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In-bound Feeds
I have previously blogged on how it is possible to set up automatic data feeds into Blackboard modules using RSS (see http://one.swlacademicnetwork.ac.uk/etu/weblog/523.html). This involved using Feed2JS ( http://feed2js.org/) which basically generates some Javascript that can be cut and pasted into a Blackboard item.  I have previously used this method, for example, to publish news feeds from the BBC and THES and also blog feeds from our ELGG based social networking environment. 

I have subsequently looked at other tools such as RSSinclude.com (thanks Colin) which additionally provides a number of template options, e.g.:

   

This method can be effectively used to increase the channels by which students can contribute. RSS feeds can be created from external services such as Flickr, Youtube, Delicious and Twitter - from user accounts or based on search terms or tags.

As an example the following URL can be used to create a Flickr feed that returns public

photographs with the Tags 'kingston' and 'university':

http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?tags=kingston,university&format=rss_200

Feed2js and RSSinclude can also be used in conjunction with feed aggregators such as Yahoo Pipes. Also see the list that Feed2js provide (http://feed2js.org/index.php?s=help#multi).

Outbound feeds
Both the Learning Objects Blog and Podcast tools allow public RSS feeds. In the case of the blog tool just remember to set the option 'Enable an RSS Feed' when creating the blog, and in the case of Podcasts, select 'Manage Podcast' from the Control Panel and set visibility to 'Everyone, available to the public'.These feeds can then be accessed via a students personal environments, e.g. iGoogle. The following screenshot shows a blog and podcast feeds from Blackboard within iGoogle.

This posting is also available as an RSS feed from within Blackboard:

http://lms.kingston.ac.uk/webapps/lobj-journal-bb_bb60/blog/ADC1001/_1882910_1/index.rss

Today, Josh from WordWall delivered a presentation to the e-learning team of ADC on their audience response system (ARS) or electronic voting system (EVS).  It is slightly different from its competitors as PPVote or TurningPoint.  Of course it can do the straightforward MCQ questions on which students can vote with a clicker and deliver an outcome which can be used for discussion. But its main strength of WordWall is being more creative with the types of questions or better said quizzes. For example it will grasp the attention by solving as many equations as you can, order words in a sentence, brainstorm by texting words and indicate your opinion. This can be done individually or in a group. With their direct link to an online encyclopaedia the presentation can easily be livening up with additional images and or additional text. It strength is not only enhancing student attention during lectures as well as supporting deeper learning of the content by doing quizzes and games.

From the examples it becomes clear that WordWall has a strong background in secondary education and that HE is an area that they like to enter. The extended form of interaction you create with the WordWall ARS seems to be more suitable for small classes or tutorials than large groups. A second consideration is that WordWall is a separate software package and has almost no integration with PowerPoint with makes it harder to use during a normal lecture. Lastly because of all the functionality’s, it has a lot of settings and options to learn.

Nevertheless we could see opportunities using WordWall in HE, for example compared to its competitors, it seems slightly stronger or more attractive for surveys, opinions and brainstorms. The ARS seems to be suitable for tutorials. Or for example in the department of Education, were lectures use it as an example to enhance teaching with technology, and students take it on their traineeship as a teaching and learning tool.  

In all WordWall is a very nice example of educational technology, and worth following there development.

Kind regards,
Hendrik

I attended a virtual seminar on Tuesday this week on Phoebe. Phoebe is an online pedagogic planner developed by the Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning Unit at Oxford University and funded through the JISC Design for Learning programme.  This web-based tool is designed to help academics construct course designs (see http://phoebe-app.conted.ox.ac.uk/about/) and my reason for interest were two-fold:

 

• Supporting the MoRSE project team develop module designs that integrate learning activities focussed on personal technologies for students working  remotely from the institution.
• Assess whether Phoebe could be a useful staff development resource

 

As underlined in the presentation Phoebe is not resource development tool but solely a planning tool with a completed template being the output.  At a first glance the tool seems fairly simplistic being based around a pre-defined template that staff complete.  However there are a number of elements that increase the power and flexibility of the system well beyond that of simply a set of templates:

