ipod touch for enhancing student learning

The more I play with the ipod touch, the more I excited I am with its potential for enhancing student learning. There are many examples, mostly from the school sector to learn from. Last week, the local paper’s technology section featured the the ipod touch plus a cheap phone as an alternative to owning an iphone (cheapest option with $40 a month plan for 24 months comes to almost $2000) compared to under $400 for a ipod touch 8G & a couple of hundred $$ to purchase & run a phone.


As an alternative to using netbooks, the ipod touch is more suitable as individual student hardware. The smallness of the device means that doing group work on the ipod touch will be more difficult then with a netbook. Small groups of 2 or 3 will work though. However, maximising the use of the ipod touch must include the need for each student to have one and a robust wifi network to cope with multiple users all accessing the network at the same time.

Examples of the use of ipod touches in education are plentiful. Louise Duncan is one who has set up a good resource including a list of the apps she uses in class & a list of ipod touch tips from students.

Tony Vincent, always an great advocate for mobile learning provides a good overview of educational possibilities for the ipod touch including good tips & tricks.

Wired educator (Mr. Croy) has an Apple slant which covers all sectors of education and has good overview of the use of the ipod touch in education and examples from his students .

A good collection of resources for use of the ipod touch in education from Chris Webb. And a whole host of examples of using ipod touches in education from Classroom 2.0 a social network on Ning.

Apple also has a recently published (July 2009) official guide to educators for using the ipod touch. So lots of examples to distil, try out and evaluate. Plus to work out how best to make use of the ipod touches capabilities within a blended learning environment.

ako aotearoa southern hub research projects colloquium

Attended & presented at the Ako Aotearoa research projects last evening. The Southern Hub (2 other hubs are the Northern & the Central, both in the North Island) is able to provide up to $10,000 to support research projects which lead to better learner outcomes. Nine projects presented on research progress & some findings. All in, an interesting session as each project had relevance to the tertiary sector, provided an interesting collection of research approaches and showcased the interest in research taken by each of the presenters. We had 10 minutes each (8 to present & 2 for questions!) but each presentation was supported by a one page handout which provided pertinent background & project details.

First up, Ronnie O'Toole from the University fo Canterbury with Alison Ogier-Price. Their project was on investigating the role of emotion in tertiary teaching. A pilot to gauge how emotions experienced by tertiary educators influence their teaching and student learning in the classroom. Collection of data was via 'emotion diaries' kept by 17 participants & based on Oatley & Duncan (1992) & Sutton (2004). Participants were also interviewed. Data still to be analysed.

My presentation followed on 'perspectives of new trades tutors' - interim report - which is on the intense vocational identity trades people have & how a process of 'boundary crossing' is required to help trades people accept & incorporate the identity of a teacher. A draft of my report has been circulated to the Southern Educational Developers (SED) group & will be discussed at a meeting next week. After that a final report will be completed by end of this month.

Next up, Gareth Archer from Community Colleges New Zealand on the influence of traditional sports & games on soft skill development for Maori youth. It involves the revival of a game ki-0-rahi (youttube video) which is played on a circular field & where one team (kioma) scores tries and the other (taniwha) scores by hitting a central target.

Nick Draper also had a sports slant, developing pedagogy for exercise science in tertiary physical education programmes. In particular to investigate how to consolidate knowledge aspects of exercise science which is often taught in 'chunks' & at different times during a course / programme so that students are able to bring together the a 'whole person' understanding of how physiology works.

Moving on the the early childhood sector, Elizabeth Elsworth, from the College of Early Childhood Education presented on 'sharing minds: promoting a research culture within a tertiary environment through mentoring relationships. Elizabeth used the concept of ako (knowledge & learning in Maori) to underpin the relationships between tutors and students, so that each learnt from the other during research mentoring sessions.

Then Gerry Duigan from CPIT poster/banner project. This project is in it's evaluation stage. The first stage was to select 10 sayings which were useful for adult educators to display in classrooms or web pages. Then banners were produced and dessiminated to 30 institutions in the South Island to gauge responses. These are now being collated & once evaluations have been actioned, the final banners will be produced and access provided via the Ako Aotearoa website.

