Evaluating various ways to deliver multiple choice questions to mobile phones

I completed a set of comparative trials with a group of full time baking students some time back and analysed the evaluations this week. Multiple choice questions were texted to students using eTxt, on AMS forms generously provided on two Nokia phones from the Kinross group and via access to Moodle quiz on their computers.

Informal feedback already indicates a preference for the flexibility of having the questions delivered to their mobile phones instead of just being available on a desktop computer via Moodle. Several of the students were keen to have more questions provided so that they could revise their lessons whenever they had a window of time. This finding confirms the learning from Peter Mellow’s studytxt trials.

Unpacking the formal evaluations using an activity theory framework revealed some important aspects of user behaviour which I did not expect to find. If we view the completion of revision questions as the object (or objective) of the activity, the things that impact on the object include the students who will use the questions, the tools they use (mobile phones) and the signs they use (SMS & the use of ‘bullets’ on AMS forms & moodle multiple choice questions). The other things that contribute to the activity include the rules (trying to get the answers right), the community (the course the students are enrolled in) & roles (students as students, students as research participants etc).

The importance of the tool & the signs used seemed to be foremost in how the students evaluated the differences between answering the same questions via eTXT (SMS messages), AMS forms (multiple choice with ‘radio buttons’ loaded on to 2 Nokia phones) & Moodle (multiple choice with buttons but had to access the questions via the web).

Students went for the familiar. They expressed a preference for using eTXT because it was simple, they understood how to use it without having to learn a new phone system, they could answer the questions by texting the answers back whenever they had free time to do so.
As the majority of students did not own Nokia phones, they were unfamiliar with the menu system on the phones & found it difficult to find the questions. Answering the questions themselves proofed to be easy although a few students (both younger & older) needed to work through a few questions before they were comfortable.

The majority of students were on prepaid phones and did not want to access the questions on Moodle via their mobile phones. They were happy to hunt up a computer at CPIT to complete the questions but the convenience, just –in – time & nomadic aspect of mlearning then became redundant. Students had completed quizzes on Moodle before and were familiar with how to access & work through the questions. Even after I demonstrated how to access the questions via my Treo, none of the students took up the opportunity to also do the same with their mobile phones.

My learning from this is that the “learn an unfamiliar activity with a familiar tool” seems to hold true. The layout of multiple choice questions on AMS forms & Moodle is vastly superior to just receiving the question as a text message. However, the students made a choice for the familiar & by their perception, the cheaper options. So whatever we do from now on needs to be simple to use BUT also familiar.

An evaluation of some Mind mapping tools

After having a successful play with wisdomap, I did an exploration of Web 2.0 mind mapping software that might be useful. Mashable com provides a list of over 30 mind mapping tools and there are other lists at Mehta nirav com and at rev2 org. So there are lots out there and many are available for use for free. I randomly chose three others, put up some mindmaps which are adaptions of what I would usually put up on the board at the start of a session and here are the results.

Firstly I put up a mind map on research paradigms on bubble.us . It was very easy to sign up (instant) and then it took 10 minutes to set up the map and save the image as a jpeg file. To share the image, you email the link to others, or invite others to subscribe to bubble.us & access your mind map. This is useful if the mind map is to be used by students to set up their own mind maps.

Both Mindomo & mindmeister required registration and then the return of a confirmation email to get started.

Mindomo has a Windows type interface, so it is familiar to use & I set up a mind map on learning styles in about ten minutes. The image is not as colourful or visually attractive as Wisdomap or bubble.us but it is easy to use, you can share your maps easily and collaboration on maps is possible.

Mindmeister provides good tutorials, including a short video on how to go about using the tool. The main difference between mindmeister and the rest is that it allows more than one person to work on the mind map at the SAME time. Although not as visually exciting as some of the others, the interface is easy to use. I put up the assessment map very quickly & sharing the map is also straightforward.

At the moment, I would probably stick with wisdomap as it is visually attractive, easy to use and provides the option of attaching other supporting material to the map (photos, videos, powerpoints etc). This makes it the wisdomap useful as a ‘one-stop’ revision site for some of the classes I teach. None of the above seemed to have mobile capabilities but I did download wisdomap on to my treo but only a thumbnail was displayed as the Treo only had internet explorer 6.

Mobile tools becoming more mainstream

Latest blog from Jane Hart’s top ten tools reveals that there is a change in the top ten tools for learning including the entry into the list of mobile tools & services (like find.mobi, fring, Qik and Utterz), mobile versions of key tools (like flickr, YouTube, Google Maps) and the mobile browser Opera Mini.

Twitter is in the 15th position, ahead of tools like youtube, igoogle & slideshare! I have not really been taken by twitter but twitter has a mass audience. One of the latest techcrunch blogs is on why twitter has not failed the power of audience. Will have another go at trying twitter out to see if it works for me :)

More info. on the mobile tools mentioned above:-

• Find.mobi is a mobile based search tool. Relatively easy to use and focused on mobile sites for ease of upload & display on mobile devices.
• fring allows use to use Skype, MSN messenger, Google talk etc. on you mobile phone. My Treo 700Wx is on the list, as is New Zealand (yeh). So will give this a go over the next couple of days to see how it works.
• Qik allows streaming live video to you phone. Will be expensive on our NZ telecom plans but will give this a try to find out how it works.
• utterz provides the tool to start a discussion from your computer or your phone. Utterz lets you create and follow discussions with friends or people with similar interests. Utterz can be audio, video, pictures and text. You can create or join a discussion from any mobile phone or computer. Friends can reply by voice, TXT message or on the mobile site at m.utterz.com. New Zealand is on the list, so another one to try out.

Good to be able to try out new mobile tools and by the look of things, mobile tools are an increasingly important adjunct when any social networking site launches.

The hidden lives of learners

At a NZ Association for Research in Education conference in 2001, I had the pleasure to attend Graham Nuthall’s Jean Herbison presentation on The cultural myths and the realities of teaching and learning. I had learnt about Graham & and Adrienne Alton Lee through my B Ed studies in the 1990s. Much of their work had particular relevance to me as my children were younger then & provided me with a source to apply my learning. To this day, both my children remember the sessions we had about learning smarter, not just harder.

Over the mid semester ‘break’, I read Graham Nuthall’s book, the hidden lives of learners and this brought back many memories for me of his presentation. Previous to reading the book, I have been mulling over my thoughts about the mlearning pilot and where it‘s next trial could take my research participants & myself. My Phd reflections established a link between becoming a baker and the use of technology to capture some of the essence of how young people ‘become’. The eportfolios produced by apprentices are very much digital narratives of some aspects of their journey towards becoming bakers. It records some of the skills and knowledge they have accumulated but the collection of multimedia evidence also captures some of the ‘unstructured’ pathways, methods, interactions and important life skills which are being gained as well.

The collections of evidence do not provide solid evidence of what goes on in the apprentices’ heads as they transform from immature, self focused boys into responsible, reliable, competent and mature young men. There is scope (if I can secure some research funding) to study the meta-cognitive processes as novices become semi – experts by using a mixture of what is currently taking place with the mlearning pilot and the research tools used by Nuthall and Alton Lee.

Wisdomap as an eportfolio tool?

Had a look at Wisdomap which came up via Jane Hart’s pick of the day elearning tool. I tend to use mindmaps in some of the sessions I teach. I use it especially when I have content that requires students to also have to put a structure to the content for their own learning. Therefore, the concept used my Wisdomap that allows each node to be extended by text, pictures, videos or websites will be really useful not only for students but also for teachers to organise their lesson resources into one easily accessible place.