 

• Context specific guidance provided through a linked wiki, e.g. writing learning outcomes, designing learning activities.  For instance, the section on ‘What Technology Can I Use For...’ covers a range of technologies that can be incorporated into different activities including mobile technologies, wikis, blogs, podcasting, virtual worlds etc (see http://phoebe-guidance.conted.ox.ac.uk/wiki/PhoebeMapActivitiesToTechnologies)
• Beyond the default templates (including basic and standard) users can develop their own or re-use other shared and ’filled out’ templates.
• Templates are stored on the Phoebe system and can be shared with the community and adapted. Currently there are over 60 that are available to users and usefully most shared templates are populated with a module design
• Templates can be linked to alternative guidance resources on a field by field basis through a user editable URL link.  This allows a customised template to be developed using a range of different support resources.

I posed a question on edit rights to the Wiki but it was made clear that these rights were currently restricted to the development team.  However it was stated that the team would welcome suggestions and the point was made that template elements can be linked to user specified support resources.  It was also clear that the template and guidance resource could be used independently of each other.

There are a number of other tools available which were mentioned and which I was mostly aware of including :

 

• London Pedagogy Planner  http://www.wle.org.uk/d4l/
• Learning Design Support Environment https://sites.google.com/a/lkl.ac.uk/ldse/
• CompendiumLD http://compendiumld.open.ac.uk/

 

Overall I think Phoebe can a very useful staff development resource, especially with the ability to share designs across the community.  The downside as raised by one of the other participants is the reality of busy academics having the time to complete such templates, even the basic versions.  Perhaps the greatest potential is for its use in specific staff development events including possibly PG Cert programmes and also for staff wanting to browse for new ideas and approaches.

 

 
Tim Linsey (Timku)

 

 

A few of my thoughts stimulated by the Eduserv Symposium ‘Evolution or revolution: The Future of identity and access management for research ’ that I attended yesterday (see http://www.eduserv.org.uk/events/esym09).
Identity management is not an area that I profess to have expertise in, or work in directly.  However it does impact on me as a user and interests me for the following reasons:
- Our ongoing development of a social networking space ‘One Community’ across the 3 institutions of the South West London Academic Network (Swan).
- The multiple identities that students, academic staff and researchers have, at minimum normally including an institutional managed identity and one or more social web identities
- The growing number of learning activities that involve both institutionally hosted (or have legal agreements with external suppliers) technologies and third party social web tools, and all the inherent data protections issues etc.
I felt that Cameron Neylon in his presentation 'Oh, you're that Cameron Neylon: why effective identity management is critical to the development of open research’ (http://www.slideshare.net/CameronNeylon/oh-youre-that-cameron-neylon ) gave a good overview of the user issues with some potential solutions.  He raised the issue of confusion between identities and associated problems such as being associated with views and opinions that you may not agree with through to proper recognition for published works.  He also referred to a perceived increase in output 'measurement'  and that some funding organisations are interested in tracking funded research well after the funding has expired.  He further advocated openly available research data but in doing this identified  issues of trust and trace back linked with identity.  He felt that some kind of token based system might help verify identity and resolve these issues.
There was much talk of federated identity which I suppose really is the passing of identity information between trusted organisations allowing the user to authenticate to systems without multiple logins along perhaps with the provision of other information about role etc which could control access to services etc. Nate Klingenstein talking on ‘Opening up use-centric identity’ (http://www.slideshare.net/efsym/opening-up-usercentric-identity) discussed the divergence between enterprise-centric  federated systems (e.g. University systems) and user-centric federated systems (e.g. OpenID and Facebook Connect).  It was argued that currently Facebook Connect is dominating the user centric domain. Issues being faced were the potential dominance of a limited number of ‘identity’ providers, and the growth of the ‘button system’ where users click on the button of their preferred ‘identity provider’ rather than seeing the emergence of a true federated identity system.  The ideal would seem to be an open and unified federated identity system but certainly Nate had mixed views on whether this would emerge.
From my perspective the ideal of a unified federated identity system, or at least moves in this direction, could have a significant impact on how 3rd party read/write web tools are integrated into learning activities alongside internally hosted tools.  Maybe this is a process that help overcome some of the issues that we face with data protection, but I suspect only if the user has control over which parts of their identity are revealed.  I am also interested to see how these technologies develop in terms of mobile devices and whether location becomes an identity element?
Related to the above mention was made of the Eduserv project funded project (http://thisisme.reading.ac.uk/) 'This is me' led by Shirley Williams.  As part of this project resources have been produced to support students (an others) understanding of their digital identity and associated issues.

