Connected Blog

As part of a series of posts, we examine the latest research on how young people and the wider population in the UK use the internet, and what it means for Local Authorities, schools and teachers.

What do young people use the net for?
The main use of the net, by far, is for learning: 57% use the net for homework, saying it provides more information than books. 15% use it for learning that’s not ’school’. Parents viewed the internet as a good research tool, but lamented the loss of ‘real’ research skills and worried that the information was not always appropriate or completely accurate.
40% use it to stay in touch with friends, 9% for entertainment such as YouTube (a low figure given the younger age of the part of the sample of respondents). Parents recognised the benefits of the internet as a communication tool but worried about its effect on interpersonal skills and its unpleasant side effects such as cyber bullying.

Where do people in the UK use the internet?
Most users of the net are using it at home (94%), then at work (34%), another’s house (30%) or at school (16%). Only 12% use public libraries and 9% internet cafés. Most people’s first exposure to the web is at home.
The most common technologies found in the home are: (2007 compared to 2005)

• Digital camera (61%, up from 51%)
• Digital TV (47%, up from 29%)
• Mp3 player (43%, up from 9%)
• Games Consoles (43%, n/a)
• Satellite TV (41%, down from 42%)
• Web cam (26%, up from 18%)
• Cable TV (21%, up from 17%)
• PDA (10%, up from 6%)

How do people use the net?
Most use of media is for getting information. Both users and non-users of the internet read as many books as each other, but users watch less TV (cf. Clay Shirky’s theory on “cognitive surplus”). The result is that users generally get more information in general, and as much as non-users through other sources (and face-to-face [F2F] remains the most important means). Users actually value F2F meeting more than non-users. Indeed, in ‘real world’ users are more likely to be outgoing individuals and part of a social group or club than non-users of the net.

When it comes to technology simplicity sells. That’s the title of David Pogue’s TED Talk which provides the basis of discussion at the third Inspiration Session for Learning and Teaching Scotland employees. But this time, with Scotland’s teachers on holiday and clearly with nothing else better to do, we’re inviting you along.

With apologies for the late invitation, if you fancy a trip to Glasgow or live nearby, you are welcome to join members of the Glow, online services and technology teams, as well as Development Officers and Knowledge Management colleagues from across the organisation:

• Monday, July 28th, 11.45-14.00
• Classroom of the Future at Learning and Teaching Scotland, Glasgow
  Optima building, 58 Robertson Street
• Meet at 11.45am in the 9th floor reception, session from midday until around 2pm.
• If you wish to attend, please leave a comment here or email me.

This session will feature a team viewing of the, ahem, sideways look of
technology and what ’simplicity’ actually means. We’ll then have a
fairly loose discussion around how LTS could do its job better by
finding its simplicity bone. Your input here would be most valuable. I
do hope you can come along. If you want to see what we’ve done so far in our inspiration sessions, please flick over to Connected Live.

For the past three months I’ve been hosting these Inspiration Sessions, providing regular “thinking pitstops” for nearly half the staff in this time, getting to grips with what new technologies’ potential might be for their own projects and mining the staff at all levels, from administrator to Director, for their creative ideas. Several new blogs and web services have been launched with the growing confidence of staff, and internally we’re beginning to see much better sharing of information using the likes of social bookmarking on del.icio.us, an internal wiki and weblogs.

How good is your ear for accents? How different do you think one word could sound in a variety of accents? A new interactive site entitled Sound Comparisons by Edinburgh University in conjunction with the Arts & Humanities Research Council allows you to hear the same word uttered in dozens of accents. I tried out the word “brother” and was amazed at the differences.

I’d say it’s impossible to cultivate a musical ear without being sensitive to the subtle changes in pitch and timbre which distinguish accents. Perhaps that’s why so many impressionists are musical.

Some of the pages are slow to load and using Firefox over Internet Explorer is recommended – but not as highly as downloading the entire site – which I’ve just done.