I can also see the possibilities for using wisdomap as an ePortfolio tool. Each node in the mindmap could be one area or sub-area of the portfolios. This node can then be expanded with links to text, files that can be text, powerpoint, excel files etc., along with links to photos or videos or to social networking websites. It will be a quick & effective way of putting an ePortfolio together.

Wisdomap offers 3 mindmaps for free, after which there is a payment of £1 per month! Small biccys for unlimited number of mindmaps. The interfaces is user-friendly and it took be less than an hour to put in a ‘adult education summary’ mindmap for a class I am teaching this week. I build up the mind map with various nodes along with text inclusions. Plus also put in relevant websites and a powerpoint summary.

As more of the social networking sites become mainstream, tools like Wisdomap which allow users to link to their existing files and information found on the web will no doubt become the norm. Next item on my wish list is mobile phone compatibility.

Michael Wesch’s youtube videos for teaching anthropology

I have used Michael Wesch’s youtube video ‘the machine is us’ in a couple of presentations. The video encapsulates the promises of web 2.0 and the opportunities it opens up for the average person to put content on the web. They have been useful in informing people new to the concept of social networking about the potential of web 2.0.

Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring the impact of new media on human interaction (and the impact of human interaction on new media). He teaches anthropology at Kansas State University. He not only researches social media but also bases his teaching on the underlying philosophies of social networking and the capabilities of technology for enhancing social networks.

Some of his work on mediated cultures is presented in the form of youtube videos. These include the ‘machine is us’ video but also another video which summarises how today’s students approach learning. This video was made by his first year anthropology class studying digital ethnography whereby the video itself was planned using a class wiki & the video shot in the lecture theatre during one of the lecture times. A really interesting concept worth exploring in other subject areas.

His students also study youtube and a series of videos, including the history of youtube have been constructed by various students from various classes over the past few years. The videos on the website are from the class of 2007 but the class of 2008 is beavering at this year’s project on their wiki.

Another project that Michael Wesch uses with his students is the world simulation project . In this project, the students become participants in a simulated world. Groups of students are divided up into ‘tribes’ who are to come up with their own cultures. Groups then interact with each other, using the rules that they have established earlier. Props like currencies, natural resources and other items that help create the world. In one of the later class sessions, the students run the simulation of ‘world history’. This is all done to provide students with the opportunity to ‘live’ the social and cultural processes that interconnect humans.

All the above make marvellous resources for social studies but also provide an example of how to engage students with a topic and to make it relevant and exciting for them.

flowgram

Here’s another interesting way to set up an eportfolio. Flowgram provides an interesting method for presenting various multimedia artifacts. You set it up like a blog. Each blog can be text or linked to your usual blog, or podcast, or linked to a slideshow, which is a series of still photos or videos, overlaid with audio voiceover or sound track. It’s a concept that has been elegantly presented and tailor made for digital story telling.

The interface is very easy to use & has a very clean, minimalist feel. Have registered to have a play & will report back next week on how things went.

Podcasts from CBS on use of cell phones in Africa

I am not much of an audio person but have taken to accumulating a collection of podcasts that I can listen to when I take the dog out for a long walk on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Unfortunately, I have accumulated enough to keep the dog & me walking all the daylight hours of Saturday & Sunday in order to get through all of them. So I did a good review of the types of podcast that would pay dividends and the one that came up trumps was one from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The SPARK podcast is hosted by Nora Young & contains a very good coverage of various technological happenings around the world. This weeks podcast is an interview with Ken Banks, an anthropologist working in Africa who is studying the impact of the cell phone on rural and disadvantaged communities. We can all learn from Africa about how to make use of cell phones in a more intrinsically useful way. The podcast also highlights the inherent ingenuity of humans in how they are able to make use of technology that is dependent on electricity in the absence of a stable electricity supply. Ken is involved in several projects that make use of mobile technology to assist in building connections with various NGOs. All of the projects contribute to the mlearning knowledge base.

I also occasionally follow the local community radio, Plains FM podcasts. One of our chef tutors, Dave Tame, presents regularly on this with his podcast on cooking trends. It is a great way for CPIT staff to share their expertise with the general public.

iPhone coming to NZ in July

Exciting news for m-learning enthusiasts in the local paper on the arrival of the 3G iPhone to NZ. Vodaphone will be offering these for sale on July the 11th – only about 30 sleeps away. There is no indication of the price yet but most people who are keen to get their hands on one will be hopeful that the prices will be similar to the ones in the US of A.

Thom Cochrane has been off the mark quickly with his evaluation of the iPhone. On my part, I have had a look at several ‘unofficial’ iPhones plus an iTouch and have to say that the touch screen interface is intuitive and an improvement on the one on my Treo 700wx. Roll on July when I will get my hands my own and I can try out the touch screen applications on Jane Hart’s site.

Group participation - the power of wikis

I did my daily check of bloglines to see that several blogs have been exploring the themes of group participation and the power of social networking. In contrast, I have been involved in several activities at work that revolve around the use of technology to open up the forum to a staff which have had very little interaction. Although the little that has taken place has been of a high quality.

To start with, Tony Karrer’s blog reported on these books which evangelise the possibilities for the use of technology to network. These are Surowiecki’s Wisdom of the Crowds, Tapscott’s Wikinomics, and Libert & Spector’s We Are Smarter Than Me. All good reads with a multitude of examples from industry, academia and the community of how social networks open up a myriad of opportunities for the average person to contribute, discuss, learn and disseminate ideas, information and philosophies. Derek Wenmouth’s blog provided news that the hallmark encyclopaedia Britannica is now also using the wiki concept to update the encyclopaedia. What will be next?

Last weekend, I read the book Wikipatterns by Stewart Mader which offers advise on how to set up a wiki community. A good practical book that puts into practice the ideas proposed in the other three books above. A website from which the book was constructed models the concepts described in the book. Of particular relevance to me was his analysis of ‘people and adoption’ patterns that help make a wiki community vibrant, organic and significant. On the reverse side, the ‘anti-people and anti-adoption’ patterns were also detailed. I will need to study the book more deeply this weekend to see why our staff forums (both CPIT wide & school based) have so few participants and report back next week on whether the wikipatterns proposed apply to the context at CPIT.

Mobile study – multiple choice questions on mobile phones

This site turned up via leonard low’s excellent blog. It’s a site that allows you to put multiple choice questions on to the web and access them via a desktop or a mobile phone. Mobile study proved to be easy to use. It took me less then ten minutes to register and cut and paste multiple choice questions into a quiz. The lay out of multiple choice questions was very easy to set out as well. Questions have to end in a ? and answers are marked with a *. Access via desktop was more or less instantaneous. Access by mobile phone was also easy but the file requires java to be available on your phone to run it.

Both mobile study & wirenode have appeared at a fortuitous time as I am embarking on trying out different ways to deliver formative questions to students’ mobile phones. So we will test all the different permutations to find out which one is most effective from the students’ viewpoint, in particular, the costs of downloading web based multiple choice questions.

Wirenode - put up mobile web pages in a flash!

This nifty site came through techcrunch as one of the sponsors for an up & coming crunchnetwork meet in Prague. Wirenode is a website that provides the service for mobile webpage creation. A review of wirenode can be found at centreworks.

It took me all of 2 minutes to register, link this blog, find a name for my mobile webpage , take a quick look at the cool mobile phone emulator to see how the page would appear on a phone & that was it!!

Checked out the site on my Treo five minutes later & it was there. Went back to the wirenode site itself on my treo to see how easy it would be to do set up a page using a phone. Web page loaded up without any problems but could not log in (login key did not respond). I tried again today (after about 4 days) and the login key still not responding.

