Who are you?

On a reçu dans les casiers un petit doc à propos de la minute de silence, en comic sans ms, forcément. Question de tradition

— Monsieur Le Prof (@MsieurLeProf) November 16, 2015

This little tweet brought all the horror of recent events into sharp focus for me. 

I follow @MonsieurLeProf on twitter, He teaches English in the suburbs of France and has a wonderful, dry sense of humour. He is a skilled user of web based technologies and has a clear understanding of how to present his digital identity to the world.  Here he makes an off the cuff remark through twitter that illustrates the lack of general awareness of appropriate etiquette when using digital media. The incident? A missive for communicating the observation of a minute's silence out of respect for the victims of the terrorist attacks. It came via pigeon holes, written in the childlike, light-hearted font known as Comic Sans MS. 

The lack of understanding of the nature of this communication is startling. The printing press was introduced to Europe in 1439, nearly 600 years later publishing is in the hands of individuals, every office produces desktop published documents for circulation on a regular basis but much research into fonts and their communicative properties is surely common knowledge? Google it! YouTube it!  Find out here what your choice of font says and watch a personal evaluation of fonts here to help you make your own choices.  

This is computer-mediated communication 101, the most basic of digital communicative skills. Yet our educational institutions fail to recognise the importance of effective digital communication skills as vital in today's world. If we paid more attention to digital interaction we would understand that we only have a hope of addressing the unfortunate abilities of those with effective digital skills combined with murderous intent if we raise awareness of the importance of transversal skills.

These skills are no longer only the domain of the publisher. In the same way as music production, photography and film making have been democratised by the personal computer (and now smart phones and tablets) our digital presence speaks volumes about us. We look very foolish when we neglect these forms of communication and worry only about the face to face. 

Make it snappy!

Top Tips for Course Creation in Languages@Warwick

View more lists from Teresa MacKinnon

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. 

#blideo challenge

This inspirational video clip was shared as part of the #blideo challenge. I wasn't nominated but couldn't resist the message on this one shared here: (with thanks to Whitney Kilgore)




There's more to this video than the powerful guilt-inducing recognition of triumph over adversity that makes our "first world problems" pale into oblivion. I don't know about you but the thought of waking up in the morning to the smell of landfill would be unlikely to get me strumming my guitar. What I find the most compelling about this video is the determination to work at something even though many may say it won't be "good enough". The instruments, created from everyday paraphernalia discarded by others, are not likely to produce the timbre of a Stradivarius or suchlike. Even after hours of crafting and practise their music is unlikely to be lauded as better than that of the LSO or other great orchestral organisations. However, the vision of these ordinary folk -  who are clearly transformed into musicians - allows them to see beyond mere musical perfection. Working with what they have - a not inconsiderable amount of talent and dedication - they are able to lift the spirits of all who hear them and show how the human spirit can overcome even the most dismal of circumstances. Playing side by side, each member has to listen to the others and harmonise, keeping in time and focusing on the performance. I cannot imagine anyone stomping off because " Victor's cello is out of tune!" If there is a lesson to draw from this then for me it is to understand that our efforts, no matter how imperfect others may consider them to be, are significant and should be celebrated. We are all fighting our life battles and will face our share of challenges. Harmony, no matter how imperfect the end result of shared endeavour, is better than egotism for so many reasons. If we understand this our lives will be richer for it. 

Here's my #blideo challenge to anyone willing to take it up:
(I nominate @sensor63 @mgraffin @bobharrisonset ) 

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!

Flexible pedagogies FOS4L

An invitation to join #FOS4L this week arrived just as I was coming to the end of a week's leave and returning to work to catch up on over 300 emails! (most were quickly deleted thankfully). As I catch up on open discussions taking place within the #fos4l spaces online and I see happily that it will involve interacting with some of my favourite folk in #edtech and making new friends I am instantly inspired to get involved. The suggestions for activities over the short 5 day course coupled with the fact it is already day 3 meant I decided to draw together my reflections together on the first 3 topics through this post. 

Digital literacies and identity:

My professional identity puts my role as a language educator before my learning technology role, although both are clearly very closely connected. I have reflected on this before for #ocTEL last year. My access to French language use afforded by the interenet feeds my language teaching identity, leading to an ongoing connection to the language as it continues to evolve - see this for example on authenticity. I also curate content to help other language teachers explore and manage their journey towards greater digital awareness. I very much welcome the inclusion of Wellbeing in Jisc's digital capability model as a recognition of the time it takes to acquire skills and knowlege necessary to be an effective digital practitioner. 

Flexible pedagogies: 

I am not sure I like this term as it implies a kind of fuzziness around how learning happens. Personally my learning since the arrival of the internet has been best described by the term heutagogy and I feel this is a useful learning theory, essentially reflecting the ease with which we can follow our own learning paths since the advent of ubiquitous access to information. As I have worked using this to inform my practice with students I have certainly found it to increase their autonomy and engagement. If we direct our own learning it follows however that we can refuse to learn should we choose to do so, no amount of teacher encouragement, threat or reward can force an individual to learn something that he doesn't wish to. I see this in my own refusal to learn that eating chocolate is fattening! However, I have to accept that heutagogy is a newcomer. The HEA have a very useful site on flexible pedagogies which I see as an umbrella term to encompass the sort of toolset I have always supported. Flexibility, willingness to adopt a learner-centred approach, devolve the locus of control to them and learn from them are all positive in my opinion. It is time to change our understanding of how learning happens but change stands little chance of success institutionally despite the helpful advice in this report unless they accompanied by a flexible approach to assessment. We get what we assess, our assessments also show what we value. 

Supporting learning:

I am going to reflect on this with respect to my leadership role in supporting digital engagement with my teaching colleagues. I have adopted the following principles:- autonomy, mutual support and connected, open practice.

• provision of self-service, just in time rescoures for skills acquisition e.g how to tutorials sandbox course spaces on our VLE and a central sharing community for all tutors to build a community of practice.
• show and tell sessions every term for dissemination and celebration of the best teaching and tool use. (see slides below)
• encouragement of PLN development through social media tools and open networks

Seems to be working for those who are prepared to accept that you have to make time in order to avoid reinventing square wheels.  A shift away from silos and towards a more open mindset are also required to value connecting for professional development.