Got a spare 15 minutes? Would you like to take part in a national, online survey about how people listen to music? The mission of Feeling Sound Musiclab is to test how we perceive music – and also to gauge the nation’s favourite chord – the result of which will be used to commission a new piece of music.

Why not read about the project, about the staff involved or take the test?

Edu Twits is a pretty quick and dirty test of creating a no-code-mashup in the style of Non-Programistan and an exploration of how far you can get creating a useful tool without really reading the manual.

I am not suggesting Edu Twits is all that useful, but I can image how we could use this in the classroom in interesting ways.

Background
I mentioned Exhibit yesterday and made a wee test exhibit of EU data, in the same way as I imagined my class would be able to do. In my imagination:

1. I’d start a spreadsheet with the correct column headers
2. Put together a webpage to pull the data via exhibit.
3. The children would research the required info (wikipedia)
4. the children would add the info to the spreadsheet, directly or via a form
5. The children would query the webpage to compare EU countries.

Which seemed fine. Then Tom’s comment:

The pure spreadsheet can be confusing and does look intimidating but with the data entry wrapped in a nice friendly form you’re looking at a much more pleasant interaction (and the ability to restrict choices some for data integrity)- all good things.

got me thinking about data entry a little more. A form seemed the way to go, but my class do not have individual email accounts and I could not send them individual invites to a google docs form.A quick google gave the the idea that a google form could be embedded in an iFrame. I wanted to test this out with real people rather than just add a lot of data myself (avoiding boredom and rsi), so I though of inviting educationalists from twitter to add themselves to a exhibit. This seemed to be a fair test of data entry.Implementation

1. The spreadsheet: all I did was set up a Google Spreadsheets, I set the first Row to:{label:Name} | {twittername} | {blogname} {blogurl} | {photo} | {year} | {iso} | {latlon} | Notes following the Exhibit instructions, you need to property names in the first row, with curly brackets round ‘em, the first must be {label}. The spreadsheet is set to publish.
2. I then set up a web page using the information from Exhibit Authors based on the EU test from the day before. If you know a wee bit of html is is pretty simple to copy-paste-adjust the example pages. also because the editing is done in html it is easy to check the Exhibit examples and view source to find out how to use the straightforward stuff. The Getting Started page should get of off and running, combined with the from a Google Spreadsheet guide if you are going to use a spreadsheet. Part 2 of this post will go into the html in a bit more detail, if anyone is interested.
3. Using the share tab on the spreadsheet, I set up a form and emailed it to myself.
   

   I’ve invited you to fill out the form ” edutwits ” which can be accessed at the following link: http://spreadsheets0.google.com/viewform?key=pIE8c8hh-DgLLHXJQQ8eEfQ&email=true

   This form can be used to update the spreadsheet. I filled in the first couple of rows on the spreadsheet and sent off an invite to a couple of folk to try out. At that point I discovered a couple of mistakes, I had {year] as a column header and the form posted the locations to the wrong column, the first was easily fixed and for the second I just moved the location column header to the column that the form was filling in. I probably should find out a bit more about google forms.

4. I then embedded the google form in an iframe on a webpage:<iframe style="float:left" src="http://spreadsheets0.google.com/viewform?key=pIE8c8hh-DgLLHXJQQ8eEfQ&email=true" width="500px" height="100%"> </iframe> I added a popup to get iso country codes from the name of countries, borrowed for a wee google chart experiment (that helped get the maps and flags onto the exhibit too), and a link to an old page for getting latitude and longitude from a google map.Later on the form was improved by moving stuff around a bit and adding the location map to the actual page rather than opening in a new window.One problem is that the iso codes and locations need to be copied from the form on the right to the google form on the left, but it seems to work.At this point (well before the form improvements, I tweeted inviting folk to try the mashup out).
5. The tweet was picked up by a few folk, one Tom Barrett who has a considerably bigger network than me, Tom’s retweeting has done much to spread the word., at the time of writing 34 folk are on the Edu Twits page.