A collection of health related projects began with Phillipa Seaton (plus 7 others) from CPIT & Pegasus Health presenting on 'practice nurses' learning needs'. The project is still in progress but has, to date, distilled five top learning needs and predominant learning styles of practice nurses.

Arindam Basu then presented on his project (involving 7 other researchers) on 'training for telehealth' which is a form of health by distance. the project reviewed current telehealth for teaching the concept/ process and based on the review, develop a 'best practice model'.

Last up, Paul Watson & Deb Sims from CPIT presented on their project which is to evaluate the quality of workplace learning for student nurses. The project was also to establish the validity & reliability of a 'clinical learning environment, supervision & teaching scale' -CLES+T developed in Finland, to find out if the scale would be usable within the NZ context.

All in a good session ably organised and hosted by Ako Aotearoa Southen Hub convener, Bridget O'Regan & Pat Robertson.

ipod touch and the MLE project

About a month a go, I picked up two ipod touches funded by the CPIT academic research committee. Renaissance computing, the agents for Apple in NZ kindly provided two ipod touches (an 8G & a 32G) for the price of one 8G :) So I have been busy over the last week or so having a play to evaluate the potential for it’s use with various mlearning projects. Being away much of October has provided time while travelling to work with the ipod touch and to utilise and evaluate its many capabilities.

Comprehensive information is provided on the apple site for using itunes, the main way to transfer information between PC and ipod without going online. Unfortunately, the ipod touch touch does not run with the mobile learning engine plug in for Moodle but accessing our normal Moodle using a web browser has always been an option.

Good starting point to the 1000s of ipod touch apps plus here is one which includes an app to turn your ipod touch into a remote control for itune PC! This one includes the app video piggy to download youtube videos.

I also downloaded stanza to convert ebooks to read on the ipod touch with a good guide from this site on how to read ebooks on the ipod touch.

From the education point of view, there is itunes u for courses, top tips on using the ipod touch for learning by Jonathan Nalder, a teacher from Queensland and a slideshare ppt providing examples of using ipod touches in learning.

The user interface for the ipod touch is intuitive to use, picture and sound quality also good. At just under NZ$400 for an 8G ipod touch, it is an accessible mobile alternative to a desktop or smartphone. The many apps available, many free and most at an affordable price provides an indication for the future role of software on mobile devices. Apps are also a cinch to download and although many are little ‘play’ apps, many provide useful utilities to enhance productivity at work and learning opportunities.

Only bugbear is no camera/video but the ipod touch does have a good voice recorder. The new ipod nano has a video camera so maybe a video camera is going to be in the next model of the ipod touch?

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day two afternoon

Afternoon began with a session by Dr. Peter Coolbear on 'staying in limelight - the future of the Ako Aotearoa Academy. He covered Ako Aotearoa's strategy for championing excellence in tertiary teaching & learning. Emphasis is changing along with locus of activity towards becoming more strategic with an advocacy role on future government policy development. Emerging strategic themes are to develop a 'second front on 'threshold of acceptability' for advocacy?, evidence based enhancement of practice, strategic, sustainable support of Maori educator/learners, also with Pacific educators & learners, supporting the learner voice & working in partnerships.

Oriel Kelly then facilitated a discussion on the future priorities for the academy. Groups worked on how the academy may meet individual members' needs, how academy is able to work with Ako & how Ako supports the academy.

Last session was organised and facilitated by the Massey University Teaching Excellence at Massey (TE@M) with their Vice Chancellor, Hon. Steve Maharey, academy members from the Waikato, Bay of Plenty & Dr. Craig Pritchard also from Massey.

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day two morning

A busy morning with variou presentations and workshops.

first up, three award winners provide a view of 'how did I get here?' The three presenting are Prof. Gary Bold, Karl Dodds (both Prime Minister award winners) & Dr. Rachel Fewster (winner of two awards - 2003 & 2009). Gary's humour came across well during his presentation on techniques for lecturing to large classes. Rachel covered 'how to make 90% of students love statistics?' providing a good example of how to make a subject interesting by building on what students know & providing relevant 'real life' problems & reasons for why they should solve them. Karl covered the more serious side of winning the award including increased levels of expectations from students & other colleagues.

