Web2rights.mp4

Picked up this neat JISC video from Joan Walker in the latest Scottish JISC Regional Support Centre News Letter. There is a lot school sector could pick up from this monthly publication and from great work that JISC do all across UK. A lot of concerns around copyright and IPR have been addressed in FE and HE sectors.

Need to persuade them to add feed to Scotedublogs

It was great news that GLOW picked up an award and it is good to see too that Scotland won another prize at the IMS Global Learning Consortium for AccessApps and in addition that JISC UK Scooped a number of awards at the ceremony.

It easy to forget how much Scotland and the UK are pushing frontiers in on-line learning.

Glasgow & About

Glasgow & About (32)
Originally uploaded by alasdairmarsden

Enjoying my pal Alasdair's Flickr Stream of Photos from around Glasgow - but pictures of Paisley Road tonight would have been interesting. Celebrations and Drowning of Sorrows at end of football season - fought out to last game by Glasgow's Old Firm - lots of very public drunkeness - shades of old hard industrial Glasgow and lots of police on the streets.

Don't think real life features in media enough

Silver Surfers Day

With thanks to my friends at Digital Unite I promised to pass on this message

Watch Silver Surfers’ TV to find out, and see what Angela Rippon and Joan Bakewell have to say about the digital revolution in this video supported by Ofcom's work to promote media literacy.
Today is Silver Surfers’ Day, a day when older people across the UK are encouraged to try out computers and learn about life online.
Organised by Digital Unite, there are over 750 events across the UK aimed at helping thousands of older people get online and discover how computers can change their lives. Go to the Digital Unite website to find out about events near you.
There’s also a new initiative called Schools for Silver Surfers, which plans to link the UK's vast school network with older people not yet online. The project aims to help older people learn about new media and younger people learn about local history.
The Digital Unite website has something for everyone – including a co-operative Flickr album and a ‘Tell us a Joke’ blog.

Making the Case for Social Networks in Organizational Settings

Thanks to comment from Andy Bright on my last posting I found this neat Slideshare on why organisations need social networking. Loved comment below from Olga How

The University of Melbourne study showed that people who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not.

Making the Case for Social Networks in Organizational Settings

View more presentations from Olga Howard.

Blogging and Web2

As a follow up to my last post. I attended an excellent session led by ex Scottish First Minister Henry McLeish in last two weeks. Henry is going to be an ambassador for Scottish Colleges International. The presentation and discussion highlighted for me the importance of more folk in public and private sectors doing more through social networking.

• 1. From 2011 public fund will contract in real terms. We probably needed a 10% reduction in public sector before now economic squeeze will enforce this.
• 2.Everyone needs to be clear about value every pound spent in public sector brings and be prepared for even greater scrutiny
• 3. There is scope for much more service and data sharing at all levels of government and society and this should drive improved services and cost cutting across public sector.
  
• 4.Devolution is likely to grow regardless of government in Scotland or UK and will not lead invetiably to independence but will lead to greater local accountability.
• 5.Colleges will need to look outside of Scotland for funding and customers - the world market, UK and England all offer opportunities.

I am grateful for my colleagues in SQA and LTScotland who blog and share along with those across Education who share. We are still in a tiny minority it would be good to see more NDPB bloggers and more voices from different bits of those who provide these critical social support services.

Blogging 2

The Scottish Parliament Debating Chamber
Originally uploaded by StartAgain

I attended the Scottish Government Cross Party Skills Committee this week and as meeting broke up I had an interesting discussion with a senior manager from another government agency about "how I got away with blogging"

I don't view blogging in this way - but for the cautious here is a quick guide.I would like to see many more folk in public sector blogging.

1. Make it clear that this is an unofficial blog it does not reflect the views of your employer - say as much in header or footer.
2. I am posting this on a Sunday morning - postings are usually made out with working hours
3.It is a reflection of my working day but also life in general. But it can never be warts and all - It is not an on-line diary. If Samuel Pepys had blogged he'd have been divorced and beheaded. This on only the domestic front.
4.I do have an internal SQA and external audience for the blog and I have found it a useful way to move learning agenda on. You do need to be tactful and sensible about how you get your message across.
5.The Blog has been an excellent touch down point for my existing business contacts and for expanding this network. Among highlights this year have been an invitation to SQA to participate in a global education conference in Singapore.
6. Take full responsibility for any typos - spelling - grammatical errors - in other walks of life we have editors - blogging is untidier and all the better for that.

