Learning from mlearning pilot participants

Nick Ford & I had an invigorating session with a group of apprentices who are part of our mlearning pilot. The session is an introduction to the apprentices who are keen to take part in the pilot on how to archive their evidence so that we can have access to their work.

All of the apprentices own a camera capable phone. Three are very conversant with phone capabilities and especially up to date with how to ‘work the system’. If you know how and when to do it, there are ways to access the web via your phone for very little payment!

Our advantage with our mlearning project, is that we are using a form of personal expression that is natural to our students. They find photo and video blogging to be a normal way for them to share their leisure activities with their friends. Half the students had their own webpage. Their perception of webpage layout & navigation is different from ours. They are not phased by a page with is cluttered with video clips, photos, advertisements, text snippets, multiply search boxes etc.

The introduction was also to familiarise the students with how to transfer their evidence or link to their evidence on to a Moodle page set up for each student. All the students are provided with ‘teacher’ access to their page. Almost all the students understood how to work Moodle very quickly and were linking to flickr, youtube and other websites (like their own Bebo page) within a few minutes of being shown how to work the editing icons. In fact, they picked up on the possibilities much faster than groups of tutors who would be given a similar introductory session to Moodle.

We also showed the students the possibilities in using Vox and Comic life to lay out their portfolios. Students familiar with Bebo appreciated the cleaner Vox interface and most thought that laying out their evidence in the form of a comic book would be something they would give a go.

It will be interesting at the beginning of next year to see what has eventuated with evidence collection and to see how the collation of the eportfolio will take place when the time comes for the evidence to be presented.

Starting on mLearning pilot

Nick Ford & I put in a joint application to the CPIT Foundation for funds to run the mLearning pilot. Our bid has been successful, so it is now time to put our pilot plans in place.

As a forerunner, the local paper did a write up about the project. The main goals of the pilot are to test out the various parts of our mlearning project with a cohort of first year apprentice bakers. It will be a bringing together of all the things we have learnt thus far with the various trials reported on this blog.

A couple of interesting items which I will explore in the next couple of weeks before adding into the pilot as possible eportfolio repository alternatives are:-

• Comic Life (via Thomas Cochrane’s blog that points to Joao Rivera’s blog on using comic life to chronicle boat building
• Mahara, the NZ open source eportfolio site and
• Slideshare, since a few apprentices have started to use powerpoint for their year three portfolios on gateaux / torten and breads.
  

It will be exciting times ahead!

Plans for 2007

Several good tramps away plus time with the family has provided me with time to revive, refresh & rejuvenate. 2007 should be another busy year. I have recovered from the disappointment of not being able to have the mlearning pilot funded via our ITO. I am still working on how to fund the developmental hours required to get the pilot going as it is important to do a good evaluation of the various aspects of the mlearning project.

The use of eTXT to SMS questions etc. will not be the difficult part. It’s the mashing of the various Web 2.0 applications that will present us with many obstacles /learning opportunities. The components include the archiving of portfolio evidence with our chosen CMS (Moodle) and a good showcase for the eportfolio. These will remain a constant unknown until we put the whole package through its paces. We need to do the trial with:-

• a multitude of mobile phone models,
• the two telecommunications providers in NZ, various mobile phone ‘plans’ from prepaid to monthly to ones like ‘best mate’ from Vodaphone,
• apprentices who live in rural areas (who might not have great mobile coverage),
• apprentices who have limited or no access to PCs so that the mobile phone becomes their only access to their eportfolio material and the Moodle course portal,
• apprentices who are tech savvy, and may be able to provide us with ideas on how to go about the exercise in a better way
• apprentices who are not that enthusiastic about using their mobile phones for the task of providing workplace evidence,
  

In short, I am really keen to trash out all the things that are barriers, challenges and pitfalls. All the things that the nay sayers have put forward to say that the mlearning programme will not work. I am a great believer in learning by doing. I also have faith in the ingenuity of our elearning support staff. This is tinged with pragmatism, so that if something really does not work, I am prepared to move on and try something else. Meanwhile, it’s important to keep up with what is continually coming up on the Web 2.0 horizon as these provide us with:

• a pool from which we can draw our eportfolio compiling resources
• ideas of on how to better use web 2.0 sites for archiving evidence or collating eportfolios
• other ways in which we could go about collecting, archiving or collating evidence
• better methods to integrate mobile phones to Web 2.0 sites
• more cost effective /time effective way to do things
• cheaper alternatives to mobile web browsing

Getting back into work mode. Thinking about iPhone & Web 2.