Despite above, still a very easy to use system & I can see great ways it can be used to support microlearning.

Microlearning

Checked my sitemeter last week & noticed Martin Lindner via the Oxford forum on mobile learning and technologies had dipped into this blog. I followed the links to his blog & then on to the microlearning conference website. The website contains links to the conference proceedings from 2006 and 2007. I have not had time to trawl through all the various presentations and reports but the concept of microlearning fits well into a mobile learning environment.

Microlearning refers to small learning units that are delivered for short learning spurts. They deliver ‘micro-perspectives’ within learning, education and training and provide a way for organising learning material in order for the material to be disseminated in a structured and planned learning sequence. For the moment, microlearning provides for a natural fit with the way in which content may be delivered via mobile devices.

However, the way in which mobile phones and other portable computing devises is developing does not mean that microlearning will always be the way things are done. A history of mobile phones ends with a look at the things that may be available on mobile phones in the future. In some senses, mobile phones seem to be developing technology that tries to replace what we now do on our desk tops. Whether mobile phones will eventually replace desk tops is yet to be seen but small UMPCs like the Asus eee show that the possibilities are there. Whether the majority of uses will engage with small screens and tiny keyboards for all of their computing needs remains to be investigated. But the possibilities are exciting and concepts like microlearning help educators adopt a more flexible mindset towards the delivery of ubiquitous access to learning resources.

myPortfolios presentation

Attended a presentation and workshop by Andy Kirk (from the flexible learning network) on myPortfolios today. Myporfolios tertiary is based on the open source Mahara software. Mahara was developed via funding from the NZ Tertiary Education Commission's e-learning Collaborative Development Fund (eCDF), involving Massey University, Auckland University of Technology, The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, and Victoria University of Wellington.

A good range of participants with about ½ from CPIT, TANZ & the secondary, primary and early childhood sectors. Andy went through a good overview including revealing the underlying pedagogical philosophy of myPortfolio as being Kolb’s learning cycle. myPortfolio accepts evidence / artefacts in the form of text and multimedia files and is linkable to blogs, flickr, youtube, rss feeds and social networking sites. Views can be customised for different ‘markets’ that the ePortfolio compiler requires. These views are made up of the artefacts that have been previously collected or linked to. Groups of users can also be networked via myPortfolio.

We all had a chance to have a good play with myPortfolio. In general, processes were intuitive although some of the page names would require tutorials with some students who are unfamiliar with how to upload material on to web based sites. myPortfolio was also visually pleasing to look at. View pages were well laid out and it was easy to move things around so that items were well organised and presented on the viewing pages.

Followup on AMS forms

Had a brief meeting with Ruth Bruce from the Kinross group a couple of weeks ago, to look at enhancements made to the AMS platform for putting forms on to mobile phones. Their newest addition is to allow ‘subscriptions’ to be held on a phone so that entry of common items does not need to be continually repeated but only adjusted as required. An example will be the use of an AMS form that has a partially completed sales order, this order can be updated in the field quickly by changing already entered data rather than re-entering all the data from scratch.

Ruth has suggested that we take up a 3 month trial of AMS. Met with Nick Ford yesterday to look at the possibility of aligning AMS to Moodle. We looked at the WSDL code provided on the AMS wiki plus the various other technical information provided. With input from our elearning networking / database guru, Kristian Thornley, we discussed possibilities and challenges along with the reasons WHY we would use AMS forms instead of what we currently now use.

From our discussion, we decided to run a trial to compare the three possible ways we could sent formative assessment questions to student mobile phones. These would be using the AMS forms, using SMS via eTXT and direct web download of quizzes from Moodle. We will evaluate time taken to download, cost of downloads, usability issues and student preferences. I will work on writing up a survey to evaluate these and fund the student downloads using our CPIT Foundation grant.

Smart Boards

This week, I have been helping Nick out with a large class of keen tutors learning more about how to use ICT in their teaching and learning. One of the sessions was on the Smart board. I had a look at one last year (a stand alone model) and was not overly impressed as the images were slightly washed out as they were projected from a normal ceiling mounted data projector. The board also tended to move when you pushed on it, leading to having to realign it before you were able to use it properly.

This time around, tried out a wall mounted smart board that had a projector mounted just above the board. CPIT now has almost half a dozen installed in the school of science. The images were crisp and the board surface easier to get used to as the board was stable. The notebook functions were well demonstrated by James Jowsey. Of note was the ability to access a gallery of pre-drawn diagrams (clip art) and to be able to manipulate these to form the base from which you could set out a note book page. Especially useful for mathemathics (graph paper, number lines) but also for geography (maps) & science (science apparatus etc.) It is also possible to download the smart book software on to a computer and use the notebook functions just from a laptop or desktop. I will try it out next week on one of my trade maths sessions to see how well it goes.

Top 100 elearning tools

Jane Hart’s collation of top elearning tools from over 150 contributors is now available as a pdf file via this site. The analysis makes for some interesting reading, in particular, that educators are using Web 2.0 tools more widely than their corporate counterparts. Also , that most of the contributors used most of the tools for their own productivity rather than for ‘teaching’. Jane Hart’s list has been useful to us here at CPIT as it provides a one stop shop for tutors just starting on using ICT in a more creative way in their teaching. Descriptions of the sites are succinct and provide enough information to allow for future exploration to see if the tools will fit well into the learning context for each tutor’s content area and student profiles.

A trawl through the list reveal a couple that I have not come across. Of interest to check out were Voicethread and Jing. Voicethread allows photos / text files to be uploaded and then commented upon via audio. Photos from flickr, powerpoint slides and word / excel and pdf files can all be uploaded. Audio files can be posted via mobile phones or through the use of text or webcam. All of the media can then be shared and comments can be left by viewers. I registered and had a quick look around. The interface is very user friendly. I would assume that displaying on a mobile phone would be difficult and at present, only phones in the USA are able to contribute voice files. However, the whole concept is very useful for digital story telling, moving it forward from just a collection of photos to providing the opportunity to bring in personalised stories with audio & video feedback and commenting.

Jing is a screen capture tool. It allows the user to take snapshots of their desktop and make a video of what they have done. This is then sharable with other users. Being in beta, it is free for the time being & requires the download of the jing software tool on to your computer. It’s a useful tool to help record procedures for using other pieces of software plus perhaps to also record presentations as well.

TEC fund application - unsuccessful

Thom Cochrane from Unitec, Nick Ford & myself, put in an application late last year to the TEC for funding via the ‘encouraging & supporting innovation’ fund. The overall proposal was to use evidence based research studies to build guidelines for the implementation of mlearning with vocational / tertiary students. With the funding, we were going to extend on our present projects with apprentice bakers to include apprentice chefs, possibly also builders or plumbers. Thom’s work was with Unitec students studying design and music. The emphasis would be in using mobile phones to allow students to collect evidence of their learning and to make use of Web 2.0 tools to archive, collate and eventually showcase their work. Mlearning meshed with social networking sites will lead to greater interaction between learners, tutors, employers and the learners’ social circle (including their friends and family). Ease of access often leads to better motivation and engagement in learning for students who take up vocational based training.

Unfortunately, our application was turned down. The feedback provided said that it was “because the rationale for the intervention was not strong and it lacked evidence". I emailed the good people at esi support to find out what the above meant & to glean some learning from the experience, so that our next application would be more concrete and contain more evidence. There is another round of applications to be considered in May, so we will put in a revised application to see if we are able to meet the criteria required.

