about Twitter; my own brothers who have heavy weight jobs in IT shake their head in disapproval when I mention Facebook, and trying to get my academic colleagues using Blogger or Ning is a bit like trying to introduce a Sky+ box into a community of Amish. (Admittedly, I don't actually own a Sky+ box myself, and my knowledge of the Amish is restricted to repeated viewings of Witness - and only then because I like Harrison Ford...)

Anyway - to get to the point, I have recently picked up a number of interesting developments where the NHS meets social networking.

For instance: there are now a large number of Trusts and national health bodies using Twitter:

http://twitter.com/NHSmarketing

http://twitter.com/nhsemployers

http://twitter.com/NHSNottsCounty

http://twitter.com/NHSChoices

http://twitter.com/NHSLeicester

to name just a few.

I even came across some great FaceBook pages devoted to the NHS:

......and this Wiki caught my eye too....
http://wikiph.org/index.php?title=Wiki_Public_Health

so maybe you could now think about how you could get your message across to colleagues or users of your service using social media?

You might also want to explore other media that the NHS is using - such as YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIeAzjuAWUE

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. - Telemedicine and e-Health - 15(6):507

2009-08-18T16:26:00.001+01:00

Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. - Telemedicine and e-Health - 15(6):507

tags: twitter, health

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The uses - and potential uses of Twitter in the Health Sector - some interesting reading and fuel to the debate on uses of technology in Virtual Team Management/ Telehealth

Leading and Managing at Distance: Case Studies in the use of Web 2.0 tools

2009-08-13T09:29:00.009+01:00

image: flickr Nimages DR

Caroline: dispersed team of healthcare trainers

The team of trainers, nominally co-located, would for large parts of each month be working as a dispersed team. All worked on a part time sessional basis on different projects and days of the week had consequent difficulties in communication, coordination and in finding time for the team to reflect on performance, consider improvements, undertake their own professional development and discuss new policies and training in the latest techniques.

The LAMD module gave Caroline the opportunity to undertake an analysis of these difficulties, discussing these in various forums with fellow students, and to experience for herself the uses of blogs, wikis and other relevant tools for collaboration and communication.

She chose to focus in her final project on the development of a wiki and a group web page for her team which could be used as a noticeboard, document repository and discussion forum to enable everyone to keep in touch and up to date with changes in regulations and practice.

From this she went on to develop another wiki to aid communication and collaboration in planning a CPD conference with another dispersed team.

Caroline Taylor is Lead Dental Care Professional Tutor - North East Scotland. She can be contacted at caroline.taylor@nes.scot.nhs.uk for further information.

Alison: how my leadership style has changed..

"... I have learned many things both about technology and its application to team work. I was aware of some means of online communication but had not related it to my working practice nor experienced its use. That has changed and I have now set up and administered a wiki which I would not have had the confidence or knowledge to do before. I have used blogs and accessed online learning. I did find the use of the wiki and online discussions very helpful to gain differing views and opinions.

I have also learned about my own abilities and am aware some of the pitfalls of leading and managing at a distance. I believed I had good communication skills but have become aware that these need to be better when the opportunity of face to face communication is not available. I have learned to listen to my team more and use every opportunity to give positive feedback rather than focussing on the negative. I will also be encouraging more reflective practice....

So what will I do now?

......... I could have used a better method for introducing the wiki to the team which may have been more successful. Instead of using email I plan to relaunch it with improved explanations of the benefits it could bring at the next team meeting . In this way I hope to better motivate the team to embrace new technology and to look for other means of improving the service to patients. It will also encourage the team members to think as a team and communicate with each other more consistently.

My Myers Briggs personality is ISFJ which means I like structure, hierarchy and organisation all features that are difficult with a dispersed team . I will need to work on being less controlling and more trusting of my team members’ abilities to allow them to develop their own skills. "

Alison Pendlowski is Deputy Head of Speech & Language Therapy at Perth Royal Infirmary

The how, what, why and where of blogging

2009-08-10T11:22:00.012+01:00

image: Flickr ehoyer

This is a guide I have developed for students who are having to write a blog for the first time as part of their studies.

Whatever the format and purpose of your blog, this guide is intended to give you some ideas about how to get started, what sort of things to blog about and how to do it safely and easily.

First you might want to look at this short video

And here’s a blog entry about the usefulness of blogging.
Here’s another blog exploring the value of the blog in learning…..

If you are setting up your own, web-based blog, a good place to start is Blogger.com where you will find simple and clear instructions on how to begin and how to customise and develop your own blog.

Getting started

A great way to start with blogs is to read other people’s first, so you get an idea of what you want to write about and the style you might want to adopt. Here are some others to look at- as you see the topics and intended audience can be very varied:

http://www.stephenfry.com/blog/
http://wsysinspireindia.wordpress.com/about/
http://daydreamlily.blogspot.com/
http://thesecretlifeofamanicdepressive.wordpress.com/
http://clayoven.wordpress.com/

See if you can find others – search via Google blog search or “blogs of note” on Blogger.com

Key tips for blogging

*Start with a short introduction about yourself and your blog and invite people to make comments, giving you feedback.

*Most people feel very self conscious when they first start to blog and think they have nothing to say that anyone else will be interested in reading. Gradually your confidence will increase – but only if you practise. As with most things, little and often is the key.

*Blogs don’t all need to be in words! You can easily upload pictures and even videos to illustrate what you want to say, as you will have noticed in some of the blogs listed above.

*One important tip is not to write your blog first in a different programme (say, a Word document) and then attempt to cut and paste it into the blog. Although technically this is possible, you will probably encounter problems with the formatting and the finished product won’t look the way you intended.

*Don’t forget that you can edit and re-edit your blog as often as you like (in Blackboard, just click on “edit” at the top of the entry. With Blogger you can save entries as drafts until you are quite sure you want to publish them – but even then you can go back and change them at any time!

*Make sure you stay within copyright law if you are using videos, pictures or quotes: everything needs to be fully acknowledged and referenced just as in a conventional assignment; you may also need others’ permission to use their images or illustrations.

*Take care of your digital identity! A simple guide and workbook on the protection of your privacy and development of a positive online identity can be found in this free download

*Blogs can be used for collaboration and as forums for discussion: a post by one user can have a number of comments added which takes the form of a conversation between the author and their audience.

*Blogs can have multiple authors and so many people can contribute to the development of a body of knowledge. This is an example of a multi author blog.

*Use tags: in order to find linked postings for specific subjects, “tags” or labels are used – short descriptions which identify the key topics. Make sure you tag your own postings, and click on topics in the list of tags in the side panel of this blog, to find posts that might be of interest to you.

Feedback on this guide is welcomed. There is a space at the bottom for you to leave comments. Why not leave one now? Do you agree with the points made? What is your view? I’d be really pleased to get some feedback from you.

Thanks for reading!

Top Ten tools

2009-08-06T10:08:00.003+01:00

for (on line) learning:

http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/recommended/janechallinor.html

itunes - educational podcasts: I found a series of Spanish podcasts that have transformed my learning of the language, convincing me there has to be more value in this medium than I currently exploit more with my own students

Twitter - the place for links, updates, chat, sharing, collecting opinions, professional and social networking

Ning - I have been part of two really valuable Ning communities for learning this year: I really like its flexibility, the attractive designs available. I intend to use it with my own students in the coming year.

Skype - invaluable for tutorials with my students and yet again for my own Spanish language studies: I meet with a teacher on line every fortnight to practice conversation

elluminate Vroom - free on line classroom (for up to three people)

Wimba create - bit of a fan currently - using to develop on line learning materials for Blackboard-hosted courses.

Camstudio - screencapture software (free download) which can be edited in movie maker with separate audio if needed.

Slideshare - upload powerpoint presentations and documents to share easily with others. Source of great learning resources too

Googledocs - brilliant tool for collaboration and sharing

Blogger - still there as my blog tool of choice

and number 11 would be diigo.com - social bookmarking site: save web links, network, create discussion groups, annotate pages and store notes.

Personal Learning Environment

2009-07-27T08:31:00.007+01:00

Today I am about to start decorating my study. I made a joke on my Facebook profile that this is my Personal Learning Environment. In the old days, that's what it would have been.

I remember having something called a carrel in the 6th form centre at school where I kept text books, files, and stationery, and which I decorated with photos of pop stars and little artistic additions of my own. My teenage bedroom was similarly a repository of art materials, writing paper, books, magazines and music. When not at home, I haunted the local library and at University I spent many happy hours in the stacks, researching and writing.

I used to dream of a house with a private study lined with books - to me the ultimate in "on tap" knowledge and my ideal of a perfect environment in which to relax, learn, withdraw from the demands of the world. These were my ideas of what a personal learning environment looked like.

Today my study is a former dining room with some course materials in hard copy and a handful of text books but the key equipment is my PC, printer/scanner, my laptop, my iphone, the wireless broadband hub, the webcam and the phone. My physical personal learning environment is a room housing the equipment that allows me to keep in touch with the world.

