12/11/2008 by nicola.

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11/11/2008 by nicola.

I spent quite a bit of time recently - as per post last week re wiki - going through Stephen Downes / George Siemens websites in a bid to retrace my online steps and rediscover ‘aha moments’ (I’ve moved jobs / laptops quite a lot in the last few years and at times, I used to take notes from people’s presentations or whatever - but I never managed to write where / how / what so have random notes - I suppose I could have googled them). It reminded me a bit of moving house - when you unpack old boxes and find hidden wonders you had forgotten existed….

And speaking of old boxes, I’ve decided to abandon my unintentional quest to bookmark every single page on the web using delicious. In the first of a series of changes - I have packed everything up to and including today on NicolaAvery2 and just keeping ones that I think could use more regularly in the future. The one I have been using and will continue to use in the future is the regular NicolaAvery one. Hope that makes sense - if it turns out to be a complete disaster, will rethink again. I would welcome any feedback. The bookmark file is also attached below if anyone wants to import etc. Note - there are around 2000 of them and they will sit at the top of all your bookmarks (a lack of archiving facility is the reason I’m doing this at all)

I might be moving in the next few months to a different sort of space (ideally I would like to design / code it but I don’t know at this point if time possible) which will include a blog with a slightly different - tone? I’m not sure that’s the right word but will update here as and when.

old delicious bookmarks

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02/11/2008 by nicola.

I have previously mentioned about using a wiki to try and represent some of my thoughts etc, well here goes nothing, you can now decide how insane I am or not, if you haven’t already done so. I was - as a personal development project, hoping to translate it into some other languages but haven’t had time yet, so have stuck a Google translation gadget in for the time being.

I did actually set up this wiki, but always viewed it as currently renting a couple of folders of personal writing space on it. The mobsessed folder is out of date, in terms of an update with that - there isn’t one! I have not been able to focus enough since July, I have written and running some python scripts on my phone, but still not looked at Android Java and looked at mobile web in more detail and I still haven’t found a way to send SMS as files to a web server, but I believe more than I did in May / June that it is possible.

I used pbwiki due to ease of setup but it does mean people have to request access to edit which is a pain, however, you can easily copy from the source code, which is a step in that direction I suppose - could potentially move it to another wiki software too. Some of the pages have nothing there but an intention yet…

This is not formal research and I have not had an opportunity to complete any experiments yet. I also have not attempted to look at neurophysiology before so my understanding is less than basic, am going with gut feel then seeing (if I understand) if the research backs it up or not. I also still don’t quite understand why my own brain which must know how it functions appears to be incapable of helping me type, write, read and understand it easily.

So I am not presenting anything as conclusions, it is ideas only. This wiki does not currently have appropriately cited references, it is a mess of thoughts. It should have and I hope to get that fixed soon. I owe a thanks to Mustafa too for a conversation about - I don’t know how long ago it was - 6, maybe 8 years ago when we were talking about mobile phones and he mentioned about the importance of magnets and magnetism in future technologies which had never occurred to me at the time and really kick-started my own thinking on mobile phones and connectivity.

Thanks especially to wonderful conversations with Inge de Waard and Jo Tait over the past year about mobiles, technology, learning, with their amazing and funny insights into these areas.

Apologies to the following who should be properly cited - who have greatly influenced my thinking on any of this would be - George Siemens - just about everything he has ever published about connectivity, humans and brains in the last few years especially hci and mobile connectivity aspects, ditto Stephen Downes on networks, technologies and openness (btw in case anyone was wondering, I was hoping to join in with the 12 week coursversation and bring some of this to the table, but life got in the way…was genuinely gutted not to),

Jay Cross on how humans move and communicate informally, Yrjo Engestrom on mobility, Jan Chipchase for amazing insights into mobile use and design, Michiel de Lange’s research, Howard Rheingold for the amazing Smart Mobs, Mark Kramer on using mobile devices via Mamk.net, C.Enrique Ortiz on mobility, Ajit Jaokar on mobile networks and openness, Jurgen Scheible with his great tutorials and book who managed to explain Python and programming in a way that I could understand and Ken Banks, Nathan Eagle’s work on mobility in Africa, massive thanks to all of them. Also thanks to various magical people in my delicious network !