Yesterday I visit the Questionmark Breakfast Briefing in London. Questionmark Perception (QMP) invites all his clients once in a while to present a product overview and new developments. As always they have been a convenient host.
In the product overview I realised that we at Kingston University do not use all the features that Questionmark offers. We use the Blackboard Connector for our integration with Blackboard (StudySpace) and because of this we tent to use the Enterprise Manager less, with it we overlook the powerful reporting tools QMP offers.
The new version 5 will offers, as often in this kind of software product meetings, more accessibility, reliability, scalability and usability. And I must say the examples of accessibility with buttons to adjust the fond and background colour look extremely promising, something that is absent in both of our e-assessment platforms (Blackboard Test Manager and QMP) at the moment.
Another importantly development is that they will try to open-up there platform more to allow a better integration with other applications, for example with APIs and HR-XML for 3rd party tools.
Despite our difficulties in the past to get a good working Blackboard Connector (we are still working with the beta 4.4 version), they promised a lot of improvements for the Blackboard v9 Connector and a better integration with the Grade Centre.
An further nice development is a new question type, the scenario base question. It allows you to give a scenario or case on the left followed by couple of questions related to the case on the right. There was without doubt a demand for this question type.
Some of the developments were certainly driven by commercial relationships. They proudly presented their relationship with SAP the largest European software company for Enterprise Resource Planning. They demanded a language feature to deliver an assessment in at least 8 different languages on student demand. And so the Authoring Manger v5 will became extra bottoms to do so. I am not entirely sure if the language delivery functionality is useful for a HE context and it makes the Authoring Manager less intuitive to use.
Lastly they developed a new web base authoring environment Questionmark Live. It allows us to create question (five question types at the moment) online. Unfortunately there is no integration with the Authoring Manager or Enterprise Manager and you need to export the questions by Q-pack for further use. The tool is probably more useful in a multi-author environment than individual authoring, as is the case here at Kingston.
If you have any more questions please contact me at: H.vanderSluis@kingston.ac.uk
Kind regards,
Hendrik

I have just posted a short review of mobile phones and the functionalities available via even basic handsets and which may have potential to be integrated into learning activities (http://tinyurl.com/b6zwtz). This is part of the Mobilising Remote Student Engagement Project (http://morse.ac.uk)in collaboration with De Montfort University and is focussing on supporting students studying remotely from the institution, in particular on fieldtrips and placements.

The BETT (Originally British Education and Training Technology) show is referred to as the worlds largest educational technology event with over 600 stands and approximately 29,000 visitors.  I visited the show on Friday as I have done on and off over the last few years and my perception has always been that its significant focus is schools.  My reason for attending is to get an insight into the technologies (also furniture and infrastructure etc) being used or planned in schools by our future students, but also because many technologies are also appropriate to HE with a number of the suppliers that we use present.  What initially struck me was the number of stands exhibiting interactive whiteboards, electronic voting systems and netbooks, and wondered what this said about the integration of technologies in school learning.  It was certainly my perception that the number of voting systems exhibited has grown significantly since my last visit.  Over the course of the few hours I was there I only managed to look at a fraction of products, stands etc in meaningful way including:

Partnership for Schools (http://www.partnershipsforschools.org.uk/index.jsp) – Partnership for Schools is the agency that has been charged with delivering the Governments secondary school renewal programme ‘Building Schools for the Future’. ICT and physical design of learning spaces is writ large in this programme with statements such as “the development of real and virtual workspaces which help to make effective, personalised learning a reality for all students”.