It’s been over a fortnight since I emailed esi support & I have not, as yet, received a reply from them. So Nick & I will work through our existing application and update to reflect requirements provided in the one sentence feedback. Thom, as always a pragmatist, has suggested that perhaps the evaluators did not understand the implications of the concepts proposed in our application. Therefore, we will need to supply a more detailed description (using examples of work that we have already completed) to provide a sense of the potential that our mlearning project has towards contributing towards a better understanding of how to make use of mobile (both hard and software) technology.

Much of our work stems from our daily interaction with young people and their use of technology in their daily lives. From textually org blog comes two blogs this week about how technology has changed the way in which young people socialise and inter-relate.
One is Rich Ling’s book, New tech, new ties: how mobile communication is reshaping social cohesion. The book looks at how the mobile phone affects the two kinds of interactions via mobile communication and face to face. Ling finds that the use of various social rituals the mobile phone strengthens social ties with friends and family but sometimes at the expense of interaction with those who are actually physically present.

The other is an article from the economist magazine on homo mobilist which reports on research at MIT by Shelley Turkle on how the use of ‘mobile tools’ leads to ‘the emergence of a new kind of person’.

These very recent studies provide a strong reason for me to continue my mlearning research and to be persistent about applying for funding to provide adequate resources for studying the sociological aspects that my mlearning research is continually revealing.

Cloud Trade

Checked out Cloud trade - anytime, anywhere digital sharing mentioned by John Biggs on Mobile crunch. Cloud trade allows media in the form of music, photos and videos along with word and pdf files to be shared between mobile phone users. In using Cloud trade, you accumulate points that can then be redeemed via the advertisers who market their products on Cloud trade.

To use Cloud trade, an application has to be downloaded on to the phone (instructions seem to be clear on what to do). You need to register and away you go. Alas, only available in the USA as only supports USA telecom providers. Also, most of the phones are the more high end / smart phones. But does work with Windows mobile 6.0 (including Treo 750), Blackberry plus also Nokia and Samsung phones.

Good concept and a view into things to come (drool), unfortunately might be sometime before Kiwis have access plus when it arrives will be expensive to use.

Critical thinking: what is it and how to assess it, a case for eportfolios

Late last week, attended a workshop convened by our staff development team and facilitated by Jan Kent.

I needed to work my through the various definitions of critical thinking and to update my knowledge on the role of critical thinking in applied vocational education. I had read Stephen Brookfield’s book on critical thinking as part of my M Ed studies and have dipped back into the book whenever I have found the need to clarify my understanding of how critical thinking applies to my own learning and research.

Jan used work by Stephen Brookfield and also the work of Jenny Moon to work through a definition of critical thinking and in particular provided examples of how critical thinking could be broken up into levels and types. Examples from Jenny Moon’s handout include a focus on Baxter Magolda’s (1992) epistemological development which identified four domains or stages. These are absolute knowing, transitional knowing, independent knowing and contextual knowing.

The group worked through several exercises to try to sort student comments and student work into the various stages of epistemological development. We also had a good discussion leading on from these exercises as to how to best assess ‘critical thinking’. There was agreement on the importance of sharing our understandings of critical thinking within our own teaching teams. There was also a need to ensure that students are then prepared for the level of critical thinking required from their programme of study.

From the point of view of my mlearning pilot, an eportfolio contains many aspects of critical thinking related to the collation of the portfolio. However the depth of critical thinking required is not unachievable by the majority of the apprentices who are constructing their eportfolios. I have provided guidelines on what is expected so the next step is to evaluate what we now have in the collections and to find out how I can nudge apprentices on to the next level. Which is to view their collection as evidence of their growing skill and knowledge as they become bakers and to then present their evidence in a way that shows their learning trajectory.

On happiness & the role of education

Artichoke’s latest post featured the NZ Herald report of a 17 year old Takapuna high student suicide, brought on by bullying at school and a discussion on the role of schools in shaping children’s attitudes to happiness.

I read the post just as I bid farewell to my 20 year old travelling back to university in Wellington. She had returned to Christchurch the week before to attend the memorial service of an ex-school mate & university peer who had taken her life just before Easter. Youth suicide rates in NZ are nothing to boast about. Compared to other OECD countries, NZ has the highest suicide rate for young men (15 to 24 years) and second highest rate among young women. This in a small country, blessed with an enviable lifestyle, purportedly egalitarian society, high literacy rates and low unemployment. WHY!

My daughter & I had a good chat about the consequences of her friend’s suicide and strategies she could use to help her and her wider group of Wellington friends deal with the loss. My daughter was sensible and maintained great equilibrium throughout. At a late stage in our mother and daughter chat, my son joined in (a rare event in itself!) and chipped in with advice from his pharmacist friend. The advice was along the lines of how every individual had highs and lows as part of the natural order of how our bodies worked. Prescription drugs that control depression sometimes make the cycles of emotional highs and lows more intense. Therefore, it was more worthwhile to talk about things when one was feeling bad rather than to pop a pill and hope things become better. We all resolved to keep in touch much more and to vent when required so that frustrations with work, study or friendships did not become bottled up. All in, the chat brought us all closer together and will be something I will remember as a parent.

The bulk of Artichoke’s post was on happiness and the role of schooling in helping young people grasp the concept of happiness. The post ended with the several questions including “the role of technology in helping students define happiness “ & “what happened to belonging”.

To the first question, I would add “ the role, in particular, of mobile phone technology” as this is the ICT tool that most young people in the 15 – 24 age range use. What use can mobile phones be towards helping young people seek help sooner for their angst? How can mobile phones keep tabs on young people (who are at risk of committing suicide) without becoming invasive? Can mobile phones be used in a sensitive and positive way to help young people through their bad patches by offering on-call ‘buddies’ like the ones that are now offered on land line phones and through voice via Youthline.

With the second question on “belonging”, the role of mentors for young people, especially for young men is extremely important. One of the things I found in my research on young people becoming bakers was how young people have an affinity to being lead / mentored to by other older men. This could be in the form of the bakery manager / owner, the bakery supervisor or in many cases, the senior apprentice. These ‘older’ role models show young men who are entering the workforce, the way to become men (for better or worse). So learning about happiness needs to be a societal force, something along the lines of Bhutan’s “happiness index”? & schools can at best, assist in the process.

Embedded practitioner

A thought provoking blog from Konrad Glogowski about being an embedded practioner. His blog like that of Barbara Ganley provide glimpses of life as a teacher at the whiteboard face.
In his latest blog he quoted work from Freire’s book Pedagogy of freedom: Ethics, democracy and civic courage. The quote summarised as ‘there should not be teaching without research and research without teaching’. One informs the other. It also reflects many of my thoughts about teaching. We teach, we find things that don’t work, we try to fix, we learn and teach others about what we found out.

Konrad also brought up the much blogged about curtailing of Al Upton’s student blogs by the South Australian government. This provided a sharp reminder to me about my work with apprentices and access to their personal blogs. Their workplace evidence is intermingled with snippets of their out of work life, a view into young lives lived to the full.

There is a find balance between becoming a truly embedded teacher and being a nosy one. Through immersion in the craft I teach and the practice of helping student’s learn, I cannot help but become embedded in how my students think, approach a topic, react to learning activities and come to grips with learning challenges. Part of becoming a good teacher is empathy with your students. Understanding what makes students tick, helps me sort out where their perceptions lie and this in turn helps me to gauge how to scaffold students from one level of understanding to the next. Engagement with students in their on-going learning also means that you become involved in other aspects of their lives as well.

Having access to apprentice blogs (and to my children’s – now both in their 20s) has provided me with a window into a totally different world viewpoint. The things (movies, music, leisure activities) young people are into are far removed from my own experiences. Yet, there are commonalities. My son’s collection of hip hop / rap artistes include several who write and perform lyrics that are akin to poetry that I enjoy reading. Yet, he would NEVER read poetry! Movies that my daughter watch & clothes she wears are things that I would never do, but we have long ranging conversations via txt on recently read books. I have learnt quite a bit about boy racing culture from several of my apprentice’s blogs.