Learning is not something that happens in the privacy of my study but is collaborative. It is not something handed down by an expert which I sit back absorbing passively, it is a collaborative event, and an active one.

This isn't new - seminars and tutorials were always the places where I learned the most becasue I could hear and dispute others views and have my own questioned in turn.

What is new is the fact that many of these conversations now take place on line. That most of what I read is stored electronically rather than in paper copies in my cupboards, and that the trails of my researches are noted in digital bookmarking sites rather than index cards.

To keep track of all of these digital resources requires a system - a place where all the various internet sites I use daily are easily accessed. I happen to use Netvibes: to collect "feeds" from my favourite blogs and news services, keep up with my friends' updates on Facebook and join in Twitter conversations. To remember links to important sites, and what tasks I have to complete, to access music and video sites and provide bite sized chunks of a Spanish language course I am following.

When I think of the term PLE, I sometimes think of Netvibes as the most obvious visual representation of my learning resources network, which is the reason why I am using a screenshot of my personal page to illustrate this post. But the real PLE is the whole network of colleagues - and the resources they access and contribute to in their turn (see for example this Twitter conversation about Personal Learning Environments)- with whom I communicate on a daily basis. With current internet tools, we have the capability to enter into collaborative learning that takes place on a world wide platform and yet is both immediate and highly personal.

Why blogging makes sense

2009-06-19T07:59:00.004+01:00

A colleague asked me the other day if I would put together a short piece for students about the purpose and value of blogging. I am thinking about this....

Her reason for asking is that blogging is increasingly being used as an assessment tool for certain learning programmes and in one way I guess I should applaud this as an alternative to marking long reports and essays!!

On another level I find it rather sad that we are in danger of turning something that should be learner driven - and for the purpose of enabling learning - into something that is a performance: no doubt with assessment criteria to judge it by..... *sigh*

So why blog? I can only really talk from my own experience here: I have been blogging for a couple of years - at first I created what amounted to an on line journal that only I could read. Then I created this blog so that I could share what I thought were interesting ideas and links with my students, unrestricted by the VLE and the delays and expense involved in getting web developers to amend learning materials.

Later, other colleagues started to read and comment on my blog when I ventured to share the url on my Twitter profile and with various learning communities I have joined. I welcome the comments and feedback I sometimes get, but I still essentially do this for myself and my students.

I find blogging a way of collecting together some of my random reading and learning from the week(s) past and shaping it into something approximating my current understanding. The point is it is a work in progress; reflection-in-action (Schon); an expression of what I am currently learning and how I am making sense of it.

Here's an analogy (I use analogies a lot in my learning and teaching!): alongside my day job, for some reason now obscure even to myself, I am learning Spanish. I read novels in Spanish, dictionary in hand. I read grammar texts and exercise books. I listen to podcasts and BBC audio programmes. There is plenty of content available. However, the real learning comes from conversation (and correspondence) with other people: preferably native Spanish speaking ones, but other learners too, as I practise the formulations learned on paper and test how they stack up in real life. Can I be understood in writing and speaking the language? My Spanish teacher engages me in conversation: as she says, this is the natural way children learn to speak - by listening and copying, practising and hearing forms repeated back to them.

For me blogging is like practising a new language. I read or hear something in the news or via Twitter, or some new experience at work causes me to stop and think about what I am doing. Feedback from others is useful, but maybe the difference between this and learning Spanish is that here I am mainly trying to arrive at some sort of understanding of myself.

Blogging gives me a pause for some sense-making out of a busy week torn between absorbing and producing.

I guess the point about using blogs in education is not that they are an alternative to assessment, but that they can be a) a dialogue with oneself about ongoing learning and b) potentially - a way of developing a conversation with a guide or mentor about that learning. If tutors are prepared to enter into that dialogue, reflect back what they are hearing, ask stimulating questions, and model good sense-making behaviours themselves, then the learner can grow through their blogging and learn more still.

As the quote above says: its not educational content that is the scarce resource, its the educators who make time to have these sense-making conversations.

Finally - another snippet from my random absorption of content: a report I overheard on the radio that said teachers who themselves write regularly are better at teaching children to be good writers. So yes, lets persuade learners to blog but lets persuade the educators to do so too!!

source: The Open Ed Tech Summit Report 2008. Open University of Catalonia, Barcelona.

Trust in teams pt 2

2009-05-25T13:02:00.003+01:00

As if in answer to my own questions, I came across this interesting Trust building Model in the Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams, Nemiro et al 2008, Jossey Bass, San Francisco

The three axes for building trust, virtually and in face to face teams are simple:

Competence - believe the team can do the job, involve them in decisions and make sure they have the right skills

Contractual - maintain boundaries, keep agreements, delegate appropriately

Communication - share information, tell the truth, give and receive constructive feedback, admit mistakes, maintain confidentiality

This has helped me to pinpoint where things have been going wrong in a virtual project team I have been working with over the last few weeks:

Specifically, I have had little involvement in key decisions about the project, constructive feedback has been poorly recieved and met with defensiveness rather than an admission that mistakes have been made. Furthermore, deadlines agreed have not been met and promises not kept: my trust in the team is pretty low as a result .....!!!

Is this model useful in pinpointing where trust has been betrayed and what new behaviours might rebuild relationships?

Trust in teams

2009-05-23T11:58:00.005+01:00

Conventional wisdom would tell us that trust exists in teams where there have been work and social relationships built up over many years. That it would be difficult to experience trust in a temporary group of people, self selected as members, never meeting face to face and with geographical and cultural differences dividing them.

In a recent survey I carried out in two teams, one co-located and in existence over many years (with normal staff turnover) and the other an "e-community" that came together for the purpose of learning for about 3 months, just the opposite proved to be true.

The co-located team reported negative feelings about working together - such as lack of groundrules, fear of being ridiculed, misunderstanding of one anothers' intentions and rivalry.

The e-community in contrast felt an intuitive understanding of one another, were willing to offer and accept support and felt that relationships were characterised by caring and sharing.

All in all the co-located group gave almost as many negative repsonses (97) as positive (116) in response to 25 questions; the E-community gave a significantly different 189 positive responses to just 13 negative ones.

An interesting study* of why people share information in on-line communities of practice demonstrates that a desire to enhance one's public profile or reputation may hold the key, but not especially any need to have the sharing reciprocated. But this doesn't really explain why we may feel more trusting of, more connected to relative strangers than we do to the people with whom we share an office.

Obviously, in the history of any long term relationship there are difficulties, knock backs, betrayals and disappointments along with the friendships and sharing. A short lived, on line group, just like a weekend conference or a holiday romance, may allow us to get to know one another intensely but superficially, without the burden of a long term "commitment". We show one another our best sides, just as we can carefully choose the picture that goes on our profile page and what we write about our lives.

Familiarity, we know, breeds contempt.

So is there a solution for co-located teams that have intransigent "personality clashes" or other dysfunctions to deal with?

And what are the prospects for long term virtual teams - will the same problems begin to arise over time, and can they be avoided?

One significant factor in my experience is the role of leadership: in the E-community there was excellent facilitation from a team of volunteers who encouraged me to join in, to find like minded people to talk to, and who modelled respect and helpfulness. I had a lot of support and guidance when I needed it, and a lot of freedom to explore and to make mistakes. The deadlines for completion of tasks were also clear and immutable. However, everyone took responsibility for themselves, for completing the task and for building trusting relationships with others.

A team leader can model respect and maintain boundaries that stamps on petty bickering and promotes greater democracy - for example, another "conventional" team I am a part time member of has monthly "socials" and a rotates chairing of the team meetings which are short, focussed and frequent.

So if you are leading a team, ask yourself - are you helping trust to develop? Are you supporting the team to learn, connect and take risks? And are you also maintaining clear boundaries about acceptable behaviour, deadlines and quality of work?

What other factors are there which help teams to develop trust and to maintain it over time? And maybe an important question to ask is, what are the trust killers? By exploring those factors which destroy trust in a team, perhaps we can develop a working model of how to promote it instead.

*McLure Wasko,M; Faraj,S Why should I share? Examining social Capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice MIS Quarterly Vol. 29 No. 1/March 2005

Collaborative Learning

2009-04-25T08:11:00.006+01:00

image: flickr Andross

Rewriting the introduction to the Virtual Teams Module this week and, more particularly, redesigning the process.

I want this to be an interactive and collaborative module which simulates virtual team working, so I am asking students to work together in small teams, on a project of their choosing and to present their final work electronically (as we never meet face to face on this module!)

In the midst of my ruminations on this I was given an idea for a blog post by my Twitter compañero @ffolliet :

"The sadness about education is that clever people can't always share their wisdom".

I think what he meant was that some very knowledgeable teachers are not very good at expressing and sharing what they know - and that is certainly true.