Initial conclusions

1. Exhibit and google spreadsheets make it fairly easy to create a usable database.
2. Editing via a form works for adding new data, but users can’t get in to make changes once data is submitted.
3. Out the box google forms lack validation, I don’t know if using the data api would be any better?
4. I am keen to try this with a class(es) as I believe it will meet some of the curricular targets for using databases (and it is fun.)

Blue Skyso far I’ve not broken any Non-Programistan guidelines, other than the addition of the google map. This could have been avoided (at least for the US) by using the address to location translation the Exhibit seems to provide. the next bit might overstep the mark a little.

1. Use google data api to build forms that would add and edit users data, load form in password protected page to stop folk messing with others stuff.
2. Add validation and auto addition of locations, iso codes etc. to said form.
3. php to create new spreadsheets and templates for exhibit displays.

In this case blue sky means ‘I have no idea what I am talking about, maybe someone has already done this stuff, maybe it can’t be done‘.Next steps

• Try this out in class after the holidays, use EU idea.
• Try a combo with another class.

If you got all the way to the foot of this page you might want to add yourself to the app. you could let me know if part 2: details of the little I’ve learned about the html bit of Exhibit, is wanted.Many thanks to the folk who have added themselves so far, and if you want your details changed, let me know.

Anyone who is a drops in on my edubuzz blog may have noticed that the last few posts of the term pointed to new mp3s of pupils playing. The reason for this sudden increase in recording activity was that I received as a gift a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder. It is handy not least because it fits in the inside pocket of a suit jacket!

Previous recordings had been done on a mini disc recorder and, while the recording quality was very high, so too was the faff factor:

• record item(s) – which had to stay on the recorder until I got home, as there was no USB interface
• transfer recording(s) in real time into a wave editing program at home
• take the opportunity while there to cut out any extra run-in/run-out time, add fade-outs etc.
• convert the wav files to mp3 in iTunes – ensuring that I had set (in Preferences) the importing to mp3 and not AAC (Advanced Audio Coding – Apple’s own format) which was not, at that time, Wordpress compatible.
• post to the blog

Now, I don’t see it as my job to advertise the Zoom H2 on behalf of its makers, but I would like to flag up some benefits for the educational user:

• as soon as a recording is finished, simply plug into speakers and press play – no need to rake around looking for it – far less, return home and reformat. Pupils like to hear their work as soon as possible and this couldn’t be easier
• the recording quality is very high
• there are many choices* to allow one to offset quality of recording (sampling, bit-rate etc.) against practical factors (file size, upload time etc.)
• you can record straight to mp3 to save converting later
• where you’ve recorded to wav and then realise that you’re going to need more space on the 512 Mb SD card (provided) before you are going to have access to a computer, you can convert from wav to mp3 on the H2
• the H2 can be powered by mains (adaptor included) or battery – more suitable when restricted access to power points prevents the ideal placement of the H2 – a low battery warning appears to save you losing a great performance – I pushed this to the limit recently and was able to make many more recordings after the initial warning had appeared – although this would probably not be the behaviour of a professional journalist
• you can store recordings in one of eight folders – which helps to avoid confusion when pupils in different schools are recording the same item
• once connected to a computer, you can turn off and save battery power as the H2 is then power through the USB connection
• the H2, once connected to a computer, functions like any other external drive – this allows you, for example, to change the file names from STE 000; STE 001 etc. to something more meaningful like Mhairi – Wedding Song. These names, once applied, will then appear on the H2
• when connected by USB the H2, where preferred, can act as an external mic and record to programs such as Audacity – this may be an easier way to keep an eye on levels
• recording level is initially set by choosing one of 3 mic gain settings – and thereafter by adjusting the level numerically, while keeping an eye on the level indicators
• where it turns out that the performance was not as loud as testing suggested, you can amplify after recording – on the H2 or later
• long performances/discussions/interviews can be split into sections (which them become separate files) on the H2
• there are 3 recording modes (90 degrees for a solo player/speaker; 180 degrees for a linear ensemble/panel of speakers; surround – ideal for small, circular ensemble/class discussion etc.
• using the line-in function, you can record listen again programmes
• additional features include: guitar tuner function; metronome; tripod (to allow the 2 to stand on a stool, desk etc); mic stand attachment; headphones; foam protector (to reduce wind noise when recording out of doors); small canvas carrying bag (to prevent scratches on the display)
• software updates can be downloaded to the SD card and will be taken on board the next time it is inserted

There are many more features I’ve yet to explore and there are also many rival products which come in a good deal cheaper than the H2 but, if I didn’t know better, I’d say this had been designed with the educational user in mind.

