Learning and working environments

Sitting in Tony Hirst’s mashup talk today, I was thinking about the tension between two fundamental approaches to creating a (computery) working – and learning – environment for yourself.
The first approach – the on-the-edge option, in Danny O’Brien’s terms – is to customise an individual machine: cosmetic things like changing the wallpaper, usability tweaks like [...]

No, Google isn’t making us stupid

There’s been a lot of commentary about Nicholas Carr’s article in The Atlantic, Is Google Making Us Stupid?  Carr is worried that, like HAL in 2001, he can feel his mind going.  He used to read for long stretches, but:
Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. [...] The deep reading [...]

OU Conf: Tony Hirst – Facebook apps

Back to liveblogging temporarily – if you can’t liveblog Tony Hirst’s presentation what can you do?
Vicky Smith chairing
Tony offers to do his talk from a seat at the back of the meeting room via a video link from his laptop to the presentation machine – only partly in jest.
Tony Hirst, Stuart Brown, Liam Green-Hughes, Martin [...]

OU Conf: Martin Weller et al – Learning Design

Martin Weller, Simon Cross, Andrew Brasher, Grainne Conole, Juliette White and Paul Clark
Martin – Umbrella thing for lots of activity.  1 – Fact finding and user reqs – workshops, interviews, etc.  2 – Tool and resource development using Compendium.  Now Compendium LD, Cloudworks for sharing designs.
LD at the OU – background of expertise from Moodle, [...]

OU Conf: Keren Mills – Digilab

Keren Mills and Non Scantlebury – Digilab/Library.
About half of the audience have never been in the Digilab.
Launched and opened Nov 2006.  Can’t miss it, it’s painted bright pink.  Professional development of non-academic staff, e.g. designers in LTS.  IET gets a mention for doing staff development.  Digilab to fill gap for hands-on opportunities.  A ‘createive play [...]

OU Conf: Tim Hunt – open source developing

Tim Hunt – Developing in the Moodle open source community: Connections promotes quality.
Has been a developer on the VLE project.  Most of this audience know what open source software and Moodle are.  (That’s a relief.)
Goes through software, free software (Stallman), open source (Raymond).  (After we’ve just established the audience already knows this, ah well.)  Licensing.  [...]

OU Conf: Ekkehard Thumm et al – OpenStudio

Ekkehard Thumm, Jamie Daniels, Esther Snelson (MPM for T189 Digital Photography). Stephen Peake, CTC for T189 here too.
(Linda Price chairing)
Ekkehard – Photography traditionally thought unsuitable for distance teaching … but it is now.  Less about the course but more about the process and the software.  (If you are interested in T189, there’s a talk tomorrow [...]

Text messaging for OU courses

Guy Carberry has done some good stuff about using text messages on OU courses – we should be doing this stuff at scale already!  But we’re getting there.

OU Conf: Bill Tait – quality framework

Bill Tait – AL in MCT, COLMSCT Associate Teaching Fellow: Towards a Quality Framework for E-learning
Project to make it easy for tutors to write learning objects.  Wrote extensible learning objects and get tutors to apply their own ideas about pedagogy.  But big gap in technological expertise, even among Computing ALs.
Aim: a framework to help practitioners [...]

OU Conf: Marion Hall – HSC resource bank

Marion Hall, Lecturer in Faculty of Health and Social Care..
Library of resources for use across HSC courses – SORRS project – Shared Online Resources Repository System.
Went live on 16 Jan 2008, HSC resource bank as standard Moodle course website – http://learn.open.ac.uk/site/HSCRB
Can be accessed by: all HSC students, ALs, and OU staff via autoregistration at http://learn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=4443
It’s [...]