There is a famous cycle of learning that shows the learner moving through unconscious incompetence ("I don't know what I don't know" - the pre-learner) through conscious incompetence ("aaagh! I am terrible at this!" - the beginning learner) onto conscious competence ("hey! I am getting the hang of /pretty good at this!" - the apprentice) and finally to unconscious competence ( "I can do this in my sleep" - the Expert).

Teachers, it is alleged, are worse than useless if they are at the Expert stage because they have forgotten the struggles of learning, do not necessarily know how to help someone get to their elevated levels and can't understand why someone else is struggling to grasp the point. (see my earlier post on The Curse of Knowledge).

I think though when I first read this Tweet I immediately leaped to another interpretation: how difficult we make it in education for very clever, knowledgeable and experienced students to share their knowledge.

In Distance Learning with mature, work based students I think it only fair to assume that students will have valuable skills, knowledge and experience to share and to build upon - so why should I think I am the only person worth listening to? - or assume that the set texts and articles I am recommending are the only knowledge worth sharing?

In Action Learning (and similarly in Person Centred approaches to teaching and coaching) we start from the premise that the "client" knows where it hurts and how to fix it - they just need help in articulating & acting on that knowledge.

So - just as @ffolliet's comment on Twitter stimulated me to write this blog and share something that deep inside I have known for a long time, just maybe forgotten - with a well timed question or prompt we can all bring out the cleverness inside each other. Student-directed groups, action learning sets, wikis for collaborative writing are all spaces where we can do this.

This isn't signalling mass unemployment for academics - just that the role has to change from being the clever person in the room who has all the answers to being the one who knows how to encourage everyone to ask clever questions of one another.

Peer assessment

2009-04-10T08:21:00.006+01:00

image: flickr chrissuderman

Not been on the blog for a while - holiday in Spain took precedence, I am afraid!

So today just a few thoughts about peer assessment as I am contemplating the topic for an assignment I am writing. This has led me to some interesting reading: predominantly Rethinking Assessment in Higher Education by Boud and Falchikov (2007: Routledge)

The main arguments against peer assessment seem to be concern for the reliability of the marking process and consequent need for training of the students. I would add that it is also deeply unpopular amongst students who generally would much rather hand over total responsibility for the process to tutors - so as not to be put in the position of sitting in judgement on their friends and colleagues ( or even on themselves: self assessment is no less unpopular in my experience).

In favour is the real world analogy - in their working lives students (and particularly work based/distance learning/ mature students) are already involved in the business of peer and colleague assessment in the course of their work - checking reports, carrying out staff appraisals, NVQ assessing, supervising another's practice.

Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that learning with & from peers is the most natural way we pick up new ideas and information (that's certainly why I blog, Twitter, diigo and wiki every day!), which is certainly an argument for collaborative learning if not peer assessment. And it furthers life long learning: if we can turn to friends and colleagues for coaching and feedback as we approach new challenges in our work or even in our hobbies, we continue the process of reflection and informal learning almost without being aware of it.

So how do we make it work?

Some ideas from Nancy Falchikov include

sharing the assessment criteria or

even better, designing such criteria with the students

training or scaffolding so that assessment skills are developed over time and not sprung as a surprise (and a big scary task) right at the end of the course

In another place in the book, there is a chapter on assessment and emotion. It is important not to forget how emotionally fraught assessment (judgement) is. Awaiting the marks on an assignment is deeply stressful for some: we feel we are being judged for who we are, not what we wrote/created. Getting those marks from a tutor allows us a measure of distance: we can be angry at them or the system if we are disappointed. Being judged by our peers may actually be more terrifying!!

In my own experience I have had mixed feelings about peer assessment. It was a system used widely in training for counsellors and because we worked in "triads" with peer observers of counselling practice at every workshop for three years, we all became relatively skilled at and relaxed with the practice. The final assessment with peer assessment on the practice portfolio was consequently less daunting.

However, at its worst, peer assessment puts the peer in the authority position and encourages them to take on the prevalent culture of whatever educational institution they have experienced: if their own experience of assessment is largely critical or punitive, peers will mirror this. Tutors therefore have to train students not only in the mechanics of assessment, but need also to model how it is applied - with fairness, humility, self awareness and respect for the student being assessed.

Hmmmm - training the institution's markers sounds like the FIRST step!!

the moon and the finger pointing

2009-03-20T08:57:00.005Z

image: flickr iron fillings

there's an old Buddhist aphorism about confusing the moon with the finger that points at it.....it's meant to warn against deifying the Buddha instead of grasping the heart of the message he brings.

Currently the most significant and devastating illustration of the error is in the stories emerging from Mid Staffs NHS Trust:

Hospital chiefs blamed poor record keeping and employed more coders to correct a seeming anomaly in their mortality figures. In the meantime, patients were ill cared for and received inadequate or incorrect treatment. The true message was lost as people focused on the medium delivering it.

Its easy to blame government's "target" cultures for such failures: everyone is so busy filling in forms they don't have time for real human contact. That's pretty much what Haringey said in answer to the death of Baby P.

And I think there is a truth here. What "target cultures" do is not just take up valuable person to person contact time in producing figures and reports, they start to convince us that those figures and reports are the real business and that the humans behind them are incidental. Because in fact what is happening is that the measure of progress towards a target is mistaken for the target itself. In this case, the figures were the pointing finger, whilst the real target is afterall the safe and humane care of a real live person.

On a different but related topic, last night my daughter (doing her A2s this year) was complaining about the amount of work she had to produce for her Business course. I was fairly dismissive in a kind of "when I was your age, missy" kind of a way until she revealed that she was compiling a report on Motivation that was expected to reach around 30,000 words. Yes. that's right - I didn't slip an extra nought in there. THIRTY THOUSAND words for an A level course work piece.

I read through parts of it and it was really quite good. I pointed out a couple of minor confusions about Herzberg, but she assured me she wouldn't be marked down for such errors, it was writing lots of stuff that would get her an A.

I accept she may have misunderstood instructions from her teachers in this assertion, but actually I think this does reflect some key messages she is getting from school: its not what or how deeply she learns that seems to matter, but whether she produces the volume of words deemed appropriate.

Target culture could even be said to be apparent in the area of social networking: rapid amassing of followers seems to be the goal of many on Twitter and Facebook, and a good deal of traffic is self-referential and solipsistic. But surely the aim of social networking is, well, you know, social networking? Conversation, meeting people, virtually or in real-life or both?

Focusing on figures, volume, reports, public inquiries, grades - those things we can measure and produce as evidence - makes us feel secure. It makes us feel we are achieving something. Because how do we measure learning? How do we measure caring? How do we measure humanity or our relationship to one another? That stuff is hard....

The moon is a long long way off: the pointing finger - well, now: I can quantify that!

The Curse of Knowledge

2009-03-07T09:17:00.006Z

Werewolves, educators, leaders - we have a lot in common when you think about it : lonely, misunderstood, living under a secret curse, liable to turn into a raging monster under the light of the full moon - ok well maybe not the last bit - but are we (not the werewolf) Cursed by Knowledge? *

Yesterday I was creating a short video tutorial for new students on an e-learning programme and, wanting to show them how to download an electronic journal article, I selected - entirely at random - one from the Harvard Business Review in 2006 entitled The Curse of Knowledge.

It describes an experiment where one group of students had to tap out a tune with their fingers whilst the other half of the group had to guess the tunes. (You might like to try this at home.....!)

Heath D & Heath C -The Curse of Knowledge (2006)Harvard Business Review Vol 84 Dec

Does this resonate with any students, educators or leaders out there? The article goes on to recommend that leaders use concrete language and stories to illustrate points and make knowledge transmissable to others. Good advice. But I think what really struck me (as an educator) was how easily we forget what it is like to learn something once we have become masters of our art. I teach salsa classes and some times I am flabbergasted by how hard people find it to grasp the basic rhythms. In my day job I try to encourage students (and sometimes colleagues) to use blogs and wikis and social networking tools and can't understand why they find it difficult: my curse is that I sometimes forget what it is like to be back at that apalling place of not knowing, feeling stupid, clumsy, and frightened of making mistakes (as long as I remain within MY comfort zones, that is!)..............

So lets all make a resolution to go out and learn something new, difficult and challenging at least once a year - and enjoy watching the teacher turn into a werewolf when we don't get it!!

*(and yes that was a pathetic link to allow me to use this great movie poster)

.........and then three come along at once!

2009-02-27T09:00:00.013Z

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dotbenjamin/

1. listening to Radio 4 on Weds afternoon (Thinking Allowed, Laurie Taylor) about ill health and redundancy. It made me realise how the fear of redundancy is so debilitating too. This is something that afflicts the flexible worker as much as anyone else. Ironically I spent 10 years working freelance in various aspects of teaching and consultancy and rejoined the salaried masses because I thought I would be more secure (lol*).... in the last 8 years I have been made redundant twice and on fixed term contracts for over 5 years.

