Peeragogy

Thinking through as to a direction for project surface tablet. One of the main ‘success’areas with tablets has been the use of the tablets to take videos of students learning practical skills or learning dispositions through roleplay. Included is the aspect of peer learning and feedback. So students use the videos as a springboard for learning not only the skills or dispositions but important aspects of judgment required to maintain reflective practice.

This bookon peeragogy, via a 2013 posting on Arlington Education Foundation referring to a holistic approach to technology enhanced learning, provides some suggestions for ways forward with regards to enhancing learning through peer learning. Although set in formal school contexts, the ideas and discussions are transferable across to vocational education.

The online book is basically a collection of ideas / resources from various American teachers who seek to improve learning through implementation of peer learning and peer production. It’s the peer production part which we really need to move along with.

So, instead of providing feedback etc. the next step is to perhaps have students develop a how to ‘guide’, using their original videos as source material. The ideas included in the book are ways to organise student groups, activities suitable, organising learning context, assessment suggestions etc. Technology tools suitable like forums, wikis, real-time meetings, MOOCs etc are discussed.

I will try out a few of the ideas with our project tablet teams, to extend on what we have begun and to continue to improve on our learning-centred approaches as supported by introducing ‘situated technology enhanced learning STEL’.

Alternatives to Coaches Eye - video analysis app

We have been using Coaches’ Eye for a range of ‘skills improvement using videos’ projects. However, coaches’ eye apps struggles to run on the surface RT. Video annotation and playback is 'jerky' due to the surface RT's low spec processor.

Appcrawler offers a range of alternatives to coaches' eye. A comparative analysis of 3 apps - ubersense (ios and android), coaches' eye and dartfish - reveals coaches' eye as the only app available on Windows devices. There are more alternatives with regards to PC apps.Some of the examples looked at in previous post could be used, but apps rather than full blown PC software would be less memory hungry. MotionPro is a newer example, but at $100 plus, a bit expensive and we will also need Surface Pros to run the app.

So will still need to keep an eye for a suitable alternative. 

Onenote - resources for getting started

After Travis Smith's presentation, we field a few staff keen to get started on onenote as a learning tool. The current onenote has improved in terms of usability and its main advantage is the ability to use it on various devices.

I have archived here some guides / resources to using onenote:

A good way for our tutors to learn about how to use onenote and its possibilities is to actually use it for their own work first. So, first up, a guide to using onenote for beginners vis PC world and another one via lifehack on using onenote in a work.

Then some 'non-conventional' ways to use onenote via blogs.office com and makeuseof.com 

The best way to deploy onenote in an educational setting is to leverage off notebook creator. Unfortunately, we need to await the installation of Office 365 on to our network before we can use notebook creator. The official guide to notebook creator is offered via office support.

A youtube video offers good step by step guide (10 minutes). Pros and Cons and discussed by broadeneducation.com. I hope to start a pilot with one or our engineering tutors to find out possibilities and test usability next semester. This will then feed into any work we do with other tutors when Office 365 is installed sometime next year.

Surface RT – working with multiple accounts in education context

Back into the fray with project surface tablet. The 12 projects we started out with last year have morphed into 16 with 2 of last year’s 12 moving on to BYOD or to other types of tablets and several ‘new’ projects.

We have learnt much from experiences last year. Chiefly, capabilities of RT surfaces in the various classroom / workshop environments at CPIT, staff capabilities requiring support and limitations of the RT surface to allow the running of video annotation apps. Here is another blog cataloging experiences in the higher ed. sector.

One of our main challenges has been to work out how to best manage accounts on tablets. Although Surface RTs allow for several user accounts to be set up on each tablet there is still the challenge of ensuring the right students accesses the correct tablet with their account set up on it.

A work around has been to set up a class account for each intake of students. We then coach students to transfer, at the end of each session, all their data on to onedrive or a memory stick. So, classes with small numbers of tablets (up to 8) are set up with individual student accounts. Larger classes or programmes sharing tablets (20 plus) are set up with a generic ‘programme’ account and students download the data when they complete each session.

The RTs have only a limited range of apps and in our bid to move to BYOD in the next year, all our projects do not rely on apps. Instead, the main functions revolve around some use of office 365, the video/camera capabilities and accessing web-based platforms including our Moodle LMS, etextbooks and echo350/socratic. One of the projects is working with computing students to develop an app but this is a long range project as each component of the app is developed and tested.

The main objective of surface tablet is still to upskill students and tutors digital literacy. Once tutors (and students) realise the potentialities of using tablets in classrooms / workshops, our role is to support the introduction and deployment. Before full digital literacy occurs, there is still a need to be 'guide on the side' to ease programmes into introducing technology enhanced learning into programmes. 

Pens for Surface RT Tablet

We have just about started our 'Project surface tablet' projects. We have 12 project teams, each with an identified learning outcome that can be enhanced through the use of 'situated technology enhanced learning'. Several of the teams have learning activities that use OneNote in tandem with Skydrive to create shared learning resources. OneNote, along with other note taking apps (youtube video of notetaking), allows for the use of a stylus to draw or use the predictive text screen option on the tablet's keyboard.

Unlike the Surface Pro, Surface RT is limited to use of pens with the fatter stubby end rather than fine point due to it's capacitive screen –  wp central has a collection of pens (various prices and types). At present, it is difficult to obtain stylii from suppliers in NZ to try out. However, we have been able to get hold of some of the 'stubby' pens along with the finer point 'Jot it/pro' range from adonit. The adonit pens are about double the price of the stubby pen options. 

We will be undertaking some trials with the various pens plus also raising awareness amongst our project surface tablet teams to the note taking and sharing options provided by the Surface RT. The co-creation of learning resources is one of the main advantages of going digital and we need to make sure both teachers and learners are able to maximise the opportunities for co-construction of learning.