eLearning Blog Dont Waste Your Time

Turnitin: 10 types of unoriginal work #turnitin #edtech

David Hopkins — Mon, 14 May 2012 10:38:39 +0000

How about this infographic from Turnitin to start the week? From a survey of nearly 900 educators (Plagiarism Today) Turnitin are trying to “understand what kinds of plagiarism were the most common in academia and, equally importantly, which were viewed as being the most problematic”.

The results showed, once classified, that the type of plagiarism can be identified as one of the following:

Clone: Verbatim copying without additions/subtractions.
CTRL+C: Largely verbatim copying from a single source with minor changes.
Find-Replace: Verbatim copying with key words/phrases changed, often automatically.
Remix: Paraphrasing content so that it flows seamlessly with other work.
Recycle: Plagiarizing from older works of your own (self plagiarism).
Hybrid: Combining correctly cited material with non-cited material in the same passage.
Mashup: A mix of copied and original content from various sources without attribution.
404 Error: Including citations that do not exist or are inaccurate.
Aggregator: Properly cited material that contains little original content.
Re-Tweet: Includes proper citation but uses too much of the original wording, content that should have been quoted but was paraphrased.

[Click to enlarge]

The interesting points for me are the frequency results, with the ‘clone’ (direct copy, word for word) and the ‘mashup’ (mixed copies, multiple sources) coming out as the most frequent offences, whilst the clone and Ctrl-C (which are basically the same?) as the most problematic or cause the most concern – but the ‘re-tweet’ and ‘remix’ as the least problematic.

The article linked to above (click the image) has a good summary of the categories as well as the full infographic. The survey also concludes with the advice that students should be included and encouraged to review their Institution’s plagiarism policy, with the following recommendations;

Inform: “Share the plagiarism spectrum with the students and use it as a guide to inform them of the ways in which plagiarism can take form.”
Intent: “The plagiarism spectrum emphasises the range of intent behind the student plagiarism. use the spectrum to guide decisions about appropriate responses to plagiarism.”
Originality Checking: “Give students access to their Originality Reports so that they can see how they may have inappropriately used or referenced source material.”

Thought on using Prezi as a teaching/learning tool

David Hopkins — Fri, 11 May 2012 09:38:24 +0000

Thanks to Steve Anderson (@web20classroom) for sharing this Prezi on “Thoughts on using Prezi as a teaching tool”.

It’s another good example of what you can do (and what you should avoid; e.g. excessive zooming and rotations) when trying to engage the audience and demonstrate/explain concepts, time lines, technical diagrams, etc.

As with all Prezi’s it is best view full screen.

Thoughts on using Prezi as a teaching tool on Prezi

Have you used Prezi with your learning materials? Are you brave enough to show off your work? If so please share with us all by leaving a comment with link to it, let’s see how we’re using this wonderful little tool!

My Prezis are here, for all to see: https://prezi.com/user/hopkinsdavid/ I have used Prezi for:

Collaborative presentation to the 2012 Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference (with Sue Beckingham)
The HEA funded workshop on QR Codes in Education

Comments welcome on both either here or on the specific page/links above.

Mozilla Open Badges, adding a “reputation layer”?

David Hopkins — Wed, 09 May 2012 13:29:54 +0000

“Learning today happens everywhere. But it’s often difficult to get recognition for skills and achievements that happen online or out of school.”

Mozilla is hoping to bring something to the learning-table – “open badges”. Mozilla Open Badges helps “solve that problem, making it easy for any organization to issue, manage and display digital badges across the web” as they say on their website: http://openbadges.org/ This is billed as new method of recognising and rewarding skills learned, both in and out of the classroom. Learners earn the badges which display their achievements and 21st century skills across the web, unlocking learning and employment opportunities. The badges system is open source and available to all.

Is this something that can be integrated with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) to show progress and learning?