Then this morning I was chatting to a colleague who, like me, has been facing the end of a "fixed term" contract for several gloomy and unsettling months. (Joyfully my colleague has just been offered a new post with the same employer! Yay!!) But this is about the third or fourth person I have spoken to recently facing such uncertainty and one has to question how this affects productivity and creativity.

For some it's a question of going into lockdown, hiding under the duvet or infecting everyone around with a slightly depressed and anxious air (me). For others it's about going into overdrive to impress your current or potential new employers that you are a good team player, reliable and productive (er, this is me too) .... either way, I don't think its a situation that is good for the soul. So I'll end this section with an uplifting Tweet from His Holiness the Dalai Lama (Oh yes, he's on Twitter too, you unbelievers!)

"Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck"

2. the power of the wiki is incredible: I am working on three simultaneously - using one as a personal learning portfolio to present my teaching log for a PGCE in Higher Education, a second as a staff development and networking site for academics new to e-learning and the third as an induction programme for new students on an e-learning programme. Interestingly, I am not deliberately using them to try to develop collaborative working or encourage any contribution from other members (other than discussion threads and member profiles) - simply as informal websites I can edit, add content too, and present in an attractive and interesting way (I am using Wetpaint.com by the way - not least because they will get rid of ads for free if its a site for educational purposes).

However, I was really struck by this use of a wiki in Australia to deal with the ongoing crisis caused by the recent fires. (Interesting aside too that the wiki's fame was spread further by use of Twitter...and, yes, I am virtually proselytizing now!)

3. Somebody (@Onenterframe) sent out a random tweet this week asking for one word that summed up the reason for your success in life. I couldn't do it in one word, but it is about passion for learning (as someone else - @dreig - noted to me in another Tweet today!)

So my personal learning this week - a tad on the geeky side - has been about creating video tutorials for e-learning students. I have discovered two exciting things recently: I can create a powerpoint preso, save all the slides as JPG files then drop them into Movie Maker so I can add audio, upload to YouTube. Yes I KNOW I could use Articulate, but at the moment I can't seem to make it work for me, I find the audio recording tedious and difficult to edit, and then I have to host it somewhere......

Second new thingummybob - Camstudio. I like Jing a lot for capturing what I am doing on screen, with a voice over, so I can show students how to do it (how to use a blog or a wiki, how to get to their student emails for the first time...). Its quick and free and looks great when its done. But I can't edit it in Movie Maker and I only get 5 mins recording time etc. So Yesterday I switched to Camstudio (also free) which creates avi files of indefinite length that are editable in MovieMaker, uploadable to Youtube and so can be cut, interspersed with slides, have music added... you name it.
I am of course hoping for an Oscar next year or at least some sort of geekgirl award.....
*(I only ever use "lol" for sardonic impact)

10 c's of teleworking

2009-02-21T08:25:00.011Z

Flickr image:neoporcupine

I don't get why some people don't get working from home. I have had various comments about the lack of socialisation, the fear of being ill-disciplined in their work habits and .....well, that's it mainly.

So why do I love working from home? And how do I overcome the discipline/socialisation thing? Here are the advantages for me:

1. Commute: 30 seconds from breakfast table to pc compared with 1hour minimum drive. No brainer.

2. Carbon footprint - see 1 above. Plus, as I work in a sunny, well insulated room in my house, with large south facing windows, I almost always don't have electric light or heating on. (OK - I gave in during the last couple of weeks of unusually harsh British Winter). My office at work is North facing and single glazed: dark and cold even in summer (its one advantage, I grant you).

3. Comfort. I have THE BEST office chair money can buy. I know the one in my "official" office is supposed to meet basic health and safety requirements but it sucks. Same goes for the cathode ray tube monitor I am supplied with, the migraine inducing overhead fluorescent lighting, the desk that's too high and the foot rest that's too low. At home I have a height adjustable desk, that really excellent chair, a footrest suitable for somebody shorter than 6', bags of natural daylight from my French windows, a flat screen monitor, wrist rests for the keyboard and my mouse hand. All of these were supplied many years ago by the company I worked for on an official "home working" contract. They took their responsibilities seriously, paid for the right equipment and let me buy it back when I left.

4. Company: yes, I do have company at home in the shape of my two lovely cats. They are never grumpy, depressed, jealous, competitive, bitchy, sarcastic or petty. (Except of course with one another, but that's cats for you!) They shower me with love, they are quiet, appreciative and hang on my every word & gesture with blatant adoration.

5. Community - ok, ok: even I know I need a little constructive criticism from time to time. My community consists of my online network. Twitter, Yammer, Skype, blogs, even the odd telephone call or email keep me in touch with a huge community of co-workers in my wider institution, my profession, right across the UK and beyond, who influence my work, provide feedback, ask intelligent questions, work in collaboration on projects, want advice, and yes, provide humour, support, sympathy and human warmth. Non social networkers don't get how it is possible to have real relationships mediated by technology. But it is. And if you doubt it - ask your kids if you can wrestle them away from their mobile phones, MSN or MyBeeboBook for two minutes.....

6. Concentration and creativity - these two go hand in hand for me: in order to research, write, plan, develop and design (even to mark assignments) I need space in my head and on my desk. In the office if I am not directly interrupted, I am constantly aware of people around me and in the corridor. My difficulty isn't in applying enough self discipline to focus on work when I am alone, it's applying too much. I have to remember to get up, stretch, turn away from the screen, have a short walk .....

image: author's own

7. Which brings me to countryside: I chose my house because of its location. A short walk to the rear of my house brings me to a classic English countryside of rolling hills, trees, and water populated by fluffy sheep, friendly cows and cute little squirrels. The birdsong provided by the thrushes and blackbirds is almost deafening....bluetits and robins flit through the branches.... the river is crowded with swans, geese and ducks, along with the odd heron....yes I know the City has Caffe Nero and John Lewis, but really, there is no competition.

8. Computer applications. Work systems are locked down and I don't have admin privileges on my own pc. I can't install anything. No Skype, no Jing, no Tweetdeck, no E-lluminate or Wimba Classroom. No webcam. No headset. Moving from home to office also affects continuity of work (I run around with multiple memory sticks containing whatever project I am currently working on as my work pc never has what I need). And the server is sooooo SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW even searching on the internet is painful. All of this of course restricts my productivity. I reserve office time for face to face meetings: I don't expect to be able to produce anything there.

9. Children (maybe that should be kids to keep the alliteration going): I have two. I like to see them occasionally. Its great to be here when they get out of school so we can chat over the day's tribulations and challenges (theirs and mine!) They are actually teenagers now and won't be around much longer, one way or the other, so this is important time we spend together.

10. last but not least Coffee: I don't really miss Caffe Nero or those other places: I make the best coffee, because its the coffee I like, and I can even do frothy milk now and call it cappuccino.....

If there is a disadvantage it is the occasional suspicious glances of those office-tied individuals who think I put WFH in my diary as a euphemism for watching daytime tv, shopping or private consultancy......

I am lucky in being supported by a boss who judges me on outcomes and not attendance, but to make it a successful and accepted alternative, homeworking does really need proper institutional support.

Teleworking isn't science fiction: it's happening now in millions of homes around the world. One day, as the recession deepens and global warming reality bites, home working will be the norm, and the suspicious glances will be directed at those demented individuals in cars passing each other on congested motorways as they travel in opposite directions to work. "Do you really NEED to do that?" we'll be asking...... "can't you work from home?"

who is this woman?

2009-02-19T11:44:00.004Z

sometimes when I put my blogger address into the address bar, this site appears . When I sign in I get to my own site......this is a very odd phenomenon. Not so much identity theft as identity confusion I suspect.

Anyway - if you see Valerie say hi!

Collaborative Learning

2009-02-16T18:43:00.004Z

I want to stress right away that this is NOT my video: it is one I helped to make in a collaborative exercise with colleagues I have never met - some of them thousands of miles away and operating in different timezones, from different continents.

When I get students moaning to me about how hard it is to get together (on line) to produce a group presentation, I am going to show them this!!

Actually to be fair, it isn't just students: work colleagues too complain they can't find the time/space to work together or even to learn about the technology that would allow them to do it virtually.

This video emerged from a group of busy, professional people who were largely participating in the learning event in their own time. The woman who created the original movie was commuting between Melbourne and Brisbane for a conference and was, at the time, beside herself with worry about the devastation of Victoria by bush fires.

Those who took part wanted to "be there", wanted to contribute, to make a difference and to learn. The goal maybe meant different things to different people but whatever it was, as individuals we felt committed to completing it.

We made decisions by consensus (or at least by noone objecting if some people took a lead)and volunteers stepped up to the mark to get things done.

The saying goes, "where there's a will, there's a way" - my guess is with projects that fall by the wayside, or with groups that fall apart, there is just, somewhere, a lack of will for it to succeed .........

Through the looking glass....

