Transitioning - a liminal space

 

Navigating the landscape - photo by @warwicklanguage CC BY SA

The academic year 2024 has just started. Not for me though. For me this is the third year of retirement and I am still in the process of transitioning from the professional me to the personal me - identities which have been enmeshed for so long it is tricky to navigate. When I read this post from Alastair Creelman, I was reminded that I need to continue to work on my navigation skills. I always found his blog really helpful and I felt rather sad to read that he would no longer be posting, although I fully understand and respect his reasons. I tried to add a comment to reflect how important his thoughts have been along the way but sadly it did not appear. So if you read this Alastair please know I am grateful for your open sharing and for how you helped me. 

Another blog post which influenced my own thoughts on transitioning came from another open hero of mine, Martin Weller. This post  is so significant as it captures the ongoing challenges of our time and reminds me of the importance of fighting for open practices. This has been an aspect of my professional life which transcends the "employment" phase and is deeply embedded in my personal psyche. I have reflected often as to whether, post retirement, I should continue to research and publish. I am still in two minds on this. I don't lack things to do to be honest!

There is one area of openness however where I feel progress is not where it needs to be yet and where I can hopefully continue to be of use. It is the area of open recognition. I think I find this so important because it goes to the very heart of my commitment to self determination (both political and psychological). The technical mechanisms include ownership and curation of an eportfolio and collection and curation of open badges. For me these tools have so many uses:

• fostering community belonging and pathways to self development
• offering recognition and encouragement in online fluency
• supporting creative activity in assessment and knowledge creation
• providing safe spaces for experimentation and individuality

Life in the age of AI will bring bigger challenges and some temptations which we must review critically. Spoiler alert: Open AI - it is NOT Open, nor is it Intelligent. This is an age which must relish in the nature of the human, must celebrate our creativity and diverse intelligences. Academia and our educational instutions must embrace the opportunity to be on the right side of history. Money and league tables must matter less; values and integrity must dominate your futures. 

I can see my next steps more clearly now. Funny how blogging helps. 

Demystifying Open

 

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

I am delighted to see more educators engaging with OpenEducation or at least taking a greater interest in things "open" but I think it would be helpful to have a sort of beginner's guide to the many forms of open which are relevant to educators. I do not profess to be an expert in all things open but, as chair of the Open Education Special Interest Group and as an open education practitioner, I feel I could contribute a little to demystifying some of the terminology which comes under the banner "open". Here goes. 

Open Access:

Probably the first term most academics engage with as it relates to academic publishing. Essentially this is a category of publication which is accessible to anyone rather than being restricted to those who are registered with a university. Some publishers require APCs (article processing fees) in order to make publications available to a wider public. For more detail see Jisc's useful guide.  Librarians are often experts in this area. 

Open Source:

A term that applies to computer software and how the coding has been created. Open source software is usually created by a community and the source code is shared openly so that developers can build on it. Contributors to open source are not always paid, some do the work as a passion project. There are many examples of open source software which practitioners may encounter such as Moodle, H5P and others. Here's a more in depth article which explains why open source is helpful for teachers and learners.  

Open Educational Resources:

Often referred to as OERs, these are resources which are shared openly on the internet usually under a Creative Commons licence. UNESCO provides information here about the origins and place of OERs in education.  Many practitioners and institutions create OER as part of a mission to broaden access to learning, such as these from the University of Edinburgh.  Practitioners often share their own resources, known as Little OER (Weller,M) through sites such as Slideshare or social media free of charge, expressing their sharing preferences through a Creative Commons licence. 

Open badges:

Open badges are digital artefacts which can be created and issued to recognise participation or activity according to the criteria defined by a badge issuer. They are made up of a digital image which has hard coded data "baked in". Open Badge platforms build on a shared standard which enables portability of badge display for earners and, when used in a learning context, can allow the creation of an ecosystem of badges to support educational aims. Here's the handy badge wiki site to find out more. 

Open educational practice (or praxis):

OEP, or the act of working openly as an educator, may include creating and sharing OER, using social media to connect and collaborate with learners or other practitioners online, maintaining a digital profile which is visible to anyone online and curating digital resources. This is an emerging activity which is described in more detail here (Cronin,C) and is clearly connected with achieving the aims of open education. 

There are other "open..." terms in use out there - for example open data, open pedagogy but these are related to the ones mentioned above so I think this may be enough for a primer! However, here are some additional resources  should you wish to know more. 