I still don’t know where mobile learning is going and since joining the university where I currently work, I seem to have understood less and less what learning is about. I am still undecided about how mobile learning could be designed, completed, or even if it should. I needed to answer some questions and this is a first attempt to do so - an attempt to try and find some organisation of my own thinking about mobile connectivity - what were devices all about, how they behave with other technologies in an environment, how they connect, how they are networked, the randomness of human beings and how this all links back to human physiology and the brain, I think a lot of answers lie in our understanding of magnetic - electromagnetic waves.

I still have a feeling that some of the best mobile learning will be informal mobile learning which links into all of this. In 2008 with increased attention being focused on being mobile, mobile devices and mobile web, it felt like a good year to try and write - something in some way. However I need to move on from wherever this is at - I think why mobile phones and mobility are of so much interest to me is that like many others I think I am nomadic - continually unsettled, continually moving around, maybe I’m trying to make sense of that too - but that’s a bit deep and off the point for this blog.

Oh and because I’m not sure when I will next be posting, I am still looking at wikis and visualisation (I still have it as a to do and I’m still interested in it which makes it kind of difficult not to) after whining last week, someone very kind, patient and wise who knows me, suggested very nicely that I might have different ideas to 2000 other people and should still go for it - I started to look at ajax this week and got as far as attempting to put a list of pages into a jquery to display a treemap (don’t think treemap is best visualisation for this anyway) - but seeing as I know nothing about jqueries it unsurprisingly didn’t work, but I have not given up hope.

PS if you do visit the RFID page and you get squeamish at the sight of needles……..

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31/10/2008 by nicola.

Saw this via Sachendra yesterday, a link to an article and discussion which should be required reading for anyone involved in the design of anything, or anyone who has thought about starting their own business.

I don’t wish to spoil the magic of it by going on about it too much here - I find it very difficult to find the right words to describe what I want or need in terms of learning design, but I know when I see something that doesn’t work for me or something that does - but that’s after its been designed and the chances are that its a bit of one thing and a bit of another thing - not a complete package that can be nicely defined with using a device, tool, system, hardware, software, open-source, free etc. Its very difficult as a human being if you say - I need this - then someone asks you to explain what that is exactly - well I find it difficult anyway!

And in 2008 we have a whole bunch of tools which we can use for a bit of this and a bit of that, but does that necessarily mean we learn better, if we weren’t exactly sure what we wanted in the first place and maybe how we wanted to learn - I think human beings are so random and if you ask people the same question on two different occasions you are likely to get two different answers depending on their circumstances / context etc.

Say you wanted to learn Flash i.e. I might want to learn Flash because I saw a really cool Flash animation and decided I wanted to be able to do those. Or I want to learn Flash because its a useful skill to have in learning technology related roles. Both of these are pretty vague though. How is a designer of learning and maybe in 2008 that is designing for myself, going to understand what I want before I start? I know I like messing around with stuff but ask me to define exactly what I mean by that….

Continuing with Flash for second, I might be able to spend some time learning how to make a ball bounce across a stage, work out how the Flash timeline works, understand the different file formats but is that taking me towards my goal in the best possible way and at the best possible speed? I might do this by following tutorials, or joining a Flash group / network, looking at blogs, wikis etc but is there any guarantee that the amount of time I spend doing this is helping me learn in the best way possible, am I asking the right questions of myself, to others, am I finding out what I need to know in order to move me forward? Is it exciting learning about this, am I being entertained with what I am seeing and hearing on the screen - does it look cool, is it making me laugh, can I find any connection with it to any of my previous experiences, anything I am interested in on a personal level and so on?

Think about the article if you just read it - did you feel connected to it, did it relate to you on a personal level, what bits and why….

Or the design of learning management systems, VLEs, learning content management systems, electronic performance support systems that repeatedly try to fit the needs of as many people as possible - how much time is spent with people asking whether they really wanted a system in the first place - rather than the what is it you are trying to do with accessing and organising learning, is a system of any kind a good solution? And if you have decided that its useful for companies to have systems, you go and ask a bunch of people what they want to do with it, what are the chances of you finding out what really works for them before you release the product? Where do you compromise? Why do you compromise?

Does this mean that analysis and design is a waste of time?

As previously mentioned - why not go and ask other people at Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations 2008 which is in a few weeks time, Jay/George/Tony are posting updates about this so if you haven’t already registered, why not stroll across to the site and sign up.

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30/10/2008 by nicola.