Second presentation from Dr. John Reynolds on "the impact on curriculum change on health sciences first year students' approaches to learning". He presented on a study which used a learning inventory (the approaches and study skills inventory - ASSIST) to measure if curriculum change on students' approaches to learning. John provided good examples of how the curriculum has been changed in structure (eg. student study groups formed) and objective (deepening understanding & links between concepts to made) and the results of an evaluation using ASSIST to find out if there were changes in students learning (surface, deep, strategic). Found surface similar to pass cohorts, strategic increased but significant increase in deep learning.

Dr. Lisa Emerson then lead a session on the new criteria for the Tertiary teaching excellence award. Lisa is the academy representative on the TTEA panel & found the experience to be inspiring & a great privilege. Background provided to assist academy members in mentoring potential applicants for future TTEAs.

Great presentations from all :)

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day one - afternoon

Two main sessions this afternoon. The first one is three discussion groups to produce position papers for the academy. These are on teaching excellence (facilitated by Pip Lynch & Juliet Gerrard), Scholarship of teaching (with Peter Mellow) & quality enhancement process in education (with Karl Dodds & Rachel Fewster). I chose to attend the session on scholarship of teaching as a continuation of my project on "perspectives of trades tutors." Group discussed the definition of 'scholarship' which has various connotations depending on teaching subject and institution.various papers put by Peter on to the Ako website were discussed with expectation of others to put more papers on plus need to perhaps do a literature review of the field. group then organised to work out how it will work together towards producing a position paper by December!!

After afternoon tea, Welby Ings, facilitated a session on 'challenging some debilitating myths', using story telling as a method to elicit our philosophies on teaching & learning. Welby modelled the power of story telling by firstly narrating a story to us. Group work then followed on using narratives in teaching. A good session which provided a good opportunity to explore the deeper issues related to using narratives in enhancing learning, especially metacognition and attitudinal transformation.

ako aotearoa academy symposium - day one morning

Symposium began by Dr. Peter Coolbear, Ako Aotearoa director with a karakia. Then welcome from Donna Buckingham who is the president of the Academy to the symposium 2009 - turning vision into promising practice.. Hon. Wyatt Mapp, associate Minister of Tertiary Education then provided the official opening. He covered the macro picture, tertiary education strategy, the research /science / technology strategy & how the academy may assist with bringing some of these strategies about. John Hosking summarised the academy's response and thanked the minister for his encouragement and support.

First key note from Dr. Sally Kift on "a transition pedagogy for first year curriculum design and renewal". Sally provided results from a review conducted via a Australian Learning & Teaching Council fellowship. This was pushed by a recognition of the growing diversity of students and the need to engage, support and realise a sense of belonging for first year students in tertiary education. A transitional pedagogy was proposed around the identification of six first year curriculum principles. These are transition, diversity, design, engagement, assessment and evaluation & monitoring.


My workshop followed after morning tea. I covered the usual ground of the move of hardware to mobile, software to the cloud & humanware to virtual social networking = everyware. I provided the opportunity for participants to explore a range of web 2.0 tools which may be useful in various teaching & learning contexts using small group activities supported with Dell Minis on loan from AUT and organised by Peter Mellow. An opportunity for partcipants to get to know each other better & to share ideas & applications of various web 2.0 tools with examples from their teaching contexts. Plus the challenge to use these tools for their own professional development and for students to 'do the work to do the learning.'

ako aotearoa academy symposium - afternoon second session

Second half of the Ako Aotearoa Academy symposium provided for two concurrent sessions to run.



One from Peter Mellow & Paul Denny, who facilitated a session on Web 2.0. A session from which I would build on for my presentation tomorrow. Attended the session on research funding so had to give this one a miss. However feedback from the others who attended this session indicated blogs, wikis etc. were covered by Peter & Paul covered Peerwise which supports the construction, display & organisation of student generated multiple choice questions.



Kirsty Weir, research manager from Ako Aotearoa, ran a 'funding clinic' to provide information on the various funding streams available for research in education. Always good to recieve some clear indication of what is expected when applying for funding. All in a very helpful session.

ako aotearoa academy symposium - 28/10 afternoon

Over the next few days, I am attending (& presenting again!) at the Ako Aotearoa academy symposium. This is open to all winners of the New Zealand excellence in tertiary teaching awards. So for the next few days, a busy programme unfolds with various keynotes, workshops, presentations and academy organisational matters.