2009-02-04T18:13:00.007Z

in a thoughtful exploration of learning and management @ffolliet caused me to wonder if it is possible to take "untrained" managers or students of leadership and management and support them learning "on the job" simply by providing a space for them to reflect on their practice.... or do we need in fact to provide initial "basic training" which is then honed by experience, supervision, coaching and reflection into "mastery"?

I mean, do we not at the very least have to provide "training" or induction into the process of reflection so that the learning process can begin?

This reminds me of some reflecting I have been doing elsewhere on the subject of.... reflection. Which comes first - knowing yourself or the ability to reflect? For me the answer is that we probably first learn to reflect in dialogue and through that process we start to know ourselves - and then we can go on to reflect by ourselves too. If we are lucky we learn this through talking with our parents and friends and then with great teachers. Then, more formally maybe with coaches, supervisors and managers....

When I was training to be a counsellor the question was how people make the first move from unawareness to wanting to become self aware. The answer then too seemed to be that relationship was the key - according to Rogers, people gradually learn through their relationships how to trust another's feedback as useful for their own development, and ultimately, how to provide that feedback for themselves.

So how do managers move from "doing" and practising according to skills and methodologies they have been taught ("programmed knowledge" as Revans called it) to reflecting, developing their own style, growing into "leaders"?

And how do students move from churning out assignments in response to teachers' questions, reproducing other people's thinking in academic essays, and into a deeper level of learning where they ask their own questions about the things that matter to them, and where they can both apply what they learn in the real world and reflect on that application and its effectiveness?

My "answer" is to try and develop processes that will get learners engaged in dialogue with one another, with me, and with themselves so that reflection becomes a habit.

This is not a new idea. Schön talked about this in the 70's. Coaching in the workplace, clinical supervision, action learning are all processes - indeed relationships - where reflection is taught, encouraged and supported.

In on line learning, spaces such as blogs and wikis can provide students, managers (or students of management!) with places to engage in reflection where they can receive feedback, engage in dialogue and reflect some more. Teachers (and other learners) have an incredibly important role to play in helping others to become more self reflective through dialogue of various kinds - through discussion boards and feedback on assignments for sure - in helping people to write, tell, sing or video their personal story....or as Winter calls it - the unfolding drama of gradual discovery.

15 minute manager

2009-02-03T20:53:00.002Z

one of the techniques for "virtual leadership" we discuss in the module is the coaching conversation. Most managers usually complain they have no time for such luxuries ..... and you can't possibly manage people effectively over the phone.......but I thought this short piece had some good practical suggestions for catching up with members of the team.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/cs/2009/02/the_31_coach.html

we don't always need long meetings or formal appraisals to let people know they are appreciated and check whether they need support.

Personal Learning Environments

2009-02-01T10:29:00.005Z

A picture created by the children in the Hole in the Wall project Feb 15th 1999

A mish mash of thoughts this week sparked by a number of separate but converging discussions

@ffolliet, @weavermiles, @sfpeaky have all been asking the same question this week (in slightly different forms and for different reasons)- how do we get our learners and colleagues engaged in communicating and collaborating on line?

Students complain they don't see why they have to use wikis, colleagues complain they don't have time to learn about all this new-fangled web 2.0 stuff.

Age doesn't seem to be a common factor as the one group are in their 20's whilst others are 40+. Usage isn't mandatory in all these cases so that's its not just that they are being awkward or rebellious, and there are fabulous role models out there with everyone from Obama to Jonathan Ross (!) on Twitter - so its obviously trendy: does the reluctance then stem from apathy? fear? lack of technological skill?

I suspect that the key has to be in the title of this blog post: learning environments are highly personal - each individual will have their own story of previous technological failure, a fear of looking stupid, experience of being criticised for getting it wrong in a new social setting (I agonised for ages about how to "retweet", for example, or whether/when to request friendships in my Ning community....)

So it may be different in every case but most conversations I have had with those reluctant to dive in seem to start with: "I just don't see the point".

And that is the point, really: people will learn to use something if there is a point to it, if they have a reason for doing so. My technophobe partner, for example, who normally avoids the internet as though it were the work of the devil, downloaded and taught himself how to use iTunes, because he is passionate about collecting music.

So one way that has been put forward is a mixture of carrot and stick perhaps: award students points for on line engagement - to make collaboration on a wiki a central part of their programme (that'll get them interested!) or make certain key information available on-line only .

But this also has to be supported with thorough training, access to the technology and exemplary modelling from the top - don't expect people to get on board if you are just waving at them from the platform..... you need to be blogging, tweeting, wiki-ing right alongside them.

Isn't use of web 2.0 just a "leadership of change" problem like any other? People will always be reluctant to embrace change unless they see it is meaningful, feel themselves supported and have a leader who is modelling the required behaviour. At least that is the conventional wisdom.

What then do we make of the Hole in the Wall experiments carried out in India by Dr Sugata Mitra? PCs with Internet access were dropped into small Indian villages without training or context and groups of children taught themselves to use them...(the adults, interestingly, made no effort to engage with them).

Finally - my personal learning story of this week. I responded to a Twitter message from a "friend" (someone I met on line through the Ning Digifolios site) who wanted a buddy to learn Spanish with. I suggested another Ning friend who had expressed a similar wish. Over the space of a couple of days the three of us set up a date and time to "meet" in a free on line classroom , accessed an on line learning programme from BBC languages and had our first somewhat chaotic lesson.

One could question the wisdom of this as a learning experience: we are none of us Spanish speakers nor particularly expert at the language.
I am English and living in Nottingham: Maria is Portuguese, from Lisbon and Natasha is Russian and was speaking from St Petersburg.

With no teacher to guide us, how can we expect to improve our Spanish language skills?

I don't know yet how this is going to turn out but I know that I did manage to practice speaking and writing, that we each took it in turn to help and correct one another from our different knowledge/skills levels and that we are as a result eager to go on learning, speaking, supporting and preparing lessons: I personally can't wait for next Thursday.

And there was something else for me about the whole experience which I reflected on later: when I was a child growing up in the 60's, I could never have imagined that an event such as this could have happened. Not just that the internet would exist and give me the ability to speak simultaneously to people in different countries, but also that one of those people would be Russian! It is perhaps because the world is constantly changing, because the change to come is unimaginable now, and because I want to be the change I want to see that I am involved in education, in the education of leaders and in on line education.

So that is the point for me.

Leaders and followers......

2009-01-20T17:41:00.004Z

.....there has been a lot of speculation about whether Obama will live up to the hype - to people's expectations - and generally commentators guess he won't.

Well, of course, how could he?

In a sense we get the leaders we deserve - because we get the leaders we create. A leader is in many ways just the sum total of all of our hopes, fears, expectations and - yes - projections.

So its encouraging that at this moment the US - and the rest of the world - has got in Obama a leader who promises hope: who (in the words of Nina Simone's song) is "young, gifted and black". (Coincidentally the title of an album by Aretha Franklin, who sang at his inauguration today).

This must say something encouraging and hopeful about the state of the world, of democracy, and of human development?

But leaders are ever at the mercy of these communal projections - whether US presidents, parents or teachers.

I know that as a "teacher" (or facilitator), I am never quite as all-powerful, as all-knowing, as wonderful (or as awful) as my students imagine.

The learning journey is usually one in which the student moves from dependency to self responsibility. It's one reason why I am so excited about the development of the Personal Learning Environment, of initiatives in collaborative learning and the use of self and peer assessment.

In the same way, mature teams are those which assume responsibility for delivering outcomes and don't fall apart if the boss proves to be a fragile human being - just like the rest of us....

Indeed, teams can be self managing: there needn't be a leader at all - and each individual accepts that they have a key part to play in the success or failure of a project.

I am currently involved in a "leaderless project" as part of the Digifolios Ning Community on personal learning spaces and accepting individual responsibility for supporting the completion of the task, collaborating in learning and sharing resources is the unspoken principle behind all we are doing there.

So the real question is, are WE going to live up to the promise that Obama's election brings? Will we disappoint ourselves as a global community? Will we accept responsibility for the successes and failures ahead - and are WE prepared to do something to make a difference?

Digital Identity: the edited me

2009-01-14T07:55:00.004Z

Being part of the Digifolios experience has given me pause for thought on the nature of digital identity - not least because I didn't know what one was until last week.

I guess my first foray into this world was when my good friend and unofficial mentor, @stujohnson (his twitter id), invited me to be part of Facebook. He's a good deal younger than me and I thought FB was for, well, people a good deal younger than me. For 6 months I had two friends on FB: him and a mutual work colleague.

Then about 18 months ago, my official mentor and now friend, @hallymk1 (his twitter id) invited a bunch of newly embarked PGCE students (of which I was one) to contribute to a blog: and so my blogging self was born.

Only last February I discovered delicious, netvibes and RSS (again, my friend @stujohnson) and in June, my boss introduced me to Twitter. Since last summer I have been blogging here and Tweeting as Virtual Leader.