Renata Vincoletto of Falando pelos Cotovelos is raising money for Camfed. (See the wonderful poster)

You may already know of Camfed. They are “an international organisation dedicated to eradicating poverty in Africa through the education of girls and empowerment of young women. In Africa, where girls have least access to education and are most vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, Camfed’s mission is to multiply girls’ access to education and accelerate the benefits to individuals, their families and communities.”

Renata is using Everyclick.com, a site where you can enter a search just as you would with any search engine, but you can choose the charity which benefits from the couple of seconds that you choose to type in your search and click. Renata explains all on her blog and how you can contribute in other ways too.

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29/10/2008 by nicola.

All meetups, conference titles should be this simple and clear. If by any chance you are interested in meeting and doing business in Africa; and you are able to get to Eindhoven, Netherlands next weekend, then this looks like an amazing opportunity to do so.

If you can’t and would like to, you can always join Club Africa and meet people, do business (it doesn’t have to be all commercial, lots of voluntary, education organisations there too) online that way. I have been on this network for a while, haven’t done anything specific yet, but had a few very useful conversations with a bunch of friendly people.

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25/10/2008 by nicola.

I was about to spend part of my weekend trying to figure out some of this, when I saw Dave Pollard’s post about connectivism & the week’s subject being about complexity, connection and learning. What ! So just to be clear, there are around 2000 people learning about this, and I am trying to figure out how the hell to visualise a wiki structure by myself. I mean 2000 people, there must be people with amazing technical and design abilities studying / talking about all this - and what, imagine if you have even 4 people, one with Java, one with design, one with wiki and one with - well whatever -it would take - 1 hour, 2 hours top to figure it out ?

I’m going to go and rediscover my weekend ! There must be amazing conversations and ideas flowing out from their experiences right now, I hope that if anyone out there knows of anything they could take maybe 5 seconds out of their day to send me a link or something and if not, so be it, but I don’t see it as a productive use of my time to spend any longer blogging about wiki stuff, happy to leave it to greater minds

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23/10/2008 by nicola.

Does the virtual world have to be better than other learning environments, can it be a replacement, is it necessary to be better?

A scenario could be where a lot of money goes towards development, a launch then enthusiasm falls after a few weeks and the number of visitors to an island drops off dramatically. Uni of Derby’s rationale for going in was to investigate opportunity for creative social learning experiences for psychology students - i.e. for medical practitioners it is easier to put ‘objects’ into a scenario and create a medical situation with problems to be solved, psychology deals with theories and concepts so if it is experiential learning, needs to be carefully thought about how it can be applied.

Non-verbal communication an issue - most communication in Second Life is via text chat, an avatar might be communicating with others, different gestures, moving away, moving back - not a lot of realism in face gestures etc Haven’t really sorted gestures in immersive environments - can be muffling for some - stops them expressing their emotions, for others it can be limiting. These things can seem very important to students and staff in their social interaction in these environments.

What about next gen - consensus in the room is that the next gen student is not majority, a lot of students require technology support and not as enthusiastic about spending time in that environment compared to other activities or work they would like to do. Uni of Derby had advantage in that already had game design lab available for use. For their learning activities in world, they created SLabs - which were basically empty slabs of land, with not additional ‘visual stuff’ that could be distracting - just a piece of land and any learning-activity specific content could be added and removed as required.”A space to remove everything we don’t need and just put the stuff we do”. The psychology students did not like it because they were busy enough and this was another thing to learn. They pre-created avatars so students could choose from an out-of-the-box avatar or create their own account.

A balance between creating something magic, beautiful and keeping it simple enough for students and staff to use. By contrast, a comment from Matthew Wheeler at Uni of Leicester - they have got their training down to 40 mins, scaffolding their second life experiences and the students have really enjoyed it and come back for more than their 4 allotted sessions. Another comment was that as with any technology, it is essential to to be clear about the purpose of the sessions or why the students are there if it is a directed activity of any kind.

Open Uni had a series of projects (attachment to follow) Immersive Learning Environments 2008 and ILE 2009. Students were encouraged to go and explore Second Life over Christmas (e.g. supplied notecards of places to visit), then had a theoretical introduction then shortly after a practical building induction. Mixed thoughts re different projects.

Some discussion - voice ? Mixed uni experiences with Second Life voice, some going back to text to provide better experiences, not just technology, but with live voice - no record of conversation, less thinking time, interruptions etc In some cases students not told that there was voice so issue did not arise. Some issues around identity and persona - if you create a SL persona and then wish to change or remove that persona, how to extricate yourself from that persona not just in SL, but other online environments.