An introduction to Open Educational Resources and Open Licensing. 

Open Education Policy Hub

The OER world map. 

The recent OERxDomains21 conference has many recordings and resources available openly as part of the #OpenCovid4Ed pledge. 

Open Education is a route to addressing the many inequalities suffered by our populations around the world which have only deepened during the pandemic. 

EuroCALL 2019: Critically open - designing for learning with your eyes open.

How do you choose your digital tools?

This coming week I will ask this question to those attending EuroCALL2019 in Louvain La Neuve, Belgium. Their input will update the word cloud above. I am interested to find out what or who influences our tool selection - do we use what we know? what we are told to use in our institution? what we have heard about from others?  When do we change tools? Does student interest or advocacy play a part? Are we aware of how some tool choices may negatively impact on student engagement? Do we think about whether a resource created using for example an authoring tool may not be accessible to some students? Perhaps we have limited choice.

I hope my presentation gives rise to discussion about how we can ask better questions when designing for learning in digital environments.

A favourite resource from Future Teacher 3.0 UK on this subject is available here.

You see sadly there is little training for web developers into the accessibility needs of those using learning resources, little awareness amongst learning designers and practitioners of the importance of accessibility and therefore the online resources which have been assumed to help support learning can sometimes just further marginalise  learners. Increasingly as the technology gets more complex, more "magical" thanks to algorithms and artificial intelligence we understand less of what is going on inside the black box. I believe that if we use digital tools we need to ask better questions, to uncover some of what is hidden from us. We need to use and promote critical digital literacy

I have been curating some of the conversations on twitter which relate to #criticaldigilit. I hope you find them useful.

Sustaining teaching through little OER

Image: Open CC BY 2.0 on Flickr by Fatimah Fatih

Soon I will be presenting on the sustainability of teaching and recent months have seen lots of talk of austerity, business models for public good which have all been relevant to my thinking. I have been curating a pearltree to capture the many facets of the discussions and engaging with various individuals about open educational practice or practices. There is an issue of definition which makes it tricky for practitioners in education to see the point of working in the open. The concern is there though.

Thanks for advocating for languages! Some of us language teachers worry about our future! @RickSmithShow @BadassTeachersA https://t.co/pv2FVrtOq0

— Amy Lenord (@alenord) February 28, 2017

For too long, teachers have been disempowered by an education system that is controlled by politicians who know nothing of how to inspire and lead young people. The barriers to professionalism and the confidence to create have to be removed. This suggestion moved me to creation!

@OERCommons @Bali_Maha ¿How about an open textbook on how to teach without textbooks?

— Mark Johnstone (@mcjsa) March 5, 2017

So how do I break free from teaching a coursebook which students cannot afford and reclaim my confidence in guiding students to the necessary competence in my subject? Well, here's my textbook creator guide (slightly tongue in cheek but you'll get the point when you take a look) 

Just do it - practice openly and others will help to improve and remix. Join your community and surface what matters through little OER.

#BYOD4L: Thoughts on curation

To curate 

When I checked the verb I was intrigued by the connections. Curare in Latin to to take care of, from cura (care) is clearly linked. We curate objects we care about, arranging them so that they are perhaps displayed effectively to please you or the others you share them with. Above is a display of my son's work put together (curated, even) by Glasshouse College and showing the skills he acquired during one year of his college life. The above is a digital curation of this curation, displayed by a proud mum on my flickr channel. 

Today I'm thinking about what I curate, why and where and by returning to the origin of the word I have realised some things I do which I had not really thought of as curation before. At one level I digitally curate resources for my research and my areas of interest. This started with bookmarking websites many years ago, but I realise that I rarely do that any longer. Bookmarks soon become unreliable and lost in their folders. Simply no longer practical. I moved on to Diigo where I can co-curate with others publicly and Delicious where again the social aspect helped me find new connections. A further change then arose as my online presence increased, I started using Pearltrees finding the easy interface practical as it is easy to share and to create teams but I am almost at the limit of my free account already. Scoop.it is another tool I rely on for connecting through curation. This shift from the personal to the public has been helpful in my work especially as it enables me to join like-minded collections from around the world. Currently I am putting together a curation linked to my paper for #OER17 because I know that those listening can browse and see a range of perspectives on my topic of the sustainability of teaching. We will thus be able to have a useful conversation and meanwhile I can keep evolving my ideas prior to the session. 

