Web 2.0 storytelling - using narratives in research

Last week, I was working on the Ako Aoteoroa funded ‘teaching craftsmanship’ research project which involves the building of narratives based on information gleaned from questionnaires and interview content. Each narrative is constructed based on set criteria. This then allows a horizontal comparison to be made between each narrative. Commonalities and differences are then easier to distil out of the mass of data presented.

I could clinically construct the narratives as a large spreadsheet or table but building narratives is imminently more satisfying J Narratives are also much more pleasant to read and some of the characteristics that define each research participant come through, even in a rather objectively composed narrative. The narratives tell stories which are much richer and intense then a list of characteristics off a spreadsheet.

However the above is my interpretation, as a researcher of the participants’ original stories. I need to put some time into exploring how to provide opportunities in my future research projects to record participants’ own narratives.

Bryan Alexander & Alan Levine discuss in an educause review article the emergence of the genre of web 2.0 story telling. They propose they consolidation of a range of social networking tools as being methods by which people are able to ‘tell stories’ about their lives. Alan Levine aka Cogdogroo provides 50+ways to tell digital stories, so there are no shortage of ideas of how to people can garner their experiences, archive them on various sites and for others to follow the threads of their thoughts & learning as they navigate through the various hyperlinks presented. Liz Kolb provides a couple of examples of how to use the mobile phone to create digital storybooks using yodio. Chrissy Hellyer presents the use of voice thread as a digital portfolio & Photopeach as another option.

Lots of ideas, some of which I have explored in the mobile portfolios project. Bringing the opportunity of recording learning while it is taking place provides for many possibilities to extend on Graham Nuthall & others’ work on the hidden lives of learners. The emerging field of multimodal discourse analysis is something I will need to explore as this provides for the rigorous data analysis of the plethora of data that will emerge from investigating participant generated artefacts!

21st century mobile learners - here or still to come?

While away last week & travelling about, I mulled over the readings stored up from the last couple of months and blogged over the first half of this year. That wended their way across my screens (laptop & blackberry) as I travelled by planes, trains and buses across the red, red Australian landscape. They all propose a future for education that is in many senses already here but also not quite here yet.

To me, the students are ready & willing. A couple of weeks ago, my group of students working on evaluating social networking sites as eportfolios shared their work with other students in their class.

However, it’s harder to shift tutors towards making use of technology in their teaching. Although many are have made the leap. The Mobile Learning Institute’s film series “A 21st Century Education” profiles individuals who embrace and defend fresh approaches to learning and who confront the urgent social challenges that are part of a 21st century experience. Most of these are general with regards to the use of ICT but Elliot Soloway and Cathie Norris take a road trip through Texas and Louisiana to see firsthand how mobile devices are being used in schools.

Apart from the above, what of the role of mlearning in the 21st century? I caught up with blogtalk radio & listened to Liz Kolb’s interview of Suzette Kliewer who is a math teacher in the K-Nect project in North Carolina. Suzette talks about how she has been using Smartphones with her math students. The project reminded me of many of the findings in John Hattie & Helen Timperley’s article on ‘The power of feedback’. They propose a model of feedback which involves asking three key questions at task, process, self-regulating & self levels. Task refers to how well a task is being performed, the process refers to the main process required to perform the task, the self regulating comes from the student self-monitoring & self directing their actions and the self refers to the personal evaluations and affects of the learner. The three questions are where am I going (feed up), how am I going (feed back) & where to next (feed forward). The model is based on feedback being provided by teachers, peers etc. regarding aspects of performance so that the learner is able to confirm or adjust their learning trajectory.

Therefore, the use of appropriately constructed ‘learning opportunities’ with the use of relevant feedback via ‘just in time’ technology like mobile phones is one way to meet the needs of some current learners. ‘Programmed learning’ segments that are customised to the levels of learning & interests of students will be even more useful & move the concept of personal learning environments forward. Anytime, anywhere access using mobile internet devices is one way to keep the 21st century learner engaged & pro-active towards meeting their own learning goals.

Blog talk radio

Liz Kolb who blogs on ‘from toy to tool; cellphones in learning’ also runs cellphones in learning at blogtalk radio – a really good resource that reports on what educators are doing with their cell phones. The episodes so far include text messaging projects on cellphones, creating professional development for teachers interested in using cellphones for teaching and learning, ideas for using cellphone cameras and rules and regulations for cellphone use in schools.

The site works on my Treo as well, I could not play the radio programme / podcast directly but could download the programme and then play it back. Download time was a few minutes, so not too trying & the file was not too big. The cheaper way to do this would be to download on to my laptop & sync across to the Treo.

So this is another podcast that I can listen to when I walk the dog. Podcasts are a good way to distribute content. However because I am not a very audio person, I find it difficult to remember details that I listen to & it is difficult to take notes while walking the dog. I will need to find out from my students whether they listen to podcasts. I know that most listen to music or the radio but few listen to radio programmes that have a lot of talk. It will also be important to find out the amount of time that students are willing to listen to podcasts and what content they will be most interested in listening to.