I still find the notion of a digital id rather scary. ID theft is a worry of course, as is spamming, but its more about how I will be perceived in this virtual world. Eventually all things connect up and I risk having aspects of my life and work inadvertently revealed in places I'd rather they weren't.

Its not that I have dark and shameful secrets to hide (well none I am going to tell you about here!) just that I am essentially, and paradoxically, rather partial to maintaining my privacy: I keep a private blog about my learning on my PGCE programme, for example, and I maintain a wholly separate online identity as an aficionada of salsa - different FB profile, website, blog.....

I have read elsewhere that on line relationships permit a freedom and intimacy that f2f doesn't always allow: it is possible to hide behind a created identity to be bolder and more open than we would be in "real" life, without the risks of rejection, perhaps?

In the same way that my profile pic is carefully chosen, cropped and "fixed" to present an acceptable face to the world, asynchronous blogging, discussion boards and emails - even video blogs that I can review before publishing - present the edited me.

First of the New Year.. a personal learning story

2009-01-13T15:00:00.008Z

I am not going to write my new year's resolutions here, because I don't have any......

Instead I want to write about a new learning experience I am involved in: http://digifolios.ning.com/

It's concerned with developing Personal Learning Portfolios/Environments - something I am keen to introduce to my students, particularly on the Virtual Teams Module. In fact I'd go so far as to say its essential in e-learning that students craft and develop such an environment for themselves in order to keep track of their learning resources.

I have blogged before about Netvibes and how it has made such a difference to my overall efficiency in keeping track of my surfing adventures....so it isn't the use of an aggregator that is new for me.....

No, what I am loving is the being part of a community and collaborating in learning tasks. There are some scheduled synchronous events (talks on WizIQ and Elluminate), there are blogs, shared presentations, discussion boards.... and yesterday we had an "ice breaker" in the form of a challenge to discover the Birth Order of each community member.

The fascinating thing about this was the ingenuity of individual members in their use of technology to discover the answers: polls on Survey Monkey and Doodle, use of Google Docs, Twitter and Gabmail etc - without any specific instructions from the coordinating team, people just got on with it. What is more, the results were fascinating - why are so many in this community eldest children - and is that significant? And the emerging stories even more so.

This is in sharp contrast with an e-learning conference I attended a few days ago where I felt I was talked at all day and only got to network in the coffee breaks - like that was somehow incidental?!

Whenever I ask students to tell me the best things about distance learning programmes I run, they say - the networking, hearing how other people manage these issues. When I think back to courses I have attended, I remember the people I met, the stories I heard, what I learned about myself in sharing stories of my own and having feedback and support from others.

And finally, this whole experience convinces me that it is possible to kick off a virtual learning experience from a cold start, to form relationships on line without benefit of face to face introductions and to collaborate effectively with others across distance using technology.

O brave new world, that hath such people in it!

virtual leadership - lessons from the module

2008-12-24T09:56:00.003Z

Reflecting on the assignments from this first run of the Module (ok I promise this will be the last mention of assignments), I have been caused in turn to reflecton my own leadership of this virtual team of learners.

One observation is that this of course isn't a team at all but a group as although each student aims to complete and pass their individual assignment, they do not have a common aim or common task to complete as a team.

As the "leader" I supplied the task ( the assignment) and resources to complete it in the form of learning materials, but some individual interpretation of that task was permitted.

Participation in any group activities was therefore entirely voluntary: there were neither rewards offered nor sanctions imposed for not participating.

The only performance management activity undertaken by me was to monitor who was participating in the Discussion Boards and wiki, but the criteria for assessing participation - or team efectiveness - were not transparent.

Individuals were not directly superivised unless they requested a coaching or tutorial session, though I did write to those who appeared not to be participating to check they were able to access everything OK.

I guess that on the one hand my leadership style could be described as laissez faire - I allowed them to work in whatever way they appeared to choose (but without enquiring as to what actually did suit them best...). On the other hand, I tell myself, I am simply treating them as adults who are responsible for their own learning.....

The results then are interesting:

Over half of the group achieved a very good or excellent mark for their assignment. The majority of these were also actively participatory in Discussion Board, Wiki, chat room and tutorials. One could conclude that participation, self-awareness, organisational skills and high achievement orientation went together.

Curiously though, about 1/3 of this "very good - excellent group" had had no contact with me or with one another. They displayed all the same levels of self awareness, application, and achievement orientation without ever having functioned as part of a learning "team". Clearly these were highly self motivated and required little direction to keep them on track - perhaps these are the ideal Virtual Team members?

Of the half of the group in the satisfactory or good range of results, most made little attempt to participate in group work beyond introducing themselves initially: variously they were afflicted by technical difficulties and onerous work demands. Some however missed out important sections of the brief - but by not asking for at least a personal tutorial, they did nothing to help themselves, which was a missed opportunity.

And then there were a couple who appeared not to have particpated at all in the module; did not refer to any of the learning materials or recommended reading resources and did not offer any reflection, but nonetheless submitted a half decent offering albeit working entirely to their own brief.

I can now reflect on this and think of ways in which I could improve the learning experience (and my leadership role) - say by offering marks for Discussion Board participation and wiki contribution to enhance motivation and clarifying the criteria by which performance will be assessed.

However, the really fascinating thing for me is that these results have a lot of parallels in work "teams" - especially where a "hands off " leadership style is being employed and the purpose or overall aim is neither fully articulated or regularly measured.

For a start there is the social crew (they are never alone!) who organise birthday lunches, send one another funny emails and turn up to every team meeting, but nonethless work really hard to further the group's overall aim, which is something they believe in fervently.

Those lone stars who rarely interact but whose work output is high and whose contribution is original, creative, and occasionally pays great dividends for the wider organisation.

The worker bees who attend for the contracted hours and ususally come up with the goods but give team meetings a wide berth, suspecting them to be "soft and fluffy claptrap". Most likely to be flustered by technology or overwhelmed by the amount of paper on their desks (or under it, behind it, etc)

The most worrying of course is the maverick who ignores any direction from the centre, shares nothing with colleagues (information is power afterall!) works only to further their (largely personal) ends, and keeps just enough this side of the "law" to avoid sanctions.... a very difficult one for any leader to manage.

If you recognise anyone here, please believe me, this blog is not based on any actual person, either living or dead.....

A year in Twitters (well six months)

2008-12-23T11:56:00.008Z

I decided to do a trawl back through my Twitter posts for the last 6 months (yes I am only a baby bird: started June 25th 2007). Why did I start using Twitter, what do I use it for and what benefits (and problems has it brought?) The following are just a few samples from my own Tweets.

The downside:

Overload: the more people you follow the more tweets you receive and it is essential to get them into some sort of order: I use Tweetdeck which allows me to put followers into groups and track messages just meant for me. I also switch off @replies. I guess I may miss things, but I’ll just trust the Twitterverse to come up with what I need…

Spammers, scammers, wannabe pornstars and other scuzzy types – but hey you can ignore them and block them

It’s addictive. Switch off from time to time…..

Anxiety when Tweets are not replied to – what does it mean???????

It all gets a bit self regarding at times…
@hallymk1 the debate about twitter groups rages on http://tinyurl.com/5l9elh 2:22 PM Dec 11th from Netvibes in reply to HallyMk1

Tweeple I follow and why….

Craig552uk: he works at DMU, his avatar is a cute kitten, he blogs about paper cutting and computer code and he’s witty: my friend WeaverMiles “introduced” me via the DMU Twitter group

AJCann: microbiologist at Leicester University, blogs about e-learning and education – occasionally grumpy and ranting, always interesting

Ken Thompson – probably the biggest single Twitter influence on the Virtual Leadership programme and my blog postings. Great website rich in resources at http://www.bioteams.com/

Sarah Horrigan – edublogger works at Nottingham Trent University; unaffected, self effacing, sensible and good natured blogging *sighs* (with relief and delight)

C4LPT – I followed Jane Hart’s blog and 25 Tools Ning Community before I followed this Twitter microblog. Always up to the minute and full of juicy titbits.

Timbuckteeth: edublogger, wrote some interesting stuff about use of wikis which has influenced my thinking about next year’s course

Redstarvip – punchy, unpredicatable, provoking.

CajunTechie – misleadingly named techie (he lives in Oklahoma) – we met via Seesmic: unofficial social networking and techie mentor (whilst I reciprocate with tips about salsa)

HallyMk1 – all round great guy, mentor in all things e-learning, works at
DMU, edublogger of note, social networking advocate and YouTube vlogger

Sfpeaky – my boss. Nuff said.