At another level, I realise that my most useful tool for curation is my google account. I've never thought of this as curation, it's more like the central pot from which I can draw material to curate and reflect on. So perhaps it is curation once removed. By default the contents are private, I make my conference notes, slides forms and docs there, my phone photos back up directly to it, instantly available to share and use whenever needed.  My blogs are also forms of curation for a specific purpose, bringing resources together and giving me space to think more deeply about them. The ALTC blog (which I work on as a co-editor) provides a way of curating the many voices of the community, helping to highlight themes which are timely and relevant. There is so much out there and not enough time to trawl through it all so finding trustworthy curators really helps. 

Curation is how I capture the things I care about and how I find others with similar interests and values. 

Weaving for peace

Image: Lucky charm 1 paper weaving

by Shannon Sinclair CC BY ND 2.0

I am not talented in an artistic sense. My secondary school art teacher took a dim view of my attempts to create a homework that scored anything above 7/10 and I quickly abandoned any attempt to improve after a brief struggle to convince her that my "gift" needed to be nurtured. However, I have a love of art and I derive great pleasure from the appreciation of the talent of others and the natural beauty I see around me in the world. I do maintain a passion for creativity which, in younger days took the form of poetry writing and singing (I thank a great English teacher for his encouragement). 

Once I was working as a teacher myself, I started to derive pleasure from creating activities and designing learning materials for my students. This interest has grown and mutated since the advent of digital media. I started in the late 1980's to devise web tours and treasure hunts, use databases as a resource for realistic oral role plays and I enjoyed how the use of new media disrupted the usual classroom dynamic and helped different students shine. Of course, much has changed since then - CD-ROMs, MP3 players, YouTube, WYSIWYGs and HTML5 have revolutionised how we create. Most recently of course digital communication tools such as smart phones have helped us to connect and interact online more easily, for better or worse. 

This has been the background for me finding a new creative space. Over the past 10 years I have gradually increased my online presence as part of my professional life. Having taught myself a little HTML many years ago, I realised that websites are rather like tapestries. The beautiful appearance of a page is the result of lots of knots and threads behind the scenes, a good deal of imagination and craft goes in to the finished product - if indeed it is ever finished. When you make online you enjoy a medium that offers lots of possibilities as long as you understand your purpose. Rather like the beautiful piece of weaving above, the various aspects of my digital presence: personal websites; twitter/instagram accounts; open resources shared through various repositories such as slideshare, XTlearn; video accounts and more have to be woven together in order to reveal all the facets of my work. I seem to have arrived at a place where my "next steps" are increasingly about weaving together the various threads of my digital creation. I worry about the web needing to remain this open canvas, a democratic space where all can participate, not one "owned" by states or multinationals who seek only to exploit or control the voice of users. My digital threads are multi-coloured but when they come together they form a coherent self portrait of an educator who will always value the spirit of the artist, who nurtures talent, openness and creativity whatever the circumstances. We can use our creativity for good or evil, I choose to support a positive vision of global human endeavour. I weave for peace. 

My thanks go to Martin Weller who commented on my weaving skills after this blog post which in turn inspired me to practice more!

Thriving in challenging environments

This wildflower roundabout delights me every time I drive into work. In the midst of the traffic it brightens the journey with its chaotic flurry of colours, enhancing the rather sterile brand new road layout. Don't get me wrong, great improvements have been made to the access to campus since work was completed on Gibbet Hill Road, giving better bus access and making the area safer for pedestrians. All is neatly landscaped but this wildflower area is a beautiful contrast and reminds me of nature's resilience even in highly manicured spaces. Every form of life here brings value, attracting wildlife and increasing eco-diversity on campus. 

So to my thoughts on the final stages of our WIHEA project. This project has been a form of wildflower island. participants have had freedom to grow their thoughts and share them safely and they have rewarded the project with a wide range of ideas and reflections. I have been gathering these and reflecting on them in the light of existing and previous work in order to communicate our trajectory, our "next steps". It has been a great privilege to work with our students and appreciate the natural beauty that comes from empowering individuals to explore as part of a shared goal to enrich our environment for all. 

Speak up!

When I first started researching tools for bringing my voice into online environments it seemed clear to me that this would be beneficial for those wishing to improve their language skills. I quickly discovered that recording your own voice was very challenging for some, even if they were more than happy to listen to others who were less anxious.

