A dog to give you a different perspective on power

We have just bought ourselves a dog. He is from the compound, but does not seem to have suffered too many trauma's. I will not bore all of you with all the details, it seems to be a mix with a lot of Wetterhoun. The one thing that struck me, as a first time dog owner, is the extreme relationship you build up with a dog. A dog requires a strict and straight alpha male boss. In return you receive extreme trust and obedience. Although there are many parallels in human relations the extent in which this holds true surprised me. This is not something I had picked up by just reading a book, but I am picking up by first hand experience.

Slight case of Mountain Sickness

Some suffer from home sickness, but I suffer from the opposite. After a great holiday in the Pyrenees it is not always easy to return to your desk and get on with every day life. As a happy reminder this is the definite pinnacle of my hols. A scramble up the Gran Encantat, one of the two peaks which makes up Els Encantats. We didn't make it to the top as the route became rather steep and exposed without decent points to fix a rope. This is the view down between our legs looking down on the lower ridges.

Second life lunch

This is a bit late, but I have been off on holiday and rather busy starting up the new year. So, better late than never, a report on a lunch session on Second Life: What is it and how could you use it in your teaching.... It took place at Utrecht University on the 12th of July.



For me the most interesting question raised was: How can you use Second Life in your education and what are the benefits. I did not really hear a satisfactory answer. I can imagine a virtual world being useful if you wish students to learn matter in which the 3D aspect is important (design, architecture, etc) and the freedom offered to create (impossible) structures.
The social aspect could be valuable but Second Life still appears to be more suited to 1 on 1, or 1 on few meetings. Teaching a large group requires keeping the group together. A humorous anecdote was the example in which a teacher kept walking off to a different place. Students which were not actively following the session would be left standing alone while the rest moved on. Second Life still is a little cumbersome at times and it is not always easy to find your way about.
Writing this I do realise that I am (intentionally) describing the use of a virtual world in teaching rather than learning. Learning is a process which can be a lot less structured, less dictated and will often be much more individual. This is something which could be done in Second Life.
A final remark concerns the number of users in Second Life. The Linden Labs company used to boast a large number (millions) of users in Second Life. In practice the number of regular visitors is a lot less. This only appears to be a few tenthousands, so it is not always as huge a buzz as it appeared to be at first.

In search of a new colleague

My direct colleague has just received a great job offer, so we are now looking for a new colleague at short notice. You can find the job description at: http://studion.fss.uu.nl/Organisatie/vacature_ondersteuner_studion.pdf. Please note: this is in Dutch as the applicant will also be expected to speak Dutch.

Website Onderwijsdagen is now online

The website for the Onderwijsdagen is now online. The theme is the great tug of war between what is on offer and what really is demanded by teachers and students. There are great new pedagogical models out there describing whole new approaches to learning, but teachers and students are not always ready to adapt these new approaches and roles. And what is true of the beautiful vista's promised by using ict in your education? Is learning still not encouraged by a real life motivating teacher who is an inspiring subject matter expert? These are questions we want to address at this conference for ict in higher education in the Netherlands. We aim to match demand and what's on offer.

You can find the website at: http://owd2007.surf.nl/owd2007/ (only in Dutch I'm afraid).

World of Warcraft in a course

Every 8 weeks or so all the coordinators from the different departments at Utrecht University meet up and discuss the latest developments. Today we had Harald Warmelink on a visit (now just started a PhD in Delft). He was studying Multimedia before and attended a course which was taught in the massive multiplayer role playing game World of Warcraft. It was not only in WOW but also about WOW. Marinka Copier (the teacher) required the students to perform all sorts of tasks from simple to complex, from individual to group effort. The final assignment was to research an aspect of World of Warcraft. All the separate chapters have been added together to form a book, which can be found (hidden between other articles) at: http://sybil.nl/2007/content/category/4/19/27/

You can view Harald's presentation below:

Blackboard usergroup meeting: portal the Wageningen example

Last Friday I missed the Blackboard usergroup meeting on portals. One solution was specially relevant for Utrecht: the use of a Sharepoint portal linked to Blackboard for the courses. Reading Willem van Valkenburg's description of their session (in Dutch I'm afraid) I am quite impressed. It sounds well thought out: I think it would be wise to pay Wageningen university a visit.

