Apps 2012

As I have progressed through my EdD my ways of working have got a little smarter. There are four apps that have served me well in 2012 for supporting my studies …

1. Reminders (so in the hours where I have too much to do I can remember what they were!)

2. Good Reader – managing my online library downloads and annotating my reading without reams of paper. By far the best reading app I have found (still).

3. Good notes – high levels of functionality, a great jotter and annotator – good for generating diagrams and mapping out thoughts.

4. Splashtop – allows my desktop (including Endnote) to be fully functional from my ipad or phone. Excellent when not wanting to be stuck at my desk.

Two more fab apps (not study related)  for 2012 have been

5. Screenchomp – Jing for the ipad – great for audio visual feedback for students and again this means there is no need to be desk bound.

6. Spelling – my best parenting app! So the kids can input the spelling list for the week and then run the tests until the spellings stick. Very motivational for kids who hate spelling.

The Jing feedback experiment

Since the last post on Jing (screen capture) I have tried it out more intensively by making 45 videos for formative feedback on personal development. I received draft submissions from students, opened them on the screen, started the video capture and recorded as I went.

Lessons learnt …

• Read through once only and highlight in yellow any areas where a comment should be made (a higher level of scripting than that means you may as well write the feedback first )
• Live with imperfection. Unless you edit the feedback in an audio editor, Jing is one take only. Live with the odd, ‘errr…..’ … pause or stumble or else the videos will take a ridiculous amount of time.
• Manage expectations: Jing feedback was sought once word got around, this created a rush at the last minute. For the sake of workload give cut offs, and only feedback on a pre-determined amount of work.
• Opt out not in. Given the openness of feedback, being technically accessible by others and given the alternative nature of the approach brief students and tell them what you are doing and why, and offer an opt out. No-one chose this.
• Practice makes efficient. The first handful of videos took forever. Had I not made a public commitment to do this I would have ditched it out of sheer frustration. It did get better.
• Using other types of video in class meant that this was a familiar approach to students. It was in synch with classroom methods. For example, I used video feedback to playback a critique of a case study.
• It saved an awful amount of time by removing the need for proofing my own feedback.

While it may seem labour intensive to offer 45 verbal feedbacks I was secure in the knowledge that 45 written feedback attempts would take an awful lot longer. The depth of the feedback was also more than could have been realistically achieved on paper. You can say a lot in 5 minutes.

What did the students think …

• Students thought this was fantastic!
• ‘Like a conversation’
• Personalised
• ‘It was like having a one to one tutorial’
• Enabled them to work through changes one at a time with the video open and their work open at the same time
• Only one technical glitch was reported
• Lots of feedback is possible in this way

Other Jing ideas…

An alternative approach I saw recently was a tutor talking through the grade sheet. Giving a verbal commentary on why decisions were made as they were. A different take on Jing.

As a spin off from this work, experimentation shows Jing can work well with White Board technology too, so that in-class examples can be used and taken away. A blue tooth mic and you’re away …

(How to make a Jing feedback video is outlined here
http://www.techsmith.com/education-tutorial-feedback-jing.html
 )

Jing – Better late than never

Having used Captivate for screen capture I never really saw the need for any other software of this type. However I have been experimenting with Jing, after seeing it used by Russell Stannard, and I have been mightily impressed! Essentially this super simple software allows you to take a video of your screen with the ability to add real time audio, and then with a one click upload the video is placed in to a cloud space, thus generating an access URL for sharing. Super quick, super intuitive! As a cross platform user it is helpful to be able to use a single cloud account to upload from my different machines and without the need for Mac and PC licenses at a high cost.

So far I have used it to create a video of where to find information within our intranet and have created a ‘catch up TV’ screen cast for those unable to attend a face to face session last week.It is so easy to use; I have no hesitation now about using this to facility to offer formative feedback students submitting draft work.

Jing in action screenshot

C-Map

I am asked increasingly about concept mapping software. I have previously favoured iThoughtHD; however, while this is very intuitive it is not so good at enabling inter-label links (something only realised after a little time and intensive usage!). C-Map was recommended to me as an alternative. Though not native to the ipad, it has a greater focus on the links rather than the labels and in turn this helps the author to think about structure, more than the brain dump. It forces the user to clarify: Why is x connected to Y?