My dissertation suggested that there was a "double hit" in using voice recording software with learners of language - the anxiety could be greater as the learners can be particularly concerned about matters such as pronunciation and error. For this reason such tasks need to be carefully designed and supported. Sometimes is it better if they are private or restricted whilst the learners gain confidence. I am sharing with you here an open gallery of Voicethreads. Palons! is for the Clavier project, Playtime for the huge rhizomatic community to share. 

Therre's nothing quite like your voice for connecting you to others. 

Licence to kill!

A recent visit to Bilbao led me to reflect on digital creation and ownership. I will briefly describe the two experiences that triggered this post. The image above is a photo taken during my visit to the Guggenheim museum. As I wandered around looking at the Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibit on the top floor I used my phone to capture some of the quotations on the wall. A friend meanwhile captured the impressive light and surfaces of this beautiful building. We were not prevented from doing so. That is until I turned my phone towards one of the artworks and was abruptly chided "no photos por favor". Fair enough, I thought, maybe the flash could damage the artwork. Later, having visited the fan shop for Athletico Bilbao in the old town to take home a souvenir for my son, I asked if I could take a picture of the shop's interior to share with him. Again came the "no photos" reply. 

I was left puzzling the principles behind these rules. Both spaces are public spaces, they clearly want to attract visitors. Both will happily take our money and benefit from our patronage. Our reported experiences (as seen on sites such as Trip Advisor) can influence other potential visitors and thus affect their "brand". It is normal these days for us to capture snapshots of our experiences to share on social media. Perhaps such businesses could better communicate what they consider to be acceptable use of technology on their premesis? 

Digital activity has made everyone a reviewer or reviewee. Creating and sharing digital capture allows individuals to express their unique take on the world, capturing a perspective that is personal and original. In the same way Basquiat's self expression came to promenance on the streets of New York, ours resides on social websites such as Instagram, evidencing how our experiences shape our lives. Businesses are in some cases claiming ownership of such experiences, the more progressive of them recognise that visitor impressions are powerful and encourage posting to their own social pages. 

Using legislation, policies and rules to limit the rights of others to experience and portray their world without good reason is abhorrent to me. I believe it is contrary to web culture, a domain where equity and freedom of speech is currently a defining principle. I believe Basquiat would have felt the same way had he lived long enough to experience the rise of the web. He clearly felt that self expression through art connected him to the world.  Freedom is under threat however, not least by those who abuse it, but also by those who would assert ownership of the infrastructure to create a two-tiered system where access is governed by your means. One way of addressing this is to ensure that ordinary people can claim their stake on their contribution through Creative Commons licencing. The silent majority need to be heard if we are to avoid the internet becoming a mirror of our world, where 1% of the population owns the lion's share. 

PS. If you would like to explore Basquiat's work in the open take a look at this site Artsy has a mission to bring art to all. 

of eggs and baskets #blimage

This #blimage challenge was posted by Steve Wheeler here. 

I know it's a bowl in the picture but with a little poetic licence it is easily connected to the proverb:

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket"


and for those learning English here's a quick test of your understanding of the meaning of this advice. 

I'm looking at this advice in the context of educational technology and change. Ubiquitous technology means that we are all becoming increasingly dependant upon tools to support learning. I would argue that this is, by and large, a good development overall as education needs to capitalise on the learning potential offered by digital tools and help inform their use so that we are able to influence the users. We do not need more passive consumers of an ever increasing wave of expensive gadgets, we need critical thinkers who understand the relative advantages and affordances offered and can make informed choices. They in turn can then influence the evolution of the markets and use their democratic power to regulate when necessary. 

One of the risks we need to ensure that users of technology understand is that of "lock-in". You can read more about it here. Some technical tools for creation that may be very enticing insist on producing file types that require ongoing commitment to a particular technology, tool or licence. This brings an inherent reduction in future proofing for your creation. At a time when the pact of technical change continues to accelerate you could very soon find that your well thought-out digital package of content is no longer usable. Remember Betamax or Sony mini disc cameras? Think of the time and money wasted and the potential for wheels being reinvented endlessly. 