* range of recording qualities

• wav44.1kHz/16bit
• wav44.1kHz/24bit
• wav48kHz/16bit
• wav48kHz/24bit
• wav96kHz/16bit
• wav96kHz/24bit
• mp3 48k; 56k; 80k; 96k; 112k; 128k; 160k; 192k; 224k; 256k; 320k;
• mp3 VBR (variable bit rate – where the sampling rate varies according to what is being played – presumably a narrower range of frequencies – including spoken word and silences – would require less information to be processed – thereby reducing file size)

Does your technology make learning better? Does it make assessment better? Does it make learning more enjoyable? These are the key questions asked by Professor Richard Kimbell from Goldsmiths when he’s looking at technology, and he found a problem with all three in e-portfolios. They need to change.

Currently, performance portfolios are created as an end result of project work. With teachers who are increasingly aware and communicating what will gain a good grade, we end up with a project and therefore a portfolio which are not real, which are fiction, which have no real sense. It is, says Kimbell, one of the reasons girls do better than boys – girls have more patience and creativity for presenting the results in a well-finished manner.

Cue Project E-Scape: this project was about generating real-time performance portfolios and finding new ways of assessing them. Initially, the idea began on paper.

A change in pedagogy
The tasks are real: repackaging lightbulbs to make the packaging reusable and multifunctional. The results: the box should be hexagonal, with a taper for the narrow end of the bulb. If you get enough of them you would end up with a sphere to surround the lightbulb. You can cut the ends to create lettering or animals which are then projected around the wall. Their projects are entitled "Your name in lights" or "Jack-In-A-Box light". You can see an example of project in this video.

Students, in their projects, are handed a script by the teacher, which choreographs their activity but does not dictate it. It’s a scaffold for some improv. These students end up working like engineers, with the teacher in a technician role: "you could do it this way, or that way, or this way. It’s your call". Teachers hate it, seeing their role reduced in some way from the sage on the stage to very much the guide on the side.

The need to make assessment digital
The project became digital as a result of an argument, an argument between two students about where their project should go. If only the teacher could capture that discussion it would make such a difference to the final assessment, providing a way to fill a gap in the learning process which is rarely assessed, if at all.

E-Portfolios, though, have three core problems. Firstly, they are generally works of fiction, created in a sterile ICT suite or on a laptop in a students’ bedroom, not in the workshop or art room where the action (and learning) was happening. Secondly, It’s a secondhand activity, digitally constructed as an afterthought to the learning itself. Finally, what kids tell you they’re learning is different from what they write down in a portfolio.

So, E-Scapes asked if they could capture, in a portfolio, the learning that was happening in typical, messy, complex classrooms. They answered with handheld learning devices and collaborative co-creation of ideas: ideas are created, swapped around and extended by team-mates. As work is done, step-by-step, the work is uploaded dynamically to the e-portfolio website. Each stage of the learning ‘build’ can be accessed in a browse mode, or examined in greater detail. It’s real-time, so the teacher can see and hear everything, all of the time, act on the spot or react later. You can see more of the process in this video.

How can this be assessed?
One potential methodology is based upon the law of comparative judgement. Think about eye tests, where we are asked which spot is sharper, the one on the left or the one on the right? We’ve only got two options, so we answer which one is better, without considering or knowing why. Taking this further, the E-Scape team, with their especially hard-to-judge non-identical projects, is to use a comparative pairs methodology (pdf). On a very simplistic level, assessment from seven judges is carried out on pairs of projects at a time, each judge marking 17 pieces of work. The judges decide which one is better, and move onto the next pair for the first round.