I think that the important thing is to connect to not WHAT young people are interested in but WHY. We need to hone in on what actually creates a sense of enjoyment, awe or engagement for them. So we don’t have to rap, or write in tagging or txt language on the board, but we need to provide students with a sense of what they can achieve with their learning or how they can apply what they learn to their current contexts. Also, we need to help trigger their passion in the subjects that they are studying. They already have the wherewithal to find more information on things they are interested in. So we as teachers need to supply them with reasons for connecting, networking, researching and learning.

ITF research forum now online

The efficient staff at the ITF have now put all the presentations made at the ITF 2008 research forum available online.

Of interest to me were the concurrent sessions that I did not attend as I was presenting in the other room. The three most relevant would be:-

• Initial Results from the Upskilling Research Programme by Dr John Benseman and Anne Alkema, Department of Labour which was on projects completed in the workplace to improve literacy in the workforce. I have witnessed many young apprentices making great improvements in their literacy and numeracy over the course of their apprenticeship. In year one, some struggle to string sentences together but by year three, many have used the opportunities afforded by situated learning in their workplace context, to write more confidently and fluently.
• The Ministry of Education Research and Monitoring Programme from David Earle and Paul Mahoney from the Ministry of Education who provided statistical information about the Industry Training Administrative Dataset Analysis and Advanced Trade, Technical, and Professional Qualifications. All pertinent to planning for ITOs and providers. This initiative provides data very much like the work of the Australian NCVER on apprentice completions etc. good to see NZ pertinent data is now also available.
• Employment Profile, Skill Needs and Training Priorities in the New Zealand Hospitality Industry by Anne Benson, from the Hospitality Standards Institute which was a quantitative look into training needs for the NZ hospitality industry into the next five years. Another good resource, useful in forecasting needs and work we are doing on re-structuring programmes in hospitality and cooking this year.

All of this work provides for a good foundation as vocational education research gains some impetus in NZ.

Boy racers & learning as becoming

Over the last three weeks, I have been immersed in writing up a rough first draft towards my PhD thesis, belonging, becoming and being bakers: the role of apprenticeships. One of the premises of the thesis is that we learn skills, knowledge etc. during an apprenticeship but we also learn many other things like life skills, workplace relationship, learn how to learn, etc etc. most of which are inferred as something apprentices will learn even if there are no unit standards attached to them.

This week, the local papers & national media have been awash with reports on boy racers. In particular the way they make pests of themselves by congregating in large numbers and holding drag races, usually late at night. The local city council banned the boy racers (who were in town this weekend in greater numbers to attend a motor show) from areas that they had been a problem before. This included streets around the city and one of the streets in the city that has many car sales yards. Vandalism perpetrated in the car yards had raised an outcry from these businesses. The boy racers then ended up in one of the more exclusive areas of the city which riled the august citizens living in the area by keeping them up for most of the night.

All the commentators seem to be bend on clamping down on boy racers by using the usual law & order strategies. Fines, arrests for non – payment of fines, confiscation of vehicles etc.

Anyway the furore has been an excuse for me to think about other things besides the contents of my thesis along with the need to get my twelve year old car fixed to meet warrant of fitness standards. One of the readings I browsed through last week came to mind, an academic paper by Phil Cohen in the Journal of Education and Work. The paper proposes using the narratives of the various ‘actors’ who participate in ‘labour’ to provide perspectives on the concepts for understanding the ‘knowledge economy’ and other social issues. It contains a telling quote (summarised from page 116) from a young man (age 17) explaining the differences between how he and his father viewed work.

“My old man’s a car mechanic. I’m what they call a boy racer. We both fix cars! He don’t approve of some of the things I get up to, but where am I gonna learn on the job and get kicks at the same time?”

My thinking is why are we wasting all the skills these young people are learning? OK. Some of the associated skills might not be appropriate to civilised society but what about the ones that are of use? I know from experience that my students are the best source of information on the best deals for motor mechanics. So wouldn’t it be great if boy racers used their skills with cars to help others in society fix their cars? The non boy racer population would have the opportunity to interact with a sector of society that has trouble understanding them and boy racers would be exposed to a different set of viewpoints as well.

Industry Training Federation (NZ) 2008 research forum

Presented a paper at the ITF research forum yesterday. Conference was held at Te Papa in Wellington and was opened by Hon. Maryan Street, associate minister for tertiary education who would be the first ‘voc ed.’ minister we have and has oversight on Skills strategy. This was followed by keynote from Douglass Watt, associate director of the Conference Board of Canada (sort of a Canadian NCVER) on International approaches to training in small & medium enterprises. He presented case studies based on 65 SMEs around the world which focused on practical training responses to critical business issues and successful learning strategies that lead to meaningful outcomes for employers and employees. Good relevant and useful information for SMEs in NZ in a handout that summarised 15 of the case studies. Second keynote of the day from Paul Satherley & Eliot Lawes from the Ministry of Education summarising findings from the adult literacy and skills survey (ALLs). Very interesting data on where NZ stands with regards to literacy (document literacy) and numeracy.

Then attended following sessions:-

• How students manage the difference between theory and practice in voc. ed. by Dr. Peter Gallagher of UCOL. Interesting concept on how ‘personal value’ in nursing students helps them negotiate through decisions they have to make with regards to the theory they learn and what they see in actual practice.
• Measuring skill utilisation by Heather Lees from the Electrotechnology Industry Training Organisation was based on a research project in a call centre to see if individual skill perceptions, skill measurements (National quals.) and skill utilisation (company objectives) align. She found that they did not and also provided insight into the challenges of doing research in the workplace.
• Web based dramatised scenarios to facilitate reflection, discussion and critical thinking from Keith Tyler-Smith, TANZ covered using photos and audio files to convey ‘case studies’ which engage online learners through their appeal to the affective senses of students.
• Molding the market: skill ecosystems in the NZ context ‘ with Gemma Piercy, Waikato University was based on 2 summer project by university students to find out if skill ecosystems, developed in Australia would be relevant in the NZ context (possibly) or have commonalities / synergies with community of practices (possibly but requires further work).
• Embedding sustainable workplace learning and assessment within workplace infrastructures’ by Dr. Nicky Murray & Gill Genet from Careerforce. Nicky provided a good overview of the challenges placed by the changing nature of our society and the workforce in maintaining training for her industry (providing care within the health and disability sector) & three workplace models that could assist in planning workplace training for her sector. Billett’s workplace pedagogy, Fuller & Unwin’s expansive / restrictive participative continuum & Ellstrom, Ekholm & Ellstrom (2008) on enabling and constraining learning.
• My paper on ‘belonging, becoming and being: Role of apprenticeships went well.

Plenary discussion on ‘research & policy development’ with Dr. Karen Vaughan from the NZCER, Dr. Peter Coolbear, director of Ako Aotearoa & Roger Smyth, manager of tertiary sector performance and reporting. This provided insight into how government policy developers (Roger) view research (draw evidence from wherever created to provide insights towards a more consolidated picture). How researchers (Karen) view policy makers – need to have more conversations between researchers and policy makers & this needs to be ongoing for life of a research project. And how funders (Peter) see research – research needs to be timely (although longitudinal research also important (Roger), and outcomes of research must be applicable by employers, providers, learners etc.

