Action Research Tool - ReLive 08

Leonie Ramondt

Anglia Ruskin University

In this session we were considering the evaluation of sessions taught or carried out in Second Life. Firstly we created and account to log into the http://journal.technologyandsocialaction.org/ site that gives access to an on-line reflective journal.

Once we had done that we worked in groups to plan, rehearse and evaluate work based on two different scenarios. The first scenario was dealing with recruitment and retention and was:

A student survey has indicated that several wheelchair using students have found that a number of facilities have been designed poorly for their use (e.g. toilets are located on the far corner of the top floor behind a series of heavy doors). They have suggested that it might help staff to experience things from their perspective. Design and test a scenario that might help key staff experience what this is like.

The group that I was in did not attempt this one but the group that did it decided that to put the teacher avatar into a bubble would help them to experience difficulties of corners, heavy doors, all sorts of inaccessibility in fact. They were preparing to do this in Second life as we split up at the end of the session.

The second session was dealing with Student Wellbeing and was:

You are exploring whether Second Life is a useful tool for student peer mentoring. In your group, design and test out some simple role plays for peer mentors, in matters such as campus orientation, what to expect from a seminar and the basics of group work.

Two groups worked on this one – one group doing the group work exercise. They formulated an exercise – building a den, where all students had to work collaboratively so had to share permissions to edit each other’s work and allow all parties to take part.

Our group did the campus orientation – after much trial, error and discussion we decided that a treasure hunt activity that taught both orientation and skills would be the best way to approach it.

The last group was working on using Survey monkey to plan their evaluation.

The groups that used the evaluation template in the journal all agreed that they needed their own questions, pertinent to the exercise to make it more useful. It was however a useful journal to use asd an ongoing record.

For evaluation purposes it was felt that if one needed quantitative data then the survey tool may be better, if one wanted qualitative data then a much more precise set of questions was needed.

The group work facility on the journal did not work and all who used it felt that that was an essential requisite for the tool to be useful in the group.

The journal is available on-line at http://journal.technologyandsocialaction.org/

 

A Day with John Davitt

This one has been two weeks in the writing and I have loads more to catch up. Not doing very well really :-)

I was lucky enough, a couple of weeks ago, to attend a day led by John Davitt,  described as a “practical visionary” in the field of ICT in education. John talked about how we all learn. The answer is; in a multitude of ways, so he felt that we should be asking children how they want to learn what they need to know saying that we can’t guess. The personalised learning agenda has been an important feature of education here in the UK for a while now, but in a new analysis of personalised learning - reported by the BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7741943.stm and tweeted a few hours ago by Gavin Dudeney it has been called "Well intentioned waffle" and challenges the idea ending with the line: “Which is why "personalised learning" was more of a symbolic gesture than a real turning point in education policy.” Being a teacher I have no problem with the fact that teachers provide for as many different ways of learning as possible by making the best use of many types of resources, images, video, sound, text and ask for work back from pupils in a huge mixture of different media and allow pupils freedom to develop their own interests and skills as far as can be fitted into the creative curriculum. Also the Learning Platforms that are being introduced across the whole country giving pupils access to their learning resources and education on demand. We are all working towards what we thought was personalised learning - if it not called that, fine - we are doing the best we can to provide what our pupils need when they need it whatever it is called.

The focus for the day was to be on the use of tools for the schools of the future.  John said that there is already a wide range of learning tools available in school but he felt that the web 2.0 tools should simply fit into the pot of resources available for use. Pupils should be able to use whatever works for them to when they want to learn something. The tools need to work around the whole “chessboard” of learning  - so that pupils can, amongst other things,  see,  hear,  talk, show, write, listen, scan, animate, share and record chats. They should be used to develop and enhance creativity.

There is a dilemma between what we have in paper and what we have digitally.  Do we want, or want our students to live in the paper world or digital world? Should we be aiming at being paperless, or do some people need resources that are paper? Are they mutually exclusive?

John’s answer was that so long as they can live powerfully and actively in whichever they choose, or both, then it is fine.

As a warm up John introduced a random name chooser, that was fun and can be found at: http://classtools.net/main_area/fruit_machine.htm.

John is a great advocator of using the mobile phone in interesting ways. He says there is a “difference engine” in every pocket. He threw out a few ideas: send a text message abroad and  get a reply, text the teacher 160 characters on any subject and show 10 seconds on sedimentary rock as a film on mobile phone. He reminded us that we should think of activities not technology. To focus on the power of this John introduced his Learning Event Generator, a tool that can generate random curriculum linked activities, an on-line version can be seen at http://www.newtools.org/showtxt.php?docid=737. We were all given copies of the software to try out and develop. His newest version was running on his iPhone.  (He also demonstrated a rather wonderful but possible pointless ocarina simulation for the iPhone, that instantly loved and coveted.) 

The delegates were all given a task from the Learning Event Generator and around the room we had videos, pdf files, sound files and animations all created in about 30 minutes in the session.

John showed the group some Flickr tools that I had not seen before - http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/, he used a photograph that he had taken of the group during the morning session and had published on Flickr, to make a magazine cover. Lovely creative use of the mobile phone, web 2.0 tools and a very inspiring task for pupils.