Finally note I have been blogging in one way or another since 2000 and before that had a number of public facing websites when I worked in the College sector from the early 1990s. In all of this time no-one has attempted to silence me and I can't think of a better way to share and work with rest of world. Globally Learners, Teachers, Public Servants and Politicians are all wrestling with same challenges in education - it is great to share solutions.

Blogging and Thoughts

Last two months have been quiet on blogging front. Thought I'd reflect on this.

1. My new job involves New Ventures which means exploring new and unchartered waters. Most of the meetings I have are exploratory and sometimes sensitive for both my internal and external audiences. I still share what I can.
2. My activities are reflected in the short-hand of my twitter stream @joecar and I am getting more feedback from a wider network this way.

I'm going to post a follow up on work with web 2.0

New Ventures Team

New Ventures Team
Originally uploaded by joecar80

Open for Business - It's taken a month or so longer than planned but today we finally launched the New Ventures Team. I will still be riding two horses as Head of Business Information Systems too until we fill this position.
Head of New Ventures is in some ways a big change from from my previous role at SQA. But it builds on earlier work and the remit offers huge potential.

• To develop new partnerships with publishers, broadcasters, industry and providers of learning materials.
• To develop new partnerships with other organisations and awarding bodies that benefit the learners of Scotland
• To explore new ways of working in Scotland and Internationally that add value to our portfolio of services.

We hope to link engaging learning content to new dynamic ways of assessment and quality assurance and makes this I think one of the more exciting jobs in Scottish Education.
We already have a number of projects with a range of partners underway - but we are happy to explore opportunities for partnership in Scotland, UK or Overseas.
I am lucky to too have experienced support in Liam and Joan we are going to have a lot of fun as we take SQA into new places and Scottish education to new heights.

I am hoping we can contribute and make use of the growing Open Educational Resource movement and drive developments that benefit Scottish Learners and the global learning community.

Stop Motion with Wolf and Pig.

Have a few things to Blog about but coudn't resist. Expect to see advert made like this in next six months

Networked Student

I picked this up from @courosa on twitter part of my own personal learning network.
It is a super example of the way that learning and teaching will never be the same and how the world of work should be changing too

JISC Goodies

This could be coming to a school or college near you soon . BoB National is a shared off-air recording and media archive service which is available to BUFVC members holding an ERA+ license. This tv scheduling service allows your institution's staff and students to record programmes scheduled to be broadcast over the next seven days as well as retrieving programmes from the last seven days of recorded channels. Users may also search thousands of programmes stored in the growing archive.

The requester will receive the programme after broadcast as a Flash Video file they can watch in a web page – in the same way as i-player. BoB National stores the recorded TV and Radio programmes in the archive and they are held indefinitely for all users to access.

The archive currently offers thousands of TV and radio programmes covering all genres and that number is set to grow as more educational institutions join BoB National.

If you would like regular updates on JISC and the services available in Scotland you should subscribe to Newsfeed from the two Scottish Regional Support Centres in Scotland.

JISC09 Last Post Open Learning Resources

Another subject close to my heart..organisations and teachers need to get out there and share publically all your learning materials. Learners don't come to you for your notes they come to you for the human service experience. Let's give knowledge away free. If you open your resources you open your doors to new forms of partnership and working with communities locally and globally. JISC have mapped out a way forward on this.

JISC is about to publish a range of open learning materials . See JISC Open Educational Content:Pilot Phase for details. There are already a number of global initiatives.

Open University (UK) Open Content Initiative
Rice Connexions
Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
UNESCO Open Training Platform
MIT OCW
National Repository of Online Courses

The JISC materials will be released through JORUM (national repository). These will be open access learning materials in open formats with open licences. You can re-mix , re-edit and use in ways you need them.