The ITF vocational education forum has played a role in encouraging research in workplace learning and vocational education in New Zealand. This, along with the start of Ako Aotearoa, provides the impetus for the emergence of some useful research into both workplace learning and vocational education in New Zealand. We are still a long way behind the Australians with their National Centre for Vocation Education Research but at least things are now starting to move along.

Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub launch

Also attended the Ako Aotearoa Southern Hub opening later in the evening. A good mixture of university and polytech staff attended for a convivial session followed by the formal opening of the Southern hub.

One of the things that make Ako Aotearoa special is that it is unique from other centres around the world in that it covers the whole spectrum of tertiary education. This includes the universities, wananga, polytechnics / institutes of technology and private training establishments, through to adult and community education providers and on-the-job training arranged by industry training organisations. Similar centres include the Australian Carrick Institute.

The Southern hub’s coordinator, Bridget O’Regan coordinated the speakers, starting with the vice- chancellor of the University of Canterbury, Professor Roy Sharp who spoke about the history of how Ako Aotearoa came about. He was followed by Alison Holmes, director of University of Canterbury’s Centre for teaching and learning, who provided a more personal background into how Ako Aotearoa originated. Then Russell from the West Coast who is on the reference group spoke about how the inclusiveness of all tertiary sectors would be Ako Aotearoa’s strength and concluded with Bridget on plans for the Southern hub to help promote excellence in tertiary teaching.

Still early days yet as Ako Aotearoa was only officially opened in November of last year but they have ambitious plans for making an impact on the teaching and learning landscape.

ePortfolios seminar at University of Canterbury #2

Attended a lunch time seminar at the University of Canterbury for a quick but effective overview of ePortfolios by Dr Madhumita Bhattacharya , Athabasca University.

Much of the material presented was a revision for me but the presentation provided several important insights that will be useful in our ongoing mportfolios pilot. These are:-

• The potential for eportfolios to integrate formal, informal and non-formal learning throughout one’s life. Which leads to the importance of ensuring that the data stored in eportfolios is easy to transport across to other platforms.
• The use of the eportfolio platform from John Hopkins University, in particular their matrix which allows one to download artifacts in the various ‘boxes’ of the matrix.
• A rubric for evaluation reflection by engaging with the construction of eportfolios in the form of a ‘spider-web’ graph. Simple, visual and easy to use. plus also can be formatted in 3D to superpose other aspects of evaluation that a visual overview is possible.

Customised forms on mobile phones

Attended a presentation at the local Vodaphone HQ by Ruth Bruce from the Kinross Group and Craig Wilson from Black Coffee software this morning on their Applications message service (AMS) software. AMS provides the facility for forms to be filled in via mobile phone and sent back to a web based front end from which form templates can be formatted / edited and viewed. Data collected on the forms can be sent, received and shared.

Basically, forms are formatted on the AMS front end. Forms can be set out to allow strings, dates, gauge (slider to allow for input), choice (multiple choice with options for only one or many options), and text box (will allow 160 characters). Forms are disseminated to mobile phones via download by each individual phone with access via username and password. The form framework lives on the phone and data entered each time is sent back to the company that requires the form to be filled in. Photos collected on the phones can be attached to the forms but it means that the messages will be more expensive. More info on the AMS wiki which includes user guide and quicktime movies of how to use the AMS.

There is an annual cost to use AMS based on number of uses, a message cost and the usual mobile phone date usage charges. If you want forms to be formatted for you, there is a one off cost for each form but the AMS seems to be quite straight forward to use and CPIT has the infrastructure to deal with any forms that are sent back in CVS or XML format and should be able to do the conversions ourselves. This platform has many potential uses and since launch 4 months ago has users in the real estate, health and equipment servicing sectors.

From the point of view of our current mlearning project, the AMS is a substantial improvement on using etxt . We will be able to sent out formative and summative questions in a ready to fill in format instead of sending out questions just as unformatted text messages and then students having to text back question number and answer. The question types we use can be increased as entry of answers in simplified using the various form filling formats provided. I can also see a use in using a short standardised from to be attached to each portfolio item that apprentices send in for their assessments that provide details of the photo / video / text file that can then be later collated towards their final eportfolio.

For mlearning in general, short pieces of content which are interactive (ie allows students to enter answers to questions etc) could be downloaded by students for revision sessions, extra information, assignments, formative assessments etc. Forms could also be set up for students who need to fill in reports while they are out on field trips, completing internships / work placements or for gathering of assessment evidence. So AMS will be something worth investigating as part of our ongoing pilot.

Trends for mobile phones in 2008

Had a browse through a forbes article on eight trends for mobile phones for 2008 which I found via the mobile – weblog blog I follow via bloglines. Of interest to mlearning applications are the mobile net becoming useful, 2008 will be year of the bad touch screen as various mobile phone manufacturers play catch up with the iPhone (my Treo 700wx has a good touch screen but does not allow zoom in etc) and the dawn of the casual computer.
For the mobile net to really take off, wifi via phones needs to be standard, otherwise its too expensive to access the web on a phone. However, most phones (including the iPhone) are still attached to telecom providers who are not keen to give up their revenue streams from uses using the ‘higher end’ capabilities of their phones.
Touch screens make handling multimedia easier. For our project on compiling portfolios using mobile phones, we are mainly using the mobile phone as a evidence capturing devise. We have not been able to use the phone to actually complete the compilation of the eportfolio due to the technical limitations of a small screen, difficulty in manoeuvring around desk top based software using mobile phone keys and memory capacity of an average phone.
The dawn of the casual computer provides a degree of optimism. Ubiquitous computer access has been around for a while but lugging a laptop around & hauling it out every time you needed to check up on things is not really cool. However being able to access information by bringing out your phone is seen to be standard practice. So doing short bits of learning on your mobile phone, whether it is just surfing the web to find answers to a question or looking for a restaurant to go to becomes second nature.
I followed up the above with a look around the web to see if there was anything else interesting on trends for 2008. The usual collection of 2008 trend predictions for the year includes 2008 trends from trendwatching with a summary from marketing web, reuters had one and there was also one from a retail marketing blog. All mentioned mobile phones in some form or other plus social networking (of the internet type). The convergence of both mobility and internet based social networks are two areas that mlearning should keep exploring.

Over a hundred posts & still blogging aka why I blog

Noticed when I put up a post last week that I have now posted over 100! When I first started blogging, I really only wanted to learn how to use a blogging tool. However, the process of blogging has provided me with a great deal of learning, pleasure and reflective opportunities along with helping me to warm up for other writing tasks.

Others have written about the advantages and disadvantages of blogging, their application to professional development and their use in promoting a company as a thought leader. So what follows are some thoughts specific to my context.

I have found the advantages of blogging to really be worth the hour or so I spent every fortnight or so putting together a blog. One of the major advantages has been that I have been able to archive many resources that are pertinent to my mLearning research. I probably use the blog most often for finding links that I know I have blogged about and also to compare my current thoughts on a topic with the thoughts I put down in the blog a while back. It’s a great way to re-visit things that work and to also build on resources that have been gleaned from a wide variety of sources but now stored in a one stop shop.

The other thing I have found really useful, is checking my sitemeter every week or so. I have had the sitemeter set up for about a year and a half. The most frequent search terms that find my blog are on ‘limitations of Web 2.0’ and ‘activity theory’ although anything to do with ‘mlearning or eportfolios and apprentices’ usually also brings up this blog. I check the site meter each week and find links via the ‘by referrals’ summary of recent visitors. These have directed me towards interesting areas that I would not personally think about checking out. Each week, I will find links that are real gems, some which I will blog about but many I will archive in my ‘to explore further’ folder. These events always bring home to me how much more interconnected the world has become. It also reinforces for me the need to be always ready to look at how other people have approached things and how ideas in other contexts well removed from areas that I have contact with, come up with similar views, ways to do things or approach the problem from a totally different paradigm. This approach has really broadened my thinking about how I go about conceptualising the various projects I now work with. It has also given me a broad spectrum of ideas to draw. In my role as elearning facilitor and staff educator I work with diverse groups of tutors, all passionately teaching their subjects to a wide range of students. Being able to expand my database of possible solutions to challenges put forward by tutors has been a real asset. Especially when I can usually also provide tutors with actual documented examples of how the solution is being used by other teachers.