In a second round, the ‘core’ of median performances are taken and worked on further to create a rank order of evenly spaced performances. Using the resulting curve of performance, grade boundaries can be created retrospectively to award a grade, and the margin of error between the highest and lowest opinion of judges can be seen as clear as a whistle. These large margins of error are down to judges disagreeing, so these portfolios need to be pulled out and looked at further. We can also look at the judges and how consensual each one is with the rest of the judging team (the principle of moderation, which Scottish schools already practice). Those who are too harsh or too ‘easy’ can stimulate discussion as to why a project might be more or less strong. So this formative assessment informs the judges and teachers.

The reliability coefficient of all this? 0.93% It’s virtually faultless, and no assessment system anywhere else comes close to getting this realistic in its outcomes. The team are working now on the third phase pairs being selected automagically after each judgement has been made, making sure that the process is as efficient as possible.

If you want to take more away from this model, the innovation in teaching, learning and assessment, I cannot recommend highly enough the interim reports on the TERU website: Phase 1 and Phase 2. You might also want to watch this 30 minute programme on new e-assessment ideas, where the E-Scape project is featured, and follow Professor Kimbell in discussion on the assessment element of the project in this programme.

Pic: Moleskin PDA

I was reminded of this quote today:

“I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826); 3rd president of US.

The reason it came to mind was that while thinking about apparent serendipity, an alternative perception occurred to me which might best be summed up by a paraphrasing of the above quote as follows:

“I’m a great believer in serendipity, and I find the more connected I become the more frequently it occurs.”

While reading one of my favourite language blogs I was referred to a site entitled The Mnemosyne Project which aims, not only to provide a sophisticated free flash-card tool, but also to research into the nature of long-term memory. A few seconds earlier, I had been referred by Ewan McIntosh to Quizlet – another free vocabulary training tool. Both seem very impressive.

However, something about the url of The Mnemosyne Project rang a bell, and it soon came to me that it appears to be the work of the same talented, open-handed people who offer the free audio editing & recording program, Audacity.

Audacity is loaded on many PCs in East Lothian schools. It was that program which I used to extract, amplify, bass boost and eventually fade out the short mp3 sample in this post. It sounds like a lot, but it was the work of seconds really.

I would imagine that any organisation offering this much to learning communities of whatever kind should be eligible for an award of some kind, at some point. Any ideas?

These are the slides I used at TeachMeetPerth Last week. You can see the images on a Flickr set.

I first got the idea for OpensourceCPD from TeachMeet at the Scottish Learning Festival in 2007 [you can see some pictures here]. Ollie Bray is widely quoted as saying that TeachMeet was his best Continuing Professional Development (CPD) experience. This had me thinking about Teachers as providers of CPD. I also talked to Con Morris of LTS’s CPD Scotland team, when he mentioned that reading my blog could be a CPD opportunity for someone!

My favourite learning experiences at conferences and inset have always been the ones presented by teachers. I include in this the more informal TeachMeets and the social continuation in the pub or restaurant afterwards. I’ve also been aware of the open source movement as a great deal of the software I use day-to-day is open source software: this blog, Firefox, Vienna and many more.

This got me wondering if this might be a useful model for distribution of CPD material by teachers, material that is not locked into a Local Authority, business or agency. Teachers as providers and consumers. The CPD material would be freely available and could be used by individuals or presented by a provide, the teachers supplying the material on the wiki could be providers/consultants. Of course, because the material is freely available it can be supplied as CPD by anyone. So the idea came together based on a casual reading of the Open Source Definition

1. Free Redistribution: the software CPD materials can be freely given away or sold. (This was intended to expand sharing and use of the software on a legal basis.)
2. Source Code: the source code must either be included or freely obtainable. (Without source code, making changes or modifications can be impossible.) This might be a little more difficult, hopefully it will not mean that folk would be put off uploading a PDF which is hard to edit, but more the spirit that material shared here is for mashing up.
3. Derived Works: redistribution of modifications must be allowed. (To allow legal sharing and to permit new features or repairs.)