Twente has issued its Sakai report...

It is now public: the report on the examination whether Sakai could be a viable option for the University of Twente is now public. It can be found at: http://www.utwente.nl/elo/news/cbus_english_final/

There are a number of notable outcomes which are relevant for Utrecht University (which will also have to answer the same question in the coming year.) From the technical perspective it is interesting to note that it has been designed to be integrated in a Service Oriented Architecture, though this will naturally take some effort (as all integrations will). It should support various pedagogical scenario's although I do feel it has been designed for a teacher based style of learning (as most, if not all VLEs are at present). The one issue in Twente at the moment appears to be rooted in the Functional analysis/Educational use. There are still issues regarding usability and user experience which need to be addressed.

A very damp yet enjoyable morris weekend

I have returned (and recovered) from a very fun Morris weekend organised by Fox Morris in Bretforton (of all places). It was my first visit to the Cotswolds, I must say: they are very quaint. It was quite a change to be surrounded by mixed sides almost all dancing Border morris. I have never seen so many Blacked up faces in one spot. Amongst others there were: Foxs morris, Stone the Crows, Exmoor, Pink bunnies 'from a place warmer than here'. It was a shame the weather was rather lousy but otherwise it was very enjoyable.

Here a video compilation of all the various teams in action, and a show of how to rip your pants...

Clustrmap on my blog

As a true geographer I am always intrigued where my visitors are coming from. On Arina Teemu's blog I found the Clustrmap badge, so I simply had to add this to my list of badges.... So now I hope they come from afar ;-)

Getting an other forum into Sakai

Still want to use good old phpBB? It has been ported to Java (and is now called JForum) and can be used in Sakai. It is almost strange to see an very well known interface in a completely different package. Sadly it does not support nested replies but works on a chronological ordering.

LaGuardia Portfolio

LaGuardia are now running a portfolio in another system (based around Blackboard) and were kind enough to come and present their findings at the Sakai user conference.
It was fascinating to hear about their vision on using the ePortfolio as a tool for empowerment for the students in Queens, NYC. They are from a very specific background and this is a tool to turn them into digital authors in a world dominated by white working class authors. It is very clearly a showcase portfolio including written papers and sometimes even reflections on these papers. The visual aspects are very important to give a feeling of ownership. Students are being used as ePortfolio consultants to help each other. In ePortfolio classes students are very satisfied with Critical thinking, collaborative learning, creative writing.
All in all a very inspiring session showing a very interesting application of a portfolio.

LAMS V2 and Sakai

Many interesting new options in LAMS V2, shame James Dalziel couldn't make it in person. One interesting change is the change in approach allowing for a combination of online and offline activities. Reports and materials used in offline activities can be included in the LAMS flow of activities. Export to portfolio is possible: this simply produces a zip package with html report of activities. Branching and conditionality is coming up in V2.1.
Technically: service based architecture which will allow it to work with various VLEs. Gradebook is not integrated yet, but there are looking at it. There is a new more complex option they are looking at: dragging and dropping Sakai tools in the LAMS authoring environment.
They have set up a LAMS community for sharing sequences and rate and comment on each other's sequences.

Learning styles in Sakai and the OCWtool

I just visited a rapid session covering learning styles theory, do have a look at the powerpoint, there are some slides there which argue for recording lectures. (By the way: the session was being recorded with UvA's Mediasite recording set).
Using control theory address the following demands that students have:
- Belonging
- Freedom
- Power
- Fun
Also start them off and show them around the course (interesting point for addressing some of the Camtools issues). Let students help each other.

Referred to Howard Gardner's theory: 8 intelligences.
They (Claremont College) used an authoring tool (Softchalk, not free, is cheap) to create scorm packages which were mediarich and interactive and were imported into Sakai (and could also have been imported into Bb or WebCT). They have also tried Melete.

If you wish students to be able to follow the course in their own manner, change the teacher centred design: you can at least offer a tool in which a student can track their progress and add what they have found and used in the way of course materials/tests, etc. perhaps based around the course goals...