First up this afternoon - which is a pre-symposium workshop - is Professor Sally Kift from Queensland University of Technology - on 'engaging diverse first year student cohorts: Moving from theory, through policy to action", with some good links to a proposed project I am hoping to begin on studying the first year experiences of first year apprentices.

eportfolios for VET - 16/10 afternoon sessions

Richard Wyles from flexible learning network in NZ speaking on "regional & sector eportfolios".
started with youtube video on eportfolios at solent university . myportfolio.schools.nz & myportfolio.ac.nz for tertiary are service for portfolios system based on Mahara. Detailed origins of Mahara & explained it's many goals including flexibity to accommodate a variety of models of learning, learner centred (learner decides what to add, who sees what etc.), personal learning environment, includes social networking for learner communities, has blogging tool, resume builder.

It is open source so has a strong developer community including peer support via forums, wikis, training content etc.original funds from TEC in NZ but has had $$ contributed from many other international institutions plus now supported by a host of Mahara partner. Also provided examples & listed ongoing development going on with the myportfolio platform.

Next up, eportfolios communities of practice;local, national & global - from Gillian Hallan, Queensland University of Technology. she spoke on how eportfolios COPs may assist each other in moving eportfolios forward across different sectors and into the future. Especially important as eportfolios move from early adoption into the mainstream. study undertaken to find out what eportfolios COP would actually need in the for of support & the attributes of a successful COP should have. findings from the Australian eportfolio project - report out oct. 2009
majority of eportfolios use in Australia are in the higher Ed. sector (70%) with only 10% in the VET sector. There is a strong need for COP to be available for the VET sector. In the study, most people wanted the COP to be used to share pedagogy, or disciplined based, assess technology / tools etc. needs of new & seasoned (over 2 years) eportfolio practioners differed. Seasoned practioners more interested in sharing ideas about 'resources'. critical success factors seems to be having a funded facilitator, member engagement and diversity of community activities. Main challenges were using the technology, facilitator workload and community engagement.

Virtual presentation from University of nottingham - Kirstie Coolin, Stuart Wood & Kat Wehrheim on eportfolios to support lifelong learning did not run due to problems with audio not getting through.

Last session of the day, eportfolios for lifelong learning: the benefits for Australia by Jerry Leeson from education.au Everyone should have a right to have a eportfolio. Presentation covered review of SICTAS report'eportfolios beyond education & training', better support for lifelong learners & the focus on the ACE sector.
SICTAS research reveals eportfolio used globally beyond traditional formal ed. including supporting workers facing redundancy, career development (careers wales & myfuture - Australia - www.myfuture.edu.au), workforce development & planning, continuing professional
development, lifelong learning, articulation of skills & experience & development of competencies in ICT.Not formal sector fit into industry or regional. Small number of large scale implementation exampled by careerswales,( www.careerwales.com )
netherlands (the future that works), nedcar , efolio minnesota ,europass.

How can lifelearn learning be recorded? especially for people who began their formal learning long before digital arrived. Is your digital evidence enough? does if show 'all of someone's learning? Web is not a good place for employers to be researching job candidates! dependent on what the intend of your web identity is. Challenges for lifelong learners & eportfolios include uncertainty about reflection (how, when, how much?) there might be multiple portfolios accumulated over time, stuff disappears before they are archived, ACE sector could be a potential user of eportfolios.

Allison closed the conference with where from here? We are in an era of innovation in order to meet the challenges of the future. where does learning happen, where we value learning, much of learning happens outside of formal learning, eportfolios need to be one way for people to collate the learning they undertake through their learning lives.

eportfolios for VET - 16/10 morning sessions

welcome by Howard Errey from the Australian Flexible Learning framework.
Followed by welcome to country from the Wurundjeri Council.
Opening address was from Rodney Spark, Victorian Flexible Learning Advisory Group (FLAG).
He also set the scene by reading a case study example of 'lifelong pathways to empower learners' as the VET visions for eportfolios.