Blogging has put me in touch with kindred spirits. In some ways, I am sad about having to use the internet to touch base with people who are working on projects like mlearning for workplace learners. I am a person who enjoys having face to face conversations with like minded people. However, in the real world, I would probably never have had the opportunity to connect with the diverse bunch of people I now have on my contact list. I can now just email the right person to find out an answer to a question that I am struggling with or who can be a shoulder to lean on when things are getting overwhelming.

Another aspect of blogging is that it forces me to keep in touch with the developments in the areas that I have an interest in. Blogging provides the motivation to organise the things I find I need to follow up when they turn up on my bloglines. It gives focus to my readings, both on and off-line and also makes me read in a more structured way, so that I can summarise my thoughts better in writing when it comes time to put my thoughts down on my blog.

So, here’s to the next 100 :)

What we need to learn and what have apprentices learnt in the workplace?

Doing a catch up on blogs and artichoke’s post on mismatch between correlation and causation caught my eye. Just coming off three weeks of intensive data analysis of my interview data and working on building a model of how apprentices belong, become and be bakers. So the blog held some resonance with my current thoughts and the headspace I have been steeped in.

A link in the above blog to Stephen Downe’s post on things you really need to learn also provided me with some food for thought. Especially in light of the recent speeches in New Zealand by both the Prime Minister (raising the school leaving age) and the opposition leader (boot camp for young offenders) about what government will be doing with young people who leave school with no school qualifications.

As I build narratives of apprentice stories, about how they found little connect at school, about how an apprenticeship had provided them with purpose in life and about how almost all of them are now passionate about a trade they all pretty much fell into; I find links, agreement and contradictions between the 10 things that Stephen has listed and the things that apprentices have learnt or have had to learn in their first three to four years in the workplace.

So here are some thoughts:-

• Predicting consequences:- when you are at the bottom of the rung in a workplace, you very quickly learn how to predict consequences within your defined place in the hierarchy. Basically, you learn the consequences of your actions / or lack of actions very quickly via the way in which your bakery products turn out and learn to not take that course of action again. If you are slow in this area, you have lost your apprenticeship.
• Reading:- I often see a great improvement in the ability of apprentices to read and write between their first and third block courses. This is because they have had to hone their literacy skills in a meaningful and situated manner. They don’t have to write an essay on a topic they have no clue about but they have to fill in forms and complete work that are important towards completing their apprenticeship.
• Distinguishing between truth and fiction:- very prosaic for most apprentices. It either works or it doesn’t! the evidence is concrete in a work environment that is production focused in producing large quantities of product that have to be consistent and good quality day after day after day.
• Empathy:- I see a developing empathy between young people and their parents and workmates. That everyone works hard, moans little and gets on with the job. Young people realise that their parents are not lying when they say how hard the workday has been when they themselves put in 12 to 16 hour days in a physically and mentally demanding job.
• Creativity:- apprentices really enjoy this aspect of a trade, to be able to put their own stamp on a product (as in finishing it well). Its one of the things that make them excited about their work, the opportunity to have their ideas listened to and to be able to then go ahead and actually produce something that looks good, tastes yummy and sells well with a healthy profit.
• Communicate:- yes, most have to come to grips with this, otherwise, no one else will speak up for them at work. They have to be able to make themselves heard and to succinctly state their case. Otherwise, the boss has other things that are more important to do.
• Learning to learn:- strategies that work in the workplace include working out who to learn best from for specific skills or tasks, when to ask questions, working out what your strengths and weaknesses are so that you can work on your weaknesses. Third year apprentices articulated these skills which I thing was quite a meta-cognitive feat for many of them.
• Stay healthy:- yup. Got to go to bed early enough in order to get up at 3am to go to work. Got to rest up on day offs to be ready for the week’s physical challenge. Got to drink more water in the bakery and eat at regular times. These are kids that would have had no breakfast when they went to school and a lunch of packet chips and a bottle of fizz.
• Value yourself:- I see taking responsibility for themselves as big pluses of an apprenticeship. Third year apprentices are planning ahead to extend their career, travel, to widen their horizons before they settle down and have kids! Barely in their 20s and they are planning ahead for their families.
• Live meaningfully:- comes through in statements like “ I have got a trade now and it’s something I can depend on … where ever I go ….. for the next few years …. For the rest of my life…” the trade also gives purpose to young people who left school with few prospects along with providing them with a vocational identity that they take pride in.

Over the years, I have seen the difference between year 1 and year 3 apprentices when they come to CPIT on block course and its been a real privilege to be able to dig deeper and to try to fathom some of what goes on during those three years.

plans for 2008

I start the year with a great deal of optimism about how mlearning can be used to assist workplace based learners with learning skills and knowledge they need to ‘become’.

Half of my work this year will be with staff education and staff development. It will involve working with staff to assist them on their journey to becoming teachers plus provide me with opportunities to evangelise the use of e-technology to the wider CPIT audience.

Last year, I did struggle with having too many hats on. This year, I am ensuring that there is a clear delineation between the various roles by ensuring that I wear only one hat on any given day! So I am devoting 2 days to teaching / researching and 3 days to staff education / development. To help make the delineation clearer, I will be based in my usual office for two days, and will be in the staff education office for three days.
I will review this after the first term to see how well it is working.

In mid February, I will be taking 4 weeks off work (without pay but funded via my tertiary teaching award) to get a good first draft of my thesis sorted out. I will be using Google Docs to share my draft with my supervisors as I will be working from home or from a friend’s bach which only has dial-up internet. So there will be a couple of months of non-blogging while I get a major part of my thesis on its way.

After that, it will be back into the mlearning pilot. I will need to sort out a few nuts and bolts type challenges. This includes getting paperwork sorted out to have the mlearning ‘courses’ the apprentices will be ‘enrolled’ in finalised and ‘fees’ transferred from the research funding across to the school. I hope to have some findings collated by Easter so that I can meet the mlearning 2008 conference paper submission deadlines.

2007 review

This year has been a year of consolidation. Running the mlearning pilot has brought together many of the ideas and systems that we have been trialling. I have also started to network better within the mLearning community and am more familiar with the literature associated with mLearning research.

Highlights for the year include:-

• The opportunity to meet with other NZ mlearning practitioners and to interact with them face to face at MOLTA
• Witnessing the buzz during my keynote on mlearning at the ITF Research Conference.
• Winning the Prime Ministers Supreme Tertiary Teaching Excellence Award
• Catching up with family in Perth & the Karri trees on the South West coast of Oz
• Viewing sunset at Uluru near Alice Springs plus touching base with vocational education researchers at the NCVER Research Conference.
• The academic collegially at the annual ASTE conference in Wellington.
• Mlearn2007 in Melbourne
• Final assessments of our full time students and the ongoing development in confidence over the year of most of the students.
• Obtaining funding from the CPIT foundation to get the mlearning pilot going.
• Working with NZ Diploma in Business tutors to put courses online presented some challenges but we got there in the end.
• Starting an apprenticeship as a staff mentor / facilitator with the CPIT staff development unit.
• Teaching staff education courses and observing how adults become more reflective teachers.
• Completing third year interviews for my research project on how young people become bakers. Now that I have started serious data analysis, I am learning so much from the interview and observations I have gathered.