I am about to do whole presentation . They are all available at http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2009/03/jiscconference09/programme.aspx . I was ambushed by Mike Coulter at end of day .. academics have been looking at elearning for a very long time statement haunts me a bit .. but there is some briliant global practice that needs to be adopted outside HE.

UK Scholarly Publishing and Open Access JISC09

This is close to my heart. The shorter the gap between real research and learning and teaching or any other endeavour the faster we can drive change. Most of these resources are too expensive for Colleges and schools at moment and if truth be told even some of the smaller HE establishments in UK -Academics are now looking at alternative publishing models that will open up resources for HE in more cost effective way - but will also open up resources to learners in other sectors.(maybe even to those who drive public policy too - in my experience few NDPBs or Gov Departments have direct access to this research) Social Returns of publically funded Resarch and Development are huge. 1.6 Billion spent through research in UK each year.

Commercial sector will benefit enormously from this too as they will get more direct access to the Science.

However institutions need to mandate self archiving and publising if this is to happen meaningfully - where it exists needs to be up to the researcher a local repository may not be meaningful for some research which is done at national or global level.

Charles Oppenheim
Academic publishing is an industry..created..peer reviewed..available through commercial journals .. subscription model for institutions. Institutions deal with managing these. Big cost savings in moving to new models of publishing.
There are different models.. worked through economic models
Toll Access, Open Access Publishing, Self Archiving
OA and SA models offer huge financial savings to system (order of 200 million)and wider social returns ( harder to quantify) There is now a JISC Report setting out benefits for system and for HEIs in moving to new model.

Hector MacQueen University of Edinburgh
Copyright is not a barrier to Open Access Publishing - google book settlement is shaping into a universal open access repoistory. Project Gutenberg, European Digital Libray, Amazon look inside service , Music and Art next ...

Gabriel

Theatre History. example. The Romans left britain and only 1100 years later were amphitheatres built again in London and professional theatre companies appeared. Theatre historians have difficulty in finding evidence of these early players and their tours around UK. Data was in very expensive books - data was in local authority records - researchers have been gathering this for last 40 years - now Somerset has been able to digitise this and make this and databases available free over the internet. Boom now in books about early english drama fed by this data set now being available (400 years later) There is also a database of early English play titles ( DEEP) . Most other collections are still subscription only and many researcher don't have access to these resources like EBO.

Jisc Conference day two JISC09

Last night -lots of discussion about data services and should these be national or local.. Feeling that lots of money is being spent on institutional service centres when money would be more economically spent on more national data centres.

Stalled this morning as I didn't have correct wi-fi password.

Sir Timothy O’Shea Principal of Edinburgh University and Chair of JISC

Aurora
Super Janet 6
On line learning and Teaching and bringing research closer to teaching
Collections and now national repositories and content creation and re-use
Biggest Access Federation in the World
Enterprise Wide Systems
Knowledge Transfer and Wealth Creation

British Universities and Films Council –bring out an i-player for education – BOB
New Services for Geographers launch too
And conference is on line for those who can’t come.

Prof Lizbeth Goodman Futurelab UK and Smartlab

I have seen Lizbeth's work before. If you look at one thing look at this presentation - this transformational work for people that happens to use technology. Start worrying about people not money or technology. Creating learning tools for learning Shows clips and talks over them - interactive CD Roms from Open University
I wonder if any of this could be repurposed for web ?
Dancers using animaton systems
Musicians children with learning difficuktues can learn faster if they learn music
People dancing with haptic devices motion and coolour tracking devices – all very magical
Creating sensory environments for learning – people can touch people virtually and fly when they can physically hardly move.
What is the colour of home – artists musics and dancers
All taking humans to new places and other dimensions
Trust and Hope Project programme – bio feedback activates characters
In Singapore created a fly through environment , learners created their own characters to move through this environment.
Stephen Hawking School in London – programme without technology which has informed interface project

Marketing corporates have developed a screen that would tell where your eyes look – hacked this – now used by people who can only move their eyes – now they can write and even play musical instruments using this tool.
Charity Safety Net – global for abused women – protection and micro enterprises including wearable games

Chicks2GO women in East London with special needs mapping out streets of London for Olympics for others with special needs.