Becta – (http://www.becta.org.uk/) Becta is the ‘Governments lead agency for the use of technology to improve education and training in this country’, working in particular with schools, local authorities and FE Colleges. They have launched a revised strategy entitled ‘Harnessing Technology: Next Generation Learning’ covering issues such as personalised learning, empowering learners and technology infrastructure to provide learners with anywhere, anytime access to resources. I picked up a copy of the Harnessing Technology for Next Generation Learning progress report (2009) (http://tinyurl.com/84nrax) and it provides some interesting statistics, e.g. 73% of all teachers regularly use interactive whiteboards, 50% of primary school pupils used a computer on their own during lessons, 84% of FE learners have access to college learning resources from outside the college whereas the figure for schools is around 10%. They do however make the point that while more learners are able to select from flexible learning options “few schools have relaxed restrictions to enable the more communicative, creative or collaborative ICT uses or practices associated with web 2.0 applications”.

Wordwall (http://wordwallweb.com/) - I liked their Wordpad handsets with a joypad type control in addition to the 'traditional' 0-9 buttons allowing the user to additionally move a personal cursor around the screen to select a graphical object.  In the small demonstration that I participated in each user was able to move their personal 'marker' around the screen to select a box containing a simple mathematical equation, with the second step to enter the answer to the equation with the ability to enter text (predictive text entry could be enabled) and numbers.

Turningpoint (http://www.turningtechnologies.com/) – Interested in the ability to set up a voting environment with multiple remote sites.
Digiscribble (www.scanningpens.co.uk) – a small clip device (a little smaller than a standard USB flash drive) that can be clipped to the top of a standard A4 pad or equivalent. When used in conjunction with the supplied adapted ink pen whatever is scribbled is digitised. The device can be used standalone to record handwriting, diagrams which can then be downloaded once connected to a PC. Alternatively it can be used while connected to a PC with any annotations displayed in real time on screen.

O2 xDA Flint (http://mediacentre.o2.co.uk/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=434&NewsAr) – Handheld networked device being targeted at education. Interesting device with keyboard and a ‘rugged’ version that could be suitable for fieldwork

I did also glance at stands exhibiting interactive tables, various types of robots, weather stations etc, music hardware and software – fascinating!

Overall my visit left me with the view that we cannot be complacent about both the rate of development and change in learning and its support in schools and colleges and of the experiences and expectations of these potential HE students.

I attended The JISC Learners’ Experiences of e-Learning Yesterday in Birmingham, and it was certainly worth the crowded and minimally heated train journey.  This focussed on the findings from phase 2 of the programme and provided an overview of some of the methodologies used (The publication ‘In Their Own Words’ synthesises the outcomes from Phase 1).  The projects, associated resources and workshop materials can be accessed via https://mw.brookes.ac.uk/display/JISCle2/Home

The methods session was of particular interest as we are looking at using some of these approaches in our KU/DMU Morse project.  Specific methods looked were Technologies Card Sort, Diary Prompts and Interview Plus.  Points made included:

• Formal student feedback sessions / surveys are seen as being representative but in fact students often do not have the opportunity to provide true feedback on their experiences.
• Questions used to elicit feedback can often be staff centred and that the categories used may not be the right ones.
• Learners are often not good at reflecting, at least not without practice.

Although I had some knowledge of Interview Plus it was useful to try the approach out if even very briefly. Basically the one-to-one interview focuses on a particular artefact that the student is working on or has produced, e.g. could be something as simple as a digital photograph.  The interviewer then gradually asks the student more detailed questions about the artefact on how, why etc and elicits from the responses the students attitudes and practices re the technology.  Some positive discussion took place about this approach and how it can be used to support reflection.  The Diary prompt method was also seen as a useful approach in supporting reflective responses.