Things to look forward to next year:-

• Writing up my thesis
• Taking on a one day a week role with staff education which includes teaching adults how to become workplace assessors (an area I currently teach) and adults learning about teaching (a new area to get into).
• Continuing my apprenticeship with staff development and playing a role in supporting staff in their teaching and professional development.
• Extending the research into mlearning, in particular, how to make better use of Web 2.0 tools using mobile phones.
• Continued reflection on teaching and learning (my students and my own).
• Mlearn2008 plus other conferences including Molta2008, efest2008 and Herdsa2008.

Its off for some serious re-creation over the next few weeks. Several good tramping trips should help revive me sufficiently to make a start into thesis writing. I also hope to have time to do some reflection on plans for mlearning and my role in staff education / staff development.

Learning from mlearning pilot 2

Derek Wenmoth has summarised in his blog on the future of reading the discussions triggered by the release of Amazon of Kindle, their handheld reader. Many commentators lament the gradual decline of reading. Along with the decline in reading print based media, comes an alleged decline in the way in which people have a wider perspective on various viewpoints and critical thinking skills.

Then a blog by Will Richardson on yound people’s skills in texting and using the net to complete their homework. A young persons skill level with texting (without the need to look at the keys) and their use of technology to have someone else complete a difficult homework assignment for them, are examples of how technology is being made use of by young people. Whether these skills are ethical or not, is perhaps not the point. What is important is that young people have different skill sets and perceptions of what is relevant to them at different times in their lives.

During our sessions with apprentices, I found the way in which they viewed the use of their mobile phones and their social networks, diverging from our views of how mobile phones could be used. In my blog comparing mobile to computer literacy, the way in which young people view information is not better or worse, just different.

For instance, I would find it intrusive to have my mobile phone track where I go so that I can receive information about the nearest shopping centre, bank, movie theatre I am walking pass. However, if I was travelling around in a strange city, I might appreciate this facility more. Young people tend to take for granted that being tracked on via their mobile phone is ‘normal’. They see the information that comes through their mobile phone as a ‘service’. They are surrounded by marketers who use text messaging to send them updates on the latest competition and TV advertisements for a myriad of material goods. However, from my experience, they are still savvy consumers. Witness the rise and rise of Trademe, young people know when they have a choice and they make use of technology to make that choice.

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.

Activity theory and mlearning research

I have had several goes at trying to unravel activity theory and how I might be able to use it as a base for my ongoing research projects.

Activity theory is based on the work of Leontiev, much of his work has been overshadowed by the work of Vygotsky. The seminal works on activity theory are the English translation of Leontiev’s book, Activity, Consciousness and Personality (1978) and a book edited by Wertsch. Engestrom is perhaps the most well known exponent of activity theory.

A book by Kaptelinin and Nardi, (Acting with Technology:- Activity Theory and Interaction Design) provides a more accessible route to understanding how to make us of activity theory in better understanding human interactions with technology. Chapter 3, Activity theory in a nutshell, is an especially succinct and clear summary of the origins of activity theory and how it relates to the human mind’s inter-relationships with people and artifacts in the context of everyday activity.

I learn by doing, so over the summer, I will work at structuring our mlearning pilot project around the activity theory research framework. It will provide me with the opportunity to apply the theory to a real situation that has people, tools (mobile phones, research questionnaires, surveys) and artifacts (multimedia evidence, assessment criteria, learning outcomes). It will be important to have a look at my planned research tools to see how they might presently reflect activity theory assumptions and see if there needs to be any tweaking of these to bring about a proper analysis of the data generated from interviews with apprentices, evaluations of their use of web 2.0 sites and their mlearning experience.

Why activity theory and not something else? There is a fit with the type of research I am undertaking with mlearning with the overall structure of activity theory. Using activity theory provides an opportunity for me to learn how to use another ‘research method’. It will also provide another perspective on how I view the data when it starts to come through plus the opportunity to evaluate how activity theory works and how to best make use of it’s framework in an actual research project.

Passion and Creativity

One of the books I took across with me to Melbourne a month or so ago was Howard Gardner’s new book, Five Minds for the Future. I started reading it on the plane and by the time I got to the second page , I found that it mirrored the same thoughts I had put together for the CPIT Spring graduation keynote held at the end of September.

In my speech, I spoke about the importance of passion. Passion has been a defining factor in my research with young apprentices who have fallen into the trade and are now all working hard to become bakers. I advised all the graduates to work at:-

• gaining and maintaining passion for their content area,
• maintaining a passion for life-long learning,
• staying passionate about people,
• fostering a passion for their profession and
• most importantly, work on sustaining a passion for goodness.

The five minds Gardner required to enhance creativity are

• the ability to be expert in a discipline,
• to have a wide spectrum of knowledge in order to synthesise other fields of knowledge with ones own discipline,
• to be able to create new forms of knowledge, innovate new ways to do things,
• be respectful of others and
• to behave ethically.

The above has triggered some thoughts on whether the students I teach are actually being prepared for the future.

• Are we igniting passion sufficiently for them to move on to gain enough motivation to work at becoming expert in their discipline (Gardner reckons it takes ten years for an individual to work up to true expert hood)?
• Do we model that we, as teachers and tradespersons, have an abiding love for life long learning?
• Do we show students how our expert knowledge, spiced with extra learning from our hobbies, leisure, research activities etc. allows us to synthesise and create new products, concepts, ways to do things?
• Do we treat students with respect regardless of their innate abilities, attitudes or social, cultural or religious values?
• Do we work within our societies ethical codes?

All of us can perhaps reply YES to all the above, but to what degree does the above permeate our teaching practice? Can we say that we are able to ignite passion in every student that we have the pleasure to teach? Have we the time to be all things to everyone? How does technology help?

So many questions, and any answers? In my context, it’s the ability to reflect, to have the things that we should be passionate about, always at the forefront of how we teach, develop learning resources and live our lives.

Swopping across to a Treo 700wx

I returned to work to find that my trusty Treo 650 has been upgraded by the powers that be to a Treo 700wx.

It then took most of Sunday afternoon to work out how to convert as much of what was on my Treo 650 (Palm OS) on to the Treo 700wx (Windows mobile OS).

I followed the steps set out in a how to guide although there is an easier but have to pay option in the form of Chapura’s PocketCopy 2.0. The how to guide worked well and there was a smooth transition with contacts, calendar, tasks and notes from Palm to Microsoft Outlook and then on to the Treo 700wx.

Photos and music stored on the 2gig SD card transferred across without any hassles. Lost access to all my ebooks - drats - plus use of Lampwords (dictionary and anagramer for scrabble) – double drats. So have resorted to resurrecting my old Treo 180 (which I gave to my son but he never used as it was monochrome) so that I can access these well used items. I will use the Treo180 as my Palm PDA until I have worked out alternatives for the Treo 700wx.

I am now getting used to the Windows Mobile environment. It is not as direct as the Palm OS to get to items but it works well enough. Also, Pocket Excel, Powerpoint and Word work better than Documents to Go. The camera resolution is noticeably better from 0.3 to 1.3 megapixels and sound quality seems to be clearer too. The phone works similar but not the SMS.

The changeover has provided a good opportunity to compare the two platforms. I will need to use the Treo 700wx a bit longer before I can say which I prefer as I am presently biased towards the Palm OS – having used it in several PDAs and two Treos.
It will take me some time to find Windows mobile / pocket PC versions of the utilities I use most often on my Treo650 and then download them to try them out.