I have had a quiet & relaxing holiday. A couple of good tramps in Kahurangi National Park & on the West Coast (despite the desultory weather) have recharged my mental arsenal. Will be away next week on Stewart Island for another tramp. It should give me time to sort out my plans for 2007.

Meanwhile, I have been catching up with relevant mlearning / elearning type articles and events. Primary of these would be the launch of Apples iPhone this week. The launch has been extensively reported in our local media including a front page photo in the Press (Christchurch paper) & on the TV news. However, what has brought the launch into focus has been the reaction of my daughter (& her friends). The iPhone is already on their list of ‘things to save up for’. They will have at least a year as the iPhone is not scheduled to arrive in NZ until early 2008. They are already enamoured by the overall coolness of the iPhone’s design (thin & slim is in), its colour / feel (although none of them have held one yet) & the ‘funky’ interface (no buttons, touch screen & brilliant display).

Apple is making a calculated move into the mobile computing market because that is one of the futures of computing. Steve Jobs reckons on getting at least 1% of the mobile phone market (currently 2 billion mobile phones have been sold) and Apple shares have gone up since the iPhone’s launch. It all bodes well for mlearning & provides some impetus for me to continue on our mlearning project.

The other area that is growing & becoming more mainstream is the rise and rise of Web 2.0 applications. Earlier on this week, there was a TV news article about car surfing. One of the reasons car surfing is growing is the number of people who take videos of themselves car surfing and then putting the videos up on youtube. I went out for a walk with a few friends who are ‘non techy’ & they wanted to know what youtube was. When I explained the concept & expounded on flickr & blogging etc. they were keen enough to discuss the topic at length. They had all come across the concept of blogging (its been in the news quite a bit) and the concept of social networking. This is another indicator that Web 2.0 applications are now becoming much more mainstream. Even though the majority of people are not using them, they are aware that blogs & the ability to put your photos on the web exist.

2006 reflections

How has the year gone? Or should I say, where has the year gone? I have just re-read my blog from the beginning of the year to see if I have made any progress on making use of mobile phones and Web 2.0 applications to set up eportfolios. I think that I have made some progress, enough to make a bid with our ITO to set up a pilot for using mobile phones to complete theory of baking units and to collect workplace based evidence with mobile phones. However, the bid has been unsuccessful. My school is now not prepared to support work on mlearning until a review is undertaken to see if there are other avenues we can use to deliver learning & workplace assessment completion to apprentices in the workplace.

I am disappointed at the outcome. Also frustrated at the lack of support for what I can see is an initiative that can have wide reaching application for trades based training. One of the arguments put in place is that the numbers in baking are too small to warrant investing in expensive development time. Point taken but the numbers involved are also ideal for running a pilot plus with a group of young people representative of workplace based training.

The registration of new National Qualifications in Baking has proceeded at a snail’s pace. The new qualifications are now just about to be registered, a year to get them through the ITO & NZQA hurdles! We need to put in place some way of assessing apprentices in the workplace that does not cost us or the apprentice too much.

I now realise the limitations of mobile phones & Web 2.0 applications and am focused on working around these challenges. I am optimistic that most of the limitations will disappear or become obsolete as mobile phone & Web 2.0 applications improve, innovate further and become even more user friendly. However, with no funding support for the interim, it will be a case of chug along on whatever time becomes available.

It also still leaves the question of whether mlearning is the path to take. From the start, we have understood that travelling out to apprentices to complete their workplace based assessments would not be financially viable. A really easy option would be to just have a ‘tick & flick’ logbook type option. Apprentices come to us with a list of products ticked off (by their employer) & they undertake a practical assessment at block course. If they do not make the grade, then they have not met competency. We could insist on photos being added to the ‘logbook’ but the question of authenticity arises when the evidence is being moderated. With mlearning, the date / time the photo was archived would be recorded, our plans were to contact the apprentice at some of these occasions to set up a ‘situated learning’ opportunity. We would know that the apprentice is working with a certain product based on the photos they were posting on to flickr or similar. At our next fortnightly check on them, we could go through the underlying knowledge questions linked to the product to see how well they are actually understood how to put things together.

Anyway, I am looking forward to the summer. A few good tramps will help me recollect my thoughts & reflect on alternative delivery methods to mlearning. I will still continue blogging as many of the tools I have discovered (like personal portals) are useful in my teaching context. I plan to use vox to set up scenarios on competency judgement for hospitality students and pageflakes to help novice bakers build scaffolds that will help them keep up with their learning during their full time programme. Plus, I will still maintain investigation into mlearning as I am ever the optimist!