He reminded us to use free tools such as Scratch with its 160,000 current projects that can be downloaded to investigate how they work and improved http://scratch.mit.edu/.

He talked about mashing being a new art form and reminded us to use video tools, phones, digital cameras etc. To develop creativity, showing the sheep http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fZuLTzoSZbo and Rosie http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=mTtVIFAm2Kw as a reminder of the fun element.

I am sure there was loads more he shared and showed, it was an interesting day and a timely reminder of what my job is all about, it is too easy to get bogged down in things that are not so important and forget it is all about the children.

Much more about John's work can be found on his website at http://www.newtools.org/ and on Dipity which seems to work well for him but will not for me :-( http://www.dipity.com/davitt.

Remembrance Day

Today I was training a whole group of teachers in a host school. We were invited to join the staff and children for the two minutes silence. As we entered the hall a very young girl read from 'For the Fallen' by Laurence Binyon, beautifully, it was very moving. Two minutes silence followed the reading. The little reader had her paper with the poem written on it, the paper was visibly shaking as she stood there, out at the front of the hall to lead the whole event. She must have been terrified, but it was just delightful. A rare treat!

Flander's Field ~ John MacCrae

Earworms Spanish

At the Language Show last week I saw the Earworms language learning program  CDs. Earworms is using a new learning technique that employs music to help people learn a language.

I have been attempting to learn Spanish this year, listening firstly to a set of CDs whilst driving, then a course of lessons with LanguageLab. Since that finished in the summer I have done nothing to either remember what I had learned or progress further. 

When I was at the show , I listened at the stall for a while whilst an Italian CD was playing and thought I could probably learn from it so I bought the set of two Spanish CDs.

Whilst I have been travelling this week I have listened to each of the CDs about five times, I am amazed at how much I recognise, how much I do already know – if only I could remember it at the right time!

It works on phrases, saying the whole phrase in Spanish and English, then breaking it down into smaller sections to practise before building it back into a whole phrase again. I think it is brilliant! It is the smaller linking and joining words that I struggle with more than anything. I know a fair number of nouns, but they are useless unless they can be put into a  sentence. This is helping me do exactly that! There is also a booklet to go with each CD, similarly broken down into parts that can be practised and altered.

The phrases are split into sections, each with a musical track backing it, and the words and phrases are added rhythmically to the backing track. By listening and repeating the phrases and sections of phrases one is meant to acquire a new language, whether it will work for me or not it has certainly helped me already, to remember what I have learned. If it helps me to be able to use it on demand – it will be truly amazing ;-)

To learn more about the programmes follow the link

http://www.audible.co.uk/aduk/site/category.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&oid=-38826&source_code=GRLS0173SH042908UK

Okay - I  want CDs three and four now please :-)

A visit to the London Language Show

I had a wonderful time on Sunday when I visited the London Language show. I watched a couple of seminars, both with lots for me to learn, wandered around the stalls to see what is new in languages technology for primary schools and bought a couple of Spanish CDs for myself – I will get a rudimentary knowledge if the language one day! 

It was strange to see people out of context – people I expect to see at the BETT show, and who expect to see me at the BETT show and not a language show, but ICT is being used so much for languages these days there is a huge cross over.

During the day I met up with several Second Life friends whom I have talked with, some quite extensively and some occasionally, over the last year. It was very strange to meet almost strangers, certainly face to face strangers, but at the same time feel that I knew them well enough to sit and chat with - a bit like old friends, where, though time has passed there is plenty to catch up on and enough common ground to make it interesting. In fact I was so relaxed that I could have happily stayed there all day talking over coffee and sandwiches. It was so lovely to meet the real people instead of the avatars that represent them in SL, but strange, in a comical sort of way to watch the mannerisms or hear the voice that I associate with an avatar and not the real person. Someone commented about my hair (in real life it is almost the same mop as in Second Life) and someone mentioned my earrings  - again similar :-)

It was so strange – a few days later it is almost as if it did not happen, did we chat in Real Life or was it just another few moments in Second Life? Can Second Life avatars really become friends – when they live hundreds, possibly thousands of miles apart? Yes I think! I have met and enjoyed being with people in other circumstances I may never have met – a huge unexpected bonus from Second Life membership.

Skrbl in Second Life 2

Well I set it up - so long as I always use the same skrbl board on the web it seems to work okay. If I change boards I have to change the land media url so it is esaier to use the same board. If I go to the My Skrbls I can clear the board I am working on so that it can be re-used. I can save the written-on boards as pictures etc., so they could be uploaded as permaneent textures in SL if needed.  

I can't work out - if you can, how you can edit the text boxes. For someone as poor at typing as me this is essential. You will be able to spot plenty of typos if the picture is big enough :-)

The next test is to get someone in Second Life with me to give it more of a test. As soon as I get the chance I will try it out.

Skrbl in Second Life

I saw a demo last night in SL that enabled users to share a whiteboard, but instead of just writing on it, like Mobwrite, people could draw. It was ideal for brainstorming, note taking etc. I have just had a look at Skrbl and it would seem that there is a widget that one can add to their blog. So this is an experiment! If I can add it to my blog, can I add it to a board in SL?

I believe I have added it to this page :-) Please do launch it and try! Now to see if I can get it going in SL... a different story I am sure, but it may be possible. I will report back!