Slides and recording for ELESIG
and back-channel Joe Wilson (@joecar) / Twitter
#ELESIG
................................Really what it says in the heading. I will play with this from time to time. A mixture of education and domestic ...............................observations.
Nice to meet and give Turkish Govt vocational delegation tour of City of Glasgow College and chat about the technologies we use to support learners. Technical chat too about SCQF and Articulation routes and what works and what still does not work in Scotland.
Turkey has just created a national qualifications and credit framework and now trying to get all institutions to implement this.
Well done SQA for supporting this critical international work. I'm sure rest of programme will go well.
Among other things we visited College TV studio - no sound ;-)
There were attendees from both institutions and folks from
- How you manage, roll out and maintain a sensible Canvas template or templates. We have one at City of Glasgow College some Universities have undergraduate and postgraduate even faculty templates. Not a path we will go down. You can catch a glimpse here. Canvas allows you to publish open courses and we will be doing more of this.
- Everyone is enjoying using the new Canvas Icon Maker (though important for accessibility always include an appropriate ALT tag).
- Some institutions like ours have clear update cycles to allow everyone to review content. Some only do this for programmes that are targeted on basis of a range of factors.
- Generally, learners love the consistency of Canvas and templates. The challenges lie in ensuring there is cross faculty adoption and that staff come to have an understanding of very basic learning design. A course should not simply be a collection of PDF documents or PowerPoints.
- One way to solve some of these issues is to build in content review to a college or University quality process. In colleges that might include sampling the appropriate use of the College template in internal verification processes.
- For all ensuring the accessibility of content is continuing issue. There are lots of great tools in Canvas that support this. Our centre uses Ally to take this further but ultimately staff need to take ownership and publish learning materials in an accessible format.
We showcased how we are using Canvas Folio and how it can give a learner a portfolio for life and can be built into normal assessment processes. We talked around how we could use Canvas Credentials as open badges/ micro credentials. Canvas have made two great acquisitions in Portfolium and Badgr.
We highlighted the opportunity that we have as Scottish Canvas users to make more use of Canvas Commons and specifically to work together and share content through a consortium on Canvas Commons. Its available if you look for it under admin consortiums. Called "Scottish Canvas Users Group" We should all be sharing content here and to the wider global community to align to UNESCO principles around Open Educational Resources. We will share our template and some of our Canvas courses here.
Also. covered our approach to ABC learning design and the range of tools our staff have access to, to embed in their Canvas courses.
Some suggestions we will take back.
Ushare is an online platform provided by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) that allows teachers and lecturers in Scotland to share resources and materials related to teaching and learning. The platform is part of the SQA's wider commitment to promoting and supporting the use of open educational resources (OER) in Scotland's education system.
I'll be around for another flying visit to Bett23 - I wonder how much Artificial Intelligence will be on display ? Is that a pun?
I am a fan of the idea of the Scottish Learning Festival and have chipped in many times over the years on how it might be improved.
I looked at the advice and like me it has aged - but some of the principles are still just as valid and have not really ever been picked up. I guess just the changing guard in the Education Department and Education Scotland and tight budgets keep it sticking to one formula or another.
If you follow my blog you will know I've been attending since the last century and before there was SLF, there were more modest gatherings of Learning Techs at the Scottish Council for Educational Technology.
I think this years regional and blended approach was a great idea. Will be interested to see if it converted into true national participation.
Last week in the splendid surroundings of the Glass House Hotel in Edinburgh I outlined what we had intended to do and what we will actually do with our new Fujitsu learning Hub.
It's a none technical presentation and does not cover the systems we use in learning technology nor our current journey to Canvas by Instructure. You can find these in more detail on the Learning and Teaching Academy site.
It was great to meet my fellow ambassadors and hear about developments across the Scottish College sector. I am looking forward to the next chapter as we deepen our relationship with Fujitsu and industry partners.
The end of another strange year - this year without the lockdown beard.
It's all been a great team effort. This year topped and tailed by two College Development Network Awards both reflecting well on the work of the Learning and Teaching Academy.
Amazing really as the team have battled the frustrations and heartbreaks of CoVid like everyone else.
Highlights
There was some pessimism about role education can play in whole carbon neutral agenda 80% of school buildings today will still be with us in 2040 and they are hard to heat and insulate. Consensus seems to be that without gas boilers best way to heat schools is by biomass boilers.
I hope next week brings some sensible and workable actions from #COP26 .
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There will be the same impasse around both what the content is in any national qualifications and how it should be assessed. I'll leave that to the end.
I am going to jump to other side of challenge. There are some parts of the Scottish system that need fixed and these suggested changes would support any future system.
If we stay fixed on the contentious parts of the challenge, as I covered in my last post the real and present danger that by making the reforms all about schools then lots of other useful parts of the system could be lost and we may not make the headway required.
So here is a list of things that simply need fixed for any system to operate more effectively for all.If the reform is because the current system is no longer fit for purpose. Then I really would expect to see the end of paper based examinations - I promised not to be contentious.
I would go further and re-look at the subject silos - perhaps looking again at the experiences and outcomes and stretching these to end of formal schooling. But that is probably a bridge too far. The suggestions above will support a new landscape whether we are assessing latin , maths, english, astrophysics, languages , welding , music , digital literacies, meta-skills or tap-dancing.