Allison Miller from the Australian Flexible learning network then updated on current VET initiatives & eportfolio national directions. Also the blog which accompanies this conference
She drew attention to the eportfolio roadmap & resources availablewhich are excellent resources contextualised to provide information on eportfolios for learners, teachers /trainers, CEOs / managers, IT & teaching & learning support staff, employers, prof bodies & career services and employee.

Morning keynote from Ruth Wallace (Charles Darwin University, Darwin) on eportfolios supporting learner identity & re-engagement. Detailed research undertaken with disenfranchised learners living in areas with very little infrastructure for use of technology. Interest in using eportfolios to reengage learners in exploring the ways in which they learn which may not be similar to the recognised forms of learning 'accepted' by the mainstream. Learner identity was found to be important especially the development of an active learner identity rather thatn learners who' were passive & waiting for things to happen. eportfolios provide opportunities for the exploration of learner identity - are they active or passive. How can they enhance their own learning? Also allow the way in which people connect and how people represent their conceptions of the world.

eportfolios should not necessarily be linear but be like a 'bramble' where various aspects of someone's knowledge are 'collected' and the connections between the different ways in which this knowledge becomes applied. Therefore eportfolios & learning need to be learner-led. trying to fit disenfranchised learners in to the current framework only leads to frustration both of the part of the learner & the provider :) Also inportant for learners to own their own knowledge even if it is a mportfolio on a memory stick. They are then able to make the decision to share their knowledge at the time/place and with people that they are ready to share.

Second morning keynote from Hazel Owen (Unitec, NZ) eportfolios and web 2.0. summarised the projects at Unitec including work with Thom Cochrane.
Provides examples from her work in Dubai & the work at Unitec to bring together some strategies to enhance eportfolios development.
Handout of links & photos. Future possibilities summarised with the mindmap which detailed the learner eportfolio of a fictional learner - Chan Sook.
Need to ensure there are no barriers to learners developing their own ways to describe how they learn, what they have learned & how they will recieve feedback, what you do with the feedback & then who & how you showcase your eportfolio.

Again, needs to be learner led. They need to set up their private, public spaces and which parts they make visible & share. Call to educators to develop their own eportfolios so that they are themselves more confident with using technology and also for them to then become of the possibilities of eportfolios within their subject area & with their students. They are then better placed to evaluate suitability, set up of support structures and use of eportfolios.

eportfolios at VET - Thursday 15/10

Arrived off an early flight across from Christchurch to Melbourne. Paul Levy picked me up at the airport & we commenced for a longish drive in the much needed rain to the Croydon campus of the Swinburne University of Technology. Here Terri Mathot had set up the conference centre for my lunch time presentation to staff on 'using technology to teach baking. Prentation went well, with about 40 -50 attending & many relevant questions fielded. My overall message was to start with something apppropriate to subject context & student profile & to gradually build on introducing ICT into enhancing student learning as required.

In the evening, the eportfolios showcase mix, mingle & network sessions bracketed the presentations by vendors of eportfolio platforms.

The presentations were on Concord, from eTech, Desire2learn, Mahara, Pebble Pad & Skillbooks
Mahara, Pebble Pad & Skill books were eportfolio focused platforms with the others being learning management systems with added eportfolios capabilities. Mahara & Skill books are open source.


All pretty much did the same things, allowing for archiving of artefacts, revision of material, areas to store reflections, possibilities for feedback from various interested parties and the ability to showcase the portfolios in a variety of ways to cater for intended viewer audiences.

Visually, Pebble pad stood out with a very clean, user friendly user system. Mahara had drag & drop capabilites & most of the others had standard browse your folders methods for bringing artifacts into the eportfolio.

Desire2learn had a mobile interface for phones, PDAs and ipods.
Most also had the option of putting in a template so that users could then pop in the required evidence into the right places. rubrics were possible for teachers & student reference so that students could work out the level of learning required to be reflected in their artifacts.


So a good opportunity to catch up on other people working on or intending to work on eportfolios. Also good to see what is available in the market for eportfolio solutions. There are inherent advantages & disadvantages to using proprietary software when some alternatives are available the aggregation of Web 2.0 tools. However, a structured eportfolios environment might be one way to get things started.


Learners & teachers, once familiar with eportfolios' capabilites may then be more confident with exploring other options for eportfolio collation & construction.