Here are some more links/resources on the topic:

Mozilla Open Badges: “This (BrowserID) opens the door for users to create a single user-centric identity across the web, with tools like Mozilla Open Badges adding a “reputation layer” that provides a complete story about what they know and have achieved. All through an open, standards-based infrastructure that puts user sovereignty, privacy and security first.”
http://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2012/04/10/mozilla-open-badges-beta/
WebProNews: “By turning our accomplishments and skills into a digital achievement, more people might be pushed to achieve something greater. We already have people spending ungodly amounts of time to earn achievements in video games so the same should be true for a person spending a lot of time to learn astrophysics. ”
http://www.webpronews.com/mozilla-open-badges-enters-public-beta-2012-04
HackHigherEducation: “The proposed Open Badges Project challenges not just certification, but also assessment. What does it mean that anyone can issue any sort of badge? Does a badge offer a better representation of skills or competencies than having a formal degree? If so, when? Will these badges be meaningful — to students, to schools, to employers? Will they be accepted? If so, by whom?”
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/hack-higher-education/how-will-mozillas-open-badges-project-affect-higher-ed

Steve Wheeler recently wrote on the subject of Running a MOOC:

“The question of open, free of cost participation in a MOOC is a given. But what about those who wish to receive some tangible form of accreditation at the end of the programme? Who provides that?”

While the Mozilla badges could be one way to show the quality of learning, there is no form of checking (at the moment?) of the quality of work completed to gain the badge, so is this just like obtaining a certificate to say you attended the course rather than getting a certificate to say how well you did on the course?

Video: Dan Pink “The surprising truth about what motivates us” (RSAnimate)

David Hopkins — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:50:45 +0000

From watching the great talk from Sir Ken Robinson on “Changing Education Paradigms” I recently found this talk from Dan Pink that “illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.”

Watching this helped me realise a similarity between the reward mechanism that is sometimes offered to employees and the reward (grade) offered to students from their assessment. Dan uses the example of Atlassian, an Australian software company, that ‘releases’ their employees one day every quarter to work on anything they want, the only proviso (assessment) is that they show the results of this work or collaboration (see time-stamp in video above – from 5:50).

What if we could get students working like this? Let them produce anything, within a given framework (Atlassian define the business need as this criteria) and. I’m sure there would be huge issues when you bring things into the mix like marking criteria, assessment policies, etc, but could we let students shine in their own style and not ours? Can we make the marking criteria and/or policies surrounding assessment flexible enough to allow or encourage personal assessment? Can students be motivated not by grade but by achievement?

‘Dermandar’ Photography App

David Hopkins — Fri, 04 May 2012 08:18:50 +0000

Dermandar (iPod/iPhone App): I like panorama photos, especially when done well and you can spin the full 360 degrees and see a room, courtyard, scenery, sport venue, etc. While this is not necessarily the ‘best’ it is still good and worth the price (free!).

“The easiest-to-use panoramic picture app on the iPhone. Just launch, take a picture, steadily move the camera to the left or right to slide an on-screen Yin symbol into a Yang symbol – How clever! How Zen! – and the program will automatically stitch together a slick panoramic photo.” – Wall Street Journal

DMD Panorama, free : http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/dmd-panorama/id441183050

Perhaps the best feature of this App is that it tells you when it is going to take the next photo, based on your rotation, and takes it for you. All you have to do is keep the iPhone steady, same height, and turn slowly. Share your panoramas on the Dermandar site or push them to Twitter or Facebook.

My Dermandar panorama photos: hopkinsdavid

In the immortal words of children’s BBC presenters from my youth … here’s one I made earlier! Click and hold your cursor in the photo and drag left or right to rotate. If you want to make it full screen click the up arrow in the top-right of the image:

DMD Panorama: Campus, University of Leicester

Please, if you use this, don’t forget to edit the title of your image – when I searched the website there were thousands of ‘untitled’ panoramas to trawl through. And, once it’s uploaded, use the edit feature to add a description and ‘tags’ so it is categorised and easy for others to crowd-source too?

Here are a few tips to remember when using the app:

Keep the camera steady and level, if you drop your hand as you pan round the stitched photo will look wrong.
As you pan round the light/contrast of the subject or scenery will change, so you’ll get dark vertical bands where the individual photos are stitched together. With practice you can minimise this, try starting the pan at a different point of the field of view?
Update the title and tags associated with the panorama, and upload to www.dermandar.com, start or add to a growing repository of panoramic photos.
Once you’ve uploaded to the website you’ll need to check the settings on each individual upload, by default it looks like your panorama is set to ‘hide from galleries and search results’. (NB: ‘galleries’ is spelt wrong on on the Dermandar website, opps!).
Connect your Twitter or Facebook accounts and publish direct.

What I’d like to see is the ability to add labels to the panoramic photo, so you can highlight an object or area of view, this would help contextualise the photo.

There are two embed options – JS & HTML5 or Flash-based – but I can only get the Flash one to work on my blog here – have you been able to get the HTML5 one working, does it then work and display on mobile tech devices that can’t handle flash?