Things I have discovered through Twitter:

Random stuff

Discovering random stuff on Twitter is one of the best things about it: not a week goes by (barely a day) when I don’t come across some really useful, bizarre, amusing or just plain random stuff

1. #mewhensmall day: 22nd Dec 2008, someone set up this hashtag and spread the word that we should change our avatars to baby pics. I loved it and joined in:

2. RT gracias a @redstarvip: http://tinyurl.com/547owy UN's New Year's Resolutions 1:36 PM Dec 9th from web
3. now we know what Twitter is for http://tinyurl.com/6f7e94 2:26 PM Dec 8th from web (study on procrastination)
4. Thanks to @redstarvip: http://www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ - very funny and also slightly disturbing 1:59 PM Dec 8th from web
5. experimenting with twittercal http://twittercal.com/ 1:06 PM Oct 14th from Netvibes

Juicy “e-learning” learning: My Top Ten (in no particular order)

This is why I really stay with Twitter: it is full of e-learning gems form the multitude of educational bloggers who inhabit the Twitterverse. This has been so useful for me in my own blogging, development of my module on Virtual Teams and as a PGCE student:

1. RT @TheTransitioner: Great resources on Building community with Ning. A slideshare, voicethread and more.. http://is.gd/cYhc about 16 hours ago from TweetDeck

2. RT @HallyMk1: "Social needs induce users to jump tech hurdles" http://bit.ly/YcWx [everyday in every way I find something cool on Twitter] 6:15 PM Dec 17th from TweetDeck

3. the trouble is I am always finding something new and interesting:

http://tinyurl.com/5wcgg6 courtesy of @c4lptnews 10:18 AM Dec 9th from web

4. @tsurutsuru thanks for the follow and this great link! retweeting here... http://tinyurl.com/3tup8m 4:07 PM Nov 29th from web in reply to tsurutsuru (collaborative learning study)

5. @redstarvip this is what's exciting me right now http://tinyurl.com/5fatbk 9:52 AM Nov 26th from Netvibes in reply to redstarvip (M Wesch on Youtube)

6. this is very interesting:

http://tinyurl.com/yq4oyp 10:37 AM Aug 14th from Netvibes (also M Wesch)

7. @timbuckteeth and anyone else forgive my typing: that should have been http://tinyurl.com/6febe4 for the wiki post 4:04 PM Nov 21st from Netvibes in reply to timbuckteeth (stages of wiki development for e-learning)

8. Howard Rheingold video on vlogging, seesmic video in education [from Seesmic.com]

http://blip.tv/file/1342237 10:16 AM Oct 23rd from Netvibes

9. enjoying this wiki I discovered about creativity in HE....

http://tinyurl.com/4m3a7n 2:20 PM Oct 9th from Netvibes

10. RT @sfpeaky you might find this interesting from @HallyMk1Horizon Report 2008: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/CSD5320.pdf 7:50 AM Dec 10th from TweetDeck

Other useful things to Tweet about

Work related: keeping my boss informed.

It was my boss who introduced me to Twitter as a way of keeping in touch because I work out of the office a lot. It lets him know what I am working on and we can pass each other little messages about current commitments and ideas. It’s a good social tool too: we can’t “bump into” one another if we are not in the same physical space, but we can virtually when reading one another’s posts. We have tried to interest other members of the team, but not had much success there….

@sfpeaky RT @markhawker: "Our NHS, Our Future" online follow-up from Lord Darzi's Next Stage Review(s) http://tinyurl.com/64ow4p 10:25 AM Dec 16th from TweetDeck in reply to sfpeaky

@sfpeaky Here's a thought- a step on from Ning community maybe? http://tinyurl.com/5fsfvv 4:31 PM Oct 31st from Netvibes in reply to sfpeaky

@sfpeaky,@tesstrace reviewing Bb for FLM next year with Euan, completing on line induction, writing oD leads newsletter, sorting out cohorts 2:20 PM Aug 7th from Netvibes in reply to sfpeaky

Blatant self promotion:

I admit to using Twitter to get interest in my blog, to get feedback, to promote the module I am teaching. To feed my need for recognition- Discovery is the new cocaine: http://tinyurl.com/3nhgqs

just posted: virtual team module reflections http://tinyurl.com/46a48v 10:10 AM Dec 19th from TweetDeck

e-learning programme for leadership: celebrating the first year in operation! http://is.gd/4fe5 1:12 PM Oct 17th from TwitKit

posting wiki assessment criteria and self and peer assessment guidance: students response to new form of assessment is very enthusiatic! 12:25 PM Oct 19th from Netvibes

pleased I finished the article what I wrote (sic) about web 2.0 in leadership development. 12:47 PM Oct 10th from Netvibes

making a Jing screencast about my students' first wiki!! http://tinyurl.com/3fs53f

http://tinyurl.com/6yx5wz my entry on the Top Ten tools for e-learning. 10:12 AM Sep 5th from Netvibes

@sfpeaky yes and added myself to elearning professionals Twitter directory: time to get serioso..... http://tinyurl.com/3spjzc 6:14 PM Oct 20th from web in reply to sfpeaky

Passing on the stuff I have learned/found elsewhere:

@stujohnson those twitter tips I promised: http://tinyurl.com/5oxbfm and http://tinyurl.com/4legxe 3:19 PM Nov 27th from Netvibes in reply to stujohnson

http://tinyurl.com/3zx299 BT adoption of social media. 2:02 PM Sep 27th from Netvibes

posted by one of my students: http://tinyurl.com/6qt5um 10:08 AM Sep 10th from Netvibes

this is am-aaaa-zing!!!!! http://www.eyejot.com/ 5:04 PM Sep

Chatting to friends

About the weather, news, traffic alerts, my social life, listening to music (http://www.blip.fm/) , sharing photos (http://www.twitpic.com/) , making jokes, posting videos…….

My first post:

discovering twitter, writing a newsletter for MHSC providers, proofing an e-earning programme that goes live in 2 months! HAVING LUNCH : 0 12:51 PM Jun 25th from web

My last post:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v6nJvb-BlhY

Thanks to everyone for the follows, and for letting me follow you …..
and here’s to a Happy New Year!

Trust and communication

2008-12-19T08:52:00.008Z

image by Nick in exsilio

Marking assignments could be a chore but I feel as if I am witnessing the results of some very interesting action research projects and listening in on some very thoughtful and at times profound reflections on what it is to be part of a dispersed or virtual team.

First conclusion I come to is that working remotely is nothing new in the NHS and certainly not in Scotland. In particular Community Health practioners of all disciplines have long been used to working away from base and their managers have had to be creative about managing such teams even before the advent of mobile phones.

Secondly, for such teams, mobile technology doesn't get much better than a mobile phone (Blackberry if you are lucky) and access to collaborative spaces like blogs and wikis is a pipe dream when you are constantly out on the road. Text messaging is essential for quick updates and social networking. (See also Ken Thompson on Bio Teaming: http://tinyurl.com/39fmts )

Thirdly, building Trust is the foundation stone for all virtual teams. Without Trust communication breaks down, messages get misinterpreted and more mistrust abounds... a vicious cycle.With trust, teams become more creative and more productive, and the leader trusts them more, and the team trusts in the leader more: a virtuous cycle. And what builds trust? Communication.......

Fourth - communication requires structure: netiquette is helpful and aids clarity, regular messages from the leader to all the team maintain a sense of belonging and being kept in the loop, having a place to find and deposit information for and by the team is helpful (a shared drive, a wiki, an intranet space - some sort of virtual noticeboard)

Fifth - training is needed to ensure everyone communicates in the best way for the team. Students came up with some intriguing ideas - putting a Christmas e-card on a shared drive to see who could access it; organising a Chritmas social event via the team wiki; getting the team to design and manage the induction of a new team member so s/he could get quickly immersed in the team norms.

I have also paused to reflect on my own experiencing of managing a virtual learning group - specifically one set within the Scottish NHS.

Technology is difficult and unstable: not everyone is able to access the Wimba classroom we set up so remote sessions of the normal classroom style were not a great success. Not everyone has webcam, headset and mic.

However chat on Blackboard worked well: it could equally be Skype or MSN chat. OK it was like herding cats at times, but the students enjoyed the "meeting" space and it added a much needed social dimension to the module. We covered topics related to the assignment and students shared ideas with one another about team building, developing trust and improving communications.

To inject a bit more of a personal element into the process I set up a video introduction (early in this blog) and used Jing from time to time to teach about the technological aspects of the course. These were well received. I think on reflection that podcasting would really add something here. Regular updates on key topics could be posted so that students could access them in their own time - again mostly out of work time so that NHS firewalls don't block media.

I have also since discovered - and gained access to - a community space within the NHS Scotland e-library where a discussion board and document sharing space could be set up specifically for this programme. This could provide the answer to the firewall problem and would leave students with a legacy - a space where graduates could continue to meet after the end of the programme and which they could colonise for their own work teams' use, instead of having to try and set up their own wiki with all the attendant access issues. I think there is an important learning here about using the avialable technology and what is already familiar!

My own e-learning coach asked me to think about what more I could do in terms of "teaching" on this module.....