“A concept by itself does not provide meaning, but when two concepts are connected using linking words or phrases, they form a meaningful proposition”. (Villalon and Calvo 2011 p18)

C-map is downloadable for Windows and Mac and wonderfully, is free.

Below is my own mind map to demonstrate C-map (though I am confident that there are better examples!!). Click to view.

Villalon, J. and R. A. Calvo (2011). “Concept Maps as Cognitive Visualizations of Writing Assignments.” Journal of Educational Technology & Society 14(3): 16-27.

Ithoughts HD Mind-mapping

After never being very satisfied with the online mind mapping software that I have tried – finally some intuitive software that my seven year old can use. ithoughts HD cost £6.99 but does exactly what it says on the tin. The iPad is perfect for mind mapping as ideas can be shifted around the page in a very straight-forward and playful way, no clunkiness. For anyone interested in visual representations of their ideas I would definitely recommend this.

Interacts neatly with Dropbox.

Export maps as pdf, jpg or a whole menu of other file types.

Hyperlink content with ease.

Screen shot below.

Brevity

Listening to Stephen Fry exploring ‘brevity‘ was a  reminder of

• the skill needed to achieve brevity
• the depths it is possible to reach through brief communication -the importance of brevity to make an impact
• the relationship between brevity and information filtering

It may also be a prompt to recall that fewer words for assessment can have advantages

• help develop efficient approaches to communication
• have impact as others have time to engage with the work
• [still] allow depth of reflection

Getting to grips with Grademark and Turnitin: Tools for assessment efficiency and enhancement

This week we had a most excellent learning and teaching forum session from Cath Ellis of Huddersfield University. The focus of the afternoon was on electronic marking using Grademark. I am fairly confident that this idea will be taken up by colleagues since it could:

- Save time as paper scripts are not sent around the university, paper submissions no longer required reducing the administrative burden and in the marking process comment banks deal with repeated errors particularly around grammar and punctuation to save time there.

-Add consistency amongst marking teams in the advice given over common errors.

- Enhance the student experience, allowing them to submit off campus without travel time or receipt queuing and enable privacy when receiving results.

-Allow the tutors own comments to be highly personalised and supportive as their time is not spent on repetitive comments.

- Enable simultaneous marking and plagiarism checking as the tutor’s eye is drawn to areas of similarity (to published work, other submitted assignments) with a coloured overlay provided in Grademark/Turnitin. The tutor can see for example if coloured areas are appropriately referenced. Plagiarism checking becomes more integrated to the assessment process.

-Help the diagnosis of issues in writing style, grammar and punctuation through aggregated reports for groups or individuals to inform the support provided.

Cath’s blog describes some of the subtleties of Grademark use. Also a concise presentation from Solent details the benefits of Grademark and Turnitin particularly from a student perspective.

There is something unequal and opaque about academics having enhancement tools and facilities not open to students and so it is good to see a peer to peer marking facility in Grademark too. Given that teaching staff do not always include peer review in their methods I am not sure that simply having the facility will mean people use it.

As a student At The University of Liverpool it is really useful to have access to these facilities for pro active academic development. Before I submit any work a course requirement is that it must go through Turnitin as a draft. This enables me to see, using the coloured overlay as described above, where I may of displayed poor academic practice (or in the worst case plagiarism). Where the similarity index is high I may see, for example, that my paraphrasing is not sufficiently different from the original or that I have used too many direct quotes. See graphic below for a view of how the similarity overlay looks to a student.

The use of a draft submission facility for students along with some support to interpret the reports and an academic development programme to offer knowledge of what good academic practice entails, seems to be a very comprehensive package of support. It equips the student to understand why it is important to address issues of academic development and at the same time offers knowledge and tools to support self-review and self-help. As a student I would now not wish to submit a final copy without the opportunity to self review using the draft facility.

Reflection – eroded by technology?

News on the role of technology overload this week, see BBC - how many hours?

There is a real challenge in finding time to reflect as we are always ‘wired in’ to different stimuli. I recently dumped my iphone as it was distracting me constantly from the world around me – with constant pings of email at inappropriate times (only to replace it swiftly with an iPad which seemed slightly better as it is not possible to take it quite everywhere!).

Are we loosing deep engagement to technostress and overload?

Levy (2007) offers some answers ….