Here is an example of one that someone else made/took, and shows you how you can use crowd-sourced content for lesson content? Embed it in your materials, wiki page, blog, VLE, website, etc (not forgetting attribution to owner/creator).

DMD Panorama: Colosseum, Rome (by rodo1111)

Are you using panorama photos in your resources or learning materials? If so please share how, what, and why with us by leaving a comment below.

The New Digital Divide #edtech #eLearning

David Hopkins — Thu, 03 May 2012 10:43:03 +0000

I saw this earlier, the new Google Search Education, posted on the The Next Web website, and is flagged as a “new search education tool aimed at helping teachers pass on the necessary skills to young learners researching online”:

This passage resonated with me, in the video from time-stamp 2:06;

“The new digital divide is that those who are able to search, and those that aren’t able to search. It’s about critical thinking skills, it’s about being independent learners, and we need to make sure we cultivate these skills within our students so that when they go out into the world … they will know how to search and be able to be critical thinkers.”

Is this another side to the digital native/immigrant or digital resident/visitor discussion (argument)? Is it about the ability to find appropriate resources or not, rather than the technical nature of the individual’s background? What do you think?

Don’t underestimate local knowledge

David Hopkins — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:06:50 +0000

There’s nothing quite like a new job or a new town (or both) to make you realise you know so little, or that you are out of your ‘comfort zone’! Take an average journey as an example … go to a specific shop for a specific item:

By Foot – choose the store you want to go to based on distance, availability, or opening times.
By Car – Drive the known-route to the known-car park for the desired shop or shopping centre and item. Use alternative routes depending on the traffic, use alternative car park if original is full.
By Bus – Choose the shop or shopping district based on closest, easiest, quickest, or cheapest bus route.
By Taxi – It doesn’t matter which shop or shopping district you go to, you don’t have to worry about parking or waiting for the bus either?

Now try this without the knowledge you’ve learned over the years you’ve lived in the area you’re in. You don’t know which is the best shop or shopping district to go to. You don’t know the best route to take to get there. You don’t know where the car park is or which is the best, cheapest, or most secure. You’d take the bus but you don’t know where the bus stops are, which is the best ticket to get, how often the buses come, etc. You could ask someone but feel a fool asking such a basic question. This is even worse if you try it in bad weather or when you’re in a rush – you soon feel very uncomfortable and begin to question whether the journey is worth it.

Local knowledge is essential to living in your area, getting around, finding quick routes or avoiding congestion, getting the best deals, or just making the most of the area. When you move somewhere new you ask a colleague, a neighbour, a friend, or even a stranger on the street. You can of course make this easier by planning ahead (if possible) and working out as much of the route as you can (thank you Google Maps and Twitter!).

Now transplant this situation to a new student starting an new (online?) course. Unless the signposts are there for them, unless the route is explained, unless they can see or find their way clearly, they will be lost. Many distant learning students do not know where or who to when they need help, many will not ask for fear of looking silly. Those who do ask are quite often asking the same questions that were asked by a previous cohort (so why haven’t you updated the student guides?).

Make sure the path to learning is not obscured by the difficult navigation or less than simple structure to the information you are providing. Make sure the students find a system or a structure to the resources that is intuitive and/or simple to navigate. Make sure the relevance of the information is made clear – is this a resource they will need every day or once a year? Make sure the important stuff (contact details, timetables, templates, assignments, etc) are easy to find and that each Unit uses the same structure so the students find familiarity in their studies as they progress through your course. Can you give them a ‘map’ – if so then what’s the best format to put it in (downloadable file, online video, describe the ‘journey’ they’re taking, etc).

This kind of approach should not only be for your learning materials but also for the information points and information resources developed to support the students in their studies (non-Unit based), the pastoral care and support (admin, policies, timetables, options choices, etc).

Where are your bus stops and car parks in your materials, and how do the students find them (easily)? Do you give them a map or explain the structure or just expect them to figure it out for themselves? Do you monitor feedback or support queries and revisit the guides to update them if something crops up regularly?

Top 20 most influential Tweeters in Learning Technology #edtech

David Hopkins — Wed, 02 May 2012 08:16:47 +0000

Congratulations to all those successfully listed on the Now “Top 20 most influential Tweeters in Learning Technology“. As the introduction to the list goes;

“It’s the only chart in the business that actually asks real marketing people in learning technology to vote for the tweeters they really like to follow, so we don’t think we’re exaggerating too much when we say it’s pretty unique. “

Many thanks for my inclusion (at number 9, if that’s anything to go by?), I am honoured to be in such esteemed company with the likes of Steve Wheeler, Nancy Rubin, Simon Finch, Jay Cross, Tony Karrer, Shelly Terrell, Joyce Seitzinger, Alec Couros, etc.