Fortunately there are folk out there who are working to convince the technology industry of the importance of open formats and interoperability. Look at the work of IMS on Learning Technology Interoperability here. Also the open source media streaming company Kaltura campaigns for open video formats.  As users of technology for education we should ensure that we know how to preserve our educational resources so that they can be repurposed, accessed by anyone. That way educators' great ideas do not become obsolete overnight. Here are a few practical tips:

• if you are making something using a browser based tool (a video, screen cast, audio recording) make sure that you can download the finished file so that you have a copy. Websites disappear regularly.
• find good file conversion facilities (e.g. Format Factory, Freemake) so that you can save your file in a range of formats.
• go open - use Creative Commons licences (CC BY) on your work so that others can remix, repurpose and develop your ideas. Sharing to a wider community increases the longevity of your work but you should get acknowledged as the originator. 

Open Education #FOS4L Getting creative

Open Education is dear to me, creating tailored learning resources has always been one of my favourite aspects of teaching, But what's the point of all that creation if you can't share it widely and be inspired by others who critique or improve on it? But the concept of open is often misunderstood. 

Since the advent of digital I have not only been able to clear out all the ancient worksheets from under my bed (25 years of dust collecting under there!) but I have also been able to refine the best ideas and develop them for digital practice, sharing using slideshare, TES resources, scribd, issu, dropbox, flickr and other sites and the engagement with them has helped me to realise how useful they are to others. It's not always easy to find sites that display the creative commons licence obviously, hence my campaign on slideshare recently. 

The new affordances of digital tools increase the impact that can be achieved from a teaching perspective considerably. Using digital video for example can revolutionise the authenticity of language teaching and learning scenarios. I have been involved in the EU Video for all project over the past year and a half and I have conducted piloting sessions with colleagues in HE to get their impressions of this approach to encouraging creativity. Of course using commercial video or "finding images on the web" can be problematic and sometimes teachers get caught like rabbits in the headlights, afraid to create or encourage creativity in case copyright is infringed. So for that reason I took one of the Video for All examples made by one of my students (using poetry for student creation) and made some resources about Creative Commons (including a wiki page here) to support language teachers in embarking on their own make to suit their context. 

I believe that supporting the confidence of teachers to create and within their Community of Practice is very important. We have been disempowered through a series of bureaucratic practices in education for too long, good teaching is a fundamentally creative process and skills development in the digital era should be a priority. This is why I embraced Terry Loane's suggestion of Open Guilds and participated recently in the webinar. I also set up an open badge for other language educators (see below, designed by @mearso) so we can start to build a cross sector CoP to promote such activity. If you know a language educator who practices openly, please share the badge claim link with them!

Content - a deposed king

Choosing my regular blog for this response to #rhizo15 week 3. Dave's post raised questions around  content in learning. I have several different angles to bring to this. 

Firstly a discovery I made shortly after I started to work in an HE teaching context. I discovered that my colleagues teaching language undergraduates consider themselves to be content experts. This is distinct from those of us who are language teachers on Institution-wide language programmes teaching undregrads of subjects other than language (maths, politics etc). This really confused me. Surely they, like I and my colleagues were teaching language - just with a slightly different focus. I was certainly unaware of this distinction when I was an undergraduate studying French. I was clear I was learning the language whilst using sociological or literary sources. I completely accept that they are more up to date on the detail of social trends or literary criticism according to their research focus, whereas we focus on approaches to learning and metacognition - skills acquisition. 

Secondly, the saying when commercialisation of web first came about was content is king. Marketting was all about creating interest in your brand, finding interesting content to integrate in your website that would attract visitors. Companies paid big money to buy from content producers and associate it with their brand. This was "click bait". This was described by Steve Wheeler on his blog post ...context is king

Steve always has a knack for getting to the root of the issue. This post  was the pointer to making content open - he says "In education, if all learners receive is content, content, content, then they will be... well, discontent."  If content matters in education, what matters most I believe is that it is open. Open educational resources can lead to all sorts of unexpected (and usually positive) things. Those who find it can repurpose, remix, share and build new learning, contributing to the constant evolution of their Community of Practice. Creatve Commons licensing will be crucial to this. The rhizome in action...

Finally for the reason for me that content is the deposed king and context rules, again I am returning to another post from Steve. As educators we can find content, we can select and curate the best of that content but what really matters is the context we provide for learning. This is where great teaching happens. Get that wrong and essentially learners are finding their own way (or not, you may have lost them). 

I am grateful to Steve that he is an Open Educational practitioner, all his posts are available CC BY or CC BY SA. If you are an educator and that means nothing to you take a look at Education Creative Commons You need to know. Don't let content to be bought and sold, learning, like the web must be available to all. 