Sadly here again bad news about the Sakai interface: it is not easy to navigate and use and non-intuitive. The basic UI is lousy! It does make me wonder what the RSmart interface looks like. Teachers claim: Bb is easiest, WebCT next and Sakai figures at bottom of popularity list...
Interestingly there was also a call for a student based rather than a teacher based VLE.

Evaluation tool in Sakai

The University of Tubingen is using an evaluation tool built by the company Ostrakon. It offers the opportunity to evaluate the data over various courses, teachers, questions etc... This tool offers all the advantages of a separate evaluation tool over various courses. It was interesting because they are working on integrating it in Sakai.
By the way, it was quite a relief to see that a number of the tips for a good evaluation approach are already in use at Utrecht.

Tools in Sakai

Unicon is a commercial partner of Sakai and showed off its new Auto Submit tool. This just goes to show that commercial partners are profitting from the Sakai tools and producing new variations (comparable to the Building Blocks in Bb).
The grade book has been improved on various aspects, one of the interesting options is the option to be able to adjust the standard download of the Grade Book (once off, you need a Java programmer to do it for your institution). More good news in the release 2.5: uploading grades, grading by sections in the course, student view of the grade book and other small improvements.

Sakai and OSP

You can run Sakai and you get OSP for free, but this is not enough to get your students able to enter a portfolio. As an admin you first have to design the forms which need to be used. Bas Kuiper from the UvA gave a presentation on this...
OSP offers the facility of free form or template presentations. When creating an template based protfolio you need to create an XSD form, which can be done using XSDweaver (see earlier post on this blog) do not use spaces in xml element names! You then use the xsd as a basis for a form in Sakai. Get this right before you start, once in use this can be difficult to change. Now you can build the portfolio template, defining which fields you want added to the template. Add a stylesheet.
So you see lots it does require some gobbledeegoock. Think in terms of xsd, xml, xsl, xslt, xalan... This something only the administrator has to worry about, the students get a simple interface.

In simple terms: the students get straightforward forms to fill in and OSP will generate a series of html pages. For more information have a look at:
http://osportfolio.org

Sakai user conference, starting up

I am visiting the Sakai User conference which is just around the corner in Amsterdam this year. It is a great opportunity to view what is happening around Sakai. I just visited a session by Cambridge presenting their Camtools. It was a very interesting session though most of their findings where not specific to Sakai but more generally related to the use of a VLE in a teacher training course. One fascinating reflection was offered by a student who claimed to be a digital native: a member of the search generation: 'So what's this breadcrumb bar? I want to search in the whole system rather than first have to understand the hierarchy. I do not want to put my resources in a closed system which I can not access next year.'

I just picked up on the end of a presentation of Syracuse on using Proficiencies in the courses. It was interesting to hear of an institution outside of the Netherlands who is also thinking in these terms ;-) A very valid remark was the question: who should design the Rubrick and how impelling should it be? Or would you rather offer the teacher the freedom to develop their own. Interesting to see that you can link proficiencies to specific activities (e.g. assignment) in a course section.

Onderwijsrepository workshop

I am waiting for a harvest of the Repository of Learning materials into the Lorenet database, so I have some time to spare ;-) I am at a workshop at Surfnet presenting their new repository service. They have chosen to use Fedora as their repository service. They have chosen a really straightforward understandable page to enter all the required metadata. I must say it looks very clear, the descriptions are obvious, this is something I could confront my teachers with. On the other hand: I would rather not confront them with this information... They also offer the option not to include the actual file but only a link to the learning asset. This gives us the opportunity to refer to streaming media files on their server or rich media assets which consist of various types of content combined.
I do believe it would be worth while to offer teaching staff the opportunity to search for learning materials in the VLE and add these to their course with only one click.

Puzzling on for the Onderwijsdagen

I have been asked for the Programme Committee for the Onderwijsdagen. This is the large annual conference for ICT in higher education in The Netherlands, organised by SURF foundation. To give you an idea: this was last year's website: http://owd2006.surf.nl/owd2006/ This year the conference will be on the 13th and 14th of November.
I am filling in the tracks: Learning (learning theories in practice at the academic and professional universities in The Netherlands) and Social Software. I am not going to reveal our theme yet though ;-) I was just wondering if somebody has got some good suggestions we can incorporate in the programme...