Wheelies in second life – wheel chair disco

Lost and found – use mobile phones to find lost children instantly – in Brazil
Microsoft Boys and Girls Clubs if America – Club Tech Digital Arts Festival , Youthnet , Digital Art Set, Rock Set, - now coming to UK – five pilot sites in UK

Future Lab – bringing things about interfaces to future lab – Fizzees 8-12 year olds wrist device creature grows and nice if you are physically active

Mobi missions – camera phones and GPRS missions built and used by learners

Ends learner with no voice that technology has given voice – we need to give these people voices while they are here and there is time for them ... wow

Student Experience of Technology JISC09

A question and answer session on students experience in Higher Education with real students. Chaired by Editor of Guardian Education.



Ex Chair HEFCE ( HE Funding Council England)



Changing world - two years of people who are emmersed in Web2.0 - learners who spend more time on-line than watching TV. At least 70% of 13 year olds have a web presence. New forms of social interaction - much wider groups of friends. Attitudes may be changing learners expect to be more participants in the learning process and greater democratisation a feeling that they can take part and have a say - a more democratic view of learning. The students are generally more proficient than the staff.

The commercial world is providing the kit. Implications for pedagogy and assessement - turning tide on plagiarism for instance is like King Canute -we need new ways of asking questions. We need to encourage critical thinking and robust deep research.



Edinburgh University Persective



E-services - need to support - learning and teaching , socialising , suviving , administration, and researching. Students see this as a holistic whole- they expect on-line services to book student accommodation as well as learning and the rest. Could be hi-tech grannies and low tech 17 year olds. Intake is highly variable. Some students can be quite conservative what you do can't be experiments it actually has to improve the learning experience.



Technology still comes second to understanding your business - what are the obectives of your learning organisation.



Students now have access to primary sources that they never have had before - do staff and students and the system know how to fully exploit this. Need to think about value for money even in learing and teaching we can't keep adding more.



Glamour sales and after sales - youtube, facebook, itunes - might be big mismatch between what is out there and learners experience when they get to a particular department. Students want predicatability and level of service.

We need to share learning resources and systems across institutions to drive real value from a lot of this.



Northampton Example

Lecturers are changing their presentation styles - encourage learners to dig deeper to discourage cut and paste. We use plagiarism software - but to challenge learners to reference their sources properly. We use youtube and on-line video. We use Delicio.us.com and social bookmarking with cohorts of students - they add new references and help build course reference material. We use google docs and email rather than institutional one. We use text messaging around programme changes. E-Assessment working on policy and guidance across the institution. Accessibility is challenge too. Some students like video conferencing and will use this outwith normal working hours. Look at balance of on-line and printed teaching support materials.



Student Perspective

Third year languages student mature student- started off using friendsabroad.com to develop language skills -developed network of French friends who wanted help with their English. Then used live Mokka , Babel and other sites with online dictionaries and phrase translators - even come with virtual keyboards that can cope with French characters. Have now taken this informal learning and almost finished degree in French - personal learning network has played major part in this. This practice now been adopted by faculty

Jeff Haywood Vice Principal Edinburgh University Jisc09

Relationship of University to global economy is complex. We now expect students to move around - we reach out to them before they come and we do a lot of technogical mediation before they arrive on campus. When learners arrive they come into a cloud - they can use technology wherever they are on campus. Some universities are now trying to do this on campuses on other side of world which brings even more challenges.

We use virtual campuse in 2nd Life , itunes, facebook we build our reputation and deliver services in all of these spaces. We need support locally , nationally and internationally. Can staff work in distributed way across time zones ?

Interesting challenges in these areas :

• Digital humanities
• visualisation ,
• data storage curation and preservation

• process and content to mobile devices
• games and virtual worlds, haptic
• contribution and manipulation tools
• e-assessment

• global identity management
• security
• new digital library
• technology rich spaces

We need to move forward in each of these areas and JISC can help in number of these.