"Content is people" says Dave. Content in the contexts above is just stuff - a document, a book, a video, a "learning object". Used by managers as this is something they can measure. Does a course have content? Yup, 3 book chapters, 12 videos and a set of quizes. Lets not assume that access to content = great learning experience. That is clearly style over substance. The interactions we have - the context - is clearly more important. 

Open to change!

I have just returned home from #oer15. My first #oer conference but a place where I met and consolidated friendships with many I have known online as like minds for many years. We were focusing on the issue of mainstreaming Open. Let me explain:

Open educational practitoners believe that education is not something you "do to" others, it is participation in a learning community, we are all learners. As such, we share and learn from each other. Few teachers have an issue with this ideal, (although some are less keen perhaps to learn from their students). Most practioners also feel that getting to grips with Creative Commons licences and searching banks of content is too big a task to contemplate. I think it is also too important to ignore. Watch David Wiley's Ted talk if you are unconvinced.

Basically: 

• Learning is vital if we are to survive as a species, the challenges that face us are bigger than we can imagine
• Learning is getting more exclusive, access is limited to a relatively small proportion of advantaged people
• The costs of learning are beyond the means of the many, this is unfair.

Open educational resources are (mainly) digital objects made available for retention, re-use, revision, re-mixing and redistribution. This is facilitated by a set of Creative Commons licences, the most "open" one being CC BY. This indicates a resource that is available for all of the above but the originator should be attributed. This offers a way of ensuring that work you produce (your worksheets for example) acknowledge your intellectual input. For me this is a way of helping to re-professionalise teaching, a "profession" that has largely been diminished, with teachers just the worker ants, a benign interface between the curriculum creators and exam authorities, under valued and bereft of influence.

So, along with my like minded colleagues, we agreed that we wish to support the journey to open practice, international open practice that opens locked minds, overcomes insularity and silos and empowers creativity and enagement. Great learners make great teachers..

Time however is an issue. There's never enough and we all prioritise accordingly. I proposed that we consider how #openbadges could be deployed in the context of the journey to becoming an Open Educational Practioner, recognition of investment in CPD (becoming a digital practitioner) which could become part of your professional credentials. Others also seemed to feel that this would help to go towards recognition of time invested. I hope this idea flies.

If you are a language teacher, please take a look at my contribution to the OpenContentToolkit here (thanks to @theokl) on images for language teaching. Becoming open is a process so you can take it at your own pace :)

Check out @WarwickLanguage ’s page on Language Teaching with images http://t.co/hilg3grnXl < toolkit join code 3KQ97DR #oer15 #ukedchat

— Theo Kuechel (@TheoKL) April 17, 2015

Celebrating the digital in HE at #digifest15

Last year I watched Jisc's digital festival #digifest from behind my desk. I could see from the website that the venue was imaginatively laid out and according to the twittersphere there were many interesting things to see and do, all at the bleeding edge of technology in education. This year, with attendance free to HE staff, I decided to go along and see for myself. The short train ride to Birmingham followed by a brisk walk across town taking in the Cathedral and the new Library was a welcome break from sitting behind a screen. The International Conference Centre in Birmingham is easy to find and well staffed and soon I was exploring the hub under the multi-coloured circus tent decor which gives the event an enticing atmosphere. Using the event app and twitter I was able to connect with other participants too. 

#digifest15 kicks off pic.twitter.com/CL2uH1IKDf
— christine sexton (@cloggingchris) March 9, 2015

Soon I was getting the latest on Jisc Open Access services, giving me helpful insights into the issues and the technical challenges that Jisc can help HEIs to confront.  I made a mental note to share with colleagues in our library.

I was interested to hear about Jisc's support for publishing:

Institution as eBook publisher #jisc project. Support for heis to take on a publishing role #digifest15
— Teresa MacKinnon (@WarwickLanguage) March 9, 2015

and participated in a lively, well attended session on using apps which included a good hands-on demo of Socrative. A session on 3D tech gave me insights into the technical aspects of this immersive way of curating and interacting with valuable artefacts and extended my understanding in an area I don't usually come across. 