Some of the messages from the various phase 2 projects included:

• Some sophisticated learners effectively integrating technologies to enhance learning but many counter stories
  
• Many learners looking to the tutor to introduce / provide guidance on the use of technologies for use in learning.  Some discussion later on about Induction practices at different institutions.
• Students struggle with transition – loss of familiar processes, over confidence etc
• Students who had to master assistive technologies tended to be agile learners in terms of integrating new technologies etc.
• Digital divide becoming narrower but deeper

Some discussion over ‘learners maturing in their studies’ Mark S. raised the question ‘what do we mean by ‘mature’? – do we mean from a teachers perspective, drumming out good practice, narrowing the way we work.  However felt that it was more ‘maturing in their own practice’

I liked the idea of Lexdis database (http://www.lexdis.ecs.soton.ac.uk/) of learning strategies contributed to by students.

Nice presentation from the E4L project (I somehow did not manage to note down the name of the speaker or the student contributor).  Some of their provisional findings echoed earlier points e.g. they found that many learners did not deviate from tutor recommended technologies for learning activities, though will listen to peers when it concerned social activities. Some great comments from one of the student participants – the importance of the ‘Kitkat’ incentive but then went on to describe how the tutor advised her on particular digital resources to use and how this then stimulated her in  branching out in terms of networking and other resources (language resources in her case – Friendsabroad.com, Livemocha, Babbel). She described how she watched videos of French cookery programmes etc to improve her language skills -  by listening to the language associated with a series of identifiable actions she was able to extend her comprehension.

 The E4L video clip resource (http://wb2.northampton.ac.uk/e4l/) was presented with 90+ clips of students describing their experiences with technologies – classified by some interesting themes such as lightbulb and darklight. Looks an interesting resource which I will spend a little time looking through.

Overall a good balance of activities and I will look to see if we can include some of them in some of our staff development events.

Okay I will try and stop posting about RSS feeds for the time being - but just one more..

We have been trialling the use of RSS in Studyspace. The current version of Blackboard has a tool for placing RSS feeds on the main 'My Home' page. As a result we have made a number of optional modules available that staff and students can use to customise this page including feeds from a number of news and broadcast channels, including this 'Ed Tech Updates' blog. If you want to try them out navigate to the Blackboard/Studyspace 'My Home' page and then click on the 'modify Content' button towards the top right of the screen. Select the feeds that you would like to use (e.g. BBC, Guardian, Times, Telegraph, FT, THES) and click Submit at the bottom of the page.

Perhaps more useful would be for staff and students to be able to select and publish their own feeds. There are of course many tools on the web that enable you to do this such as aggregator tools e.g. http://www.Pageflakes.com. One Community allows the publication of RSS feeds and has a basic aggregator tool (see the Resources tab). Also although Studyspace/Blackboard does not have direct support for RSS feeds within modules it is still possible to do including feeding One Community blogs into Studyspace. This can be done through the free web tool Feed2JS ( http://feed2js.org/ ). The process is very straightforward but see the end of this post for details.

Yahoo Pipes (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/)is another very useful web based toolkit that allows RSS feeds to be merged and filtered and then fed into One Community or Studyspace. The site has library of customised pipes that have shared by other users.

Geocoded RSS feeds provide another dimension but perhaps another day...


Using Feed2js with Blackboard
Visit the Feed2js website and click on the Build tab. Enter the RSS feed address and click on the preview button to check the feed is working correctly. There are also a number of other options that can be adjusted and these change the way the feed is displayed. I would recommend leaving these alone until you have tried it out. Click on Generate Javascript. The 'Javascript' will then be displayed in a text box. Copy all of the text, and then from within the Blackboard Control Panel enter a content area and click on Add Item. Give the item a name and then in the textbox button menu click on the button. Paste in the text and then click on the submit button. This should result in the RSS feed being displayed. Warning: Do not try editing the feed in Blackboard once it has been created or you may need to start again.

Following on from my previous post the following is an image of an RSS feed from One Community displayed on a mobile phone. By selecting a given title the full text can be displayed.