Open Habitat Project - spaces can be social, flexible, dynamic, inspiring - can create different environments and scenarios for different choices of students - makes it more engaging and fun for students. Distance students enjoy sharing the same social spaces as other distance learners? If do Second life in real classroom and in Second life at same time, can be confusing for communication - do you talk to each other in real or virtual life? How to build sense of trust, what are good icebreaking activities if have different avatars as e.g. animals for example.

So where do virtual vs physical worlds fit - together ? mirrored ? augmented ? separate ? game-based ? alternate? which works best with which types of learning activities such as problem-based, role play etc. Authentic details are useful in 3D virtual worlds - e.g. for one Uni with international students, they wanted to see authentic city details before coming to UK, e.g. a simulation of how to put your hand out for a bus etc. Its important to build in reflection time as well as engagement.

Useful with alternate reality in that you learn without realise you are - because you are using your technology / communication method of choice such as blog, photos, video, so no learning curve - ‘under-the-surface’ learning.

Professor Maggi Savin Baden summing up, mentioned about VW special issue of ALT-J in November and new CURLIEW Coventry Uni project:

1. Boundary issues in IVWs
2. Distance versus blended learning in IVWs.
3. Amplification of RL character in SL
4. Patterns that inform - scenarios/ways of doing/ideas that seem to work
5. Trust - how do you know what honesty, trust is in SL
6. Cooperation vs collaboration in these environments
7. Relationship between embodiment and learning - do you feel more real as an avatar.
8. Interrupts concept that identity is hegemonic.

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23/10/2008 by nicola.

Hi,

If you want to follow - the video of the day is being streamed live into Second Life

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Coventry%20University/140/147/137/

Will try and blog later, not possible at this moment

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20/10/2008 by nicola.

Got distracted by still trying to embed dynamic ‘things’ like a Wordtree visualisation on wiki pages - think I’ve found a way to do which haven’t done yet -on Google Sites wikis. Just to make it confusing for anyone unfamiliar with Java (programming) and JavaScript (browser scripting) they are not the same, but the Java applet visualisation in Many Eyes can be embedded using JavaScript. You can use with Google Gadgets API as per this explanation on Google groups by embedding in an iframe which lives like a floating box on top of your regular web page. iframes are not great from an accessibility point of view, but you can use them on various wikis. Don’t have time to look at an API right now but will return to…

Whilst I’m going completely off topic, if you ever want to know more about JavaScript, there’s a nice friendly tutorial that explains it using wild bears.

Profiles
If you have an enterprise wiki solution, there is a possibility that your wiki will be talking to other applications you use, maybe all linked so the chances of having more information other than your name is more likely. However for public free hosted wikis, it is more likely that the profile information is not likely to be as detailed because it partly depends on the person who has filled it in - with the multitude of things we sign up for, filling in profile information each time into different boxes in forms is less and less appealing. Or in some cases it is little more than a contact details form e.g.

With some wiki software, they give you the option to add tags to your profile - this could be about areas that you might be interested in. So if someone is using a wiki for the first time and would like to find other people as well as content with similar interests, the tags can be really helpful. You could then create visualisations of tags, in the same way as many of the delicious add-ons that have been created e.g. in Malinka Ivanova’s great post earlier this year.

However, this is starting to stray into social graph territory which is way beyond simple visualisations of who is doing what on a wiki and the additional visualisation of other areas in which a person might be social, could be distracting rather than helpful - will it actually make a wiki more social / does a wiki need to be more social?

Bearing that in mind, will attempt to do experiment 3 - soon. This series of posts is as usual, my attempt to throw some ideas out there - I know a whole bunch of stuff about web pages and wikis, I’ve been playing around with charts, formulas in spreadsheets (can’t really do anything in egovernment without being buried occasionally spreadsheets !) and some visualisation stuff for several years but do not consider myself to have expertise in either of these when it comes to extraction of data of any kind. I’m kind of hoping / dreaming that anyone who comes across these posts with more experience in a particular area can point me in a useful direction…

Likewise for experiment 5 when I try and put some of this into a 3D environment, I have until now purposely avoided things like Lindenscript (and no room to think with all the other programming languages I am attempting to do stuff with) and I have not built anything other than a media and web page ’screen’ in Second Life so far. I’m really hoping someone else has already found a way, there is a wikiHUD for Second life wiki which may be a starting point.

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