My twitter feed brought more interesting observations from attendees:

It may be our institutions that are not fit for purpose, not our #edtech #digifest15
— Elizabeth Ellis (@liz_isabella) March 9, 2015

The combination of the physical (an unusually genteel, calm conference) and the virtual (through social media) brought me space to think. Add to that the encounters with tweeps I had not really had a chance to chat with before as well as meet ups with old friends and this was a better than average conference experience. The highlights were yet to come though! The Google presentation was comprehensive and enthusiastic, well caputred by Martin Hamilton but by far the highlight, and well worth waiting for was the no-nonsense delivery on FE and Feltag by Bob Harrison, seen here getting a selfie to show the wife :) He reminded us that we have a responsibility to future generations to make best use of our assets, to think differently and to engage together in agile evolution. 

So thanks Jisc for a memorable day, my batteries were recharged and I felt ready for the rest of my week knowing that the sector lead is up for embracing the challenges of digital education. Inspired by Bob's words I am ready to shift some paradigms :)

going global

Post inspired by @mrkempnz a fellow tweep and inspiring edtech educator.

From Lone Wolf to Hunting with the Pack - becoming a globally connected educator http://t.co/LlB2Uz9tZq what’s your story?
— Craig Kemp (@mrkempnz) August 9, 2014

Working as a teacher can be a lonely and somewhat insular occupation if you are not careful.  Whether you work in a school, a university, full time, part time or freelance you are assuming a role that puts you under the spotlight and your learners have expectations of you. Over a 30 year career I have worked in a variety of contexts with different age groups from under 10's to over 50's, one to one to one to many, responsible at some periods for the language learning of over 1,000 learners a year. I think I have a reasonable understanding of a range of learner expectations. I have definitely not "seen it all" and I learn more each year from my learners who now tend to be international students following an accelerated learning pathway to French in Higher Education. I am a co-learner with them as we explore the world of resources available to us thanks to the internet and computer-mediated communication (CMC). I try to contribute to my communities, both local and global. 

My PLN, (here's a Top Trumps I did a while back) gathered gradually over more than 5 years through interaction online, lots or reading and great networks of professionals, have broadened my outlook, inspired me to examine my assumptions more closely, to engage with debates central to my chosen career path, and to grow as an educator. Blogging and micro-blogging have helped make explicit the ruminations and half thought through ideas, reflecting and connecting in order to better understand where I stand (split infinitives are OK BTW) . Participating in synchronous and asynchronous CMC has taken me beyond the boundaries of my classroom experiences and those of my immediate colleagues into global interactions and contexts, beyond the UK and Europe. I collaborate with teachers in Australia,the US and around the world in #globalclassroom chats, extend my student connections through the #clavier virtual exchange, and explore the potential for language learning CPD through informal online networks. I have developed my use of technology for teaching, gaining a professional qualification in learning technology through the ALT CMALT scheme and now I research and publish in CMC for language learning and the emerging area of Online Intercultural Exchange (#OIE). 

I had no idea where my early tweets would lead. I followed my head and my heart and found a world of inspiration digitally enabled just a keyboard away. My students and I are the richer for it, my CPD is constant and relevant, my learning lifelong and lifewide. Connecting globally allows us to rise above the immediate, often political nature of our national context and focus on the real issues in education. We need to support the next generation as they discover the realities of sharing the planet and meeting the needs of humanity in challenging times. We promote mutual understanding, communication skills, empathy, openness and creativity. Going global has helped to reignite my passion for education.  

The e word.

I chose to look at enhancement and watched the video about xMOOC models. There are several viewpoints shown in the clip but the main focus is on the Stamford experience of Udacity co founder Sebastian Thrun and his stated aim was to democratise access to learning arising from his belief that "education is a basic human right". Whilst I fully support this premise (who wouldn't ?) I felt that some of the statements made rather simplified the success of this model and at times tried to compare it to a way of teaching that would be recognised by most teachers as failing learners . Traditional teaching was presented as students sitting in ranks, not allowed to talk to each other, lecturers transmitting knowledge from the front - surely these are clichés and any institution who maintains them is already on the road to obsolescence? Sadly in HE old habits (and business plans) die hard.