I am not keen to lecture - with Wimba or podcast - and the evidence suggests that the learning materials on Blackboard are well accessed and provide a sound basis from which students can tackle the assignment.

Providing a space where they can discuss their responses to that material seems to me to be the key - but instead of the activities we currently have, I think the discussion boards would be better used in

getting students to read articles and present their responses,

setting up small groups to work together on short focused tasks

presenting short case studies or issues for discussion in the style of an action learning set

I also think a social networking element is needed: one comment that struck me is that virtual teams lack a space where they can bump into one another for a quick chat. Something like Twitter might be the answer here, if, once again, people can be persuaded to try it or can find their way around the technological problems of accessing it.

ah well - back to the marking now!

NHS messaging system

2008-12-12T09:34:00.001Z

One of the things (maybe the only really important thing) that students on the Leading and Managing at A Distance Module (part of the Frontline Leadership and Management Programme for NHS Scotland) have consistently complained about is the lack of IT support. It is fitting then, on the final day of the current run of this programme that a new email system for the NHS is being announced.

The important words are right at the end - better support for mobile messaging! Hallelujah!

Procrastination.....

2008-12-08T14:31:00.000Z

One of the reasons some people give for not wanting to work from home is that they fear they will find too many distractions there. There now appears to be a mathematical formula by which you can judge the likelihood of you completing a task - or maybe for working out what it takes to keep your team focused on the job in hand.....

http://tinyurl.com/6f7e94

A new look

2008-12-07T16:36:00.003Z

as we near the end of the module, I am going to be doing some tidying up: a new layout, for one, as I felt the old style template was a bit cramped.

I will also be removing all module members from the authors list: you can still read and comment, but I am preparing for the blog's new role beyond FLM.

At De Montfort we are putting together a number of "bite sized" modules for work based learning in SMEs (that's small/medium enterprises) and there's been quite a bit of interest in this module for preparing managers and team leaders for "remote" working: not surprisingly in an age when people are more and more concerned at both the econmics and the environmental damage of ceaseless travel - to, from and around work.

I shall continue to post items of interest and would appreciate your feedback, comments and contributions.

All in the mind

2008-12-04T11:53:00.008Z

I was listening to a fascinating edition of Radio Four's All in the Mind driving home yesterday: there were two topics that caught my "ear"

The first was about the use of Blogs by people with mental health issues, and how these were being used for support, developing self awareness and informing the public at large about the reality of mental illness - dispelling stereotypes and fears.

The second was about techniques to persuade people to do what you want them to do. There were some useful "tips" here which have given me food for thought about this module next year - indeed about the programme as a whole. Getting students to engage with the on line Discussion Board is a constant struggle for tutors, and much thought has been given to the use of incentives like awarding marks, assessing postings etc. One of the thoughts I had from listening to this short article was that it needs to be sold much more as "the place to be", to generate a sense that everyone is using it so I will miss out if I don't.....

The second point though was about email and how it is a really terrible medium for persuasion because it is so cold and impersonal. The speakers main tip here was to make the email as personal as possible: using names, informal signatures or logos/colour etc.

Combining the two issues: it is noticeable how much better used the wiki forum was than Blackboard, initially, on this module. My guess is that although it was unfamiliar and difficult to access at times, it did have a much more informal look about it and there was a more personal touch in things like the profile pages which helped us get to know one another a little.

I know that some students have gone on to develop informal group sites or wikis for their teams as means of keeping in touch in a less formal way than email and work-based intranets allow. It will be interesting to see how these are taken up over time....

Virtual Meeting anyone?

2008-11-25T11:25:00.004Z

How would you like to meet in a virtual world? with desks and chairs you can sit in, interactive screens you can watch Powerpoint displays on; chat facility, not to mention the ability to fly?

I completed my Second Life Basic training last week and have been back for a few brief visits, exploring this strange virtual world.

I really like the space University of Leicester have created with their Media Zoo - there are boats to sail on, beanie bags to lounge on, even a dog... and this is a picture of me in their impressive conference centre.

I wonder what it would be like to hold a virtual meeting here, instead of Blackboard or the Wimba classroom? In my training I was only interacting with one or two people - the teacher and another student. The difference between this and Wimba was that the tutor could literally show me where to go and what to do (or his avatar showed mine...).

Nonetheless, I managed to end up in the water a couple of times - not to mention flying into trees. Now that doesn't happen in meetings very often!

Anthropological study of YouTube

2008-11-25T10:14:00.002Z

There are dark days in e-learning/ virtual leading, when you feel lost in the onslaught of information, new sites, software possibilities. When communication is not as clear, ordered, humane, and considerate as it might be, and sitting at your PC, you feel isolated, unsupported and wonder .... well, just what is the point of it all?

And then, you glance randomly at a Twitter posting, and a whole new world of insight opens up.

Well that's kind of a snapshot of what I was going through at various stages of yesterday evening. I found this video so exciting, I postponed watching Spooks....

Be warned: it is long, but if you are at all fascinated by the phenomenon that is YouTube,wonder where all this blogging and vlogging is taking us, or are simply curious to know what your kids are up to - persevere....

Coaching in Organisations

2008-11-19T12:57:00.002Z

In the final weeks of this module you are asked to explore a coaching approach to "distance" management - that is, moving from micro managing the team to a supportive, objective-setting stance that recognises the distance and the autonomy of the staff concerned whilst firmly contracting to get the job done.

I have been sent this link: http://www.cipd.co.uk/helpingpeoplelearn/_cchng.htm

which shows how a number of companies are developing coaching within their organisations. I thought it might be helpful....

My first Wimba session as facilitator

2008-11-17T21:33:00.002Z

well, the hour flew by and in spite of my initial concerns - if not cynicism about the medium, it was surprisingly effective.

Signal strength varied and so one person never really succeeded in joining us, one only heard intermittently and a third had only chat facility though she could hear and see the screen: the other three managed to have conversations chiefly about the assignment criteria, how to develop a wiki and latterly about developing trust in teams.

In the last instance, the team members (including the one who could only add chat input) gave some good ideas to the person with the issue - so that it became a bit of an "action learning" session.

The issue was a central one to the module: development of trust in a virtual/dispersed team: especially where there are ancient and deep rooted tribal differences.

Feedback was very positive - I felt there was real learning and sharing: the voice and webcam helps to create a more grounded kind of contact than just chat. And that's what students said too."Like being with someone in the classroom"

Great fun, very useful, will definitely do it again!

Tweet Tweet Tweet

2008-11-17T15:54:00.004Z

and while we are on the subject of simple communications platforms - here's a nice little blog post I came across about the many uses of Twitter (and yes - I found it on Twitter...).

what stood out for me was the following quote:

A diffuse kind of ad-hoc educational institution emerges from the twittersphere in this way. There is no teacher and no student. We’re all teaching and learning from each other.

So if you still don't know what it is, now's the time to find out... about twitter

keep it simple, stooopid

2008-11-15T16:24:00.004Z

I enjoyed this post - which is a quote from another blog..... just passing on goodies here, really.

The point is one I take to heart - we cannot wait around for the technology or the firewalls to catch up with our need to connect: we have to use available technology, make the links that we can and get cracking!

I am planning to set up a Grou.ps site for my team which spans a number of faculties, so we can share our professional profiles, register our interests, share documents, chat about common interests, work on projects together and find out who is available for delivering new programmes to coporate clients. Sharing links to some key websites would also be a great idea.

I am a big fan of Grou.ps : it actually does provide the simple, single site that Scott Leslie fears we may not be able to lay our hands on yet, and one or two of you have already started to discover how handy it can be for your own group communication needs - for those who haven't yet, explore!!

Virtual conference

2008-11-13T17:28:00.008Z

On line conference - social networking and learning
I am currently "attending" a conference hosted by Leicester University. It involves a face to face event in January but prior to that there are both synchronous (on line "live" ) sessions and asynchronous ones (discussion forums, podcasts, videos etc).

Today I particpated in a forum discussion about the usefulness of podcasting and was directed to view/hear a few examples. I also watched a recording of a Wimba classroom session where a lecturer facilitated a small group discussion about different on line media in education.

Next week I will be being trained in the basics of Second Life (that's my "avatar" above...) and attending a small group session on line all about mobile learning.

The conference is making me aware of how much scope there is for developing models of e-learning that are not constrained by Blackboard and which give greater freedom to the learner to pick and choose modules/activities.

Any one Linked In??

2008-10-31T16:20:00.004Z

I saw this today - a kind of Facebook for grown ups and professionals with cool applications (you know, not Vampire bites or cute bunny hugs) like Huddle workspace so you can share documents and work on projects together. Here's the Huddle video:

I think this might be something I try out with my team. We are attempting to set up a cross faculty network of "talent" we can draw on to develop learning programmes for clients. I have started to set up a Ning community, but it has limitations. With this I could envisage everyone having a Linked In profile detailing their CVs, and using something like Huddle to collaborate on tenders and programme design....hmmm!! Sounds promising!!