So, not too much pressure then to continue and do even better ‘stuff then’? Nah, should be good fun!

How LinkedIn works

David Hopkins — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 19:17:29 +0000

As a follow up to the presentation I made at last weeks Plymouth Enhanced Learning Conference (PELeCON) with Sue Beckingham this infographic is worth a couple of minutes to look over.

[Click to view full Infographic]

Some interesting figures from the graphic:

Europe accounts for over 34 million members (6 million in the UK alone) and India 11 million.
2011: 4.2 billion searches on the LinkedIn platform.
LinkedIn now has over 2,116 employees (up from 500 in 2010).
The fastest growing demographics are students and recent college graduates.
Revenues for 2011 reached $522 million.
75 of the Fortune 100 use LinkedIn for “corporate hiring solution”.

If we can give our students an edge when they apply for the same jobs as others by helping them use social networks, like LinkedIn, professionally and effectively then the student looks good, and so does the Institution they are coming from. What do you think?

What are you doing with your students to help them use social networks so they work for them, not against?

There are some more excellent infographics on Jeff Bullas’ blog (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+), check them out.

‘Kindle’ eBook App

David Hopkins — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 10:05:21 +0000

‘Kindle’ eBook (iPhone/iPad): I didn’t go out and buy a Kindle when they first appeared, but I wanted to. At the time we were testing the Sony eReader at work so I borrowed one of those for a couple of weeks, which I didn’t like (mainly due to hassle of connect-to-upload and software issues, but it was still OK to use).

Since then the Kindle and other eBook readers have come along way. The new look Kindle Touch, B&N Nook and the new Kobo available in the UK WH Smiths are all impressive devices, but they still do not have the overall functionality of the iPhone or iPad (except the Kindle Fire, which is still not in the UK yet! Grrrr!).

And so to the Kindle App for iPhone and iPad:

“The Kindle app is optimized for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, giving users the ability to read Kindle books, newspapers, magazines and PDFs on a beautiful, easy-to-use interface. You’ll have access to over 900,000* books in the Kindle Store. Amazon Whispersync automatically syncs your last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights across devices (including Kindle), so you can pick up your book where you left off on another device. ”

Kindle Free : http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/kindle/id302584613

I recently read and finished the complete Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy which I bought for the Kindle and downloaded on both iPad and iPhone. Depending on where I was and what device I had available I read the eBook in about a week (yes, I’m a fast reader when I enjoy the book). Whist I downloaded the Kindle App about a year ago this was the first paid-for book I’d read on it and the experience was great – it was easy, enjoyable, I could pick it up for a page or chapter or two at a time, etc, etc.

Why am I including this as an App in learning and teaching list? Here’s why:

Sync (Whispersync) – the ability to save progress in any book on any device that is running the Kindle App (including your laptop/desktop) and advance to this point when you pick up another device and want to continue reading from where you stopped.
Publishers are becoming more accepting of the format of electronic books, so expect to see versions available in different formats, including EPUB, in the future. In which case the Kindle and Kindle App will be an excellent choice.
One advantage I can see about using Kindle and Amazon in general (whether it is using an Amazon device or just the App) is the ability to send documents to your account and device via email – “Email PDFs & other documents to your new Send-to-Kindle e-mail address and we deliver them to your device. The documents are automatically archived in the Amazon Cloud and available for re-download on your iOS or supported Kindle devices.” If Schools are not using this when they give these devices to students to get learning materials to the students then they are missing a HUGE trick – I would if I was involved in that kind of project!
Scale the text to the size that suits your eyesight, and even change the background from white to ‘paper’, even white text on black for night-time reading.
Simple touch the screen to progress/turn the page, or you can swipe to turn.
Access to massive Amazon eBook store (+900k reportedly available).
Dictionary – tap and hold a word to view the definition (dependent on connection).

Other resources you should look at about Kindle and eBooks:

James Clay eLearning Stuff – podcast with Lilian Soon, David Sugden and Ron Mitchell
eLearn magazine – “Moving From Paper to E-Book Reading”

Are you using a Kindle or the Kindle App (or both)? How are you using ‘them’, and are you involved in a scheme whereby the students are given one (or an account) and you send them the documents they need instead of them downloading from the VLE?