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. 

Projecting the future

Having just emerged from the usual end of year exam marking frenzy I am now pushing ahead with a learning and teaching project supported by Warwick's International Higher Education Academy. The project team is an international mix, combining staff and students with a range of roles and experience and they are keen to investigate the new learning context we see all around us. We will be looking at how we can improve engagement in lectures, how the availability of information through digital devices changes the roles of student and teacher, how we manage our online presence and what sharing means today. 

For me, this is an exciting development as so far my thinking in these areas has largely been with others outside my immediate context, through participating in online interactions in and beyond my own teaching and ed tech communities. I am interested to see if our collaborative discussions help shed some light on where the newly founded School of Modern Languages and Cultures can progress good practice informed by these pioneer researchers. 

The project approach is heutagogic - participants will make their own decisions about the investigations they wish to contribute to, they will determine their own path, reflect on their learning and co-construct pages in Mahara (our e-portfolio tool) in order to make their findings explicit. Much of the activity will be mediated through our course areas and this in itself is a new challenge. My kick off meeting and drop in session so far have focused on making sure everyone gets to know each other and feels welcome in our digital spaces. We have a short project window (finishing at the end of July) and, given the nature of the project design each has to find their own way through our set of investigations, contributing to our shared goal as they go. Order will eventually emerge out of chaos, but we all have to be comfortable with the disruption involved in order to get to grips with some challenging ideas. Not surprisingly there are lots of questions for me as project manager: can I...? should I...? and the answer is typically Do you want to? Go ahead...try it...It is scary to have permission to follow your curiosity when you have been trained to meet targets and accomplish set goals. I am very grateful they are willing to give this a go. I can't wait to see what they think and to bring it back to the ALT conference in the autumn. 

Setting sail together.

Yesterday I presented a keynote to the LLAS #elearnllas symposium which charted the course of my professional development as a learning technologist over recent years. I did not set out to become a learning technologist, this was rather a necessary set of skills I needed to acquire in order to develop our blended learning provision. My objective had been to implement a platform to enable our tutors and students to share resources and connect beyond the classroom, given that we have just 2 or 3 hours a week contact time. 

The journey has not been without its challenges but I didn't want to dwell on these. What I wanted to share with my peers was the nature of the digital landscape and how we can be best prepared for embarking on such journeys from our own institutional contexts. I chose to map the territory using the thinglink above. This is offered as a tool which can be shared with others to encourage them to explore the digital environment and find affordances which are useful to their practice. The multimodal path through my presentation is available here and those who share the messages can collect a digital badge by submitting an evidence URL (blog post link, tweet etc) to this open badge claim. 

Inspirational talk by @WarwickLanguage at #elearnllas Language teachers need to get out more into the digital space! pic.twitter.com/2T8neCo3ix

— elearning symposium (@elearnLLAS) January 22, 2016

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 )