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.

mlearn2007 reflections

Enjoyed mLearn 2007 thoroughly and am looking forward to mlearn2008.
Had some time last week to reflect on my learnings from mLearn2007. I was in the North Island, completing third year interviews with apprentices, the last lot of interviews towards my PhD. I did a fair bit of driving pass the beautiful spring green paddocks around Wellington, Wairarapa, Masterton and Hawkes Bay. Traffic was light so there was time for some serious introspection.

Some items pertinent to my own teaching context and mlearning projects were:-
Ascendance of mobile phones as the tool used for the delivery of mlearning.
However, majority of phones still only capable of voice and SMS L
Interest from developing countries on the potential of mobile phones to improve access to learning for people who would not otherwise be able to access information we now take for granted in the developed world.
Severe disadvantage of mobile phones (as compared to PDAs) is their ‘locked’ or ‘walled garden’ telecommunication company’s imposed structure.
More papers on the perceptions of students to the concept of mlearning including primary school, ‘international’ and disabled students.
Maturity of mlearning projects using PDAs – especially in the UK.
The need to relate our learning about mobile learning to actual pedagogy in schools and tertiary education. How can mobile learning change things – for the better – in particular to engage students in taking more control of their learning via access to a wider range of resources than available in ‘traditional’ classrooms.
Educators still need to ‘show the way’ as students are focused on using their phone (a very personal item) for their own social needs.
Not as many papers on location based mlearning as last year.
Still limited use of web based sites for mlearning, so our mlearning project is still pushing the envelope.
iPhones are will challenge the way in which other mobile phones are designed.


Sue Waters has archived a collation of various perspectives on mlearn2007 on a wiki, made up of various links to elluminate sessions, blogs and twitter notes. The elluminate sessions were ‘attended’ by several keen practitioners who could not physically be at the conference. The way in which technology allows us to ‘revisit’ a conference or participate without actually being physically present shows possibilities for distance education. However, face to face interaction is still not replicable as it brings up all sorts of opportunities for serendipitous discoveries.

mLearn2008 launched

Hand over from mlearn 2007 to mlearn2008. Organised by the University of Wolverhampton to be held at Ironbridge Gorge from 7th to 10th October. Followed with Handheld2008 in London from 13th to 15th October.

mLearn2007 day 3

Day three started with 15 minute sessions! First presentation on portable devices in innovative classrooms from Megan Iemma (Heathdale Christian School, Victoria) and Paul Rodney (Christ’s College, Christchurch, NZ), using ipods in music, languages and literacy. Provided good examples, mainly using ipods (mogopod, Iwriter quiz programme, Iquiz, text2go, ghostwriter, tubesock) but also the use of ComicLife to develop comic based video material for languages and Garageband and Audacity to record pronounciation (via Bluetooth) and musical podcasts.

Then Roger Carroll from Victoria University, Australia on how mobile technology could be the catalyst between the workplace, learner and the educational institute. Generational differences, workplace practices, workforce demographics & technology changes need to come together in order enhance learning. Examples in using a moblog (photos mainly plus also videos which must be narrated) to engage carpentry students in learning. Mobile support, assessments, content and formal assessments costing AUS$1.50 for each download. Using constructivist, collaborative and collective learning to provide individual students the ability to create their own content and assessment.

Next, Julie Turnell from University of Teesside, UK on an investigation into students’ use of mobile devices and why they use for social activities but not for learning. Has a high proportion of ‘non-traditional’ students & text messaging has been used to support and retain students. Out of 469 students, only 3 did not own phone, 335 owned mp3 players as well. 84% used phones to share photos and videos, 60% used calendar etc. for personal use but only 30% used it for their study schedules. Therefore differences between how students use their phones in social community compared to their learning community. Might creation of a Virtual Community of Practice (Kimble, Penrod & Perry) help turn social interaction into activities that support learning.

Last item for the conference was a panel session on “how did we get here?” with Charlie Schick, Mike Sharples, Peter Le Cornu, Marc Niemes & Robyn Archer. Introduced by Jo Pearson, the scenario was that we were now at mlearn2017 where wireless is ubiquitous, batteries are self charging, nanotechnology is well established and the web has imploded on itself and has been replaced by smaller, more intimate virtual worlds. Virtual schools and virtual workplaces are the norm.

Mike Sharples, (University of Nottingham) quoted William Gibson with “the future is already here, not just evenly distributed”. Entertainment has changed, even banking has changed, so why not schools?

Mark Niemes, (elearning.org) schools willing to spend on mortar & bricks but not on more ‘ephemeral’ items like web sites, intranets and mobile learning. Devices become ‘disposable’, the easier to use will win. Content – too much around but not all useful, how do we sieve through all the knowledge to find out what we need? Context, personal, private or public depending on role.

Peter Cornu (St. Johns Ambulance), organizations have fewer buildings, most learning flexible & web available. People learn the skills & then come in to institutions to have recognition of their skills when they are ready. Teachers still practicing good pedagogy. IT working with their organizations to bring about learning effectively.

Charlie Schick (Nokia), not a techno-optimist but if we look back 10 years, education has not been changed fundamentally & in 10 years time, there will not be significant changes. But changes will take place gradually, especially if led by consumers, learners, parents, industry etc.

Robyn Archer (Connex, Melbourne) changes in how we travel. Travel to train stations not by car but via bus or bicycle & rush hour not as crowded. Achieved by using technology to improve how transport systems can be more efficient. Aging population has now retired. New workforce more in tune with use of technology, training is just in time with need for constant retraining. Customers also need to be trained by providing them with updates on how the transport network is working based on tracking systems.