The Open Source Definition has a lot more, but you get the idea. This project will probably follow the Open Content model more closely:

Technically, it is royalty free, share alike and may or may not allow commercial redistribution. Content can be either in the public domain or under an open license like one of the Creative Commons licenses.

but at this time I thought that Open Source CPD was a snappy title, so I have started a wiki OpenSourceCPD to support this idea. I hope it is going to be connected to CPDFind in some way. At the moment the site is sitting on a temporary server and I probably will not get a lot of work done until the spring break. Several Scottish educational bloggers have added Profiles and there seem to be a far bit of approval at TeachMeetPerth. The focus to start with will be Social Media or Web 2.0 in teaching and learning.Nothing is set in stone (it is a wiki) but I’ve begun three main sections:

• CPD Materials A basic outline of various social media tools that can be used in teaching.
• Cpd Opportunities CPD courses for self study or to be used as a skeleton for leading cpd.
• Profiles A list of practitioners that could lead such cpd (this could be on a paid or free, online or face2face basis).

If this idea appeals please get in touch, if you want a password to edit the wiki leave a comment or send me a mail. If you have some material you want hosted on the wiki but have not the time or inclination to edit it get in touch and I’ll be happy to post it for you.

So have a look at OpenSourceCPD.

I have to thank everyone who helped make TeachMeetPerth such a great success! Excellent conversation and ideas delivered in typical TeachMeet style! Lots of sharing and lots of humour… roll on the next one! I decided that I’d use my 7 minute slot to highlight a few tools that I like and which are a) great fun, or b) really useful. Here’s a quick reminder of them complete with links.

1) Instapaper – Is a quick and dirty version of del.icio.us. What I like is that you highlight the text that catches your eye on the original website and then hit the ‘Read Later’ button. The highlighted text serves as a reminder when you go to the parent site… Not the best explanation in the world, but give it a try and you’ll soon see what I mean!

2) Buzzword is my favourite online word-processor. Simple and clean interface, and capable of saving out as Word documents… My thoughts: Combine Buzzword with an iPod touch (once they get flash enabled) and you have a £199 personal learning tool… suddenly 1-to-1 becomes very affordable!The other great thing about Buzzword is that it allows you to work on a document anytime/anyplace as long as you have internet access. Yes, there are plenty of other online word-processors, but Buzzword is, to my mind, the best of the lot! (Incidentally, Buzzword was recently bought by Adobe, so it’s not going to disappear overnight!)

3) Thatsmymouse – is a hoot! Embed it in a webpage and you can see the mouse of everyone else who’s looking at the page. Even better, if you start typing, you can attach messages to your mouse pointer… think classroom, lots of kids on the same site, think you can see them clicking on the wrong bits of the screen and correct them… try it now… or even better, get some friends online so you can try it together! (It’s on the first page of the Midsummerdreaming wiki that my colleague Sarah Duffy talked about)

4) TinyURL has really come of age with the advent of Twitter. It takes a long URL and turns it into a short one… er, that’s it really!

5) Fleck allows you to add notes to any website, and then share them with others. A great tool for getting a class to discuss what is good or bad about a website… can anyone say ‘Information Literacy’?

6) Tangler is a nifty tool that allows you to start a discussion group around any site… it is brand new (it went the day before TeachMeetPerth), and so still has to prove itself, but it’s got a nice interface and they are promising to allow it to be embedded and attached to any website… In other words, suddenly every site becomes a 2.0 site! One to watch I think…

and finally…

7) retrievr – This is the one that got the gasps on the night. Simply start sketching in the box on the left, and retrievr will attempt to match your efforts with a photo from the flickr database. The results are variable, but you will find some great photos this way. Incidentally, the colour matching is really good (even if the accuracy of the image isn’t) which means it’s a brilliant way of getting clip art that matches your slides/handouts/newly painted kitchen walls… go, play, and enjoy!

So those were my 7 in 7… what would yours be??