Levy describes how the erosion of reflection has evolved across the twentieth century and is a product of social, economic, political and ethical pressures and of the availability of technology. Levy argues technology itself may not be the root cause of eroded reflective time this but is part of a more complex picture of the speeding up of activity.

The failure to get a handle on this challenge may be linked Levy suggests to the rise of work in society; quoting Pieper from as far back as the 1940s as saying ‘The world of work is becoming our entire world’. As part of the same story the place of leisure is eroded then – this is significant as leisure can offer reflective space – a form of stillness. The place of slow time for thinking is damaged by the rise of fast time and all of the immediate pressures.

Perhaps a new academic skill is learning to concentrate and make space to reflect. Levy actually recommends that university’s may build in contemplative time (not sure if this is for staff or students, or possibly [hopefully] both).

Coeckelbergh (2011) suggests the role of the paradox of distance and proximity in explaining the growth of technology saying that technology enables ways of being – e.g. living and working at a distance that would not otherwise be possible or acceptable – in turn the need for yet more technology is created.

“these media, by making possible that one lives at a distance, promotes (physical) distance rather than proximity. The paradox is that while presented as a solution to ditace in the global village, it is at the same time its very condition” p. 133.

I have some empathy with this view, if unguarded technology seems to breed technology.

It seems technology is a double-edged sword and for learners it is a challenge to ensure that more screen time and technological possibilities do not distract quiet contemplative creative time.

Coeckelbergh, M. (2011). “What are we doing?: Microblogging, the ordinary private, and the primacy of the present.” Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society 9(2): 127-136.

Levy, D. (2007). “No time to think: Reflections on information technology and contemplative scholarship.” Ethics and Information Technology 9(4): 237-249.

Good reader

Don’t very often blog ‘tech stuff’ but very pleased with Goodreader App for iPad. Download PDFs (papers, library material etc) and rename, edit, annotate, tag and rate. Simple but very helpful. Excellent tool for working alongside digital collections and has much more functionality than iBooks. Though I have had no need as yet, Goodreader also works with a range of other file formats including images.

E-assessment for work based learning: Functionality v ideals

There are very close ties, or at least there can be, between e-learning, e-assessment and work-based learning. The compatibility of e- methods and work-based, work-located studies is in many instances because of:

· Pragmatic considerations

o Access anytime, anywhere using asynchronous technologies.

· Quality concerns

o E-learning allows the HEI to contain a direct link in to provision that may otherwise be entirely delivered by a partner organisation.

Where e-assessment is used for these reasons only (without consideration of the wider learning design) there may be limited benefits, a reductionist approach results. What is lost when only a narrow rationale is used for choosing e-assessment for work-based learning?

· Association with authenticity – If assessment is a bolt-on, a means to an end, then the opportunity to enable work-based learners to use and build upon their day-to-day practices may be lost in the rush to simply weigh knowledge.

· Association with social justice - E-assessment offers a chance to level the playing field a little more. In getting away from essay writing and enabling the creation of multi-media artefacts for assessment, learners can play to their strengths and enhance authenticity. However, to enhance the chance of such an approach succeeding the use of media playfulness needs to be engrained into delivery/the learning journey, the e-infrastructure, the human support and the assessment success criteria. This is not a concept easily bolted on!

· Disjunction – Constructive alignment remains widely accepted good practice for all learning and teaching, based on this accepted wisdom alignment between assessment tasks and learning should remain clear. Whilst the content of learning can form an alignment, even when using assessment as a bolt-on, there may be disjunction when the means of assessment is remote from the learning experience. It could be argued that the assessment instrument should be synergistic with the journey.  For example a student sitting down to take a computer aided test with scenario based question and answers when none of the delivery has been in this way may result in feelings of separateness between learning and assessment; likewise for a summative portfolio to be online after a face to face delivery which did not in any way utilise technology erodes the possibility of full and deep engagement and potentially acts to make the technology alien and intimidating under pressure.

As we design work-based learning initiatives with an e- element in either delivery or assessment or both care must be taken to be holistic in looking at how to support, how to maximise the benefit and how to ensure that for the learners a sense of journey is maintained. There are potentially lost opportunities and also dangers of disjuncture in being overly focussed on finding a means assessment that ‘will do the job’ of providing some measure of learning without considering such designs more holistically with reference to integration with delivery, support (tutor or peer) and [work-based, local] context.  This tension then in the relationship between e-learning and work-based learning equates to function v. ideal design.