Lorcan Dempsey Chief Strategist OCLC Jisc09

We have built things on a large institutional scale. University Libraries meant building large local collections and to be good you had to have a large pile of good stuff. As transaction costs come down it becomes easier to find things and collaborate there is less need to pile things up locally.
It is also easier and cost effective to outsource things - we should all be asking what business are we in - as the cost of tranactions go down.

Amazon, E-Bay are all about managing large sets of users - mobilising them and connecting them
Customer Relationship Management, Infrastucture, Product Innovation can all be outsourced or changed.

Libraries - need to look at this - How we source manage new information services, online services, repositories , on-line access even physical space for collections and for study. We need to move to more customised and personal services.

Our users work on web scale not institutional scale - this is even beyond national scale that JISC has provided. What are the new information services - are they institutional , national or do we need global services. Do we manage research and learning materials at local level and source all other external materials. Most journals even backcopies beginning to go on line.
But a national scale repository would free up institutional time. Google Digitisation has revealed that Unversities may have a copy of the book but in many cases they don't own the book. Discovery and preservation at local level of special collections is variable.

What local value to we get from this at local level - podcasts, videos, business records , website

Institutional scale is no longer appropriate - we need national and collaborative solutions but we also need more supra-institutional services - global multiscaler - and we are still working through how we get there. Challenge to JISC how you add value by persuading institutions to stop doing so many things locally. 43 Institutions trying to get DSpace to work isn't best way forward.

Juliet Williams Jisc09

Innovate or die - we need to think unthinkable and look to our current crisis being the driver of our recovery. Social Enterprise can be driven by the technological revolution - there are new routes to market and new markets for products and services - opportunities too for new business models. Smaller Businesses will need to find new ways of partnering.
Education is key to economic competiveness but do we get good value for money - are young people really being prepared for employment and being given skills they need ?. Have we lost sight of what education is. Learning is not compelling enough , learning is a community activity and emancipating - we need culture of creativity and learning and enterprising individuals who can respond to new opportunities.

We need to abandon old pedagogies quickly and look at ways to stimulate creativity and innovation. We need to look at how we fund knowledge transfer and encourage learners to move out from University to lead their own businesses. New Zealand is great model of small country who have taken many organisations out on to the Web. SMEs can gain commercial advantage of using new technologies. In Cornwall new University partnership is working well with small creative companies to change the local economy. Educational establishments need to reach out and be prepared to take more risk at all levels. We need to rethink how we work with the community and commercial organisations.

Latest product an eco-surfboard - bio-degradable with higher performance than traditional oil based boards- about to be manufactured underlicence in number of locations from spin out company.

Higher Education in the Global Economy

I am at pre-conference session of JISC Conference in Edinburgh and I will be summarising sessions. Looking at technological changes and threats today. JISC look after educational infrastructure in Higher Education and their systems underpin Colleges and Schools in Scotland too. I am live blogging may need to come back to tidy this up.

Rashik Parmer Chief Technology Officer IBM
More than money being traded and different things being valued- carbon, IPR, other soft goods.
Moving from a world of data capture to how we unleish all the information to make smarter decisions - in maths, science , social science - new data visualisation tools.
Move towards service excellence - we need to think beyond 6 Sigma quality systems.
Information Cloud, Services Cloud , shared access to information and creation.
Security - How do we protect and manage data exchange.
Hybrid Transformation Systems - Moore's Law keeps going Petaflop Computer and Zitaflop on way supercomputing is will be able to condense Google infrastructure down to 2 or 3 racks in a server house shortly.

How do we inspire next generation to see opportunities in all of this.
We have staff around world working on same data sets.
How do we open up these data sets further - to help HE get access to the tools and datasets that we have. We need to be collaborative and unified to build value.
Shared services and infrastructure needs to move to include middleware and information services.

Challenge in UK we have JANET backbone but we have faced challenges to move passed this level of collaboration. Subject disciplines need to change to take into account service culture . IBM needs bright folk who understand service culture and can design services.

Extreme Sheep LED ART

One Man , His Dog and lots of disco sheep
Some people will get very "animated" about this ;-)

I used to use Herding Cats Video as warm up - may use this next time.