CPIT lunch time PD session: Mobile learning apps

The CPIT Centre for Educational Development (CED) and the Learning Technologies Unit (LTU) has been running a series of professional development sessions this term. Today’s lunch time session was on mobile apps. Almost 30 tutorial and learning support staff attended. Katrina Fisher provided some examples of the work she has been doing following completion of the Ako Aotearoa net tablets project. Included is the work on developing video content supported by quizzes and glossaries that students access via Moodle. Shifting content from tablet to Moodle opens access to web enabled hardware.

Sam Hegarty then provided a show and tell of several useful iOS apps.He started with evernote as a good option to upload content on to the cloud and access through a range of devices and operating systems.

Nearpod was met with great enthusiasm. This app allows a teacher to share the image on their screen with other iOS devices. The app includes options for quizzes, sketching, polls and picture/website/video sharing. Something we will need to test with a large number of tablets through a CPIT wifi site. The app seemed to run in a timely manner during the demo when there were about a dozen devices accessing the site.

Socrative was recommended by one of the staff as a multi-platform alternative although it did not have quite all the options that were available on Nearpod. Its main objective is to be a ‘student or audience response’ system.

Educreations allows a recording of a lesson in the form of whiteboard notes and audio. Photos can be attached and annotated. Basically a screen capture plus voice recording of a short interactive ‘learning presentation’. 

By a nice coincidence, Derek Wenmouth’s blog today was on Bring your own device (BYOD). This was one barrier raised by staff – the expense of obtaining tablets and the lack of support for non-windows OS devices at present. Therefore, an important next step is to establish institutional BYOD policy that is visible to staff and students, providing clear guidelines on what is institutionally supported.

Bounce - book overview

Syed, M. (2010). Bounce.the myth of talent and the power of practice. London, UK. Fourth Estate.

This book has an excellence in sporting achievement focus, stemming from Matthew Syed's background as a competitive table tennis player. It is along similar lines to Gladwell’s book Outliers - summarised in earlier blog, covering some similar ground but providing an update through the use of more recent work on psychology and neurology. The sports focus keeps the book tight and there is much information of relevance to trade skills development.

There are 10 chapters in 3 parts with parts 1 and 2 of most relevance.

Part one covers the ‘talent myth’ and similar to Outliers, spells out how the path to sports excellence relies on a mix of being at the right place and the right time; having connections with the right people; and possessing the discipline and diligence to engage with deliberate practice over a long period of time.

Part two brings in the ‘paradoxes of the mind’ with the role of motivation and the placebo effect. Chapter six on ‘the curse of choking and how to avoid it’ provides an interesting read of the danger of collapsing under the strains and pressures of external expectations and provides tips for the individual on how to surmount this hurdle.

All in, part one provides a good overview of the learning involved in getting to become an expert. There are summaries of current literature and good examples of application of these studies to sports training and development are provided. The book is also written in an easy to read style, explaining concepts in sports psychology with clarity. 

NZ ITP conference - part of day 2

In Wellington today to do a short presentation on the 3d project as part of presentations in number of 'innovation for industry ' projects. The conference is for management and council members of institutes of technology and polytechnics in NZ.

Managed to get in in time for the last keynote of the morning from two industry representatives, Frank Dean (service manager) Gen-i Southland and Davey McDonald ( owner and manager) from Ortega Fish Shack. Both provide employers' and ex-students' perspective on vocational education's contribution to individual's life aspirations. Both are successful and were supportive of flexible delivery options, allowing integration of work and study. Appreciated ITP 's small class sizes, hands on learning activities, industry relevance of learning content and assessments and tutor's currency with industry. Both spoke realistically about their vocational choices, parent's influences on career choice and support for completing qualifications part-time while working full-time. Recommended need to keep up with play with regards to technology, approaches, collaboration, contribution of technology to extending learning and workplace connections for students.

Innovation presentations in 2 concurrent streams with 5 projects presented in each. There were more projects submitted than time allocated so several other projects will have presentations featured on conference website.

I attend the ones in the stream I am presenting in.

First up, Dr. Juan Pellegrino, also from CPIT who presents on 'supporting international expansion of SMEs'. Covered aims, rationale, methods, sme partner, issues and interim findings. Used case study to build narrative and the focus group of academics to study how sme could work through challenges along with linkages to current literature on innovation.

Dr. Ken Simpson and Diana Sharma from Unitec on ' relationships between ITPs and local business sector collaboration' - TEPU - the platform. How to encourage academics and industry to form a bridge. Could take at least 5 years with a report now about 2 years in. At the moment regular monthly meetings and hospitality exchanges at now has a draft collaboration proposal submitted. So build understanding first and then formalize. First up jointly establish a business development capability unit. Either to get better at what they were doing and assist to move into new or unfamiliar. now have 11 objectives to assist businesses to grow and to share institutional infrastructure.

My presentation next, centering around how to leverage the installation of a 3D printer to encourage institution and industry collaboration. Including rationale for project, summary of initial literature review and recommendations from this. Data from pre printer arrival presented along with some data from post printer.

Then from Eastern Institute of Technology with a group of researchers (viticulture Dr. Mark Krasnaw and business Dr Frina Albertyn) on a specialised industry project to reduce rot in vineyards through early non chemical defoliation. Need for outreach with stakeholders, then develop project, implement, analysis of data and dissemination of results and how to encourage uptake of new technology.

Last up, Jimmi Rosa from Bay of Plenty Polytechnic (BOPP) on the development of a elearning tool for dentists. A project initiated by industry for an ITP to design and develop a specific elearning tool to provide information on dental equipment. Reference used from Bakker et al. 2011 and Schindler and Epper, 2003, activity theory (Engestrom) and knowledge reuse (Markus, 2001) to evaluate efficacy of knowledge transfer. Projects involved staff, students and industry partners. Project website http://triohub.com/demo

Off after presentation to fly back to Christchurch so will catch up on several other presentations of interest once they come up on the conference website.

Practice based education summit Sydney 2012 April – checking out web archive

Was unable to be at the practice-based education (PBE)summit, held in Sydney in early April this year. An Ako Aotearoa meeting at the end of September and touching base with one of the presenters at the summit, Dr. Dale Sheehan, reminded me to check through the summit archives. I now also see that presentations have been uploaded to youtube.

Presentations of interest are from the following with powerpoints and videos of each presentation available:

Professor Stephen Billett on Learning through practice: Origins, practices and potentials which contains aspects from his book on Vocational learning as summarise in recent blog.

Professor David Boud on the practice of practice-based education.

Professor Joy Higgs presented on pedagogies relevant to practice based education

Dr. Dave Sheehan talked about her projects around the education and training of doctors with PBE and the next generation of general practitioners.

The 2013 summit website also now up and the main Education for Practice Institute has pertinent information   and useful resources.