The elements of the MOOC model applicable in my context:
(I prefer cMooc to xMooc personally, as I see the latter more as an institutional marketing model to support business as usual) were:

• online delivery makes learning more accessible especially to those unable to take time away from work/life in order to study
• greater availability of content for replay/review
• more problem based learning, explanations afterwards, "flipped" delivery
• increased emphasis on interaction, making best use of technology, use of quiz 
• more economical, reach more students, make teaching a first class discipline again
• education a lifelong issue - more relevant to modern world, flexible and continuous 

Of course all these things also apply to good blended learning. The question here is how does one scale up the tutor time in order to deliver a personalised experience to thousands of participants? It would seem from the participants interviewed that they expected to get that interaction from each other. Possibly accepted as a trade off for not having to pay to learn? One interviewee commented that we "underestimate how powerful interaction can be online". I believe that to be the case having experienced several cMoocs now since 2011. If you invest the time in online learning, getting to know your fellow learners, if the course is aligned with your personal learning needs you can indeed make useful and productive connections which can foster deep learning. Thrun's experience must be quite chilling for the established order, as it questions whether the "best" universities really select the best potential graduates, his online students outperformed those turning up on campus according to his analysis. So as I have long suspected, there is much wasted potential as a result of our industrial schooling model. 

• problems anticipated

the business model: as soon as money is exchanged for learning a set of expectations arise which have to be met. Thrun's model implies that business as usual is required in order to fund this open free course model. Clearly new costing models would have to be established, I am sure the technology used isn't free and I guess he also expects payment for his work? This is at the heart of the issue and we need some suggestions more creative than simply trying to sell videos of experts in order to raise funds and draw attention to the institution. 

Ultimately, what is judged by learners to be "enhanced" learning opportunities will depend upon their experience of learning, not simply the content they have had access to. Interaction lies at the heart of that. Quality has never really been about institutional reputation, it is more personal than that.

Opening doors

There is no open unless there's closed, so I will start my reflection on openness with some thoughts about the locks that exist and can impede access to learning opportunities. 

If you have children you will have no doubt at times ensured that some "learning opportunities" presented by power tools, scissors, staircases were locked away, only accessible when and how you judged suitable. Such judgements are part of parental responsibility (although many would say that we have become over protective at times and limit experiences that were more freely available in times gone by). I see a parallel here with educators wishing to control access to resources to ensure their learners are not overwhelmed or faced with content that may confuse. This is a difficult balance to get right, especially in an age where access to content (irrespective of its quality) has never been more open. Each of us is a filter and maybe we should take a more active part in curating resources and encouraging the development of learner's critical and evaluative skills to empower their selection of resources. Timeliness is of course important, but the learner may be best equipped to decide on a suitable time to access a resource. Failing to acknowledge this creates dependant learners who assume that only experts can lead their learning. Surely we need to support learner autonomy and a more open discourse around learning in order to prepare for an uncertain future. 

Another reason for closing doors is that which signals ownership. "My room", "my office" closed spaces delineating roles, relationships and the observation of personal space. Again, this is not always a bad thing (my son is responsible for the state of his room, I am glad I can close the door on that!) but we have to acknowledge the reasons behind these social conventions and the possible impact of perhaps unintended consequences. Just today, following up on a paper that was part of a US conference and appears from the abstract to be relevant to my research I was frustrated to find that none of my "keys" fit the lock to access it. The link demanded payment for access and my various memberships did not enable me to read the work. Personally I prefer to publish through open channels as I value being part of a wide community of practitioners, learning from each other. 
Creative commons licencing allows me to claim my authorship, acknowledging my part in the process of contributing to a wider knowledge gathering society whilst making my preferences for usage clear. I hear more academics agreeing that openness is a principle they value.

Finally let's think about open source development and commercial providers. It has become rather "in" to recommend open source technologies over commercial vendors. I use both and have had good and bad experiences which lead me to the conclusion that "open source" does not always equate to better, more ethical, more sustainable solutions for learning technology. I use tools drawn from both sectors based on their suitability for purpose. My overriding concern is to avoid "lock in" which leaves users hostages to fortune and to establish that technology providers have an ethical way of working that ensures that my learners get a good user experience. I check out LTI compliance in order to keep the doors open. In some cases the best tool for the job requires significant financial investment in research and development that can only be achieved if the provider has access to sufficient resource. Rules of openness related to the management of digital resources are still evolving though. As part of Mozilla's webmaker course last year I created some remixes using their Popcorn maker, it was disappointing to see that French video content had been blocked when, as a language teacher, I was easily covered by "reasonable use" allowances.

So to sum up, open vs closed are not in fact simple opposites, it is much more complex than that. Far from being an open and shut case, we must continue to strive towards operationalising openness in ways that are:

• appropriate
• understandable
• facilitating
• fair